The Endless Bummer

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

I recently started a Tumblr page. I did it for specific reasons, mostly having to do with making a visual argument for a lifestyle choice my wife and I were debating. I wanted to convey all the wonder and possibility making such a purchase could have. A little cheesy, maybe a touch over-reaching, the thing is basically a mood board, a style sheet that I'd present to my wife as if she were some client I was desperately trying to woo. Woo. Anyhow, the thing has turned into a bit of a time-waster, a bit of a mild obsession, and in the end I think it has helped do the job. We're in the process of making the purchase anyway. But I've stumbled upon some realizations having this bit of a digital pin board. First of all, it feels very much like my own bedroom wall I had as a teenager. Back then I'd stick up surfing posters and music posters just so. I'd hang up sporting gear, then thinly veiled drug paraphernalia, then photos of friends and girlfriends in particular fashion. Then maybe my friends would come over and maybe I'd feel proud of how good my room would look, or I'd feel stupid about how bad it'd look. All to say having this Tumblr page is just another foray into the trend towards the adolescentifation of middle age. What's more, as I peruse other blogs and tumblrs and do google image searches or stumble upon images from online news articles I find pictures on other people's digital bedroom walls the same as my own. As if this whole wide expansion of connective thought and correlative opportunity that we see as some kind of digital spring called the world wide internet is only serving to narrow our choices. Yes! You can look at surf stuff and fashion! Yes! You can find that old photo of your favorite soccer player and skateboarder! But they will be the same photos everyone else is seeing. And they'll likely be displayed the same way everyone else is displaying them. And someone is keen to watch it all happen, scoop up the representative rights to the concept and feed it to you in ever larger yet more pristine gulps. All to say, here is a great article my friend Beau sent through last night via Facebook. A great read.

Monday, April 23, 2012

Oldfield Lovely

Le Sabich just alerted me to this clip. And while it seems pretty long in the video tooth, I think it merits a repost here just for its sheer radness.

On Freesurfe®s.

This time of year, this time of life, always churns up a thousand and one debates about the quotidien balance of energy and focus. Somewhere some time someone decided that life encompassed two entirely separate, but inter-working worlds called "Life" and "Work." Or someone didn't decide it, it just happened for a certain portion of the population and that population grew to encompass a majority of the world we are operating in. I'm sure there's a great book on the history of that somewhere that I haven't read. As this population of livethenworkthenlivethenworkers grew to current proportions, someone noticed that the enforcement of such strict guidelines needed to be mitigated somehow, dreaming up a counter-cultural movement attempting to shift things back into a holistic approach. Life is work and work is life and we need to get back to those basics and live your dreams and live for today and follow your bliss and et cetera et cetera et cetera. And most of us have grown up with that kind new propaganda floating around our brains. Our system is based on the one which necessitates a sort of conceptual deification of the other which is then packaged by somebody else and sold back to someone else which makes that other person work even harder to get the goods. It's all pretty insane-making. In the end, thanks to the system, the people who are living the "good" holistic life depend on the people who lead the "bad" dualistic life to pay for their exploits. All the time the dualists are trying to get to be the holists while the holists are stressing out that even they are not holistic enough. It's that same old story, if by old you mean a time frame of as-of-this-post-indeterminate-length. Crazy times indeed, but have they ever been otherwise, or even better? Here is a picture of Chris Gentile working away on his laptop over at the Pilgrim shop.

CDM

There are a lot of nice ideas attempting to get worked out in this video. It's nice to see a little snatchet of footage of one surfer on a variety of boards. That's a good little lesson in style. And while the music isn't bad music, I turned it down to let my own tunes play over it all.

Sunday, April 22, 2012

Right Said Fred

We float out in the water. Two rusty nails stuck to our nearly matching boards. It always feels pretty bad, those first few spring sessions. I mean, it feels great to be in the water, sure. There's that deep sigh of relief when it hits us how comfortable it is to be back in the ocean. But our surfing sucks and worse, there's that niggling asshole voice that comes in the echo chamber that keeps whining about how we didn't surf enough over the winter, that while we were nose down, trying to stay warm and be productive, all our friends were getting better at surfing while were were getting worse. And that's a sad thought, that thought "I am worse at surfing." And we argue back. We assert that we have to take care of the family, put a roof over our head, build our careers! And besides, the waves were crap this winter, and the few days that were good, well how the hell could we have planned for that? All of this bounces around bobbing between sets. And then we catch a wave and we suck. Granted, it's better than not catching the wave. And having a job is better than not having a job, and who wants a poke in the eye with a sharp stick? Sweet Jesus how high can we set our expectations? To make self deprecating matters look and sound even more ridiculous are these fine pieces of crafty engineering we are riding. See, because Tony and I have these Andreini Vaqueros we picked up last year. Yeah, it's like the official EBNY clubhouse fun board. And we dress the same in these black suits and bob up and down laughing at each others jokes. And we have the same job. Like Mean Girls for hairy men. Except we're not mean. Well, Tony isn't. Maybe I'm mean. But all we're talking about is how bad we've turned out as surfers approaching middle age. Approaching gently, from far off, sure, but approaching on a train that's going nowhere else. And we're talking about how great these boards are, and we're coming up with little dumb observations paddling out from each ride like "ooh, yeah, you know you really need to get it slotted in before it'll catch" and "this thing paddles great but you really need to let it do all the work." I mean if I weren't a super supporter of equality and if I weren't striving for a kind of respectful discourse, I would say without batting an eyelash that the whole thing sounds so "totally gay." But Fred Hemmings coulda told us that. Not that the waves got over knee high today.

Friday, April 20, 2012

Surf Historians

We tend to pay really really great attention. Really, really great. And so when we peruse the "Surf Historians" section we notice all sorts of things. Like we notice that certain surf blogs are now fashion blogs. And certain other surf blogs no longer exist. And even other surf blogs haven't posted in months. What we aren't good at is maintenance. Doing the little things to keep it all fresh. So maybe next week sometime if we find the time we'll go through the "Surf Historians" section with a fine tooth comb. We'll be weeding out blogs that don't post, don't exist, or have magically changed subject matter and authorship.
If you know of a good surfy blog that should be there, especially of the local East Coast variety, let us know...

Antonio & Toddy (and Angus, who is with us in our hearts.)