It is time...

...for stormy weather. Hurricane Earl hurls towards the coast, and it looks like this one is going to definitely send some monumental swell. A lot of people had harsh bells ringing in their ears when they checked the waves Saturday/Sunday, and while the mid-afternoons may have been lackluster, the mornings and evenings were outstanding, if you could weather the crowds. This picture is from the infamous Holyoke, where the crowds were confining:

Ha!

     Just kidding, it's from Surfy Surfy, but if it was a left, that could have been from the aforementioned break, where at least 30 people were out at one time. I don't normally subject myself to torture, I'm no masochist, so instead of pushing for the point like so many cool guys and gals, we decided to hang off the outside, which allowed us to garner many tasty waves.
  
 






     The space above is where some water shots of us surfing would be, had I not forgotten to fasten the locking latch on my Dad's waterproof camera. allowing it to open and fill instantaneously with water, destroying it. It met with death after three shots of Frank silhouetted by the sunrise. Cute.
     Anyway, Earl's almost here, Fiona's out there, and we've had solid surf for eight of the last nine days, with not much end in site. Looks like everything's coming up roses.

    

     "Stormy Weather," the 13th track off of the Pixies' 1990 album Bossanova. Every time I listen to the Pixies,  I find myself wondering why I don't listen to them more.

Recent Developments

     So, it's been a little bit so I figure it's time for an update, and a rain-day washout morning is the best time for that sort of thing. We had a great swell this past weekend, with days upon days of ever-changing solid northeast windswell, ranging from chaotic to semi-clean, from shallow take-offs to steep drops. Wind never switched offshore, but that's OK. Surfed Wounded Gull, Sandal, and had inaugural WJ surf on Saturday, which was great to get back down there after a couple months hiatus and surf some nice long lines. Sunday's surf at Wounded Gull was punctuated parenthetically in the middle by the 32nd Annual Dog Day 5 Mile Road Race, in which I beat my past self by about 1 minute 15 seconds, for a total of 41:14 (which when you factor in the delay between when the siren sounded and when we actually crossed the starting line is more like 39:14 or so) which is better than I thought I'd do considering I haven't really been running. I have been surfing a lot more than last year, though, so I guess the lesson is: surfing is better training for running than running. Probably not, but a man can dream.

   If you remember, back on Valentine's Day I posted about skinning Frank's Rastafish with plans to make something out of it for him. Well, with 005 finished for Mark, it was about time to start this one. The dimensions are 5'4" x 19 5/8" x 2 5/16 ", with a single wing and this little fang-fish-squash thing of  a tail, which was entirely my design. No, it was Frank's, and that's the truth. That square hole is where the leash plug used to be. Still a bit to go shaping-wise, but it's coming along.

     Check out that cover, first printing 1968. Been reading this book I picked up at the thrift store last week. Science Fiction by Gaslight: A History and Anthology of Science Fiction in the Popular Magazine from 1891-1911, edited by Sam Moskowitz. This collection has been really interesting so far, with the first 30 or so pages giving a really detailed history of the popular magazine in the United States and England, along with the prevalence of science fiction material therein. Really great stuff in here, divided into sections such as Catastrophes, Marvelous Inventions, Monsters and Horrors, Future Wars, Man-Eating Plants, and more. The titles of the stories are really great as well: "Where the Air Quivered," "The Voice in the Night," "The Ray of Displacement," "Itself," and "The Mansion of Forgetfulness," just to name a few. There's a couple well known names here, H.G.Wells and Jules Verne, but most of the stories are written by authors I've never heard of. One thing to think of when reading the works of forward-thinking imaginations of the past: Would they have been disappointed in the future? Maybe, because Robert Barr, in his story "The Doom of London," imagines that by the year 1950 electricity would have run its course and been replaced by "vibratory ether." It must have been a strange, strange world back then. I guess it still is.

A rare shot of Wounded Gull.

KAK was a psych group formed in a San Francisco in 1968 by Gary Lee Yoder, who would later be a member of Blue Cheer. A really wonderful album from '69 that has since been re-released with some great extra tracks. A blend of really good psych-jams veering towards the harder side, such as "Electric Sailor" and "Bryte 'N' Clear Day," and some mellower stuff that really balances the album, such as "I've Got Time" and my personal favorite off of the album, "Flowing By." The whole album is a solid piece of '60s psych rock that is definitely worth a listen. 

