If it’s one thing that I’ve learned, everything is surging these days:  We have surging inflation, surging home prices, surging storms and now….. Surging Tsunamis (which should be a punk band from the 80’s).

Yep.  That is how I spent this morning. On Tsunami Watch. Why?  It’s become a problem for our entire neighborhood.

Here are the top surges of 2022, ranked from those of least concern to those that threaten to the biggest possible disaster (at least according to the conversations I’ve had with my neighbors here in LarryLand):

1. Tsunami Surges in Surf City
2. Home Price Surges
3. White Claw Surges

I betcha you were expecting a COVID surge would be on the list, but frankly that’s simply yesterday’s news.  Keeping up with what’s in fashion and out is a difficult game at best and we here at LarryLand are more than willing to help keep you informed. At least as well as most major network news.

To that extent, let us start with the top story of the day on our cell phones and on the “Breaking News”.  Tsunami Watch. 

It’s important to understand why this is important to my neighborhood. On the corner not 100 yards south of our neighborhood is the last Tsunami Evacuation Route sign.  Apparently, when there is a tsunami, the surge of the tsunami will come one mile inland, but not the last 100 yards. Why?  Well, the elevation goes from 11 to 12 feet. 

Needless to say, when we rolled out of bed this morning and turned on the news, they were deadly serious.  There is a “Tsunami Advisory” in effect – this is the second-highest level, the first being a “Tsunami Warning” that you need to catch up to your house floating down the street.

Uh Oh.  This is not like them on the KTLA weekend news. Mark, Loretta, and all the gang are often so busy comparing notes and eating donuts that they often don’t even bother with the news at all.  Seriously, there are occasions where the weather forecast guy is talking and the booth simply runs the numbers behind him in full knowledge that they will never actually talk about the weather.

But they have on their serious faces this morning.  A picture of the HB Pier is behind them and they zoom in on the waves (Which are, like, totally epic. Just the other day I got a sequence of a guy getting barreled). But… no surfers are there.

Were the newscasters talking about the fate of the people in Tonga, where an actual tsunami may have wiped out their homes?  Of course not. A 1-2 foot “surge” may be coming to California any minute now and we have to be on the lookout.  (Note – when I walked out my front door, I noticed that none of my neighbors were “on the lookout”).

There will be a (get this) 1 to 2 foot surge in the surf (what the surfers call “ankle high”) and it might come at any moment (or not).  They’re zooming in and Mark, the resident surfer that is also an anchor, says that there is “nothing going on”.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that this isn’t important news. I maybe spitballing here, but Tonga may have just attached itself to the Philippines or something like that. Nope, we need to get a reporter on the scene.

Enter Chip.  He “rolled out of bed” (literally, his statement), and drove to the coast where he hooked up his camera and filmed the Seal Beach pier (which is protected by a jetty). Chip is talking to the surf school guys who are just hanging around. No one sees anything or seems the least bit concerned. The fools – don’t they know that a huge ankle-biter (wave, not chihuahua) may be coming: I strongly suspect that the KTLA staff said something like “doesn’t Chip live near there?” and rousted him out of bed at 6am. At least Loretta gave him an attaboy for being such a responsible journalist, meaning that he lost his chance to sleep in.

But… this was just surge #1.  And, fortunately, our neighborhood was spared.

Of course, we then have to talk about Surge #2: Home Prices.  I would expect that a tsunami warning might cause the home prices here in HB to drop, which might be good for my neighbors Metin and Bilgen. They’re renting and trying to find a place to buy, but “surging home prices” are an issue.

Fortunately, KTLA and I am “on the case” (of White Claw, surging as it were). They located the perfect house for Metin and his family:   2100 Square Foot Victorian, 1 Bathroom, NO bedrooms, and 100 year old appliances:  The price:  $2,000,000.

Whew!  I think I’ll need to reconsider the sale of my home.  Heck I (actually this guy who rents from me named Homeowner) received a guaranteed offer of [substantially less than $2M] based on sales in Los Angeles (umm… I’m not in Los Angeles).  Yet I have running water, more than 1 bathroom, a couple of bedrooms and a stove from the 1940’s. They must have known that the tsunami surge was coming to wipe me out.

And that brings us to the worst of all of the Scourging Surges: Surge #3, the Surge of White Claw Surge.  [reader challenge – say that 10 times fast]

The marketing gurus at White Claw are geniuses.  In February 2020, while standing in line for an hour for a roll of toilet paper, I noticed that every single shopper had gallons of water in their basket. They were surging forward like a tsunami, emptying the shelves of every last drop.

At first I was curious – does someone really think that water will stop running? And then I had my answer:  everywhere the water disappeared, suddenly there was a pallet of White Claw in its place.

What exactly is White Claw?  It is, now follow me here….. WATER.   Yes, fizzy water with some alcohol and artificial flavorings, but still….. WATER.

Being that I had a long time in line and nothing better to do than question my line-persons (the NFL is so politically incorrect calling them linemen), I figured out the White Claw Master Plan for Conquering America (or at least the sophomore class of most universities):

1. We buy all the water in the supermarket.  $2 a gallon
2. We park our van behind the store, and pour all the water into a “mobile processing unit”. 
3. We add in some fake flavor, a bottle of cheap vodka and a bunch of sugar.
4. Then we have a guy with a large straw make bubbles in each can as it’s getting sealed.
5. We package it and move it BACK into the supermarket.  It sells for $2 a can.
6. We get rich beyond our wildest dreams. Even richer than Bartles and Jaymes who now own a Caribbean island (we’ll let you youngsters look that one up).

You may think I’m kidding, but their sales have absolutely skyrocketed:  They were 60% of the market in 2020 of all the seltzer products out there, with something like a 300% increase in sales.  (Yes, this is what I consider to be hard-hitting reporting. My journalist-in-training daughter disagrees. Master’s degree – what does she know.)

The proof of their arrogance, however, lies not with their sales but with their newest product:  White Claw Surge. I have no idea what a surge tastes like, but apparently it tastes like more alcohol in a larger container. I just want to meet the marketing guru who came up with that name.

At least it is truth in advertising.