Wicked Tuna Recap: The Season Finale, Finally.
Oh, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, it’s finally here. I have finally reached the last episode of Wicked Tuna and am here to recap it for you (my previous recaps are here). I mean, after this, I still have to do the North Vs. South which I’ve been seeing commercials for during things I actually enjoy watching, like Going Deep with David Rees. Spoiler alert: They still “really need this fish”.
We start off with a tranquil sunrise and Paul Hebert saying “It’s so free out here, living off the wilderness, you know?” No, I don’t. The wilderness? Like you can just set a rabbit trap and live off furs and shit in the winter like some Little House on the Prairie shit? I’m pretty sure you’re living off hot dogs and Budweiser.
He probably subsists mostly on folksy colloquialisms.
The Sambvca (because why not name your boat after the grossest liquor ever) reels a fish, and they struggle with it and as the show goes to commercial, he yells “this fish will die tonight!” and then laughs in an oddly maniacal and yet manic fashion. I’m scared. Hold me, Clampadres.
So far I’ve seen like 3 slow motion seagulls this episode. They really saved up all their best slow-motion seagull footage for the finale. You can tell this is not made for an audience of seafaring folks, because most of us are not huge fans of seagulls. Listen, birds are beautiful, and I even like pigeons, but holy shit, seagulls are awful. I saw one take off with an entire bag of popcorn a few weeks ago at Plum Cove. They’ll shit on you with reckless abandon. They will congregate loudly outside your window when you’re on a fucking conference call. They’re the douchebags of the avian world.
We move on to some super contrived back and forth between Tyler from Stonerboat and TJ/TJ’s dad from Hot Tuna, where apparently Tyler had worked before. That makes sense. Anyway, it’s a magical thing. “ENJOY YA WINTAH!” “YOU’RE A LOSAH!” Pretty much everything that my neighbors yell into the street on a daily basis.
And 8:22 into it, back on the Sambvca, I hear my first “WE NEED THIS FISH!” I just chugged my beer. That’s the game. It has to be a game. Or I won’t make it through another 35 minutes. At 11:22, Paul’s long-suffering older brother says, again. “We need this fish.” About the same fish. Double chug my beer.
This fish is taking forever to catch, but they finally nail it, while poor Dave from the Hard Merchandise looks on, puffing on a cigarette and wearing the same hoodie he’s worn this entire season. This guy’s had a rough year, what with the boat sinking and me giving him a hard time for never being seen without a cigarette. I do hope ol’ smoky-lungs catches one this episode so he can snap out of his funk. Has this guy ever smiled? If I had the choice of a night out at the bar with Dave Marciano or a sack of overcooked rice pilaf, I think the rice might be a bit more lively and upbeat.
Cheer up! There’s always cigarettes.
The Sambvca gets $14k for that one fish they apparently really needed. I’m pretty sure everyone really needs that kinda money in this town, but hey, whatever.
Finally the Hard Merchandise gets a fish. One of the boat dudes is all “IT’S A WICKED SCREAMAH!” And I have to hold back from yelling “So’s your mom!” And then, two minutes later, “WE NEED THIS FISH!” I crack open another beer. This may be a long night.
And then, glory of all glories, a shirtless Paul Hebert appears in the background of a shot. Oh, my word. This is why I’m in this, folks, for gems like this.
The magic happened.
The Hard Merchandise explains that they “really need” the fish they end up catching. Twice. I am inebriated at this point.
There’s this super fast “who’s gonna catch the fish!” thing where the camera cuts between 4 boats in like 6 seconds. Some people catch the fish. They needed the fish!
But not the Pinwheel, they haven’t caught a fish. Tyler is sad. Here is Tyler. I like beer.
This is the face of a man out of snacks.
Of course, they catch a fish. So does The Tuna.com. I swear, after this is over, I will hear “SANDRO! SANDRO NEUTRAAL!” in my nightmares for months.
I actually feel really bad for the Pinwheel at this point. Their line snaps, they are out of luck, and then everybody like calls them up and makes fun of them.
The show ends with some melodramatic TALKING FROM CAPTAINS about what this year meant to them, and then Tyler steams off down to the south to segue to the spinoff I now have to watch.
It’s been real this season. They’re filming the next season as we speak (literally, I can hear the helicopters ugh).
Tune in sometime soon for WICKED TUNA: NORTH VS SOUTH VS KT.
East Gloucester School Supply List
This year’s back to school season is remarkable for my family because it’s the first year our kids enter the Gloucester Public School system – our older son, Nathan, is entering Kindergarten over at East Gloucester Elementary. We “choiced in”, which basically means we “bring down the per-capita income of families in the school by several thousand dollars a year”. We’re downtown people, used to downtown things like “empty nip bottles thrown where your kids play” and “getting everything that isn’t lashed down stolen by a bearded man pushing a baby carriage with no baby in it.” East Gloucester is a weird but awesome hippie/hipster/edgy utopia where people watch each other’s kids and walk into each other’s sheds to borrow and return tools. Return tools they borrowed. Can you imagine? The decadence.
