Listen: Biggest conundrum haunting surf world finally solved!

Not sandals.

I don’t wear them though you probably do. Flip flops, flaps, slaps, sandals, thongs, jandals, plakkies, slops, toe-splitters, honey-bunnies, li’l foot friends, deep south jonks. Each and every nomenclature juvenile or stupid, like the footwear itself, unless one lives on the islands, is Hawaiian, and is allowed to call them “slippahs” which is cool and ok.

The footwear choice of surfers since time immemorial circa ancient Egypt. Those bros wore them, Japanese Samurai wore them, Brazilians wear them as do you.

But, again, each descriptor a foolish and silly word.

How can a grown man step outside the house in thongs?

In toe-tanners?

He cannot, nor can a grown woman, but thankfully this issue has finally risen to a head.

David Lee Scales and I get together, now twice weekly, for chats and today’s might be the most important of all. I, if you somehow forgot, have my master’s degree in Applied Linguistics.

Jongs?

No.

Listen to the proper locution for those non-island born/bred here.

And enjoy.

"Now THAT'S surfing!"

There was a time, and not terribly long ago, when surfers sat upon the apex of Mt. Cool. Oakley Razorblades around eyes, Webz on hands, Gotcha jams covering thighs and Flojo sandals on toes. Everyone wanting to be them, nobody able to imitate. Sportos, motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wasteoids, dweebies, dickheads all clamoring for some of that surfer spice. Surfers starred as desirable studs and stud-ettes in top rated sitcoms, ruled the sand and the sea.

A seemingly infinite Hot Summer Night.

Alas, nothing is forever and surfers fell hard from the perch into the desert where pickleballers once roamed and there they have been ever since.

Hope springs that someday a surfer will come along who’s rad, once again, but until then, we are all forced to watch a 36-year-old quarterback steal the shine once ours by going Swag Surfin. The song, released in 2009, has become an anthem for many professional football teams including Atlanta’s Falcons and, after their stunning overtime win last evening, midwesterner Kirk Cousins Swag Surfed along with the crowd.

Announcers declaring, “Now THAT’S surfing!”

Watch here.

But how long, do you imagine, will this desolation stretch on? Will we see another cool surfer in our lifetimes?

Caitlin Simmers, we turn our lonely eyes to you.

Conan Hayes is a “a very, very high-end white-hat security guy."

If ever there was a surfer’s life to match the twists of the wild ol Wright family, it would be Conan Hayes, the forty-nine-year-old, Seattle-born peer of Kelly Slater and tamer of giant Cloudbreak and Teahupoo.

For after a relatively successful pro career, which included finishing 12th in 1996, Conan split the sport at the turn of the century to co-found a label that would eventually be worth thirty-ish mill.

Hayes sold his share of the company to his partner Pat Tenore for $7.5 mill and was subsequently erased from its history the company’s website claiming that “RVCA is the brainchild of company founder, PM Tenore.

In 2015, Hayes was hit with grand theft charges by the Orange County DA, who alleged Hayes had committed short sale fraud against the Bank of America “by providing Bank of America with false information concerning his financial net worth, which was in the millions of dollars, in order to qualify for short sale relief.”

The charges were dropped two years later “among a myriad of scandals following the prosecution.”

Conan, a chameleon who, after selling RCVA operated a warehouse importing children’s toys in LA, pivoted into the election denying game, becoming “a minor celebrity” in that particular culture war.

The NY Times revealed Conan was a major player in an “election denial network” who was paid $200,000 by Donald Trump’s legal team, and who allegedly went undercover to make copies of election software, searching for evidence the Dems stole the show from the Grand Old Party in 2020.

Now, sexy blonde bombshell Tina Peters, the former Colorado county clerk who slipped Conan Hayes a security card so he could access the Mesa County election system, has been sent to prison for nine years, the judge telling her:

“You are no hero, you abused your position and you are a charlatan. You cannot help but lie as easy as you breathe.”

A couple of years back, the New Yorker painted a wonderful picture of Conan “Billy” Hayes doin’ his dirty biz.

According to the Times, the person who likely used Wood’s badge and made copies of the Mesa County voting software was Conan James Hayes, a former pro surfer who has been closely associated with Lindell and Patrick Byrne, the former C.E.O. of Overstock.com, who, like Lindell, has spent millions of dollars trying to overturn the 2020 Presidential election. (Dominion filed a defamation lawsuit against Byrne last year, alleging that he “manufactured and promoted fake evidence to convince the world that the 2020 election had been stolen.”)

