Month: March 2015

KT’s Wicked Tuna Recap: Episode 2, “Anchor Anger”

  By

Last week, I recapped the first episode in this season of Wicked Tuna. Episode 2 aired last night Sunday Night, and boy, do we have plenty to talk about (probably not it’s a boring show). I’m done geared up for the next 43 minutes of my life! I have some margaritas, my DVR, and a growing sense of dread – I’m good to go.

We start off with the Tuna.com, where they spend a 2 minute portion of the show filming absolutely nothing of interest. Next is a segment on the Pinwheel, which is all decked out in its normal stupid rasta glory. At one point there is green, yellow, and red pretty much everywhere, including the color of the fishing line and Tyler’s boxer shorts.

Diversify, people.

Diversify, people.

I literally do not get this obsession. I don’t think I have cumulatively smoked enough weed in my life to ever purchase anything related to reggae. I mean more power to him, I just thought that whole trend was done in like 1999 but what do I know, I just live and breathe pop culture and am married to a nightclub DJ. Kids these days. Anyway, SLOW MOTION SEAGULLS!

THEY'RE SO BEAUUUTIFUL AND DON'T AT ALL SHIT EVERYWHERE

THEY’RE SO BEAUUUTIFUL AND DON’T AT ALL SHIT EVERYWHERE

Over on the Hot Tuna, Mike explains that he is TJ’s younger brother by 18 months, making them “Irish Step-Twins.” o_O He then states that because they are brothers, he will bring yelling and tension to the boat, which basically was like “please keep me on, I shall bring ever so many ratings.” But whatever, they seem cool, so let’s get to some drama.

Oh, more reggae music, so we’re back on Stonerboat. Oh, there’s some dramatic music because Pinwheel and Tuna and Tyler says “I’m going to pop your anchor ball!” That’s totally unscripted, I bet.

Crazy just happens out on these high seas! Anyway turns out he was just being a dick. “This guy’s going to get beaten one of these days!” says somebody. Yeah, that’s pretty much the Gloucester way – just assault somebody. Classy. Maybe you can also not pay your cab fare and be in possession of a Schedule B substance while you’re at it, really go for broke. They continue to talk about the likelihood of Tyler being beaten and apparently no one steps in to say it’s a bad idea. Amazing.

Anyway the Tuna.com accidentally keeps catching sharks, while Pinwheel lands another fish. Dave gets sorta butthurt and steams away sulking, while Tyler and his group of skater bois wave dramatically. I can’t even hate on the Pinwheel because they’re sorta the best thing this show has. I just want more footage of them slamming cheeseburgers and PBRs like we know they have somewhere on the cutting room floor. Can we just cut all the Hard Merchandise scenes and just have way more stoner action? I want to see some Cards Against Humanity going on.

Why haven’t they called the Hot Tuna the Ott Tuna? Har Har. Oh, I’m almost two drinks in by the way. Yep. No one was saying “I need this fish” so I just went with a slow and continuous drinking to block out the reggae music.

 

Sometimes I pause this in the weirdest places.

 

The Hard Merchandise reels a fish, and someone yells “we got a wicked screamer!” which was, of course, my nickname in high school.

Back on the Tuna.com, Dave reaches a new level of freak-out and uses more profanity than I do when his line breaks. At one point he blames an entire week of bad luck on Tyler, which is an incredibly adult and mature thing to do. Then upon returning to the Marina, he actually whacks Tyler directly in the face and threatens to break his legs, and then says Tyler has “no backbone.” Um, you just assaulted someone much younger and smaller than you. What the fuck even is this show? People enjoy watching half-fake assaults between white guys in dumb shorts? I literally don’t understand America. Way to represent Gloucester, guys. Awesome. Good work.

Drinks Needed: 2.5
Tunas Caught: 4
Slow Motion Seagulls: 1
Dogs Yelled At: 1
Idiotic Assaults: 1

Poem Titles Re-Written for Hipster Audiences

  By

hipsterpoet

Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening to Vomit PBR into a Bush

Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night Without a Double-Breasted Peacoat.

I Know Why The Caged Bird Tattoo Sings

Do Not Stand at my 5th Floor Bed-Stuy Walkup and Weep

No Man’s Mustache is an Island

All That is Gold Feather Earrings Does Not Glitter

Oh Captain Hat! My Captain Hat!

“In Flanders Field” Check-in on Foursquare

No Snark Sunday: Japan and Winter

  By

Two things I love are Japan and winter. Neither is easy.

My first trip was in the mid 90’s, to Toyama, a small industrial city on the opposite side of the main island of Honshu from Tokyo. I was there three weeks. My brain almost exploded.

I remember looking out the window as we touched down thinking “Oh look, they have  streets and Hondas and KFCs. It all looks the same as home. How hard can this be?” Answer: very hard. Because everything in Japan, especially outside the major cities, is all Japanese. Japan is, like, everywhere in that country. It’s sort of inescapable, all the Japan in Japan. Go figure.

Things+are+a+bit+different+in+japan+_6311b26a703f82a5c5c1e8696abbb1c1

All that Japan everywhere made getting anything done reliant on bending to unique structures and expectations. The equipment we were using was similar, but not the same. The cultural structure of teams and the communication in and between them was impossible to easily navigate for a novice. Even getting materials (this was a building project) was a challenge, but also hilarious as their main supply outlet (sort of like Home Depot but more industrial-focused) was called “Happy Beaver.” My point is whatever it was I had to do in a given day needed to be adjusted to account for the “Japan Factor.” Even those Hondas drove on the opposite side of the road and those KFCs were considered (at the time) to be nice sit-down restaurants, the kind of place you would take your spouse on a night out.

This is how I feel right now, how a lot of us feel, I think at the tail end of this epic winter. We’re doing all the same stuff we normally do; commuting to work, getting kids to school, walking the dog,  trying to get our jobs done and the shopping and the laundry and the rest of it all taken care of, but the conditions are taking a piece of the action wherever we go. It’s hard to adjust to the idea we now live in what is, essentially, a giant strip mine for snow with huge pieces of excavation equipment rolling around everywhere all the time. It’s difficult to get into your head that traveling from downtown to East Gloucester and back can take as long as getting to Boston. It’s tiring. It wears on you.

We’re at the point where it’s not an emergency anymore, this is just day-to-day life. It’s just normal to see people and cars sharing the lanes of the narrow, busy streets, inching out because you can’t see around corners, knowing that public transportation is no longer reliable or how parking is an epic challenge and walking  anywhere is a death-defying process. And we’re just going on with the full knowledge it’s going to snow again, probably a couple more times. That’s just life in the new reality.

It’s the same feeling I remember having after another long day of failing to get across to the the crane operator what we were trying to do for about four hours. I was lying in my micro-scale hotel room drinking my next in the series of large cans of Asahi beer from the vending machine in the hall outside (there were benefits) and listening to the BBC World Service on my small Grundig shortwave (this was pre-Internet). I was thinking, “I just want shit to be normal again. I just want to order what I think is a pizza and not get a flat rice pancake with a pile of what looks like moldy beans on top with two french toast sticks jutting out of it. I just want to get on a train and know that it’s going to wind up somewhere I’m trying to go, not take me to an otherworldly seaside park with these weird exposed tree-roots everywhere and that strange aquarium with tanks of  little fish that swam through hoops.”

people were crowded around this fish like it was Cher

people were crowded around this fish like it was Cher

In retrospect, that first experience was incredible. I still dream about it, especially that particular day where I got lost and gave up on what I thought I was going to get done and just wandered around. However, at the time it was profoundly stressful and exhausting.

But man, those little fish. Those thing were cool.