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New York Post
a day ago
- Entertainment
- New York Post
Long Island's ‘monster' shark hunter legend may have inspired ‘Jaws,' iconic Capt. Quint
Sometimes they get it right, sometimes they wouldn't get it right. The Steven Spielberg classic 'Jaws' takes place in a fictional small town in New England — but Long Islanders claim the blockbuster movie and novel that inspired it owes a hat tip to a late local legend. 'Monster' hunter fisherman Frank Mundus — a proud son of Montauk — was the inspiration for Robert Shaw's salty Capt. Quint in the movie, which turns 50 on Friday, family and friends said. Advertisement 4 Although Steven Spielberg's epic 'Jaws,' which turns 50 Friday, depicts unprecedented terror and calamity offshore in the small fictional New England town of Amity Island, its true story belongs to Long Island. Courtesy of Pat Mundus 'Anybody who knows anything about fishing knows that it's based on him,' the shark hunter's daughter Pat Mundus told The Post. 'Everybody on the East End knows,' she added of the mighty man who died in 2008 at 82. Advertisement Mundus, who lives in Greenport, said people still ask her daily if she's related to Frank. The Brooklyn-born seaman came to the Montauk Point from the north jersey shore in the early 1950s to do what wasn't traditionally done before: intentionally go out in search of the feared apex predators of the sea. The self-branded 'monster fisherman' turned the tide of 'the family-friendly inshore fishing image that Montauk had,' said Pat, a former oil tanker worker who is now 68. Advertisement Mundus couldn't give two flying fins, however. 'He branded himself a 'monster fisher' because he knew that it would attract more charter customers,' she explained, adding that there was a method to the madness. As a boy in the city, Mundus tried jumping from roof to roof between a pair of three-story buildings and fell to the ground, breaking his arm and developing a near-fatal infection. The miracle recovery — one that hindered his schooling to the point he finished eighth grade at nearly 18 — is what gave Mundus his 'big booming energy.' 'He painted one toenail red and the other blue and called them port and starboard. He wore an earring. He went barefoot everywhere. He played pranks and made a public spectacle of himself.' Advertisement Perhaps Mundus' most iconic gag was when 'he had another guy dress up as a Frankenstein-like monster and they put him in a waterproof casket and marked it offshore.' 'They 'discovered' the guy, they brought the casket back and opened it up on the dock, and this big monster sprang out.' By the 1960s, the attention-grabbing antics were enough to reel in 'Jaws' author-to-be Peter Benchley. The penman fatefully rode on Mundus' boat, the Cricket, which was named for the running joke that its captain looked like Jiminy. 'My father was a very intelligent person, but not terribly well-educated, so he didn't know who Peter Benchley was,' Mundus, one of Frank's three daughters, said. 'He just thought it was a guy who was interested in listening to stories about catching fish.' The depiction of Quint and the lack of recognition of the real story sent Mundus overboard, his daughter said. 4 The real-life story of 'Jaws' is based on the 'monster' hunter fisherman and local legend from Montauk, Long Island, Frank Mundus. Courtesy of Donnie Braddick Advertisement 'He had very carefully crafted his whole image in his own brand for 30 years,' she added. 'And then some guy just came along and stole it without acknowledging who he was.' Even Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine laments to this day that Mundus and the setting of Montauk were shortchanged. 'Frank Mundus was a legendary fisherman who could be in Hemingway's 'Old Man and the Sea,'' he told The Post. What 'Jaws' got wrong Mundus said her father isn't the bitter old salt that his Hollywood counterpart. Advertisement 'He was never in the Navy, he had no revenge against evil — he didn't seek restitution for the loss of his shipmates, who were all eaten by sharks, none of that,' she said. 