Loki, 'The Nexus Event' - June 30

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Just ask the NatGeo magazine – in their July 2021 article about the Kenyan fossils they talk about ‘elephant relatives called proboscideans’, and all that I can say is: oh, for fuck’s sake! ‘Proboscideans’ are a taxonomic term that acts as an ‘umbrella’ that contains both the modern elephants and their extinct cousins, (the mammoths, the mastodons, and beyond). To call proboscideans ‘elephant relatives’ is just wrong, as the modern elephants, (the Asian and two African species), themselves are proboscideans. NatGeo once used to be a standard for scientific prestige and accuracy, and now that is gone. ‘Elephant relatives called proboscideans’ indeed!

…On to the more pleasant topics? This week’s ‘Loki’ episode, ‘The Nexus Event’ is…officially mediocre, as the show’s crew, apparently, just could not figure out the pacing in the show’s first season.

Let us elaborate, (if that is possible). From the start, Disney/MCU tried to downplay ‘Loki’; possibly because the titular character (characters?) are bisexual, and Disney hates controversy these days, and not just because it costs them money, but because. They just hate it after the entire SW, and MCU, and other messes. What next?

Well, again, I want to blame the troubles of ‘Loki’ on Disney/MCU trying to not have their LGBTQ+ cake and eat it too, but the truth is that the LGBTQ+ elements are minor in ‘Loki’, and the show itself suffers… from clunky, awkward plot. Loki and Sylvie’s entire side trip to Lamentis proved to be a monumental red herring; perhaps the duo needed to really bond, and there are few better bonding events than an apocalypse, (cough Thanos cough), but somehow ‘Loki’ the TV series mishandles this, by making Lamentis look like an unnecessary side trip from the TVA.

The TVA itself… I am no Loki, (though the post-credits scene introduced several more to the show), but I began to suspect that something was wrong with the TVA from the start; it was just too grand to be true, and now that the space lizard-gods proved to be robots… people aren’t being too surprised. Moreover, judge RnR is based on a character who has been associated with Conq the Kangaroo… I mean, Kang the Conqueror, who is a known villain in the Marvel Comics, so this sudden turn of events is not too sudden either.

In addition, Loki’s death? Also more dramatic than surprising, not to mention that I, for one, am kind of inured to this shit after the AoS’ S5 finale: they tried to make Fitz’s and Coulson’s demise oh so dramatic… and then they turned around and practically resurrected Fitz in S6, and as for Coulson and his look-alikes in AoS’ S6 & S7… don’t start.

‘Loki’, conversely, went in the other direction – all of the Lokis introduced in this series, (including Sylvie), are different from each other…and it will be interesting to see as to how the titular Loki figures out as to how to handle them, and how to deal with them, and so on. Straightforward enough, only ‘Loki’ the TV series does not deal with straightforward. Pause.

In AoS, the plot lines overindulged in twists and turns, especially in the first seasons…but regardless of this overindulgence, the overall plot still marched forward, from point A to point B, to oversimplify the situation. In ‘Loki’, conversely, the plot doesn’t go anywhere, it just circles around a single point – the TVA – and all the twists and turns serve even less purpose than they did in AoS, as they don’t progress the overall plot at all, but only make it more muddled. Anything else?

Ah, yes, back to the characters’ deaths. AoS already made a mockery of this aspect of MCU at the S5 finale, but ‘Loki’ took it one step further: apparently, all of the characters that are ‘killed’, or ‘deleted’, by TVA, don’t really die, but rather end up in some sort of a limbo, which is rather reminiscent of an apocalyptic NYC, (cough, the first Avengers’ movie, cough). I.e. instead of dying, Loki has found even more allies for himself, and whatever he will do now, he will do it with style and with help… (In theory about the last part). Anything else?

Sadly, no. Real life still sucks – a condo has collapsed in Florida, a man was attacked by a great white shark off the coast of California, (I believe), and yesterday we had to live through the mother of all the thunderstorms while dealing with a fire alarm. Put otherwise, my good readers, this is it for now – see you all soon!

AoS Ep 7x10 - Aug 1

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so we are continuing to talk about AoS. In this week’s episode, Jiaying is dead, and she never learned that Daisy was her daughter, just as Kora was. Pause.

Again, I may have forgot to mention it, but the entire ‘Daisy has a half-sister’ plot is yet another reboot, one that is not really compatible with the earlier episodes slash seasons. After the time storm – something brand new and original – AoS is back to the tired old clichés, i.e. rebooting and recycling its’ old ideas, (Nathaniel & Kora aren’t too different from Grant and Kara, or from Werner and Ruby, for that matter), time mismanagement – really, we’re having more of the same old hash now, are we? – plot redesigns, and, also, inconsistency.

Back when S7 began, the team Time Bus was all about how it was all about preserving the past, only now the past is anything but being preserved – it is being wildly changed instead. John Garrett is being brought into the (quasi)-Hydra fold already, way before the Balkans incident, (back in the 1990s, as opposed to the 1980s), which threatens his connection to Ward, for without Garrett, Ward would never become involved with S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra; whether that’s a good thing or not is another question, but the team Time Bus is trying to preserve the past, the good and the bad of it, not change it, right?

…And speaking of Grant, what about Daisy? Was she conceived and abandoned already? Because if she wasn’t, then she’s liable to stop existing, period, once their time travel ends and they settle back down, (in a manner of speaking)? With the entire old leadership of Li Shi dead, the time line changed already and possibly for good. What next?

I, for one, have no idea, but it will be interesting to see as to what will happen next, simply because we are in the finishing stretch, baby, and no one cares. Rather, everyone’s focus is on Daniel and Daisy, because, like, they are MCU/S.H.I.E.L.D.’s new couple of darlings or something. Since there is no indication that ‘Marvel’s AoS’ characters will appear in the future MCU installments, this doesn’t mean very much.

