Look, the world is a terrible place and there isn’t a goddamn thing I can do about it.

Drought, famine, war, diminishing resources, rising extremism and the ticking time bomb of climate change- it all just sucks. Most of the time I feel as helpless as a stewardess on Malaysian Air, just passing out little packets of salty humor as we cross into Ukrainian airspace. And I’ve been thinking for a while that I should say something IMPORTANT about all of it- I mean, it’s not like there is a shortage of ridiculous things for me to comment on. Like the sheer absurdity of Americans urging anybody to “show restraint” in the face of repeated terror attacks, considering the way we responded to being attacked just that one time. It’s like being told by Rob Ford to take it easy on the lattes or told by Jimmy Fallon to take it easy on the Rob Ford jokes. Hell, we Americans load kids up on buses and throw rocks at them – and they don’t even hate us (yet)! If this is what we do to the people that like us, can you imagine what we would do if there was actually a threat? One rocket flies in over the border towards San Diego and God help everybody from Tijuana down to Rio. So perhaps we should show a little restraint when it comes to giving helpful advice.

Anyhow, like I said, I’ve been thinking a lot about what to say about it all and in all my deliberation about the woes of the world I fear I lost sight of what’s really important. Namely- that this Wednesday is the world premiere of SHARKNADO TWO ON SYFY!!!! Who needs peace and social justice when you’ve got sharks and chainsaws! And Ian Ziering! And Tara Reid! And flying sharks! AND CHAINSAWS!!!! If Sharknado Two isn’t the answer to your problems- THEN YOU’RE NOT ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS! So, in honor of this world changing occasion- I’m reposting last summer’s Sharknado “blogumn” – which was actually the last thing I ever posted on the late, great, Fierce and Nerdy, almost one year ago today.  And next week, I’ll post my review of Sharknado Two.

Of course, you may notice that I am also somewhat critical of Israeli contractors in this “blogumn” – but, it’s worth noting that- while Israeli contractors may be bad, at least they don’t steal all the concrete that’s provided for infrastructure and humanitarian purposes and use it to build tunnels to smuggle weapons unlike some militants I could mention.

Anyhow- that’s all I’m gonna say about it. No need to add more words to a “blogumn” that’s already 500 words longer than the script of Sharknado and 1000 words larger than Tara Reid’s vocabulary.  So- here goes- enjoy!

Originally Posted on FierceandNerdy.com- July 30, 2013 – hence the incredibly outdated references

I really meant to write about my bathroom renovation this week – offering witty insights and wise advice to anyone brave and foolish enough to trust an Israeli contractor with their money and a wet saw. Something other home owners could read, relate to and maybe even learn a little something from. But then I figured, fuck it, I’ll just write about Sharknado which, I think we all agree, is the finest LA movie since Chinatown. Maybe even better – as we can see from the comparison below:

I mean, it’s kind of a no brainer. Maybe if Roman Polanski had been just a little bit more imaginative – like, let’s say – instead of finding a dead hobo in the dried up LA river bed the cops found a blond in a bikini with HUGE BAZOOMMBAS (clinical term) who’d been bitten in half by a flying shark with one or possibly TWO HEADS.

Or maybe instead of cutting Jack Nicholson’s nose with an itty-bitty knife, Roman Polanski could have CHOPPED IT OFF WITH A CHAINSAW and as all the blood gushed into the LA River, there would be a close up on a super-intelligent CGI shark in the water smelling the blood and turning its head as if to say “Oooooh, something suddenly smells simply delectable. Is that a hint of Private Detective nose I’m getting? I simply must go investigate” ‘cause you know that’s a real fucking thing sharks do, and then the shark could jump out of the water and BITE ROMAN POLANSKI’S NOSE AND WHOLE FACE OFF, cause that’s what qualifies as “irony” in these movies, as well as DEVOURING the blond in a bikini with the HUGE GAZONGAS (technical term) who inexplicably accompanies Polanski to all of his important nose cutting jobs – which is particularly surprising since she’s over 14.

So, yeah, maybe if Polanksi had just been a little bit more imaginative or tried just a little bit harder he could have made a movie as awesome as Sharknado – but he didn’t – so forget it Roman, L.A’s Sharknado’s town.

Which is appropriate, because Sharknado’s got every bit as much to say about LA as Chinatown. The asshole New Yorker on the freeway who gets eaten alive by a shark on the 405 right after complaining about stupid Californians who freak out when it rains; the substitute teacher from Wyoming who came out to LA to be an actor and was killed by a flying letter from the Hollywood sign; a shark crashing into the cement outside Mann’s Chinese Theatre and leaving it’s own “footprint”; the Ferris Wheel on the Santa Monica pier coming loose and crashing right through the iconic sign on the pier – thereby destroying all future “hey, look, moron, if you didn’t fucking realize it already, we’re in LA” montages during Laker game broadcasts.

