Usually not great bedfellows every five years or so surfing does provide some LOLs. Here we look at the best examples over the last two decades.
Red Bull TV latest series 21 Hours is surfing’s latest attempt at humour. The spoof series sees Chris Cote follow surfers from the Airborne Series in a mockumentary style clip. First up was Ian Crane (who would go onto to win the event in France this week), while Jack Freestone is to feature in the next episode. The strangest thing about this series is that, gulp, it is actually quite funny. Cote hits mostly the right notes and Crane and Freestone play the straight dude role well.
https://www.redbull.com/int-en/airborne-21-hours-ian-crane
Now, this is unusual. Comedy and surfing have, traditionally, never quite got on. Taylor Steele and his pro surfing skits are probably the biggest repeat offenders, but the surfing cannon is littered with cringe, rather than comedy. 21 Hours should then at least be commended, even for having the balls to attempt it. Thinking it was all too easy to find the cringe though, we instead have searched for the laughs. It wasn’t easy, but here a some of the best examples where surfing skits have managed to bring the LOLs.
Drunk History On Eddie Aikau
Comedy Central’s “Drunk History” series tackles the story of Eddie Aikau. The part on the “Australian Invasion” of Hawaii in 1976 and Eddie Aikau’s role in negotiating a deal between Rabbit Bartholomew and the Hawaiians is particularly full of gold. Comedian Kurt Braunohler handles the story with accuracy and hilarity and gets bonus points for using the term “wide-on”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=ijXymGGmJtE
Sterling Spencer: Pinch My Salt
For around two years around 2010 Sterling Spencer wasn’t just the funniest man in surfing, he was the only funny man in surfing. His Instagram skits and youtube posts on pinchmysalt.tv used his uncanny impersonations, overdubs and oddball sense of humour to create real laugh out loud moments, a rarity in the surfing genre.
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Fair Bits
Taj’s movie “Fair Bits,” made a better first of the comedy cameo than most, though with heavy hitters like Ben Stiller involved it is perhaps no surprise. This clip takes on the issue of localism in surfing, aided by cameos from Benji Weatherly (Stiller’s drinking buddy) plus the Malloy Brothers, Taj Burrow and Andy Irons. This could surfing’s funniest four and a half minutes.
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Kenny Powers
Okay scraping the barrel here a little, and not really apart of surfing per se, but any clip that starts with, “Mahalo surfers, you fucking nerds!” and is soundtracked by Iggy Pop deserves a start. Kenny Powers from “Eastbound and Down” inverts the usual antagonism toward spongers by surfers in this hilarious parody of localism and surf culture.
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Greasy and Lemmy in Doped Youth
Before Mick Fanning and Joel Parkinson were mildly respectable world champs, they donned wigs to become Greasy and Lemmy in the Vaughan Blakey directed “Doped Youth.” The bonus section of the movie was this expletive-riddled review, which is equally rough and laugh-out-loud funny and captured the true sense of humour of the Cooly Kids.
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