By Chas Smith
"Taut torso and tattooed arms."
Oh to be handsome, a former dead President, bank robber and, to top it all off, mega famous rock n roller. Oh to be Anthony Kiedis. The Red Hot Chili Pepper frontman, 52 years old (or 62 maybe) but still entirely striking, pixie-ish even, has been a known surf aficionado for many years, enjoying Malibu’s little political wet energy mounds on full volumed craft. And for those past two summer seasons he has enjoyed them with 20-year-old Australian model Helena Vestergaard.
Well, out with the old, in with the new as Leonardo DiCaprio says and, just yesterday, Kiedis was snapped with the 22-year-old Brazilian model Wanessa Milhomem. Daily Mail breathlessly described his “taut torso and tattooed arms as he walked with his wetsuit pulled down to his waist while making his way back to dry land” and Milhomem, who “towered over him as she strolled in a patterned string bikini.”
Kiedis is listed as 5’9 though seems the exact same height as the Red Hot Chili Pepper’s bassist Flea who swings in at 5’6.
Which leads to the important question. Is it better to be plain and tall or minuscule and ab fab?
Back to the loved up surf date, though, there’s not many more details I am able to share other than Kiedis carrying his longer board wax side in.
Wet Sand.
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Lauryn, carrying little Darwin inside protective fold of Florence Marine X wetsuit, and husband John John share a wave at Slater's Surf Ranch.
US Olympian pays homage to game-changing biologist at birth of son!
A few days before Christmas in 2022, John John Florence, the little canary-haired boy raised on peanut butter and Wonder bread, who enchanted the world as the first tweenie to ride Pipeline and who was later credited with saving the surf industry, married his long-time girlfriend, the Australian Lauryn Cribb.
John John Florence proposed to his long-time girlfriend, a model turned horticulture student, in 2019 using a diamond ring his mama Alex had found on the beach and right before a one-month yacht voyage.
The pair were married in the nearby Waimea Valley despite torrential rains, the same storms that created an epic river wave that nearly slaughtered sad-eyed degenerate Jamie O’Brien.
When Lauren announced she was pregnant in December 2023, pregnancy of course being a natural consequence of a CIS marriage, she wrote: “Swallowed a watermelon seed and now it’s growing. We’re excited for our little baby boy to join us in May…”
View this post on Instagram
At the time, we wondered if, like his mama Alex, John John would gift his boy a similarly unique handle.
Well, yeah.
Even better than John John is…Darwin Florence, named, you’d suppose, after the towering British biologist who gave the world the theory of evolution via his knockout bestseller Origin of the Species.
In a nutshell, Darwin theorised, and with plenty of evidence, how species change over time, driven by natural selection and the wild ol’ game of survival.
Traits that help organisms thrive in their environment get passed on, while less helpful traits fade away.
Undaunted by the trauma of childbirth, John John posted this clip, today, of him testing fins shortly after the birth.
Congrats to John John Florence and mama Florence and welcome baby Darwin.
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“Mangez le rat!”
Now, let us all be honest. There has only been one surf film, ever, worth the time of an auteur and that is Bruce Brown’s seminal masterpiece The Endless Summer. Others, including Point Break, North Shore, Blue Crush are cute. Others still, including Chasing Mavericks and In God’s Hands, are so offensive as to count as crimes against humanity.
None, though, has received a knee-buckling six minute standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival. None except Nicolas Cage’s new offering The Surfer, that is.
Variety shared, “Cage appeared to be having a ball, beaming from ear to ear and waving across the room as cheers erupted around the Palais for the film, a wild, mind-bending adventure that sees the fan favorite hit the sort of deranged peaks not witnessed on screen since ‘Mandy.’ At one point he took the mic to ask how to say “eat the rat” in French — a line from the film (and likely to become a meme) — roaring “mangez le rat!” to the delight of the crowd.”
The picture, directed by Lorcan Finnegan, is said to be an homage to vintage Australian New Wave films and is receiving rave reviews.
The Hollywood Reporter declares, “There’s no point in hiring Nicolas Cage if you’re not going to let him rip with a wackadoodle, OTT performance, and he duly delivers in the sly psychological thriller The Surfer.”
