Skål!
A happy Thanksgiving to everyone. Many of us have been facing challenges recently but I'm grateful for the bounty in our lives. Thank you for everyone's support. May your journey be fruitful:

Yeah!!!
Unknown ripper making The Local look easy this afternoon:

Before Marinero sailed, he was trying to convince me of the merits of the afternoon session over the morning go out. The last couple of days nearly have me convinced...

The Inside Right

Marinero's
An empty left from this swell (yesterday):

Fabricate
Another "on the super off chance you happen to be in London..." postings but I'm stoked for my friend James who's playing music at the legendary Fabric night club tomorrow night. He's been producing deep electronic music for years and his recent sounds have linked him up with the way ahead of the game Autonomic crew. Check the party out for bleeding edge beats and vibes.

James with the Del Mar promo shot:


James has an album lined up for the tres chic Nonplus+ record label and this is a clip from the 12" they just released last week. Breaks Selection approved, turn up the bass:
Porcelain by ASC

Target of Opportunity
One of my favorite breaks goes unridden during the last swell:

Brain Drain
My friend Tom writes for the Reader and this week's cover article is one of his. Be sure to pick up a copy for a good read:

There's been a lot of talk in the media recently about the long term brain health implications for players of sports like Football.

I've read a number of neuro-scientists who say even things like heading a soccer ball should be avoided. I hope that's not so much the case. I got lip launched like 5 times on Monday morning and my bell definately got rung.

If You Happen to be in London...
...I would make a point of stopping by this party:

I've been picking up Blu Mar Ten 12"s since their first releases in the mid 90's and their new album is a real return to form for them. Lush atmospheres with syncopated beats and heavyweight bass (yes, turn up the volume). If Alix Perez's 1984 wasn't so good this would be a sure bet for my pick of Album of the Year.

A few of my favorites from the Natural History album:

Just gorgeous...
By The Time My Light Reaches You I'll Be Gone by Blu Mar Ten


Vibes and things...
Above Words by Blu Mar Ten


A real bass workout on this one. Love the contrasting elements...
Last Dance by Blu Mar Ten

Hump a Ruck
America's future infantrymen, FT Benning, Georgia:

The Denver Post has put together a brilliant photo journal chronicling one boy's uncertain journey towards adulthood. Click through to see how a soldier is made.

I'm glad I had some challenging adventures when I was young but the article is quite the reminder of how nice a surfy lifestyle is.

Mo-dern
Is this movie playing at La Paloma tonight? It seems like it's going to have some good music. Of course the surfing will be bonkers.

Party wave with Dane and River Rock:

Die Mauer
Team Breaks Selection in Berlin. What a city, congrats on 20 years of reunification.

Arms Control
The swell is here today. No handguns allowed at this bodysurfing break:

Saturday Super Session
Great day today with Ian, Hunt, Sean and J.

Hunt paddling out:


Sean racing through an in-betweener:


Anybody in there?:


J-man setting up. I love that you can see the eel grass standing up through the face of the wave:

Chris and His Chocolate Bar
The second shape I've done for Chris. A good design process is iterative so I love to have the opportunity to work with customers more than once:

It's Not Flat

The Clairemont Horror
or alternatively, Dreams in the Witch Bay...


It's with the last vestige of will that I cling to coherence and recount that which on this day, All Saints Eve in the ninth year of the third millennium after Christ, has blasted my shaper sanity.

My ordeal began only hours ago. It was just mid day and I was feverishly at work in my study pouring over the arcane tomb of surfboard design lore known only as the Hydrodynamicon.

The parlor clock struck it's twelfth note. At first quite faintly, and seemingly from nowhere, an alien chorus of thin, monotone flutes and pulsing drums called to me. I was compelled out the back of the house in pursuit of these discordant timbres. The sound grew louder in my skull as it drew me up the canyon where the slopes rise wild and where thin brooklets trickle without having ever caught the glint of sunlight.

At an indeterminate point, the chaparral thinned and I reached the crest of an unknown mesa. All was then silent and before me in a blasted clearing lay the crumbling edifices of a dead society's shaping bay. Relics of their mad quest for the source lay cast aside in weeds and brambles.

What fervor drove this cult and what became of them? What path am I on with my own investigation into the wave riding occult and what fate awaits me on this shaping quest? The horror...

- All quotations from the writtings of H.P. Lovecraft -

"It is a mistake to fancy that horror is associated inextricably with darkness, silence, and solitude. I found it in the glare of mid-afternoon"



"Likewise are there dread survivals of things older and more potent than man; things that have blasphemously straggled down through the aeons to ages never meant for them; monstrous entities that have lain sleeping endlessly"



"Certainly, the terror of a deserted house swells in geometrical rather than arithmetical progression"



There were geometrical forms for which an Euclid could scarcely find a name"



"Non-Euclidean calculus and quantum physics are enough to stretch any brain; and when one mixes them with folklore, and tries to trace a strange background of multi-dimensional reality behind the ghoulish hints of the Gothic tales and the wild whispers of the chimney-corner, one can hardly expect to be wholly free from mental tension."



"And they say that the Terrible Old Man talks to these bottles, addressing them by such names as Jack, Scar-Face, Long Tom, Spanish Joe, Peters, and Mate Ellis"



"What tormented me most was my momentary inability to feel that my surroundings were a dream"






"Never was a sane man more dangerously close to the arcana of basic entity...



...never was an organic brain nearer to utter annihilation in the chaos that transcends form and force and symmetry."




"Even the sunlight assumed a supernal glamour, as if some special atmosphere or exhalation mantled the whole region."



"The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. Not in the spaces we know, but between them, They walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen."

"All these things, however, the Elder Ones only may decide; and meanwhile the morning mist still comes up by that lonely vertiginous peak with the steep ancient house"

"I now feel gnawing at my vitals that dark terror which will never leave me till I, too, am at rest; "accidentally" or otherwise."

Knocking it Out
Finally getting around to putting the "barn doors" in on the shaping bay:

5'11" Tern for Ken
The Tern is the Breaks Selection take on the San Diego classic fish design. This one is for my old buddy Ken:

Torrey Pines

Footsteps in the Dark
I've had the Isley Brothers sample looping through my brain today. Quiet clear Autumn morning vibes and some surf to start things off. "It was a good day"...