In a live-stream video posted on Twitter, Byrne offered additional details about how the scheme unfolded: Hayes, whom Byrne described as “a very, very high-end white-hat security guy,” was given “some county credentials, or something, and he dressed up like a little nerd.” When representatives from Dominion Voting Systems and the Colorado secretary of state’s office showed up for the trusted build, Byrne went on, “what’s funny is that unbeknownst to them . . . one of those county workers wasn’t really a county worker.” Byrne said that Hayes FaceTimed him during the software update. “He had a name like Billy or something on his nametag. Billy the county worker. Hey, message to Dominion and Colorado secretary of state, that guy with ‘Billy’ on his nametag next to you, he was actually one of ours. He was filming you fuckers.” (It would later come out that Bishop’s credit card had been used to make the hotel reservation for Hayes’s stay in Grand Junction.)

One month to go til Trump v Kammy go head to head.

Who you got?

"When you're doing a breathing class with Wim Hof on #FridayThe13th under a #NewMoon and Mercury is heavily in #Retrograde and you pass out..."

It might not be so trendy, today, but a few years back ice bath plunges and wild holding breath business was entirely all the rage. Cold was the key to eternal youth. Lack of breathing, or some derivation thereof, the secret to perfect health. And Wim Hof, a 65-year-old Dutchman, was at the very forefront of it all.

Hof, known as “The Iceman” wowed the fitness-conscious by breaking the Guinness Book of World Records records for swimming under ice, laying upon ice and running a half marathon, barefoot, upon, you guessed it, ice. Hof developed a whole system around cold, lack of breathing and perpetual adolescents, naming it the Wim Hof Method that was practiced enthusiastically by professional surf icons like Laird Hamilton and Kelly Slater.

The best of the best.

Eight years ago, you may recall when the 11x world champ became knocked right out doing a Wim Hof Method. Afterward, Slater penned, “When you’re doing a breathing class with #WimHof (@iceman_hof) on #FridayThe13th under a #NewMoon and Mercury is heavily in #Retrograde and you pass out and fall on your face, start dreaming and wake up wondering where tf you are and why does your face feel like you just got tackled on the football field and somebody was filming it all…but you think it’s funny.”

“You knocked yourself out,” Hof responded.

Well, in a turn nobody saw coming, The Iceman has just come under heavy fire for alleged abuse. A report published in the Netherlands’ de Volkskrant newspaper over the weekend claimed Hof had “subjected his former partner, their son and her two children from a previous marriage to physical and verbal abuse over a period of 13 years.”

Hof vociferously denies the charges and vows to fight them in the court of Dutch law, but a possible casualty is his biopic which is currently in the works and starring Shakespeare in Love heartthrob Joseph Fiennes.

The production company for the film released a statement declaring, “Genesius Pictures can confirm that due to the severity of the allegations, this production, which was in development only and had not begun filming, is on hold.”

Big bummer for those who enjoy their films as cold as their beverages.

There will, certainly, be more as this story develops.

"He's an angel walking. He is the hero of Indian Rocks Beach now."

America’s eastern seaboard has had a real doozy of a hurricane season, thus far. Currently Kirk is whipping itself into a Category 3 storm in the Atlantic and though not predicated to make landfall, is sounding alarms for unruly swell and dangerous rip currents. He comes right on the heels of Hurricane Helene who caused widespread damage and death after blasting through Florida’s gulf and drowning the Carolinas.

In the darkness, though, a bright surfer light shone. Marty Thomas, from Indian Rocks, Florida, paddled out into the wrath and rescued 12 people and pets using only his surfboard.

Anne McIntosh, a 27-year resident of Indian Rocks, was in her home when the flood waters came in. “The beds were floating. The couch was floating. My brother and his wife were on the counters,” she says. “I was walking around in the back unit just thinking, ‘what am I going to do?’ And all of a sudden I hear a voice, and he’s saying, ‘We’ll get you. We’ll get you.'”

The voice of Marty Thomas.

The brave surfer pried the doors to McIntosh’s house open and paddled her and her giant St. Bernard to safety before heading right back out into the maelstrom to save many others.

The grateful woman and Thomas reunited, days ago, with McIntosh telling him, “He’s an angel walking. He is the hero of Indian Rocks Beach now. And you do it so gracefully. Thank you. And I love you for it. And you deserve all the good things in life.”

Thomas, ever chill, responded, “Thank you. I appreciate that. You’re pretty awesome yourself.”

The handsome silver-ish fox appeared to do his heroics on a SUP as a high-performance shortboard would not have been up for the task. I trust that you will hold space in your heart for our stand-up brothers and sisters for Marty Thomas’ sake.

At least for five days.