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| ALL FOR A FEW PERFECT WAVES had to be 500 pages or less -- not the original 850! Material was cut that, in the final analysis, interrupted the dramatic flow and story. Some great scenes were lost, but even a great scene can't just come out of nowhere. Maybe one day I'll do a special edition, an author's cut. But until then....enjoy. And check back now and then for new stories, and individual interview excerpts. All stories Copyright David Rensin/All For a Few Perfect Waves. You may link but you may not reproduce elsewhere without written permission. |
| MIKI DORA IN MOROCCO JANUARY THROUGH MARCH 1999 As you know, the original manuscript would have resulted in an 850 page book. Much had to be deleted. Below is a chapter about Miki’ s trip to Oulidia Surf Camp in Morocco. He’d just moved back to Guéthary on the Cote Basque, and made a deal with Quiksilver to be a representative without portfolio. In other words, Quiksilver, through Miki’s friend Harry Hodge – who ran the company in Europe – agreed (at their own suggestion) to pay Miki’s living expenses, give him a car, insurance, golf and tennis club memberships, and an allowance. In return Miki had only to be Miki . . . that is, hang out with whomever he wanted to and be on the scene. Wearing Quiksilver clothing and hawing company products was not involved. Harry simply wanted to give the guy a way to sustain himself. Mike McNeill worked for Quiksilver. Susan was his ex-wife. Laurent Miramon ran the surf camp. Virginie is his sister. Rick Hodgson knew Miki from Topanga, and had played a part in having some of Miki’s belongings left behind in New Zealand returned to him. Michael McDonnell is a movie producer. Cynthia Applewhite met Miki in 1959 and was a lifelong friend. Barry McGrath also worked for Quiksilver. SUSAN MCNEILL: Miki would only compromise his freedom for short periods of time, like when he was supposed to be working for Harry Hodge, or when he would have to compromise to involve himself with a woman. He would make small compromises, but he saw them as a means to the end. He would never say yes to projects because it would be too much work. He was probably capable of running a large company, if he had chosen to do so, but it would have taken too much time away from his personal freedom. I think he resented people who would give up their personal freedom in order to work the machine. He was also a little jealous. Part of Harry Hodge’s deal with Miki was that he was supposed to be the Welcome Wagon. But when the first wagon came to town, Miki went to a surf camp in Morocco and stayed three months. The wagons came and went, came and went, and all these guys were here who were supposed to be playing golf, going to the Alps and surfing, and the guide was down there going, “Oh, I can’t get back. I’ll be back next week.” Then he left a huge tab down there that Quiksilver had to pay as well. And then he was always getting ill. He used to say it was because of what he ate, but I knew it wasn’t. Meanwhile, Bob Simpson was complaining: “He doesn’t get paid very well.” I said, “Bob, he’s not doing anything.” I don’t think Bob knew Miki very long, but there’s another one: he really loved Miki. He did a lot for Miki, gave Miki so much. VIRGINIE MIRAMON: He was sent by Harry Hodge to the surf camp in Morocco, in a small village called Oualidia, in January, 1999, for a vacation. I was visiting my brother Laurent, who created the camp and surf school for kids and adults fifteen years ago, and I just happened to be there when Miki came. The surf camp was sponsored by Quiksilver, in a way. Not financially speaking, but it added to their image. He was supposed to stay two weeks, and he ended up staying much longer. MIKE MCNEILL: Quiksilver buys time in the camp, leasing it for a two-week period to send our team riders down. They used to do an exercise program where we’d get fit. Miki started out on one of these deals, but then everyone left and Miki stayed. Which Miki often did. VIRGINIE MIRAMON: My brother always wanted to pass on his knowledge of the ocean and surfing, especially kids. We were born and raised in Morocco and had a fantastic childhood. We were surrounded by wonderful ocean people who were always sharing with us, teaching us, taking us fishing. LAURENT MIRAMON: I have a special life here in Morocco. I teach surf to kids and I’m very involved in preserving the surfing conditions and the spirit of the area. I work from March to November, then I have four months of holidays. It’s the best period for surfing in Morocco, so it’s good for me. Quiksilver called me in late December and asked me if I could host Miki Dora for a week at the beginning of January because it was too cold in France and Miki was tired. I said yes, with pleasure.. He came for one week and he stayed three months, and I spent my holidays taking care of Miki Dora. He should have been back in France but he would always say, "No, I need one more day. I picked up Miki at the airport. We had a very good feeling immediately. Where I live is not crowded. We surfed alone on very good waves. There are the famous waves off Safi, a right point break, much like Jeffreys Bay. Oualidia is a beach break with rights and lefts. Miki brought a special board. He was always trying to find the special shape. He had a 9' with no rocker. Otherwise he was traveling very light. He had a bag and a backpack. Some stones. He opened a little bag and showed them to me one night. I was scared. Tthere were some crazy pieces inside. It was a little fortune. I said, “Let me put it in the office.” He said, “No no, it stays always with me. This is my bank.” When people arrive in Morocco I take their passports so they’re really on holiday. They don’t have to think about their paper. I said to Miki, “Give me the passport. I keep it with me. No problem.” He didn’t want to. When you have a client who’s had his passport stolen it’s big shit. I didn’t understand it. I said, “Miki, it’s no problem.” Finally, he trusted me but he said, “Hey Laurent, please take care. This is my heart. I haven’t got a passport since 15 years.” He used to change the pictures. His passport had no residency. That’s exceptional. It means you are not registered really any place in the world. It means you don’t pay any tax, any insurance, any anything. The residency of France was paid by Quiksilver. It was an American passport he got when they cleaned the case of Miki Dora at the FBI. Miki said, “You should have seen the face of the young inspector from the FBI. They were looking at my old case; it was like a mountain of paper, about 30 centimeters.” But it was nothing serious to chase a guy for 12 or 15 years. It was stupid. He had some stuff with American Express or some fight, but he wasn’t a gangster. He said the FBI came to his house in New Zealand and he escaped. He left everything. The story is crazy. From France, when he went back to New York to clean his case with the FBI. I said, “Hey, Miki, why did you go back to New York?” He said, “For my mother. She called me. She was sick. She was getting too old.” She wanted to die thinking that everything was okay for her son. So they took the best lawyer, and that’s the way Miki went back to New York. Miki was tired after three or six months in jail in Bayonne. VIRGINIE MIRAMON: My first impression of Miki was that he was a charming, well-educated, knowledgeable person. A very complicated individual. I could tell he was complicated because I can see through people. He was very curious; when he’s introduced to someone, he would ask lots of questions. And yet he liked to keep his privacy, he was secretive. You can see some looks in his eyes. But he enjoyed being with us. We had a wonderful time. We surfed, we played, we laughed, we enjoyed the sun, we read, we talked, we played backgammon and ping-pong. I beat him all the time at backgammon. He hated that! He was angered, tense. Of course, he’ s a Leo. I’m a Cancer. Leo is the father of the zodiac. Cancers are the mothers. Right away he told us who he was, the first day. He said, “OK, this is who I am, this is where I come from, this is my story. I’m here to relax. I don’t want to interact with people. I like my privacy. I don’t like to have my photo taken.” That’s about it. We said, “OK, fine.” I didn’t care much who he was – this “Miki Dora” legend. I had heard of it from my brother, seen a couple of photos. To me he was like every other person. He had traveled a lot, so he liked to talk about distant places and other people’s ways. He was still upset over being in prison. And upset about his house in South Africa catching on fire; and his dog was his passion. He carried a photo of Scooter Boy