Brought to RWB’s attention by reader Mike, and perhaps life-changing information for many, is this article on the maybe potential soon end of surfing as we know it. Why? Because the foam that consitutes the internal part of most surfboards has fallen foul of the environmentalist nannies in Washington DC.

The Clark foam is the core of most of the world’s surfboards and Mr. Clark has been forced by the EPA to shut down his California foam-making factory. That means Central Florida craftsmen who shape and finish surfboards can no longer get the raw materials.

So, Joe said, the smaller shops might not survive.

“They have no source of making boards, then everybody’s done,” he said.

John Brooks has been surfing since he was five. He owns 20 Clark surfboards and he’s a sales rep to 70 Florida surf shops, and he admits people are nervous.

…

The price of a surfboard in Central Florida has jumped $50 or $100 in many shops. Joe said he’s afraid, as early as this fall, some of them will be out of business.

Hmm. Well, for RWB I guess it’s just one more athletic activity I can rule out participating in.

And bad news too regarding a different kind of surfing: Van Morrison slams internet (hat tip to Rich for this).

He says: “Now, because of the internet, everyone’s suddenly a big shot. I’m talking about people who think that because they’ve looked up a website, they know everything.

“You used to have to study things but now you can just find it on the internet, and everybody feels very important because they have access to this stuff.

“It was a different culture when I was young. Quality, respect – they seem to have vanished.”

Who’s suddenly a big shot, in Van’s view? Everyone. Who feels “very important” because they have access to “this stuff?” Everybody.

Welcome to Van Morrison’s tortured inner world. Methinks he must have been musing out loud in some poetic way about some mysterious fact that he figured was unknowable, when some smart aleck said, “Hey, I just Googled it, and the answer is blah blah blah.”

Or else he made a reference to some obscure musical recording or other, and some similar smart aleck popped up and said “I just looked it up on the All Music Guide and you’re wrong. Look! I printed it out for you.”

Anyhow, grumpy or not, Van’s a genius, and one can only look forward to the album that his disillusionment with the internet inspires. Who knows: maybe it will drive him to muse about the “days before rock n roll,” when he knelt beside the old “wireless knobs” and the music came mysteriously from Luxembourg and other unseen places across the ether.

It’s just not the same when it comes across the “ethernet.”

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Addendum 03/04/2006: Clive Davis (no, the other one) picked up on my musings about Van and recalls going to interview him some years ago:

It was the most unnerving experience of my career. You see, getting a complete sentence out of him was almost impossible. He wasn’t unpleasant, just totally introverted.

I found a copy of Clive’s 1996 interview with Van here. It’s an interesting read, despite Van’s lack of gregarity (and I know that’s not a word).

Van was notably more verbose than usual last year in an interview published at his own official website.

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