No better time to be alive July 22, 2008
Posted by Brendan in Life in America, The Whole Wide World.trackback
Forget about medical advances. Dismiss the burgeoning achievements in science and technology. Put far from your mind the abundance, variety, and ready availability of (relatively) inexpensive food products. The single greatest blessing of being alive in the early part of the XXIst Century is that, unlike our poor, besotted ancestors, we , ladies and gentlemen, have SHARK WEEK!!
It is to television what the Resurrection is to Christianity. Crowning, enobling, enlightening, and awe inspiring.
For one glorious week in late July (for the past 21 years) the Discovery Channel — arguably the greatest channel in my satellite line up this side of NESN — has given us a week of wonder.
In addition to the weeklong series of shark related TV features and documentaries, the companion website allows you to play games, take quizzes, and track sharks! Hell, they even have a blog.
This New England boy has been fascinated by sharks all his life. They were contemporaries of the earliest life on this planet; they exist in every sea and ocean (at least one variety can survive for extended periods in fresh water); and they put mankind squarely in its place. Opposable thumbs be damned, a fish occupies a higher place on the food-chain than we do.
It all begins at 9:00 PM on Sunday, July 27th and it runs through the following week. And in tribute to man’s ultimate dominion over this planet, I may be sitting down to a plate of Mako shark on Sunday afternoon before the festivities get underway!
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