with him everywhere. And he was quite emotional about it, because at the surf camp there’s lots of dogs. I’m not here to judge him. I don’t want to go into analyzing who he was, what he did. I’m not interested. I think he truly enjoyed and appreciated that. He didn’t have to put an act together or play a game. He didn’t have to be malicious. He just had to be…maybe the true Miki. He was funny. He still had the hand gestures, always. He was self-deprecating to the point that he was taking himself down all the time. At that stage in his life, he was probably doing a review of his life and what he had done, and was aware of all this stuff. He didn’t do that good, and he was probably aware of what he had done wrong. Because he was a smart individual. I think we were a fresh breath of air for him because we did not care – about what had happened, what he did. We didn’t want anything from him. We just accepted him for who he was, with his heart and his soul. It was good for him to interact with people who were not from his past. It just simple with us. LAURENT MIRAMON: I live a special life in a beautiful place. We are the same distance between Casablanca and Marrakech, a two hour drive, near Essaouira, also called Mogador. Mogador was a very special place in the ‘60s hippie movement. Jimmy Hendrix was there. You know the song about the castle made of sand? It was written in Essaouira; there’s a castle on the beach. I also took Miki there. I live in such a place and do good business, but I don’t sell myself. That was the big complaint from Miki: all his friends sold themselves. He stayed the same. I took him to some special places like Desert Point where you have to walk for one hour. But he was tired. Sometimes I could hear him coughing all night long. He slept poorly and always with the BBC radio on. It was impossible to sleep with him in the same room, though we had to share sometimes when we traveled. Because I thought he would only be one or two weeks, we went straight on a trip to Marrakech and to Essaouria. He told me he’d been to Morocco in the ‘60s, to Kenitra, in the north. There was an American military base there and he went to see some friends. I introduced him to James Stewart Church, a great painter. Stewart was like Miki. He had the same character. He stopped painting when he realized that his paintings were used in a commercial way. In the USA, for stealing one pencil he went to jail for two months. Finally he went to Tangiers in the ‘60s and stayed in Morocco. Miki met Stewart in a beautiful house in Marrakech, like one out of A Thousand and One Nights. He had an old friend in Marrakech named Virgil Bertoné. He’s a guy from Biarritz. In the ‘60s, ‘70s he had a limousine business. It was also the ‘70s, so he had a good address with everything you need to get happy: the best restaurant, the best wine, the best coke, the best hash. He went also to jail many years. He’s been in Morocco for 15 years and we found him for Miki. It was funny to see the two guys together: “Hey, you’re getting old!” “No, you’re getting old!” ~ Quiksilver paid for the first two weeks. After that, Harry wanted to have Miki in France for marketing – parties for the company, surf conferences, contests. He was really feeling bad. He was coughing. It seemed serious. He took a lot of vitamins but no medicines. The marketing guy sent a fax to Miki saying, “You must come back. We will stop paying your bill in Morocco.” It was a little tough. It was a young guy in marketing telling that one sentence to such a character who was 64. I said to Miki, “Hey, no problem if you want to stay more.” VIRGINIE MIRAMON: We were concerned. “This guy isn’t young. He’s not old, but he’s not doing well. What can we do?” He had his own medicine cabinet. There was nothing we could give him. Sometimes he stayed in his room for two days, and ask nicely if he could have his dinner in his room --but that’s all the help he asked for. ~ LAURENT MIRAMON: Miki had some people who wanted to do a movie. I remember only John Milius and another guy who did The Usual Suspects, but there were others. Everyone who wanted to contact Miki sent faxes to my office. I used to give the faxes to Miki and every time he was, “Laurent, can you read this and tell me what you think about this guy? I think he’s a stupid guy. He must be gay.” I saw the fax from John Milius and said, “Miki, I don’t think he’s a stupid guy.” It was a way for Miki to have fun and make shit about all this. These guys wanted the bad past of his life and Miki didn’t want to do a movie about being in jail. Miki wanted to do a movie about his real life. RICK HODGSON: I think he knew that if his story was really told, that he wouldn’t look good. He old me that he saw the movie about him being a Lawrence of Arabia sweeping epic, with all the adventures, with the humor and the beauty and the scope. Probably with a few clever, harmless scams, but not with the truly evil stuff. However, when Miki hadn’t heard from McDonnell for a few weeks he become anxious that the producer had suddenly lost interest. Shortly after settling into the surf came, he wrote to Cynthia Applewhite: Thank you for your encouraging FAX:! I left France Jan 1, for Morocco to escape a flu epidemic. I didn’t make it. Its caught me. I’m down for a week now. My trips in shambles… As for the producer, before I left a 3 page fax was sent off with some answer to questions he had sent me! No reply? Please try and call Michael. I think he has lost interest. I haven’t heard a word from anyone in a month now. I must plan my life accordingly. Applewhite replied: This is a project he’s been thinking about for a long time and now he has your permission, I’m sure he’s doing the job efficiently, scouting out money, screenwriter, getting the star’s interest, and all that a producer has to do to get it going. My advice to you is don’t even think about it. I’ll all happen without any effort on your part at all. After I contact M.M. I’ll fax you what we talked about. What an exciting movie this will make! Don’t worry. This guy feels so lucky to get this opportunity to create a movie of your life! Remember, Mickey! Your fascinating image that intrigues everybody is that of a lone, aloof, inaccessible, remote sports celebrity . So keep your image. Let M.M. do it all for you. He hasn’t lost interest! Right here I should put in the remark that this is Hollywood: “Hurry up & wait.” Have Faith – be cool – Love you. Finally, McDonnell wrote: Happy New Year Mickey. Interestingly, I got put together with Johnny Fain in a doubles game and now I’m his new favorite partner. He’s got bad knees and an artificial hip. He likes me because I chase down all the lobs that go over him. He’s still got pretty good ground strokes. We’ve beaten guys that should have beaten us. He wants me to do his story as a movie. He gave me the Surfers Journal article on him. I called him yesterday to say that in my view there is no movie there. Incredible stories, characters, incidents yes, but no feature film. He’s a tenacious little bastard, isn’t he? I’m not going to pursue it. I called Milius. As you mentioned he was someone who always seemed to respect you, and we talked at length (as he is wont to do) about you, Malibu, Big Wednesday, and movies ivolving surfing. He didn’t see where the movie is in your story at first but seemed intrigued after I told him what I had in mind. He invited me to lunch next week. I’ll see what I can learn from him and I’ll fax you to tell you about it. I look forward to meeting you one day. Relieved, Miki replied on letterhead from the Hotel Kenzi Semiramis, Morocco: “I’m paying off the local-Controlling-Chieftain, against the clock, so I won’t get slam-dunked by his snap of the finger strong arm morons. So the world turns everything has its price, even out of the dim past – ancient MOROCCO. You have to pay for every wave! Time marches on . . . . I’m sorry to hear of Johnny’s physical problems. I have not had a word from him in 30 years…! He was always a bit confused on the facts of life – along with the rest of his generations….. The 60s were audacious times to bad no one learned anything! And yet the same day he faxed a letter to a trusted friend in Malibu, in which he said, “I just might have to come back to the United Snakes. It looks like I got a film option pending from the producer of “The Usual Suspects.” Is it any good? Do you know this joker Michael McDonnell of Malibu? Finally, Cynthia Applewhite met with McDonnell and reported back to Miki. As to your film: Mickey, you are lucky! This is a well-known film producer who wants to do this and present you a la “Cool Hand Luke,” starring Paul Newman, which was about a glamorous non-conformist. Maybe