“God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War is a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.”
-Tyler Durden
One of those rare great book, great movie combo’s – Fight Club. One of my English teachers in high school said his favorite author was Chuck Palahniuk and suggested we read that book if we had seen the movie. If you haven’t already, I highly recommend watching.
As much as this quote fired me up to write something audacious about surfing, that’s not what I came here for. For now, I’m back dropping the weekly rule, and it has a direct correlation to Fight Club. When you watch it you’ll know what I’m talking about. Rule Number Nine of surfing is:
DO NOT TALK ABOUT SURFING, UNLESS ASKED ABOUT SURFING.
So obviously this is a little twist on the infamous rule from the movie. Surfing is okay to be talked about if someone asks you about it. Say you’re in the parking lot, or walking off the sand and someone asks,
“Hey, is the water cold?”
“Excuse me, how’s the current?”
Whatever. Even the odd
“Did you get a few?”
I never ask this though, because I know I could be in for a 10 minute listen about bro’s session. The thing that you can’t do is start talking about surfing for no reason. Don’t be changing out of your wetsuit and tell the guy pulling up,
“Dude, it’s so fun out there.”
“I was sitting just south of that tower, pretty sick left coming in. I got a couple nice sections.”
“This board feels good man, you should look into one.”
Just shut the fuck up. If nobody asks you anything, don’t say anything. I would literally rather hear about the weather than your surf session. If I’m interested, I promise I’ll ask. Same goes for the people in the parking lot. None of them want to hear about how you “really laid the rail down” on that carve. All of that shit is relative. That’s why I don’t want to hear about it. Because if I actually saw that “carve”, I don’t think I would have been very impressed with how much rail was in the water.
If, for some forsaken reason, you must talk about a wave, or anything related to surfing at all, you treat it like you’re telling your deepest, darkest secret. Do it in a hushed tone, in the far corner of the beach where nobody else can hear you. Explain your story quickly; get it over with. No unnecessary details. And make the person hearing this news swear secrecy not to embarrass you by sharing this any further.
That is Rule Number Nine.
Sorry. Not really.
“A guy who came to Flight Club for the first time, his ass was a wad of cookie dough. After a few weeks, he was carved out of wood,”
Cheers,
hwilsin
Drew Stanfield