And The Shark Goes “Grrr!”
Oh, the many pleasant hours I spent plucking junk from its spring-loaded jaw!
We are in full summer mode here in the Hunt household, and perhaps there is no greater indication of our seasonal relaxation than the fact that we have just sacrificed four consecutive evenings to view the entire Jaws tetralogy. This is what can happen when you have time on your hands and the ability to stream Netflix offerings on your TV. It all started innocently enough on Sunday evening, the first of several nights that our eldest daughter was away at camp, thus reducing the number of family members needed for unanimous entertainment option agreement to three. Somehow the availability of Jaws for streaming came up, and it struck each of us as a fun viewing choice for different reasons. My wife remembered seeing it many years ago. Our youngest daughter had heard about it and was intrigued. And me? I came within a shark's tooth of seeing Jaws at a drive-in in the summer of '77.
It is easy now to forget just how big a pop culture phenomenon Jaws became after its 1975 release. The movie allegedly deterred impressionable viewers from enjoying the beach. It was memorably lampooned in the famous "Landshark" sketches of Saturday Night Live, an effects-laden sendup called "Jowls" on The Carol Burnett Show, and a classic Mort Drucker/Larry Siegel movie parody in MAD magazine. Among the merchandising tie-ins was an Ideal Jaws game that featured a G-rated version of the Freudian movie poster on its box (minus the naked woman swimming above the advancing shark). I owned the game, which consisted of a hollow plastic shark with a hinged jaw, upon which an assorted of marine detritus was balanced. Players used a small hook to retrieve the items, until at last the weight of the remaining pieces no longer counterbalanced the tensile strength of attached rubber bands, whereupon the jaws suddenly snapped shut. I thought the game was great.
A couple summers later I was asked by a friend to accompany her family and some other kids to a drive-in showing of Jaws. I was incensed when my mother firmly declined the invitation on the grounds that the movie was too disturbing for anyone my age.
Hot Hot Hot
Hot times on Beale Street, Memphis, 2006. Note the pedestrians in long pants.
It's hot right now in the Midwest, though nowhere near as steamy as the triple-digit extremes that the unfortunate citizens of our Eastern Seaboard are experiencing. Nevertheless, once the temperature tops 90° Fahrenheit and surpasses that benchmark on a daily basis, those of us with the luxury of air-conditioned homes and cars take a little longer to acclimate. We even start to ponder how the world ever got along without air conditioning, ignoring the fact that much of it still does. Once you're used to living in perpetually comfortable environs, it's easy to get so accustomed to it that the seasonal highs of the summer months seem almost like an affront from nature.
"When Mom and I were your age," I recently pontificated to our eldest daughter, "we grew up without air conditioning in our homes."
"What did you do?" she asked, never having known such discomfort.
Independence Day
AT MY DESK, JULY 4, 2010
The disgruntled Declaration of an American Newspaper Subscriber
When in the Course of a newspaper subscription it becomes necessary for one reader to dissolve the commercial band that has connected him to the daily local and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal stations to which the Law of Supply and Demand and the Free Market entitles him, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that he should declare the causes which impel him to the separation.
I hold these truths to be self-evident, that all newspaper readers are created equal, that they are endowed by their literacy with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are the expectation of a decent Life section, Liberty from shameless and unwarranted self-promotion, and the pursuit of Happiness under a fair and reasonable home subscription rate. --- That to secure these rights, Journalistic and Publishing Standards are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the Free Market, --- That whenever any Newspaper becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the Reader to alter or to abolish it, and to utilize Alternative Media Sources, choosing reputable outlets according to such principles and organizing his browser bookmarks in such form, as to him shall seem most likely to effect his Informed Opinion and Consumer Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Newspaper Subscriptions long established should not be canceled for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that a loyal readership is more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right itself by abolishing the daily delivery to which it is accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under an absolute Monopoly, it is his right, it is his duty, to throw off such Newspaper, and to provide new Guards for their future security. --- Such has been the patient sufferance of this Reader; and such is now the necessity which constrains him to alter his former Means of Gathering News. The history of The Columbus Dispatch is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Commercial Tyranny over this Reader. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
Group Dynamics
The Beatles: indispensable leads, colorful supporting characters, and no extras?
Imagine the public outrage that would ensue if Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr were to announce their intention to reunite and tour as The Beatles. Though they would have no trouble selling tickets, a critical consensus would condemn the endeavor as false advertising, even though the deaths of John Lennon and George Harrison obviously would have prevented them from participating. Yet there is no hue and cry over Roger Daltry and Pete Townsend appearing as The Who in spite of the unavailability of late bandmates Keith Moon and John Entwistle. Why? The answer rests in the peculiarities of rock group dynamics, by which the members of most bands can be subdivided into indispensable leads, colorful supporting characters, and extras.
Now let us entertain an alternative history in which Lennon and McCartney are today's surviving Fab Two. They hold a press conference under a giant Beatles logo and announce a reunion tour. The world rejoices. Everyone laments the losses of Harrison and Starr, but few seem to mind Lennon and McCartney hiring session players and billing themselves as The Beatles. This is because within Beatle group dynamics, Lennon and McCartney were the indispensable leads. You can't have The Beatles without either of them, but you conceivably could have The Beatles with both of them and some hired hands.
Three Days Of Darkness
"Take that, Satan's minion!" cried Moe.
CHAPTER I
Three Days of Darkness!
