I stayed up way too late last night watching Perfect Disaster, a wonderful disaster porn series now airing on the Discovery Channel. Each show assumes the most toxic combination of disaster-fomenting factors actually comes to fruition and then lets the hypothetical chaos unfold for our entertainment.
Last night’s episode was about a massive F-Shit "super tornado" plowing through downtown Dallas during rush hour. It’s not a matter of if this will happen, the announcer solemnly intoned, but when. Yeah, baby! Work that wall cloud!
A real disaster porn auteur knows you have to make the actors extra obnoxious so audiences will actively root for the disaster. I was disappointed when the bratty little Cub Scout kid didn’t get sucked up into the funnel. In real life, most second graders in the twister belt know the safety drill, but Perfect Disaster assumes the entire town will behave in the stupidest manner possible because, well, this is a Perfect Disaster.
When the sirens sound, everybody goes outside for a look-see. Drones set out for their flimsy homes instead of sheltering themselves in sturdier buildings and get trapped on gridlocked freeways. Window-gazing office workers get sucked out of skyscrapers or sluiced by flying glass.
The money shot came when the twister slammed into an anonymous “Dallas stadium” clearly representing Arlington’s Ameriquest Field, presumably strewing spectators about like plastic grocery bags full of chum – and offering conclusive proof that God hates the Texas Rangers.
Friday, April 07, 2006
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2 comments:
When is the rerun?!!?
Terri R
Eerie coincidence, considering last night I was watching the Weather Channel's Storm Stories in my East Texas hotel room last night, and one of the episode's was about a rare Salt Lake City tornado in 1999. And then I woke up to reports of the damage overnight to northern Georgia.
Judy Rogers, our Homeland Security Coordinator (who has done a lot of natural disaster modeling) must have watched that episode as well - she mentioned that there has been some modeling for the a Dallas (which is in the southern end of Tornado alley) F5 by someone quite reputable. She's a trip - she told her oncologists they better get rid of recently developed sarcoma in her lungs NOW because storm season is coming up!
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