The Shark Film Office

When I began what turned out to be an unexpected 8-month break from working on The Shark Film Office site last October (due to grievous bodily injury), I had already been damaged severely by a shark film which I had, at the time, been planning to review next on the site. The film was called Shark Exorcist , and with all seriousness, that straight-to-video piece of sheer dreck – after three viewings attempting to make sense of the damnable thing – broke my brain. Really, my brain was broken after the first two viewings to the effect that I stared blankly at an empty document on my computer’s screen for about two weeks before I watched it the nearly fatal third time. Then my brainpan cracked to such a degree that I then and now truly blame my hip injury in late October at Disneyland (on the Matterhorn, no less) on the fact that I had forgotten how to operate my body in a normal fashion following three misbegotten viewings of Shark Exorcist . [Of course, I could also blame it on the...

I have always been a bit cynical towards the notion of "Christmas in July". Everyone complains about how long the winter holiday season has gotten – even the wackos who continually yell about "putting the Christ back in Christmas" – but I have seen even the staunchest of their like get thoroughly disgruntled over being reminded that there are "just 87 shopping days until Christmas" sometime in late September. With the ever-inching advance of seasonal marketing over the past few decades, it is often unbearable. So, why is there this stupid notion of what should be a once a year, winter month thing also being forced upon us by various concerns in the middle of the summer? As far as I can ascertain, the thrust of so much (but not all) of this "Christmas in July" fanfare seems to revolve around and come from fairly secular activities and quarters. If anything, that probably makes all the Fox News alarms about the "war on Christmas" even mor...