On the other hand, I’ve to apologize, as I’ve mislead you: ‘The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’ aren’t coming to MCU/Disney+ this month, they’re restarting their airing/shooting this month, and will arrive on MCU/Disney+ later this year, (2020). Given that we still have nary a sign as to when the re-made ‘Mulan’ Disney movie is coming out, I’m not making any bets on TFATWS, or any other Marvel/Disney+ shows. Anything else?

…Back in real life, a woman was killed by a great white shark off the coast of Maine, (which is an American state, cough), just when NatGeo is thrusting its’ ‘Shark Week’ all over the place: here, there, and everywhere, even on its’ currently downfallen YouTube channels. The NatGeoWild YouTube channel is not even worth mentioning, as these days it just features clips from the various NatGeo (and Animal Planet?) TV series, none of which lately is any good. Then again, there is the ‘Gordon Ramsey Unchained’ show… pause.

Earlier this year, the NatGeo YouTube channel aired plenty of Gordon Ramsey’s adventures abroad, but now, as his final – for the S2, anyways – Norwegian episode was aired, the two YouTube channels fell out of sync. Did the NatGeo leadership and team Ramsey have a falling-out or something? Does anyone have any ideas? If so, feel free to share them with me, because I will be listening.

For now, though, this is it. See you all soon!

JW: Motion Comics part 1 - Nov 29

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. An extra notification: whatever you do, do not buy a reindeer donut, because it is a donut with eyes. It just is not right eating something, anything, that looks back at you while you eat it. It may not be animated, or sentient, or whatever, but it still got eyes and is looking at you while you eat it. Do not buy it and do not eat it – it is not worth looking at it looking back at you while you eat it. What is next?

The Jurassic World franchise released a new ‘masterpiece’ – a motion comic, a first part of a sequence, which deals with the mosasaur that was introduced back in the first JW movie. Ok, and?

Well, most important part that got overseen, most likely, is that this motion comic is ‘woke’ – its’ main character, the news TV host, is a part of an interracial family; essentially, it is a drawn animation version of the family that we’ve seen in the ‘Battle at Big Rock’ live short film – but because BBR and this mosasaur-featuring motion comics are about dinosaurs, so no one seems to be all that concerned about the human side of the pieces… So what?

Good question – for example, people on both sides claim that ‘wokeness’ is affecting mass media, especially cinema movies. Just look at latest failure of the CA-2019 reboot. It didn’t succeed, but not because of wokeness, and judging as to how quickly Ms. Elizabeth Banks stopped complaining about this, (for whatever reasons), she recognized, or was forced to recognize, this as well. What next?

The mosasaur? Yes, it’s the big one, and JW was working towards it since the closing scenes of JW: FK film; even the aforementioned BBR short feature had a shot of this sea reptile swallowing a great white shark not unlike how it swallow a sea lion, but-

On average, a modern great white shark is about 6 m long. This is a big fish, but even so, it does not really swallow its prey whole; it tears it into chunks with its’ cutting teeth and swallows those chunks. The mosasaur – well, all of the mosasaur family – belonged to the group of reptiles that includes modern snakes and lizards, the Squamata; the mosasaurs’ closest relatives were the shared ancestors of snakes and monitor lizards (think the Komodo dragon), and so the mosasaurs were aquatic relatives of both. (Both the modern marine iguanas of the Galapagos Islands and the modern sea snakes of the tropical seas are not very close relatives of the extinct mosasaurs).

How big were the mosasaurs when compared to a 6-m-long great white shark? The North American Tylosaurus, the biggest of them all, could reach 12 m in length, twice as big as the modern fish in question. But! It was not a swallower like a modern crocodile, which prefer to swallow their fish prey whole. Instead, mosasaurs essentially had a second pair of jaws inside the first pair to better rip and tear their prey into pieces.

The JW mosasaur isn’t ‘real’ or even ‘realistic’ and might be more than 12 m long by now? It is not about size alone, in the first JW when we saw it for the first time feeding on a great white shark; it still tore it into a couple of pieces, before swallowing them. After it attacked and killed the I-Rex in the end of the first movie, the beginning of the second film showed the bones of the I-Rex just lying around in a jumbled mess. Size-related issues or not, the JW mosasaur is realistic, maybe not quite on the level of BBC’s ‘Sea monsters’ (2003) mini-trilogy, but still close enough. So where does it leave us?

It leaves us with a first part of a multiserial motion comic that shows, or will show, how the modern world will coexist with prehistoric animals. This is the movie that the JP/JW franchise wanted to make in place of what we now know as the JW: FK film and it will probably be done with a much more genuine, heartfelt effort than the JW: FK film, which is essentially two movies stitched into one. This isn’t a trait unique to JW: FK; the SW8 film had the same problem, fundamentally speaking, but in case of JW: FK, this was done because it became a filler between the first JW movie and the upcoming new JW franchise creations, such as BBR and this motion comic. Both are variations on the same theme – humans interacting with dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals, both even feature interracial families – how progressive! Moreover, the truth is, if a movie is good, then wokeness will not hurt it at all, just look at BBR, and the same goes for the other mass media mediums, such as this motion comic. Ergo, let us just enjoy it and see what the future brings us in this medium of mass media, because real life sucks, (see above).

…This is it for now; see you all soon!

Face the Beast - Sep 7

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Just ask the dead opossum I came across the other day – it clearly wasn’t dead via road kill, but died after tangling with some bigger animal, and it was a fairly large opossum – about the size of an average house cat or bigger. I do not know just what would have attacked such an animal – probably a red fox or even a coyote, but regardless, the opossum is dead. The world won’t be quite the same after its’ passing. Now, onto the TV land.

