#You should also not that I know nothing about surfer slang

[arolotl-queen]

Just played dnd and I didn't want to think of a character voice so my character talks in 90s surfer slang and every interaction just sounds like:

Npc: I killed a man

Me: Thats radical my dude.

Npc: I stabbed him in the stomach and watched him bleed to death.

Me: thats pretty gnarly. Want to come catch some sick waves with me?

[socialwriter]

Circles

*Not my gif, credit to original post*

Pairing: JJ Maybank x Female Reader

Summary: You meet the blonde surfer boy you’re meant to spend the rest of your life with

TW: Cursing, my inadequate knowledge of surfing, underage drinking, smoking 

1.7K words

A/N: @kindapinkskies​ and I apparently both love soulmate AUs so I wrote this oops.

Ever since the age of thirteen, you had had the tattoo of a small circle on your hip bone that matched your soulmate's somewhere in the world. Middle school girls would gush over their dream soulmates and the beautiful tattoos that graced their bodies, whereas of course you had no godly idea what your soulmate even looked like and your tattoo was a fucking circle. How lucky were you?

You see, you aren’t able to see any other person’s soulmate tattoo until you grow to love them, whether it be platonic, familial, or romantic. Scientists thought that it was so that everyone would be more experienced in love by the time that they actually met their soulmate. You thought that it was a way to simply torture you with the what ifs and not knowing if the guy who you’d just gone on a miserable date with also had that little circle on hip. 

Recently, you and your mother had moved to the Outer Banks, and she was convinced that this would be where your so-called soulmate would find you and you would live happily ever after. You, however, were not convinced. It had already been a week and you had yet to make a friend in town. It's not like you didn’t try, it's just that everyone that you came across was either busy working or a pompous asshole that stuck their nose up at you. So here you were, day 7 of wandering aimlessly around the Outer Banks, hoping that someone would take notice of the lost puppy dog look on your face. No luck, however, so you decided to grab a bite to eat since it was a little bit before noon and your stomach had started grumbling about ten minutes ago. 

You decided to stop at a place called ‘The Wreck’. If what you’d heard from casual conversations around the island was true, then your meal here should be at least halfway decent. You enter an almost entirely empty restaurant, given it was just before the lunch rush. You ding the bell at the hostess desk, causing one of the girls in a group of teenagers around your age sitting at the back of the restaurant to stand and approach you. “Hi, welcome to The Wreck. How can I help you?”

You give the girl a small smile, she seemed pretty nice. “I, um, I was just stopping by for a bite to eat. I’m starved.” You tuck a loose strand of hair behind your ear, suddenly aware of the fact of how sad it was that you were here to eat alone. 

“You a touron?” She questions, causing you to give her a very confused look. 

“I’m sorry, a who now?”

She chuckles, shaking her head. “That’s what we call the tourists around here. So, you visiting?” She asks. You make an ‘o’ shape with your mouth at her explanation before shaking your head. “No, me and my mom just moved here about a week ago, so I just don’t really know anyone on the island or anything about it.” You explain.

She nods, a smile beginning to grow on her lips. “Well why don’t you hang out with me and my friends.” She gestured over to three guys and a girl sitting in the back, already watching. You send them an awkward wave, which some of them reciprocate. “That would actually be really nice …” You pause, realizing that you didn’t even know this girl’s name.

  “Kiara. Carrera. But everyone just calls me Kie.” She informs you, holding out your hand for her to shake.

“Y/n L/n.”  You tell her, shaking her hand before she leads you over to her friends.

“Guys, this is Y/n L/n. Y/n, this is Pope, JJ, John B, and Sarah.” She says, introducing each one of her friends, pulling up a chair for you before quickly going to grab you a bite to eat.

You suddenly felt very awkward under the eyes of these four strangers, willing yourself to disappear before Sarah decides to start up a conversation with you. “So, Y/n, did you just move here?” She questions. You appreciate her attempt at small talk. 

Nodding, you tell her “Yeah, my mom and I just moved here like a week ago. We used to live on the mainland but she got a job offer we couldn’t refuse, so we moved to the Cut and now here I am.”

“Sweet, you’re a pogue.” One of the boys, you think his name was Pope, said. Before you could question him on what a pogue actually was (you were guessing there was more weird slang that you would have to learn), but before you could, the blonde, JJ you thought, spoke up. 

“So you surf?” He questioned, leaning forward. You had to admit, he was pretty attractive, his blonde hair tousled in a perfectly imperfect way and his blue eyes seemingly piercing into your soul. You shake your head, never having the opportunity to learn. You answer seems to disappoint JJ, causing him to deflate and mumble “disappointing” under his breath, which earns him a whack on the back of the head by the third boy, John B. “Be nice.”

Kie then returns with some french fries and a sandwich for you to munch on, and the conversation moves on to something about a boat.

---

After the not so good first impression with JJ, the blonde had apologized to you and insisted that he be the one to teach you how to surf. While his apology seemed genuine, you were still slightly terrified of surfing. However, JJ assured you that it wasn’t nearly as dangerous or terrifying as you thought, and promised to be with you every step of the way.

He taught you how to swim out to the waves, when the perfect time to get up was, and which waves were a no-go for a beginner like you. Eventually, he had convinced you to actually take a spare board that John B had and go into the water, waiting until a wave that you could ride actually came along. He yelled at you from the shore to go for it, giving you a thumbs up and cheering you on while you nervously rode the wave. At the end, you smiled to yourself, loving the pump of adrenaline that came with surfing. You swam back to shore, squealing and pulling JJ into a hug, which he reciprocated with a chuckle. “I did it!!” You exclaimed, excited by your success.

JJ pulled back from the hug, smiling. “Told ya you could, I am the best surfing instructor you’d be able to get after all,” he said with a smirk, causing you to playfully shove his shoulder and roll your eyes. Something about JJ just felt right, like the two of you meshed together. You were two pieces of the same puzzle, and this feeling only continued to grow the closer you got over the coming weeks. 

---

Sarah had insisted before your outing on the HSM Pogue the next day that you, her, and Kie have a girls night at her place. So here you were, up at 2 am, talking about nothing before the topic of soulmates inevitably comes up. Sarah tells you that her and John B had had a long love hate relationship before eventually getting together and discovering that they were soulmates. You had figured as much, if the subtle PDA and looks they’d sent each other at The Wreck earlier were anything to off of. Kie, similar to you, hadn’t found her soulmate, but told you that she was actively looking for them like you. “So what does your tatto look like Y/n? Where is it?” Sarah questioned, shifting on her bed which she was currently laying on.

“Oh, mines so stupid. Its a little circle, right here on my hipbone,” you said, pointing at the tattoo that you didn’t even know if they could see yet. At your description, however, the smiles on Kie and Sarah’s faces falter, both girls tensing and glancing at one another. “What, is that like a bad omen or something that I don’t know about?” You question, nervous by their reaction. 

Kie awkwardly laughs it off, shaking her head at you. “No,no, its nothing bad. Just, I think you might find out who your soulmate is sooner than later.” She states, causing your brows to furrow. But she drops the subject quickly, and you don’t question her on it for the rest of the night.

---

All six of you were on the HMS Pogue goofing around. After Sarah and Kie had pulled John B and Pope off to the side before getting on the boat, the four had been treating you and JJ a little odd. You just brushed it off, thinking that you were just imagining the change in attitude. You were currently sipping a beer, resting your head on JJ’s shoulder while he smoked some weed. When you had finished, you stood looking at the rest of the group. “Anyone else in the mood for a swim?” You questioned, already pulling off your t-shirt to reveal a bikini underneath. 

“Yeah, I’m just gonna dri-” JJ starts, dropping the newly opened beer in his hand when he looks at you. You look at him like he’s crazy, shuffling your feet to avoid them getting covered beer. “JJ, what the fuck!” you groan in annoyance, but he seems to not notice the mess he’s made, eyes fixated on your stomach. Everyone else looked on with knowing expressions, but no one dared say anything. 

“Is no one going to clean up this mess but me?” You question, looking at every like they’ve gone insane. JJ moves to pull his shirt off, and you can’t help but roll your eyes. “J, we are not cleaning up the beer with your shirt,” you tell him, giving him a look. 

“No, I..” he points to his hip. At the small circle tattoo that matches yours. Your eyes widen, and you look up at him, a silent conversation seemingly happening between the two of you. This boy, the one who you’d grown so close to, who you’d felt so complete with, was your soulmate. Suddenly everything became clearer, like your life had just started making sense. Knowing it was him, provided you with a sense of clarity.

You both slowly approached each other and JJ gingerly grabbed your hand, running him thumb over your knuckles. “Hi.” You said softly, a smile forming on your lips.

“Hi.”

[autumnblogs]

Day 5: Imaginary Friends and Repressed Subconsciouses

https://homestuck.com/story/836

We open to Dave having the shit - and the softness - beaten out of him by Bro.

https://homestuck.com/story/838

These are exactly the sort of things a void player would say. This page lends itself to the interpretation that Rose is inverted and acting more like a Witch of Void than a Seer of Light, exactly the same way that Jade is acting like a Seer of Time. (Of course, Rose is either being sarcastic or placating herself. The reality is that, as she pretty much immediately demonstrates, she can’t help but pry for the true underlying meaning of what Jade is saying, grasping at information, and with it, power over her situation.)

I’ve already called attention to the dearth of conversations between these two characters - they’re not going to talk a lot between now and when Rose goes Grimdark. I think it’s just a shame. I wonder if it’s because Rose feels like Jade has her life under control, yearns for that, and in typical Rose fashion, decides that Jade is judging her for her lack of control? She is remarkably cool toward Jade, and I expect that to at least some degree, it’s because she feels inferior to her.

@volatileleporegina​ and I had a discussion on Discord where they guess that this is like, the dichotomy between Seers and Witches.

Rose probably envies the fact that Jade has her shit together. Witches are at their best and their happiest when they can go apeshit, seize control of a situation, and act completely on instinct. Seers are at their best and their happiest when they have inner peace, control of their situation, and control over their emotions.

More after the break.

https://homestuck.com/story/845

More speech patterns here. John does not use a lot of prepositions, and his language is very hesitant - he rarely asserts anything important, and has a pretty strong tendency to use phrases like “I guess, I figure, I think, I might” and so on and so on.

John also talks like he’s from the west coast of the USA, at least in a caricaturish way - he uses a lot of old school surfer slang that got co-opted into generic cool culture, like rad, although not nearly to the same extent as later parody character Latula.

https://homestuck.com/story/855

As a character who will eventually be revealed to be a Hero of Hope, Grandpa Harley dwells in the realm of fantasy. While he fills the mould of the idealized adventurer-hero - a true Pulp Fiction Macho Genius Archaeologist in the mould of Doc Savage or Indiana Jones, his relationship with other human beings is more... theoretical.

I wonder if it says anything about Hope in general that all of the Heroes of Hope in the story are practically incapable of having positive relationships in their lives? Before I tended to chalk Jake’s failure up to being a Page, and simply needing more time, but Eridan and Cronus sabotage all of their relationships as well.

Perhaps I’ll come back to this train of thought in the future. For now, Grandpa and Jake alike are characters who I consider wretches, and pitiable wretches at that. I have far less patience for Grandpa though. More of that as we go.

I should be open about the fact that, while I’ve been a bit more forgiving with Mom Lalonde, the fact is that, with the exception of Dad Egbert, I consider all four of the Beta Guardians to be abusive parents; Nanna is an exception as well if she is counted to be one of the guardians). Their conduct in raising their children is at the very least inexcusable, although if they demonstrated any repentance, it would perhaps be forgivable; in all their cases, by the end of the comic, it is too late for that (although they get another lease on life through the Alpha Kids, which if you don’t mind me showing my hand, I think is the entire point of the Alpha Kids from a storytelling perspective- reconciliation of the parents with the children.)

https://homestuck.com/story/859

One thing I have always liked about Jade is that she does not negotiate with terrorists. You go girl :)

https://homestuck.com/story/874

Rose lives in either Ontario or Upstate New York. I think someone found that the coordinates of her house are in Rainbow Falls.

