Last night was the premiere of a show that I had been looking forward to for some time, “Expedition Great White.” It is pretty much what it sounds like: scientists and fisherman go on an expedition to capture great white sharks to study them. Even better, to capture them, they basically wrangle them onto this underwater hydraulic lift off the side of a boat, raise the hydraulic lift above the water, and study the shark, right there, as it sits on the lift above the water, the big ass shark flopping around while humans stand and poke and prod it. It’s pretty awesome, in no small part because as a viewer you can’t help but look at this shark, flailing around helplessly with humans all around him, and think, “Well, you ain’t so tough are you now, eh, bitch?”; in some respects it’s like watching a bully get browbeaten by his mother.

Two things you should know before we continue:

1) My DVR has become my best friend over the past few weeks. Uncle Jason has been extremely busy as of late. Not only has my regular day job been crazy, but since the book came out, my dance card has been filled with a number of things, like sitting on NYC book clubs who’ve read my book (more on this tomorrow), having drinks with various peoples, working on two (yes, two!) new projects, planning a road trip for events in Cleveland-Chicago-Milwaukee and events in Denver and Seattle (still waiting to hear on readings in NYC, Boston and LA), etc.

Are these good problems to have? Absolutely. Should I be complaining about them? Nope. And I’m not, really. To be honest, in many ways, I couldn’t be happier – I’m meeting great people, creating stuff that I genuinely like/think is good, etc. Things are awesome right now.

But still, it’s jam-packed, non-stop, go, go, go (and I don’t have a cocaine problem, sadly). So when I have some free time, I love nothing more than blasting the AC, crashing on the couch, consuming an obnoxious amount of calories, firing up the sweet, sweet DVR, and just drifting away into complete intellectual and physical passiveness. It’s glorious.

2) I now apparently love fishing (or at least, shows about fishing). One of my new DVR staples is “River Monsters,” a show on Animal Planet in which a British sliver fox travels the globe, meeting local peoples and fishing for, well, river monsters. Fascinating show, both because of the fish and the look into native cultures. And of course, the silver fox doesn’t hurt, either.

So when I saw the ads for “Expedition Great White,” I immediately added it to the DVR list. And so last night, after watching the Flyers get crushed and realizing that I care about the Celtics-Lakers series about as much as I care about Yankees-Red Sox rivalry, I fired up “Expedition Great White.”

And I was really, really disappointed. Sure, the sharks are pretty cool and huge and whatnot. But seemingly all the characters are rather unlikeable – the main fisherman who butts heads with the doctor is especially so. But that wasn’t my main problem.

What they’re doing in the show is attaching this radar sensors/trackers to the dorsal fins of the great whites before releasing them. When the dorsal fin comes above the water in the shark’s day-to-day cruising, the sensor shoots data to a satellite (in space!) and records the shark’s progress. This is, I think, to determine the shark’s migratory patterns, which is something important to learn about, because, well, I guess it’s important because they’re great whites and they’re cool.

And this is where I felt not only disappointed, but really, really fired up.

To be clear, I do nothing, in any way, shape or form, to help either the earth or humanity. My life is solely about me. During the day, I work. At night, I work, but on more fun stuff. On the weekends, I get drunk and try to finger girls. Somewhere in there is an insane amount of sports consumption, as well as laziness. But that’s pretty much what we’re looking at. I am dedicated to me and me only.

But if, by chance, I was to dedicate my life to some cause – if I were to throw myself full-bore into something I was passionate about, something that I thought could really make a difference, something that I’d spend many hours a week and weeks a year and years of my life doing at considerable personal/financial/emotional cost, I’m guessing a cause to which I would not dedicate myself would be FUCKING SHARKS.

Really? We need spend millions and millions of dollars on a giant boat with a hydraulic lift, on a hundred or so of these trackers, and on a goddamn satellite (in space!) so that we can study the migratory patterns of sharks? Are these patterns going to cure cancer? Or HIV? Homelessness? Poverty? Lead us to a pot of gold? Lead us to just regular pot? Anything?

I’m not knocking those with passion. I wish I had more of it (that is, passion for anything aside from VH1 Classic). And I don’t mean to get all lefty on you, but twice in the span of a one hour walk a few days ago I saw two homeless men take out their penises and pee in public, the second one doing so right in plain view of a few people drinking at an outdoor bar. Now, of course, I set out that day to actively locate homeless men’s exposed penises, but that’s not that point here. The point is that with all the ills in society, ills that affect actual living human beings, someone, somewhere, thinks it’s ok to dedicate their lives figuring out where sharks swim. And what’s worse, someone (or some body or institute) is willing to foot the mighty expensive bill for all this.

[I’m not kidding about the homeless guy’s birds, either – that really happened. Certainly a fun highlight to a late spring evening’s constitutional.]

Again, I know this is a simplistic view of things, but facts are facts: millions of bucks to figure out where sharks swim while homeless dudes all over America are taking out their birds and peeing in public. So – crazy idea – instead of spending the money on the stupid shark shit, why don’t we take that money, use it to round up all the homeless, and throw them in the ocean? (I’m kidding – that was too easy.)

This got my so fired up – and into a related tangent with a friend over IM about how NASA’s shit just seems to break all the time – so much so that even though I DVR’ed a second episode of the show, I can’t watch it. The fact that someone is spending all this money on sharks has completely turned me off to the show.

So what does this mean? A couple of possibilities:

- I have, at 30, already entered the “grumpy old man” stage of my life, and thus am looking to complain about anything.

- I am really biased against sharks. (For example, what if all this money and energy was spent discussing the merits of different Elvis Costello songs? Would I be so pissed then?)

- I am absolutely, totally correct here.

- All of the above.

I think it’s the last one. And in the meantime, to hell “Expedition Great White” – I’ve still got “River Monsters,” as well as a massive amount of murder shows from the ID channel. At least these shows aren’t trying to do anything but entertain and possibly educate me; Uncle Jason doesn’t like to get his hackles raised in his down time.