Paul ‘a abdul’ Evans writes:

Final day at the Pipeline. 5am optimism was high about a surge in the swell, but the tropical dawn revealed the overnight increase as minors and underwhelming. Still, crystal ball said bad winds and dribble have been DHL’d from the mid latitudes and run with it was the call. I was optimistic about a Kelly – Dane final. Oh please let it be Kelly Dane in the final…

It wasn’t. It was Kelly vs Taj. Taj won.

Oh Dane DanE dANe dane dane Dane Dane Daney Daney Danish Dayne Dane Dane Dane Dane Dane Dane Dane Oh Dane DanE dANe dane dane Dane Dane Daney Daney Danish Dayne Dane Dane Dane Dane Dane Dane Dane Oh Dane DanE dANe dane dane Dane Dane Daney Daney Danish Dayne Dane Dane Dane Dane Dane Dane Dane Oh Dane DanE dANe dane dane Dane Dane Daney Daney Danish Dayne Dane Dane Dane Dane Dane Dane Dane

Dane is standing right here all wet and cool looking and all these two want to do is look at and talk to each other?!?! What is wrong with you people? Photo: Sean Flynn

Brodie Carr was on the phone for ages looking serious. I figured it must be either his woman JuJu Live or his lawyer. Actually, it was the dude from the rebel tour, a boxing promoter called Matt Tinley. Rebel tour rebel tour rebel tour. Afterwards he showed me his phone and said, “Look, that called cost me three dollars. Wanker.” Actually he didn’t say wanker, but it reads better if I say he did, no?

Things got tres interessant early doors. Tell your friends, tell your girl, tell your mother, call up your wack crew and tell each other: Dean Morrison and Damien Hobgood had a great hassle for a set wave. Without controversy, sport is shit. This was canny controv, and not shit. Dingo pulled Dooma’s leash, stopped him from getting the wave and sent him over the falls. I’m pretty sure every other turkey (I say other coz I am one of course) with a mag and a website is gonna say something inevitable about Lance Burkhart and Rick Kane, but not me. I’m going to just say Over here on the North Shore we treat friends mo bettah; This board has a single fin mentality, give me a real board, my board; You took his stuff, you pound em… (incidentally Vince (Gerry Lopez) was in the contest. Life really does imitates art.)

Gerry. Legend.

Damien was angry. If he was in Dallas he’d have been JR Spewing. Him and conny direc Marty Thom had lengthy discussion about it in semi public. Sherm, Nick Carroll, Marcus Surfline and moi were lapping it up like a puppy who just puked. I liked particularly how he was semi-abstract in his sustained lament, as if to keep it moving around. “When has someone ever pulled a leash and not gotten an interference? When has that ever happened???” (In a voice pretending to be the person who should have called triangle) “He just got his leash pulled and went over the falls at Pipe. That’s real funny hahahaha…” Damo was flamin’, and rightly so.

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Who’s a naughty boy then? Dingo Morrison is. He’s a leash puller. Urethane chord grabber. He’ll forever be Dean “Lance Burkhart” Morrison, even if he doesnt do concentric circle nipple body paint. He was ripping though, all event. Chas Smith thought he was going to win. What a kook Chas Smith is with his white convertable Mitsubishi, his ciggies and his littering!

Kelly may be God. The tan (you’d be tanned too if you been around since the dawn of creation), the all-knowingness, the singular power over the destiny of men. I’ll happily accept that. But Dane is Jesus. The beard, the coolness, not forgetting the New Testament miracle-esque shreddery. Two hundred billion Mexicans have pictures of Jesus in their front rooms and as far as I’m aware none of them have a picture of God, so what does that tell us? Move over Kelly.

Dane. Even that little roll of flab looks cool on him. Gosh, how’d he get so fricken cool?

Slater was delicious all event. He is uncommon. There is only one. His board today was 5 feet six inches long, had four fins and two stringers near the rails. He may be old but he’s pretty and he’s the greatest of all time, and his eyes are something else. He did  a floatey pumpey roof dance this morn that went on for nearly as long as Bohemian Rhapsody. Nobody does it better. His line is unique, his at-times sloppy army wavey of 2007 has gone and been replaced by who else can do this shit, the no hands backhand pumps out of of balance pozzies, the double jointed Slaterback lookbacks into the spit. But he looked a bit like he couldn’t be arsed in the final. Ace Buck wondered, “Why didn’t he just get busy and surf?” But I think I know. He didn’t want to win in the windy beachbreaky crapPipe. He was like Ali when Foreman was already going down in Zaire in ’74, about to throw another punch but pulled it back so as not to ruin the aesthetic of the dance. And so it was Taj who won the 2009 Banzai Pipemasters.

As I was leaving the beach before the prezo to come and write this the announcer was referring to the fact that Australians won the Men and Womens Triple Crown, World Title, Sunset and Pipe. Then he did something truly awful and went, “Aussie Aussie Aussie…” and several of their kind went “Oi Oi Oi” It really is one of the shittest chants in the universe, possibly even worst than the French, “Allez les bleus” That’s all they’ve got, the best they can come up with. Over and over and over. Imagine that shit for five days in a row at a test match. It would be enough to try the patience of a saint, even Saint Wayne of Wagga Wagga. Just then, I saw a petite Swedish girl who lives in Hossegor, and she joined in with the chorus of “Oi Oi Oi.” I was horrified. I said, “Did you really just do that?” She looked ashamed. I said,“Wash your mouth out son, and get your father’s gun, and shoot the Wigan scum, coz Leeds is number one.”