Leon "King Rotten" Johnson Response
First Leon got pissed at me:
I sincerely hope things have been well for you as of late. I know it's been a while since you've heard anything from me, but as you might remember, I've been dealing with a shoulder injury, and my insurance still doesn't kick in until the end of the month. Nico has been great throughout this ordeal, hooking me up with his friend Dr. Saltzman who has provided me enough vikes and P.T. instructions to weather this storm. Last month, Dr. Saltzman sent me down to one of his colleagues in National City, who previously had a practice in TJ, for some treatment of something called Prolotherapy. I got the treatment for free, all I had to do was deliver some shoe box sized package to him, and he didn't have any quams whatsoever with working on me. I was down there for a few weeks getting the treatment, and I swear I'm pretty close to being better now..........I mean, the shoulder ain't what it was before the injury, but I can sleep on it finally, and at least now the Cutty and vikes can kill the pain when it rears its ugly head, because before the treatment that stuff barely took the edge off. Plus, I've gotten back out and charged at Pescador and the Strand in the past week. I think things are really looking up for me. Hopefully I can avoid surgery. The results from this treatment have been amazing............I've even pulled a few chicks because I have my confidence back in the water. When I got out of the water at Pescador, I was able to get a couple of 30 something year old broads who were watching me charge, to go back to Don's Inn at the Harbor for a few cocktails.......and the next thing you know, one of them was in the stink bug position in Nico's spa and I honestly don't know what Nico was doing with the other one. With spring and summer on the horizon, timing for my shoulder to heal couldn't be better man.
In the last few months I've checked out your website a few times, but not recently, as I've given up all electronics for Lent. But the posts I've seen, are awe inspiring to say the least. You are a man of your word, a man of stoke, a man who knows fear exists, but is inclined first to smile at it, then trudge forward instead of retreat from it, and if shit goes bad because of that, then you'll deal with it when it presents itself. You remind me of myself back in the day.
I'm emailing now because of some very recent things that I've been hearing from my crew and my son........and I'm sad to say, that the news I'm referring to isn't of a jovial nature. As a matter of fact, with the reports I've been getting from Chest, Fernie, Mel, Sizemore, and some others....I'd say it was equivalent to taking a big healthy bite of a shit sandwich.
I'm breaking my Lent vow right now, as Nico is my witness.......Hell, I'm writing because........I'm gonna be honest here............. I'm not too altogether happy about a few things that I heard this weekend from my friends. First off, Chest told me that you posted something about making a bsurf movie, and he said you referrred to me in that post, and that the movie would be about me. Believe you me Hot Shot, that's not such a great idea Thomas......and I gotta warn you, if you plan to name that movie "Stoke on Film", you will have a shitstorm coming at you from me, buddy. I've already told you I started filming a bsurf flick back in '07 and '08 and half of it is finished and in the can........I just ran out of funding and support (That sunuvabitch Nico really dicked me on that deal, especially when he recommended to Bert I. Gordon that he walk away from the deal too). Funny thing though, one of Mr. Gordon's reps just contacted me 2 weeks ago to talk about finishing "Stoke on Film" and I have a lunch meeting with her on Wednesday.......and she's pretty hot, so the chances are good the deal will be sealed. So do you see now why I'm so pissed about your recent post of jumping the gun on your movie? I suspect you are scheming to steal my dream and get your movie made before I can, and knowing your cunning, you'll be tempted to use the name "Stoke on Film". I respect you, but if you venture into this realm, you will be venturing into an abyss that I'm positive you are unfamiliar with, and I am an old salt in it. From one friend/adversary to another......you've been warned my friend.
The other disturbing thing came from a phone call I got from Mackie on Saturday. He is on vacation with Panama, an old member from our T-Street crew back in the 80's, in Waikiki. Mackie and Panama called me on Sat. to make me jealous that they were in a rented Ford Escape heading to the North Shore because there was a swell. A little over an hour later, they called back and told me something that made the Stella I was drinking shoot out my nose. Mackie said he saw you and a pack of dudes walking on the beach. At first I told him to go introduce himself and Panama to you, but then he started describing the beach scenario to me, and something that he said seemed very unsettling if not unnerving. He said your crew looked very ominous with fins in hand, almost with intent to intimidate any onlookers. He was pretty sure one of the dudes was Gary Hall Jr., the rogue olympian with the "ugly american" attitude. He said he swore he saw Burnham in the mix too...........which is when I, subsequently, told him to get the hell out of there and find another break up the shore, which him and Panama promptly did.
My question to you is, why the hell are you hanging with a crew like this? I didn't even know you were going to the NS. It's as if you have also pilfered my idea of creating a Unity Crew, and you've done it all unbeknownest to me - completely cutting me out of the deal. I know I've been out with an injury, but a shout out could have been the least you could have done brother. Haven't I warned you that it's not a good idea to enlist liars, cheats, braggarts, dudes full of AHola, malcontents, thugs into a crew that really should just want to ride waves and maintain an anti-kook order just like our forefathers did? Guys like this don't care about the code.......they would just assume whip their dicks out and piss on the code, rather than to give some green-horn-up-and-comer a chance to drop in and sharpen their craft on any wave. Having guys like this can only lead to trouble, man, can't you see that?. And now your flaunting this crew on the North Shore of all places? I'm sure if you keep up these antics over there, there will be a 'visit' to your porch from some fellas wearing black shorts real soon.
I wish you would have consulted me man. I wish you would have told me about this trip. If you need any help, just let me know man.
