HURLEY PROZAC starts Tomorrow

[aaronn]

go bobby slater

[Lucky Al]

the southern californians don't seem to move their lips much in post-heat interviews. they look like ventriloquists and perhaps paradoxically at the same time like ventriloquists' dummies. makes you wonder who's pulling their strings. what's your take fong, queensland labor party?

[steve shearer]

I enjoy Rabbit Bartholomew's commentary; apart from a very mild slur in his enunciation he has a very good grasp of sporting metaphor and cliche and he employs them with both a nascent sense of drama and a light touch which acknowledges the inherent absurdity of the situation.
Bravo Bugs.

Chloe Andino knocked in rd 2 again.

And Melling gets through, Vinnie crows for a Lennox hometown victory.
There'll be celebration in the streets today.


U still awake Al? Vietnam is behind us isn't it? Timewise I mean, not culturally.

[Lucky Al]

morning steve, i'm awake now. did i miss anything good? i don't think i heard much of rabbit. barton was on when i was watching. at one point last night or the night before he said surfing a heat is like playing a game of scrabble and i started trying to recall the highest-scoring word i'd ever played in scrabble, decided it might have been "queazier" stretching from one triple word score to another and wondered how that would compare with owen wright's 9 or gabriel medina's attempts to dominate the peak in his heat in the first round, maybe not too unfavourably?

[Lucky Al]

i don't know about vietnamese culture in general and don't like to think much about it although vietnamese people especially women often tell me they think or ask me whether i think westerners and western countries are more "civilised" (văn minh) than vietnam and vietnamese people. i am fairly certain however that vietnamese traffic culture has a great deal of catching up to do. then again maybe i'm wrong and it's just because the roads are so crowded that the people on them seem so crazy and uncultured - maybe australians would behave similarly in similar circumstances. again though i don't like to think much about these things - i much prefer to concentrate on avoiding getting killed on the road.

[godsavetheking]

I was watching last night and there were three Australians in the booth. Barton was definitely there and perhaps also a Ronnie and a Richie. As with Barton's surfing career, so with his commentating. Where before he would doggedly milk each wave to the beach to eke out that last quarter-point turn off the foam, now behind the mike, he seizes with similar tenacity on each and every heat development and minutely examines it for tactical or psychological significance, however trivial. Seemingly without the ability to self-regulate and cruelly denied the calming influence of a decisive lead commentator, Barton races off down labyrinthine culs-de-sac, his high rising terminal growing ever more shrill while the two Ronnies (or Richies) nod vapid encouragement until he reaches an inevitably unsatisfactory conclusion.

Overall though, he's actually OK. I can sort of tolerate him in smallish doses. Rambling and unordered though his externalised internal monologue may be, you get the feeling that the exact same thoughts are running through the minds of the pea-brained skill pygmys out in the water. For the other two, an extended stay at the Richie Benaud School for the Deft Handling of Sporting Lacunae is urgently needed, with particular focus on shutting the fcuk up when you haven't got anything interesting to say.

[steve shearer]

Excellent use of the word lacunae.....now that would smash Lucky Al's "queazier" out of the ballpark.

[booradley]

Anyone else not able to get "heats on demand"?

[godsavetheking]

Are you double clicking on 'Round 1' or 'Round 2' in the right hand pane? (I'm using this link http://www.hurley.com/hurleypro/dvr/dvr.cfm and it works fine)

[pirate_agenda]

i am so far enjoying seeing some good surfing (ie linking a variety of powerful and functional turns, along with some air game) getting scored well and the spin to win one air reverse ruin the rest of the wave mentality not so much (with the exception of heitor's rodeo, but that's something new and tech, and probably deserved the big score). the "hurley true innovation award" is giving me the shits, because 90% of the candidates are doing air reverses, which are far from innovative these days.

[Lucky Al]

i'll stay up and watch a few heats. call me a sucker, or better a masochist. that's it, call me al the masochist from now on. i'm looking forward to hearing what barton will compare surfing a heat with next, and secretly hoping it's playing dominos since i'm actually not all that good at scrabble really, just got lucky that one time. and i read somewhere the other day that playing dominos requires not only discipline, grace and precision but also delicacy of the hand and a steady heart. i wonder if barton knows, maybe someone should tell him.

[Nick Carroll]

Jeez I would love to hear some of youse behind the mike!

Yeah I know that's not the point.

I actually think this event is kind of boring, at least on line, maybe it would be more entertaining being there, but for some reason the usual Hurley sharpness and interesting little broadcast ideas aren't really present.

[booradley]

Are you double clicking on 'Round 1' or 'Round 2' in the right hand pane? (I'm using this link http://www.hurley.com/hurleypro/dvr/dvr.cfm and it works fine)

I got nothing under the "select heat" tab in the right hand pane!

[PeepeelaPew]

...

[Lucky Al]

when i was a teenager i had a mate who always said "youse" even when he was only talking to me and that was a lot because the two of us hung out together almost every day for three years and for a long time it drove me crazy so i would often shout "it's just me here! there's only one of me! call me you, not youse! speak proper english!" he would just laugh and tell me to fuck off and keep doing it. thankfully it stopped bothering me in the end. i guess it was more my problem than it was his. funny old thing language, wild beast of a thing, it's alive i tells yas!

[steve shearer]

who said Youse lately Al.

Last time I remember it was when Fenech said I love youse all after beating .....I cant' recall.

It wasn't Azumah Nelson thats for sure.

[Lucky Al]

Nick just said it. He always says it. But he uses it correctly, as the second person plural. Oh, he's very careful about that.

[Nick Carroll]

I do use it regularly because I loved that Fenech quote at the time and it stuck with me.

I am vainly hoping that some Australian professional surfer will one day yell it from the stage at the Quik Pro or Bells or whatever. But it's indeed a vain hope. Professional surfers do not love youse all.