CTA heading placeholder - short sentence tagline or statement to go here

Steve Shearer March 2, 2009

I went to drive north today to report on the contest, heavy hearted after slaying AI in print and receiving a torrent of hate mail and abuse from his supporters (oh, the travails of putting your real name to everything), but I was stopped by a flooded stream near my house.

Floods! Pestilence! Tsunami!

Rainbows and otherwordly performances by the Messiah, existential crises by a three-time world champ. What else could the good lord put forth? I'm ashamed to say shipmates that I hove to, retreated and parked the carcass on the couch to watch it on the 'puter.

AI's supporters urged me to have faith in the ex-champ and resist the urge to lay the boot into a fellow human in need of support. To that end I would beg the readers indulgence with a quote by famed British Historian Albert Toynbee that seemed relevant to the idea of faith, higher powers and the potential resurrection of AI:

"As I see it religion is a built-in feature of human nature. It is an inevitable accompaniment of the consciousness that is mankind's distinctive characteristic. We are aware that we are awakened to consciousness in a Universe that is mysterious to us, and the heart of the mystery has not been bought to light by the progress of scientific knowledge. Today we are as much in the dark as ever about how or why, if indeed there is any reason why, we have come to be what we are. We are painfully aware that our human nature is an incongruous combination of two discordant elements: the animality that we share with all other living creatures, from our fellow mammals down to bacteria, and a spirituality that is, we think, uniquely human. Our human experience informs us that the universe in which we find ourselves is not solely material or biological, there is also a spiritual presence........."

Indeed.

I prepared for AI's heat with a pint of beer and some sashimi grade cows liver, to aid the haemoglobin count. I was nervous as hell.

AI has obviously had some kind of spiritual conversion since the meltdown of '08. The new humble, dispirited AI is unsettling to watch. If a garbled military metaphor could be used it's like watching the German army heading for Stalingrad. A tragedy is imminent as the Russian winter sets in. But not today. AI escaped today; made a small incursion into enemy territory but his body language remains weak and inconclusive; physically he looked like an English backpacker heading out for a surf, with those almost fat ankles. Luckily his opponent was the almost unbelievably tepid Roy Powers who provided some much needed cannon fodder for Andy. Technically and motivationally Andy seems a few sandwiches short of a picnic but a small window of faith lies open for his true believers.

Not much else seemed to happen today. A few journeymen, honest souls no doubt, faced off but apart from an unlucky Adam Melling, no-one seemed much capable of rattling any top seed cages. I switched off during the last heat of the day with Stedman and Drew Courtney having a kook-off.

At roughly the half-way point of the Contest and with larger philosophical questions like "Why am I here" and "what is the value of all this" kept in check for a spell it's time for sports fans to examine the coverage and see what is crap and what is not and maybe examine the basic premise that professional surfing fans should get more than retarded level English in their reports.

To be fair and impartial we've got to give Quik a passing grade on their web commentary team. Mel is solid, as is Blakey, whilst Pottz is patchy and tends to perform best when in female company. His tendency to say "he's no slouch, this (fill in your favourite journeyman)" is irritating. Todd Kline has toned down his nasally cluelessness and general sycophancy to a moderately tolerable level.

Online and the battle of the New Guard between STAB's Jed Smith and ASL's Will Smith (I shit you not sports fans) is a comprehensive mismatch with Will only barely able to string together a sentence. Will also needs a tripod......are these guys fucking for real? Will also poached my question to Dane in the post heat interview without asking one of his own. Go to the back of the class Will. Jed Smith, in describing the rampant Jordy Smith (what is it with all these Smith's) said " he carved into the bowels of the blue grinders like a bowie knife through a pigs underbelly." Hahaha .....great metaphor Jed.

Today was a low water mark and we must consider that in our conclusions. There's trickery ahead and strong wills, and while we lament the fate of journeymen like Ben Dunn and the demise of AI and the semi-retarded nature of most surf journalism we keep foremost in our minds the self-evident truth that while some spirits become shallower, weaker, there is also a compensation for it: another spirit becomes stronger.