...Because Fish #@%& In It!

It's hard to concentrate on movies or blogging when all you have are thoughts of copulating sharks in your head. Such is the problem when Discovery Channel's annual Shark Week rolls around. It's not my fault that they devoted an entire documentary to The Science of Shark Sex! But then the filmmakers spent 45 minutes of the show not talking about shark sex at all, but instead showed the drooling scientists roaming about the water around three islands posting all sorts of monitoring devices in their attempt to capture the mating habits of some grey reef sharks. But once the magic moment arrives -- BUCK-A-WHANG! It was so freaking graphic, with all of this descriptive talk about penetration and thrusting, that I wasn't sure that I hadn't fallen asleep earlier and missed the whole plotline involving the great white pizza delivery boy and the randy nurse shark cheerleader.

The scientists made a big deal about how they had been waiting their whole careers to capture such a moment on film, and I thought "Well, that's great...!" I'm happy for them that their hard work and pervy diligence has paid off, but then, not two hours later on a different documentary, the same sort of "wham-bam-pass-your-clam" shark orgy was shown amongst a group of whitetips! And the filmmakers were totally casual about it, like it had been on film a zillion times before! But the Shark Sex show was supposed to be a brand new doc, so either the scientists were misguided in their belief that they were the first to film such an act, or they were actually shark fetishists and could only get off on the carnal pursuits of reef sharks that were grey. My, my, my... how very specific. What's next? Shark-milking videos with nurse sharks? Dogfishy-style assplay?

Frankly, the act seemed the same, whether between greys or whitetips: wet, nasty and dirty. The scientists were quick to point out that the males had two such appendages, but only "one was used for penetration". Seems like the sharks are missing an angle here. And despite the appearance of the act, the narrator also noted about the male shark's pair of claspers that "these aren't like the erectile penises" that mammalians possess. Hey, claspers or a whatchamacallit... whatever you want to call your junk due to your own species preference... a dork is a dork. Hell, humans can't even decide on the proper look of their own penises, cutting off this bit or that according to religious ceremony, or adding a Prince Albert or a tattoo or what have you, or even sometimes splitting portions of it for some ungodly reason. Why should we castigate the sharks for their equipment, especially when it seems to dwarf even that of John Holmes? If the appendages aren't erectile, they certainly give the impression that they are, and they fulfill the same purpose as a penis. Something is inserted into something else, and ultimately, semen is delivered to fertilize eggs. Besides, the act was remarkably similar, and the closeup action could have come from any hardcore human video, minus, perhaps, the presence of some fat idiot's hairy ball sac bouncing up and down (I'm talking about you, Mr. Jeremy). Strange what you can run into on basic cable in the middle of a Saturday morning.

A co-worker was telling me the other day about their need to sit their son down for "the talk"... you know, regarding the so-called facts of life. Seems to me you can just switch the stations to the Discovery Channel after they've finished watching The Backyardigans, and then make them wonder why the animals on the first show are wasting their time stupidly singing and dancing when they could be doing what the animals on the other show are doing: roughly biting and banging away at each other. (Think about that the next time you watch that little penguin and moose on The Backyardigans... or is it now The Backdoorigans?) 

Either make the the kids watch the Shark Sex episode, or watch it yourself and then describe it to your kids: "Well, first Mommy and Daddy zip about in boats between three islands and plant their buoys into the floor of the ocean so that we can triangulate a monitoring signal..." Perhaps the kids should just watch the last fifteen minutes of the show for some hot grey reef shark-on-grey reef shark-on-yet-another-grey reef shark action. Oh... I didn't mention it was basically a shark gangbang?

Ah! Those naughty, naughty sharks... If they weren't already in the water, they'd need a shower.

Of course, W.C. Fields would never agree with that. He never drank water, you know, for a very particular reason...

[This article was originally posted on my main blog, The Cinema 4 Pylon, on 08-06-06. But it seemed appropriate to also post it over here.]