Of Frankenfish, Summer Reading, The Hindenburg

As you can imagine, I get the electronic version of heaps of mail (Kilobytes? Megabytes? Brownie Bites?) weekly, from topics as far-reaching as shaping, to why isn't my board ready yet, and what the hell do you mean you went to Baja and left my board at the glasser, and why haven't you called your mom in a month, and how come there's a credit card charge for a movie called The DaVinci Load?
Anyhoo, I treat these correspondence as I treat all of my business dealings: with respect, dignity, and the occasional impulse to post them online so that all 37 (got another blog hit last Tuesday!) of you can enjoy.
I present to you the HHG Mail Bag, Summer Reading Edition!
And a new surfboard for local shredder Chip.

Chip's 7'Something" Frankenfish

Dear HHG, I just finished reading Chad Harbach's best-seller The Art of Fielding and was kind of underwhelmed. However, I don't trust my instincts. First, it's on the bestseller list. Second, there's like fifteen pages of positive reviews before the book even begins PLUS an author interview at the end Also, the cover has cool font and is very patriotic. All of these must add up to an amazing reading experience, right? Is it me? Are my tastes slipping?
LitSlip in Leucadia

LitSlip, if you're asking me for assistance, your tastes are already questionable. However, with regard to Mr. Harbach's novel, you must stand strong with your opinions. What would have happened if Hindenburg captain Ernst Lehmann hadn't stood strong in his belief that his zeppelin airship could be safely docked at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey during an electrical storm with strong headwinds in a flammable aircraft packed with combustible gasses? How would history have been changed had flygirl Amelia Earhart not stood firm on her opinion that an equatorial around-the-world flight plan would be a piece of cake? What would have happened if I had not taken an unwavering stand with the lovely Mrs. HHG that there would be 'no consequences whatsoever' in allowing each of our young girls to eat an entire bag of dried cherries during our recent sixteen-hour drive back from Mexico?

More Frankenfish!

Dear HHG,
on a recent surf trip to Baja with a few other couples I noticed an interesting phenomenon with the ladyfolk: there would be hushed whispering, a stifled giggle or two, the sounded of a blender motor, a concealed exchange, and then one would disappear. Several days later she would reappear in search of more margaritas, and the phenomenon would begin again. What gives?
Gray Curious in Carlsbad

Gray Curious, your instincts serve you well: E.L. James' Fifty Shades of Grey is wholly responsible for these behaviors, which can circulate through select populations with a cyclical regularity. Remember The Bridges of Madison County? Overall, this clandestine literary pursuit is far preferable to what the less-fair sex does with their gender-isolated pursuits: jumping off things. Farting on things. Football.

Four Wings+Four Fins=Sixty-Four Times the Radness

Dear HHG, Should I read Atlas Shrugged?
Randy in The Tenderloin.

Randy, please read Atlas Shrugged if you hate humor and self awareness, and love drawn-out 'moral' justifications for self-interest and greed! Also, read if you enjoy hundreds of pages of white men giving speeches about their importance, predictable characters, and d-bags approaching you with their own half-baked, semi-racist, self-serving economic theories. Also read if you love boring shit in general.
Don't get me wrong, Randy. I love bad writing as much as the next person--culture snobs, as a whole, are a  paranoid and miserable bunch, and act as if the rest of the world is the same way. Screw those guys! Read books about sports stars bitchin' cars and celebrity marriages gone bad and murder mysteries that are also love stories that turn into feel good road trips with vampire-hunting ex presidents. There is joy in that stuff, and that's what reading is all about.
And summer.
And Chip's new 7-foot-Something-inch surfboard.

Brometheus Unbound

The myth of Prometheus features a crafty Prometheus fashioning humankind out of clay, then stealing fire from the gods to animate his work.
The Gods were, understandably, unstoked.
The subtitle of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is 'The Modern Prometheus.' Frankenstein refers to the name of the doctor who steals fire (electricity) to animate his own creation--a manlike figure cobbled together from the parts of dead folks.
The creature has no name, and is abandoned by its creator, a freaked-out Dr. Frankenstein, upon its 'birth.'
The nameless monster starts off its life as a knowledge-seeking innocent, only to be taught evil, mistrust, and general bad behavior by some countrified English d-bags.

The Frankenfish, which has been enjoying a nice run up here on the Northcoast, is a Frankensteinian mashup of several different design elements.

However, unlike Dr. Frankenstein's creation, the board's lines are blended without all those pesky suture marks around the neck area.
Second, all who see it do not shriek in fear and cover the eyes of nearby children.
Finally, instead of being tormented by a damned dirty population of pastoral English peasants, Frankenfishes have been nurtured, coaxed, allowed to fully cure as suggested by Fatty, and shown goodness by their owners (who have heroically resisted the urge to open Red Tail Ales with their fins) in the form of waves, waves, waves.

This sub-eight-foot Frankenfish is for local hellman GayVader, who is neither gay, nor Vader--not that there is anything wrong with being either. It features a sky blue bottom tint and a 'one-drop' blue deck tint.
Five finboxes for maximum Franken-ness, double concaves for turbo boostage, and a blue resin pinline to tie it all together.

PS: If this blog entry looks at all weird to you, it's because I am writing from the East Coast, and things here are different. Examples:
1. The air is wet, giving me an unwelcome Jewfro and making it difficult to go more than two hours without a shower.
2. People use 'wicked' as an adverb, as in, 'it's wicked hot today, but it was wicked hotter yesterday.'
3, 4, 5. There are insects at the beach, people sport clothes and cars with names of colleges on them, and Dunkin' Donuts (sic) offers 'muffins,' which are really just donuts in muffin form.
6. Bring on the warm-water peelers!

The Modern Brometheus

"I seek the everlasting ices of the North,
where you will feel the misery of cold and fronts."
-The Monster, from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus

Local surf diehard Brent is my new hero. Born and raised in Sonoma County (heretofore referred to as SoCo), father, enviro-champion, and stoked beyond belief, whether it be freezing cold dawn patrol or freezing cold anytime else. Actually, I've never heard the guy complain about the cold, which leaves him almost peerless in this most unwelcome of surf destinations.
And he shows up with beers.
Many of those beers are represented in the design concept of this board.
The Frankenfish stands at 7'9" (the champagne of board lengths), is longboardy wide, fishy tailed and ???? nosed. It's a quad, and features a single wing at the rear of the front fins.
The wing creates a pivot point right at the spot where I dropped a Tecate on the nearly completed shape. My bad.
Of course, no Frankenfish would be complete without the beak nose--a feature I feel really ties the shape together.
This crisp Ice9 blank will get a stellar full board tint from Fatty in the weeks to come. Color? I'm not going to spoil the surprise, but let's just say it rhymes with 'yellow with a blue pinline.'
On a more gastrointestinal note, remember that soup my wife reminded me to buy last week when she was feeling ill? Well, I bought a ton of the stuff (can you ever have enough soup around?), and it really paid off this week as we both got really sick. The roasted corn and pepper is our current favorite--sweet and spicy!