Nightline

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Any of you catch the segment on Nightline about the surfer with Aspergers? I thought it was quite interesting.

I did and he's definitely an amazing surfer.


I had a great love for the water too and became a certified scuba diver at 12.


I've tried to surf a few times, but my motor skills are too poor. It's yet another thing I could never be good at and it kills me because surfing truly is one of the coolest experiences in the world.

Clay is living the kind of life i've only dreamed of. I'm willing to bet plenty of NT's would trade their precious social skills to be in his shoes.

I stayed up to watch the Nightline about Clay Marzo as well.

I particularly enjoyed this broadcast, as it showed more about Marzo's Aspergers and how he does have struggles communicating, etc. He still seems like a pretty functional human being who is doing something he loves, and he has a nice family and a really cute girlfriend (who helps him with his schedule, etc) -- but it was good for me to see his repetitive behaviors (a kind of appealing need to rub his hands together when he's excited) and his difficulty with interviews and conversation. On the one hand, he seems very capable, but on the other hand he has deficits. It's the deficits that kind of interest me -- in previous video, the stuff they showed was very stylized, capitalizing on Marzo's good looks, or editing of surfing footage -- minimizing the deficits and emphasizing Marzo's more palatable qualities (palatable to the NT world). The Nightline footage dwelt more on the realities of having Asperger's, and showed how difficult life can be for Marzo. It showed the good stuff, too, to be sure, but it was a more fair representation (in my opinion) of the reality of his life. Good stuff.