I mean, who needs some boring old incredibly brilliant and thought provoking social commentary about water rights in the San Fernando Valley directed by a borderline child molester when you’ve got sharks devouring New Yorkers stuck in traffic on the freeway, which, let’s face it, we’ve all fantasized about a little on the 405 during rush hour (IDEA FOR A SEQUEL: Sharknado vs Carmageddon – Seriously, We Mean It – Stay Off The Roads This Weekend).

Of course, you could argue that none of this shark biting stuff is truly necessary for quality filmmaking and may, in fact, be detrimental to art of cinema. And, of course, you’d be absolutely right. Well done! Nicely argued Mr. Barista with $100,000 in film school debt.

It’s too bad that bitch of an Assistant Manager isn’t impressed by your knowledge of cinema and hipster mustache and insists on riding your ass about coming in late and not restocking the cups. What a Fascist! She’s worse than Hitler and Harvey Weinstein put together. She totally just resents you cause she knows she’s still gonna be stuck working at Starbucks while you’re accepting your Best Original Screenplay Oscar for AmericKKKan KKKoffee Shop. Wait til she sees that scene where the mean assistant manager gets tied to the bed by the shy, nerdy film maker who blindfolds her with his black polo and spanks her with a copy of Save the Cat until she screams out “You’re right. Geniuses shouldn’t have to refill the creamer. Hit me again with your scathing insights about the state of contemporary independent film financing.” Ha! The joke’s really going to be on her then! If only your mom would just donate to your Kickstarter already, you could really get this film made.

But the problem with your argument, oh Wise Mr. Barista Man, is that Sharknado is a SyFy Channel movie and SyFy doesn’t care about quality filmmaking or doing things the “right” way. Hell, they don’t even care about spelling “Sci Fi” correctly, do you really think they give a shit “story structure” and “character arc.”

And, you know what – good for them. Who needs quality filmmaking anyhow? What has that gotten us lately? Before Midnight? SPOILER ALERT – growing up sucks- NEXT! Fruitvale Station? SPOILER ALERT – America sucks – NEXT! Elysium – what is that anyhow? Some dystopian allegory about economic inequality and environmental destruction? SPOILER ALERT – HUMANITY SUCKS – stop whining and bring on the flying sharks – and get me my fucking iced latte already! If you’re such a good writer why can’t you spell my name right on the cup? Get it right or I’ll talk to the Assistant Manager again. She just can’t wait to take another shark-sized bite out of your bratty, entitled little worthless millennial ass.

SyFy, you see is carrying on a proud tradition of B-Movie making in this country. And, as the Russ Meyer of Basic Cable Channels – SyFy understands that you can’t spell B Movie without Shark Bites, Bosoms and Buckets of Blood, Baby!

Plus- they understand the 3 basic rules of B-Movie Making:

1. More is More

Look, strictly speaking, Ian Ziering didn’t need to fight off a flying shark with a chainsaw at the end of Sharknado. In fact, most contemporary ichthyologists agree that if a shark does come flying at you out of a tornado with its mouth wide open, the best thing you can do is take one step to the left and let it HIT THE GROUND AND FUCKING DIE. IT’S A FISH. IT’S NOT GONNA MAKE IT ON LAND. I mean, it’s not like the shark is going to crash into the ground and suddenly transform into a Grizzly Bear and maul you – not in Sharknado, anyhow. I mean, sure, maybe if you were starring in Grizzly Shark vs SharKoala Bear – but that’s a whole different movie. It’s a good one, though:

A shy, nerdy scientist (Dustin Diamond) working in a secret lab in Cancun (which looks an awful lot like Oxnard) is manipulated by an evil American politician (Brian Austin Green as “Senator Silver”) into creating a genetic hybrid of Great White Shark and Grizzly Bear to be used to protect Alaska from Russian invasion at the secret request of President Palin.

The Grizzly Shark gets loose, though, right at the height of spring break and starts mauling coeds in bikinis with huge tetongas (Spanish technical term). The only way they can stop it is to bring in the sexy female, brilliant-but-reckless Australian scientist (Kylie Minogue) who has developed an experimental Great White Shark / Koala Bear genetic hybrid for…some reason, along with grizzled old Aussie hunter (Paul Hogan in the “Robert Shaw Memorial Grizzled Old Guy Who Dies Pointlessly, Like, Literally Five Minutes Before the Shark is Killed Just to Make Some Fucking Point About Hubris, I Guess“ Role) who has a five minute monologue about how his father was killed by a shark and his mother was mauled by a bear and then gets bitten and mauled like, literally five minutes before Grizzly Shark gets killed to make some fucking point about hubris. I guess.

