Pageantry At Sea

Yesterday I took Brett on a "surprise adventure" to the aquarium in San Pedro, mostly because it was used for the exterior shots of the aquarium in last week's L Word. And while the real interior of the aquarium is a decidely lower rent affair than the one on the show, as it lacks horny manatees and dolphins, there was unusual tension in the air between the animals. This feeling, a mix of desperation and insecurity, was quickly explained when we walked in and saw the only tank featured in the main hallway. There, all by itself, was a lone sea horse. And above it? A bold sign and makeshift shrine, announcing it as "The Sea Animal Of The Moment."

Brett was taken aback that the aquarium would have the nerve to designate one of its charges as the "It Girl" of the entire place. Me? Not so much. Life is cruel. It's dog eat dog. Seahorse eat jellyfish. Shit happens.

The seahorse knew it was the animal of the moment. I don't know what sex it was, but I will say that it had its tail wrapped around an underwater plant and was sort of fawning nonchalance, like the hot girl at the party who stakes out the spot next to the banister and leans on its rail so that everyone has to pass her on the way to the keg. The seahorse soaked in its fabulousness, wondering when Elisha Cuthbert's managers were going to call and realize they had yesterday's pie on their hands, and that the real deal was down near the port.

I could see the manifestation of this competitive atmosphere in the frenzy of the animals located deeper in the aquarium's bowels. There was a tank of baby, baby jellyfish, so small that they had to be viewed through a magnifying glass attached to the front of the tank. They hysterically opened and closed their umbrella-like bodies, the ridges on their outer edges spreading out like needy fingers trying to grab attention from onlookers. Each one tried to stand out from its nearly identical twin next to it, anxious to prove that it was more of the moment than its aquarium-mate. The jellyfish were speed-dialing MTV's producers of "I Want A Famous Face," wanting to know how close a rhinoplasty would bring them to looking like a seahorse.

The most damaging proof was in the way that shark sacks were displayed for aquarium guests. In a small, thin aquarium, three unborn shark fetuses squirmed in their semi-translucent patches underneath tags that indicated date of inception. Could anything be sadder than seeing a not-yet-infant shark, 7 months in the "womb," trying to be as cute as possible before it even officially entered the world? The shark babies wiggled their heads and shook their tails, knowing that in only a matter of months, they would either be of the moment, or just a thing of the past. How can one be born healthy under such circumstances?

But, as we exited, passing the seahorse, I realized that it must even be sadder to once have been the Sea Animal Of The Moment and then to be eventually taken down from your post. I imagined the seahorse forever resigned to a tank hidden away from aquarium visitors, like an old lady in a nursing room that no one wants to visit anymore because she's become too tiresome in her datedness. All I could see in that seahorse's future was the promise of becoming yesterday's news, and all I could ponder was the vicious cycles that we trap ourselves within.

Comments

[Angela Giles Klocke]

I've just recently discovered your Blog, and today's entry was just awesome. So was the one before, and well, the one before that. Nice to have a new Blog to visit :)