Dennis Aaberg

Good-natured surfer/writer/musician from Pacific Palisades, California; best known as cowriter of Warner Brothers' 1978 surfing film Big Wednesday. By the time Denny Aaberg began surfing in 1959 as a 12-year-old, his older brother Kemp was regarded as one of California's top surfers. Aaberg's involvement in the sport branched out as he played guitar on Innermost Limits of Pure Fun, a 1970 surf film, and contributed a song to Big Wednesday-a movie inspired by a 1974 Surfer magazine short story written by Aaberg titled "No-Pants Mance" that looked back at his wave- and beer-soaked salad days at Malibu in the early '60s. The sandy-haired Aaberg continued to serve as keeper of the Malibu flame, appearing in the 1987 documentary The Legends of Malibu, and describing in detail Malibu's characters, scene, and rituals in "Tres Amigos," a 1994 Longboard magazine feature. "Malibu was rough theater," Aaberg wrote. "In ancient Greece, plays lasted all day, beginning at dawn and not ending until dusk. Malibu was the same way."