Respectfully Dissappointed,
First and Foremost, I sincerely want to apologize for the cowardly, hysterical and frantical, if not ultimately disrespectful email I sent to you the other night while on vacation. I am begging your forgiveness because I was suffering from a severe case of intemperence.......what I'm trying to say is that a few hours before I emailed you, my ex-wife's lawyer had just paid me a visit at Nico's pad on PCH to inform me that she is going after A LOT more monthly money from me than what was originally agreed upon between us and the court moderator about 4 or 5 years ago. If she wins, it will literally leave me with exactly $38 dollars a month spending money.....she'll get the rest, for life. How in the name of all that is holy can this happen in this country??? After he left, I coped with a bottle of Knob Creek, with a few Kettle One Dirties mixed in. The next thing I knew, I was breaking my Lent vow by emailing, (all the while Nico, that sunuvabitch, was egging me on) and I ended up doing a severely dispicable deed..............attacking you, a good person. I woke up the next morning, slumped over the keyboard and in a booze filled foggy haze, then I read what I had wrote the night before..........and immediatley had a panic attack and had several sharp pains in my chest........., mixed that in with the inability to shake off the dew from the night before...thank god Aricelli was there to talk me off the mental ledge I was on...that day was quite possibly the worst of my life.....shame, embarrassment, anger, worthlessness, impending doom...Aricelli got me out of that dark place, it certainly didn't hurt that she allowed me to have a shower beer while getting blown....I felt all these emotions that morning, it was like a whirlwind that I never want to go through again.. I've spent the rest of the week soul searching, and finding the courage to make ammends..... I've learned a valuable life lesson.....I want you to know that.
Mackie and Panama were out on the NS looking at a potential property that Nico is thinking of investing in and they saw you and your crew this afternoon / evening again walking down the beach to charge somewhere.....and they called me......and this time I actually told them that I was wrong about you, told them I was hammered the other night and told them to go and make contact and offer aloha to you and your crew......but apparently I freaked them out pretty bad from my comments about your crew on Sunday, and they adamantly refused to do it..........they even went so far as accusing me of setting them up. They thought I was leading them into some kind of shakedown, where they would either be ridiculed, clowned, or even beat down. They thought I was in co-hoots with your crew.......that whole conversation with them tonite baffled me....I've never heard Mackie or Panama talk like this in such panic, never have they jumped bad with me in the 29 years they've been in me and Nico's crew..............which leads me to the next question, what in the hell are you guys doing/acting like over there that can cause this kind of paranoid mayhem in their minds? I wish I was there to make all of it right, dammit.
Look, I know I said some mean things about you and many of your friends, and I wanna make things right.......especially with Burnham. I've seen him charge, and I've seen him mentor younger chargers, and do a lot of goodwill in the water.......so I have no right calling you and him sunzabitches and yellow bastards, and furthermore accuse you all of thuggishly delivering up sucker punches to the back of any unsuspecting inlander's head while they are changing out of their wetsuit in the parking lot......I should have never said that......and I'm trying to make that apology statement right now.....by apologizing.....I'm hoping for a clean slate. Will you please tell him I mean well and have total respect for him and want to offer him an olive basket once and for all?
It's just that, at times, he can also be a real a-hole with ill intent, which is why I warn others about him,he needs to change that about him, by the way, have I told you that he has personally threatened me with bodily harm via the Yahoo group on many occassions, and he has proven to be a loose cannon with no center ground, so you should continue to watch him with one eye, because he can't be fully trusted and you should keep things in check with that guy at all times..
About your version of creating your own Unity Crew and your idea of a movie. I am cool with it.......because you are the next generation, and my time has passed......but of course, I do have an offer. Maybe we could parnter in the venture, or at least you could include me in on the ground floor of these ventures.....so at the minimum, I could reap some small dividends in the deals.....I've already told you I have a lot of footage ready to go in the can.....and I have a guy with connections that seems interested again, see this link, his shop is legit , though his kids do most of the business dealings for him these days.....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Village_of_the_Giants
Look, it's bad enough that I feel like an ass for verbally attacking you, so my purpose is establishing legimacy right now. I've attached a pic of me and Greg Deets when he gifted me a pair of his old skool UDT's in his backyard a few years back. And I've also attached a pic of my Father Bruno (hung up in Nico's Stabbin' Cabin), taken in our backyard in Capo Beach back in the mid 70's when I was in my teens. He was the one who taught me the Code, as his father taught him, he was the one with the stories of relying on his UDT's in a jam during his military service, was the one who taught a young Elvis Presely how to charge waves during down periods of the filmings of Blue Hawaii and Paradise Hawaiian Style on Oahu in the 60's(legit story - no bullshit). The old man was a mean, distant, cold hearted sunuvatbitch as a dad, but at least he taught me the basics of beach-scene insticts and how to handle the big shit.
Thomas, I am the real deal......just way past my prime and in an alien world where localism and thuggery reigns supreme and I feel like I'm trying to swim upstream against a ridiculous current..... but I plan on having you up to Nico's Annual Spring Fever Bash at his pad on PCH,........it's annually epic....... last year he chartered a Moosehead Lager Truck to roll up in the driveway until 4am.......tons of chicks and McConnehy and his hanger-ons are usually there in full force, though kooks, they tend to give the place "atmosphere"..... and I promise you, that you and your wife, can stay in the Stabbin' Cabin as long as you wish, and your friends too can crash in the house, enjoy the spa and the LACO waves just down the bluff....but we'll have to discuss Burnham's presence prior to it, cool?........just as long as you include me in any further deals that are in development by you. Think about it, and get back to me when you get back stateside.
