Ask Carroll

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Nick Carroll
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Re: Ask Carroll

Post by Nick Carroll » Wed Oct 01, 2014 10:26 am

ha ha OK what do I think dream team wise

well first of all I think conflict is at the heart of all drama thus we need some sense of possible conflict - humorous conflict but conflict nonetheless - on the panel

I also think there is a serious need for some excellent gossip, like high end funny fcuken stories about what goes on outside competition

I reckon you need three people on commentary at all times. Rotate 'em through sure but always three. They are:

-a race caller, the guy who keeps the viewer up and focused on the mechanics of the heat, who has priority, how long to go, how many waves, who's doing a li-li-lo etc

-a colour guy, who knows a lot of backstory and funny stuff and who can throw a regular stream of such stuff into the feed

-an idiosyncratic expert, who can just occasionally rip through the verbiage with a pungent comment or two and re-frame the whole heat, possibly starting arguments with the colour guy

Outside that it feels as if the webcast is woefully lacking pre-shot gold, like that Red Bull 21 Days thing was/is the most interesting thing being done in pro surfing coverage I think, taking you into the pros' lives and making human beings out of 'em. All their wins and losses don't mean shit without that. If there was more of that to fill deadly gaps in heats, you'd see the shows come alive a bit more I think

Commentators who might fill those roles, the play by play isn't badly served right now, Joey's good at it despite the lililo thing, Ronnie's good at it. Mike Parsons is a good colour man as is Sean Doherty, and Ross Williams is doing really well there as long as he can keep a grip on his love for KS and obvious disdain for Brazilians. Idiosyncratic experts, Bugs is epic, Gerlach as long as you can keep him to two or three comments per heat, I'd be pretty good at it, Shaun Tomson's good at it. Gossip kings/queens, well Paul Fisher would be a walk up start but I feel there is room for someone to invent that role and become a real mainstay. Like a real funny bitchy tone.

Nick Carroll
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Re: Ask Carroll

Post by Nick Carroll » Wed Oct 01, 2014 10:28 am

what am I sorry about andy?

philw
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Re: Ask Carroll

Post by philw » Wed Oct 01, 2014 12:34 pm

Funny bitch = chas smith

Have you ever met Chas, Nick? And does he live up to his own descriptions of himself?

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Re: Ask Carroll

Post by Finn » Wed Oct 01, 2014 4:36 pm

I read Chas book " Welcome to paradise, ....."

Once finished, i thought it was quite well written. At first he instantly grated on me, to the point of not wanting to continue, but the topic was something i so wanted to know more about, that I soldiered on.

+1 be interested in your thoughts Nick.

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Re: Ask Carroll

Post by gardie » Wed Oct 01, 2014 6:32 pm

Maybe using a drone to get an above shot

Not for the waves been ridden but to show positioning rips etc

It would have been good to get a birds eye view of the Andino Medina Tahiti heat to show everyone what was going on

The minimum three commentators sounds an improvement

The fish may frighten a few away but at least it would be entertaining.

Bring back the snake having side bets to breath some life into it

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Re: Ask Carroll

Post by Nick Carroll » Wed Oct 01, 2014 9:39 pm

philw wrote:Funny bitch = chas smith

Have you ever met Chas, Nick? And does he live up to his own descriptions of himself?
Oh yes! Chas and I are friends. He's nowhere near as outlandish as his self descriptions would suggest but he does have a finely honed sense of the sensational, and he has a way of charming his targets which lets him get away with quite a lot before the bridges are inevitably burned. He's hopeless at keeping his word, we had an agreement to swap copies of our books but he has failed to send me a copy of the Welcome to Hell one so I can't comment on it.

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foamy
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Re: Ask Carroll

Post by foamy » Fri Oct 03, 2014 5:09 pm

Hello Nick, could you go to the 'North Shore Hawaii' thread in Weather and surf forecasting and answer bumfluff's questions about events in the Western Pacific and the likely effects on North Shore Hawaii surf?

http://forum.realsurf.com/forum/viewtop ... 12&t=29934

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Re: Ask Carroll

Post by SharkBoy » Sat Oct 04, 2014 8:05 pm

Hey Nick!

