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You can imagine my shock - and thrill - when California's Sex Wax Inc. began following me on Twitter this week.
Shock because @MrZogsSexWax makes stuff for surfers, was founded by a guy known as Zog, and is now following a guy who'd like to be a beach bum but isn't, who instead writes about all things business, and who lives some 3,500 kilometres from the Pacific coast, by a lake, in a land of frost and snow.
Thrill because Zog and I go way back, though he couldn't possibly know that.
First, I use the term "beach bum" fondly.
Second, Mr. Zogs Sex Wax is a well-known product (and, yes, there's no apostrophe).
Third, Sex Wax is a surfboard wax, in the shape of a hockey puck, that you rub on a board to stop you from slipping (and hence the Beach Boys "waxing down our surfboards" in 1963's Surfin' U.S.A.).
And fourth, there really is a Mr. Zog, who has been in business for more than four decades.
(Now that we've actually spoken, I figure I'm on a one-name basis with him, and the "Mr." is not required, despite the fact that it's Globe and Mail style. (And he's 69 and I'm 60, so "dude" is out of the question.)
On Monday night, my e-mail informed me that I was now being followed by @MrZogsSexWax. I couldn't imagine why. They follow surfers, surf shops, surf schools and self-styled beach bums. Maybe me because they also make hockey wax?
Then it clicked: Besides citing my Globe and Mail work, my Twitter profile notes that I am a "lover of coffee and very amateur skimboarding," a sport that, at my age, took me years to master while my kids skimmed circles around me. ("Master" is an exaggeration. It means I can actually stand up and skim a few feet across the water.)
What Zog couldn't know is that we have a long history, and that I will never part with a beloved, now-ratty, old black T-shirt, emblazoned with the Mr. Zogs Sex Wax logo, that I wear to bed every night.
It began when we were vacationing in Florida, God knows how many years ago, and saw kids using the small boards to zip across the water.
It looked like fun, so we bought a cheap board, rather than a more expensive fibreglass version.
Then back in Toronto, my son Jake decided to make one, a board of fibreglass wrapped around a thin foam core. It worked so well that son Luke and daughters Molly and Charlotte wanted one, too.
So our hobby became building skimboards in our Toronto backyard. (During which I cured the fibreglass to our deck chairs, destroying them, because it never occurred to me to use sawhorses.)
My kids, by the way, are great on their boards. Me? Like the chairs, I destroyed my big toe, which can make for a painful 2,400-kilometre drive home to Toronto from the southern gulf coast of Florida.
Since then, we've skimmed the U.S. east coast, from Florida's Sanibel Island and Cocoa Beach, to Hilton Head and the Outer Banks in the Carolinas, lugging around our bruised, sand-encrusted boards and always equipped with a trusty Sex Wax puck.
Back to the beginning: At first, in Florida, we were told we needed to wax the skimboard, as you would a surfboard, and thus we were introduced to Mr. Zogs Sex Wax.
That wasn't good enough for me. I also wanted a T-shirt promoting Sex Wax, with a huge logo on the back.
"You're not going to wear that outside, are you?" Molly asked, while my wife did an oh-Michael-grow-up roll of the eyes and the other kids snickered.
So banned from being seen in it, I wear it to bed every night.
(If you want to see the T-shirt, click here. And if you want to see an older wannabe on a homemade board, click here.)
I've spoken to prime ministers, stars and business leaders, so nothing much phases me. But speaking to the guy who unknowingly became a big part of my life was kind of cool.
Zog is a true entrepreneur. For competitive reasons, he wouldn't disclose annual sales. But he did tell me that he sells "in virtually every country that has some kind of ocean, and some that don't."
And so the venture that began in the early '70s at a small California surf shop now boasts surfboard, snowboard, ski and hockey wax, shirts, candles and accessories like wax-cleaning combs and beach towels. And boxer shorts.
Zog is Frederick Charles Herzog III, a father of two, who grew up surfing around Orange County, having bought his first board, used, for $90.
In his youth, he was known as Rick until "somewhere in college somebody started calling me Zog." The "Mr." was added when Sex Wax was created.
After the University of California at Santa Barbara, he hung out in the area and opened a surf shop, also publishing his own newsletter. Just next door was a chemist, Nate Skinner, and together they created the wax, formed initially in empty soup and tuna fish cans, and Zog tried to sell to other shops from his pickup truck.
Given the name, a lot of them wouldn't touch it, though some did. But, as the company tells it, it spread up and down the California coast by word of mouth and took off from there.
Sex has nothing to do with it (to my knowledge).
According to the company's website, Zog asked an artist friend to create the label. His friend thought Sex Wax "sounded phonetically cool," while young Zog "liked it because it was attention-grabbing, absurd and a great spoof on Madison Avenue's not so subtle attempts to use sex to sell a product."
"Offended" by the name, some folks wouldn't buy it. The logo was also forbidden at some schools and family theme parks.
"And then there are those who read the label and smile with the knowledge that the world needs all the humour it can get."
If you're reading this, Zog, know that I'm wearing my trusty, old, frayed T-shirt to bed tonight. (Under a sweater. It's November. And it's Canada.)
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