[Editors’ Note: Last month, surfer Brad Gerlach and the Beastie Boys’ Mike D. joined the crew from Operation Amped at Zuma Beach to help teach some war-wounded veterans to surf. Boardistan surf correspondent Ben Marcus was there to see it all first hand. Here is his story.]
Mike D is living and breathing proof of the duality of man… the Jungian thing. He is, at the same time, one of the quietest and least quiet humans on this earth. As drum major for the Beastie Boys, Mike D is right up there with Jaco Pastorius, David Bowie, Wild Cherry and Average White Band for Funkiest White Man Ever. Mike D is the man behind the beats that have propelled the Beastie Boys into the hit machine that has mined more platinum than South Africa X Russia. Their first album, released in 1986, when platinum times nine and in just over 20 years they have sold over 20 million units. That’s a lot of units.
The Beastie Boys’ Body Movin’ was playing on Indie 103.1 at about 9:00 in the morning on Monday, July 21. In front of Tower 14, the Sicky Dicky tents were going up and there were a lot of surfboards scattered around as Operation Amped was setting up to take about a dozen injured war veterans out for a day in the surf.
Leaning against the seawall, the thin, quiet guy staring out to the ocean with eyes that seemed to know what they were looking for, was none other than Mike Diamond. By his own admission, “The name is D., y’all and I don’t play/And I can rock a block party ’til your hair turns grey/’So what you sayin?’/I explode on site/And like Jimmy Walker I’m Dynomite!”
But in civilian life, Mike Diamond is as quiet and unassuming as Mike D is “a special individual/Pulling out knots/pulling in residuals.”
Please follow the jump for the rest of the story.
Brad Gerlach was the featured instructor this day, and he said a few syllables about how honored he was to be there and how good it felt to give something back to the veterans who had sacrificed so much. And then Brad passed the mic, so to speak, to Mike D of the Beastie Boys as some in the crowd braced themselves for an artillery barrage of words.
But the guy who took the mic was looking very natural in a zipperless O’Neill Mutant wetsuit: “First, uh thanks for everybody coming down. Thanks for inviting me. I apologize for… I’m not really dressed appropriately. I usually try to dress a little better so… Um yeah I want to say this is a great event because it allows people to meet each other, share and talk, but in a very real setting. To me surfing is very similar to music in that is this thing you have to be completely present for. It’s all about the moment, it’s not what happened yesterday, it’s not what’s happening tomorrow… it’s not what happened to you two years ago or what you might want to do next week. It’s all about what’s happening (he turns to a breaking wave and gestures) right out there. The dolphins are going through the wave, the direction of the wave, being aware of that. It’s always changing and it’s something that in a weird way you have to submit yourself to and be a part of, in much the same way I have found with music. And I like it.”
And with that, two dozen instructors helped about a dozen veterans down to the water’s edge, and spent several hours showing them how to paddle – sometimes with only one arm – and how to stand up – sometimes with only one leg. Mike D disappeared into all that, but star gazers who were paying attention couldn’t help but notice that Mike D was perfectly comfortable diving through a steady, four-foot crunching shorebreak at Zuma, pushing soldiers and Marines into waves and then bodysurfing after them.
Here was a Jewish kid from Brooklyn – one of the Godfathers of East Coast hip hop – who moved through the ocean like a dolphin. Several observers wondered well, how did he get there?
Operation Amped is a program sponsored by the Greater Los Angeles Veterans Administration Health Care System that takes injured and rehabbing veterans from recent and past wars, gets them away from the shady turf of the hospital and into the sunny surf at Zuma Beach. Some of these veterans are amputees but many of them are suffering from more invisible wounds: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or traumatic brain injuries from bullets or shrapnel from IED’s.
If it’s good for your head, it’s good for your mind and there are few activities more soothing to the human brain than dousing it in the endorphins and other liqueurs of hard exertion in the cool waters of the Pacific. Many of these veterans went to the Middle East to kick ass, but ended up getting shot up or blown up and spending months and years in hospitals and rehab. Many of them never dreamed they would be able to do something as physical as surfing again, and they all love the chance to ride waves that Operation Amped offers.
Operation Amped has been going strong for two years now and is getting stronger. On the West Coast they hold clinics at Zuma once a month through the summer and over the first weekend of August they had a three-day event at Camp Pendleton, on the beach at Church.
The events are organized by Tom Tapp, Randi Woodrow and Kurt Boorman of the VA, William Morris agent Steve Rabineau and his wife Sylvie and Jeff Kolodny, a former Surfing Magazine editor turned Hollywood agent. Skylar Peak of Sicky Dicky provides the surfboards, wetsuits and other equipment and Duke’s Malibu gives up the lunchtime grinds for free.
The disabled vets are helped into the water by many dozens of volunteers famous and anonymous. The famous have included Shaun Tomson, Ken Bradshaw, Jamie Sterling, Garret MacNamara, Allen Sarlo, several of the Gudauskus brothers and now Brad G and Mike D.
Kelly Slater has expressed an interest in helping out, if he can just tear himself away from winning WCT events.
The July campaign for Operation Amped was a big success, with about a dozen veterans happily flopping around in three-foot surf for hours on end. They came in for lunch, talked story, and went out for more.
There will be another Operation Amped event at Zuma in September. In the words of the Beastie Boys from Body Movin’: “All of y’all get off the wall/Have a ball and get involved with,” Operation Amped, they need volunteers and money.
Check out the website at www.operationamped.com.