Well, speaking of animals, I watched ‘Face the Beast’ miniseries today, and I must admit, it was good. It involved a couple of scientists/investigators… well, investigating various infamous animal attacks in human history: First, the saltwater crocodile attack on the Ramree islands, and then the sharks on the Hispaniola shipwreck. And you know what? It was good.

It has been a while since we’ve talked about AFO and its’ episodes, which had featured CGI versions as well as robot replicas of crocodiles and sharks, (as well as various other animals), and for a certain reason, ‘Face the Beast’ brought it back: sure, there was plenty of excitement and entertainment, but there was data collecting and at least some educational factors as well. Unlike whatever is going down on Animal Planet these days, the History channel in Canada tries to be educational too; whether it really succeeds is another story entirely, but it tries. In the first part, the FTB team actually ended up capturing a saltwater crocodile to rescue a village on the Ramree island, (it’s located in the Indian ocean, if anyone cares); in the second, they did a series of experiments, and proved that, you know, sharks are smarter than how they are credited to be, plus they can communicate with each other via their bioelectricity, I say. Go team FTB! …Pity that it is only a two-parter, but it works.

What it works about? In both parts, the FTB crew proved, that under a right combination, normally shy animals – yes, crocodiles and sharks are shy, especially if they have plenty of space to maneuver around humans – can become man-eaters and as such deadly dangerous, pun intended. Yes, it is not quite clear if FTB research will help avoid such scenarios in the future, but it is not the show’s concern, so there. The show’s primary role is to entertain us, its’ audience, and it quite succeeds here. Anything else?

BA has defeated SW in tennis. It is real life, not TV, so go team Canada! Not every Canadian’s life sucks, as it did for the opossum that I have come across, (remember that guy?). Life sucks, but you can feel proud for your country, this is what I am saying here.

…This is it for now, see you all soon!

JW rumblings - Sep 17

And so, our ‘Giantslayer’ adventure path is slowly moving towards the final confrontation with the evil giant tyrant/final boss. That is good, and as a sign of my relief – fighting all of these evil giants took proportionally much more time than we expected when we began this entire slog – I feel like ranting about something, again. The issue is – what subject?

Well, there is always Marvel’s current ‘secret empire’ ‘adventure path’, which has ran its’ own length, and is now transforming into ‘Marvel Legacy’ or something like that. Basically, the evil Steve Rogers/Captain America/Hydra Supreme/etc. might’ve escaped, leaving the good Steve Rogers/Captain America/etc. pick up the pieces – or not, in which case, in either case, there are some poor SWAT-type folk who are about to get smashed by a Steve Rogers, which just isn’t fun.

In another plot line, Frank ‘Punisher’ Castle is being ‘groomed’ by Fury in taking down Hydra. This sounds very grand, but again, in another comic series, Punisher just got beat down by Diamondback, making MCU a true multiverse (in a manner of speaking), while in the long run, Hydra is just a too good & conventional plot villain to be completely exterminated, so I’m not being impressed by FC being an asshole to outright villains for a change, let us see what ‘Marvel Legacy’ story arc will deliver. Plus, Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow is dead now, apparently, and the Punisher is angsting because of that as well. Seriously, were these two ever a couple, (potentially or otherwise), or is a new thing?

Meanwhile, the preparations for the making (and subsequent release) of JW2 are proceeding. Am I excited about this? No. The original JP movie was good because it was based on the original novel, which was, yes, sci-fi, but with an emphasis on science and realism. Yes, there was suspension of disbelief, especially in the end, when the novel’s velociraptors organized themselves into a proper group and escaped/invaded to the mainland, (Costa Rica), where they vanished into the jungle. They were Lysol-dependant, (in the novel), so they learned to eat chicken (domestic fowl) and beans and similar food sources in the wild instead. What was that cartoon? The raptor was going to acquire a fake ID and live & work in NYC? Yeah, Crichton certainly set the stage for that!

But his movieverse heirs have certainly went beyond him. The first two JP movies were quite good, even if because they followed, (to various extents) the plot of the actual Crichton novels. JP3 film, however, was something else, including the entire T-Rex vs. Spinosaurus controversy. Seriously, it has been established/figured out/understood/etc. by now that both of these JP3 dinosaurs, especially Spinosaurus, are fictional, and are no more RL than MCU’s Iron Man and Captain America are. Does it really matter who would win? In RL, the two dinosaurs lived millions of years apart, on two different continents and never met each other during any point in their evolutionary histories. Talking as to which of the two would win and why, it is less of a ‘lion vs. tiger’ debate and more of a ‘Steve vs. Tony’ one.

Where were we? Well, on the topic of ‘Steve vs. Tony’, JP3’s Spinosaurus showed about as much realism as the crocodile from ‘Peter Pan’ did, (not counting OUAT, where his role was played by Mr. Gold, apparently), while the raptors of that movie did an admirable job of passing as the nastier versions of Neverland’s Lost Boys, so to speak – their intelligence in that movie certainly approached human levels, and when Dr. Grant communicated with them… no, just no. Forget realism. The dinosaurs of JP3 could as well be some aliens – original aliens – in a sci-fi movie and they would work just as well in that capacity…

In JW1, the intelligence of the dinosaurs was toned back down to realistic levels – only not. Enter the I-Rex, the hybrid that looks, and functions like a RL carnosaur for all practical purposes. Just think RL Giganotosaurus or Mapusaurus. Okay, and?

And the I-Rex was able to survive slash endure a direct hit from an Ankylosaurus’ tail. In RL, Ankylosaurus was one of the plant-eating dinosaurs that had evolved to survive and live alongside Tyrannosaurus, a carnivore that evolved one of the most powerful bites on the planet, specifically designed to smash through bone. In response, Ankylosaurus had evolved its’ infamous tail that was also designed to smash through bones, (especially if Ankylosaurus was in proper health). I don’t know what I-Rex was a hybrid of exactly, but just as with Rexy’s bite, there’s no way it could’ve endured Ankylosaurus’ tail strikes to its’ legs or the rest of the body, not unless it had the healing power of Wolverine (the MCU mutant, not the RL animal) as well. (In addition, the way it telepathically communicates and dominates all the other reptiles in the movie? Apparently, there is some Professor X in it as well).

