Blue water thoughts

I was given a new computer at school. Yay! My old, old one froze up, was installed with Microsoft Word 2003, lol, and wouldn't play DVDs. Primitive.

My turn in line came up and a spiffy new computer, complete with MS 8 :( was ready to go. Now for the hard work- finding a desktop theme. You know, the big photo or the slide show in the background. Hey, if I'm going to be looking at the screen during the day, even briefly as I do at school, the scene is all-important.

I was saddened to see that my long-beloved blue Bahamian tiny island with the palm tree was no longer available. Nor was a suitable photo like the one on my laptop at home available- a rocky shore, with just the right proportion of rock-to-beach.

After some searching, failing and then going online to download a theme, I found a blue water photo with a Bahamian boat, a palm tree in the foreground. I got to thinking about beaches, and ocean ... dwelling serenely in my daydream all day, a hammock strung between two palm trees, a white sand beach, and blue water with a pod of porpoises lazing in the shallow waves.

When I got home the beach theme was still on my mind. So of course I queued up The Endless Summer, (1963) THE seminal surfing movie. It is a great documentary- charming, informative, casual, picturesque, and by now, historic.

The Endless Summer

They call it The Endless Summer the ultimate surfing adventure, crossing the globe in search of the perfect wave. From the uncharted waters of West Africa, to the shark-filled seas of Australia, to the tropical paradise of Tahiti and beyond, these California surfers accomplish in a few months what most people never do in a lifetime...They live their dream. Director Bruce Brown creates a film so powerful it has become a timeless masterpiece that continues to capture the imagination of every new generation. When it first played in theaters, audiences lined up to see it again and again, spellbound by its thrilling excitement and awesome photography. But in fact, what's most compelling about the film is the sport of surfing itself, and once you've seen it, you'll never forget why.

The Endless Summer is a great film. Another enjoyable surf movie is Accidental Icon: The Real Gidget Story (2010).

Young female surfers have been nicknamed 'Gidget' for almost 50 years and yet the true story of Kathy Kohner Zuckerman, the real 'Gidget,' and how her account of surfing Malibu in the mid-1950s became the basis for a best-selling novel and spurred a national cultural phenomenon has never been explored until now. This touching look at a unique father/daughter relationship and the connection to so many lives and pop culture stories is as original as it is fun. Capturing both a love for our beaches and a love for surfing Accidental Icon is a real California story that could only come to life at the movies.

You could always watch the ORIGINAL Annette Funicello/Frankie Avalon surf/beach party movie, in a stroke of originality, called, Beach Party. (1963) And then pair that with their 1987 movie starring both Annette and Frankie, as a spoof of themselves 24 years later. It's called Back to the Beach.

I recently saw Splinters, an interesting 2011 documentary about surfing in Papua New Guinea. Another very good movie.

Splinters is the first feature-length documentary film about the evolution of indigenous surfing in the developing nation of Papua New Guinea. In the 1980s an intrepid Australian pilot left behind a surfboard in the seaside village of Vanimo. Twenty years on, surfing is not only a pillar of village life but also a means to prestige. With no access to economic or educational advancement, let alone running water and power, village life is hermetic. A spot on the Papua New Guinea national surfing team is the way to see the wider world; the only way.

If you don't mind Susan Casey's ethics, then her surfer book "The Wave" would be interesting reading.

And though it has nothing to do with surfing, but everything to do with beautiful blue water settings and starring a young Denzel Washington ;), The Mighty Quinn is a good movie to hunker down and watch.

So those are my blue water thoughts of the day.