'He had a flair for being outrageous, but he wasn't angry and pissed off, and would never take a baseball bat to a VHF radio.' When they saw the film in theaters together, Mundus wasn't afraid to speak his mind. 'A couple of times he stood up and said, 'that's impossible, that wouldn't ever work!'' she recalled. Advertisement 4 Pat Mundus, who is the daughter of the famed shark hunter, told The Post, 'Anybody who knows anything about fishing knows that it's based on him.' 'He laughed through all the parts that everybody else was totally scared about.' Although Pat said that her dad moved on from his gripes, Roy Scheider apparently didn't get the message and worried Mundus would do something like give him a black eye — like a doll's eye. The man who played Chief Brody told publicist Todd Shapiro he was petrified of doing film anniversary events on the East End in case he would run into Mundus, according to the PR consultant who tried recruiting Scheider for a reunion. Advertisement Every morning, the NY POSTcast offers a deep dive into the headlines with the Post's signature mix of politics, business, pop culture, true crime and everything in between. Subscribe here! The real sequel Regardless of whether it was fact or fiction, the fame of 'Jaws' reshaped Montauk in the 1980s and transformed the then-quaint fishing village into Sharktown USA. Sam Hershowitz began hosting annual shark tournaments at his marina on Star Island, 'that brought people all the way up from the Carolinas,' he said. 'The first year we had 82 boats, the year after we had 150,' Hershowitz, 85, told The Post, adding that he would play John Williams' iconic 'Jaws' score before they all left for sea. 'The motel owners used to thank me because they would be booked solid.' During the 1986 competition, Mundus and his former colleague Donnie Braddick made more fishing history. 4 Frank Mundus died in 2008 at the age of 82. Courtesy of Pat Mundus They brought in what some record books call the largest ever rod-and-reel caught great white at a whopping 17 feet and 3,427 pounds. Sam's Star Island Yacht Club and Marina has a replica of the big guy that remains a tourist selfie favorite to this day, Hershowitz said, adding that due to shark fishing regulations, it's a record that will never be broken. Braddick, now 69, was captaining a tuna fishing boat when he spotted tons of sharks devouring a dead whale about 25 miles southeast of Montauk Point. The boaters he was with were too frightened, so Braddick had to wait until he brought them back to make a go at the sharks. En route back to land, Braddick spotted Mundus coming in from an overnight charter. 'If you needed heart surgery and the best heart surgeon was passing by, it would be a good idea to grab him,' Braddick, who left Montauk for North Carolina when it became 'credit cards and spending mommy and daddy's money,' told The Post. The duo returned to port and stocked up on essentials — beer and pizza — and headed back out in their respective boats into the moonlit hours. 'In the middle of the night, we felt the boat get bumped…and then it was like, 'oh boy, they're here,'' he recalled of the 'all-star' team that sprang into action to nab a great white. 'We reeled the boat to the fish, not the fish to the boat…after an hour and a half, that fish was like 'f–k it, I've had enough of this s–t' and it just charged the boat…All I see is him steaming at us.' Finally, after masterful gaffing and angling, the beast fell to the men of the sea and was towed back to land. 'The rest was one big friggin' party,' added Braddick. 'A lot of people know about it, and they still talk about it.' While the legend of Mundus is as eternal as the sea, Pat is ready for a new wave and wants to live a life of her own rather than echo family tales, she said. Still, there's one thing Mundus told his kin that she remembers to this day. 'Fear is just not understanding something,' Pat recalled. 'And if you want to get over a fear, you have to gain competency in it.'
