44 | Part One: Stuff that jumped the shark (not us)

After a long and largely unplanned summer vacation, the guys are back with an apex predator of a two-parter.

On September 20, 1977, something momentous happened. On that last day of the third summer of disco and the second summer of the Son of Sam, Happy Days actor and former water skiing instructor Henry Winkler, AKA "Fonzie" and/or "The Fonz," made history when his character (ostensibly a motorcycle hoodlum from Milwaukee) jumped over a shark while on water skis in Los Angeles. The Fonz did this in response to a challenge to his bravery.

According to Wikipedia: "The idiom 'jumping the shark' is a pejorative used to argue that a creative work or entity has reached a point in which it has exhausted its core intent and is introducing new ideas that are discordant with, or an over-exaggeration of, its original purpose." The phrase was coined in 1985 by radio personality Jon Hein to describe what Henry Winkler had done, given that the stunt was his idea.

This week and next, take a long, leisurely look at just some of the shark jumpers that came to mind as Richard and Dave stared at each across the table in the (now virtual) Semi-Retired studio.

Music and image credits:
Frenzied shark by Pascal Le Lay from Pixabay   
Semi-Retired “flipz” theme by tubebackr from SoundCloud
Music promoted by free-stock-music.com
Perforated steel by YuriyC from VectorStock