The action is described thusly:
Unfolding largely on a beach and its adjacent parking lot in Western Australia, but about a man who is trapped by his own compulsions, The Surfer must be one of the most claustrophobic films that takes place almost entirely outdoors. Hold on, there are a couple of interiors: a grotty public toilet, the inside of a few cars, and a shack on the beach where local antagonists of the eponymous unnamed hero, the surfer (Cage), hang out. But the frequent zooms into the surfer’s twitchy eyes, sudden flashes back and forward, and shimmering shots that look like they’ve been filmed underwater even when on dry land all suggest the story might be unfolding in the surfer’s head as his sanity unravels.
But of course you will see and I will see and we will discuss our various feelings. Until then, let’s enjoy the trailer together.
Need more entertainment? Don’t worry. David Lee Scales and I got together for our weekly chat and discussed surf adjacency. Enjoy, rats.
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By Derek Rielly
"The most viral spot in New York for lunch!"
Eight years back, three Bondi surfers, all of ‘em shredders and all under thirty, opened a little takeaway joint called Fishbowl serving “Japanese-leaning, Los Angeles style poke” in the arcade underneath the vast and then new Pacific apartment complex on beachfront Campbell Parade.
Real low-key, all of ‘em, Nic Pestalozzi, Casper Ettleson and Nathan Dalah, working behind the counter slinging bowls in the tiny 280 square foot restaurant, a couple of benches and stools for anyone who needed their grinds right now.
They called it Fishbowl and it soon morphed away from straight poke and into selling Japanese-style fish/tofu/chicken salad bowls at a bigger joint across the way and by 2022 the restaurants were selling sixty-million bucks in bowls a year.
If you wanna count the locations, there’s forty-five stores across Australia, twenty six in Sydney, nine in Melbourne, and ten in Queensland.
And, now, New Yorkers have lined up for hours to get a taste of the wildly popular takeaway chain, with one foodie calling it the “the most viral spot for lunch” although in the US it’s called This Bowl not Fishbowl ‘cause there’s chicken and beef on the menu.
@rubylilyyyyy Explain to me why every Australian in NYC right now feels overly protective of Fish Bowl… I just cant qeue for another thing @THISBOWL NYC #newyork #spring #fyp #fypシ #newyorkcity #aussie #fishbowl ♬ original sound – rubylily
“People are right in calling this one of the best lunch options and eve quick dinners because we are going to be craving their bowls and can’t wait to work through their whole menu, definitely worth the hype,” they said.
There’s been a little back and forthing on social about whether or not they’re poke bowls and claims that poke had been “stolen and gentrified”.
“Firstly, we’re not poke and don’t claim to be, poke is from Hawaii, and is a very different style meal to the salads we serve,” co-founder Nic Pestalozzi told the Murdoch Press. “We serve salads, they’re full of vegetables, and an array of proteins. Poke is all about raw fish, it’s great, but it’s not what we do.”
But, whatever, building a wildly successful worldwide biz selling healthy, and relatively cheap, food at a a time when fatties are taking over the world gotta be regarded as inspirational, no?
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By Chas Smith
"With the surf forecast showing a fun 2ft of surf on Saturday, the stage is set for a competitive showdown..."
Fans of professional surfing are, generally, aware that Mother Nature can be a big ol’ jerk. Events, scheduled years in advance, oftentimes receive no material support from the buxom blonde and are forced to run in waist high garbage. Sometimes that trash is so odious, so unbelievably nasty, that organizers are forced to cull the window from three days down to one.
And let us travel to Watergate Bay, there on England’s southwestern most tip where the highly-anticipated English National Surfing Championships was set to take place May 4th through the 6th. The weather was reliably terrible and so Surfing England pushed until now and with rubbish surf on tap, it has been forced to slash and burn two whole days of competitive little political wet energy mound riding.
Putting a World Surf League-esque face on matters, the official governing body declared, “With the surf forecast showing a fun 2ft of surf on Saturday, the stage is set for a competitive showdown. A total of 84 surfers have entered across six divisions, ensuring over 15 hours of gripping competition heats, split across two wave peaks. The event kicks off bright and early on Saturday, with thrilling action carrying through to late afternoon when the event’s top surfers will be crowned with national titles.”
Joe Turpel couldn’t have Wall of Positive Noise’d better.
Bravo, I guess.
Will the “global home of surfing” sue for unauthorized usage though?
Certainly more as the story develops.
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