You yell 'shark' and we've got a panic on our hands on the Fourth of July

Didn't see this in a quick search, but the Cape Cod Times got a pretty great shot of a great white cruising behind a man in a kayak last weekend. They were smarter than Amity Mayor Larry Vaughn and closed the beaches.

 

"He's gonna need a bigger boat". LOL

 

"Uh, I am familiar with the fact that you are going to ignore this particular problem until it swims up and bites you in the ass!"

 

Somebody should make a movie about this.

 

Can't imagine what was going through that kayaker's mind. I've been snorkeling and seen multiple sharks swimming below me (no cage or anything, just out in the open water of the Indian Ocean) and I wasn't freaked out at all. The sharks didn't even seem to notice me or my cousin.

But this guy ... I mean, that's a great white and it's cruising up right behind him doing its best Jaws impression with its dorsal out of the water. And from below, his kayak and paddles probably at least slightly resemble a seal. I'm sure I'd have been more freaked out in that situation than I was snorkeling with four or five sharks swimming 30 feet below me.

 

Something that really bugs me about the "Jaws" series is Mayor Larry Vaughn.
Not his flippant attitude toward the shark, or his blatant disregard for the safety of his residents.
Rather, how in the holy fuck did he get re-elected!?
"Jaws 2" takes place a few years after the first one, and Vaughn is somehow still mayor. If he was still mayor on July 5, 1975, and not chopped up for chum by a mob of angry Amitians it would've been a miracle.
Forget the 35-foot Great White, or the voodoo-inspired shark in "Jaws 4". THIS is the biggest leap of logic in the entire series.

 

In 3D!

 

He's a pro-business mayor of a town populated almost entirely by business-owning voters. I'm sure he gave them all tax breaks to reflect the poor tourist season they endured.

 

Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side, Chief. We was comin' back from the island of Tinian to Leyte... just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb.

Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in 12 minutes. Didn't see the first shark for about a half an hour. Tiger. 13-footer. You know how you know that when you're in the water, Chief? You tell by looking from the dorsal to the tail fin. What we didn't know, was our bomb mission had been so secret, no distress signal had been sent. They didn't even list us overdue for a week.

Very first light, Chief, sharks come cruisin', so we formed ourselves into tight groups. You know, it was kinda like old squares in the battle like you see in the calendar named "The Battle of Waterloo" and the idea was: shark comes to the nearest man, that man he starts poundin' and hollerin' and screamin' and sometimes the shark will go away.

But sometimes he wouldn't go away. Sometimes that shark he looks right into ya. Right into your eyes. And, you know, the thing about a shark... he's got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll's eyes. When he comes at ya, doesn't seem to be living... until he bites ya, and those black eyes roll over white and then... ah then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin'.

The ocean turns red, and despite all the poundin' and the hollerin', they all come in and they... rip you to pieces. You know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men. I don't know how many sharks, maybe a thousand. I know how many men, they averaged six an hour.

On Thursday morning, Chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player. Boatswain's mate. I thought he was asleep. I reached over to wake him up. He bobbed up, down in the water just like a kinda top. Upended. Well, he'd been bitten in half below the waist.

Noon, the fifth day, Mr. Hooper, a Lockheed Ventura saw us. He swung in low and he saw us... he was a young pilot, a lot younger than Mr. Hooper. Anyway, he saw us and he come in low and three hours later a big fat PBY comes down and starts to pick us up.

You know that was the time I was most frightened... waitin' for my turn. I'll never put on a lifejacket again. So, eleven hundred men went in the water; 316 men come out and the sharks took the rest, June the 29th, 1945.

Anyway, we delivered the bomb.

 

That was the headline on the front page.

 

Yeah, that's where I read it - that's why I put it in quotes.

oh kudos btw for that HR Derby checksheet. That was just fantastic.

 

I can't take credit for creation, just finding it. They are working on an All-Star Game one for tonight.