Clearly you see my point. Killing a shark with a chainsaw is in no way necessary. It’s not even a good idea. What it is, though, is, to quote Adam Richman “Awesome”. And unlike cheese fondue, tequila and reality shows about white trash idiots doing random jobs that you can’t possibly believe anybody actually does (“on a brand new American Crapfest, Dickface and Steve get hired to build a custom toilet for NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt Jr. – but when the job gets backed up and delays start hitting the fan – will they be able to pull another successful job out of their butts or will the whole company go down the drain?”) – awesomeness is one good thing you can never get enough of.

So, let’s go, pile on the awesomeness!! A shark devouring an annoying TV reporter live on camera? AWESOME! Ian Ziering shooting sharks out of the sky with a handgun to protect his son’s helicopter as he flies into a shark infested tornado to drop a bomb into it? AWESOME! An opening sequence on a boat where an Evil Ambiguous Asian buying sharks illegally for shark fin soup from an Evil Ambiguous Latino both get devoured by flying sharks in a hurricane which has ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOTHING whatsofuckingever to do with the rest of the movie?

AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME! MORE MORE MORE!! IT’S ALL FUCKING GOOD!!!!

2. Kitsch is King / Karma is a Killer

Look, I hate to tell Ian Ziering this but they didn’t cast him for his great acting. They cast him cause they thought it would be funny to have a washed up, beach bum Steve Sanders racing back to Beverly Hills to heroically rescue his blond bimbo trophy wife and estranged kids- and it was! It’s the best use of Ian Ziering in a movie since Steve Sanders played the Pizza Guy in the porno that was shot at Brandon’s house.

The fact that he turned out to be the best actor in the movie is kind of a bonus – it’s like that time I went to see Rick Springfield at a casino in Atlantic City so I could laugh at all the secretaries in leopard skin Spandex and ended up kind of liking the stuff off his new album. I mean, sure, being the best actor in a movie starring Tara Reid is like being the best Quarterback on a Jets team with Mark Sanchez or being the best pass receiver on a Patriots team with Hernandez, Gronkowski, and Welker, but still.

By the way- here’s a little riddle – what do two of the best Patriots pass receivers from last season have in common? They’re both wearing Orange uniforms this year – HA! Oh, and they’re both getting ass raped in the shower #peytonsdirtylittlesecret #helikeshisendstight.

It’s important to keep in mind, though, that Kitsch casting is an art- you can’t just put some washed up old star in a movie and ASSUME it’s going to be entertaining. Look at Mega Piranha as an example – sure they cast Tiffany – but they had her playing a dowdy scientist who takes everything all seriously and worries about the fate of mankind. I mean, what were they thinking? Why on earth would they cast Tiffany in what was clearly a Gabrielle Carteris role???

In Mega Python vs Gateroid they got it right.

Tiffany plays a voluptuous sheriff hell bent on the destruction of Debbie Gibson who has lines like “I think we’re alone now – there doesn’t seem to be anyone around” – BRILLIANT! A masterpiece of kitsch casting rivaled only by the casting of Ian Ziering as Fin Shepard in Sharknado and Anthony Wiener as Eliot Spitzer in Dumb Shit New York Democrats II: The Revenge of Carlos Danger.

According to a Fox News poll, btw – while 60% of Americans disapproved of Wiener’s sexting – 85% disapproved of the fact that he chose a “Goddamn Mexican sex name – and not a good solid American name like John Hardcock or Jimmy Bob Boner.” As Megyn Kelly Tweeted “First Mark Anthony at the All Star Game, now Carlos Danger? What’s America coming to? #obama”

Then, of course, there is SyFy B-Movie Karma. Traditionally, Karma is defined as:

“The force generated by a person’s actions held in Hinduism and Buddhism to perpetuate transmigration and in its ethical consequences to determine the nature of the person’s next existence.”

In SyFy movies – Karma is defined as:

“’Are you out of your mind, there’s no possible way that a shark could make it all the way up here to Beverly Hil…AAARRRRRGGGGGGHHHH, HELP, SHARK!!!!!!!!!’ bite, chomp, blood spatter, dead douchebag.”

This brings up a very important safety tip – if you do find yourself in the midst of a shark infestation – DO NOT DO the following:

• Swim in murky waters
• Splash around and draw attention to yourself
• Say anything disparaging or insulting about sharks or their ability to attack you, no matter how far-fetched it may seem that they could do it. Sharks FUCKING HATE THAT SHIT. Seriously, dude, it’s a shark. Show some goddamn respect and you might just survive this attack. Otherwise, SyFy Movie Karma’s gonna get you before you can say “Sharks? Coming out of the sand in Las Vegas? Don’t be rediculou….AAAAAARRRGGGGGH, HELP, SHARK!!!! Bite, chomp, blood spatter, dead you.

3. Logic is for Losers

OK – pop-quiz time – which of these roles do you think presents the greatest acting challenge?

1. Hamlet
2. King Lear
3. Fin Shepard in Sharknado (Hey – his name is Fin – I just got that – HA! This movie just gets better and better!)

