Two weeks ago I introduced my eight-year-old son to 

. Together we laughed as kooks of every description were slammed in various and sundry ways. Teddy noticed that Kookslams has 1.1 million Instagram followers, and his enjoyment shot up. (My enjoyment dipped as I felt Teddy's unspoken judgment against Encyclopedia of Surfing's paltry 15.3K followers. Click 

An idea struck. A really good idea, and it arrived fully formed. To impress my boy and to drive eyeballs to EOS and to do my part for the funniest surf-related social site going, I would become a Kookslams contributor. I've got hundreds of slams on the hard drive, from every decade, going back to the days of redwood. This was the most meant-to-be collab in all of surf media. "Kookslams Klassics Presented by Encyclopedia of Surfing." The thing was practically making itself!

I went to bed knowing that EOS and Kookslams together were going to make the surf world a happier place. And in less than two days it all blew apart.

Can I blame Derek Rielly? No, but almost. I texted Derek and Chas Smith, looking for Kookslams contact info. Derek gave me an email and I shot off a query to Kookslams. Then Chas swung in to say the email Derek gave me was actually for Kook of the Day, not Kookslams. Two different entities. Whoops! Nobody had Kookslams' email, so I DM'd them the same query I'd just sent to Kook of the Day, right after which KOTD got back to me all excited about the idea. Awkward. I apologized, said I was trying to reach Kookslams, my bad etc. KOTD didn't reply, of course they didn't, and I felt like an asshole.

But hold on. A DM from Kookslams: "Heck ya man! Send a link to download clips." I was back on top! Fire up the Nespresso and let's get to work!

An hour of creative ecstasy followed. It went something like:

Ease into it. Make a trial clip or two. No, hold on. Make a full set of clips. Four. No, six.

One wave per clip, nice and simple. Or wait . . . montage. Montage!

Not just any musical backing . . . Country-western! Because nobody in surfing likes country, which makes it funny, and because country is about pain, and pain-funny is what Kookslams is all about.

, because is it perfect, and because there are 300 other versions of it, by different singers, and OH MY GOD this will be the theme music for "Kookslams Klassics Presented by Encyclopedia of Surfing!"

At that point I pushed away from the computer and took a victory lap around the block, agile of foot and light in spirit. Had lunch. Napped. Killed two more Nespresso pods and made the clips, bang-bang-bang, all six of them. Uploaded to Dropbox, sent Kookslams an invite to grab, wondered if I'd have to expand EOS' server capacity.

And that, friends, is the end of the story.

Of course they didn't. I kooked out. So badly. I took Kookslams' wonderfully simple idea, over-engineered the shit out of it, and basically said: "Look, I can do this better than you!" If I had to guess, I'd say Kookslams was embarrassed by what I'd done, but choose to be respectful, I'm the Encyclopedia of Surfing guy, the old fella, surfing's historian etc etc, so they punted by going silent. It was a mercy killing.

I won't say it didn't hurt. But like the song says, only for a little while.

CONFESSIONS OF A KOOKSLAMS REJECT

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