Hollow Victory?

Hey Y'all.
For those of you who don't know, corporate drone Makoto has conceded in our battle for supremacy. He left this note in the comments last night:

"huh, since when did this become lewis' blog?
its kind of fucked, i've lost control of my content.
I've decided to stop contributing, you guys can catch me on the one and only, original, not to be duplicated, not to be copied.
http://agnoli.posterous.com
later"

This brings up some good points. Does absolute power corrupt absolutely? Was I doomed to become a megalomaniacal despot from the moment I registered this blog, therefore seizing sole admin privileges? Or did I create this blog with Ryan and Avery standing by because I am a megalomaniac?

The Orphans Forum is all about community. I think of myself as that creepy guy who runs the AA meeting, not some tyrant. (Speaking of which: New members have to share eventually. Todd, we haven't heard from you yet. Dave - ditto. The group is here to support you.)

Anyway, I'm feeling a little bit guilty about casting brother Makoto out. Was I too harsh on him? Did the power go to my head? Who is going to provide us with irrelevant techno information now? Who is going to be our unfiltered, socially inappropriate, Moth Collector? Who will regale us with stories about what the 80s were like?

I feel a void already. If Makoto won't come back to us, we must nominate a replacement. Will this guy do?

War Escalates; Makoto Barred

Things have turned violent in the fight for supremacy between Corporate Drones and Surf Orphans.

After much internal debate amongst high-ranking Orphans Forum officials, Giovanni Makoto Agnoli has had his account temporarily suspended. Simply put, the only unforgivable sin is to be boring. Makoto's post below crossed the line in terms of humorless office nonsense. If he'd at least used some six-sigma terminology;phrases like "value-add" "low-hanging fruit" or "synergize our efforts" I might have let it slide as ironic.

To detail the reasons for this barring more completely, Makoto has his own Blog at http://agnoli.posterous.com/

Makoto has never actually written or posted anything specifically for Orphans Forum - instead he simply checked a box and all his Posterous posts are forwarded to Orphans Forum. We don't mind the pictures of old people. What sucks is that everyone else is embracing the concept of a group blog - we're writing our posts with our Orphan audience in mind, and in response to what everyone else is posting on the blog. That's what we envisioned for this site - a reply-all vibe amongst friends.

I've placed another poll in the sidebar. It's up to you to strive for peace and vote Corporate Drone Makoto back in... or not.

Makoto, i love you, but...

you are not giving me a reason to read posterous anymore. quit double posting here and there. give us some Orphan's Forum specific blogs. 

Faces of Death

Makoto and I woke up the day after Christmas with a strange realization: we had no plans, no obligations, and no responsibilities today. Translation: no excuses handy to save us from driving for surf.

So we somewhat reluctantly drove down to surf Steamer Lane with 100 other members of the "tribe." As you know, surfers come in all shapes, sizes, and ability levels in Santa Cruz, and they're all thrown into the same big Melting Pot of a lineup.

Normally, the most experienced (and angriest) surfers gravitate to the outside, while farther inside the competition is much less fierce. My usual strategy is to take advantage of the kooks surfing Indicators. Let those old walruses fight over mushy sleigh rides at Middle Peak - I prefer the long, walled up waves at Indicators.

The best moment of my session came on a gem of a wave - one of those speed walls you occasionally see at low tide but never seem to catch. This time, I actually caught it, and even more bizarrely, after a couple whacks of the top, this wave actually started to barrel. Everyone knows I NEVER get barreled backside, cause I suck. But this time I greatly benefited from a mistake (nearly fell coming down from lipper, setting me up behind pit) and I actually pulled in. One big problem: I'm flying down the line grabbing rail, with no line to take but the right one, and there's some poor kook chick on a funboard caught inside in front of me. I wasn't about to change my line (as noted, extremely rare for me to get a wave this good at the lane, let alone pull in on it) so I kept gunning right towards her.

What does she do? Well, instead of paddling like hell, she literally froze up, put her hands in her hair, and started screaming at the top of her lungs like Janet Leigh in Psycho, with this look of pure, undiluted terror on her face.

I'm not exaggerating here - this chick could have starred in any horror movie. The fear on her face was unbelievable, and her scream was equally blood curdling.
I missed her by an inch, linked the wave to Cowells, and I cant's help but laugh every time I remember her face.