Ask Carroll

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kreepykrawly
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Re: Ask Carroll

Post by kreepykrawly » Mon Dec 23, 2013 6:51 am

collnarra wrote:
kreepykrawly wrote:Common Trev you're smarter than that...it was tongue in cheek. In the context of what I was saying...the demons I was refering to was the guilt he was feeling for not competing in South Africa.
A cynical joke.

were you at the preso yesterday, KK? I was, on and off. You shoulda come introduced yourself.
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I appreciate your enthusiasm for wanting to meet me however i was engaged in celebrating a far greater anniversary.

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Re: Ask Carroll

Post by tonka79 » Mon Dec 23, 2013 7:51 am

Nick Carroll wrote:
tonka79 wrote:Nick,

I see that the Encyclopedia of Surfing recently published an article on the partial boycott of surfing events in South Africa, beginning in '85, lead by Tom (see: http://encyclopediaofsurfing.com/eos-bl ... -the-sand/). Was it something you supported and what's your view on when or on what grounds sport should enter into the realm of politics?
I supported it wholeheartedly, I don't have a hard and fast view on these things but in that case at that time it felt me like the South African white public were pretty sports mad like Australians and that the sporting boycott that'd already been underway for a while with the Rugby and cricket etc was having an effect. I also backed Tom's move because I could see it was something he really believed in doing and because it was partly out of his sense of responsibility as a world champion, that he felt a surfer could make a difference here.

I think that sport-entering-politics thing is a misleading argument by the way, it's a matter of sport being part of life and society. Sportspeople standing for politics often look a bit ridiculous but sportspeople standing up for something they believe in at the risk of their careers, well that's the sort of thing politicians should do more often and don't. (Not that many sports people do either.)
Yes, have to agree with your later points. Shame really. I'm not sure if it's a function of people lacking the courage to stand up for something they believe in, or simply not believing in something other than what benefits them personally.

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Re: Ask Carroll

Post by JSB » Thu Dec 26, 2013 10:13 pm

What's with all these new boards around with carbon over the stringer, doe's it do anything or just another marketing gimmick ?

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Re: Ask Carroll

Post by lostman » Thu Dec 26, 2013 10:26 pm

Hey Nicky
a couple of quickies..

1.Have you read the Chas Smith book yet? You said awhile back that you would review it here. Will this happen?

2. As you have been to the North Shore for many a year now and haven't ever reported on anything of substance out of the water in all that time...
Are you somebodies Aikane? and will you tell us who?

3. Have you ever been false cracked?
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Re: Ask Carroll

Post by Nick Carroll » Fri Dec 27, 2013 7:17 am

For crew who might be wondering why I'm not bothering to answer lostman's questions:

Aikane: accounts of Hawaiian same-sex relationships in the journals of Captain Cook's Third Voyage (1776-80).

Authors
Morris RJ.
Journal
J Homosex. 1990;19(4):21-54.

Affiliation
Abstract
The journals recorded by Captain James Cook and his associates on Cook's Third Voyage of discovery (1776-1780) include extensive eyewitness accounts and analyses of the Hawaiian people and their culture-the first to be made by Europeans and Americans. Among these are several reports of young men called aikane, who were attached to the court or train of the ali'i (chiefs), and whose functions were sexual, social, and political. Among these aikane were several who acted as intermediaries between the sailors and the Hawaiians, and whose influence and conduct profoundly affected the course of events at Kealakekua Bay, where Cook was killed in February, 1779. The information contained in these materials suggests that such Hawaiian same-sex relationships are more important than currently accounted for in accepted theories of Hawaiian ethnohistory.

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kreepykrawly
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Re: Ask Carroll

Post by kreepykrawly » Fri Dec 27, 2013 7:58 am

wow...after reading Lostmans post I just learned summin new ...just googled 'false cracked' , 'Aikane' and 'Chad Smith' ...took me 5 minutes all up with reading.(I speed read)

They say our global archaic schooling system needs to change drastically because we no longer have to learn 'fact based' content due to the fact we can randomly access the www.
Viva la internet....

