Birthdays with a South Swell

Last weekend was a fantastic set of birthday parties/beach weekend at my buddy Charles' place in Oceanside on the beach. Last Friday afternoon about 12 of us descended the 5 freeway down to Oceanside, a nice, mellow beach town about 20 minutes north of San Diego, just that side of Camp Pendleton. Charles' family has a fantastic house right on the beach with about 10 bedrooms, a gorgeous garden courtyard and, best of all, a beer pong stadium. It was Charles' and his friend Brian's birthdays, and to mark the occasion, the theme was Tyrants and Tarts. Edie couldn't make it, so I was on my own as Johnny Castro, Fidel's younger brother. Charles was kind of the pope...



You can see me next to Courtney Love, the real Fidel, Betty Page, and of course, the Pope. Charles goes all out...



Pancho Villa (Brian) and the Pope...



Betty (Bailey) doing what she does best, ukulele in hand...



Castro and Saddam (Philip). Saddam is actually a Marine who's back from Iraq, and a great surfer as well. We surfed together the whole weekend and, needless to say, he's a bit more in shape than I am.



The peanut gallery.



The stage. We did quite a bit of surfing, we were there right in the middle of a fairly massive south swell. Friday and Saturday surfing on my new funshape surfboard, then bodysurfing Saturday afternoon- I caught my first barrel bodysurfing. Basically, when the lip of the wave comes down, and you're inside the tube that is created, that's what happened to me. I was spinning around, twisting inside the barrel, and it was amazing. Early Sunday morning I went surfing on my longboard, shown below.