Andy and Lyndie Irons, Me and Napoleon Dynamite

Ever been compared to a famous movie star? I was, and it wasn't Brad Pitt.

For those of a certain age, you’ll remember the cult hit comedy movie Napoleon Dynamite. For those of that age, it may surprise you that the movie is 20 years old this year. 

And so on that tenuous link, here is my own “Napoleon Dynamite” story, brought to life by the incredible animation of Matt Ward of Linguistine Art and commissioned by the Surf Europe Editor Paul Evans. They spent days on it.

First a disclaimer, and an apology. The video involves a lot of boobs - boob chat, boob drawings, boob, boob, boob. Lyndie Irons’ boobs to be precise. When this went live, I reached out to Lyndie for permission, given the content’s gratuitous, immature, and juvenile nature. Gracious as ever, she gave the okay, even going so far as saying it made her laugh and was a great reminder of the good times she had with Andy. Anyway, its been buried for a while and thought it should get a run on the bugle

And on that trip itself, here is a recollection on one of the last, pre-internet, big-budget trips that surfing had. 

The Emperor’s New Clothes

Did an all-star Red Bull boat trip foresee the surfing apocalypse? 

In 2005 a gang of 40 or so surfers, photographers, filmers, marketeers and journalists boarded the 177-foot, 33-cabin, 100-person dining room cruise ship the Yasawa Princess. Red Bull had assembled its all-star cast for a 10-day exploratory mission of the southern Fiji Atolls. Andy, Bruce, Mick, JOB, Ian Walsh, Alex Gray, Ben Dunn, Beau Emerton and Keala Kennelly were the surfers. Even the hired jetski drivers, Tony Ray and Glyndon Ringrose, were hardcore surfing legends. 

To capture the action, they’d enlisted an A-grade collection of photographers. Jon Frank, Art Brewer, Jason Kenworthy and Ted Grambeau were behind various high-definition long lenses. Then came various Red Bull execs from America, Europe and Australia, including Ant Macdonald, Josh Kendrick and Chris Mater. It was all maintained by a staff of 30, including an onboard masseuse. Lastly, a couple of journos from various surf mags tagged along, the callow minnows on a boat that floated surfing’s biggest stars of that epoch. 

Now Red Bull hadn’t been in surf that long. They were established enough and had spent enough coin to show that they were going to be a big player. They’d already done some truly progressive additions to surfing and would go on to do many more. 

The idea behind this motherlode budget spend however wasn’t one of them. An ideas man had sold them a “revolutionary contest formula” called The Red Bull Five Times. A surfer would catch five waves, then five of their peers would judge the wave later on video, based on five criteria. The whole deal would be captured in high-def, packaged and made into a DVD. 

Having explained the idea to the cast and crew on Day 1 of the trip it was immediately apparent that this was a terrible idea. Getting professional surfers to do anything apart from surfing is a harrowing experience for all concerned. Of course, as I sipped a cocktail, in the company of Andy’s glamorous wife Lyndie, and slid through a slick Pacific on a giant gin palace toward a melting sun I wasn’t about to voice that opinion.

Neither were the surfers, who were contractually obliged to be there, nor the photographers and filters on the 1000 bucks a day rate. The Red Bull execs who no doubt had moved mountains to get the project to happen in the first place sat silent and grim-faced. All the various Emperors involved had no clothes on, but there wasn’t a single person onboard who was going to tell them to put their cocks back in their socks. 

Of course, this was 20 years ago. It was the end of a decade where the surf industry actually had money. As Tracks staffers, we’d pick and choose our boat trips, doing two a year at least, each. There was a long-lost thing in the spreadsheet called a travel budget. It had five figures in it. 

There was no shortage of bad marketing ideas. We once spent 35% of a considerable launch party budget on hiring dwarf bouncers. Another time we sat down, and agreed with, an agency paid by Tooheys as they showcased a new beer bottle aimed at women. The bottle was 500 ml in size. Basically, a big, fat stubbie. Too big to drink on your own, too small to share. 

“Genius” we all said, in between slurps, and had them make 45,000 Tracks stubbie holders to fit the new design, the number of magazines we told them we sold each month. We gave away 20,000 free with the mag (the actual number we sold) and had 25K spare. The Editor Sean Doherty made a mattress out of the surplus and that was his office “bed” for the next six months. The rest went in about 30 boxes under my rented house in Stanwell Park. They were only discovered six years later when the house was being demolished.

Anyway in Fiji, a basic shitty idea was compounded by a lack of waves. In the 10 days aboard we surfed only on two of them. One single session could be described as having had quality waves. Things went dark. The evening cocktails crept towards the afternoon. Then they started at lunch.

The execs brought out new plans each day, like giving restless kids in the pub crayons. After all, they no doubt had ROI project assessments to complete on return. We, the kids, ate the crayons. A surfboard spray painting session turned into a paint fight. An afternoon of fine dining turned into a food fight. A game of poker turned into a fight fight.

Eventually, I think, the trip was cut slightly short. By the end, the Red Bull Five Times concept was rarely mentioned. I returned to the Tracks office with plenty of high profile surfer anecdotes, but precious little copy. I cobbled together 2500 words from my Red Bull-stained blank notebook. I then edited the sheets of images from some of surfing’s greatest lensman to try and make it look like we’d scored good waves. 

For the double page opener, I chose a massive group shot, taken mid-paint fight rather than, say, an Art Brewer shot of Andy Irons in the barrel, or trademark Mick Fanning top turn by Ted Grambeau. I figured it summed the feeling of the trip better than any action shot of one of the world’s best-ever surfers. 

Eventually, the magazine, my last as a staff member, came back from the printers. I think it was Ronnie Blakey who first spotted an anomaly on the opening page of my story. “Is that Fanning with his cock out?” he yelped. In the group shot, Mick has slipped his appendage out of his boardshorts for the shot and I had failed to spot it before it went to print. 

This might have been the last huge budget, all-star, surf trip. It was the end of an era. And all we had to show for the burning apocalypse was a magazine with a penis in it. There’s a lesson in there somewhere.