This isn’t even out of place here. At all.
Therefore, the 2014 school supply list was a bit of a shock to our system. We expected glue sticks, crayons, and washable markers. But this is what we got:
1. A Kayak
2. Kale Chips
3. Pencils hand-hewn by local underemployed woodcrafters
4. Organic, free-range backpack
5. Macbook Pro (New or under 6 months old)
6. Chuck Taylor Hi-Tops in a color besides black
7. A feather and dipping ink
8. Homemade recycled paper notebooks tied with ukelele strings.
9. Non-GMO Paint Pens
10. Lunches prepared entirely from a CSA or farm share.
There were other parameters as well. All mothers must volunteer in either long flowy skirts with clogs or ripped denim and Vans. Dads must wear horn-rimmed glasses and be well-versed in how to refinish a hardwood floor. Younger siblings must be in cloth diapers.
I can’t wait.
(I shouldn’t have to point out that this is satire. But, here we are, where I point out that no, this is not the real school supply list. God, some of you people.)
ClamHouse Rocks! A Back To School Primer
YOU CAN TELL IT’S THE END OF SUMMER because since July 4th the CVS and Walgreens have been pushing their Halloween goods, teachers have been quitting their side jobs, and seasonal workers have been trying to figure out how to correctly collect unemployment until April.
That means it’s back to school time in the city, that magical time of year where students who are done harvesting on the family farm return to the schoolhouse equipped with new chalk and writing boards, eager to complete the three Rs.
Teachers are relieved to get a steady paycheck once again, and parents are excited to have something to busy their kids with for six-to-eight hours aside from Camp, the beach, wandering the town’s streets and parks, the beach, a neighbor’s pool, summer job, hanging out with cell phone in the house, the beach, protesting outside Market Basket, the river, or the beach.
Lesson: to every thing there is a season, and purpose, except in summer. During summer we’re just waiting until the kids can be busy again. Countdown to Columbus Day: six weeks.
YOUR, YOU’RE, YORE & THEY’RE, THEIR, THERE – Gone are the lazy, hazy, crazy, Swayze days of summer – it’s now officially sweatshirt weather at nights, and probably a strange heat wave for the first few days of school. If you have kids ages zero to seven, this might mean you still stop by the beach after school or the weekend. Otherwise, the rest of us are now slaves to anything school-related and weekends full of non-stop sports games and birthday parties at the bowling alley. Always the bowling alley, always.
In the adult world we operate on the notion that life is fifty-two weeks at a time, and you’re always working unless you take a vacation (who does that?). In school we think of life a grade at a time, or a semester or quarter at a time. Learning is somehow confined to 180 days, six and a half hours each, only from September to June. Fight the power! Learn alongside your kids if you can – have them teach you what they learned that day. Have them show you some new way of learning math or remembering history facts. Before long (you have until they’re like fourteen, right? Maybe twelve?), your children won’t want to tell you anything, so enjoy them while they’re young enough to talk about their day. You can always follow your kids’ lives on Twitter or Instagram because Facebook is now only for old people, and by old people we’re talking like the 24-64 demographic).
Lesson: Trick yourself into learning things by tricking your kids into doing homework with them. Doubleplusgood! Countdown to Thanksgiving: twelve weeks.
Y=MX + B – It’s important to remember that you (and your children) have and will forget most of what you learn in school. Adults have forgotten about 70% of what they learned since three years old, even counting college and grad school and the years of television shows and movies they’ve consumed. And if they were paying attention? Still 70%. That’s right – educated humans will forget most of what they learn in 14+ years of school (that’s counting pre-school). Adult humans always forget how to be kind and not beat each other up, and rarely know how to share, and those were some of the basics.
Lesson: I totally forget. I knew it at one point, but maybe I have it written down somewhere in a notebook in the attic? Countdown to Christmas Break: sixteen weeks.
FAILURE IS AN OPTION – That’s right. Any teacher, coach, or principal who says otherwise is totally wrong. Whether you’re a teacher, parent, student, or all three, don’t be afraid to fail. Fail big, fail often, but only after you’ve tried your bestest and then learned something. If you fail as a parent, you have time to make it right, even if your kids are grown. If you’ve failed as a student, there is always a chance or teacher or test you can do to regain your place in the world (or another road to travel to get to where you want to be). If you’ve failed as a teacher, start over. September is a good time for this.
Lesson: Life is very long, so you’ve got time to become the person you’ve always wanted to be, whether you’re a freshman in high school or a rookie parent. Countdown to February Break: twenty-four weeks.
THE GOOD WILL HUNTING ANOMALY – Only 20% of you are going to run the world. Well, probably like 1% of 20% of 20% of you. That means the rest of us get to party and protest and out-learn each other, which is what we call society. HOWEVER there is this place that has ALL the knowledge in the world (aside from the library): this place of magic and wonder is called the Google.