Here to Hear

03 - Electric Sailor

05 - I've Got Time

06 - Flowing By

07 - Bryte 'N' Clear Day

Another Jay Nine Bag! Also: Dark Fall Apologies.

      Jeannine made a bag for Mark's board, and here it is! The bricks on the nose match the bricks on the SF lam. You can check out Jeannine's Etsy shop RIGHT HERE. She has a bunch of vintage ladies clothing and things like that.
     Surfed this morning and it was nice to finally get some waves that had some size (4 -5 ft.) and power to them. Nice to not have to pump and flounder on small gutless mush. Got me more thirsty for hurricanes.
     Also, after some discussion today I feel I may have been too hard on Dark Fall. Still, I'll probably never watch it again, and I still stick to my argument that the narrator's voice and the ideas it transmitted were not very intelligent sounding, and I think for someone who doesn't surf it really degrades the movie and surfing in general. Wise up.

     This one's for Ryan, and all you wonderful vegetarians out there. I'm not the first to say "Thou shall not kill!" Even though more closely translated, Exodus 20:13 says, "Thou shalt not murder," which is way different than kill, murder still involving killing but "unlawfully with malice aforethought" (OED). Anyway, Gorilla Biscuits' "Cats and Dogs", from their second album Start Today.

005 is finished!

    Finished SF 005 for Mark earlier the middle of this week. He came up today and fortunately there was some OK surf to try it out in. Went over mid-afternoon and got some waist high surf with some push behind it. Not the best lines but there was something at least. It was really a unique feeling watching him surf the board I made, and surf it well, it being the first board I have made specifically for someone else. A really good feeling actually.

     I really like how the rails came out on this board. They are like what I was shooting for with 004, but didn't quite get. I'm really excited to keep on making some more boards. Next up (possibly) is Frank's 5'4" that I'm making out of his fish I cut down a while back. Should be interesting. Stay tuned.
   
     Went to the showing of Dark Fall at the Seaport on Thursday. Here's my review: I'll never watch Dark Fall again. It really had nothing much going for it, in my opinion. It had a lot of things working against it: sub-intelligent narration, music I didn't really care for, an filmmaking/editing style I also didn't care for because I thought it was nothing special (and, lest we forget, I am a cinema studies minor), and kind of jerky seeming people in it. Here's a cool thing (loosely quoted): "Surfing is all we can do during the winter to keep our sanity." Actually, that's not that cool. Hmmm, let's see. Maybe you could read a book? That might help out with the dim narration. Or possibly get a real job. Or, I don't know, learn to play an instrument. My point being: That's a stupid thing to say.
    
Some of the good things were:
               
A) The segment on Dean Randazzo
B) As Frank brought up while I was ranting against the movie while surfing the next morning, the segment about surfing in the winter and the comaraderie it breeds. Although this may have been overshadowed by the "stars" of the show complaining about how hard it is to surf with 5mm wetsuits and ice-cream headaches. Grow up.
C) The summer section with the small waves was kind of cool.
D) While this film will probably fade into obscurity out in the real world, it did feature some amazing waves that almost all people outside of the state and many people inside the state would find hard to believe came from NJ.
      So yeah, there's my official review. Take it or leave it.

      All of you psyche-rock fans may already know all this, but anyway: Black Mountain and the Black Angels are both releasing new albums on the same day (Sept. 14th). Black Mountain will release Old Fangs and the Black Angels will release Phosphene Dreams. Both albums will probably be amazing if each band stays on their current course of excellence. So that's one bit of the news. But the other bit, and the bit I just found out a couple days ago, is that the two bands will also be doing an Autumn tour together, and not only that, but the show in Philly falls on a Saturday, and not only that, but they're having a four-ticket-for-the-price-of-three deal. I've never seen the Black Angels, but Black Mountain is a really solid and psychedelicizing live band.

Get there.

Black Mountain:

Modern Music -  Self-Titled, Track 1
Tyrants - In The Future, Track 3

The Black Angels:

Surf City (Revisited) - Black Angel Exit EP, Track 1
Vikings - Directions to See a Ghost, Track 8

Potato Leaf.

Winter Redux

 I wish it was cold again.