you’ve seen it. If not, try to find it in a video store over there and rent it. Knowing this, you should have the confidence to just relax and let him do it all, get the star, get the financing. When a deal comes about, our agency, CAA, best in Hollywood, will act for you and get you the most money. So just enjoy life and let the wheels move. If it’s meant to be, it’ll be. Could happen fast, could take forever, could (sigh) all fall apart. We trust not, but we’re all in the hands of Destiny. It’s taken almost a year for them to select a screenwriter to do Louie’s life and start on our project. Michael wanted to go over there and interview you but I said, “No, bring Mickey Dora over here and put him up in a good hotel.” When I spoke to him yesterday to get your correct fax number, he said they were going to do that -- bring you here. Maybe rent you a car? Yay! (We’ll also go to) El Cholo (restaurant and to) Dr. Starr’s for checking you out on her magic machine and prescribing youthifying and healthifying supplements to keep you feeling great and limber and flexible for tennis, golf and WAVES! Love, Cynthia PS: I hope I did right in suggesting they bring you here. Besides my pleasure in seeing you again, I’m thinking: Mickey spending more time with Senior Dora -- also face to face meeting with CAA agent & discussing $ matters. Let me know when you’re coming. Miki wrote: “Thank you for faxing me back.I’m feeling a little better now. Perhaps I “over-reacted”. When one is sick as I was it’s a hell of a thing to fight it alone in a strange country. I’ m used to it but when some one I don’t know is juggling with my life, I become a wee bit jittery, particularly when he plays tennis with Johnny Fain. There’s no telling what this confused little nincompoop puts into Michael’s head. Anyhow its not important, there’s nothing anyone can do to me that has not been done … He did however finally fax me. He’s off to Costa Rica for a while. He claims he talked to John Milius. You know how discomposed I get about my life! I went through a lot to make it work; to let Hollywood carve me up in little chunks and served up to the Public – with or without me, it makes my flesh creep. I have no one to help me in these matters. If by some trust to luck and tempt for time, this all comes to pass and I can make something of it all, I will show you my appreciation! I don’ t want you to get too involved with this venture to the impairment to your normal life, one only has so much energy to expend. ~ After the flurry of Hollywood business that followed him to Oualidia, Miki turned his energy to other matters. LAURENT MIRAMON: He had a lot of time to think here. It’s a beautiful place on a lagoon. In the winter it’s empty. He surfed with me and he walked a lot on the beach. He was always thinking about the places he saw in his life. Whenever he came back from a promenade he would tell me about Malibu in the old times. He told me about South Africa. It was sad. His house burned, his dog died. He left from there with nothing. Just some stones in the pockets. He said it was on purpose. He wasn’t respecting the rules. He said he especially loved to in the white parts with a black friend. Miki was always giving me some advice. Every day I got three or four stories from Miki’s life. He was always comparing his life and my life from every point of view – surfing, women, everything. It was fantastic to spend three months with him. He had always a view on the future. He was always telling me, “Laurent, take care about this, take care about that; it’s gonna happen like this, it’s gonna happen like that.” He wanted to make a new board in balsa. He wanted to get a free trip to Ecuador from Quiksilver to buy wood. He wanted to take me there because I speak Spanish and I take care well of Miki. He said to Harry, “I have to take Laurent with me.” He talked about special skin for the wet suits. He was a little dreamer, talking like this. But in one way he’s right. He’s whole concept was right. I think he met Yvon Chouinard, from Patagonia, but quickly. He was always talking about Yvon and what he did with textiles. He was always giving me advice about the evolution of my business. He saw the whole system, the capitalism, from the ‘60s. It’s hard to deal in this world. He hated the surf industry except the special relation he had with Harry Hodge. Harry was the part that Miki wasn’t: he was successful and doing well. He had a lot of admiration for Harry: he gave all his time to the business. It was very bizarre because then most of the people I met had a bad opinion of Miki. They didn’t understand why Harry was helping him. Miki was a man abusing people. Harry was the only guy helping him. The relationship worked. After two months of not working I had twenty-five kids coming to the camp. Miki said, “Hey, kids’ coming? I must leave! It’s time to leave.” I told him, “Hey, Miki, no. There is no problem. You’re gonna see the kids. There is a lot of respect. You can stay here.” He did. Finally, at the end of the week, we were having dinner in the big tent with all the kids on one side and me and Miki. He looked at me and said, “Hey Laurent, they are very cool, these kids.” To him all kids were a mess because of the education, the system, all that. Miki had said, “They’re going to eat you! They’re gremlins.” Another time a journalist from Eurosport came with a cameraman. Miki got paranoid. “No, no! I leave! I leave!” Again, I said, “No, they’re very cool. They’re going to respect you. I’m going to take care of that.” I told them not to film him and obeyed. He spent the week with them and had a very good feeling with them. A very good time, having dinner, talking. He became more flexible and more open. In fact., he began dancing salsa here. I have Cuban blood and Spanish, and we love salsa. Most of the time there is salsa and people dance, and he was very happy to see people dancing like this: no party, just for the occasion. Great dancers and girls. One night we were dancing until three or four. He woke up and began dancing. He was very smart, dancing salsa. He was good. My sister dances very well, especially salsa. I heard the rumor that he was in love with her. VIRGINIE MIRAMON: The only reason I was at the camp so often – I came down on weekends – is because I was on my way back to America and I’d fallen in the street and dislocated my elbow really bad. I had to stay there longer than I planned. Later that year I was in France and Miki helped me find a place to live in Guethary. We were in the same building. Whenever Miki was invited to a party, he always would say, “Hey Virginie, I have an invitation, do you want to come?” He was very nice to me. He was a good friend. I heard he had a crush on me. But I couldn’t sense it. Maybe I can see through people, but when I’m concerned, I have no idea. From what I saw – and I saw him in the company of other women – he was a real gentleman. I never saw him out of line with a woman. My brother’s girlfriend at the time was Spanish and living in San Sebastian. He liked her too, he liked being in her company. We’ d always spend a couple of hours together, having a coffee, playing backgammon. He was the same with her as with me. ~ LAURENT MIRAMON: The FBI came to visit Miki at the surf camp. I think they didn’t want to let Miki do a movie or a book. It was bad advertising for them. Imagine the situation. We were at the camp with five or six friends. A guy came, a solid guy. He said he was a mountain guide and was just back from the Kilimanjaro; it was the third time he’d done it. He said, “Yeah, I’m a surfer.” He had no board. I said, “No problem. I’ ll rent you a board.” He began talking with people and with Miki. He was a very friendly American guy. Smiling. Talking. We went for dinner and the guy wanted to talk to Miki. Miki looked at me and said, “Hey Laurent. Please tell this stupid guy that I don’t talk with police.” The guy was laughing. He was next to him.It was very uncomfortable even for me. I was like, “Oh. Miki’s radical.” The guy was having fun, laughing. He tried again to talk with Miki. Miki told me again, “He’s stupid really, this guy. I believe he’s really stupid.” In front of him and in front of people. That night Miki said, “This guy, are you sure he’s coming from the Kilimanjaro? He’s not sunburned. His lips are fresh. They’re like lips from New York. And look at his clothes: He’s so well-packed. He’ s not a guide.” The day after, we went surfing. It was not big, but they were solid five-, six-foot beach break. I saw the guy in the water. He was a nut. He was not able to paddle correctly. He got crashed in the waves. He broke the board. First day. He had to pay for the board. He wasn’t a surfer. He