On the Google you can literally learn everything ever taught or learned in the history of ever. From Plato to plate tectonics, from embryos to empires, it’s all there. ‘Ol good Will Hunting from Cambridge once said something like, “you could get a $100K education from a $1.50 in late fees to the library,” and he was right except that most people don’t read and most people don’t even know where the library is. But you – yes, you! have the entire knowledge of the world in your pocket! It’s that rectangle thing with the broken face that you just can’t seem to fix. Install the Wikipedia or TED Talks or NPR app and learn something new every day. In fact, you could spend a whole year just learning from the Google and you would probably know more than most people on the planet right now.
Lesson: Use technology to supplement your learning, not just for pixelated adventures and Twitter. Countdown to Spring Break: thirty-three weeks.
TIME IS RELATIVE – If you are living in Massachusetts, and reading this, and own a computer, and have finished at least eighth grade, and you and your children are relatively healthy, then, in the year 2014, you’re doing better than 98% of the world over all of time and memorial. Really. You’re better off than every empire and state that ever existed. That’s how awful the world is and history has been for regular people. And just think, Massachusetts is the best place in America (and most of the world) for education. THE BEST. AND Gloucester schools are amazing, as are their teachers and students. So there are no limits for any of us – those returning to school, taking time off of it, avoiding it, or starting it up for the first time.
Lesson: We’re too advantaged to waste one day. Well, maybe one. Well, maybe we can waste a few days, but only a few. Countdown to Memorial Day: thirty-eight weeks; Countdown to Graduation: forty weeks or so; Countdown to next year’s Back to School Special Primer: fifty-one weeks.
See you at the bowling alley.
No Snark Sunday: The One Where We’re Thankful for Market Basket
I know Jim Dowd usually does a smashing job with No Snark Sunday, but I asked him if he was still up to do it after a long week and weekend full of work, and he just had that thousand-yard stare of a man nowhere close to achieving his to-do list. I decided to try my hand at it so he didn’t end up freaking out and pacing the end of the fish pier at midnight, mumbling to himself about school supplies and lag bolts.
I racked my brain about No Snark possibilities (School? Schooner fest that I missed because I’m always working?) and then Marty DelVecchio posted this simple picture on Facebook and I was like “bingo, fuckers, that’s what I’m doing.”
Basket’s Back!
He took this Friday, when shoppers were returning to Market Basket after the successful takeover by Artie T Demoulas.
We are a better community by having Market Basket here. It sounds completely odd for me to say that – despite being a business major and running my own LLC, I’m a super liberal anti-big-corporation kind of hippie punk mom. But, it’s true. Market Basket helps the middle and lower classes survive. End of story.
– They provide reasonably priced fresh produce. The huge problems so many inner cities face is lack of fresh produce for cheap (look up Food Desert), and that’s one of the huge causes of obesity and health problems. Locally, we have other amazing resources like Backyard Growers, Open Door, and the Farmer’s Market that filled the gap, but not every city is as lucky as ours. I don’t want to crap on other local supermarket chains, but in most cases you end up paying more for worse-looking fruit and veggies.
– Cheap Staples, too. Produce is only a small part – having cheap necessities like milk, eggs, cheese, pasta (their own in-house whole grain stuff is great), and sugar/flour literally changes the budget for folks without a ton of discretionary income. We all felt the pinch. The nuclear Clamfamily’s 2 adults and 2 kids usually means about $100-$120 in groceries per week, but outside Market Basket, this shoots up to nearly $200, unless you have the time to meticulously research loss leaders and sales and make several trips (spoiler alert: we don’t). Our pantry was laughingly bare this week. We even ran out of canned beans. We’re terrible Doomsday Preppers, apparently.
– Jobs. This is a weird one, because it’s always been reported by major media that the Basket pays well and is a loyal employer, but I have heard firsthand from employees what their starting pay and benefits were, and they weren’t really remarkable. Also, a lot of the Gloucester Crossing employees who started the place up got moved to part time a few months in when the work load fell off and had to wait a long time to go back to full time. I am remiss to give accolades to anyone who doesn’t provide a living wage to living people and fosters underemployment. But, they do provide a good opportunity for teenagers to get a first job, and the company does do a great job of promoting from within. Folks do stay on for years, and apparently do move up in pay and benefits, and that’s far better than others.
The Market Basket fiasco was also notable for giving my my first actual opportunity to write something kind of serious that got major hits – with swears, of course, but serious nonetheless. It was insane how quickly the whole Clam thing spread. A little bit of humor and gratuitous swearing is apparently how 200,000+ people like their news-related articles. It’s been absolutely fucking crazy. People I don’t know stop me in the street. People left dozens of comments, and emailed me personally, to tell me I was a great writer. Dudes, I just started writing in May when we started this thing. That’s crazytalk!