It seems odd to me for no reason at all that Rose would be a Canadian when all of the other characters in the comic are ambiguously American, and there are a number of other reasons it would fit for Rose to be from upstate NY, not the least of which is that it is a part of Lovecraft Country, and the home of the principle madman from HP’s “Beyond the Wall of Sleep,” a story about a hick from Upstate New York who has insane dreams that he cannot express with his limited vocabulary. It turns out that this unassuming crazy person is actually a mortal manifestation of an extra-dimensional star-god, and he forms a friendship with the viewpoint character, an intern at the hospital where he has been institutionalized. While the magic dreams ultimately prove to be too much for the mortal frame and give him a heart attack, he contacts his friend the intern via a dream to express to him that he dearly hopes that the two of them meet again one day beyond the wall of sleep.

Another reason is that I’ve always viewed Rose as being an extremely affected person. Nobody talks the way that Rose talks - her words are all extremely deliberately chosen in a way that doesn’t fit the pattern of the other characters’ more stream-of-consciousness writing styles. Rose thinks in Prose, whereas her friends all write like they talk. I like to imagine, for this reason, that Rose has a transatlantic accent like Katharine Hepburn, which is to say, a learned accent. Back in old-timey times, actors, newscasters, the wealthy, and so on would take classes to learn how to pronounce words in a sophisticated way that nobody naturally spoke in - a bit like Received Pronunciation on the other side of the pond. It’s long since died out, but it fits the sort of affected, stuffy, faux-aristocratic manner that Rose styles herself with. It’s a blend of Manhattanite and Londoner pronunciation, and I think it suits her.

Anyway, there you go. There’s something that you just learned about my inner life and how I think way too much about tiny details like “What would Rose’s voice sound like?”

https://homestuck.com/story/876

Dave lives in Texas. For this reason, I have decided that he sounds like a cowboy. No particular cowboy, just some cowboy.

Jade lives in the Pacific Ocean, and I have a very specific head voice picked out for her - Anna Paquin, particularly young Anna Paquin who portrayed Sheeta in Castle in the Sky, although I’ve always imagined Jade to have a much broader kiwi accent.

https://homestuck.com/story/879

I wonder if Nanna’s oven works at all like Biscuits’?

https://homestuck.com/story/893

Nothing ever really came of Dr. Brinner’s mail. Law of Conservation of detail tells us that he might be one of pipefan413′s coworkers (maybe fedorafreak?) but we’ll never know.

https://homestuck.com/story/905

It’s not totally clear to me exactly what’s going on here, but I have a couple of theories.

Theory #1: This is Mom Lalonde’s childhood room from when she grew up. It makes sense to me that the Lalonde House and the Lab might be a package deal, especially since we see Roxy growing up in a similar setting, but with far more prolific modular structures.

Theory #2: As theory #1, but this is also Mom Lalonde’s current accommodation. Tea parties and tea seem to be shorthand in Homestuck for immaturity and avoidance in particular - characters like Nepeta, Mom, and Grandpa use Tea Parties to retreat into childish fantasy instead of confronting the real, hard problems they have to deal with.

https://homestuck.com/story/919

Jade’s strife with Grandpa might lend some credence to the idea that she uses imaginary friends (who are also us, the audience!) to cope with her loneliness.

https://homestuck.com/story/926

Even the extraordinary cynicism and antipathy of Rose Lalonde can’t resist adorable kittens.

https://homestuck.com/story/935

Jaspers’ secret seems to be the genetic code of a First Guardian, although whether Rose actually got it from this mysterious kitty-cat, or whether it was buried in her subconscious all along is probably a coin flip. (I would put my money on the subconscious thing.)

https://homestuck.com/story/938

For all her pretension, Rose Lalonde is a sad thirteen year old girl whose mother spends too much time sozzled to help her make sense of a confusing and chaotic world. It would be nice for her to be able to make sense of the world and get some sense of constancy, but then part of the point of Sburb is to teach its players that nothing in life is constant.

https://homestuck.com/story/949

Resolving some of the uncertainty around his Dad will allow John to consciously perceive the graffiti he’s been subconsciously scribbling around his room. You knew that already, but it doesn’t change the fact that this is a big deal for him. I’ll take a stab at why this is the case - one of the recurring motifs in Homestuck is characters avoiding uncomfortable truths through avoidance and stagnation - if they don’t want to think about something, they really really don’t think about it, to the point of not being able to perceive it at all. Here, John magically gains the ability to see some of the graffiti drawn by his dream self by being confronted with the truth about his Dad. For other characters, I think, it will be less magical.

https://homestuck.com/story/965

Calling attention to John’s lexicon again, I feel like it’s an overlooked fact that he uses turn of the decade hacker slang a lot too - just peppers his language with it.

https://homestuck.com/story/980

Jade, like John, actually has two separate Guardians - her deceased bio-parent, and this devilbeast. The terminology for these white-and-electric-green monsters, First Guardians, suggests that from a mythological perspective, they function as Ur-Parental figures, raising a civilization to adulthood so that its members can go on to play Sburb, participating in the reproductive cycle of the Universe.

https://homestuck.com/story/988

The fact that Mom Lalonde’s “Room” is full of booze supports my hypothesis that she still lives in her little girl’s lab bedroom.

Rose doesn’t make a big deal out of what’s in her Mom’s bedroom the way that John is, but I think that her exploration of the laboratory serves as effectively a long-form version of the same experience that John has just had. They’re both learning plenty about their enigmatic guardians.

Rose is a smart girl. She’s figured out what is going on, even if she hasn’t thought about it at the surface-level of the narration yet.

https://homestuck.com/story/1004

John Egbert is a young man who does not really like himself very much.

https://homestuck.com/story/1023

The very first time Rose shows genuine vulnerability to pretty much anyone in the comic. “Maybe I am just being a friend?”

https://homestuck.com/story/1028

Dreams in Homestuck are material events than can have material effects on the characters’ reality - but on the other hand, spending loads of time dreaming can prevent you from having a meaningful effect on your session.

Homestuck is a little ambivalent about dreams but I think it’s safe to say that something close to is stance would be to say that what goes on unacknowledged inside of your head is still a part of you even if you can’t perceive it. Characters who spend all of their time in dreams though, paradoxically won’t make all that much progress toward actually understanding it. Tavros and Jade both spend loads of time in their dreams on Prospit, and while Jade does it because she has Vriska-induced narcolepsy, I think we’re supposed to draw a line from one to the other.

Neither of them is in an emotional state to tough out the process of digging up what’s beneath the surface, and resolving the tension between what’s inside of them and what’s outside of them.

https://homestuck.com/story/1049

This creepy little guy is here because Gamzee sent him. I’m going to pay careful attention to the sequence of events that leads him here, because I have a hunch that John’s weird clown fixation somehow leads to Gamzee’s.

https://homestuck.com/story/1064

The fact that the Joker only has two holes in his punchcard suggests that clowns come very close to being elemental in the Homestuck universe.

That is not a surprise.

https://homestuck.com/story/1069

We’ll conclude the day with John’s alchemy session, and come back tomorrow where I’ll finally get around to stating another one of Homestuck’s major throughlines. For now though, I’ll point out that pretty much everything John has created here has some kind of Dad imagery or another (Although all the Cosby gags have aged incredibly poorly, don’t forget that at one point he was America’s Dad!)

With the possible exception of the Bunny Wizard hat which combines some Rose imagery with some John imagery! No wonder she thought it was as cool as he did.

For now, Cam signing off, something something not alone.

[smelly-cassettes]

take the risk - Chapter 2

Archie Sutton wants to be a professional surfer. Gorillaz is a garage band that plays on the beach. Archie’s infatuation with one of the members makes everything so much better. But will a little rock in the ocean halt him from achieving his dreams?

Here’s chapter 1 if you missed it

Au by @putinsstepdad

Tagging @uncamurdy2 because it’s starchie

Read it on ao3 here

6k works/over 10k in total so far

There’s a song for every chapter

Thank you so much for the support<3333

(If you see any weird things like “<em>” it’s just formatting stuff. This is pasted from my ao3)

some then a cut

~

"‘Surfs up?’ That’s literally the worst name I’ve ever heard for a competition. Actually, no. Scratch that. That’s the worst thing I’ve heard for any kind of title. It’s like they ripped off seventies hippie slang and was like ‘Perfect. This is what we’re naming our competition. Not cliche at all.’”

“I never thought someone who doesn’t even surf was so passionate about surfing competitions.”

Lindsay rolled her eyes. “I’m not actually worried ‘bout it. I just think it’s a stupid name.” Archie laughed at her comments and mumbled out his agreement.

Surfs Up really was a stupid name for a surfing competition yet it’s the best one to go to if you want to make it as a surfer professionally. It was Archie’s one chance in becoming an actual professional surfer to the point where he could make money and leave the beach he was at to chase his dream. It sounds all very one-pathic and like a sugar coated goal but this was real stuff. Winning Surfs Up immediately gives you a spot in nationals which in itself has a dozen perks. Even if you don’t win you get featured in enough magazines to boost your title. Not to mention that the competition was only a few short months away.

Maybe morally speaking, your title isn’t everything. Surf speaking, your title is your career. It’s a job being an influencer like any other where being higher up in the media scale meant your talent is good enough to be seen by everyone, no matter your interest (or disinterest). Archie didn’t really care whether or not he was social media famous--though that is nice to think about--he just wanted to make it to the big leagues to compete. Competitions are fun for Archie, but he also longs for that sense of work; for that one thing that’ll drive him every day to be better than he is now.

“Stupid name or not, I gotta win.” Archie grinned and bit the inside of his cheek. He was playing with the grooves in between the long, thin pieces of wood that put together the top part of the picnic table he and Lindsay were sitting at. It was hot today. Very hot, and being on the beach today made it way hotter next to the steaming sand, but it was nice in the shade beneath the umbrella that stood up from the middle of the picnic table.

There were lots of people out on the beach this morning, mostly just families of mothers and fathers with their kids enjoying the sun and swimming the afternoon away. Besides that, it was actually pretty quiet. The ocean made sounds against the sand on the shore, waves crashing on top of itself, seagulls doing their usual chirps. It was always quieter on the strip where he and Linsday sat before their afternoon shifts, the strip was busy in the evening where tourists bought their souvenirs and the families from the beach came to grab dinner.

“Think you’ve got it this year?” Lindsay asks and Archie nods.

“Damn sure hope so. Told you, last year was just a test run.” Archie responds, focusing on the grooves in the wood more than he would normally. “I love this beach but...I can’t be here forever.”

The last part of that sentence made Archie’s throat swell up and almost hurt saying it. This beach to Archie was like his backyard, his van his home, and the restaurant his family. The concerts he’d go to at night and the years it took of memorizing the ocean in front of him, he didn’t want to leave it, but Archie was willing to give anything to be a professional.

What would probably suck the most out of that whole transition of switching beaches every week and travelling everywhere for work is that Archie would no longer be able to see the Gorillaz in their amazing beach concerts. It was one of the very few, what you may or may not call “social situations” that Archie would include himself in voluntarily. Not only that but Gorillaz was so fucking amazing. The beach concerts were the best, Gorillaz music echoing against the buildings on the strip and only about a hundred, maybe two, at the beach watching. Not many people advertised when or where their music was playing, the Gorillaz being huge examples of that, so there weren’t too many that showed up because nobody knew what band or at what time. Archie only knew because he worked on the beach and either he heard the music or somebody told him who was playing at the amphitheater down the strip.

“Yeah, I get it.” Lindsay responds with a warm look. “I don’t think you should be here forever either. No offense.” She grins and brushes her dark hair back over her shoulder with her hand.

“None taken.” The side of Archie’s lip curls into a smile but slowly transitions back to a more glum look while he picks up his phone that was faced down on the table and clicks the bottom button to turn on his screen. He bites his lip and stares at the pink and yellow There Is No Future album cover set as his current lockscreen and his face turns into disappointment at the lack of notification. He doesn’t really know exactly what he was expecting but checking his screen became a recent habit of his and it was getting on his nerves.

“Still nothing?” Lindsay asks. She knows about the whole Gorillaz ordeal. Lindsay knew a lot about Archie, actually. They’ve been working together for three years and he lives at the restaurant, how could she not?

“Hm?” Archie turns his attention up and sets his phone down. He didn’t even realize he wasn’t paying attention in the first place.