probably was someone who had one week of lessons to go into a surf camp and ask where is Miki Dora. It’s ike a movie, I know, but we were convinced that this stupid guy was lying. We had three days like this. The third day I made like I was closing the camp, to put this guy out. We went to Ksar. The guy went in my van with us. I left the guy in the street at a hotel, and he was crazy. He wanted to stay in contact with us. He wanted to get information. He wanted to see us for dinner. But everybody was not simpatico with him. I didn’t want to talk with him; Miki was radical with him; my sister was the same. I believe he was like a general information, maybe FBI or not. I don’t know, but it was very bizarre. Another time, maybe one week later, a young man came to the camp, maybe 25 years old. We were having coffee. They knew I was closed, so he asked for a leash. I looked at the guy and said, “You’re coming from Europe or the USA and you think you’re going to find a leash in Morocco? If you come to surf in Morocco you have a guide, and you must know the only surf shop is in Casablanca. So why you didn’t go to Casablanca to buy a leash as soon as you arrived?” It was another story. Another blah-blah-blah. Me, I’m quite radical because we don’t have stuff. It’s hard for us to get essentials and boards. Even if I have ten leashes I’m going to tell such a guy, “No, I don’t have leash.” Leash for Moroccans, not for foreigners who forgot his leash. I said to the guy, “Go to Essaouira. It’s 160 kilometers. Maybe there is a surf shop there and you can find a leash.” The guy had a block of wax in his pocket. He said, “It’s hard to have material in Morocco, so take this. I give you the block of wax.” I took the wax and said, “Thank you! Thank you very much. Ciao. Bye-bye.” He should have gone. It was three o’clock p.m. I went back to my house. I was in the living room and he couldn’t see me, but the guy was on the beach right in front of my house. An empty beach. No t-shirt. Nude. I saw the guy was really fit. And he was always looking always to my house. It’s the only house open in the wintertime and he knew that Miki was there. So, I don’t know exactly the truth about all this, but it was two very strange visits. In all my relations, if it’s not clear I’m very sensitive. It’ s my job, communications, and I can feel people. And I can tell you, these two guys were very bizarre. ~ When Miki finally went back to Biarritz, Harry wasn’t so happy that he’d stayed so long in Morocco So Miki told Harry that I gave him poison and tried to keep him in the camp because it was good promotion for the camp. [laughs] It’s funny but he told Harry seriously. People from inside and outside the company told me that. He said, “It was a trap! They gave me drugs in Morocco, like black magic.I was sick and I couldn’t move! I stayed there and it was good for the camp.” ~ BARRY MCGRATH: A friend and I decided to go to Morocco, to surf for a month or two. Through working with Quiksilver I knew Miki, and that he was at a surf camp in Oualidia. He’d been there for a few months, quite sick actually – caught chronic flu or bronchitis. On the way to Taghazout, we decided to drop into the surf camp and hook up with Miki to see what he was doing, and try to get him out of his rut. We stayed a few days, had a few meals, and Miki decided to come with us, a few hundred kilometers further south to Taghazout. But knowing his problems of sharing money for expenses, we were a bit worried. Everything was OK until we got to the second or third petrol station and by then Miki didn’t want to participate in anything. At the same time, he was buying very expensive things in the shops. At Taghazout we stayed in a little house on Anchor Point. Miki immediately took over the biggest room, even though we were paying. Miki actually went out for a couple of surfs, but after a couple days, Miki just wasn’t participating in anything. After a couple of weeks Miki was kind of freaking out a little bit as well, listening to the radio all night, talking about some mad programs he was listening to in China, and “we’re all going to get invaded by the Chinese.” Generally, things not going well. My friend and I spoke about it, and decided we didn’t want Miki to be with us anymore. We hinted about it, he didn’t care. He just hung out. So we decided, while we were surfing, we’d tell Miki. We were going to tell him together, but my friend got out of the surf first. As I walked up on the rocks, Miki comes running down to me, and says, “Fuck! What’s going on?! Your friend’s just told me I have to get out of here!” I said, “Miki, stop. I don’t know what my friend said to you, but whatever it was, I completely agree with him.” He said, “He wants me to get out on the next bus.” I said, “OK, we’ll get your things together and take you to the bus station.” We took him into town and got him a bus ticket and he left, to, Agadir I suppose, then took a plane back to France. Later, he thought what had happened was quite funny. In the end, Miki told few people about his time in Morocco, but when he did, it was often spun into a wild tale.I went with my best friends for 35 years. We hadn’t been on a surf trip together for years and years.So we didn’t really want to take Miki with us, but it seemed OK, so we took him. Maybe under different circumstances we probably would have held on a bit longer. But we just were down for a month holiday, and had been working, and we didn’t need Miki and his mad stories about being invaded by China. Although there were some things that were quite interesting and funny. What’s funny is how Miki would do things like say, “It’s absolutely impossible for me to help you guys out with petrol, absolutely impossible,” and then he’d be buying fossilized shark teeth for loads of money. He’d open his wallet and it was full of money, but it was impossible to buy a carrot to put in the tagine. That was Miki. If it hadn’t been Miki, we would have left him in the first petrol station. But of course, it was Miki Dora. He told us loads of great stories, in the beginning. It happened over probably two weeks, ten days, there were lots of positive things. His New Zealand stories. It was fantastic. But the hassles over time became stronger than the stories. I must say when Miki got sick here afterwards, I saw Miki quite often. We always had a beer together, hung out with the same people, and he didn’t hold any grudges about that, I don’t think. I think somewhere along the line, he thought, not that it was good exactly, but at least it was a couple people not ass-licking Miki Dora. I’d see him having beers in Guethary and everybody would just be, “That’s Miki Dora! Miki Dora!” And of course, classic Miki Dora, he didn’t want to be recognized. When he got sick, he was a different person. We had a laugh. It was great. It always comes down to basic, “He was Miki Dora.” Even in South Morocco, people would go, “There’s Miki Dora.” “Are you staying with Miki Dora?” And we’d say, “Yeah, maybe he could stay with you!” RICK HODGSON: Miki later told me that the only way he could get into the surf camp in Morocco was by pack mule, that a Cuban mercenary ran the camp. There were guards with automatic weapons everywhere, and if you took off in front of anybody you’d be shot. And the waves were black and the bottom so full of rocks and poisonous things that you’d die if you didn’t make the take off. Miki always liked you to think that he went right into hell and artfully maneuvered out of hell with priceless panache and/or priceless booty. That was his whole quest. That was the story he wrote for himself; that was his real mythology. It was beautiful, but not what was really happening. The beauty was the contrast with the real story: When I was talking to a person unrelated to Miki, he said said he’d just gotten a postcard from a friend in Morocco who said Miki had been kicked out of this family surf camp because he wouldn’t pay for food and he kept trying to weasel it from cafeteria. There were no mercanaries, automatic weapons – nothing – except moms and kids and surfers and he was trying to have a free ride. Miki’s view of reality was so Walter Mitty. And he’d keep you spellbound with the stories.He had an amazing ego with a life story that, by design, was almost impossible to keep up with. |
PHOTOS BY MARCIA MCMARTIN
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The Master at work
| Original working sketch for the most famous surfboard ad of all time. |
| Unused image for Pygmio Fainus, by Ivan Hosoi. In the end they went with the evolution pics right out of Time/Life |
Stoner
| Russ Spencer of Bison Films interviews me about Miki and the book. Click here. |
