Stab Podcast: Rasta’s Board Art Surf Performance Theory
Death wears horizontal stripes.
David Attenborough made his career from showing strange creatures to the gawking masses — those sitting behind a screen, mesmerised by the absurdity and beauty flickering in front of them. He captured the delicate rituals, the ancient instincts, the sheer marvel of life that existed far beyond their own small worlds.
This week on the podcast, Dave Rastovich is the snow leopard, and Danny Johnson is Sir David Attenborough.
The subject is so strange, with behaviours so off-kilter, that Danny could’ve just pointed the camera, pressed record, and served up an uncut stream of the animal eating its breakfast. Yet, in the third instalment of EAST, which premiered just days ago, you’ll see that the filmmaker is his own blend of brilliance and eccentricity, cut from the same flax cloth as the subject he’s documenting.
Rasta has a gift for rummaging through the clutter of his psyche and voicing thoughts that we’ve all likely had but ignored. The toll we pay for our digital existence.
“He talks about things we all know intuitively, even if we’re not consciously thinking about them, and nobody has ever said them before,” says Mikey, mesmerised.
Give Dave a board that works by conventional wisdom, and he’ll likely give it the stink eye. But turn the fins backwards, and he might just find something to love.
“Building someone a wild horse is never the goal,” says Donald Brink in episode three. Maybe not, but considering Rasta ditched a Dane Reynolds shape because it was too polished, it’s clear he’d rather wrestle with a wild stallion than a well-trained cat.
Next up, Buck gets all sentimental thinking about the kids from the Chinese Communist Party. “Most of us surf for fun. It sucks to think of kids being forced to surf without enjoying it.”
“Fuck those kids,” Mikey shoots back, spine prickly. “They’re getting paid to spend six months in Indo.”
In any case, an ex-Australian QS surfer has been picked up by the big yellow star, and now serves as the coach for the Chinese surf team, where excellence is non-negotiable. More pressure than finals day in Saquarema.
In other news, far from China, Mikey February designed a surfboard., a Trilogy theory is debunked, Steph Gilmore casually strolls away from the candy store, and we offer a fresh dose of unsolicited gambling advice.
What? You got something better to do?
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