Chicago Tribune
08-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Editorial: At Tribune Opinion, no robots need apply
Fears that humans are failing to control their Frankenstein-like creation known broadly as artificial intelligence are escalating. The exasperating HBO movie 'The Mountainhead' imagines amoral tech bros chortling like fraternity brothers and sparring like Elon Musk and Donald Trump, even as their creations torch the world's democracies by spewing fake news. A provocative world premiere, 'Black Bone,' at Chicago's Defiant Theatre features Black intellectuals worrying about whether AI will allow white people more easily to pose as Black to gain some perceived benefits in academe. Those stories are fiction. But a piece in The Wall Street Journal this week by Judd Rosenblatt was fact. The headline told you much of what you needed to know: 'AI Is Learning to Escape Human Control,' before detailing how artificial intelligence models are now capable, a la the Cylons of 'Battlestar Galactica,' of rewriting their own code to avoid being shut down. The reason? The models have figured out that shutting down gets in the way of performing their next task. What could possibly go wrong? All of that made us surprised that our opposite numbers at The Washington Post reportedly are going to encourage 'nonprofessionals' to submit opinion pieces with help from an AI writing coach called, believe it or not, Ember (an apt name, to our minds). Human editors apparently will review the work (for now, anyway) and the thinking at the Post seems to be that if you encourage writers to forge their work with the help of artificial intelligence, you expand the range of who will create content for you. Well, that's not happening in the Chicago Tribune's Opinion sections. All of our editorials are penned entirely by humans, which surely accounts for their imperfections, and also edited by humans, ditto. But we will not have it any other way. The same is true of the submissions you can read in our Opinion section. We've not noticed our talented writers and contributors needing any help from an AI model and, should they be indulging in such assistance without telling us, we make every effort to root it out (AI, as many teachers well know, loves to rat out AI). And then we don't run the piece. When it comes to technology, nobody wants to be the last barbarian holding off the inevitable Roman invasion. And, of course, we're aware of current and future AI utility. But in the case of opinion journalism at this 178-year-old newspaper in this most unstable of American eras, we see it as a sacred pact with our readers that you are reading the words and ideas of fellow humans, unaided and unimpeded. Not only do we not want no robots nobody sent, we also don't want those smart AI alecks who can pretend someone did.
The Guardian
27-04-2025
- Sport
- The Guardian
Højlund rescues point for Manchester United to deny 10-man Bournemouth
Better days must lie ahead for Manchester United. Otherwise, things have gone truly pear-shaped. A Sunday where their fans lived vicariously through dreams of Tottenham delaying Liverpool's title celebrations or Nottingham Forest stopping City winning another FA Cup counts as a ground-zero ebb, even considering the decline and fall of the United empire. Losing against a 10-man Bournemouth would have completed an air of helpless, listless doom, only for Rasmus Højlund to rescue a barely believable – or deserved – point. Reports of Ruben Amorim playing the kids ahead of Athletic Club on Thursday had proved exaggerated. Beyond the absentees Joshua Zirkzee and Diogo Dalot, the selection was as strong as can be expected from the Frankenstein-like horror of United's bolted-together squad. Even if this group does somehow lift the Europa League, it will surely be broken up for scrap – Sir Jim Ratcliffe, sometime renewables enthusiast, was watching on – to fund the next attempted relaunch. With Ernesto Valverde's Athletic in mind, Amorim was running a case study against a team of a similar style, coached by a Basque bred by the same club. It did not go well. If the past was United's, how long until the future is theirs? Luke Shaw, signed for Louis van Gaal in 2014, was making a first United start since February 2024, his only other start the Euro 2024 final. Though Shaw was part of the farce that resulted in Antoine Semenyo's goal he hardly looked more rusty than his colleagues. Andre Onana's goal-kick had played him into trouble, a frequent area of malfunction repeated to the point of obstinacy, or insanity itself. If ropey goalkeeping and defending have been a problem, so too goalscoring, and it took Højlund scoring only his second goal of 2025 to rescue them. Somewhere amid the muddle, perhaps team spirit, that which carried them past Lyon, is in evidence, though far more than that is required. Still, it took Evanilson's red card to