Saturday, November 21, 2009

Modern Collective A “Trojan Horse for Socialist Utopia.”













By Tim Baker.


Planet Earth – Stars of the highly touted new surf movie, Modern Collective, have been shocked to discover the project was all an elaborate ruse by film-maker Kai Neville to impose his leftist-socialist politics on the world.

In the fine print of agreements signed by the surfers, they are henceforth obliged to donate all future income “for the collective good of humanity.”

Under the agreement, private ownership of wealth is strictly prohibited and the surfers’ earnings from sponsorship and prize money, as well as all profits from the film, must be handed over to a number of approved “community projects”.

“I thought collective just meant we were going traveling and surfing together, not some kind of crazy kabutz shit where we had to give everything away,” complained a stunned Dion Agius. “I should have twigged when Kai started carrying on about upsetting the apple cart, and apples for every one. I just thought he was on the pingers.”

Lawyers for the surfers are poring over their contracts but so far can find no loopholes in the binding agreements they have entered.

“It first came to me one day at Canguu,” said Neville, of his inspiration for the scheme. “I’d just despatched some little Balo kid to order our lunches and fetch me some fresh batteries when I had a kind of epiphany. I just couldn’t justify tripping around the planet in the lap of luxury with all these wealthy guys while so many people went without the basic necessities of life,” he said.
“All these unpaid extras in surf movies, often in impoverished third world locations, earn nothing from our imposition on their homelands and I figured it was time we gave something back. It’s nothing but an accident of birth that we have so much while they go without.”

The combined annual incomes of the surfers, Agius, Smith, Mitch Coleborn, Dusty Payne, Yadin Nichol and Dane Reynolds, believed to be in the vicinity of US$4 million, will be diverted into a charitable foundation and distributed to a number of community groups.

Top of the list is a large training facility for unemployed youth around Canguu, equipping them for jobs in the surf industry. Everything from board making and ding fixing, to website design and film making will be taught. Additionally, the surfers will all be required to perform several weeks of community service in the facility. Any failure to comply may result in an extended stay in a special “re-education camp.”

“Machado had the right idea. All he had to do was pretend he was digging a freaking well for a few minutes while Taylor got the shot, and everyone thinks he’s a bloody Saint,” bemoaned Mitch Coleborn. “We’ve basically signed our lives away because of this crazed little Che Guevara posing as a camerman, and if we complain and try and wriggle out of it we look like the bad guys.”

The only one not complaining is Reynolds. “I’ve always hated being a surf star and all the money and opportunities that come with it,” said Reynolds. “Frankly, it’s been torture. This will finally allow me to really be the kind of gritty, down-at-heel rebel I’ve always wanted to be.”

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Lifelong Friendship Ends After Mates’ Rules Violation













By Chris Binns

TOONALOOK WATERS, EAST COAST AUSTRALIA:
Ted Newbury and Damon Hensley today officially declared their 25-year mateship over, citing irreconcilable differences. After years of mediation and counselling following ‘Bowlogate’, the sorry night that saw Newbury forget to buy Hensley a round, then later fail to honour a pantsing at the pool table, the final curtain came down on the pair’s strained relationship this morning at Toonalook Back Beach, when Hensley failed to wait on the sand and watch Newbury’s last wave.

According to a distraught Newbury, the wave was “ a real good one, ay. I linked her all the way through, stuck a big floater onto the sand and did that kick-your-board-out-and-catch-it-and-keep-running thing. I was pretty pumped and looked up for Damo, but... he wasn’t there. So spewing, I’m just over it. After all I’ve done for that guy...”

Hensley admits his fault but claims he’d had the shits with his former mate from the time they’d suited up. “Ah y’know how it is, he picked me up from home like he always does, but something just didn’t seem right. I was bagging his shitty driving and he didn’t seem to appreciate it like he normally does. Then in the carpark I was pissing in my wetty and flicked some on him, and he just looked at me like, whatever. So I was like, whatever too, y’know?”

The pair were civil in the water, except for on one occasion when Newbury dropped in on Hensley, who he claims was too far back to make it. “Yeah,” says Newbury, “I went, but I had to. Teddy was never gonna get around that one, and it was too good to let go. He does it all the time and I’ve had a gutful of pulling back on bombs that he doesn’t end up making.”

According to Newbury, the situation was quite different. “Fuck mate, the only reason I don’t make ’em is ’cos that clown’s always on the shoulder pushing the section down on me. He calls me Too Deep Teddy, but I reckon Drop-In Damo’s more like it. Fuck ’im.”

About the Mates’ Rule violation on the sand, Hensley is quick to set the record straight. “It was pretty shit out there. We’d been in the water for a while already and were running late for work. Edward had called last wave, and I snagged a set and beached it. Then I seen him catch at least three more little in-betweeners and kick off and paddle back out every time. After one he coulda come in on and didn’t, I bailed. It was cold on the sand and now he’s all sour on me. He can get rooted.”

Although their friendship is over, Hensley and Newbury later released a joint statement saying they their other dealings, as brothers-in-law and business partners, will be unaffected.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Dane Reynolds Reluctantly Gives Up Paper Run To Concentrate On Surfing Career













By Nick Carroll


California:
In a heart-wrenching statement to friends, family and the global surf media, Dane Reynolds has announced he will be giving up his twice weekly paper run.

The run, which Reynolds first took on at the age of nine, covers a number of streets near his childhood home, and involves riding around with a basket of local free newspapers and tossing them into the front yards of various residents.

Giving up hand delivery of the Ventura Guardian will allow Reynolds to focus all his attention on his pro surfing career, which he said had suffered in prior seasons from broken concentration. “I was always stressing … I’d be sitting in the lineup at Teahupo’o or Hossegor, and thinking about getting back home in time for next Tuesday’s delivery.”

The $25 per month paycheque funded the purchase of his first very own surfboard. Confessed Reynolds: “At first I was worried I wouldn’t be able to find the money for my next quiver, but then I recalled I was being paid a million dollars a year by various sponsors and got my surfboards free from the world’s highest profile board designer.”

Nonetheless, admitted Reynolds, the decision to abandon the paper run has caused him considerable angst. “I’ve got nothing to fall back on now,” he told reporters, brushing away tears. “Apart from a paper run, and colossal stardom in the undeniably hip global surf culture, what else am I qualified for? I feel as if my youth is slipping away.”

Reynolds also plans to sell his specially modified bike, which allowed him to carry up to 100 newspapers at a time. But, he said, “I won’t just sell it to anyone. That bike meant the world to me.”

Local grandmother Lupe Gonzales said the whole neighbourhood would miss Reynolds. “We always knew when the paper had arrived by his raucous bellowing. ‘Read all about it!’ Dane really knew how to wake people up.”

She said the neighbourhood was planning a party to celebrate Reynolds’s long paperboy career, but she expected only a few people to show up, since the party would be on a Sunday morning when all decent Americans went to church.

New area paper boy, Bobby Martinez, says he is hoping to follow in Reynolds’s footsteps. “Boy, would I love it if a major surf corporation threw that kind of money at me!” said Martinez. “Then I wouldn’t have to win ultra prestigious ASP world tour events just to keep myself in airfares.”