For all I know, selection criteria for SURFER Magazine's 1982 Hot 100 was an amalgam of surf talent, completed junior college units, and rote memorization of NBA stats, in which case, by God, I was in the Hot 10 of the Hot 100. But if we're going on surf talent alone? Ah well. Not so hot. Mark me down as south of the 50th percentile. But anyway, there I was, in the original Hot 100 class, bottom of the page, back of the article, well after Tom Curren, Barton Lynch, Derek Ho, Damien Hardman and the rest of the headliners-to-be, lighting up a matchbook-size black-and-white photo, the nose of my ET Surfboards MW Model twin-fin drooping into the gutter.

SURFER would have you believe that I was an "up-and-comer" (I was 22), "blessed with raw natural talent" (atheist with a ridiculous work ethic), and had "the potential to make it in a big way" (I'd been the fourth-best surfer at my high school, and was destined to rise no further). In actual fact, I earned my spot on the Hot 100 because SURFER staff photog Steve Sakamoto had a guilt spasm over all the incredibly foul things he said to me over the phone about my mother. That's my theory, anyway. Steve and Mimi had actually met once, and had a perfectly civil and ordinary conversation, but at 50 she was still attractive enough to rouse the devil in people like Steve, and such was my plebeian status that I allowed him to describe all manner of perverted imaginary sex acts he and my mom had performed the night before. Then he'd abruptly say "Meet me at River Jetties at 6:00," and hang up.

Sakamoto nominated me for inclusion in the Hot 100 to salve his conscience. That's my theory.

One more confessional memory. Whatever pride I gained from making the Hot 100 was shadowed to the vanishing point by the fact that my arch frenemy Dennis Jarvis got the cover that month. And it was a stunner. Better than MR's cover a couple issues earlier. Better than Shaun's a couple months after. I high-fived Dennis when the mag came out and told him it was so unreal, so rad, but every six months, when my dentist points out that I'm a nighttime teeth-grinder, I silently curse DJ for that cover shot.

CONFESSIONS OF A SURFER MAG "HOT 100" BACKLISTER

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