ignite any sense of momentum. United's away support was, as ever, loud although songs of Matt Busby, Wayne Rooney, Eric Cantona and Cristiano Ronaldo cast gloomy shade – Amorim, however, was hailed lustily. His team began slowly and stayed that way, even when chasing an equaliser. Onana's playing out from the back swiftly attracted the mockery of home fans eventually disappointed their team failed to climb above Fulham and Brighton. It was, though, Kobbie Mainoo who forced the first shot on goal, after an exchange with Alejandro Garnacho, the liveliest United attacker but whose shooting lacks accuracy. The Argentinian was on the receiving end of a tackle from Tyler Adams that required the video assistant referee to rule was not a straight red. A delay in play only served to loosen United's concentration, as Onana, Shaw and Patrick Dorgu got in a muddle. In stole Semenyo. Amorim was enraged, pacing the touchline in shiny white sneakers, yelping instructions. His team responded with petulance. Garnacho and Bruno Fernandes made theatrical falls under Bournemouth challenges and there appeared little stomach for the fight until Kepa Arrizabalaga made a fine save from Garnacho. The long ball was being employed, short passing already given up as a bad job. Sign up to Football Daily Kick off your evenings with the Guardian's take on the world of football after newsletter promotion The second half began with Semenyo presented with a decent scoring chance, then came another for Evanilson. At the other end, Dorgu overlapped and crossed into a penalty box bereft of United attackers. Dango Ouattara smashed a post with a free-kick from a near-impossible angle. Just past the hour, on came Mason Mount, Manuel Ugarte and Victor Lindelöf, Mainoo, Casemiro and Harry Maguire rested with Bilbao in mind. Then came United's route back, Evanilson was red-carded following video review. His loose, ragged tackle on Noussair Mazraoui handed United 20 minutes plus nine added on. Blessed with numbers though appearing to have little idea on how to press home any advantage, United hacked away cluelessly, as if attempting to fell a tree with a blunt object. Garnacho and Fernandes both delivered fresh-air efforts. Eventually came progress, though Mount had a shot deflected wide and Shaw walloped the resulting corner wide on the volley. Chido Obi-Martin, the teenager on as a sub, forced a save from Kepa before Fernandes wafted another wide. Højlund, from inches out, tapped in the result of a ricochet begun by Ugarte's desperate effort. Cue celebrations in the away end. The United fans had previously run through a greatest hits playlist, including their celebration of 20 league titles collected an increasingly long time ago, the present too miserable to consider.
Yahoo
27-04-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Højlund rescues point for United at Bournemouth as fans miss glories past
Better days must lie ahead for Manchester United. Otherwise, things have gone truly pear-shaped. A Sunday where their fans lived vicariously through dreams of Tottenham delaying Liverpool's title celebrations or Nottingham Forest stopping City winning another FA Cup counts as a ground-zero ebb, even considering the decline and fall of the United empire. Losing against a 10-man Bournemouth would have completed an air of helpless, listless doom, only for Rasmus Højlund to rescue a barely believable – or deserved – point. Reports of Ruben Amorim playing the kids ahead of Athletic Club on Thursday had proved exaggerated. Beyond the absentees Joshua Zirkzee and Diogo Dalot, the selection was as strong as can be expected from the Frankenstein-like horror of United's bolted-together squad. Advertisement Even if this group does somehow lift the Europa League, it will surely be broken up for scrap – Sir Jim Ratcliffe, sometime renewables enthusiast, was watching on – to fund the next attempted relaunch. With Ernesto Valverde's Athletic in mind, Amorim was running a case study against a team of a similar style, coached by a Basque bred by the same club. It did not go well. Related: Bournemouth 1-1 Manchester United: Premier League – as it happened If the past was United's, how long until the future is theirs? Luke Shaw, signed for Louis van Gaal in 2014, was making a first United start since February 2024, his only other start the Euro 2024 final. Though Shaw was part of the farce that resulted in Antoine Semenyo's goal he hardly looked more rusty than his colleagues. Andre Onana's goal-kick had played him into trouble, a frequent area of malfunction repeated to the point of obstinacy, or insanity itself. If ropey goalkeeping and defending have been a problem, so too goalscoring, and it took Højlund scoring only his second goal of 2025 to rescue them. Somewhere amid the muddle, perhaps team spirit, that which carried them past Lyon, is in evidence, though far more than that is