“That guy you met, he hasn’t answered?”

Archie was actually a little upset at the thought of Gorillaz for the past few days. He hasn’t received a single text since talking to 2D that one night at Seasides and it was beginning to get to him. It was more an anxious feeling than anything, like the silent regret of giving 2D his phone number in the first place. It was probably too forward and 2D was just being nice by taking it. Archie calmed these thoughts by telling himself that 2D was most likely busy, or there just wasn’t a show that they were doing. That last one was a little weird because Gorillaz typically performed once a week or two on the beach or in a local bar, but here Archie is about four weeks later and a little deprived of the great Gorillaz content he craves so much. The Gorillaz didn’t owe Archie anything, to be fair. Still, he wants to support them in any way possible.

Archie shook his head and shrugged one of his shoulders. “Yeah, no text yet.” Lindsay gave a somewhat cryptic look through her green eyes.

“That’s strange. Are you still going to their concert tonight?” She asks, taking Archie a little by surprise, he hasn’t heard a peep from the band in what feels like a decade.

“I didn’t know they were having a concert tonight.” Archie confessed honestly. This is how he found out a lot of the time, though. Mutuals talking upon each other until one brings it up and Archie plans the night around the one event. “But yeah, I wouldn’t miss it. Are you going too?” He asks and Lindsay shakes her head, her straight hair falling back in front of her shoulders and waving and whipping with her movements.

“Got class in the morning and we both work until close.” She speaks effortlessly. Lindsay was the same age as Archie, well, a year younger technically but same graduation class. She attended college while still living with her parents and is really close to graduating with her bachelors in general health and then she’s going into sports medicine. Archie looked up to her in a way, always working and gets things done no matter how hard. Given she still complains all the time but anyone would with her schedule.

Archie nods and observes his phone for a brief second but averts his eyes back up to Lindsay once he realizes. Lindsay notices and laughs at Archie.

“Just ask him out already, geez.” She chirps teasingly.

“I don’t have his number!” He exclaims back and Lindsay covers her mouth to muffle her giggles. “I mean if I did I still wouldn’t. I’m just waiting for a text.”

Just a text.

“Well you have fun with that.” Lindsay continues her childish giggles and stands from the picnic table to stretch. Archie takes this as his signal to also stand and grab his phone to check one last time but a thin dainty hand with short and chipped yellow nail polish covers his screen. “Just go to the concert, Arch. Reunite with your super hot band guy and then when you’re about to kiss, yell at him for not texting you back.” Archie chuckled sheepishly at Lindsay’s comment putting the weirdest image in his brain. Always the most charming speeches from her.

“Okay.” Archie breaths out with a shake of his head and Lindsay laughs again, hitting his arm with her palm lightly.

“Shift starts in an hour and I wanna run home for a few minutes.” She stretches again. Archie nods and gives her another okay and waves to send her off. He lifts his phone to click the button that was probably going to break today from turning his screen on so much.

Nothing. Archie sighs.

He shouldn’t let this one thing get him down, it was only a text message, how petty. Archie could still go to the concert tonight and see them, maybe talk to 2D if he gets the chance but no bets are being taken. Archie looks over away from the strip to the ocean. It was unbelievably blue and perfect out, given the families might leave with a few more sunburns than anyone would ask for, but still the perfect day. Archie breathed in the warm air and slowly exhaled it out. Maybe he’ll go out for a wave or two before his shift.

The day is extremely fast paced yet endlessly long and exhausting like all saturday’s at Seasides. Saturday’s were the days off, the weekend away, the day in the sun before going back to work or school the next monday. At least that’s kind of how it goes for most people, everyone that doesn’t work a beachside job like Archie. He can’t really complain with the number of good things he gets out of his job like minimal hours and being thirty feet away from his bed and not needing to work for any particular bills or anything, but working Saturday’s sucked because it was crowded and full of kids and sand and water--not that Archie can defend him complaint with that one either without being a hypocrite.

Point is that it’s been a long day and Archie can’t decide whether or not he wants to get up from his old boxy futon that feels like heaven right now or go to the Gorillaz concert that he only just found out about this morning with Lindsay. He lifts his phone and opens his messages to see a list of people he’s talked to over the past few months, dead end messages and nobody he really keeps up with besides maybe a “can you come into work asap please? Thank you.”

There were no new messages. Irritated at himself, he turned his phone completely off and sat up on the bed quick enough to have his hair fall in front of his face, the yellow-green becoming more apparent so close to his eye that he couldn’t focus on it entirely. He brushed it back with one of his hands and used the other to check the time on his wrist.

It was already almost ten thirty and most beach concerts only ran from ten to eleven, rarely longer because of beach rules to have everyone off by midnight. If Archie wanted to see the Gorillaz he’d have to go now even if he was only five minutes walking distance from the amphitheater, but first he’d have to get out of these greasy smelling clothes.

The stage was beautiful, like always. Black flooring on top of grey concrete that made up the entire bottom part of the theater, thick black tent-like fabric on top and directly next to it were all the stage lights that could shine any color on any band. Also along the lights were Archie’s favorite part, the fog machines. For some reason they just made everything so much cooler and exciting. All of this was set in the sand faced away from the ocean.  

The Gorillaz set was really good tonight, too. There were a couple of songs that he hadn’t heard before, which he’s assuming is the reason he hasn’t heard of any concerts recently either.

During the concert Archie watches 2D without even really thinking. He’d slowly look away to take in the view of something else like Noodle’s guitar or which part of the drum Russel is hitting, but his eyes would always move back to 2D like a magnet. 2D was in a very casual getup of jean shorts and a very ripped and worn plain grey t-shirt that was lazily tucked into the front of his shorts. Through some of the many rips in the shirt Archie could see 2D’s pale torso and he could only wonder how somebody could manage to stay that pale so close to the equator. On the off chances when 2D lifted his arms to get the crowd to cheer or sing with him, his shirt rode up and Archie could see a little more, but the harsh defined lines of his hip bones were about the tip of what exposed. His hair was sweaty and messy and bounced around his face while he moved about the stage and his black eyes looking around mysteriously. At one point Archie swears 2D is looking in his direction because he doesn’t blink or move for a few seconds and Archie can feel a weird tension crawling up his back, like it was signaling him to look away but he couldn’t.

2D’s singing was all the more exhilarating, stinging every inch of Archie’s skin and making his muscles vibrate with every movement that 2D made. Why Archie was memorizing all of these fine details? He didn’t know. Maybe it was just because he hasn’t seen a performance in a while. On one hand it freaked him out and made him question every thought in his head but on the other hand it was exuberance and he never wanted it to stop.

But what caught Archie’s eye the most was the fact that he’s never seen 2D out of jeans and a jacket. That in itself wasn’t surprising and sounds kind of silly worded like that, but it wasn’t because 2D was wearing shorts that caught him off guard, but everything around it. Archie could see pink and purple bruise-like scars that covered 2D’s shins and forearms. With them there was also divots in his skin here and there, similar to acne scars but instead of a lot of small ones he had a few big ones, the type of scars from chunks of flesh being taken away from the skin but they were very aged. 2D’s marks weren’t new enough to be actual bruises, they were scars for sure, and Archie knew exactly what they were from.

Their set was over before Archie even knew it--probably because he got there later than ever--and he was conflicted. Gorillaz exited the stage and people started shuffling off the beach almost hurriedly, people needing to get home to sleep before work in the morning and some just rushing to get warmer. That was a downside to the beach at night is that it’s like a desert, hotter than hell during light hours and freezing cold during dark hours. Archie internally debates on leaving with the crowd so he doesn’t look like the last one standing on the beach for no reason, but he also feels like he should talk to 2D. What Archie didn’t know for sure is that while he was tossing ideas around in his brain he was standing in that spot for longer than he thought and he didn’t budge until a voice broke him out of his tranced state.

“Are you ‘ere for the after party?” The voice questioned and made Archie nearly physically jump where he was. Archie turned to the voice and met with a face a lot closer to his than he was expecting and he jumped back scaredly. 2D laughed and his black eyes squinted from his raised cheeks. Archie’s face heated, embarrassed.

“A-after party?” Archie asked. He’s never been to an after party for Gorillaz before, how has he been missing out on these?

“It was jus’ a joke.” 2D’s laughter caught the end of his sentence and Archie felt even more embarrassed but before he could answer 2D placed his hand on Archie’s back, making his speech pause. “Come on, we’ve been waitin’ to see ya.”

Archie’s brows furrowed in thought, wondering how they’ve been waiting for him if they didn’t know Archie was going to be there in the first place. Or maybe they did know and he didn’t know, still never receiving any notice by text or anything of the sort. Strangely, that seems like more of the case here.

2D lead Archie to the back of the stage that contained the electric set for lighting and sound on for the stage. Russel was currently playing with it, flipping switches and turning knobs in ways that Archie would never understand or care to learn.

“Good?” Russel asked loudly, like he was shouting to someone else. A smaller voice shouted back from beside Archie.

“Good! Next!” The fainter voice sounded back. Bands were in charge of setting up and taking down their own equipment along with taking care of the sound and lights by themselves and it seems like they were all preparing their leave.

2D and Archie approached Russel and 2D’s hand left Archie’s back and returned to his side, a part of Archie wishing it hadn’t.

“Russ, this is, um…” 2D’s voice stopped midway trying to introduce Archie and comprehended the thought that he never learned Archie’s name.

“Archie.” He helped out and reached to shake Russel’s hand and Russel smiled fondly, holding Archie’s hand and shaking it briefly before returning to his work on the electric box. 2D gave Archie a stare visible enough to receive Archie’s attention but 2D looked away as soon as he made eye contact.

“Thanks for the help.” Grunted someone behind them, breaking the tension. “Don’t worry, we cleaned up ourselves no thanks to you.” Archie noticed this man as Murdoc, the bass for the Gorillaz.

“What, you need a hand carrying amps?” Russel chimed in, closing the electric box and standing up next to 2D. “I thought you were stronger than that, Muds.” He snickered and Murdoc’s face changed from anger and annoyance to a bit more egotistical.

“Yeah right, like I’m that weak.” Murdoc replied and Russel raised an eyebrow. They both knew exactly what Russel was doing and yet Murdoc was falling perfectly into it.

“So what did you need our help for?” He asked back and tied the knot. The insult finally setting into Murdoc’s face and the rest of the band laughed. The teasing was amusing to Archie, he was interested to see the types of relationships they all had with each other. As they were talking, the last band member approached, a young woman only standing to about five feet in skinny jeans and a leather jacket. This was Noodle.

“Murdoc, Noodle. This is Archie.” 2D said proudly now that he knew Archie’s name and Archie exchanged a smile with Noodle and well, he smiled at Murdoc but he didn’t really give anything back but he shook Archie’s hand politely enough to count as something.

“Introductions are nice and all,” Murdoc began. “But we gotta be off this sand in ten minutes and I don’t feel like interacting with beach security so if we could go before then, that’d be great.”

“Yeah me neither, we should go.” 2D answered and they all began shuffling towards a van. At this point Archie didn’t know whether to just go back to his van or not but once again, 2D interrupted his thoughts with, “Are you coming?”

“Okay so I’m just going to break the ice here and ask how you two know each other?” Noodle asks with a corona extra in her hand and sits in a folding chair at a small circular wooden dining table. They were hanging out in 2D’s garage, or moreso his parents garage--supposedly they weren't home--but surprisingly cozy with couches with so many signs and tools against the walls that Archie couldn’t exactly tell what color it was. Not high end or decked out with expensive items by any means, but a cool hang out spot.

Archie takes a seat next to Noodle and glances at 2D, wondering if he’s going to answer Noodle or if Archie should do it himself. 2D was preoccupied in the fridge looking at his whole two beer options to notice that Noodle asked a question. Archie chuckled at 2D’s befuddlement but turned his attention to Noodle.

“I work at Seasides.” He answers as Russel and Murdoc take seats on the opposite side of the table.

“The diner we booked last month?” Murdoc asked and popped open his beer. Archie nodded and explained the situation further. He left out most of it and left in just the part of them meeting and Archie being a fan of their music; he thought it might be better to leave out the whole waiting for a text thing.

“Why do you work there?” Russel asks out of curiosity and starts shuffling a deck of cards. 2D sits next to Archie after he finally made his decision on what beer to take.