Flash forward, and—

And we got Indoraptors, which is the same old I-Rex, just with different sizes, proportions, and velociraptor, rather than Tyrannosaurus, DNA. Odds are that we are going to see a new depiction of the JP3 super-intelligent raptors are quite high. And?

And where is the JP-franchise going with all of this, in the long run? Yes, the first novel & movie depicted them somewhat like sci-fi monsters, but dinosaurs do not really make good monsters, (especially for grown-ups) – they aren’t particularly monstrous or evil, certainly not kaiju/Godzilla/King Kong/Monarch universe evil. ‘The Land before Time’ franchise had a different take on them – there the dinosaurs were slightly anthropomorphic, and some were ‘good’, and some were ‘evil’, in the same manner that the ‘modern animals’ of Brian Jacques’ novels were – it’s all a fairy tale for children, but the JP-franchise isn’t going for that.

Where is it going? Possibly, to try to become a fully-fledged monster-verse, which is a bad idea, because dinosaurs aren’t really monsters, not even fictional, sci-fi ones. They are just too real and too abstract for us, (unlike giant monsters – the fictional Megalodon has only distant connections to the RL one), to be properly monstrous. Yes, Tyrannosaurus is bizarre – all head and no arms – but is it monstrous by being itself at the end of the day? No. It is scary because it would eat people if it existed in modern times, making it no different from a shark or a lion. Yes, ‘Jaws’ is a movie classic, but not just because it stars a man-eating shark, but some human star actors as well. The same goes for ‘The Ghost and the Darkness’, which is built on a similar premise, except that instead of a single Great White Shark there are two African lions. A good movie about some man-eating animal monsters can be honestly good…just not precisely, because it stars man-eating animal monsters – and the same goes for the dinosaurs.

And yes, we got the news that there’s going to be at least one other dino-hybrid – a stegoceratops, a Stegosaurus & Triceratops hybrid. I have no idea what was the logic behind this one. As BBC’s WWD mini-series (1999) have shown, the RL plant-eating dinosaurs, (i.e. Stegosaurus, Ankylosaurus, Triceratops & Torosaurus, etc.), could be quite formidable themselves, without being augmented by human script writers…

Oh, and another thing. Yes, both Stegosaurus and Triceratops belonged to the bird-hipped branch of the dinosaur family, (let us leave the latest RL revision of the dinosaur family tree out of the equation this time), but they weren’t particularly close relatives; in RL modern terms the JW2 heroes could get confronted by a deer/antelope hybrid – it works the same way… Where is common sense?

In the bizarre appearance of the second hybrid.  Aye, RL herbivorous dinosaurs could be quite bizarre by themselves – just think Nothronychus and kin, the plant-eating cousins of raptors and tyrannosaurs – a typical theropod body, extra-long neck, extra-small head, (as in the sauropods), plus – extra powerful and clawed front legs…you couldn’t get more away from the traditional depiction of a theropod if you’d purposefully tried… but no, we get a bizarre-looking unrealistic hybrid, designed to shock and awe. Yay team (new) JP franchise.

And now, it is time to wind down the rambling. Basically, unbelievingly, but the first two JP movies were actually somewhat educational for purely fictional movies. (I am speaking very loosely here). They were also fairly realistic, (by sci-fi movie standards). Sadly, from JP3 onwards these qualities vanished, which is a pity, because they were what made JP-franchise’s movies’ unique. What will JW2 look like, I do not know yet. However, neither am I enthusiastic about it.

Well, this is it for this time. See you in the future!

Shark Week - shark vs. croc - June 30

Firstly, some good news, (relatively speaking): we fixed our TV, at least to a point, so we have some channels back on, (at least). Ergo, this bring us to the following – a, I will be able to see ‘Expedition Mungo’ in the upcoming weeks on TV, (and not just the Internet), and b, I was able to watch – once more – the ‘croc-shark showdown’ show, also on TV, (as part of the Shark Week). And?

And it was an interesting, informational, and educational show, of the sort that AFO had not been, (though it tried). It showed the interactions of the saltwater crocodiles in Australia with various species of local sharks: initially the saltwater crocodile was found primarily in Australia’s rivers due to human depredations regardless of its’ name, but now it is found off the Australian coasts, where sharks live. And?

And contrary to what AFO has depicted in its own ‘croc vs. shark’ episode, (remember, I talked about it?), the sharks and the saltwater crocodiles were shown peacefully coexisting with each other off the Australian coast; the smaller sharks, such as the tawny nurse shark and the hardnose shark, (no, seriously, apparently these are real names for real life shark species), follow the crocodiles and pick up scraps from their meals, as some vultures and ravens do with big cats and bears. This is a sharp contrast to AFO, and it does explain as to why AFO used CGI simulation rather than RL life animals, but-

But the sharks shown in this program were smaller and weaker than the saltwater crocodiles were, overall. Plus, they were able to coexist with the great reptiles, (and the saltwater crocodiles may be the biggest modern reptiles, period), by living very different lifestyles: at night they would follow the crocodiles around, true, but during the day, when the crocodiles remained active and stayed near the coastline, (in mangrove swamps and the like), the sharks went into deeper waters and stayed there instead. And this brings us to the tiger sharks.

The tiger sharks may be smaller than the great whites are, but they are still powerful, (and alongside the great white and the bull sharks they are some of the most dangerous sharks, to humans), and would be more evenly matched to fight a saltwater crocodile if the occasion arose. However, they do not, and are apparently avoiding the saltwater crocodiles instead.