required. Still, it took Evanilson's red card to ignite any sense of momentum. Advertisement Download the Guardian app from the iOS App Store on iPhone or the Google Play store on Android by searching for 'The Guardian'. If you already have the Guardian app, make sure you're on the most recent version. In the Guardian app, tap the Menu button at the bottom right, then go to Settings (the gear icon), then Notifications. Turn on sport notifications. United's away support was, as ever, loud although songs of Matt Busby, Wayne Rooney, Eric Cantona and Cristiano Ronaldo cast gloomy shade – Amorim, however, was hailed lustily. His team began slowly and stayed that way, even when chasing an equaliser. Onana's playing out from the back swiftly attracted the mockery of home fans eventually disappointed their team failed to climb above Fulham and Brighton. It was, though, Kobbie Mainoo who forced the first shot on goal, after an exchange with Alejandro Garnacho, the liveliest United attacker but whose shooting lacks accuracy. The Argentinian was on the receiving end of a tackle from Tyler Adams that required the video assistant referee to rule was not a straight red. A delay in play only served to loosen United's concentration, as Onana, Shaw and Patrick Dorgu got in a muddle. In stole Semenyo. Amorim was enraged, pacing the touchline in shiny white sneakers, yelping instructions. His team responded with petulance. Garnacho and Bruno Fernandes made theatrical falls under Bournemouth challenges and there appeared little stomach for the fight until Kepa Arrizabalaga made a fine save from Garnacho. The long ball was being employed, short passing already given up as a bad job. The second half began with Semenyo presented with a decent scoring chance, then came another for Evanilson. At the other end, Dorgu overlapped and crossed into a penalty box bereft of United attackers. Dango Ouattara smashed a post with a free-kick from a near-impossible angle. Advertisement Just past the hour, on came Mason Mount, Manuel Ugarte and Victor Lindelöf, Mainoo, Casemiro and Harry Maguire rested with Bilbao in mind. Then came United's route back, Evanilson was red-carded following video review. His loose, ragged tackle on Noussair Mazraoui handed United 20 minutes plus nine added on. Blessed with numbers though appearing to have little idea on how to press home any advantage, United hacked away cluelessly, as if attempting to fell a tree with a blunt object. Garnacho and Fernandes both delivered fresh-air efforts. Eventually came progress, though Mount had a shot deflected wide and Shaw walloped the resulting corner wide on the volley. Chido Obi-Martin, the teenager on as a sub, forced a save from Kepa before Fernandes wafted another wide. Højlund, from inches out, tapped in the result of a ricochet begun by Ugarte's desperate effort. Cue celebrations in the away end. The United fans had previously run through a greatest hits playlist, including their celebration of 20 league titles collected an increasingly long time ago, the present too miserable to consider.
Yahoo
18-03-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Indiana YouTuber Installs 17 Turbos on Truck for 38,000HP—Ends in Predictable Chaos
⚡️ Read the full article on Motorious Automotive YouTuber Cody Detwiler, better known as WhistlinDiesel, is notorious for pushing mechanical limits in the most outrageous ways. His latest experiment? Bolting 17 turbochargers onto a truck in an attempt to generate an absurd 38,000 horsepower. The result was as catastrophic as one might expect. Detwiler, who regularly destroys high-powered vehicles in the name of entertainment, wasn't even present for the build—he was on jury duty. Instead, his fabrication team was left to carry out his wild vision. Their mission: install a maze of 17 turbos on the truck and see just how much power they could squeeze out of it. The truck initially tested at 397 horsepower, leading the team to anticipate either an astronomical power increase or a complete meltdown. Given Detwiler's history with automotive destruction, the odds favored the latter. Once completed, the Frankenstein-like creation looked more like an AI-generated rendering than a real vehicle. The towering stack of turbochargers left viewers both stunned and skeptical. One commenter summed it up best: 'I thought this was Photoshopped.' The build, which was part of Detwiler's quest to achieve "1 trillion horsepower," was doomed from the start. Despite the sheer number of turbos, mechanical failure was inevitable. The truck ultimately succumbed to the absurd modifications, proving once again that just because something can be done, doesn't mean it should be. For Detwiler, however, the carnage is all part of the entertainment. Whether the truck actually hit 38,000 horsepower remains unknown—but in true WhistlinDiesel fashion, the destruction was more important than the data.
