Shark Week -or- Tums Time -or- Anxiety Alley

While casually flipping through the fuzzy cable my roommate illegally pawns off to our downstairs tenant, I landed on Shark Week on the Discovery Channel. It's a nightly hour of car-crash entertainment, as in you can't take your eyes off of it, but it makes you wanna puke. Now with all the technology that has burgeoned since last year, the producers are capable of placing a camera on a floating surfboard that looks like a seal from underwater. They've got footage of a shark rising from the depths at Mach 3 and hitting the board with such force that it literally jumps out of the water. Right before it hits, the jaws open up and the eyes roll back. It just looks mean, man.

I'll tell ya - even though I wasn't in the water with the shark, I felt a chill run down my back. That would be some shit, huh? To see a shark slicing through the water, coming right at you, and the last thing you see in your waking life is his big teeth and black eyeballs? It's certainly not an advertising for surfing, that's for sure.

What a racket Discovery is running with the Shark Week phenomenon. It's almost as cruel as the TBS 007 Marathon that usually runs in December around Christmastime. Talk about monopolizing the viewing audience. How bummed do you think TNT is right now? All they can advertise is an occasional Twister or As Good As it Gets or Field of Dreams marathon. People love watching evil sharks and playboys. We're predictable that way. In many respects, they're identical, sharks and smooth spies.

How Does One Know if Anyone Reads This Crap?

Here I am, spilling my guts to the World, talking about how I cry despite being a male, yet nobody can chirp in and say, "That's so funny, Smidge!" like they used to do on MySpace. This Blogger thing requires some pride-swallowing, that's for sure.

I play on a mens soccer league, and today it occurred to me that I don't mind losing nearly as much as I used to. We got housed 7 to 1, yet I left the field with ego completely intact. Nor did I resort to yelling at people like I used to do when I was in high school. Boy, I may have been an arrogant prick at times in high school. Nobody's fessed up and said so, however, so I suppose it may be all in my head.

It seems this blog is more my pensive and melancholy blog, as opposed to my "always trying to be funny" MySpace blog. It's as if I don't want to tarnish that veneer of "funny guy" over there, like I'll lose Friends or Readers if I show my true self. It's weird when someone you once felt up freshman year reads your innermost thoughts. I'd rather be felt-up than really seen for who I am, that's for sure. What's worse is when you get a phone call from the mom and she says, "So, I've read the blog. (long pause) Do you really have to use your real name?" Translation: "I don't want my book group friends knowing you used to sniff coke and masturbate and use foul language to a fault." I mean, I've gotten better, but not THAT much better.

Here's something funny to keep this blog from sinking into the morass of Nietchze-like depression: I was totally punked on the highway today by a very old man in a Cadillac. I pulled out in front of him, going about 60 in my lane, but he was trucking along at 65. Without putting his turn signal on, he pulled around me, and then cut me off! The kicker was that he had to really struggle to get to his exit, which came up right after his Nascar move, and I could see him stressing about it when I passed him again. His wife was sitting next to him, and I imagined this exchange as he got onto the exit:

HUSBAND: Oh fuck, Betty. Hold on! It's gonna be close!
WIFE: Charles, why do you have to be such a goddam cowboy?

Old people yelling at each other is comedy, right? Or is that still sad in some way? I don't know.

Art is Bad for You

Before it seemed like I was being too sensitive, but I cross-referenced it with my friend tonight (who actually just broke up with his girlfriend, making him more sensitive than me, but whatever) and the final three episodes of Six Feet Under were fucking scary, anxiety-causing emotion blasters. C'mon! Nate dies completely out of the blue, and then David has to deal with some red-hooded monster stalking his every move? My friend said, "At least I had my girlfriend to watch it with me. I can't imagine seeing those episodes alone." No shit! To make myself seem more like a wimp, I'll tell you that I watched those episodes in the blinding, hazy light of mid-morning last week, not at the turn of the night like I used to watch Unsolved Mysteries. Yet, there I was, shuffling aimlessly around my house, wondering if there really was a God. I mentioned in a previous post that I had cried during the last show. And it makes me wonder - is putting yourself through that stress really worth it? At what point in my adulthood did it become a questionable act to experience an artform that might be sad or scary? I used to watch Faces of Death, for fucksake, and that made me feel bold, like a soldier. Now, I can't be so sure Just Shoot Me isn't going to put me over the edge with a special scene about date rape. No wonder Old People don't go to the movies or read books or watch anything other than PBS. They've whittled down their tolerance for drama to a gnat-sized dose of Oprah now and then. Me, I feel like putting myself through the stressful act now and then just to build my balls up. I'm 26 years young, too young to be afraid of fictional characters. Imagine if the whole season had been as well done as the first three. You probably wouldn't be reading this.

Six Feet Under Made Me Cry

In the final episode of the show, Claire drives out to New York in a brand new Prius as the deaths of each of her family members plays out between shots of the Southwestern desert highway. It was actually really well done in the scope of the whole season, which has seemed trite and cheesy at times. Why did I cry? Because it occurred to me that life is big and people die - there's really no other reason. The season took a turn for the gory and scary in the last few episodes after Nate dies (spoiler alert!) and after watching it, I felt anxious and alone. Leave it to an HBO series to make you wonder if there's an afterlife, or whether it is "a dreamless sleep" as Nate says to Brenda in one of her daydreams.

I'm going to be teaching highschoolers and a family member suggested I brush up on my grammar. So, if you out there reading this find a grammatical error, feel free to bust my balls on it. I don't feel like reading another grammar help book on top of "Teaching for Dummies."

OK, I Take it Back - Firefox Chaps My Ass

I should have known. My techie roommate installed Firefox on my computer, promising luxurious internet browsing capabilities and all sorts of "cool add-ons," but in actuality it has been a hate affair for the entire time I've had it. The first few days I was just trying to figure out what the Firefox icon in the toolbar was. "Is that the globe on fire?" "OK, it's a blue ball engulfed by a fiery Olympic wreath?" "Is that a gimpy dog whose leg is on fire?" "Shit, that's a fox!" "OK, is the fox humping the planet?" And as far as "add-ons" are concerned, I will never appreciate them, since I don't know what they are or how to use them or why they would make my life easier. I miss Safari, but Firefox kind of made Safari its bitch, and going back to it feels like visiting an old person I never liked in the first place.

Blogger Chaps My Ass

I was up until 4am setting this blog up - getting a new email address, coming up with the name, trying to pick a format - and even now nothing is showing up on it. It's completely new-chalkboard blank. At least on MySpace there was some kind of guarantee that Rupert Murdoch wasn't going to let his investment go to the dogs. Who's in charge over here? Bob Saget?

The Way I Smell Before I Go to Bed

I've been growing a beard for the past few days and it started to irritate the shit out of my neck, so I shaved it off. Before doing so, I took a shower in my euro-style tub/shower in order to soften the hairs before the slice-and-dice. My rinse off doubled as a deodorizing process, until I realized afterwards that I smelled worse than prior. It served to awaken whatever lingering odors had lain beneath the superficial layer of skin underneath my armpits and let them swirl around my face and head like a genie out of the bottle. I had a similar experience in Alaska once when I hadn't showered for about three weeks, then took a bath in an icy river, and then proceeded to smell worse than anyone ever anywhere.