| KGO-AM 810 San Francisco with Christine Craft |
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| Surfer 30-7-1989 MILLION DAYS TO DARKNESS Death, Diamonds and the Episodic Wave BY MICKEY DORA Creator and prodigy of the Malibu Mystique, high-performance pioneer, standard bearer of the surf rebel, prophet of surfing's apocalypse and angry icon to an ever-expanding audience he unwittingly helped to create...Mickey Dora has led a life dedicated to the ultimate free ride. Yet, in many ways, Dora has paid a high price for his philosophies of freedom: harassment and incarceration, gossip, notoriety and blatant commercial rip-offs have proved to be a relentless nemesis. He dropped off the public surf scene in 1974. Now, after years of wandering in the desert, both metaphorically and literally, Dora has delivered a new and ominously literal parable of our sport and our times. Without blurring the lines between fact and fiction and self-delusion, let me begin by recalling a few events. The interrogation starts: (Big Brother): Were you ever in the Military? (Man in Custody): No. Did you ever serve in any other Armed Forces? No. Did you ever work for the Government? No. Do you own any property? No. Do you have a home? No—just Post Restante only. Do you have any insurance or a pension? No. Do you have a bank account or credit card? No. Have you ever been on welfare or food stamps? Nope. Do you own anything? No. Have you ever been married? Nope. Are you homosexual? Isn't everybody in this screwed-up country? Who the hell do you think you are? Who the hell do you want me to be? Just answer the question, yes or no. How do you make your living? By the oldest of livelihoods, Free Trade. Now what the hell would that be? Barter. You're a liar! You're trafficking in drugs. You owe the IRS $300,000. Case closed. To quote Faustus: "Youth and debauchery are magnificent, but eventually you have the Devil to pay." Stripped naked, I stood there manacled, shackled and chained, like any other slave caught in the 20th century, where human beings are trapped, brainwashed and otherwise destroyed by a mindless disciplinary process. No Amnesty International or bogus Helsinki Accord. With everything I owned confiscated I was tossed a government- issue jumpsuit accompanied by the inevitable standard caustic remark, "Hey, man, what's your beef?" With one of my particularly favorite prosaic facade expressions, I responded "Among other things, improper abuse of credit." A few of the local homeboys were checking me out as if I were a two- bit purse snatcher. One blurted out, "Oh, yeah, went to Vegas for the weekend, huh?" In my best diction, I replied, "No, not exactly. Just took a wee trip around world." "Huh? Oh, yeah! How long were you gone, man?" And I was able to make the triumphant declaration: "Seven years, man!" A loud cheer burst forth as the guard escorted me to my cell: Maximum Security, Terminal Island Federal Penitentiary, Long Beach, California. From 1974 to 1981 I covered well over 200,000 miles over four continents 90% of the time reconnoitering the coastal areas of India, Africa, the Far East, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, South America and hundreds of islands. Only in Europe did Interpol or the Feds ever get close. Only after five ~passports and millions of taxpayer dollars wasted on the hunt did I, with a gun pointed at my head, volunteer to return to the USA (just visiting, thanks), thus ending the most extraordinary surfing odyssey in the history of mankind. Better to be judged by 12 than carried by six. The way they laid down the law you'd have thought I was the top Burgermeister of the Baader-Meinhof, or that I was in the power of the Red Brigade, Black September and all their related modern counterparts. In the course of time, with a stroke of the pen, I was finally kicked out of the pen with a federal misdemeanor, after being bottled up in their suffocating reform schools for two very long, solitary years. It was all too absurd: no trial, no dark suit, no presidential pardon. They gave Nazi war criminals a better deal. No doubt the question arises: Should I have gotten the firing squad for all those amazing escapades I pulled off during the fifties, sixties and seventies? Anyhow, free again, I wasn't about to sit around waiting amid all the trappings of modem urban materialism and let TV rigor mortis infest my mind. I stand or fall, live or die, by my own decisions. To be splattered across a California freeway is not my idea of a rewarding end. I'll never rot in one of those jam-packed, clammy, dead-end cemeteries of the North. I'd rather be consumed by a Great White while riding perfect waves along the Wild Coast, or devoured by a desert lion while diamond gazing somewhere in the Namib, the oldest desert in existence, a land of splendor and grandeur, the land where man first walked this planet. What better place to end one's life than in Primordial Africa? By adopting my particular type of self-imposed exile I can outdistance these scourgers of mankind: those who believe in consciousness without existence and those who believe in existence without consciousness—these caricatures who go to ludicrous lengths to assert their own importance, their own grotesque, overblown ambition. The preconceived, hypocritical values of these scourges are their calling cards to the temples of mediocrity and cultural impoverishment. These schizos are forever in motion, spinning out of control, unable to slow down for fear someone might get a glimpse of their hollowness, their vulnerability and lack of moral courage, I wonder what the ancient Hawaiians would think of today's world. The once-prodigious, noble Hawaiian Enlightenment, with all its virtues, tribal loyalties and irrecoverable surfing skills, has in the end availed them nothing. Africa represents a last chance for the Human Spirit; one of its few remaining opportunities to return to the place from whence it came. Since most of you are not yet intimate with my idiopathic mind, let me explain that I've been commissioned by SURFER Magazine to formulate my general principles of self-aggrandizement. My hypothesis is 180° opposite to present-day logic (The Fool Plus One Theory); Quantum Waveriding being the prime factor in the equation. As child prodigies sometimes do, I continue to discover my aptitude, which has endured to this present moment. If you are willing to accept the assertion that surfing is a colossal waste of time, then I'll concede I've wasted my life. But in a better and more graceful manner than any of my two-legged counterparts, no matter what the cost or consequences. As manifested in today's environment, it is extremely more hazardous to compete with the five billion out-of-control human beings endlessly copulating and howling to the gods of growth and planned waste, rewarded with IOU paper promises to their nonexistent Promised Land. I’ve been globe-trotting since the age of three months. Getaway is the name of the game, and I've been burning up the road ever since. The flames are in my blood permanently. I grew up in probably the most perfect climate in the world. In that time dimension the California and Hawaii beaches were rarely used, mostly wild, untamed and breathtaking. It's hard for me to believe, but at the time of Christ (that's not even one million days ago) there were only about 170 million people on Earth. For over 1,000 years, the world's population stayed about the same. Only near the turn of this century did the number of humans start to become troublesome. | Then, with the introduction of the massive credit system, which gained momentum at the end of the fifties, unanimously endorsed by the economists, politicians, professors and forecasters, the population took off for the stratosphere. Today, the world's population is out of control, raging like a prairie fire. When will the finite limits of the globe suffer a cataclysmic collision with a population gone wild? Will it take five, six or ten billion people? It is all the evolution of the human race relentlessly approaching its final destiny on this planet; a destiny which ultimately ignores the futile efforts of those who think they are shaping the world! It's too awful for me to contemplate. When anthropologists look back on the sixties, seventies and eighties, they will shudder in disbelief. "Let the fetus live so it can starve to death.” Undaunted, I'm going to continue to live and evolve in this irrational world, infected as it is with mysticism, superstition and grinding in- competence. The virus has spread to every aspect of life on our planet. Africa, in particular, is now riddled with demagogue dictators who make the megalomaniac Emperor Bukasa of the Central African Republic and