The premiere of Shark Week… July 28, 2008
Posted by Brendan in &c., The Whole Wide World.add a comment
…sucked.
I look forward to Shark Week the way a ten year old looks forward to Christmas and, I gotta tell ya, the Discovery Channel really let me down with last night’s premiere.
They served up a fetid slurry of three day old cold gruel when I was expecting an end cut of prime rib with, maybe, a lobster tail on the side.
Instead of bloody, gruesome attacks by Great Whites and Tigers, they gave us fiberglass shark robots and tedious physics experiments.
What the hell were they thinking?! I want blood, razor sharp teeth, and non-stop man eating fish…
Ok, even the Discovery Channel is entitled to lay one once every twenty-one years so I’ll cut them some slack. Tonight’s line-up should more than make up for the tedium that was last night’s disappointing premiere.
One of my personal favs, “Air Jaws” — an hour of surface breaching, attacking, back flipping, frenzied Great Whites (see ultra cool clip here) — is on at 8:00 PM. Unfortunately, Air jaws is followed by two shows making their premiere this year which have the potential to be disappointing:
SURVIVING SHARKS
Premieres Monday, July 28, at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
Survivorman’s Les Stroud hosts this look at how best to play it safe in the water, while testing popular theories of how to survive shark encounters. Les travels to the Bahamas and South Africa to test whether the behavior of Caribbean reef sharks and great whites changes depending upon the time of day. While in South Africa, Les and marine biologist Jeremiah Sullivan conduct an analysis of the great white’s bite, and test whether kicking and splashing attracts sharks, and if it’s safer to stay in a group or tread water alone if stranded in the ocean.
[Unless Les Stroud turns out to be the main course -- or at least the appetizer -- for a Great White, this'll probably be a yawn]
DAY OF THE SHARK
Premieres Monday, July 28, at 10 p.m. ET/PT.
Do shark encounters happen more frequently in the morning or night? This special chronicles six recent shark attacks that took place at different times of day. Top shark experts weigh in on what time of day is better or worse for avoiding sharks.
[I dunno, this may have B- potential. Have to wait and see. If an experiment goes wrong and someone goes feet first into a shark's gullet, I'll give it a solid A]
Air Jaws will definitely bring up the curve but it looks like I’ll have more bitch-blogging to do tomorrow.
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Coincidentally, it looks like even sharks hate Ryan Seacrest
A long hiatus July 18, 2008
Posted by Brendan in &c..3 comments
I took a brief vacation in June and never quite eased back into blogging.
So…let’s try one more time.
Begin. Commence. Start. May 9, 2008
Posted by Brendan in &c., Uncategorized.add a comment
It’s not my first blog; it’s just my latest blog.
Back in the days when spare time was an abundant commodity , I was able to blog several times daily and hold forth on every conceivable subject. Now spare time is a luxury and, accordingly, I’ll have to choose my subject matter with more discretion and aim for a higher degree of quality rather than mass quantity.
The topics are unchanged – all the major obsessions and fetishes will be touched upon: Religion, Politics, Baseball, and American History.
I haven’t decided if I’ll transfer the archives from the old site or just start from scratch. I’m leaning towards importing a few selected posts and making the rest up as I go along.
It’s going to take a few days to input the links in the blogroll and tweak the design to my (ever elusive) satisfaction but, hey, Rome wasn’t built in a day.
All that said, welcome to my new blog.
EDIT 5/14/08: I decided to import a few ancient posts after all. They’re from 2006 or earlier and many are still subject to deletion.



