DEFER YOUR ENTHUSIASM (17)
By:
June 1, 2025
One in a series of enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, analyzing and celebrating our favorite… late-breaking obsessions, avoided discoveries, and devotions delayed! Series edited by Adam McGovern.
I wait on the burning beaches of Cape Cod for those grey triangles in the water. No one actually goes in the water, because of those grey triangles. You’re right: shark fins. Great Whites. They’re great! Just like they were when I was a kid. Well, great in the broad sense. I’m obsessed. Again.
When I was 9 Uncle Bob took my brother, Bubsy, and I to see Jaws. We sat in the 3rd row, Uncle Bob cranked his hearing aid and away we went. That summer I disappointed my dad every day for 2 weeks in Wildwood, NJ. He couldn’t believe we wouldn’t go in the ocean, when we spent all year saying how pools sucked and the ocean ruled. It was a family thing. And he had spent all that money. But I couldn’t risk that salty, clean water. Who the hell wants to be chomped in half? I sat on the white sand and listened to the organ music from the boardwalk. I was big on precautions. At least you could see the bottom of a pool. Back to the motel.
Cue up about 5 years of reading magazines at ACME Supermarket that were exclusively about sharks maiming or killing people, 90% photos. Drawing Jaws on my desk, recess debates about whether or not he actually ate the boat, some friend whispering the first few opening bars of the score on our way home in the sunset. That shark was like a giant bloody-toothed attachment to my life that I dragged around everywhere.
As they do, things change. Slowly the scary cello music faded, drowned out by Cheap Trick and Devo. Shark movies are still a thing but I ignore them. For years. Then suddenly… I’m middle aged and, it being winter, I randomly click on a YouTube video and see a shark circling a kayak — in three feet of water. In Provincetown, on my favorite beach. Furious research led to the realization that, holy shit!, Cape Cod has been invaded by Great Whites. A surfer had died. And it was like I was 9. I was locked. I checked Sharktivity every 60 minutes, (timer), and soon got to know who was whom. August came around. Provincetown: I was there. The beaches were filled with people sitting on the sand. No one was swimming. Actually the only incident of swimming is when my husband decided to do a few paddles. I quietly hyperventilated. Would it be the old leg bite, so common, or just a quiet drag under? With his deaf ear to the sky, doing a majestic crawl, it was like Uncle Bob had resurrected himself, threw himself in a time machine, and taken over Andy’s body. The lifeguard’s whistle blew and blew but it turned out to be a seal.
I’m off the app. For now. One day I woke up and Big Fin was no longer doing his thing, hanging out at the buoy all day, probably starving to death since his food source, seals, were all in shallow water. Um, can you hear me throwing in the facts? I’ve slowed down, as drinkers say. But I haven’t stopped. Fins are in!
DEFER YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Adam McGovern | Mandy Keifetz on FAITH | Heather Quinlan on THE GRATEFUL DEAD | Carlo Rotella on SMOOTHER GROOVES | Art Wallace on MICHIGAN | Kelly Jean Fitzsimmons on TAYLOR SWIFT | Josh Glenn on ART | James Scott Maloy on BE-BOP DELUXE | Jake Zucker on LIGHT SLEEPER | Gabriela Pedranti on THE BIG BANG THEORY | Adam McGovern on DOGS | Tana Sirois on COLLABORATIVE EVOLUTION | Rani Som on LED ZEP | Holly Interlandi on HOT SAUCE | Jeff Lewonczyk on TWIN PEAKS | Nikhil Singh on PRE-TEEN DAVID LYNCH PROBLEMS | Christopher Rashee Stevenson on O’NEILL & THE SEA | Fran Pado on SHARKS | Juan Recondo on BEN GRIMM’S INNER LIFE | Miranda Mellis on KARL OVE KNAUSGAARD | Mimi Lipson on SOBRIETY | William Nericcio on ELYSIUM | Crockett Doob on SLEATER-KINNEY | Marlon Stern Lopez on PAT THE BUNNY | Crystal Durant on SEX AND THE CITY | Wendy Chin-Tanner on MY PARENTS’ ART STORE.
JACK KIRBY PANELS | CAPTAIN KIRK SCENES | OLD-SCHOOL HIP HOP | TYPEFACES | NEW WAVE | SQUADS | PUNK | NEO-NOIR MOVIES | COMICS | SCI-FI MOVIES | SIDEKICKS | CARTOONS | TV DEATHS | COUNTRY | PROTO-PUNK | METAL | & more enthusiasms!