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.