This makes sense, actually – both sharks and crocodiles can sense vibrations through the water, (and AFO pointed this out, BTW), so should a tiger shark sense a saltwater crocodile, (or vice versa), it would figure out, (both sharks and crocodiles are more intelligent than they are credited with), that this is an animal that is about as big as it is, (and a tiger shark is about the same size as a saltwater crocodile is, BTW – so’s a great white; it is twice as heavy as a croc is, but more about this later), it doesn’t appear to be bleeding, or sick, or in distress, so it should be left alone instead. Dolphins are not as intimidating (from a human point of view) as crocodiles are, but they can kill sharks, even such big ones as the great hammerhead shark, (we’re talking bottlenose dolphins here), and the killer whales, who are as big as a great white shark, but more physically powerful and mentally smarter than they, kill and eat the great whites on a regular basis if they like their tastes – but killer whales are very complex and interesting creatures and should be discussed on their own, if at all.

Back to the saltwater crocodile. It may not be as intelligent as the killer whale is, but it has plenty of power of its own, and its bite is actually stronger than that of the great white shark. The AFO episode in question was quite good, actually, as it highlighted the similarities and the differences between the two carnivores; in particular, the croc was a ‘crusher’, while the shark was a ‘slicer’. Or, while the teeth of a shark (a great white, a bull, or even a tiger) are designed to slice through flesh, (and even the shells of sea turtles, and more), the crocodile’s are not. Rather, they crush and grip, and since crocodiles cannot chew, they have to shake their prey to pieces instead or go for the death roll, as people know.

(Now it might be a good time to mention the T-Rex and its own crushing bite, but T-Rex never went out to the sea, so let us not go there, period. Another time, maybe).

This means that a crocodile should have, and does have, more powerful musculature than a shark does. This is not surprising; the big reptiles – crocodiles and alligators, monitor lizards and constrictor snakes, even some of the turtles – have to compete and to hunt with even bigger creatures – the mammals. Since the end of the Mesozoic, 65 MYA, reptiles had to live in the mammals’ world, and evolve accordingly: they couldn’t be bigger anymore (for various reasons), so they got to be proportionally tougher; the Nile crocodile defeated the African lion in their own AFO episode by right, as we discussed it back then; and the sharks, well, haven’t. They live in the sea, which is their domain, and they actually tend to avoid marine mammals; even such bigger species as the bull and the tiger sharks do.

The great white shark does not, which is why it might be the most dangerous – through physical power – shark of the modern times. It hunts the marine mammals – the sea lions, the fur seals, even the elephant seals, but most of its’ prey is still smaller than it is, and when it comes to something bigger, or even equal – i.e. the killer whale, the great white shark is in trouble.

By contrast, the killer whales often kill animals bigger than they are, namely the baleen whales, just as on land, wolves, wild dogs and spotted hyenas also kill animals bigger than they are, such as the moose and the antelope. Size-wise, big mammals are bigger and smarter than their rivals – fish, amphibians, reptiles and birds – are, but the birds and the reptiles, especially the bigger ones – evolved to handle this…while the fish not so much. The great white shark may be heavier than a saltwater crocodile is, but the saltwater crocodile is tougher than the great white shark is.

And not just metaphorically, literally too. All sharks are cartilaginous fish, their skeletons are not made from bone, (ossified), but from cartilage, (in humans, cartilage is found mostly in ears and noses), which is softer than bones are. A crocodile’s jaws evolved to crush bone and shake it apart with nothing but a good grip and physical strength; as soon as it clumped its jaws on a shark – on a part of its’ body and started to crush and rip, the shark would fall apart…literally. Regardless of its’ size, too. Most dolphins did not evolve to kill opponents bigger than they are, (the killer whales are an exception), and they kill sharks; and the crocodiles have.

So, firstly, why did the crocodile lose in AFO? For the same reason that the American black bear won over the American alligator, and the anaconda – over the jaguar. The show’s cast decided that it was so and that was that. DW, at least, tried to justify its’ decisions with numbers, and that had its own problems, but AFO did not have even that…and that why it ended after a single season, for all of its’ good qualities.

And secondly? This is why the tiger sharks avoid the saltwater crocodiles off the Australian coast, for example. I cannot guarantee that the sharks are smart enough to comprehend this sort of thing, but instinctively, this is what they do. It’s possible that a tiger shark might overpower and kill a saltwater crocodile, but the reverse is also true, and in RL, animals don’t like even fights…unless they are between two rivals for females, or territory, but that is another story.

Until then – see you!

Phelps vs. shark - July 24

Let us talk of Michael Phelps and his race with the great white shark.

Pause.

Yes, Shark Week is upon us, but I must confess that I was never its’ biggest fan, and this race just reminded me why.

Let us review its’ most important feature – Michael Phelps did race a great white shark, but it was a virtual one, not a real one. Moreover, yes, certainly, no one in their sane mind would race a great white shark in the wild if they can help it, and this is not something that can be arranged legally and on live TV, but-

However, what was the point of this program? AP had plenty of flaws, but what it did have, until recently, was RM with JW, and that was real life interaction of man and fish. Yes, it entertained people, but it also educated them, at least to a point, especially in the first few seasons. This – ‘Phelps vs. shark’ and beyond – is just entertainment; that, and a free ad, (but more on this later).

Now, if we are talking about a face-off with a virtual shark, we might as well bring forth AFO, and its’ episodes – ‘Saltwater Crocodile vs. Great White Shark’ and ‘Bull Shark vs. Hippopotamus’. I have discussed both of these episodes separately in the past, so here I’ll just point out again that for all of its’ flaws, AFO did its best to both educate and entertain; yes, at the end of the episode CGI’d animals (reptiles, fish) fought each other, but before that happened, AFO’s cast did its’ best to dissemble the two contestants (per episode), to depict (and to figure out) their fighting strategies; they did their best to depict their weapons in cast-iron replicas and etc. They genuinely tried to integrate computer graphics and real life, and that is quite tricky, you know?

