YUCK; Feeling Lonely Today; but at least I am not being eaten by sharks
And yes that's the kind of teeter totter I go through sometimes. Even last night I was marvelling at what a great mood I've been in the last week, and wondered when it would swing around, and it looks like maybe today's the day. I must have sent like 4 emails yesterday and I got no replies, and even though its totally petty I still kinda go, aww, poor me, so sad, blah blah blah ...
So let's talk about sharks.
Who has seen BLUE WATER, WHITE DEATH? Yeah, that's right, NONE A Y'ALL have. Cept for me. And it rules. Made in 1971, when apparently Great Whites were infrequently-photographed, it has a bunch of (apparently) famous divers (and a folk singer) tooling around the world looking for trouble in the form of the famous MAN EATER. And I can't tell you how many times I yelled at the screen "You fools are crazy!" These clowns kept getting out of their cages to "swim amongst the sharks." While they are feeding. With blood in the water. I'm sorry, but did someone just say 'death wish?' Maybe it s a WHITE DEATH wish!
This kind of thing just really floats my boat. I like all those fakey shark movies like DARK WATERS and MEGALODON, but the REAL DEAL is just so damned primal. A shark seems like some inescapable attack engine. Its one of the few things that truly frightens me; I just don't know what I'd do if I ever found myself in the water with a shark. More than likely, I'd just die of fright. Well, maybe. Maybe pee my pants first. The thought is just so utterly horriffic that I can't really get my head around it. I can imagine being mugged (scary). I can imagine getting set on fire (not fun, really hot). But being IN PROXIMITY to a shark, never mind being actually ATTACKED, is something akin to pondering the edge of the universe. It seems beyond reality, something so awful and unknown that you pray you never really know any more about it. So I got my fingers and toes crossed on this one folks. Dear God: keep Lee away from them damn fine killing machines of yours. He's a bit ascairt of em. Something about their Dedicated Objective, their lack of Reason, their Focused Malevolence, or, even scarier, a total void of any GooD OR Evil, just impassive savagery.
Brrr. Kinda terrible, really.
But the movie's really something special. The print I got is so ragged-out that it reminded me of some old unknown Kung Fu movie. Its so scratched and dirty, filled with sprocket damage and jump cuts, you'd think it had been dragged by a truck. It's a rare thing of beauty. A testament to its coolness --- its been shown A LOT. "Where" and "to whom," who knows. But somebody showed this guy some love over the years. Mostly stagey, with piles of rehearsed dialogue, and punctuated by infrequent renditions of sea-themed folk songs, it comes dangerously close to being kinda silly, but the whole time you get the feeling they are just winding you up for the payoff. And it comes, in spades. In fact, there are PLENTY of payoffs. The ugliness of a whaling vessel, the gruesome appetites of sea-based carnivores, the flat-out oddball life forms that populate the seas ... its like a National Geographic special on Crack. When the sharks appear you can hear the childlike glee in the divers' voices, as if they weren't actually in the very presence of the grim reaper himself. Their post-swimming dialogues are even more flummoxing. "You just have to keep a general air of well-being about you," one says. "You have to just tell yourself that you aren't in any danger, otherwise you'd go crazy," another says, after having miraculously kept his cool in a swarm of these devils. Just astonishing.
You know all of that stock footage you always see of shark attacks? THIS IS WHERE IT CAME FROM. This is the original, the progenitor. Heck, one of the divers is that guy you always see photos of, well, photos of his ravaged body at least, the one where you really have to wonder if you are looking at a cadaver, because the guy seems like he's just BARELY HANGING TOGETHER. How can a person's body be so savaged and still survive? And yet, here he is, blithely "amongst them" again, like some sad victim of Stockholm Syndrome who can't draw himself away from this mysterious being who holds the key to mortality in its grasp. Or fins or whatever. Just amazing. I don't even call it 'bravery.' And it isn't 'foolhardiness,' either. Its like faith in God, even though you know God can take you at any time. Maybe its more like being in the presence of God. Whatever it is --- it's something undefinable, something I don't ever plan to explore.
I'll just watch it on TV, thank-you-very-much!
