Date: 12/23/03
Author: Steve "Jocko" DiGiacomo

As time goes by, I've noticed some changes in our world. These days, Kyle Schmidt poses with his little baby ripper in his old-school rocking chair, Byerly is signing autographs on someone's grandma and, sorry ladies, but World Champion Shaun Murray is off the market. Oh, and he won't compete on tour any more. There are so many changes for us to process. How else is wakeboarding changing? Let's take a closer look.

Every year we have new riders pushing the edge, carving their names into wakeboarding's history. These new riders are the pulse of the sport, the new blood. They are the ones who inspire us.

Andrew Adkison - Give Them A Reason To Remember Your Name. His new ad sums up his whole year. Congrats to the next big thing in wakeboarding. What was the formula to Andrew's success? Determination, persistence, momentum, success...in that order.

Jeff House - Is this the Gator of the future? Every photo of this guy - like in the new CWB ad - has a good solid grab, totally outstretched muscles all tweaked. It all reminds me of those early days of Gator's dominance in the mags. Remember Gator's huge, floaty hoochies when he's totally flexed right at the peak? It made you think "power" just from the way his arm was all tweaked out. Gator achieved more with one tweaked out tantrum photo than all of the mobes in the rest of the mag. Well, Jeff House has that same effect. Power and control. Riders like Jeff House make me want to go out and try to make everything look so cool.

Third world countries are giving up their nuclear weapons while Keith Lyman is riding his nuclear grabs on a Nuclear Marketing Blitz. Enter the Jobe Keith Lyman 136 and 141 wakeboards and the Lyman BOA bindings (I think that "Lyman BOA" stands for "Lyman Banking Off A.D.D."). Stay tuned soon for the Keith Lyman BOA (Bring On Adkison) wakeboard figure with Kung-Fu grip. It comes with an 85-foot leash and it bounces all around. Be careful. Once you turn on the action figure, it's hard to catch him to turn him off. Sometimes it's better to let him just keep inverting until his batteries run out. Lyman's nuclear power is a tricky thing, so don't mess with it.

I'm sure that many of you are still thinking about last minute gift ideas. Well how about a new wakeboard for your favorite loser friend? You know, that one guy who always wants to borrow your board. Well, hook the brother up. These days, there are many different types of wakeboards available to choose from. It seems that in wakeboarding there's a gift idea for everybody.

For the ladies we have girlie boards named Flower, Diva and Vixen. On Comet, On Cupid, Donner and Blitzen! If you buy her her own board, you'll get more riding in at The Rixen.

For your friends from PETA who wake surf on the river, there are surfboards named Red Chubby and Big Woody for their quiver. How they came up with those names, well that just makes me shiver. I can only imagine how their ads will be, "If you're going to suck, suck hard on a Red Chubby!"

For those of you who prefer something with more gore, there's so much more in store. We have boards named Blade and Spade, Assassin and Dr. Death, but be careful grabbin' on a Blade, stomping on your Spade, don't be passin' your Assassin and never ever turn a blind eye to Dr. Death yo. Just some wisdom that I'm passin'.

For those of you who like to party like it's 1999, we've got boards named Mary Jane, Chief, Blunt and Divine. We've got Substance and Revelation and some Insight as well. Or you can always just Trip out and gel. Which board to buy? Just take your chance. Just don't pass out New Year's Eve and wake up wearing boardpants.

Then there are these guys who call themselves Get High Sports, offering ropes named Chronic and Dope Racks for boards of all sorts. When you're riding the slider, in case you fall, they've got helmets called Headstash, one size fits all!

But my favorite by far, how can you beat this name: Lucky by CWB. A board named Lucky. That changes this head game. "Here, ride Lucky," this will help me land it. Pure fake confidence, "With Lucky, I'll stand it" Then when I land on my face there's no doubt, that somewhere along the way, my Lucky had run out.

Two other bits of good news and I'm sure that these are totally unrelated. Sliders, kickers and obstacles have been showing up in every competition lately and recently Rainbow Fins announced sales of more than 2,000,000. Congratulations.

If Parks can drive a pink Mercedes, our world is changing right in front of our eyes. First it was a VW Bug, then a limo with a tank turret, now we need a pink Mercedes to be cool. I'm never going to catch up.

Oh well. Happy Holidays to all! Everybody ask Santa for a new life vest.

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