For example, just few weeks ago I was at ROM – the Royal Ontario Museum - to look at their blue whale exhibit. It was wonderful, it rocked, and it tried to be ‘interactive’ – there were plenty of mini-videos, impromptu computer games, various thing that a person could touch…such as a Halloween-like costume of a krill. The krill are relatives of the prawns and shrimp that live in the open ocean and are eaten by the baleen whales (like the blue whale or the humpback, opposed to the dolphins, porpoises and sperm whales). That is fine, but how is dressing as an extra from SpongeBob franchise educates children about whales? And on the other hand, the actual exhibits – the actual blue whale skeleton, the replica skeletons of the prehistoric whales, the exhibits from the whaling eras – i.e. historical artefacts – aren’t interactive, actually, but are quite decidedly kept away from the public, you can look, but you can’t touch.

Ditto for other exhibits of ROM, such as the historical artefacts from India, China, Japan, Korea, etc. People could vote on which pieces they wanted to see, but they could not touch them. The interactions were limited, almost one-way, and it’s reasonable – the oils in human skin are damaging to bones and historical artefacts, ROM doesn’t want to lose its’ prized exhibits, so no touching, and what the public is left with is a bunch of second-best pieces, such as the depiction of whale dung on the floor. (Yeah, I am not kidding – there was a giant bright orange blob on the floor of the exhibit to simulate whale dung). Basically, like AFO, the Royal Ontario Museum tries to integrate reality with computer simulation (and more), and it still falls short; when I was returning home, I came across some house finches feeding on a tree. They were much more real than any of ROM’s exhibits, even if they were kind of small and hard to notice in the darkening summer evening…

Back to Shark Week? As such pieces as ‘Shark Vortex’ (aired earlier today) show, Discovery, (as opposed to AP), can air educational pieces – primarily educational pieces, for there was some entertainment as well, (but this is how it works), because-

Because there were real sharks in ‘Shark Vortex’, period. The footage of the mako, the great white, and the porbeagle sharks was real, and there was no to little CGI. The focus was on real life (and real life footage, yes). In ‘Phelps vs. great white’ the focus was on Phelps and how he raced virtual sharks; there was some footage of real life sharks – the great white, the hammerhead, the Caribbean reef sharks – but the main focus was on Phelps and his prowess. It is amazing, undoubtedly – Phelps is not famous for nothing – but he is not a shark, so…

So this idea of Discovery has actually backfired on them and Phelps, when they opened Shark Week with a promotional show of Phelps. So far, fans are unhappy with Phelps’ loss and with Phelps in general. If Phelps planned to make his alliance with Discovery to make himself famous, he did not succeed so well. Ah well, he is still one of the fastest swimming humans on the planet. Good luck to him!

This is it for this time; see you next time.

PS: And no, I haven’t forgotten about ‘Killjoys’ either; it’s just that so far there’s nothing to truly congratulate or criticize them on. So again – until next time.

Upcoming 'Shark week' rant

And so, once again, Shark week is almost upon us in Canada. Hooray! Sharks, after all, are magnificent and powerful creatures, alpha predators of the oceans, just as big cats or bears are on land, and crocodiles and alligators are in fresh water.

Sharks are very varying creatures. For example, both the whale shark and the basking shark are filter feeders, but whereas the basking shark just swims around with an open mouth, with the water flowing in and out (through the gills), the whale shark actively pumps the plankton-filled liquid and in general is a more active fish among the two. The megamouth shark, which is also a filter feeder, does its own thing by actively feeding on plankton at night, when its competition (including the baleen whales) is asleep. 

The carnivorous sharks, of course, are an even more diverse group. The great white shark is Jaws, one of the most powerful denizens of the ocean; only the killer whale (and perhaps the sperm whale) can defeat it. The bull shark is smaller, but still very solidly built, and is one of the few fish that can live both in fresh and salt water. The sand tiger shark (no relation to the actual tiger shark) and the blue shark, on the other hand, are graceful inhabitants of the open waters, specializing in catch fish, not warm-blooded mammals and birds, as the great white shark does – and the list goes on.

Some of the sharks are downright bizarre – the aforementioned thresher shark with its remarkable tail; the hammerhead shark with its head; the sawnose shark which is similar to the better-known sawfish because it also has a saw on its nose – etc. All of these features make sharks stars of the ocean world – and of the Shark week that will be airing on the Discovery channel starting from August 10. 

Sadly, there is a rather big fly in the ointment, and it is called “Megalodon: The New Evidence”. It is a sequel to the previous mocumentary, “Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives”. That particular film played with the concept of Megalodon surviving in modern times, feeding on such animals as the humpback whales...and for a while it led many people astray, by making them think that this was a real documentary instead.

Now, in part this is his or her own fault – one should not be so gullible about what one sees on TV or the Internet...never mind. I need to go a make an appointment with my vet about the health of my unicorn that I have bought on EBay. That is an old story. The thing is that Discovery channel generally airs documentary films and series, which are based in real life; even on such specials as Shark week what we usually see are documentaries; the Megalodon duology (and before that – the duology about the mermaids) are not – they’re fiction, just like the Sharknado or the Mega-Shark films are.

Now, Discovery channel currently does not have it as bad as the Animal Planet, by comparison; they still do not regularly air such tripe as “Man-Eating Super Wolves” or “Zombie Cats”, etc. But this is a disturbing tendency all the same.

