FINGER FOOD 2-21-07
By Corky Carroll

Over my sixteen zillion years of surfing and being around the beaches of this world I have seen people do some amazing things.  Both amazingly brilliant and amazingly stupid.  I have seen the best surfers in the world pull off incredible feats off daring and skill in all sizes and shapes of waves.  And, I have seen some of the not best surfers in the world, who also are not the smartest of individuals on the planet either, attempt to pull off feats of daring and skill that they don’t posses the skill to pull off too.  Normally these attempts end in horrible disaster and carnage.  

I remember one winter on the north shore of Oahu there was a really talented crew surfing the “pipeline.”  Jock Sutherland, Rory Russell, Tom Stone and others.  It was during the early days of shortboards and new barriers were being broken everyday it seemed.  And in the middle of this pack of really talented surfers was this dude from Peru who was actually a fairly decent surfer, but not on the level that he really needed to be to stick himself into that pack at that spot.  But this dude had more confidence and more nerve than he should have.  Actually, in my humble opinion, this dude was just plain dumb.  I think his name was Rocko. 

Rocko made it a habit of taking off on the most horrifying waves than came through and in the most horrifying positions imaginable.  It was like he was saying that he was going for the impossible and he didn’t care about the consequences.  And the consequences were pretty radical. 
I saw that dude come out of the water bleeding from head to toe and out his nose and ears and eyes many times.  He must have been numb to pain or something.  He lasted about a month or two and then we never saw him again.  

Then there are the dudes that just don’t know any better.  Like the army guys that are on leave and go out to the north shore and rent surfboards.  You see them trying to paddle out at Wiamea Bay on twenty to thirty foot days.  This makes the lifeguards really unhappy.  It’s not a matter of “if” they are going to have to be rescued, it’s more about who loses the coin flip and has to make the rescue. 

Then there are the small, yet painful, things that people do around the water that make you just go, “What in the heck were you thinking?”  Like people standing on the rocks to take photos of the huge tidal wave that the radio is warning everybody about.  I love those guys.  You see photos of them standing there in front of some monster wall of water snapping a photo of it just before it consumes them.  That is a smart one.  And the guys that get drunk and dive off piers into one foot of water.  Uh huh….  Rhodes Scholars all.

And this brings me to the reason for today’s story.  I have a friend who I should not name because he is probably going to be just a little embarrassed.  But I can tell you that his name is very close to being Brian Gately from North Carolina.  Yesterday he is walking down the beach and sees a pufferfish lying there in the sand.  It is wiggling around a little bit so he figures he will help it get back into the water.  But when the fish sees him it puffs up.  You do not want to mess with a puffed up pufferfish.  So the fish is sitting there looking at him with his mouth wide open.  I do not know what Brian was thinking, but he went and stuck his finger into the pufferfish’s mouth.  Even he has no explanation for why he did this.  But the pufferfish promptly, and with forethought and malice, bit half his finger right off.  And then, arrogantly I might add, spit it out on the sand.  

This has to go high onto my top ten list of the dumbest things that I have ever heard of.  

And, in the spirit of the dumbest things ever in and around the water, I would like to invite you, my wondrous and extremely intelligent readers, to send in any and all of your stories about extreme stupidity.  I’d love to hear them.  It’s so delightful to laugh at somebody else’s ill-fated folly.  I am more or less tired of not laughing at my own.

SURFED CITIED 2-21-07
By Corky Carroll

I don’t know about you, but I have heard just about all I need to hear about this stupid Santa Cruz versus Huntington Beach over the use of the title “Surf City” thing. The fact that this whole thing is now in a federal court just amazes me to the max.  Is this ultimate “localism?”

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I thought that the whole issue is crazy and that the writer of the song “Surf City” should really have the total say in how his vision should be used.  After all, the whole concept of this issue is the romantic vision of the mythical nirvana for surfers where there are two girls for every boy.   Obviously this is a male kinda thing.  I imagine if the song had been written by a girl it would have been two boys for every girl.  Or actually these days I really don’t know.  Times are changing around here.  But, needless to say, I like the two girls version.  You all can take whatever fantasy that works best for you.  And that is the basic root of the issue.  The whole thing is a fantasy and conceived by songwriters who really should own the copy write and should have the final say.  Not some federal court.  At least this is my opinion.  I could be totally wrong from a legal standpoint.  I am so far from being a lawyer it’s not even funny.  But this is the way that it seems to me that it ought to be.  

With this thought in mind I did a little investigating, a rare thing for me and something that goes totally against my will.  As most of you know I would rather run with hints and allegations than substantiated pure facts.  It’s way more fun that way.  But on this occasion I thought it only fair to find out “what really happened.”  So I actually took the time to do a bit of research on how the song “Surf City” came into being.

I had always thought that it was written by Jan Berry and Dean Torrance, Jan and Dean.  They are the ones that had a number one hit with the record back in the 1960’s.   But I found out more.  It seems that the song was originally the concept of Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys.

I read about this incident in more than one book. I will quote you verbatim from " Heroes and Villains, The True Story of the Beach Boys" by Steven Gaines.

“Jan and Dean told Brian that they wanted to record "Surfin" and "Surfin Safari" for their next album, and asked if he and the guys would do backup. Thrilled to think that Jan and Dean would think to cover his songs, Brian rounded up the group and brought them in the studio, where they graciously sang the same arrangement that they had sung on stage. After the session was over, Brian played some of his new tunes, and Jan and Dean picked out songs to record as though choosing breakfast cereal from a supermarket shelf. One of the songs which they eventually co-wrote was called "Surf City." It was about a mythical kingdom-California- where there were" two girls for every boy." Brian agreed to sing at the recording session of " Surf City." By midsummer of 1963 it was number one on the national charts.

Brian was thrilled, Murry (The Wilson brother’s father and manager of the Beach Boys) infuriated. Murry felt with some justification, that Brian had given away the groups first number one single to competitors. Murry called Jan and Dean "pirates," and when Jan heard how enraged Murry was, he arrived at a Beach Boys session at Western Studios dressed in an elaborate pirates costume, complete with eye patch. Murry was not amused: from now on, all of Brian's hit songs would be kept in the family."

So you see, even an old dog like me who thinks he knows nothing and is right can occasionally learn something new.  But anyway, back to my point.  So, in my way of thinking the whole “Surf City” thing should belong to Brian Wilson, Jan Berry and Dean Torrance.  Maybe somebody ought to ask them.  Jan passed away, but Brian and Dean are still around.  Dean lives right here in Surf City…….. opps, I mean Huntington Beach.

For all I know maybe they already signed away the rights to this, or not.   Inquiring minds wanna know.  Hey, I wanna know.