“Good grief!” exclaimed Moe Hardee as he perused the latest Parish Post. He ran his fingers through his blonde hair and cast a worried glance toward his brother, Hank. “It says here that Padre Pio has prophesied Three Days of Darkness!”
“Gee,” remarked Hank, dark-haired and one year older than seventeen-year-old Moe, “that will sure put a crimp in our boating plans!” Hank and Moe were the sons of famous detective Denton Hardee, and they had been looking forward to a weekend expedition on Bartlett Bay with their Mayport High chums. “Read me the details.”
“Well, according to Padre Pio, an enormous cross in the sky will signal the imminence of three days of darkness, during which the sun will not shine and demons will run loose throughout the streets.”
“Holy moly!” reacted Hank, whose customary reserve and lack of impulsiveness had been rattled by the startling news.
Hip Hop
The irrepressible Hop guides the trash truck home at the end of another day.
As a summer job, it wasn't bad. Working for my hometown's small parks and recreation department gave me a steady 40 hours a week with weekends off. Although it was for minimum wage ($3.35 an hour at the time), the full-time seasonal position allowed me to earn enough money for the textbooks and miscellaneous expenses of a further three quarters of undergraduate study. Furthermore, one's employment there made the prospect of being re-hired the following season likely, and so it was that my college experience was interspersed with a trio of summers spent keeping the parks beautiful.
The colorful characters I met there could have populated a lowbrow sitcom. Each day began and ended in a dingy office area within the maintenance garage, where assignments were given out in the morning and the same four regulars concluded each afternoon with a few rounds of euchre. Many of them had been working for the parks department for years, and the atmosphere was very casual and wisecracking. On my first day there, another "temp" and I were assigned to the most casual and wisecracking of them all, a small and rotund man who went by the nickname of Hop.
School’s Out
No more pencils, no more books...
I've always heard that a school of piranha can skeletonize a cow in mere minutes, a trivial tidbit that came to mind as I watched the students in my classroom remove everything attached to the walls in preparation for summer break. Dozens of educational elements, from large wall posters to tiny "word wall" words, were ravenously detached in a frenzy of activity. What had taken me hours to put up was taken down in minutes, and my students stepped back and surveyed the bare bones of our room with sighs of satisfaction.
For the kids, there is an almost painfully sweet quality to the approaching end of a school year. Each emptied desk and vacant bulletin board is a sure sign that freedom is tantalizingly near, yet the final dismissal seems ever-receding, like a desert mirage. This frustrating combination of heightened anticipation and delayed gratification is largely responsible for the June madness that tries the souls of students and teachers alike. You can't blame the children: when you're only nine or ten years old, a summer off is one long vacation.
Geese Is The Word
The local supermarket where I often buy gas has apparently taken measures to rid their premises of Canada geese. The rectangular retention pond that drains the parking lot and provides a buffer zone from an adjacent four-lane road is now criss-crossed with a matrix of fine netting. From the perspective of a goose, the unsightly, white lattice must be one giant pain in the bill.
Imagine trying to land in this once-familiar pond. Skim the surface too closely and you're suddenly somersaulting into the drink. Manage a graceful touchdown and you're floating upon an aquatic cell with an area of just several square yards. Want to float around in the cell next door? Time to fly again. Thinking about taking the goslings for a swim? Might as well forget it. There's nothing dangerous about your former haven, but like rush-hour traffic, it sure is frustrating trying to get around.
I was disheartened to discover the nets during a recent fill-up, not due to any concerns over animal welfare, but simply because I love geese. They are far and away my favorite bird.
You’ll Die Laughing…Or Not
What was it about these trading cards that made them so irresistible?
I grew up calling them Monster Cards, although that is merely a generic description. Collectors often refer to them as You'll Die Laughing cards. That is also incorrect. For many years, the proper name for this bizarre series eluded me, as I had discarded the colorful wax paper pack wrappers shortly after every purchase, and I was only five at the time. In fact, the fabled Topps collectibles were marketed as Creature Feature in 1973 with an initial run of 62 trading cards, followed shortly thereafter with a second series of 66. The images on those cards are still familiar to me all these years later.
The Creature Feature gimmick was as elementary as its target demographic. Black and white stills from old Universal Pictures horror films were given ridiculous dialogue captions. The reverse, printed in purple ink on gray card stock, featured a fanciful illustration of jovial monsters gathered around a tombstone, upon which was inscribed a terribly corny joke. Despite the heading You'll Die Laughing, it's unlikely that the lame attempts at humor provoked so much as a mild snort, let alone a lethal guffaw.
Turn To The Left
All of us have our pet peeves when it comes to driving. Some motorists are infuriated by tailgating, others cannot stand a slow car in the passing lane, and some object to the high speed at which their fellow drivers pass them. I share these annoyances and many others, but for whatever reason, the traffic behaviors that irritate me the most seem to be related to left turns. One of the practices that I dislike is absolutely against the law, another is of questionable legality, and a third is perfectly legal but nonetheless maddening to me.
I commence my diatribe with the most grievous offense, a traffic violation so blatant that the first time I encountered it I was left slack-jawed in astonishment. Picture an average intersection with traffic stopped along its north/south axis. The drivers wait patiently for the light to change. As you mentally survey the scene, keep your eyes on the southbound car in the left turn lane, which is poised to enter the intersection, wait for oncoming traffic to clear, and turn to the east. This is the car that will soon do something aggressive, reckless and dangerous. Let's refer to its driver as Joe Dingus, for the sake of clarity.