I Like to Watch

July 27, 2008 | Sharks are exciting and full of promise, but that only goes part of the way toward explaining why Shark Week always brings joy to the hearts of so many. Yes, sharks are fascinating to watch, cartoonish and beautiful, graceful and horrifying, magnificent and intimidating and nonchalant. Either because we don't have to elbow past them in the grocery store or because we try very hard not to think of them during the other 51 weeks of the year, sharks seem exotic, and fixating on them feels almost self-indulgent.

Shark Week, then, is more than just a week to look at sharks. Maybe it started as such 21 years ago, when the Discovery Channel, like the awkward kid who brings his dad's python to school for a momentary glimpse of popularity, first shouted "Hey everybody! Look over here! Sharks!" But since then, Shark Week has evolved into a high concept, divorced from its original intention. Shark Week doesn't just mean, "Let's look at scary, fascinating sharks together! Let's watch them circle menacingly and chomp on bloody fish! Let's hear about the most gruesome shark attacks and worry about the next time we dip a toe in the water!"

No, Shark Week also urges us to celebrate something arbitrary, something divorced from tradition or religion or national significance. The spirit of Shark Week reminds us that we get to choose what matters to us, and we can make today Taco Day or make this Nap Week, or expand Nap Week into the Year of Avoiding Real Work. We can celebrate frogs or expensive shoes or good friends or cheap beer or big hair by giving each its very own holiday, and if we choose to sit on the couch and eat snacks and watch sharks on TV for a full week, that's a perfectly legitimate choice, too.

The founders of Shark Week recognize how empty and directionless our lives can be. They know how we drift along, searching for some worthwhile distraction. They know how we're aching for something to rally us forward, like Miley Cyrus fans who need a cheery beacon through the bewildering hinterlands of puberty. And unlike campaign coverage, Emmy nominations, Olympic trials or the Tour de France, Shark Week doesn't require cogitation or analysis. We're tired of thinking. We don't want to worry about the impending recession. We don't care about Angelina Jolie's twins ... or her two brand-new babies, for that matter. We just want to watch sharks, damn it!

Happy Shark Week, America!

Good chums
Naturally most of the programs featured during Shark Week (July 27-Aug. 2 on Discovery) are one part Jacques Cousteau, two parts "Jackass." "Surviving Sharks" (premieres 9 p.m. EDT Monday) fits the bill perfectly. Under the auspices of such high-minded goals as studying "the interactions between humans and sharks" and "analyzing a shark's bite," host Les Stroud of "Survivorman" does exactly what boats full of rubbernecking tourists do every year: He throws a bunch of chum in the water and waits for some big-ass sharks to show up and scare the bejesus out of everyone.

Thus does Stroud place a "chumsicle" (trash-can-shaped popsicle of frozen chum) into the water suspended by a rope, ostensibly so that he can determine whether reef sharks (in the Caribbean) and great white sharks (in South Africa) feed more frenetically during the day or at night. Stroud's methods are less than scientific, of course. He simply observes the sharks in both cases, and then concludes that sharks are "opportunists" that are happy to feed at any hour. Man, Shark Week is so educational! Pass the nachos, will ya?

Next, in the interest of "analyzing" the bite of the great white shark, Stroud throws a big hunk of fish into the water, and then films a great white chomping on it. Here's his analysis: "The snout lifts! The jaw drops! The teeth protrude! And the bait is engulfed in its massive jaws!" He continues breathlessly, "Researchers have found that the great white follows these four steps in virtually every bite, and it all happens in less than one second!" "Well, ain't that a corker!" we gasp, as our snouts lift, our jaws drop, our teeth protrude and another nacho is engulfed in our hungry jaws. In another highly unscientific experiment, Stroud straps a piece of meat to some chain mail to see if it'll protect against a great white bite. (Something tells me he already knows the answer to this one.) Yes, the snout lifts and the jaw drops, and then, to the delight of Shark Week watchers everywhere, the great white shakes its head back and forth like a dog playing tug o' war with a rope toy. Stroud's face lights up and you just know he's thinking, "If only we made a little guy wear that chain mail suit, this footage would be sooo much more dramatic!" A few seconds later, the shark chomps the bait in two and swims away, the meat and half of the chain mail in his gullet.

Time for another experiment! "You sense that you're being stalked by a tiger shark. Do you play dead, or do you swim for the boat?" Stroud uses his "friend" Bionic Bob, a motorized dummy, to see how a tiger shark responds to different motions. When Bionic Bob swims (Very slowly. Poor Bob!) toward the boat, the tiger shark ignores him for 45 minutes. Come on, this is disappointing! Why didn't they strap a pork shoulder to Bionic Bob's ass?

But then, when Bionic Bob ... well, bobs in the water, lifelessly, the tiger shark swims over and rips Bionic Bob's pants off, revealing his bionic buttocks. Stroud, ever the thoughtful scientist, yells and laughs from the safety of his nearby boat. Soon, the tiger shark is chomping on Bionic Bob's jugular, ripping off both his arms while ominous music plays. Stroud's voice-over somehow manages to inform us, without giggling, that "the injuries Bob has sustained are devastating!"

OK, let's just be honest. Shark Week is for stoners ... or the stoned at heart.

No wonder Discovery's "MythBusters" (9 p.m. Wednesdays) are invited to the party. "Mythbusters" is also for stoners -- albeit the science-oriented, slightly geeky kind who smoke big bong hits and then figure out how to rig together a human-propelling slingshot using only bungee cords and duct tape. The MythBuster team of cheerful miscreants typically take on myths like "Is a bird in the hand really worth two in the bush?" or "Do witches actually float?"

OK, hold on a minute. I just looked on the "MythBusters" Web site's episode guide for a few examples, and guess what I found?

"Episode 35: Border Slingshot: Is it feasible to fly over the frontier? In this episode, Adam and Jamie take on the myth that illegal immigrants are firing themselves 200 yards across the border and into the United States with a slingshot so accurate, it can land the human projectiles safely on a carefully placed mattress. Border patrols are reportedly baffled -- can the MythBusters' handbuilt human-sized slingshot solve the puzzle?"

Sweet Jesus, and I thought that my human-propelling slingshot joke was the ultimate too-absurd-and-stonery-to-be-true example! Let this be a lesson to you, kids: The stonery-ness of stoners always lives up to its mythic status.

Next page: Shark myth ... busted!