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.
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.
Well, 005 is basically completely shaped. Finished it off yesterday. All it needs now is some final touches, which will be done right before it gets the finboxes glassed in. We're going with Futures on this board. The fact of the matter is that it's hot out, and it's going to be bad business glassing in this heat and humidity. I'm going to have to wait until the evening most definitely. Towards the end of the week it looks like it will be a little cooler. I don't mind the heat really, but sometimes after working all day in 90+ temperatures, it's hard to make myself go out and work on stuff. See Serious Delirium.
Also looks like some waves (hopefully) towards the end of the week. Had an excellent day last Tuesday, phenomenal actually. Lost a fin because while the glass is strong, the cedar underneath is not and I must have cranked down too hard on the finbox screws, and it crushed the cedar. So some as I'm running up the beach looking for it, I see some strange guy who was wading in the shorebreak wearing a drysuit (!) holding up my fin. A hero! So I surfed the rest of the time without it, and the board worked fine, because there were mostly rights and I still had two fins in that side.
"Nothing Ever Happened," the ninth track off of Deerhunter's 2008 album Microcastle. Really good album, and great song off of that album. Love the jam at the end. Also check out out Bradford Cox's other band, Atlas Sound. Good stuff.
So, with the (temporary) shop all set up, I started Mark's board on Wednesday. Actually, most of that time was spent figuring out an outline. Mark had a template made up, but in the end decided to make quite a bit wider than he originally planned, which was a good call in my opinon, I've been a fan of wider boards ever since I bought my Cannibal "Rocketfish". So the dimensions he decided on were 5'7" x 19 1/2" x 2 3/8". After I pulled his template out to the desired width, I checked it with other templates I have, and coincidentally it was really close to the Boombastik, and by extension, my quad. So I decided to go off that again, I pulled in the nose just slightly and made the rail come into the tail a little straighter, but still retained a nice curve. I also moved the wide point back a bit, to add some pivot. So, by the time I figured that all out and cut out the one side, it was too late to use the jigsaw to cut out another template to flip for the other side.
So I did that Thursday. The board is cut out and the bottom skinned and sanded (I used the Skil 100; it was nice). I planned to continue working on it this evening, and should be working on it right now, except I was having an off day with other projects which dealt in wood instead of foam. I kept on cutting things wrong and getting really frustrated. With wood, when I do that, usually the piece that has been cut wrong gets shattered to splinters and then I cut a new one. Knowing my self (kind of) and the way I can get when I get frustrated, I opted not to work on the board tonight because A)I do not want to shatter the blank to splinters and B)I can't just cut a new one if I mess up. So, thanks to Mark for his patience, work will resume tomorrow, when I am hopefully out of my serious delirium. Serious.
The water's finally warmed up enough where it's perfect without a wetsuit. Been getting out on the little swell we've had this week, and it's been fun in a carefree, shorebreak surfing kind of way. I picked up a pair of swimfins today, to start doing some bodysurfing and just plain old swimming during these semi-flat spells. But don't let anyone tell you it's been flat: I've surfed four times this week, and rode fun waves every time.
Are you big on the Pig?
I took advantage of the Sun earlier today and dewaxed my boards, then I took this picture. From left to right: SF 004, SF 001, SF 003, Hobie "Phil Edwards Model" 9'0", push mower, Dewey Weber "DNT Series" 5'8", Cannibal "Rocketfish" 6'0".
Look at this insect, and realize once again what a strange world we live in. Really beautifully bizarre.
Ever since Pat posted this post over at Casualties of the Loudness War, I've had this song stuck in my head. It's Bruce Springsteen, of course, and the song is "Atlantic City," from his unbelievable 1982 album Nebraska. Now, even you Bruce detractors (you know who you are) have to respect it when an artist (in this case, being Bruce), releases a huge album (namely, The River), does a huge tour with huge shows at huge places (the River Tour being the tour in question), then releases a stark "folk" album recorded on a four-track at his home, and not just any album but an amazingly album full of the thematics of the darkness and tears that his previous work may have been touching on but not completely engulfing (well, except for "The River." That is one sad song.) So yeah, listen to this song, and every song on the album, again and again, and again once more.
This blog was started as a way to chronicle my adventures into surfboard shaping and just surfing in general. Since its inception, it has evolved into a log of whatever I feel like rambling about and sharing with the world, including, but not limited to: photographs, bicycles and bicycling, film, music, gardening, cute pictures of Henry, and more.
