• When the heck did some stoned genius decide that freaking Shamu need a pyro show? Do they not get that it’s a fish? A big, rubbery trout that they pretend is smiling at them when really it’s just considering how many of them it can behead in one bite. Those teeth aren’t sharp just to be pretty. It plays along real nice, taking the anchovies, doing it’s little flips, because it knows that at any minute it could smack you with that flipping fin and paralyze you for life. And really, whose bright idea was it to include fire and water in the same quote unquote extravaganza? I don’t care if it’s Shamu’s birthday, and he “wants” a big firework show right outside his Plexiglas excuse for a house. Fish don’t like fire. It reminds them that we’re going to eat them. It’s like putting the hamsters and the snakes across from each other at the pet store. It’s cruel, really. Not to mention stupid. I mean, who goes to Sea World for the fireworks show? They want to get splashed by Shamu. I for one am not going to pay eighty dollars so an overgrown tuna can cover me with a saltwater shower. Give me big flames and bigger explosions any day. I wasn’t the kid burning ants with a magnifying glass. I was the kid burning the fuses of bottle rockets pointed at plate glass windows with a magnifying glass. My therapist said I should channel my “destructive urges” into something more productive, or else I was going to end up spending so much on arson bail I couldn’t even afford to set things on fire anymore. Which would be really sad. So instead I set up pyrotechnic displays, which is normally totally awesome and I couldn’t love my life more, but some days, like this day, mean that I’m perched on the edge of a giant tank with a giant head eating fish, trying to splice wires together and avoid getting electrocuted just from the presence of humidity in the air, all because some trainer says the egotistical sea bass wouldn’t hurt a fly and they can’t spare the extra room to do this inside because there’s a fricking tour going on. Like the manta rays can’t manage without the limelight for fifteen freaking minutes. I’m really gonna kill whoever agreed to take this gig. Oh yeah, that was me…. I knew I shouldn’t have listened to myself when I reminded myself that if I had another amplifier dropped on my foot by some cross-eyed techie I was going to end up burning down the entire amphitheater out of spite. It’s a rule of thumb not to listen to my own thoughts; I know better than anyone that I’m full of s**t. Only right now I’m thinking a burning amphitheater would be preferable to this creepy, black marble sideways staring thing that the Shamu thing is doing with me. Hard to win a staring contest when they could be secretly blinking on the other side of their ridiculously gigantic head. Well for it’s information, I’m watching it too. Well, sorta. I have to finish wiring this display. “Red wire…. Blue wire… white wire…. When did pyrotechnics manufacturers decide that just because they do fireworks they have to be so danged patriotic? Okay, a little bit of powder…. Put on the cap, and then we test this sucker.” As I light the fuse and backed away, I see the biggest look of absolute maniacal homicidal glee I had ever seen in my entire life. Shamu leaps into the air, and with the sort of sonic boom I usually associate with rockets breaking the sound barrier, hits the water again, splashing my entire set up just as the fuse starts hitting the wires. Soaking wet and furious, all I can do was stare as something sparks purple within the device I had been hooking up. The purple spark leads to even more purple sparks, which leads to this large, wobbly hole in what I can only believe is the space time continuum, in which I see objects of awe and horror that chilled the blood in my veins, and that I’m pretty sure no mortal mind was supposed to see and come away from whole. Then again, I’ve been to a Celine Dion concert while coming down from a bad LSD trip, and really the two events seem pretty much the same. As I dive into Shamu’s tank in an attempt to avoid some sort of Sci Fi channel CGI Friday night movie style craziness, or the anger of the elder gods, I can only hope that the giant mackerel isn’t going to eat me.