To be fair to Lostman you need to answer his question honestly and stop using Tommy South African diversion tactics.

Do you have an Aikane ??? :lol:

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Re: Ask Carroll

Post by Nick Carroll » Fri Dec 27, 2013 8:29 am

come on kk you know I am a decent average Australian family man.

though god knows what really goes on in the suburbs eh, I bet there are quite a few older men in, say, Randwick, surrounded by harems of young male acolytes eager to do their wrinkled old bidding.

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Re: Ask Carroll

Post by steve shearer » Fri Dec 27, 2013 8:45 am

Come on Nick, this faux-preciousness is a bit much.

You've already alluded to the massive conflict of interest which lay at the heart of your journalism career. You had interests to protect, chiefly those of your brother, and by extension those of the industry which supported him.

Rather than a frank and fearless reporting of events; events which surfers knew were happening anyway, you maintained an illusion via a position of false neutrality. You were one of the chief gatekeepers of this illusion. That illusion served the interests of certain people and sectors. It certainly didn't serve the interests of all, mostly the general public who were sold a pup for all those years.

I say that without rancour. Most would have done the same under similar circumstances. But for christ sakes lets stop this whole objectivity pretense.
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Re: Ask Carroll

Post by Beanpole » Fri Dec 27, 2013 8:58 am

Nick Carroll wrote:come on kk you know I am a decent average Australian family man.

though god knows what really goes on in the suburbs eh, I bet there are quite a few older men in, say, Randwick, surrounded by harems of young male acolytes eager to do their wrinkled old bidding.
:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
Yeah, I hear all the hot surfers in Coogee are rent boys. Or was that Maroubra?
Good luck going to the Bra and making enquires.
Of course over in gods own country (thats gods own country Nth Beaches, not gods own country Cronulla or gods own country Nth Coast) the idea of dubious characters preying on young surfers is just not a possibility. Although a few names do come to mind fairly easily.
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Re: Ask Carroll

Post by Nick Carroll » Fri Dec 27, 2013 11:20 am

steve shearer wrote:Come on Nick, this faux-preciousness is a bit much.

You've already alluded to the massive conflict of interest which lay at the heart of your journalism career. You had interests to protect, chiefly those of your brother, and by extension those of the industry which supported him.

Rather than a frank and fearless reporting of events; events which surfers knew were happening anyway, you maintained an illusion via a position of false neutrality. You were one of the chief gatekeepers of this illusion. That illusion served the interests of certain people and sectors. It certainly didn't serve the interests of all, mostly the general public who were sold a pup for all those years.

I say that without rancour. Most would have done the same under similar circumstances. But for christ sakes lets stop this whole objectivity pretense.
Still haven't read that book eh shearer.

Why don't ya read it and then get back to me about positions of false neutrality and the objectivity pretense. And about all the illusion serving and maintaining and the interests served therein. All the poxy fcuken humanity of it.

I'll reply to you on this because you're not hiding behind a pseudonym, I'm not gonna address nasty little comments thrown up from the coward's hole of Trollville.

I'm pretty much sick of this bullshit actually. Yeah I've written some shitty boring articles as well as good ones over the years, yeah my reporting has been incomplete, yeah I protected my brother from public exposure over his drug use, well, tough shit. Like I have tried to explain to you before, there's a time for those personal stories to be told and for me and Tom that time has come, so we've told it in all its painful fcuken detail, as it needed to be told. The cost of a decision to "out" him before that time would not have been borne by the readership, nor by the surf industry by the way, it would have been borne by him and his kids. I've got questions about how much I enabled Tom's drug use and about the family dynamics involved which I dig into in the book, but about the judgement call to put his and his kids' private lives ahead of the public's need to know, fcuk, I am not ashamed of that at all, it could well have saved lives.

Other surfers are doing the same thing - telling their stories - to differing extents and good on 'em. Again their personal stories are theirs to tell. This feels to me like necessary revision and it'll go on for as long as people are interested in surfing.