Do you reckon Slater's Round 3 'win' over Logie was fair judging to Logie (and Medina as well) ?

Nick Carroll
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Re: Ask Carroll

Post by Nick Carroll » Sun Oct 05, 2014 5:04 pm

Yeah from the admittedly cramped vision of the webcast I thought Kelly got by far the best wave of that heat and Travis didn't come close to matching it really. Pretty close on the face of it but if you wanna beat a guy with an 8 you kinda gotta get an 8. Someone with more power and variety would have taken KS out in that heat on that performance.

Might have looked different live I imagine.

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Re: Ask Carroll

Post by Nick Carroll » Sun Oct 05, 2014 5:21 pm

by the way I've been wondering, if Joe and Co can use the future perfect tense to predict a surfer's moves, why can't they see all the way to the end and just go "He'll win the contest with a great performance in 4' surf" "He'll come ninth" etc. Save everyone time.

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foamy
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Re: Ask Carroll

Post by foamy » Sun Oct 05, 2014 5:49 pm

One assumes Joe's precognition only works a few seconds in advance but, if you were sitting in the airport and Joe decided to change to a later flight, it might be prudent to follow his example.

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Re: Ask Carroll

Post by pearceD » Mon Oct 06, 2014 9:18 am

Nick Carroll wrote:by the way I've been wondering, if Joe and Co can use the future perfect tense to predict a surfer's moves, why can't they see all the way to the end and just go "He'll win the contest with a great performance in 4' surf" "He'll come ninth" etc. Save everyone time.
Shit - what happens when Carroll asks a question!? Who answers it...?

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Re: Ask Carroll

Post by godsavetheking » Tue Oct 07, 2014 8:35 pm

Dear Nick Carroll

I'm feeling a little bit mid-lifey and dangerously close to signing up to a triathlon. Bike and run are fine but my swimming has always been shit. The last (and only) time I did one - nigh on 20 years ago now - I'd cobbled together a rudimentary breathe-every-eight flail that got me round, fucked, in about 35 minutes. Since then I've slightly improved my stroke and actually got quite keen one winter about 8 years ago when I was swimming two or three times a week and got my 1000m down to a still slow but better 18 minutes or so, which I suppose would have translated to a reasonably comfortable 30 mins for a 1500 in the sea. So my problems are shit technique and a loathing for swimming for swimming's sake. I used to quite enjoy pyramids with a couple of mates because of the competitive element and reduced monotony, but are they good training? Or do I need to accept that I just need to grind out the distance?

In anticipation,

gstq
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Nick Carroll
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Re: Ask Carroll

Post by Nick Carroll » Wed Oct 08, 2014 10:30 am

a ha ha ha ha ha sucker.

OK that wasn't very helpful was it.

Look sadly the only way to get any good at swimming is to do the kilometres. But there are kilometres and kilometres, if you get my drift.

I kinda think that just getting in a pool and swimming 2k straight is a bit non productive. You'll always swim that distance slow, specially by yourself. What you want to do is learn to swim faster and the three vital components to that are:

- Mates. You gotta swim in a group with similar goals, some of whom are hopefully faster swimmers than you. A squad set-up with a paid coach is the best but if you gotta cobble together a crew yourself that's better than nothing.

- Intervals. They call it something pseudo-technical these days, High Impact Interval Training or whatever, but it's been well known for ages that you get a lot more training value out of repeatedly loading your heart rate and backing off than from ticking it over at 70% all day long. The classic aerobic swim training pattern, once you've warmed up, is 3-4mins at 75-80% of your maximum heart rate, 10-15 seconds rest, repeat between 8 and 10 times. For me that'd be 10 x 200m on 3min. For you it'd probably be 8 x 150m on 3min20sec. Break it up on either side with sprints and drills. Goes without saying that to do this, you need a pool with a clock.

- Consistency. You've gotta build swim training into your life so it becomes a habit. Three times a week, same time, same place. Don't miss a session and don't try to make up a missed session. You know how when you get pills from the doctor and the script tells you not to take two at once to try to make up for missing a dose? It's like that.