If you answered A or B you’re dead wrong. Any Freshman theatre major with a pair of tights can rock out a halfway decent “Oh, what a rogue and peasant slave am I” or stand out in the rain bellowing “Seriously, dude, I can’t believe my daughter’s such a royal BEYOTCH!!!!!!” or whatever the fuck King Lear says anyhow #laziesttheatrestudentever. But it takes a true thespian of Zieringesque proportions to deliver a line like “a tornado can pick up marine life and drop it hundreds of miles from the coast line” like that’s a real fucking thing that we should seriously be concerned about. Cause, at the risk of being karmicaly (and comically) being devoured by a flying shark – it’s not.

I mean, sure, I suppose a tornado could pick up a buncha sharks and drop them on land but they wouldn’t exactly come flying out of the sky with mouths agape ready to devour and destroy everyone in their path who dares defy them. No. They’d be dead. There would be a giant rain of dead sharks and the only movie you could make about it would be an extremely tedious documentary about how Global Warming created a freak storm which obliterated thousands of animals from an endangered species. And while I’m sure that An Inconvenient Tooth would be an important film, it wouldn’t be nearly as much fun as Sharknado.

SyFy B-Movies, you see, are like the lies you tell your parents as a teenager. They’re not about what’s “real” but about “what you can get away with making someone believe” as determined by the following simple equation:  T = D x WTB – or Truth = Delivery x Willingness to Believe.

I mean, look, your parents want to believe that you were hard at work at your unbelievably shitty book store job all day – not that you played hooky to drop acid and go to an amusement park. So when they confront you and say “Hey, your job called today and asked where you were” – they want you to lie to them – as long as you can deliver the lie with a straight face. If you can say “Oh yeah, I got there early so I started counting books and I totally got locked in the storeroom and nobody found me there for hours” with a straight face even though your mom’s face is melting and you’re seeing trails every time your dad moves his hands – then do it, go for it – they totally want to believe it – so it’ll end up being the Truth.

Same with Sharknado – we want to believe that there might just be some tiny little thread of logic in this movie so that we’re not total idiots for wasting our time watching it, so just give us some kind of totally half-assed absurdly implausible scientific crap and say it with a straight face and we’ll fall for it like a couple of parents who are convinced that the little baggie full of green stuff in their son’s room is really just basil for the pesto he was gonna make for a surprise Mother’s Day dinner. Surprise! Sure, it’s unusually pro-active of him to have bought it in November – but, you know, he sounded so sincere when he said what it was that he couldn’t possibly have been lying. I mean, he’s good – but he’s no Ian Ziering.

Of course, when it comes to telling outrageous lies that people want to hear, nobody beats an Israeli contractor. Like, for instance when they say “This job take one to two weeks maximum” when the truth is “You stupid bastards are still going to be showering with a hose in the backyard six fucking months from now cause it takes us one day to painstakingly put up one fucking piece of tile and then we’ve got to take it down the next day and do it again cause we’re morons.”

Or when they say “I’ll come back tomorrow to finish.” when the truth is “I have absolutely no idea when I’m coming back here but I do know for goddamn sure that it ain’t gonna be tomorrow”. Or the biggest Israeli lie of all “Don’t worry. This renovation is not problem” when the truth is “WORRY. WORRY NOW. WORRY A WHOLE FUCKING LOT. THIS IS THE WORST IDEA YOU’VE EVER HAD!!!!! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON’T RENOVATE!!!!! THIS IS A BIG PROBLEM!!! THIS IS VERRRRY BIG PROBLEM!!!!!RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!!!! AAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!“

Now I know how Bill Clinton felt when Rabin told him “Two state solution? Don’t worry. That is not problem. We finish in one, two weeks maximum. I come back to Camp David to finish negotiations tomorrow.”

So – hey, how about that? I ended up writing about my bathroom renovation anyhow. And the best part is, now I’ve got images of sharks devouring my Israeli contractors. Wait, wait, hold on a second, let me enjoy this. Aaaaaahhhh, that’s the stuff. This gives me a great new idea for a sequel – Sharknado 2: Shark Attack is Not Problem in which Ian Ziering and Tara Reid get back together and rebuild their house which was destroyed in the first movie – only their incompetent Israeli contractors accidentally link up their sewer to a secret underground shark tank overseen by a dowdy scientist who takes everything all seriously and is worried about the future of mankind (Gabrielle Carteris – duh), and thousands of sharks start gushing out of their toilet devouring every Israeli in their path (oooh, that’s like heroin).

I mean, sure, I know it’s far fetched – let’s face it, there’s no possible way that a shark could EVER come out of a toilet, it’s just redic….. AAAAAARRRGGGGGH, HELP, SHARK!!!! Bite, chomp, blood spatter. End of blogumn. Good bye