If we are talking about sharks, what about Megalodon itself? Can it still be real? No. Sharks do not readily leave remains, other than their teeth and the occasional backbone vertebra, but their teeth quite take up the slack, and people find them very often. Megalodon teeth in this case take a very specific position: they are fossilized, not fresh. There are no fresh Megalodon teeth, which means – that there are no live Megalodon sharks living in modern oceans. Giant sharks, on the other hand, are a different story – in general, cold-blooded animals tend to grow throughout their lives, and great white sharks, in particular, can reach 3, or even 4.5 m in length: still smaller than Megalodon was, but far bigger than a human is. This is more than enough to fill-in Megalodon’s econiche.

And what econiche is that? That of a mega-predator, of course. Megalodon was the biggest shark of all times, of course, but it was also a part of the mega-fauna of the previous Cenozoic epochs. During that time, most animals were larger than their current relatives are, and the same goes for the sharks.

Speaking of relatives, there is some speculation that Megalodon might be related to the mako sharks. While the great white shark evolved into a powerhouse, the mako (two species) evolved into the aquatic analogue of the cheetah (sort of) – it is the only fish fast enough to catch and kill the legendary swordfish. Real life being what it is, however, sometimes the swordfish is the one who comes on top and dead or dying mako sharks were found, with pieces of the swordfish’s sword still in them – but that’s not the point. The point is that some scientists believe that Megalodon was more closely related to the mako than to the great white, and others – that the mako is the close relative of the great white, and Megalodon is related to neither, and if we don’t even fully know to whom Megalodon was related to, then how do we know what it looked like? Any depiction of the Megalodon is fully speculative, period – maybe it looked like a giant bull shark instead, who knows...

Back to the econiche. The great white shark has taken over Megalodon’s place – to a point: it still does not attack and eat whales. But it does not need to – the killer whale does it instead. Smarter and more social than any shark, even the great white, the killer whale does an admirable job of killing baleen whales, sharks, giant squid and other denizens of the oceans. Not bad for a relative newcomer to Earth – just like humans, the killer whale is very much a modern animal.

The shark, on the other hand, is very old – they have been around roughly since the Devonian, over 300 million years ago in the past, and they were able to handle everything that the Earth, and the universe, threw at them. Lately, this includes humans, who kill many more sharks than sharks kill people. To paraphrase Josef Augusta, a famous paleontologist, ‘the hunter man of the Pleistocene had little impact on nature, unlike the gatherer man of the Holocene’. These are true words, and hopefully, the upcoming Shark week shall discuss them as well.

End

"Megalodon: Monster Shark Lives" movie review

A small, but stable branch of Animal Planet is creating monster quasi-documentary films. There was “Dragons: Fantasy Made Real”, “Mermaids: The Body on the Beach” and “Mermaids: The New Evidence”, and now “Megalodon: Monster Shark Lives” – and it is this movie that I am going to rant about. Let us begin.

What is so special about megalodon? In the previous films AP can shoehorn mythical creatures, dragons and mermaids, into real life while doing it realistically. Seriously, a dragon or a mermaid in a sci-fi/fantasy show is expected, it belongs there – in a documentary show not so much. AP had to come up with some really fancy explanations how dragons and mermaids really worked and where they come from...with a mixed success, in my opinion (do not get me started on the mermaid/aquatic ape theory). 

Megalodon is another story. It already is a real-life creature (albeit one that is supposed to have died out during the Ice Age) – a shark, that may be 15 m in length on the average, but nothing more. People have encountered and studied sharks for a while now, and outside of its length megalodon does not appear to be very different: extreme in its size, but nothing else.

But...

Ever since humans have encountered sharks they feared them. The sharks are some of the biggest predators in the oceans and unlike their terrestrial counterparts – lions, tigers, hyenas, etc – they cannot be controlled. Nowadays it is relatively easy to track down a lion or a tiger if they become man-eaters; a shark – not so much.

Shark attacks are also random: lions and tigers tend to treat humans as a steady and regular source of food once they start eating them – sharks do not. To a shark a human has considerably less blubber and more bone (sharks do not really eat marrow) than a seal or a sea lion of a matching size does. That is why they tend to leave us alone...after they bit off an arm or a leg or a chunk of torso – not that that is any consolation to a shark attack victim, you know? Sometimes one bite is enough to kill you, if the shark is big enough or the bitten place is vital enough in its anatomy.

Sharks are also highly mobile and thus unpredictable. A great white or a tiger shark can travel – in fact, it almost constantly travels across the world for different places to get a meal: one week it is in South Africa, the next – at Mexico or Hawaii: why not? It is humans who are aliens in the underwater world of fish and other creatures of the depths, and the sharks are perhaps some of Mother Nature’s most formidable reminders that that is so, alongside giant octopi and squids. Naturally humans fear them – megalodon is just the uttermost manifestation of those fears inflated to an extreme size – big enough to sink a boat in one bit and swallow a human in another.

How realistic are those fears? Firstly, people want to believe that sharks are giant carnivorous monsters that just want to eat people attacking them from below (as in “Jaws”) or from above (“Sharknado”). There is probably nothing that can change this picture so the idea of the monster-movie megalodon is going to persevere for decades to come.

Secondly, cryptozoologists want to believe that megalodon exists. Basically, this is the same point as the one above, save that fear has been replaced by awe. They are going to seek out proof that megalodon exists no matter what. So far official science says that no, it does not, but when ever did this stop people? Ergo no, I do not think that the hype around sharks in general and megalodon in particular will ever go away.

As for the movie itself... the name “megalodon” was used mostly as a brand: people know this name and associate it with a giant shark, so AP just appropriated it for their newest monster. They showed it quite realistically too, save for the fact that in real life megalodon (well, Carcharodon megalodon, if you want to get technical) was not a deep-sea fish: the depths of oceans and seas are cold, have little food and not much more oxygen – hardly a place for a warmth-loving whale-eating shark!