“Money, why else?” Archie responds with a small laugh. He earns a small “that’s true” and continues. “I just need enough for food and surf competition entries. That’s the-”

“You surf?” 2D and Noodle ask in unison and Archie looks at them a bit confused.

“Yeah. Have been since I was little.” He answers.

“That’s so cool.” Noodle says back and picks up her hand of cards that Russ dealt out. 2D just stared at Archie which was both flattering and amusing.

“Wait...Sutton?” 2D asked and Archie felt a familiar feeling in his nerves. He was asked that exact phrase probably five times a day from little kids at work right before he was asked for an autograph or picture. To adults he was just another kid that liked surfing, but to the kids he was a celebrity. It was cute.

“Yeah, that’s me. Didn’t recognize from the hair?” He joked, his light green locks still flowing down unlike during competitions. It was the biggest reason he wasn’t easily recognizable outside of comps.

“That’s crazy.” 2D says, still baffled. “I’ve seen you at competitions before, you’re amazing.” The gushing by 2D made Archie’s insides twist and his face heat up. Archie smiled with a slightly nervous laugh.

“Ditto.” Archie answered and opened his beer, never looking away from 2D’s eyes. They stayed staring at each other while Archie opened, drank, and set down his beer, never breaking gaze and not stopping until they’re both smiling like complete weirdos.

“Must be why you’re a server, then, yeah?” Murdoc snarks and Noodle flicks the side of his head. Murdoc flinches and puts his hand over the place she flicked.

“Ow--hey! It was a joke, calm down.” He retaliated and Noodle contentedly smiles.

Archie was asked a lot of questions about himself. His job, where he lives, competitions he’s done before, etcetera. It was all just the basics of describing how he lived in a van and never left the beach unless he had to--which was still never. And Archie learned a lot about them, too. Noodle lives at home with her foster parents because she’s only seventeen and can’t really leave yet. Her biological parents are full Japanese but she has no idea who they are, only that she was put in foster care at eight years old and adopted quickly by a nice older couple. Noodle also graduated high school at sixteen and is supposedly the smartest book-wise out of the group.

Russ apparently suffers through living with poltergeists and other spirits that don’t leave him alone, plus he dropped out of school early senior year, but otherwise leads a pretty happy life with friends, music, and his full time job as a cook in a diner downtown. Murdoc graduated with bad grades because he started working at fourteen and never had time for anything else. He grew up with a verbally abusive family and he only dedicated time into guitar and work, moving out at seventeen and finding Russel through a roommate ad until he was eighteen and could sign a lease of his own but only moved a short two floors down in the same apartment building as Russel.

2D worked part time at a gas station and lived with his parents, which is actually their garage that they were seated at now, but he didn’t stay there often. 2D suffered from a list of traumas like a car crash that fractured his eyes and made them go mostly black, given the white or red spot that Archie never noticed from afar, and a shark attack when he was really young that gave him the many scars along his arms and legs.

“You get inna lot of trouble, don’t you?” Archie asked 2D when he heard the story and 2D laughed with a nod. 2D didn’t respond to him, Archie just memorized 2D’s smile. Slightly crooked teeth, one gold tooth on the bottom and a little discoloration on his to front teeth--cigarette marks. Blue hair, black eyes, thin lips. 2D glanced up and Archie looked away.

Russel and Murdoc are the ones that began the band in the year that they lived together. Russ already knew drums and ukulele meanwhile Murdoc knew bass and together they had some form of a band, but they needed another guitarist and a singer. Soon enough, after three weeks and a few different interviews, they had met Noodle. 2D was picked up after Murdoc found online videos of his singing and piano playing, finding out that this blue haired kid lived in the same city only a few miles away from them. Thus, Gorillaz was born and they began making music, only performing at local bars in their downtime until they could make a full career out of it. Yet they haven’t, but Russ said that they now have tickets and merch to some of their concerts so they bring in a little bit of money.

They’ve all been sitting in the garage for an hour now, playing round after round of rummy and telling endless stories to Archie about their jobs and concerts, like when equipment dies during a set or one time where 2D literally forgot the lyrics to a new song and had to stop midway and start a new song. They told Archie a lot of stories and he told a few back about surfing and working, but he didn’t have anything near as interesting as poltergeists or crazy car accidents.

It was the strangest feeling, too. Archie never once felt that night like they were idols or celebrities like a standard band member would, but why should he? They were all just young adults just like him that had jobs but also happened to be in a band--who made super good music, might he add. Archie kind of forgot about how he looked up to them in that one short hour and molded into the conversations like he would with anyone else. It was a rush, in a certain garage-full-of-tipsy-young-adults sense.

Archie took a liking to them all. Murdoc made weird jokes that nobody really laughed at, Noodle played hard and won almost every round, Russ was strategic and laid the most sets, meanwhile 2D stared blankly and confused and always discarded things he could actually play. Archie was convinced that 2D didn’t know how to play and it was amusing to everyone, but they all acted like he just got bad cards and cheered him on. It was baffling that he actually won a couple rounds. 2D still didn’t even notice until he realized he had no cards left and asked who took them.

“Beer run. Who wants another?” Noodle asks and stands. Everyone raises their hands besides Russel.

“I gotta drive you two back, don’t forget.” Russel added giving a look to Murdoc and Noodle. Noodle gave a thumbs up and proceeded her journey to the fridge.

“How you feelin’, Arch?” 2D asks with his face leaned against his hand. 2D stared at Archie lazily and lightly tapped Archie’s knee with his knuckle. Archie laughed at his lightweighted state.

“I’m feeling fine, how are you?” Archie asks back and bumps 2D’s knee like he just did. 2D smiles and giggles but doesn’t answer the question.

“Pet names already?” Murdoc teases. “Doesn’t that usually come after the date?”

“Who’s on a date now?” 2D squints at Murdoc. Archie was a little afraid to think what he thought Murdoc was implying.

Archie was gay, and he wasn’t really the most open about it. He never hid himself but it’s not something he told straight up unless he was asked and only to people he knew. Lindsay didn’t find out for at least a year working together, but she never freaked out or treated it like bigger than it is. Archie was just so used to being treated like he was the abnormal one in the group. It was part of the reason he dropped out of school so young, it was annoying being asked about your sexuality every day. Murdoc didn’t make Archie uncomfortable, only experiencing the weird feeling of treating his sexuality like it’s normal.

“Stop makings weird, Muds.” Noodle criticized and bumped the back of his head with his beer bottle before slamming it down in front of him. Murdoc flinched again and squinted at her while she passed around drinks.

“I’m gonna have a concussion by the end of the night because of you.” Murdoc spoke and Noodle opened her beer with a smirk.

“Good.”

“So,” 2D starts to veer off their topic while he shuffles cards for the next round. “What do your parents do, Archie?” It was almost like the question was on cue, interrupting the thoughts in Archie’s head. All the attention was on him now. He cleared his throat.

“Uhm, well, my father has always been into construction and electric services. Last I knew my mother was a sales rep but she changes jobs a lot, I don’t know what she’s doing now.” Archie explained. It was weird to call his parents by “mom” or “dad” in any context. He hasn’t called them that since he lived there. Long time ago.

“Last you knew?” Russ asks and Archie nods. He’s not sure if he should go in depth on his whole relationship or not. Archie chooses the latter.

“Well I uh, we haven’t talked in a little while. M’not sure what they’re up to.” Archie shrugs and opens his new beer.

“It’s nice to keep in touch while you’re still young.” Noodle answers and lifts the cards being dealt to her. “Not all of us can do that, y’know?” She asks and Archie nods. It’s not her fault that she doesn’t know how Archie falls into that spectrum.

“Yeah, I’ll visit soon.” He lies and lifts his cards and his beer. Archie doesn’t believe it’s time for him to visit home soon in any means, but they don’t really need to know that, so he stays quiet.

Another hour of drinks, cards, and dumb drunk jokes passed and it was nearing one in the morning. Their laughs and dizzy brains started to tire out and Russ was the first one to call the shots, throwing his cards down and giving an “okay we should go before I get too tired and can’t drive.” Apparently Murdoc had some hot date to get to (which was a total lie, nobody would be going on a date with Murdoc at one in the morning), and Noodle had to sneak in before getting in trouble for being out too late, though it was late enough for her to get in trouble anyways. That said, Russ, Noodle, and Murdoc said their goodbyes and nice-to-meet-you’s and shuffle into Russel’s car, driving off to their respectful homes. 2D and Archie were left in the garage, Archie helping to dispose of empty bottles and pick up cards despite 2D telling him that he didn’t have to. “It’s just cards, no big deal,” Archie spoke and 2D just shrugged it off.

“I should probably go, too. Are you sober?” Archie asked and 2D gave him a nervous look.

Shit.

“Uhh, no.” 2D says bluntly. “But I have room if you wanna just stay. I kind of don’t want to kill you tonight.” Archie laughs.

“It’s cool. I can call a cab.” Archie says with a stretch. It feels like his brain was swirling around in his head and he only had a couple beers. Archie searches around in his pocket for his phone but quickly noticed that it wasn’t in his usual spot in his back pocket, finally remembering that he left it on his futon when he got fed up with the text messages. Or lack thereof.

“Just save the fifteen bucks and sleep in my bed.” 2D says lazily and Archie smirks at him. 2D’s words set into his eyes and he got flustered. “No wait I didn’t me-”

“Oh, so you do just want me in your bed?” Archie mocked. He wouldn’t make that sexual of a joke if he was sober but neither of them were innocent now. 2D’s expression changed and he stared at Archie skeptically.

“Well obviously.” 2D said back very seriously. Archie was surprised that 2D was playing along now after trying to take back his flirty comment. “Whole plan all along, you couldn’t tell?” Archie blushed subconsciously. Or maybe it was just the alcohol. Either way he was flustered.

“No, sorry. Too focused on your body I just couldn’t look away.” Archie was surprising himself with the amount of gay comments he was springing out, and to 2D of all people, and what was more baffling is that 2D didn’t care. 2D held his arm out and waved it towards Archie.

“Then help this body up. ‘Think I might fall if I tried myself.” 2D commented and Archie gave him a look that said “really?” 2D knew exactly what he was thinking and nodded. With a dramatic sigh, Archie pulled 2D’s arm and lifted the man to his feet but 2D just crashed into Archie with a tired bump and a couple giggles. The closeness Archie had to 2D’s face now was intense and ran the same familiar tension up his spine as they stood with Archie’s hands on 2D’s waist and 2D’s hands on Archie’s biceps. Archie looked from one of 2D’s eyes to the other and 2D just stares back without much expression, or maybe it was just his eyes. It was always his eyes.

This is the part in the story where one person kisses the other, but Archie doesn’t think he has it in him, he's not drunk enough to do that. Archie darts his eyes away quickly and wraps one arm around 2D to sturdy him and keep him from collapsing on the garage floor. 2D holds onto Archie while they walk into the house and they don’t talk along the way besides Archie asking “where do I go?” and hardly getting an answer out of 2D. Archie bumped into a few walls because of 2D's towering height being hard to hold up and 2D only responded with giggles and gripping onto Archie for support.

Eventually Archie finds a bedroom and walks in with the drunk 2D and throws him on the bed almost mercilessly. 2D only grunts in response and Archie laughs. He’s pretty sure 2D was sleeping on the way to his room because as soon as he hit the bed, he was dead. Archie stood at stared at 2D for a moment before laughing again and walking over to attempt to pull 2D’s lazy form up higher on the bed but barely winning. He’ll have to survive completely clothed and half off the bed tonight.

Archie didn’t even bother trying to find a couch or another bedroom to sleep in, he was too tired and the house was almost too dark to see in for that, so he just flopped next to 2D in this decent sized queen bed and let his head spin itself to sleep. But before he fully drifted off, he felt the bed shift and noticed 2D rolling beside him. Archie stayed still, mostly because he couldn’t move if he tried, but also because he assumed 2D was just getting comfortable. He was pretty much right, with the small exception of 2D rolling over almost onto Archie. Okay, he wasn’t on top of Archie but 2D snaked his arms around one of Archie’s and leaned his head against his shoulder and fell right back asleep. Sleep cuddler, he never would have guessed. Archie was too tired and sure his body was already asleep so he couldn’t respond anyways so he just let his brain whirl to sleep along with it.

