Typhoon Haiyan Isn't a Disaster Movie on the Syfy Channel

A horrible typhoon, Haiyan, has hit the Philippines--a behemoth of a tropical cyclone which has broken a record for wind speed, outstripping even the famous Hurricane Camille. It reminds me of the B-grade and C-grade disaster movies the Syfy Channel likes to play starting at seven o'clock on Saturday nights--except this is for real, folks.

The themes of the Saturday movies usually run to (1) weather-related and other quasi-natural, never-before-seen disasters, (2) scary mutant animals in someone's backyard lake, or (3) intentional/unintentional weapons created by mad scientists--or merely well-meaning but stupid scientists--or some power monger in the government/military--that generally bring about the circumstances which obtain in themes (1) and (2).

Usually the films are so bad, so campy, and so low-budget, that I love to watch them and laugh. Not quite as bad as the sci-fi movies of my childhood, though, in which my older sister insisted that hugely magnified plastic dinosaurs and common varieties of ants were cast as the villains. At least the ants were pretty good actors, which is more than I can say for the casts of the modern movies.

This typhoon, however, is really tragic, no-kidding, wrath-of-God stuff. Meteorologists and climatologists were predicting that its wind speeds might break a record. It roared ashore with 195 mph sustained winds and gusts of 235! Yikes. Someone said heavy metal roofs were flying like kites.

An old TV commercial from many years ago used to admonish, "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature!" Indeed not. But the severity of the weather in the last few years can almost make me believe that some lunatic has done just that. Remember the giant tornado outbreaks? The unrestrained wildfires? The flood birthed from a garden variety rainstorm gone mad that happened right here on the Mohawk River last June? Superstorm Sandy!

Yes, Saturday-night-at-the-movies is making me a little uncomfortable lately. Some of the plots of these cinematic underachievers are hitting a little too close to home. Especially the ones about gamma-ray bursts, near-Earth asteroids, super volcanoes, popcorn tornadoes, and mutating bacteria. And have you seen how BIG some of those alligators lounging in the Florida canals are getting?! It was more fun when my sister and I could watch a sci-fi film and say, "Oh, that's so fake!"

Hey, Fellow SyFy Channel cultists out there--what are your favorites? Leave me a comment! I'll start--one of the best titles, if nothing else, is Atomic Twister. 

I don't have a good Jude Hayes quote for the blog today. But maybe we could listen in on Ming and Clicker's discussion of our topic:

   I staggered through the office door, arms overloaded with a stack of case files. Ming and Clicker, who were draped around my desk chair and the "client" easy chair in their usual contortionist slouches, ignored me in favor of the spirited argument in progress.

   "Okay, what about the one where there was this tornado made out of ice shards? Ming asked defiantly. How ridiculous is that?!"

   "Dude, that could happen," Clicker declared solemnly. "Flash freezing! Same thing they do to baby peas."