August 04, 2009

• It just won't feel right commenting on this until Snark Week. But they did overlook the Golf Shark
• May I add a personal anecdote: when Jaws first hit the theaters, I was working for "wacky radio personality" 'Sweet' Dick Whittington who tried to do a public stunt or audience gathering once a week. He started talking about the fact that sharks never stop swimming and they never sleep and he jumped to the conclusion that if sharks did sleep they'd be less cranky and less likely to bite people. So he organized a Lullabye Sing-In for sharks. Marineland wouldn't let us broadcast from their shark tank, so he improvised a group of human sharks... a card shark, a pool shark and a loan shark (all actors and part of his troupe). I didn't qualify as a shark (my Wendell character was too familiar to be anything else) so I got him to let me be the Sandman and got a bag of sand from Santa Monica Beach that I threw at the human sharks (who stood in an empty wading pool that was our substitute shark tank) while about 50 people who'd gathered in the radio station parking lot sang lullabyes. It was way too visual for radio, but way too much fun. Best moment: Loan shark: Hey, there's a cigarette butt in the sand! Me: That's how you're sure it's from a local beach.