***
Oh, and by the way, my day got a lot better :) There's people in the world that can really do that to you, without even knowing or trying, they can just turn a lame day right on around and you go home smiling.
So let's talk about sharks.
Who has seen BLUE WATER, WHITE DEATH? Yeah, that's right, NONE A Y'ALL have. Cept for me. And it rules. Made in 1971, when apparently Great Whites were infrequently-photographed, it has a bunch of (apparently) famous divers (and a folk singer) tooling around the world looking for trouble in the form of the famous MAN EATER. And I can't tell you how many times I yelled at the screen "You fools are crazy!" These clowns kept getting out of their cages to "swim amongst the sharks." While they are feeding. With blood in the water. I'm sorry, but did someone just say 'death wish?' Maybe it s a WHITE DEATH wish!
This kind of thing just really floats my boat. I like all those fakey shark movies like DARK WATERS and MEGALODON, but the REAL DEAL is just so damned primal. A shark seems like some inescapable attack engine. Its one of the few things that truly frightens me; I just don't know what I'd do if I ever found myself in the water with a shark. More than likely, I'd just die of fright. Well, maybe. Maybe pee my pants first. The thought is just so utterly horriffic that I can't really get my head around it. I can imagine being mugged (scary). I can imagine getting set on fire (not fun, really hot). But being IN PROXIMITY to a shark, never mind being actually ATTACKED, is something akin to pondering the edge of the universe. It seems beyond reality, something so awful and unknown that you pray you never really know any more about it. So I got my fingers and toes crossed on this one folks. Dear God: keep Lee away from them damn fine killing machines of yours. He's a bit ascairt of em. Something about their Dedicated Objective, their lack of Reason, their Focused Malevolence, or, even scarier, a total void of any GooD OR Evil, just impassive savagery.
Brrr. Kinda terrible, really.
But the movie's really something special. The print I got is so ragged-out that it reminded me of some old unknown Kung Fu movie. Its so scratched and dirty, filled with sprocket damage and jump cuts, you'd think it had been dragged by a truck. It's a rare thing of beauty. A testament to its coolness --- its been shown A LOT. "Where" and "to whom," who knows. But somebody showed this guy some love over the years. Mostly stagey, with piles of rehearsed dialogue, and punctuated by infrequent renditions of sea-themed folk songs, it comes dangerously close to being kinda silly, but the whole time you get the feeling they are just winding you up for the payoff. And it comes, in spades. In fact, there are PLENTY of payoffs. The ugliness of a whaling vessel, the gruesome appetites of sea-based carnivores, the flat-out oddball life forms that populate the seas ... its like a National Geographic special on Crack. When the sharks appear you can hear the childlike glee in the divers' voices, as if they weren't actually in the very presence of the grim reaper himself. Their post-swimming dialogues are even more flummoxing. "You just have to keep a general air of well-being about you," one says. "You have to just tell yourself that you aren't in any danger, otherwise you'd go crazy," another says, after having miraculously kept his cool in a swarm of these devils. Just astonishing.
You know all of that stock footage you always see of shark attacks? THIS IS WHERE IT CAME FROM. This is the original, the progenitor. Heck, one of the divers is that guy you always see photos of, well, photos of his ravaged body at least, the one where you really have to wonder if you are looking at a cadaver, because the guy seems like he's just BARELY HANGING TOGETHER. How can a person's body be so savaged and still survive? And yet, here he is, blithely "amongst them" again, like some sad victim of Stockholm Syndrome who can't draw himself away from this mysterious being who holds the key to mortality in its grasp. Or fins or whatever. Just amazing. I don't even call it 'bravery.' And it isn't 'foolhardiness,' either. Its like faith in God, even though you know God can take you at any time. Maybe its more like being in the presence of God. Whatever it is --- it's something undefinable, something I don't ever plan to explore.
I'll just watch it on TV, thank-you-very-much!
***
Oh, and by the way, my day got a lot better :) There's people in the world that can really do that to you, without even knowing or trying, they can just turn a lame day right on around and you go home smiling.
posted by figurebuilder at 9:50 AM
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