Idi Amin look like pipsqueaks in comparison. Reason and Justice are only mindless platitudes; the real rule on this planet is “Might is Right." You must either conquer and rule or lose and serve, triumph or suffer, be the hammer or the anvil. History gushes with blood. The coup de grace was the Berlin Conference of 1878, which was bequeathed to Africa by the former Colonial Nations, cutting up the continent so these power brokers could plunder at will, eventually sapping the foundations of all tribal and linguistic uniqueness. It was a blow that will take generations to undo—if such a I turnaround is even possible. And the world wonders why the Black Continent is coming apart at the seams. Starvation in the hundreds-of-millions is inevitable. AIDS is pandemic. If a two-legged Black Mamba doesn't slit your throat, then a fervent patriot might just put a bullet between your eyes for blurting out liberal U.S. propaganda. The Afrikaners, Germans and British have no great historical compulsion to be unduly fond of one another; they act in desperate partnership here only because they realize that if they fail to hang together, they will hang separately. Each day 375,000 black workers descend some 3,240 meters into the bowels of the Earth, to a depth at which temperatures increase by 1° C for every 50 meters of descent. These are the deepest gold mines in the world, and the richest. The gold deposits of the Witwaterstrand are the greatest subterranean treasures so far found by man. Hundreds of black workers die every year through explosions, cave-ins, and so forth. Thousands of tons of rock and gravel are dug just to produce a few ounces of gold. Tons of the pure metal is shipped to Central Bank locations throughout the world, only to be placed underground, once again, in vaults. The U.S. Government says this gold is worth only $42 an ounce, but anybody with a bit of common sense knows otherwise. The U.S. Government says gold is too valuable to be used as money. I presume then money should have no value. It brings to mind that great American fanatic, William Jennings Bryan, who railed against crucifying mankind upon a Cross of Gold. Better to enslave him in a sea of debt. It's a funny thing, in all the years I've lived in Africa (no affront intended to Irving Berlin) not once have I heard God Bless America sung. Unbelievable, eh? I keep my mouth shut, my mind alert, my eyes straight on riding a few extra- ordinary waves. In 1970 Jeffreys Bay was still relatively unknown. It's been deteriorating ever since (like everyplace else). However, the real treasure chest of waves lies somewhere else. No matter what the population of the world ejaculates into, nobody is going to venture into this world within a world, wherein the Final Destination is the ultimate solitude—madness or death. South of the Tropic of Capricorn, north of the meridian of the Cape of Good Hope, 30° south, 18° east…In the Heavens of the Southern Cross...below the sinister cycle of survival by killing and the endless sacrifice of the weaker in order in make the strong stronger: There lies Namaqualand and, north, the timeless prehistoric Africa, a world of primitive drives and desires, inhabited by the Gikwe-Bushmen 25,000 years ago during the Middle Stone Age. Their ancestors occupied the same territory continuously for 25 million years, since the dawn of the world, when Man and Beast were brothers. They are the oldest sitting tenants on Earth. Near the mouth of the Orange River lay the richest deposits of gem diamonds in the world. They were probably washed down by prehistoric rivers from volcanic deposits inland. This soft material, known as "kimberlite" or "blue ground," is a rich alluvial stew, the most prized ingredient of which is the diamond. In the language of the Hottentots, the word Namib, literally translated, means Waterless Land of Death. The Atlantic shore of Namib is known as the Skeleton Coast, a narrow belt of wasteland some 80-180 kilometers wide and more than 2,000 kilometers long. The Skeleton Coast begins near the Olifants River in the south and ends near Mossameda in Angola to the north. Geologists blink their eyes and scratch their heads in disbelief when they first view the Namib. For myself, this is the most extraordinary geographical, biological, phantasmagorical piece of real estate I have overcome across. Bewildering and mesmerizing is this science fiction landscape, and vain is my attempt to explain or justify it. Suffice that it is one of the most savage and primeval scenes imaginable— almost incomprehensible to modern man. Few things have changed here over the last few million years. Where great four-tusked elephants once made their own laws, roving bands of black-backed jackals have now inherited this living nightmare. Dwarf trees survive here that live 1,000 years, and have tentacle-like leaves which produce a flower every 25 years. This is the hideout of the baboon spider and the deadly black scorpion—and their number-one enemy, the golden mole, a ferocious predator. Like a surrealistic airbrushing, a few dust devils spin unconstrained over glistening, bright-yellow sand dunes. These dunes look like they've taken over the entire Earth, creating a mirage of unimaginable proportions. The shoreline topography is a junkyard of rusting history littered with relics of old) and modern shipwrecks, interspersed with whale skeletons, fossils and semi-precious stones. Sporadically, washed-up corpses of giant squid—predator to the Sperm whales that roam off the continental shelf in the cold South Atlantic depths—seem to levitate over the hot sands. Their ghostlike, distorted cadavers somehow reflect into the misty environment, encasing the sea and its waves, just a few meters away, in a shroud of ominous adversity. Far above, in the metallic African atmosphere, a black eagle winding down on Current of air produces a very unsettling sensation. This neck of land would make an impression on the most invincible of minds. The Theory of Probability rapidly works against you the deeper you manage to penetrate into this surreal stretch of coastline, until the on- and-off chance of getting out alive becomes zilch. Standing to the right, sand dunes, higher than those of the Sahara or the Gobi, play tricks with your sense of time. They were in existence 200 million years before the Pharaohs. In this dry air your dehydrated body, too, would be perfectly preserved like the Egyptian mummies, forever, into perpetuity. Ever seen a man dying of thirst? Do you know what happens to him? He lurches around in a tight circle, eyeballs bulging out of his head, choking, his tongue hanging down farther than his chin... cracked and swollen, like a chunk of rotting liver. At this stage, it's a hundred-to-one shot he's going to kick the bucket. Water gushing forth from subterranean artesian wells encircled by a lush date palm oasis is simply a pipe dream. Checking out the snakebite outfit and a couple of extra boxes of cartridges for the 375 Magnum Express, my Bushman sidekick and bodyguard makes our base camp only a quarter of the way in. The Land Rover contains our entire water supply. It would be a worthless piece of junk if anything major went wrong with it. Water is our most precious possession, and radiator evaporation wastes too much. Nature here does not yield her secrets willingly. That's where my Bushman colleague comes in. His world is a very strange and ancient one. There is no doubt that the psychic powers of his people have remained more delicately tuned than ours. Keeping others alive and fed is his expertise. Do you think anything in this domain cares a hoot about Apartheid or Capitalism or Socialism or Religion or Man’s Greed and Cruelties? This land remains totally indifferent to all human pretensions. I would take only a Bushman on this venture; he can be trusted. A white man would freak out, drink all your water, put a bullet in your back, and nobody would be the wiser. It is no traveler's tale or stretch of the truth when I say over five million carats of diamonds were recovered along these ancient beaches over a 15-year period, making the legendary King Solomon's Mines seem puny in comparison. Unlike those mined in the Transvaal, these are formed by volcanic action under the sea, and there are still millions more to unearth. The world-renowned, 128-carat Tiffany Diamond was found along this very coast. However, my passion for great waves overshadows my lust for diamonds. If you think these are the sun stroked deliriums of a paranoid, let me try to explain. Just as when a negative is placed into a solution a faint image emerges, then only later in the process does the full picture become clear, so only in retrospect will this narrative