Man, what an insane day.

[colonialsurfer]

SECULAR SURFACE Surfing The Nations / TEXT

Click here and download part 1 of this text as a pdf: SECULAR SURFACE - Surfing The Nations

In 1936, Walter Benjamin wrote the classic and often referenced text The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Boris Groys has more recent written Religion in the age of digital reproduction (2009).

The philosopher and the artist Groys writes, among other things, that religion and conspiracy theories are two things that really benefit from the Internet and the network community. He believes that the spread and rise of these have increased significantly with our digitized era. Religion is facing a renaissance through digital social media. New forms of religion and religiosity are being developed.

The Internet in its structure benefits private, unconditional and sovereign freedom before scientific, conditional, institutional freedom, or sharing of legitimized viewpoints and perspectives. It is the unconditional and not proven information that can more easily and without resistance spread through the Internet. I also want to point out that this goes on in the market-liberal economy. It is information that in a superficial way fits easier within different situations, this is because it’s not regulated and therefore becomes more fast-formulated. It becomes competitive in spite of its major shortcomings, and Groys’ declares it as survival of the fittest in accordance with a Darwinist perspective. It finds favorable positions, diversity of positions, precisely through how it is not anchored and thus can move unlimitedly.

(…)

During the prayer meeting, I placed a camera next to me and pressed the record button. It captures sound while standing and filming sneakily. Some minutes later, we do a prayer in which we pray for getting blessed with photographs and video material that will spread our message.

(…)

The reason for my work as a missionary for Surfing The Nations is that I see it as a performance work part of my art practice. There is nobody in place who knows about my intentions. My role could possibly be described in other ways than an artist. I'm there as a surfer. I'm there as a missionary. I'm there as an anthropologist. I'm there as a tourist. I'm there as a journalist. At the same time, none of these roles are true.

(…)

When I’m leaving the church and the area I feel a bit bestial. I write bestial (a beast) here with a link to how artists work with a context in real life, and then symbolically cannibalize on it to talk about something else. It’s a consumption of meaning, consumption of the environment and the people in order to be used as a representation. A violence that is close to hand within photographic and recording techniques. During our fairly personal conversation, I had placed a sound recorder switched on in a textile bag. Did I lie to this priest, I ask myself then? The priest who even may have baptized me at exactly on this spot in Onsala.

Honesty is honored within Christianity. You shall be true to yourself and you must be true to God. Within surf culture, it is important to be genuine and authentic. You are supposed to do things for real. Otherwise, you're just a poser.

Click here and download part 1 of this text as a pdf: SECULAR SURFACE - Surfing The Nations

(…)

Renovation

We get to hear from Niklas and Kristin that we are about to paint and renovate the village's hairdressing salon. The salon is very small but centrally located in Arugam Bay. What we are about to do is explained as extensive aid work. After an internal meeting in our compounds, we go to the barber to tell him about our plans.

Niklas talks to the hairdresser in an educating manner and tone. We listen behind him almost like supervision in the small room. The discussion is mostly, or almost extensively a monologue. The words get outspoken from Niklas in a slightly superior jargon. But he is also adapting the words to a kind of made-up slang English for someone who isn’t so good at the language. Niklas is seeking for approval while explaining in sweeping gestures about what he, or we, are about to do in the barbershop.

It goes on in a way that resembles how a seller tries to convince a potential customer. The technique is based on excluding other possible alternatives.

- Just think about it, you know, cause what we wanna do, we wanna paint inside and fix.

Paint outside, paint the door, paint everything. Says Niklas and continues.

(…)

- You know in America they sell shampoo and wax and

I know here different I know.

But we make shelves.

The stereo we put in the back so you can’t see.

Everything very nice looking, clean. And we wanna paint everything new, new curtains.

Paint this, paint everything really, really nice.

It´s ok for you or?

Since it´s not the hairdresser himself who owns the place, the decision requires the involvement of more people. But we are determined and have already decided. Within the group, we are told by Niklas and Kristin that we are going to do something very good, a good deed, and something that will affect the community in the right way. We are going to spread a positive message in the village.

Niklas to the hairdresser again:

- We wanna help to fix, but, we need to know.

We need to, we look in the shelves see how much money.

How much money cost.

We will see, cause we have very little money.

Not much money this year, so not much money.

But we wanna start with the painting.

It’s going to be obvious for everyone who passes that we are working in the room. At first, there is a curtain in the large window towards the street but we take it down. The hairdresser is someone that many from the village visit regularly. The plan is that the hairdresser's customers will see how the place has been painted and redone, and then stories will be told about our group. And from the street people will see us working.

One of Surfing the Nations many taglines, for example, used in their videos: Be the change you want to see in the world. This is explained as a Mahatma Gandhi quotation. It's an incorrect quote that has become viral on the internet. I don’t know exactly where it originates and how it began to spread. What Ghandi really said that gave rise to this is: We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change.

Gandhi expressed something that is somewhat more complex, humble, listening to the environment and self-reflective criticism. It is about thinking about your own role and changing yourself, rather than focusing on changing the world through your deeds and your role. How we act in Sri Lanka and Arugam Bay, our way of thinking and our roles is supposed to change the surrounding place.

In proportion to the size of the hairdressing salon, we are way too many on-site working. The small room is full of our bodies in action. We begin our work by emptying the salon on things. For example, there is a large amount and variety of posters on the walls in organic patterns.

- Is it ok to tear these down? Is Kristin asking Niklas.

- Yes. Do Niklas answer frankly.

We tear down the posters from the walls, an act that makes them crumpled and torn apart. What these pictures mean or are of value to the hairdresser is nothing we really take into account. He might have collected these for years. Posters that soon lie in a pile on the floor.

At a rather late stage of the process, when we have already have decided the color, Kristin asks while the hairdresser is in the room if Niklas knows how the hairdresser actually wants it.

- Ask him. Niklas reply very card.

At this point, I think I've got some understanding of how Niklas thinks. As prejudice and pretext from me I think that Niklas doesn’t expect the hairdresser to answer something clearly. That is an argument from his side about why we should control and decide the design.

- What colors do you want in here? - Do you like green? Kristin says to the hairdresser. The barber doesn´t know this, but green is the color we’ve already chosen. The hairdresser shakes his head and expresses something far out with his eyes.

- Do you like orange?

He does not answer and Kristin continues.

- Black? Black everywhere?

- Black? No! Says the hairdresser.

When Kristin then asks about the hairdresser's favorite color, he points up at one of the walls and says blue. The cerise cold blue color in which the room is already painted in is the hairdresser's favorite color. It’s a pleasant tone in a place with a sunny, warm and hot climate.

Like I mentioned before, the argument raised about why we should paint in a different color, according to Niklas and Kristin, is because the hairdresser doesn’t have a strong opinion. He doesn’t know what he wants. We know the good taste and that is part of what we bring as our positive message. With scrapers, we slowly scratch away the blue color from the walls. There is no air conditioning in the room and we are not used to working in this heat. Sweat pours down our bodies while we work and many of the men in our group are dressed in surf-shorts and no top.

After a while, I'm told to stop scraping the paint off the walls. We are going to skip this step and paint directly on top of the old surface. This is an approach that every painter knows will lead to bad quality. A way of cheating that doesn’t get the paint to attach very well to the wall and will make it likely to fall off in the near future. At first, during the process of scraping, I protest and want to continue the work until it’s done. But I give up when Niklas explains that we won’t have enough time to complete our work. We don’t have time because we have other things to do here in Arugam Bay during our stay. In a few days, a surf contest will begin as part of the international surfing tour. We are aiming to attend the beach and spread the word about Surfing The Nations. In the barbershop, we fill up the worst holes in the room with putty knives before we start painting with a clear strong lime green color. The green is a bit similar to the color that usually appears on green screens.

We are then standing in a green room. A green-room within wave surfing is when you are in a good surf position inside a barreling wave. A reference in movie making is green rooms or green screens that are used to film things, or people so that the motive can be edited into any other visual context and background. A green room is also what you find backstage at a theater.

We also build a very simple wall in the room and put up simple self-made shelves on it. Once the room is painted completely green, we also add straight horizontal brown-orange and white stripes. We paint these across all the walls of the room. We make the brown-orange stripes wide and the white ones more narrow. If you compare with the free organic style from earlier with a lot of colorful posters on the walls, it is now possible to resemble the room more as a normative Ikea interior. But the room is quite a bit more exaggerated than the ones appearing in the IKEA catalogs. The stripes that go through all the walls of the room define the room and make it very definite. It is like an already set room and becomes a very closed body.

The stripes that are in the room now can be linked to sports culture. They look like typical sportswear patterns that for example appear on t-shirts, polo shirts or sport pants, etc. And a reference through us in the room is that it looks like something connected to wave surf culture. Such as minimalist painted landscapes, sea horizons, and sunsets. But the stripes and the contrast in colors also resemble borders in a sports playing field, such as a field for soccer, tennis, basketball and so on.

It is also noticeable how the pattern on the walls resembles the style of modernism painting, and then a lot of modernist abstract paintings in especially the late modernism era after World War II. In the 1930s radical modernist art provoked the Nazis.

And the Nazis adapted art they did not like, the modernism, as degenerated art and they persecuted designated artists. Artists had to flee from the Nazis.

After World War II, in late modernism, a lot of paintings were done with monochrome paint fields. Painting would then, within the dominant discourse that was pronounced through art criticism and theory, preferably only be surface and paint. Artists who were abstract expressionists and formalists were busy searching for the essence of the medium. At the same time, the artists often had magnificent existential or spiritual motives for their works. Those for the time radical but aesthetically rather simple works of color fields became very popular within the art scene in the 40s and 50s. It has been read historically, among other things, as a search for clean projection surfaces of a bright future after a devastating horrible and traumatizing world war. Today, it’s possible to see similar abstract aesthetics as something very common in commercial contexts, and as a pattern in modern contemporary architecture.

How those abstract color fields as an aesthetic expression in the contemporary are read as something apolitical is part of what makes them very popular nowadays I think. But monochrome painting and abstract expressionism in the 50s and 60s had a role in the Cold War. The CIA funded abstract expressionism and marketed American art to place the United States as a culturally free country. This was done without the artist’s active participation or knowledge and they became part of a propaganda machine. What matters for the CIA's choice of art genre to support economically were that the content of the abstract expressionism paintings themselves were insignificant political narratives.

Regardless of where the aesthetic originates from or how it is charged with meaning, it is now placed in this room to make a difference, it is said within our group that this aesthetic will lead to a change. Through my actions, it is being connected with a socially embedded art project. It becomes something to read as a representation, to be interpreted and examined symbolically. It is us who bring up stories and say our meanings. We are directing. What is then almost bluntly clear is that the pattern of the walls is the same color scheme as for Surfing The Nations headquarters in Hawaii. And the same goes for a large hand-painted Surfing The Nations sign at the organization's enclosed area here in Arugam Bay.

On the glass window, which is the wall facing the street, the name of the hairdressing salon is written, as well as other information, in colorful ornamental letters. It is written both in the Latin letters and with letters from the Sinhala alphabet. We are scraping away each part of those letters and words, carefully, as we renovate.

The village's artist and designer, who most probably has painted these letters as well, is saying that he wants to do the job with a new design and also a new sign. But Niklas and Kristin have decided that a girl from France will do the job. I never meet her, but the intended girl apparently works as an illustrator and a designer in her home country. The job here is probably something Surfing The Nations won't pay anything for. They will explain the contribution as a kind of voluntary aid work.

The village local artist doesn´t give up and he keep on trying to get the assignment. Then Niklas asks him to bring along a portfolio of what he´s done before. In this situation is a portfolio not something to take for granted and the question is a bit rude. The works he has done are placed around in the village of Arugam Bay. Niklas sound is snobbish like a blasé person in the art industry when an unknown artist wants to show his works. The artist then tries to show examples of his creativity without showing any traditional portfolio. A bit later he brings with him an old satellite dish which he explains that he can make a spectacular sign of putting on the ridge of the building. The weeks and even months while Surfing The Nations are in Arugam Bay, the letters we erased from the window aren´t getting replaced in any way. The surface remains clean.

