I didn’t see it during its premiere last week, and I will probably take a pass on tonight’s rerun(7:00PM Eastern Daylight Time on SyFy – “Imagine Greater”), but there’s something about the inherently absurd plot of “Sharknado” that’s hit a nerve.
Apparently, it rains in Los Angeles. Hard. Very hard. So hard that tornadoes form over the Pacific Ocean, creating waterspouts that suck up a zillion great white sharks. The waterspouts move over land, and the sharks drop out of the sky on unsuspecting Angelenos. Mayhem ensues.
This made-for-Syfy film was successful enough that a sequel has already been announced. “Sharknado 2” will be set in New York. I don’t know if it will be filmed here – the first movie was actually shot in LA, unusually for SyFy which likes its Canadian stand-ins for US cities. If the subtitle is not “The Big Apple Gets Bit” or some such, I will be sorely disappointed.
Again, not having seen “Sharknado” I can’t really comment on it, but I expect that a lot of the action consists of LA people seeing sharks, screaming, and doing their best (not enough, in most cases) to avoid getting bit. The New York sequel will surely be similar.
If there is a “Sharknado 3,” and were it to be set in Trenton, I think it would be very different. If the film were to accurately depict this town, a more authentic reaction among Trentonians to Great Whites on South Broad would more likely be, “So, sharks now? Whatever!” as they proceed to just deal with this calamity as they have dealt with so many in the last few years.
In “Sharknado 3,” I’d pity the poor sharks. They won’t have a clue what will be waiting for them!
These musings are inspired, I suppose, by the tsunami (sorry) of articles in today’s papers commemorating the one-year anniversary of the FBI raids on the houses of the Indicted Occupant of Trenton’s Mayor’s Office, his brother Ralphiel Mack, and Joseph Giorgianni, as well as Trenton’s City Hall. The raids scooped up documents which were used in the arrests and indictments of these three individuals. Trial on Federal criminal charges begins in January.
Each of the articles gives us a quick review of the events of the last year, and conclude that, for the City’s residents, not much has changed. Or, at least, not much has changed for the better. Trenton has been in limbo for the last year, waiting for the conclusion to this long, sad chapter in its history; no one on the county, state, or federal level will likely do much for Trenton while the IO remains in office.
The IO himself is mostly invisible and mute, no longer even going through the motions to appear to stay relevant to the citizens he is still paid bi-weekly to serve. As the town’s murder toll for the year registers in the 20’s already – it’s only July! – and the city’s Police Vice Unit is “married” to the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office, we hear not a peep from the man.
A state report narrates how open-air drug markets open unhindered on street corners around the City all day and night, adding fuel to the city’s rising crime rate, and the sound from the second floor of City Hall is crickets.
And the financial swamp that is the Lafayette Yard Hotel & Conference Center gets deeper and murkier by the day, to the accompaniment of a resounding silence by the Office of the Chief Executive.
David Foster’s piece in the Trentonian gives us some invaluable context, and reminds us how the City’s problems did not suddenly materialize in July 2010. Many of them were created during the previous 20 years of the Doug Palmer Adminstration. If not actually created then, problems were ignored: papered over by truckloads of State funding that postponed the day of reckoning. And there were epidemics of willful blindness to problems our City Fathers were unwilling to see, such as the gangs problem now blighting the town.
But the thing is, most of the problems that were germinated in the Palmer Administration and earlier were harder to see, buried in oceans (sorry again!) of the fine print found in budgets, financial statements and legislation. Or we were distracted by the illusion of progress teased by such projects as the Arena, Ballpark, and the accursed Hotel. The rot was there, but it was easier to ignore, and happened in slow motion.
The last three years have been remarkable by the fact that we have seen so many shenanigans, conducted so ineptly by so many people so frequently, that it’s been easy to overlook what came before.
In that sense, Trenton has been so beset by man-made disasters of recent and ancient vintage, that the kinds of natural and un-natural catastrophes that are the stock in trade of the SyFy folks would hardly make an impact on the poor souls here. As all the anniversary articles today remind us, we’ve been rendered numb by all of it.
If airborne carcharodons all of a sudden started munching on Clinton Street pedestrians, who’d notice?
“Macks on a Plane!” Now there’s a title to get our attention!