become discernible, bringing the full picture into focus, The average fathead would shrug them off as inconsequential specks of glorified glass. Perhaps. It's all in the way you perceive things. Have any of you ever held and turned in your fingertips a 20-carat, blue-white diamond, the purest and most sought-after stone of all? I think not. If you had, you would know you were holding a mysterious, compelling substance. Do you have any idea of its worth? If I told you half, you'd call me a liar. Its fiery beauty is as hard to account for as is its origin in the volcanoes that turned night to day in the Proterozoic Period. They are splinters of a mirror that simmered a hundred million years ago. In their blue-white heart is the broken image of our Earth as it existed at its birth. When you hold this gemstone you're holding a fragment of the basic element of our planet. Alas, the unquenchable allure of kleptomania is always present. No one is immune. Lekker lewe: the sweet life or humbugged! Take my word for it: If you are not a master of brilliant cunning, don't even let it cross your mind. Let them lie where they are. You could lose your life. Many a man has. In South Africa it's an offense against the State if you are caught with an uncut stone. The Golden Rule: If you find a diamond, throw it away. A few years back this Australian bloke had a harebrained scheme to sailboard in, make his fortune, then sail up near the Angolan border. I warned him it would be a dangerous exercise in futility. He was sure he had all the answers, though, including the best escape route. All brawn and no brain, puffed-up and arrogant, in full regalia he sailed off into the fog and resigned himself to Fate... never to be seen again. A week-or-so later, near my encampment, I spotted a wandering Strandloper landing south. The origin of these Strandlopers is completely unknown. Even the Bushmen, who are conscious of everything, are confused about their aboriginal ancestry. There are only about a dozen Strandlopers left in existence. This naked anthropoid was wearing the Australian's shredded boardshorts as his headdress. It's been said before: "He laughs best who laughs last." So, can one get out alive with his inheritance? It's highly unlikely. First off, walking out is a Herculean task. You probably wouldn't last the day. The Namib Desert is merciless. To the south is the forbidden area of Consolidated Diamond Mines, De Beers and the Central Selling Organization. They make the law of the land, and their Dumond Detectives are harsh enforcers. If you're arrested, expect to be held incommunicado, fluoroscoped, your hands tied into enormous metal-type gloves, then force-fed ample doses of laxatives. God help you if any diamonds are found. These chaps are humorless, slow-thinking and insufferably self- righteous. There is no such thing as live-and-let-live in the diamond business. I know what I'm talking about. I've been through it all. So... to the north, Angola and the ANC. If they catch you, a necklace party is guaranteed. I was once stopped by some Cuban commandos who were going to waste me on the spot. One guy understood a little French. I convinced him I was a French porno photographer and gave him the address of my worst enemy in Paris. I got their attention by promising that after they won the war I would give them all positions as stunt thespians in my next production. I ripped out a few sample pages from my outlawed, smuggled-in Penthouse mag as a teaser. They looked disarranged as I made a hasty retreat and got the hell out of there. Of course, there's always the South Atlantic, but here we're dealing with unimaginable actualities. For some 5,000 kilometers southward from the Cape of Good Hope there is no other land, no shipping or trade routes, no aircraft, no weather stations, nothing. There is only the raging intensity of water whipped by the howling storms of the Roaring Forties. Circulating anticlockwise, the Benguela Current sweeps northward from Antarctica then collides with the warm Agulhas Stream and the Mozambique Current, causing massive ocean turbulences, generating chaos along the continental shelf and inducing a Maelstrom Effect. This provokes a frightening instability within the Coriolis Force. One of the offshoots of these submerged disturbances is the Upwelling Principle, and one of the main danger zones is between the Walvis Ridge and the Cape Basin, where the real impending menace looms as Episodic Waves. From all my investigations, I am convinced the luxury liner Waratah was hit by one of these rogue waves and lost without a trace in 1909 with 211 aboard. According to my calculations, these killer waves are most likely to occur during the Vernal Equinox. For example, the Mamohus, a 93,000- ton tanker whose bows were swept away by one of these huge waves in 1966, miraculously survived the encounter. Most ships are not so fortunate; they are taken to the icy bottom in a matter of seconds. Lloyds of London makes reference to the existence of these rogue monsters in its marine-indemnity policies as "the Episodic Wave Phenomenon." An encounter usually means a total loss and pay-out. Annually, supertankers carry some 600 million tons of crude oil around the southern coast of Africa, bound from the Middle East for Europe and the Americas. If these sea routes were ever cut by the Russkies, Europe would freeze to death instantly and America's economy would probably cave in. The way I figured it, the deeper I managed to get in with drinking water, the better the chances of getting back out alive. For this elementary reason 1 buried a few canteens at marked spots along the way, so that when I retraced my footsore steps I'd have an ample supply to prolong survival, Alongside this strand of sand, always within a stone's throw, is an array of world-class point breaks. This one: Out of the vast bed of South Atlantic Ocean there emerges, like a flash of greased lightning, a symmetrically smooth, 8' jet-black wall of water, spiraling over a craggy and jagged cluster of fossilized reefs. From its rooster-tail blow-back, its silvery rainbow spray glimmers, then vanishes into an inky, vaporous mist. It is a sight that would confound any observer. Imagine a devastating, 100-yard, coiling stand-up cylinder breaking in 4' of water over a razor-sharp, crustacean-covered bottom. A split- second, vertical, semi-blind take-off must be executed with brute force for serious follow-through drive. Compulsory is maximum acceleration...and a full-out super trim. One miscalculation and you're a dead man, being carried out of this world. Injured-only is impossible. That's why equipment must be perfectly balanced. Bottom curve, rocker and rails have all been handcrafted from years of enlightened theory (by the eye only). No power tools are ever used. This understanding produces a heart-and-soul, 8'2" X 17-l/2"-wide, drawn- to-the-limit, classic single-fin pin. Rest assured, in this domain each wave envelops and lambastes all five senses, leaving a lasting impression indelibly stamped in the subconscious. Two billion brain cells are inflamed, stimulating maximum concentration, computerized in Life-or-Death thrill ride that is unsurpassable, making everything else in life, by comparison, second-rate. A day's walk farther north lies a panorama more deplorably desolate than human imagination can conceive, created by a seismic cataclysm a hundred million years ago. Here, I gaze at a sight no white man has ever seen. From my vantage point: the scorched-dry river terrace of an ancient estuary. I can survey the ceaselessly heaving and churning undercurrents and the savage shorebreak. Beyond, an apparition—an optical illusion it seems at first, between the horizon and the shoreline—rising from the depths: an immeasurably huge, writhing, expanding wall of water. Its center looks like a hooded cobra head, swaying and heaving; its reflection, magnified on the gray-black, lacquer-smooth water below, exaggerates this abnormal monstrosity for a fraction of a moment, then it explodes into oblivion. My sense of wonder is heightened and renewed by this deadly attraction. Lost in thought, I wonder if I have the courage. Existing on Bushman rice (insect larvae, ants and their eggs), chomping on other organic delicacies (snakes, scorpions, rats, mice, lizards, frogs and locusts), jacked-up on a protein high, gnawing on my last chunk of biltong, I am inspired by the gravity of this remarkable spectacle. Unhinged, yet curious to confront this hybrid, I am halted by a cautionary rush of adrenaline. There are very few events left in life that are free from Social, Political and Religious connotations, and this is unequivocally one of them. Being sucked out