There are dark things that we all must admit about ourselves. Things that no one wants to fess up to. One of the reasons why I loved the movie Adaptation so much was because it showed, in all its excrutiating detail, just how sad writers are. Granted, the multiple scenes of masturbation were a bit much, but, you know, other than that: awesome.
If anything, for all that actors blather on about their method, and playing a "true" moment, the thing that I think distinguishes writers from civilians is that we will gleefully, even stubbornly, tell stories that make us look horrible, so long as the story is good. The story is more important than how we come off in the telling. If I get to the end of a story about what happened to me and someone says, "oh my God, you're a sick bastard. Please get away from me," that DOES NOT BOTHER ME AT ALL. What bothers me is if they YAWN while I'm telling the story.
In the spirit of this, and with the proviso that, yes, I know people in the area, and I know people who know people, and I hope everyone's okay -- I have to come clean and admit something right now.
I love Weather Porn.
You know what I'm talking about. The old Doppler Storm Track Nuclear Death Van Weather Plex 3000. The screaming local news promos that profess that their weather experts use not only the finest National Weather Service data, but Santeria and Baal Worship to bring you the latest developments in Mother Nature's Hella-Pissed campaign to eradicate each and every one of us from the surface of the planet we've so horribly despoiled. Maybe it's because one of my fondest memories of childhood is the two years I spent in Florida, where every night of the summer is Tornado night!
Some of my fondest memories involve contemplating death at the hands of the great crazy storm from the sky, or doing Tornado and Hurricane drills at recess. Last Christmas, I visited the Mater and Pater at their Florida retiro-digs and Dad and I waited for two hours to get on the Twister ride at Universal studios. When the cow went through the air, I nearly wept. I am a straight man in my thirties. I. Nearly. Wept. Oh Weather Porn, you complete me.
For a Weather Porn freak, there is no day quite like Hurricane Day. It's like Guy Fawkes Day and your birthday and the really good Christmasses when you were a kid all rolled into one.
I got up this morning -- early -- and over my coffee, I swooned as Anderson Cooper looked like he was going to burst into tears on CNN. He was all alone out there on a big bridge, and he was pointing out this crane that had just come loose on this barge, and "hey, gee, that's a crane swinging in hundred mile an hour winds, and um, should I really be standing here with that CRANE SWINGING AROUND LIKE THAT?" And his grey-hair's a flapping, and then they go to Mr. Unflappable, "I could have gone to Space if I wanted to" Miles O'Brien, and he chuckles just like Doc Hibberd on The Simpsons and points out that storms are funny things, "I'm only about three miles from Anderson right now," he says, looking around at the light winds mussing his hair ever-so-slightly and the rain just dusting the surface of his windbreaker. Meanwhile, they keep cutting back to Anderson who's freaking out on the Bridge because he can see this OTHER bridge, and there are TRACTOR TRAILERS just trying to cross it, and he's trying to find the words to say, "What kind of %$%#$@ moron are you, trying to cross a bridge in this weather?" And the whole time his feral little grey eyes are darting, darting, unconsciously toward the freely-swinging head of that %$@^$# CRANE THAT'S NOW TOTALLY LOOSE!
I thought I was gonna die.
I am a bad person. I know. It is a terrible tragedy. I will not take the opportunity to score cheap and sleazy points about how this has horrible connections to Peak Oil, and Global Warming, and all the other things that the Bush Administration doesn't believe exist. Like, um...Doppler Radar? Seriously, I think somewhere out there there's a Bushie just waiting til the dust settles to introduce the bold new discipline of "Intelligent Weathervanes." That's right. Do not trust the science people. Believe in the rooster on the roof.
The only thing I want to know, the only thing that would perhaps make me feel more comfortable in my sociopathy, is the knowledge that there are others out there who got up this morning, heard that the storm had moved east of the Crescent City and had been downgraded to Category 4 from 5, and were, just for a second -- a little disappointed.
No. Nobody?
Okay, maybe it's just me, then.
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