When I arrive in Sri Lanka and for the first time meet the group from Surfing The Nations at the Airport in Colombo, I wear a silver crucifix in a thin silver chain around my neck. It´s a crucifix I received as a gift from my classmates at Konstfack when I turned 30 years old. That I would work with this project was a reason for giving me the crucifix. They wanted me to remember them and that I would rather think of art than of God and religion. However, they were worried that I would disappear into Surfing The Nations organization when I took a break from the studies at Konstfack for this.

Later on-site in Sri Lanka, I was told, by others in Surfing The Nations, to remove the crucifix from my neck. It was because a crucifix could make it more difficult to meet the locals and be seen friendly in Arugam Bay.

From the beginning, before we changed anything in the room, it was very organic in the aesthetics with posters hanging here and there is a variation on the walls. When we considered ourselves finished with the hairdressing salon a few days later, the room looks a bit like a more extreme IKEA interior. When I later show a video from our work in the hairdressing salon, it is a common response from the audience that they get a bad feeling in their gut and stomach. And what was done there in Sri Lanka can be seen and understood as a kind of abuse by design as a medium.

In the book Don´t waste your life, that I found in the organization's little Christian library in Arugam Bay, I read a criticism of postmodernism. It was a book that was popular to read in our group.  John Piper, who wrote the book, quotes the author C.S Lewis in a part where he is trying to explain why he thinks postmodernism is the wrong way to go:

You can ́t go on ”seeing through” things forever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to ”see through” first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To ”see through” all things is the same as not to see.

Ideas about taste as true values ​​are common in our group. Our group is convinced that, objectively, it looks much better in the hairdressing salon after we repainted. Something that people who have been an audience for my video rarely agreed with. I have never heard anyone say: Wow! The Barbershop became really nice! Instead, I have heard expressions of uneasiness and unpleasant feelings. To understand the uneasy feeling and see why I think a deconstruction of the context is required here. I read the C.S. Lewis quote in this context as a simplification. A logic that is not at all transferable to the criticism of postmodernism and its way of deconstructing truths and values. Deconstructing something doesn´t mean that it ceases to exist or stops being meaningful. Instead, theoretical deconstructions help to make understandable what you see and why you understand it in a certain way. The world is out there and it is opaque in a lot of senses.

Click here and download part 1 of this text as a pdf: SECULAR SURFACE - Surfing The Nations

[brightlotusmoon]

Me, re-watching 2012 TMNT Season 4:

Wait. So, they introduce a character for Raphael to fall in love with. They give her a beautiful name. He can’t pronounce it so he just calls her something else entirely that doesn’t sound even close for the sake of nostalgia and poetic art? The fuck? That sounds like eras-

Someone not invested: “Uhh. It’s a weird nutty cartoon about mutant–”

Me, a seasoned lifelong fan in my thirties: “SHUT UP THIS MATTERS, HER NAME IS Y'GYTHBA how’d you like it if I called you Dave when you said your name is Anastasia!“

“But… my name is Dave?”

“Shut up, Dave. Also, they couldn’t have just brought in Ninjara for Raph? Oh wait they did - WITH ALOPEX’S NAME WHICH MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE, ALOPEX MEANS WHITE FOX ASSHOLES and Ninjara was the best girlfriend for Raph and look in IDW he’s falling for Alopex anyway and Mona Lisa was just to sell the 1980s toon–”

“Please breathe, you’re scaring me.”

“Shut up, Dave.”

Also, why is Mikey spring green and not sea green, it’s been throwing me off since the beginning. Also, I always hated that Donnie was a stalker creep to April and I still don’t like it and they just need to put it to rest one way or the other. Also, Splinter should have visibly loved his kids more. Mikey’s slang always disturbed me. Leo has always been an asshole but now he’s got geek cred to make him loveable. The writers are terrible, the animators have been fucking with us all along and I love it.

LOL, I love the fuck out of this fucking show and I will complain about it until I fucking die. AUGH so many many things to whine and complain about, I could build a house out of my problems with this fucking show, but I could build a city out of my love for it.

I rarely ever complain about Cipes with his surfer slang or really any human thing they take on, because that’s just it, they’re NOT HUMAN and it doesn’t matter, none of those human social taboos matter for teenage mutants living underground. Unless the characters are being role models for kids, it doesn’t really matter. Fanfic writers and artists get a lot of shit but the thing is, these characters are half animal mutants with human brains. They can do what they want, honestly, and turtles are one of those species that gives no fucks, they live for hundreds of years, they literally shouldn’t care.

But we care. About them. Fuck. Why do we care so much?

…I think Dave left. You should too if you don’t like the complaining. What are you doing here with me anyway? I’m weird and mentally interesting, I have too many crazies. Shoo. If you’re still with me, I love you. I love mutant turtle ninjas and I don’t care who knows. I regret nothing. Alternate title: When your Autistic Special Interest takes over your life and you get salty as fuck over nothing.

[mredwinsmith]

Universe Point After Afterword: Part 2

Looking for Part 1? It’s over here.

I got back to Pittsburgh knowing that I had a month or so to improve my wind and endurance, which I thought were fine going into regionals but obviously needed some work. So I obsessively sprinted the hill in the alley behind my house, 70 yards up, 70 yards back down – every day. Get home from a rough day hauling lumber and drywall up three flights of stairs? Run the hill. Exhausted from chasing around a three year old all day? Run the hill. 95 degrees out? Run the hill. I knew it might be my only shot to play at nationals and I wasn’t going to waste it by being unprepared.

As for my family, we used nationals as an excuse to go visit Jessi’s parents up in Wyoming, which meant that my little boy Henry would be able to see daddy play. We flew into Denver two days early, visited friends and went to dinosaur museums – all awesome, totally fun stuff that I nervously fretted through waiting for Friday morning to arrive.

And then finally, graciously, Friday morning did arrive. We got to the Aurora Sports Complex to see by far the largest collection of ultimate fields and ultimate players the world may have ever witnessed. All seven divisions of open, women’s, mixed, grandmasters and great grandmasters were spread out over an area so large the place needed giant towers marking each compass direction. There were over 2,000 players on 79 teams from all over the country. It was massive. So massive in fact, I immediately regretted telling Jessi it was cool to just drop me off at the entrance and that I’d “wander around to find my team.” I’m relatively certain that if she hadn’t shown back up with the car fifteen minutes later, they’d have eventually found my skeleton along the road with my cell phone pressed to where my ear used to be and Black Tide Matt still attempting to give me directions….

“We’re over by the merchandise tent and…..I mean you should see….ok, there’s a green team playing a white team next to us. Do you see that? Cramer? Are you still there? Cramer? Do you see the green versus white game?”

“We’re sorry, the Verizon customer you’re attempting to reach is no longer available….”

“It’s field twenty-two. I think. Twenty uh…..just look for the green vs. white game. Cramer? Cramer?”

Eventually I got there alive, received my uniform, (#95 for the first year I started playing ultimate), warmed up, and in a blur, the game started.

After all the planning, all the hoping, all the dreaming about first setting foot on the fields at nationals, I don’t really remember lining up for my first point. I really thought I’d go out there and suck it all in for about thirty seconds, looking around at the mountains and the blue sky and having a quiet introspective inner monologue like, “You did it. You’re here. You’re on the field at nationals. All the hard work has paid off. Suck it in. Remember this moment forev….”

“Cramer, you have number seven. Force flick. Let’s go.”

And I was running.

Our first game was against a Boston team called Critical Mass. On my first point, they turned it and a 5’6” guy rotated to cover me so I shot deep. I was twenty yards behind him streaking for the end zone when we decided to throw away a swing pass.

“Oh, goddammit.”

Now I had to decelerate and chase him from a 20-yard disadvantage. I didn’t know it at the time, but it would become a microcosm of my entire weekend.

On my next point, we were coming out of our own end zone when I lost the 6’4” guy that was on me on an in cut. Our handler spotted me but the throw went sailing way up to the left. I had to slow down and jump, but probably would’ve caught it if the big dude didn’t go straight through my back to get the D. I really don’t like to make calls so I talked myself into shrugging it off – which even the dude who’d hacked me found quite surprising.

I’d describe my teammates as “quite baffled” by the non-call. Luckily we forced turn in the end zone and marched down to score. As I came off the field, Brody put his arm around my shoulder.

“You didn’t get fouled on that catch down there?”

“Nah, I definitely got wrecked. I just didn’t want to be a dick.”

“Cramer. This is nationals, man,” he said with a wry smile that replaced the flick to the forehead he obviously wanted to give me. “Not summer league.”

I nodded. It was a great point. “Not summer league. Got it.”

As for Brody, he was a bit jetlagged after arriving from Israel the day before. He’d participated as a counselor and photographer at a camp called Ultimate Peace, which brings together Arab, Palestinian, and Israeli children for a weeklong ultimate and friendship spectacular. Kids who are often raised to be enemies are put on the field in mixed-culture teams and have to practice, play, cooperate, and jointly work out their differences. In the first nearly fifty years of ultimate, it might be the singular best thing that the game has brought to the world. Some day the Israeli Prime Minister and the Palestinian President could sit down and hammer out a long lasting peace because of a friendship that Brody helped foster that week. I mean, he could’ve legitimately helped usher in centuries of worldwide prosperity never before seen on Earth.

And yet it still wouldn’t excuse his first pull of the tournament, which went 60 yards straight sideways out of bounds into the parking lot, hitting a minivan and giving Boston the disc two yards from our goal line. In fact, as I imagine the 2057 Israeli Palestinian Peace Accords, I believe there’s a good chance they begin as such:

Israeli PM: “I’m not sure my country is going to like this.”

Palestinian Prez: “I don’t think mine will either. We’re going to get a lot of heat. A lot of heat.”

Israeli PM: “Well, nothing can be as bad as Brody’s pull against Boston. If he can rebound from that and still have a spectacular tournament, we too can forge ahead no matter what the circumstances.”

Palestinian Prez: “We can indeed. Hand me the pen old friend.”

BAM – Age of Aquarius.

Despite virtually spotting them that goal early on, we cruised and won pretty handily 15-5. My favorite moment of the tournament actually came in the 2nd half when I got a fingernail on the tall guy’s throw for what I’d hesitate to call a point block – more like a point skim. Either way it forced the disc into the ground and off the turnover I ended up with a hockey assist as we went up 10-3. As I came off the field, Henry comes sprinting down the hill with his hand raised in the air.

“Good job, daddy! Great playing! High five!”

And I high fived him – and picked him up and spun him around there at nationals, an old guy playing the sport I’ve loved for over two decades, there at its highest old guy pinnacle – and my boy was there to see it. Whether he remembers it or not is somewhat irrelevant. He was there. And that is the top moment of my entire ultimate career to this point.

As it turned out, I desperately needed that moment the rest of the day. Flying high off our ten point opening game victory, we mentally lollygagged through our next game against Chicago’s Old Man Winter. Nothing went right. We couldn’t complete wide-open dumps. I swear we had double digit uncontested drops. Unforced error after unforced error and we fell 14-10. All you need to know about that game is from a picture an Ultiphotos photographer captured of Black Tide Matt standing on the sidelines with a look on his face as if trying to pass a kidney stone just moments after learning his kid totaled his car. It pretty much sums up that game.

We were 1-1 and now had to match up with the best team in the pool, a bunch of monsters out of Minneapolis named Surly. All through our second round game, dark clouds were creeping in from the south as everyone kept an eye on the skies and hoped their approach would be slow enough to get in our third round games – which turned out to be a tad optimistic.

Surly was up 2-0 when a flash of lightning hit close enough for everyone to sigh, look at each other, and reluctantly begin trudging to our cars. USA Ultimate had mini tornado sirens that started going off and (to use my favorite British slang) everybody just sort of cocked about. I don’t believe it ever actually rained. Me, Surfer Bryan and Defensive Dennis all tried to go take naps in my rented Kia Soul before realizing how hard it is to nap in a fucking Kia Soul and giving up entirely.

Unlike the east coast where trees block your view of damn near everything, in Aurora, Colorado, you can see for sixty miles in each direction. Which is awesome until you’re trying not to see lightning. For ninety-four minutes every player there went, “Ok, it’s been at least ten minutes since the last bolt. They’ve got to be starting the games here pretty (flash)…..damn it.”