Six weeks of that will get you over the hump, four months of it will make 1500m a piece of cake.

I'd also advise you, as you get close to the race, start consciously prepping yourself for swimming in a crowd. I don't do triathlons but I do surf races and I know what it's like to go into the water with a bunch of aggressive competitive people - it'll shock anyone out of rhythm and adds to the generic fear of being in the water to the point where you'll give up almost straight away, maybe even risk a health problem. You've gotta be ready for that. If you're doing the pool thing and swimming in broken groups (i.e. five secs apart up and down the left side of the lane), make a move on the guy in front of you, swim up and get on his feet occasionally. Or do 25m sprints beside each other in the same lane. Get used to being splashed and kicked.

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Re: Ask Carroll

Post by marauding mullet » Wed Oct 08, 2014 12:53 pm

fongss wrote:nick...im fairly fit for my age and have recently recovered well from major surgery.

but

its long been my dream too get really fat....like kk size fat

elvis fat....huge...have airplane crews move me around the plane to even out the baggage... fat

how can I best achieve this and still surf :?:

it seems the way too go in the islands :-o
You have a role model in big Jimbo that surfs Padang Padang.
The ocean is big enough for both of you.
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channels
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Re: Ask Carroll

Post by channels » Wed Oct 08, 2014 2:06 pm

NC - Feel free not to answer this if it may jeopardise your employment.

In my cube monkey existence, I wandered over to the food court across the road and was flicking through a Surfing Life at the newsagent, and in it was a "Boardshort Buyers Guide". I get the point that mostly this stuff is advertorial but when the Oakley boardies which are priced at $200 a pop are rated a 8/10 for value for money, do you think the 'journalism content' starts to take the piss a bit? Is it a case of we have to give a good review in case the sponsors pull an ad?

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Re: Ask Carroll

Post by steve shearer » Wed Oct 08, 2014 2:14 pm

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
― Upton Sinclair.
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Nick Carroll
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Re: Ask Carroll

Post by Nick Carroll » Wed Oct 08, 2014 2:56 pm

channels wrote:NC - Feel free not to answer this if it may jeopardise your employment.

In my cube monkey existence, I wandered over to the food court across the road and was flicking through a Surfing Life at the newsagent, and in it was a "Boardshort Buyers Guide". I get the point that mostly this stuff is advertorial but when the Oakley boardies which are priced at $200 a pop are rated a 8/10 for value for money, do you think the 'journalism content' starts to take the piss a bit? Is it a case of we have to give a good review in case the sponsors pull an ad?
well I thought hard about answering this since you are after all a fcuken cube monkey and thus not really in the game etc

like you probably even like daylight saving for fcuk's sake

but then I thought "hang on he admitted he was a cube monkey" and that takes guts.

So: yes in fact the Boardshort Buyer's Guide is an advertorial feature, and for the most part the shorts in the Guide belong to significant advertisers in Surfing Life magazine.

It's not quite as explicit as you suggest, but yeah, I'm pretty sure that quite a few of the companies involved would react very badly to having their shorts shit-canned in such a review. The ad contract might survive but some sorta penalty would be levied.

Luckily most companies make pretty good boardshorts these days, so the need to savagely attack a product doesn't really arise. Though it's pretty hard to tell much about a pair of boardies without wearing them for several months on a consistent basis.

I am not sure if any surf mag in the world has its staff wear 30 pairs of board shorts for six months then compiles a board short guide to shorts that probably aren't on sale any more. But these sorts of product guides are very common in all areas of media. I'd suggest you read with some salt and vinegar at hand, then put that aside and read the excellent 10 Decades pieces that feature in the mag before the Boardshort Guide.

If you want a personal run-down on the shorts I've been wearing since the last Boardshort Guide - the Rip Curl Mirage, the Bong Platinum Tahiti model, the O'Neill Superfreak, and the Quik diamond dobby Kelly Slater model (what a nostalgic moment that is!), I'm only too happy to provide it.

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