The Dreadliest Catch

After reading this (a great post from Chris Kelly at HuffPo), I imagined the following scenario (based on this)…

The Noordam ends up veering hundreds of miles off course when, in a fit of manly self-determination, Dick Morris and William Rusher are consumed by an excessive wave of testosterone that sweeps throughout their bodies upon hearing the news of “some progress” in Iraq from the latest George W. Bush press conference.

They seize control of the boat and, unknowingly, end up setting a course for Dutch Harbor in Unalaska. Soon afterwards, the ship is utterly destroyed from brutal sea storms, including huge swells and gale force winds, causing conservative academics, politicians and pundits to be scattered across the Bering Sea.

All passengers end up unaccounted for, but for three. Here are their stories…

“Narrator: We join the crew of the Cornelia Marie after a night of fishing for Alaskan King Crab. Captain Phil Harris tells us of a strange sight that he encountered in the icy darkness.”

“Harris: At first I couldn’t make it out – just thought it was some big ‘Opi’ crab boat that had run aground somehow, so I tried to navigate over to find out of there were any survivors. Well, it turns out that it was just some kind of a sauna or lounge or something or maybe a gym that was part of a ship that somehow made it all the way out here. I gotta tell you, though, that the guy hiding in it didn’t look like he’d been working out or anything. We took him on anyway as a greenhorn.”

“Narrator: That new greenhorn was Ramesh Ponnuru.”

“Ponnuru: Ugh, God, this is ugly, filthy work! I’ve been up for two days straight, stacking pots, scrubbing the ship deck and cleaning out the toilets!”

“Harris: Hey, Ramesh, get your gear on, go up on deck and start helping the crew with dumping the crabs! I don’t care how rotten the weather is. If I lose the captain’s wager, you’re going to find out what ‘a culture of death’ really means!”

…

“Narrator: Meanwhile, Rich Lowry had somehow survived the journey also across hundreds of miles to the Farwest Leader, clinging for dear life inside the remains of a jacuzzi. Captain Greg Moncrief has more.”

“Moncrief: Yeah, after we fixed the ‘dog’ that we use as a wench to help lift the pots, it turns out that New Rich was better than Old Rich at steering them so we could drop ‘em into the water. The problem is that, pretty soon, he got so good that he started yakking all over the place about how we’re waging a war out here, and how much of a force for good the righteous anger of the American people can be, whatever the hell that means. So anyway, the winds pick up and the boat tosses more and more, and we tell him to zip it because we can’t hear ourselves giving directions, but still he won’t shut up.”

“Narrator: I don’t see him out on deck. Where is he now?”

“Moncrief: Oh, don’t worry. We got him all stowed down in the hold inside a pot. He was calculating that I’d put him in charge of the deck hands. He was wrong. Calculation has its advantages, but no one likes naked calculation.*”

* - actual Lowry quote, by the way
…

“Narrator: As the wave swells continue to rise and the boats pitch dangerously on the frozen water, Captain Sig Hansen of the Northwestern tells us this strange story.”

“Hansen: The guys start bitching at me more and more from the deck ‘cause I tell ‘em I want ‘em to keep up with the 300 pots instead of the usual 150, since we’ve hit a nice spot and I want to keep the run goin’. Even though they get so tired they act like robots, that’s good. Robots don’t complain. Robots don’t sleep. I like it that way.

All of a sudden, we hear this shrieking in the darkness. The boat gets closer, and the shrieking gets louder and louder. Then all of a sudden, we realize it’s a woman’s voice, so we send a hoist over the side and tell her to hang on while we pull her on board. She looks all frozen, with barnacles all over her and seaweed sticking out of her hair. It looked like she was wearing some kind of an evening gown, but it’s all wet and matted all over her. To tell you the truth, it was showing off a lot of her, but we didn’t want to look. Maybe we’ve been out to sea for too long or something.”

Narrator: “Tell us what happened next.”

Hansen: “Well, you’d think she be happy to be alive, but she starts screaming and crying even more, and she actually starts kicking us in her stocking feet. Screaming over and over, ‘I’m Ann Coulter, I’m Ann Coulter!’ as if that’s supposed to mean something. Acting pretty godless, if you take my meaning.”

Narrator: “Could you tell us where she is?”

Hansen: “Well (looking away a bit), I hate to say this, but while she was fighting with us, we got this monster 20-foot swell, and the boat pitched so badly that it threw her over the side back into the water again, and this time, we just took off without her. And it’s just as well. A woman’s bad luck on a crab boat anyway.”

I wonder if could sell the pilot to The Discovery Channel, or maybe CNN to replace Glenn Beck? The mind boggles…