It was an odd break that nobody seemed to know what to do with. Do we crack open the beer we brought or not? Should I stretch? I should stretch, right? Fuck, I really want a beer but I also really want to win this game if we play it. But do I want to win as much as I want a beer right NOW? Hmmmm.

Anyway, after a long delay that took everyone’s heads right out of the game, we resumed play against Surly in what amounted to a wind tunnel. I was guarding this big dude with glasses not long after the lightning delay mercifully ended. During a stoppage of play, we both noticed the sky light up off in the distance. I glanced at him. He glanced at me.

“We didn’t see that,” he said.

“See what? I was looking at the clear blue sky over to the east. We’re all old. If you saw a flash, it could’ve just been your vision going. Cataract maybe.”

“Yeah. Yeah. Totally possible. I really oughta get that checked out.”

Having been placed on the 2nd defensive line, I wasn’t getting to play much. In critical situations the captains simply put guys on the field they knew and trusted more. And my mind was honestly starting to drift. Through the Chicago game and later into the Minneapolis game, I just didn’t feel part of it all. Then on my third point of the Surly game, our zone forced a turn in the gale force winds. Brody was tired from running around in the cup, so he asked me to switch to popper from my normal deep receiver position. One of our handlers, a dude with a bright red hat named Jessup who somehow could huck right through the wind had it on the goal line. I shook one of their wings and got open. Jessup spun a brilliant little backhand through the cup that was right at my knees.

And I dropped it. Hit my hands. Didn’t stick. Broken finger or not, I let the team down. When you’re not playing much, you want to stand out when you get on the field. Dropping a wide open catch on your own goal line is not how you want to do it.

We actually gave eventual champion Surly a good game losing just 10-7 but after the game I felt empty. Like I didn’t belong. Three games and somehow I didn’t end up with a single stat. No goals, no assists, no D’s. It wasn’t what I’d hoped for by a long shot. I just….didn’t fit.

Weirdly the thing that helped regain my confidence was that goddamned Kia Soul. Captain Ryan and Black Tide Matt had reserved a couple tables for the team at a pizza place in what I believe was western Kansas. I’d planned on just taking a shower and hanging out in our room at the Embassy Suites to sulk and mournfully shake my head all night, but because the restaurant was so far away nobody wanted to get a taxi or ride share. So I was damn near forced to drive people there. As the miles stacked up, my teammates got more and more thankful for the ride. And suddenly, oddly, I had a purpose. Even if it wasn’t for something on the field, my teammates were glad I was there. I got them to and from the pizza place. And that was something at least. I wasn’t totally useless.

The next morning was our critical crossover game. We finished #3 in Pool B and Kalakala out of Seattle finished #2 in pool C. Winner would finish in the top eight. Loser couldn’t finish higher than ninth. In a lot of ways, the whole tournament rested on what we did in that first game of Saturday morning.

Now I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention some of the awesomely creative team names there that weekend. Great grandmasters led the way for the men with teams like Boulder “Old and in the Way,” San Francisco Relics, and Cincinnati “Age Against the Machine.” But personally I’d give the top three to the women’s division for Seattle iRot (a fantastic play on Seattle Riot), Atlanta Atlantiques, and the hands down winner New York “I Thought This Was a Wine Tasting” who lands the top spot and it’s not particularly close.

But the one name that confused damn near everybody was the team we were about to play. So before the game I approached one of their guys.

“Hey man, so I gotta know…..”

He chuckled. “What’s Kalakala?”

“I imagine you guys are getting that a lot.”

“Yeah,” he answered. “It was this ferry boat that was sleek and luxurious back in the 40’s. And then some guy towed it down to Seattle from Alaska but couldn’t get the money to fix it up so it just sat there in the water slowly falling apart.”

“Ah,” I said, the light going off in my brain. “Just like us. Where once we were young and sleek, we’re now just rusting hulks of our former glory doing all we can not to sink.”

He smiled. “And we’re all in the same boat.”

I laughed. “I like you guys.”

In what would be one of the most exciting games I’ve ever played in, we came storming out of the gate and surprised them. On the second point, we made a D and on the resulting break out, Guillermo threw an around backhand way out in front of me. I laid out, tipped the disc up to myself and caught it as I flipped over, wasting three seconds of my stall count searching for my glasses and hurriedly jamming them back on my face. Guillermo cut out then shot back in and was the first thing I saw when clarity returned. I flicked one to him and took off up the sideline as he put up a huge hanging huck for one of our bigger guys, a wide-bodied defender named Dan. Dan was one-on-one with a guy about his size but I’d seen him play enough to know he was coming down with it – which he did just in front of the goal line.  I hadn’t slowed down since I flipped the disc to Guillermo and was wide open in the center of the end zone. Dan turned and saw me, letting go a soft backhand.

As the disc was in the air my only thought was if you drop this one, just keep going up the hill and straight to the airport. But I didn’t. I pancaked it in front of my stomach. We were up 2-0 and at long last by the grace of the lord had a stat at nationals. An important goal in an important game no less. I could finally, finally relax.

We were up 4-0 when I went back into the game. Halfway up the field, my tight mark forced a bad throw that got undercut by funny, happy dude named Dom who like a lot of guys at the tournament looked as if he used to be all muscle….before he had kids. His abs were still there, just buried under a layer of dad.

Anyway, when Dom undercut the disc, he immediately flipped a five-yard backhand up to me. Seeing he was going to be wide open for a power position huck, I put a little lob on a platter for him up the sideline. With a receiver streaking wide open deep for the 5-0 lead, he wound up a mega-backhand and…..for some reason thought better of it, awkwardly jerking the disc across his waist and letting go a flick completely against his momentum. The resulting throw had the flight properties of a bad hairpiece – a floppy blade straight out of bounds that didn’t even give the receiver a chance.

Dom stopped and watched the disc sail off toward the water coolers with his mouth wide open. He turned to me, his hands pulling his eyelids down his cheeks as a Kalakala guy went to retrieve it.

“Why the hell did I do that?”

“I don’t….uh, know,” I said, still squinting toward the end zone. I knew he felt awful. It was exactly how I felt at the end of the Surly game. I just patted him on the back and turned to play defense. It sounds shitty but I was sort of glad to have a kindred spirit who was having just as lousy a tournament as I was. Although I’d have traded it for a 5-0 lead in a heartbeat. “Let’s get the D.”

Even at the time, it felt like a turning point. Soon afterward they started to score. And we got nervous. We flubbed a catch at the front cone that would’ve put us up 6-2. Next thing we know it’s tied 7-7.

My favorite two moments of the game came in the 2nd half. Tied 8-8, Seattle put a curving backhand up the line in front of our tents. One of our best players, a lanky yoga freak (and former club champion with the Santa Barbara Condors) named Gav tracked it down and extended to tip it away just in front of the Seattle receiver. While the disc was in the air, another Sunset guy, a short, stocky handler in a backwards Kansas Jayhawks hat named Katz raced over from the center of the end zone and laid out as well. The three of them, all coming to the disc from different directions had a demolition derby in the air, Katz undercutting the Seattle dude, Gav’s ribs landing on the Seattle guy’s head and the Seattle guy’s knee somehow nailing Katz in the groin. When it was all over they looked like extras in a movie about Omaha Beach, squirming, rolling, limping, and crawling away.

From the center of the end zone, Dom looked at me and pointed to Katz, who was rolling on the ground in pain.

“What happened to him?”

For some reason instead of answering him in English, I decided to play charades and lightly cup then punch an imaginary set of balls.

“What the hell was that?” Dom laughed. “That gives me no information!”

“I don’t know. I didn’t want to yell across the field that he got hit in the junk! That was the first thing that popped into my head!”

In the end zone, Dom mimed what I’d done. “I’d have never got ‘hit in the balls’ out of that!”

Katz grunted and crawled to the sideline tent. “I’m fine by the way guys. Thanks for the concern.”

I turned to him. “How’s your (miming cupping and punching testicles)?”

“I have no idea what that means.”

“He’s totally ok!” I yelled out to Dom.

There was a rather lengthy discussion about whether the play was dangerous and constituted a foul, but the Seattle dude after his initial irritation at having his head landed on was really spirited and said no foul. Gav had made a spectacular play to get the disc and all contact happened afterward. So all seemed well. Although we’d learn later that Gav had cracked a rib, thus seriously limiting one of our better players – which really didn’t help our cause the rest of the way.

I didn’t find out about my other favorite moment in the game until the party later that night as I chilled with one of our best cutters, a bull of a dude named Adam who at 48 was somehow always open.

“Sometime during that game against Seattle there was a point with like four straight turns,” Adam laughed. “I was dead. The guy guarding me was obviously dead too. We’re both there with our hands tugging at our shorts so I just looked at him and said ‘hey man you wanna just…..pretend for a while?’”

“What like a truce? You don’t run too hard, I don’t run too hard?”

“Yeah,” Adam heaved.

“I’m fine with that.”

So they pretended. Ladies and gentlemen, I present grandmasters ultimate.

Anyway, the soft cap went on with the game tied 11-11. Game to 13. Seattle scored. Then our offense came back and tied it on a beautiful stall nine backhand from Brody to a tall receiver named Doug. Our sideline went berzerk. I sprinted onto the field with high fives at the ready hoping to be called in for the resulting defensive universe point. I was fired up. But all our screaming and hollering had drowned out the fact that back near the throw a stall had been called. Brody swore he got it off but the defender swore he hadn’t. Goal came off the board. If we wanted to tie the game, we’d have to do it again.

Off the reset, Brody managed to get a dump off but three passes later one of our most sure handed guys dropped a wide open pass with nobody around him. Seattle took the gift and scored to go into the top eight and send us into the “ninals” bracket. It was a disappointing result but after such a fantastic game against such a great bunch of dudes, it was really tough to fly off the handle afterwards. All we could do was regroup and play on.

Our next game was against the #16 seed, a team called Team Helm out of Columbus, Ohio. We won a fun, somewhat lighthearted game 15-9. But the very best part of the experience came in the spirit circle after the game when their captain explained the reason they were named Team Helm.

“For those of you that don’t know, we’re named for Paul Helm, our teammate, friend, and…..in a sport filled with good people, one of the best. We um, lost him earlier this year. He battled and battled and battled but the cancer eventually….” he trailed off and choked up a bit. “This game today was competitive but also spirited and fun. A lot of laughs out on the field and even more on the sidelines. And it’s just a beautiful day and…..this was his type of game. He’d have loved this. He’d have loved this.”

Standing there in the circle with my arms around two of his teammates who were nodding and biting their lips trying not to break down, I went to a place that’s so rare to go, to a moment of full and complete clarity – a pure, deeper understanding of my own mortality and just how lucky I was to be standing in that spot with those people. To be there, win or lose, to compete, to smile, to shake hands, to fist bump, to dive, to jump, to run – to still be able to do what we do. I’m sure everyone in the circle felt it. A connection. A shared sense of purpose and community as if for ten or fifteen seconds there was not only a single team comprised of players in different jerseys, but in many ways a single player. Maybe I’m nuts. Maybe I’m the only one whose very existence, whose very atoms briefly touched another plane just out of our reach, but I doubt it. It was a very moving experience.

When their captain was done with his tribute, Captain Ryan brought us all in together. After every game so far at both regionals and nationals, we’d crunched in tight with the other team and yelled in one voice “Ultimate Forever!” And I occasionally jokingly yelled “Ultimate until entropy completes its inevitable march toward the nothing from which we came!” But this time instead of shouting “Ultimate Forever” to the sky, San Diego and Columbus came together to yell….

“Paul Helm forever!”

I raised my hat to the clear blue sky in tribute. I didn’t know the guy. But I knew the guy. We all know a Paul Helm. Rest in peace, buddy, wherever you are. Thanks for helping me to see and appreciate the bigger picture.

After that, our final game of the day was a 15-10 loss to Raleigh Hootenanny just before I lugged my gear back to the Kia Soul to find the rear passenger’s side tire completely flat. So after sprinting all day I got to lug the spare out of the back, change the damn thing on a sweltering blacktop parking lot, and drive to the Denver Airport – where everyone in line at Avis curiously avoided the dude in the white #95 jersey who smelled like sweat, sunscreen, and more sweat. Like ten people made eye contact as if to ask, “So what’s your deal,” before catching a whiff of my jersey and quickly realizing how little they truly cared.