As for this Chief Gatekeeper thing, holy shit, well here is how it looked from my side of that rather weird fence, I was mostly just a stoked surfer trying to convey my feeling and understanding of the sport to others. I was as sucked in by the romance of surfing as much as anyone could be, and thus tended to brush aside a lot of other stuff in the process, it felt to me like surfing was the main thing, not what seemed to me to be the crap on the sidelines. That was my strength – my involvement and passion – and I played to it. I'm a bit older now and the romance is eroded by experience, and I'm pretty aware of my weaknesses as a writer and in other things. I also feel a bit sorta used by the surf industry in some ways, like the passion I tried to inject into all those mags ended up partly just being fuel to their marketing fire, though I know heaps of people who worked (or I should say used to work) for those companies shared exactly the same passion. Maybe the revisionism mentioned above will end up condemning me for numerous historical surfing crimes, though that all seems a bit overwrought to me. But I still feel like overall I've done a good job as a surf writer over the years and I've got nothing to regret in any of it.

I also feel like you want me to be someone else, well I'm not.

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Re: Ask Carroll

Post by andy2476 » Fri Dec 27, 2013 12:07 pm

Nick Carroll wrote:Maybe the revisionism mentioned above will end up condemning me for numerous historical surfing crimes,

Are you talking about my mate from Bellingen ?

Don't sweat it. If those North **** didn't get dropped in or stinkeyed on their trip to the big smoke, they'd feel cheated.
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Re: Ask Carroll

Post by Nick Carroll » Fri Dec 27, 2013 12:43 pm

Nah in that regard I am like one of those ex Nazi prison guards who hunker down in some mid sized town in Australia or the US and refuse to admit to their sins.

"That wasn't me, my name is John Smith, not Josef Hammerschmidt" etc

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Re: Ask Carroll

Post by lostman » Fri Dec 27, 2013 1:20 pm

Gee you can be an intemperate precious little knob at times Nicky.
Get off your high horse will ya!
The Aikane jibe was in jest ffs!! Stop taking yourself so seriously.. you are a freaking surf journalist!!

You have been to Hawaii many many times, has some moke ever smashed you for some indiscretion or not? Surely a fair question??

Same as the question about Smiths book..
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Re: Ask Carroll

Post by Nick Carroll » Fri Dec 27, 2013 7:28 pm

Well that's a bit more like it lostman. Don't be a fcuken troll, I hate that and won't give it any air.

Yes I have been punched out on the North Shore, it was pretty good shit, but just what happens if you commit yourself to surfing there over decades, I didn't try to fight back and sucked it up, and I might just save the story up for telling elsewhere.

Yeah haven't had a chance to read Chas's book yet but like I said will do and will review it here.

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Re: Ask Carroll

Post by Lucky Al » Fri Dec 27, 2013 7:45 pm

nick do you think it was at all fair for lostman to call you an intemperate precious little knob or was it completely unjustified?

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Re: Ask Carroll

Post by Nick Carroll » Fri Dec 27, 2013 8:45 pm

Nah it's OK, I mean I don't even really know him so who cares.

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Re: Ask Carroll

Post by lostman » Fri Dec 27, 2013 9:09 pm

Touché Mr Rice Queen!

Thanks Mr Carroll.. hope to read that story someday and I look forward to the review!!

There are many interesting tales to be told in the surfing world both past and present.. I am not a fan of Mr Smith and his trash prose but I admire his intent and wish more would follow suit.
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Re: Ask Carroll

Post by philw » Fri Dec 27, 2013 11:37 pm

^^

Chas Smith's intent? Really? I've read his book ( got it for Xmas ! ) and it is entertaining enough. But his intent is unclear, other than self promotion that may perhaps have been ironic at some point, but like the shakas he once threw as a joke, is now indistinguishable from the real thing. For a book that promised fearless reporting it was unsatisfying. For example:

He didn't ask WHY Eddie Rothman 'cracked' Fanning over the Jew comment - or if he did he didn't write about it - and the book is lesser for one of the potentially more revealing episodes remaining unexplained.

It's like he can't decide where he stands, outside or inside.

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