through the rip was the easy part. Under the circumstances, the channel seemed safe enough—no erratic sets. In fact, 200 yards out, and nothing. Going alone really doesn't rattle my nervous system that much; I've been doing this my entire life, in hundreds of bizarre spots throughout the world. But this experience was unique. First off, the water seemed to stick to my fingertips, making it an effort to paddle with any speed. This was a bit unnerving. Then, without warning, it happened: In close proximity, a huge bubble erupted up out of the water. Within it appeared a gigantic, blunt head, then a body in airborne suspension, three times the size of a bull elephant, scaring the holy brownie out of me. I almost swallowed my tongue in a coronary fright. Wrapped around the immense head, flailing spasmodically, were two tentacle-sucking arms and eight shorter ones. Then came the shrill, ear-splitting sounds of a giant cephalopoda squid getting munched, its black ink gushing and squirting like a broken fire hydrant, bits and pieces of flesh flying everywhere. The battle lasted a few minutes. Then, with one gargantuan gulp, the sperm whale swallowed the whole goddamn thing. The 30', 400- pound body—all this nourishment consumed before my eyes—went down the whale's gullet in slow motion. An enormous bloodshot eye gave me a quick once-over, but bubbling away in its digestive juices like a saintly Jonah was not to be my inexorable fate. Temporarily disoriented, I found myself dead-center of an advancing set of waves. I barely made it over the second one, punching through the feathering mass. Awestruck, unable to believe my senses, the third was a towering peak, pyramode in shape, unimaginable in size. I began to hyperventilate for my inevitable keelhauling, stroking for my life toward the channel and a last chance for escape. Now, with an unnatural hissing sound... bending... this tremendous substance began to change its course, aiming straight for me. I knew in the back of my mind that I had survived closed-out Waimea, but this perpendicular, midnight-black wall of water with a Cyclopean center core was something else altogether. Now the colossus was on me. With all my strength I paddled straight for the eye, then rolled and jabbed my stiletto through the very top. At that precise second the sun broke through the hazy atmosphere, illuminating the puncture I was coming through with thousands of dazzling, iridescent water particles. In the next instant everything was caving in. I took my last gasp of air as the top third of this giant wave pitched out, tore my true love from my hands and snapped the legrope. In this fraction of a second, clinging like a spider to its web in a monsoon, looking back over my shoulder I through this translucent skylight, I could see my board spinning out of control far beneath me. Grabbing my knees in an egg-survival position, I anticipated a launch into eternity. During the plummet, I just missed cannon-balling through the deck of my board. Fortunately, my back only glanced off the rail as the cascade of water above caught up with me. I tried desperately to thrash through the back, but it was not to be. The water held me tight, like a fly in a gluepot. The next moment was one of tumultuous, disjointed dispersion. With most high-quality waves over 10', the exploding water is projected shoreward. In this instance, just the opposite occurred. The massive throw-out curved back into its own base, exploded inward and upward, forming a wave within a wave, theoretically devouring itself. Anyone caught in this Episodic Creation would be unmercifully spun in a horizontal vortex and plunged down to the icy depths for a soundless inspection of Davy Jones' locker. The secrets of all my triumphs are never to panic, and impeccable timing. This Epilogue is not just entertainment, it is Real Life. To thoroughly end my account of this experience would take at least 20 more pages. Highly impractical, Labor lost. Superfluous to the limited attention span of this magazine's frivolous fraternity. In short, tucked away in a safe deposit box in Paris are all the photographs, sketches, charts and maps of the expedition, including a 10-carat black diamond encased in a fossilized oyster shell. In addition, there is my exhaustive data, collected over a 20-year period, on the explanatory premises of the Episodic Wave Theory. Conceivably, someday I shall finish this accounting verbally, over a bottle of Mouton '45, with an individual who has a highly inquisitive mind. Until that very hour the bourgeoisie must be reconciled to their customary Orwellian entanglements, rushing to be saved by technology...and then saved from it. In the words of Confucius: "Bloodhound who keep nose too close to ground never see charging tiger." quotes accompany Million Days To Darkness Before talking about your movie career, Mickey, tell us about your surfing career. What career? My personal involvement died in the late fifties when the introverts were pushed out and the phony organized masses took over. All the guys I started with are washed up. Whoever’s left is ugly and overrated. The only thing left of my “career” is being persecuted by cops and lifeguards, which are one and the same. You've been accused of being ruthless on waves. What do you say about that? It's a lie. I'm vicious. We're all pushing and shoving, jockeying for position, and If I get the wave first—if I'm in the best position— then I feel I deserve it. So, when someone catches a wave I'm involved with—when he takes off in front of me—well, he's stealing my wave. He puts me in a position of either losing my board or going on the rocks. So, if he's in my way—well, he gets tapped. And then I get the blame and people say I'm pushing my weight around. Well, what's your solution? We should have had birth control 20 years ago. It’s too late now... send them to Saigon. How about the Islands? How about it? I'd rather go to Selma, Alabama. There're too many hard feelings over there. Really, Mickey, these answers you've given...you can't be serious. Well, I'll leave that up to the imagination of your comic book readers. —"Interview: Mickey Chapin Dora: Surf Stuntman” SURFER Vol. 6. #3 (1965) "Malibu... is my perfect wave. And when it's right, it's right in the palm of my hand. These wares will never change, only the people on them... and that's what I remember, the waves I ride, not the crud that floats around them. "Up until '59 I had Malibu barren, with 6'+ power swells. These are my cherished days I shall never reveal to anyone. "(Today) I talk to kids I think, are in the know, who are still riding waves for the sheer freedom they offer...(and) their concept of Malibu is a complete Valley takeover, a fantasy of insanity filled with kooks of all colors, super-egomania running rampant, fags, finks and pork chop- ism. (And the) tragic thing is it's all true.... "However, I can’t help feeling there's something happening. New philosophies are taking hold...in certain segments of the sport, and I hope (they) want the same things I want: freedom to live and ride nature's waves, without the oppressive hang-up of the mad, insane complex that runs the world and this sick, sick war. "Things are going to change drastically in the next year-or-so, for all of us, whether we like it or not. Maybe a few will go forward and make it a better world. "These are incredible times. "Thank. God for a few, free waves." —"Mickey on Malibu" SURRFER Vol. 8. #6 (1967) What part does surfing play in your life today? When there's surf I'm totally committed; when there's none. It doesn't exist. What is your general philosophy of life and survival? It's really quite simple: freedom from affectation and affiliation. To expound upon the subject will only bring more ridicule upon myself. Are you planning to get married? Possibly in my ever-vague fantasies of idealism, yes. As a perverse realist, never in California. Would you enter a contest for $1,000-$2,000 prize money? I ride for my pleasure only: no thanks. Professionalism will be completely destructive to any control an individual has over the sport at present. The organizers will call the shots, collect the profits, while the waverider does all the labor and receives little. Also, since surfing's alliance with the decadent big- business interests is designed only as a temporary damper to complete fiscal collapse, the completion of such a partnership will serve only to accelerate the art's demise. A surfer should think carefully before selling his being to these "people”, since he's signing his own death warrant as a personal entity. Practically speaking, if any of this makes sense to someone, all my mail will be forwarded to my retreat in Madagascar. |