Furthermore, megaldon did not start out as a whale-eating giant: the first years of its life were probably spent in shallower coastal waters (BBC Sea Monsters) hunting smaller prey – dugongs and manatees, dolphins, sea turtles, maybe even large fish - and avoid the adult megalodon which would probably eat the youngsters instead (as modern sharks tend to do). This would have brought them into contact – and conflict – with humans much sooner than “just now” and I do not know who would have won...

Then we have the humpback whales – that was probably the most annoying part of the movie. Why humpback whales? There are 15 species of modern baleen whales (you know, the ones that feed on plankton as the humpback whales do), plus the sperm whale (that has teeth rather than baleen), all of which can be food for megalodon if it existed in modern day and age. 

Why the humpback? Sharks do not have the sort of food specialization that the carnivorous mammals, birds and reptiles may have. Great white shark prefers to eat sea lions and fur seals, but it will probably try anything to see just how edible it is. The bull and the tiger sharks eat anything, including garbage that ended up in the sea; so does the blue shark but it is a fish of the open ocean and encounters people less often than the great white, bull and tiger.

And so probably had megalodon – it was willing to eat anything if it was big and meaty enough. If it lived in modern times, the humpback whale would have had no preference: megalodon would have eaten it just as willingly as it would have eaten the blue and pygmy right whales, for example.

The closest I can come up with for the reason behind the humpback whale is that it is one of the more popular and well-known species of whales among people (at least for now): its footage is easily obtainable, the audience would just look at the humpback knowingly and return back to concentrating on the shark. Fair enough.

As for megalodon's coloration – dark above, light below – I believe that it is called cryptic countershading and many of ocean-dwelling animals have it. The fish have it: not just the sharks, but also jacks, mackerel, tuna, etc; the penguins have it as well, especially smaller species like the African penguin: it helps them blend in with the waters around them. (Terrestrial animals often have lighter bellies than backs as well, but for slightly different reasons.) This does not make megalodon some sort of an unstoppable super ocean monster, but-

“Megalodon: Monster Shark Lives” was released as part of Discovery Channel’s 2013 Shark Week, when the Discovery channel does its best to cash in on the shark hype that was discussed before. And it seems that 2013”s version is going to be the most commercial Shark Week yet, as Discovery Channel is actually airing “Jaws” and “Sharknado”, regardless of the fact that they are fiction. They are about sharks, they are popular with the TV audiences, so Discovery Channel is airing them.

And “Megalodon: Monster Shark Lives” is just a manifestation of the same hype. People wanted to see it because it was a movie about a monster shark that lives in the ocean’s depths – a giant bogeyman rather than a real-life monster, a creature no more real than the mermaid is. If that is what they expected they got it; if they did not – they probably turned it off and watched a megalodon-related documentary on YouTube or elsewhere. Still, as a movie “Megalodon: Monster Shark Lives” was a decent one, without any particular political hype, unlike the mermaid duology, even if it was also taking place in South Africa – but I’m guessing that someone in AP management has a very complicated or weird relationship with South Africa and just cannot let it go. Oh well.

The final bit of weirdness was the movie script. “Megalodon: Monster Shark Lives” did its best to cash in on the hype and fear that surrounds sharks, especially the mythical giants. The fact that it did not end with Collin Drake and his crew duking it out with Meg in a Captain Ahab-Moby Dick style a la “Jaws” was a good thing in my opinion but in the first parts of the movie it certainly sounded like it was going to end thus. I am guessing that someone remembered that Animal Planet is for nature conservation, not destruction, and changes had to be made...just not very thoroughly.

In any case, I believe that I am rating “Megalodon: Monster Shark Lives” three and a half stars out of five; well, maybe three and three quarters. It was not the best megalodon-related movie that was ever made, especially a documentary one, but it was not the worst either.

Peace out!

River Monsters - Phantom Assassin

In the last episode of RM of Canada's version of S4, JW returns to Australia to tackle a rare and elusive Glyphis shark, and from the start, problems begin.

JW's problems appear to be technical: there is driftwood in the river that tangles up in the tackle and fishing line; there are other fish, and also freshwater crabs, that eat the bait; and there are the bull sharks and saltwater crocodiles that would eat the bait and the anglers, if they could. In fact, a sizable part of the episode is centered on the saltwater crocodiles and their interactions with people: this episode reconstructs a story where a saltwater crocodile has emerged from the river at night and attacked two tourists in their tent, almost killing one of them in the process. That's just scary.

The other main predator in this episode are the sharks. First, there are the bull sharks, which by now have become a rather established character of RM: JW has about one episode per RM season about those cartilaginous fish so far, including the first episode of this season, BTW. Thus, it is no surprise to the audience to see JW catch several of them in the process of the ep... but there are others.

More precisely, there are other cartilaginous fish - not just the sharks. An Australian sawfish and a whipray both make cameo appearances as river monsters, but it is still the sharks who steal the show.

Well... sort of. In this episode, JW actually goes out to sea to fish for them (for XP, I assume). There, as he first encounters the multitude of sharks that inhabit Australia's coast (and some of them are official man-eaters) and later - the rough and unpredictable coastal ties in King Sound in particular (9 m of water going up and down - that's a lot!), he realizes that the boundaries between the fresh water and the salt are less distinct than he had thought, and that even such sea-based sharks as the mako can come up the river for a while, not just the bull shark and the sawfishes.

But what about the Glyphis shark - the river monster that JW went to catch in this episode? Did he catch it? Yes! It is a rather small and gracile shark, much less intimidating than the bull, for example, but it is a shark that lives primarily in the fresh water, not in the sea, unlike the bull, and as such, this catch of JW deserves points for its rarity, if anything else. After all, size alone does not make a river monster, as the Mekong giant catfish can testify...

S4 of RM had its ups and downs, with some very unequal and different (in quality) episodes. But it has ended on a positive, upbeat note, and so I can safely admit that I have enjoyed watching it, period.