Anyway, because of the flat tire I got locked out of my suite. On the way to the fields I’d forgotten my key and by the time I got back, everyone was already at the tournament party and thus not there to open the door. So I got to show up at Dry Dock Brewing smelling just as wonderful as I did in line at Avis. I planned on staying about twenty minutes tops, just long enough to use my meal and beer tickets before bumming a key and heading back to shower. That was before I sat down.

The back patio at Dry Dock was moderately populated when I arrived and I immediately spotted Guillermo and some of our great grandmasters guys because you can see our jerseys from the space station. So I hit up the food trucks, got myself an Apricot Blonde and chilled. And of course about ten of us start swapping stories about Poultry Days in 1988 and Mardis Gras in 1999 the Kalakala game earlier in the day and next thing I knew I’d been there for two hours. So Guillermo buys a round of beers. And we finish them and I buy a round of beers. And the party is slowly filling up. I look around and it’s all so damned familiar. Scruffy dudes with long hair and visors and hippie women with dreds and sarongs, slowly tamed by fatherhood and motherhood, work, and family, but still with that familiar ultimate party twinkle in their eyes. The music was loud, the beer was flowing, and the laughter was constant. Though everyone there was over thirty and we may have collectively traded in our pure youthful wildness for something a bit more subdued, it was still an ultimate party. Which meant anything could happen.

To demonstrate my point, Dom, Guillermo, and I were swapping stories with one of our great grandmasters players, this gray-haired dude named Al when a younger woman in a pink tank top came over and tapped him on the shoulder. She pointed at a few empty chairs next to him and asked….

“Are you using these chairs? Ok if we take them?”

Al, being an old guy of course says, “Well that depends. What do we get in return?”

And I swear to you the girl looks him dead in the eye and with the face of a lawyer negotiating property rights goes, “I’ll suck your (nickname for Richard).”

Of course Al, being in his 50’s doesn’t get even remotely flustered. He just chuckles and says, “Go ahead and take them. We’ve got plenty.”

And the girl walked off with the chairs.

After witnessing the exchange, it took me and Dom a second or two to regain our faculties. Finally Dom threw up his hands in exasperation. “Al, what the fuck was that answer?”

“Eh, what was I supposed to say?”

“You say deal, Al!” I shouted, palm to my forehead. “You have yourself a deal! That’s what you say!”

And what made this party different than all the others came via his reply. “Eh, I’ve been married to the same woman for thirty-three years now. My sense of fantasy died a long time ago.”

And Dom, Guillermo, and I banged on the table in solidarity, toasted Al’s marriage and drank well into the night.

The next day brought our final game for 11th place against a team called Sick Hammers out of Texas. And it ended up being a great game – back and forth the whole way. Throughout the first half they were scoring on us easily because well, for some reason we couldn’t figure out that a team named Sick Hammers might ya know….constantly look to throw a bunch of fucking hammers.

“Guys, seriously, they’re not called Sick Backhands or Sick Push Passes,” Black Tide Matt said. “There’s a clue about how to defend them literally right in their name! C’mon!”

My final point came halfway through the second half when I burnt my guy to the end zone, didn’t get the disc and cut in toward the goal line. I was wide the hell open – and the thrower put it almost straight into the grass. I laid out anyway, hitting awkwardly on my ribs and my hip. As I stood up and prepared to play defense, it was like someone jabbed a fire poker into the middle of my back. I went down to a knee.

“Ooooh, shit. Hold up, guys.”

I’d tweaked my back and bruised the living hell out of my ribs, something that made me grimace for going on two weeks. And it was a fitting bookend to the weekend. I swear that out of the twenty or so passes thrown to me in those seven games, I had to lay out for fifteen of them. I started to seriously wonder if somehow I was an optical illusion, appearing like I was always seven yards away from where I actually was. It was the only thing that made sense.

That aside, the weekend was amazing. Frustrating or not, I can’t look back on it with anything but absolute joy. All my years dreaming of playing at nationals and I got to do it. And when Captain Ryan caught a four-yard flick to the corner on universe point to beat Sick Hammers 16-15, suddenly it was all over. Just like that my first nationals was no longer in the future or the present. It was part of the past. It was something I’d done. One bucket list item completed.

We took team pictures, checked out of the hotels, and came back to the fields to watch Surly beat Boulder’s Johnny Walker in the grandmasters final at almost the exact same time Minneapolis Surly COUGARS won the women’s championship on the adjacent field. So that was cool to see. And one field over from that, my old friend Barefoot Ben (who’d had to completely relearn how to throw after shattering his right elbow in 2014) was helping his Washington DC team finish second in the masters division – ensuring that he’d get to play at the World Championships in Winnipeg in 2018. All his hard work and painful rehab had paid off. I couldn’t have been happier for him.

As for me, I wandered around, talked with a couple old friends from Pittsburgh who were playing for various teams around the country, said goodbye to my Endless Sunset teammates and just like that I was on I-25 headed north to Wyoming.

I finished the tournament with one goal – and that was it. We came in a disappointing 11th. And like I imagine happens with just about all Grandmasters players, my mental state fluctuated wildly between, “Ya know, I’m still pretty damn good. I could play this sport another fifteen years, easy,” and “That’s it, I just don’t have it anymore. Maybe it’s time to give this shit up.”

Often those thoughts occurred on consecutive points.

But I can honestly say that now I can hobble away from this sport without any regrets or what ifs. I have plenty of friends who had to give it all up at 28 because of work, kids, or injuries without ever getting to nationals. So I truly am lucky to have lasted this long.

At 40, I now wake up in the morning and my back hurts no matter what I did the day before. My ankles, my right elbow, and my neck pop like firecrackers at random times throughout the day. Where once I could easily touch the top of the square on a basketball backboard, I can now barely scrape the underside of the rim. After all this time, I can honestly envision a future not so far away where I put my cleats away for good. And I’m ok with it. I’ve done enough. Soon it’ll be time for someone else to take my spot in this wonderful game.

But who am I kidding. In 2027 when I get an email from Black Tide Matt that says, “Cramer, we need a guy for our Great Grandmasters team. Are you 50 yet?”

I’ll sigh, smile, and answer, “Yeah. Yeah I am. See you at regionals.”

Photo by Dominic Scarfe

Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this final chapter, please consider purchasing Universe Point by Skyd Press, available now on Amazon. And a special thanks to everyone who has bought the book, enjoyed it, and reached out. As any writer or artist will tell you, it means more than you know to realize that all the work (in this case six years) you put into a project has been worth it. And if you think a friend or fellow ultimate player would enjoy it, please let them know! If we’re being honest here, that’s 99% of our marketing campaign. So far it’s been successful beyond my wildest dreams so a heartfelt thank you to anyone who has contributed to the success of the book by recommending it to others.

Thanks and see you on the fields – uh, if my body holds up. – Cramer

Universe Point is available now on Amazon!

The post Universe Point After Afterword: Part 2 appeared first on Skyd Magazine.

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12 sayings only people from California will understand

California is known by many as the land of beautiful celebrities, packed freeways, and perpetual summer. 

But the nation's most populous state also has a huge variety of people with unique ways of speaking, from valley girl speak to surfer lingo to slang inspired by Bay Area hip hop. 

The people of the Golden State speak a dialect distinct enough to warrant its own name: California English.  

We've come up with 12 sayings that only people who hail from the Golden State will understand.

1. "There's a Sigalert for the carpool lane on the 5 south." 

Freeways are a huge part of Californians' daily existence, so of course there are plenty of slang terms associated with it. Californians may be the only people in the country to put "the" before the number of a freeway route (and they're never called highways), and the only people to call it the carpool lane instead of the HOV.

And if there's a Sigalert, take it as a hint to avoid the area completely. Sigalerts are messages issued by the California Highway Patrol when there's an accident or anything else blocking multiple lanes of traffic, meaning that notorious California traffic is even more horrendous than usual (see also: Carmageddon).

2. "It takes 20 minutes, depending on traffic."

People from California say this all the time to describe their location, and it's barely ever true. 30 minutes just sounds way too far, and 15 minutes is unrealistic.  

We all know that 20 minutes away really means something closer to 40, and that light traffic is never something you can depend on. 

3. "June Gloom."

Beginning in June (or even at the end of May if it's a particularly unlucky year), a wave of foggy weather invades coastal areas of California and ruins everyone's beach plans. June Gloom/Grey May/No-Sky July are southern Californian terms used to describe a weather pattern that brings low-lying clouds and mist during the early summer months. 

Though people from out of town will try to convince you it's just air pollution, the fog that appears every morning usually clears up by mid-afternoon or so. 

4. "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco." 

This San Francisco cliche is usually attributed to Mark Twain, though there's no evidence he ever actually said it. Contrary to what pop culture may have you have believe, summer in the Bay Area is pretty cold, and fog is a nearly constant presence. 

The fog may be a nuisance to visitors touring the Bay Area, but San Franciscans embrace the fog as an essential part of what makes their city home. They even named the fog Karl and gave it its own Twitter and Facebook pages.

5. "It's pretty gnarly out, bro. It's double overhead today!"

Surfer culture has had a huge influence on the way coastal Californians speak. You may hear surfers, skaters, and snowboarders talking about "shredding the gnar," but even those who refrain from participating in extreme sports tend to use the word "gnarly" to describe things that are either extremely good or extremely bad.

You'll also hear words like "epic," and of course, "dude." Waves that are "double overhead" are not meant for the faint of heart.

6. "I'm stoked." 

Though Merriam-Webster defines "stoke" as "to stir or add fuel to (something that is burning)" this expression has absolutely nothing to do with building a fire, at least in a literal sense. Californians are stoked when they're totally, completely exhilarated about something, whether it's a trip to the mountains or a huge swell coming just in time for the weekend. 

Now a commonly used word in many regions, "stoked" became popular with "The Endless Summer," a classic surfing movie documentary by Bruce Brown from 1966.  

7. "Hella."

Perhaps one of the most distinctive and divisive words on this list, the use of the word "hella" is an immediate indication that the speaker is from northern California. Derived from "hell of a" or "hell of a lot," the word is generally used in place of "really," "a lot," or "very."

Don't get caught using this word in the southern part of the state, however. You'll only hear people from the Bay Area say this, while people from elsewhere in California will probably find the term annoying. 

8. "The industry."

Vague references to "the industry" might be a little confusing to people not from southern California. When someone says their husband or wife works in "the industry," they don't mean they're an industrial worker, though they may belong to a different kind of labor union. Actors, directors, producers, screenwriters, art directors, film editors, and talent agents are just a few people who make up the huge entity that is "the industry." 

Show business is so prominent in Los Angeles that southern Californians should immediately get the reference. 

9. "This burger is bomb."

We've all heard people refer to things as "the bomb" since the late '90s.  Californians often put their own spin on this outdated expression by taking out "the."

It's usually food items that are referred to as "bomb," though theoretically anything awesome could be referred to in this way. 

10. "I'll take a Double-Double, animal style."

Californians are deeply proud of their In-N-Out, a fast-food burger chain that comes with its own jargon and a secret menu not advertised in stores. A burger served "animal style" has mustard fried into the patty and comes with extra spread and grilled onions. 

You can also order your fries animal style. If you're especially hungry, try a 3x3 burger, which comes with three beef patties, or even a 4x4, which comes with four.

11. "This burrito is dank." 

"Dank" is a prime example of a term whose connotation has changed from negative to positive thanks to slang usage. Though Merriam-Webster defines it as meaning "wet and cold in a way that is unpleasant," as in a dank basement, the word was adopted by stoner culture to describe high-quality marijuana. 

The word has since evolved to describe anything that is especially good, like an exceptionally tasty burrito. 

12. Whatever you do, definitely don't say "Cali." 

The only people who don't refer to California as "Cali" are the Golden State natives themselves. You will very, very rarely hear a Californian call their home state by this name, even though people from everywhere else love to call it that. 

If you want to blend in, try to avoid this shudder-inducing word in the presence of California natives.

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SEE ALSO: The best steakhouse in every state

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