Run! It's a Glacier!

UPDATE ON CD DRIVE: I’ve replaced the drive. Oddly enough, none of the stores had one that was a 12X or below (I’m not gun-shy). A friend has kindly offered to burn a replacement copy of the disc that blew, so I don’t have to buy a full new boxed set to get it back. (The RIAA will be coming soon to pick us both up because we are now responsible for their hemorrhaging sales.) Someone has actually suggested that the RIAA blew up my disc in a DRM effort. Interesting theory . . .

Lately I’ve been having the urge to write, direct, star in and write the musical score for a big-budget action film. I want to be the white, pudgy version of Mario Van Peebles. Except with better hair.

Naturally, I need to have a story idea, plus an entire plot. To add further complications, I also need to come up with some plot holes in order to make it feel like a real action thriller.

I’ve decided that the best route to go is the traditional Natural Disaster movie. We haven’t had a good one for quite some time. Sure, there was Twister. And I love seeing a flying cow as much as the next guy, but as far as a movie with actual science and special effects that actually look better than a blurry dirt spot with pieces of wood flying around it, there hasn’t been one. There have been recent films about forest fires (that would be Firestorm starring Howie Long, no less) volcanoes, meteors, comets, floods, big holes, and swarms of mutant spiders. To be honest, there aren’t many left.

But I found one.

GLACIER: Coming Eventually to a Theater Near You

The film will be located in a small Rocky Mountain town. That there isn’t currently significant glacial activity there is beside the point, and quite honestly if you’re looking for hard science why are you watching an action film? Before the credits roll you see two men in circa 1860s clothing climbing up a rocky slope. They’re looking for gold, or something valuable. Maybe they’re in search of the ever-elusive Rocky Mountain Monkey. The screen says “Holy Hill, 1864.”

They get to the peak of whatever it is they are climbing they stop and take a drink. One guy looks off over into the distance and sees an expanse of white.

“What’s that,” he asks.

“Don’t know,” his friend replies.

They continue on their way, the camera moves over the expanse of white and the music swells menacingly. Then you have your opening credits.

PRESENT DAY the screen says. The town is a bustling place; people are doing whatever small town people in movies do. Making jam or something. You see, it’s a movie small town. So not only does it have the quaintness of small-town living, but they also have an art gallery, eight coffee houses that sell rare Columbian blends and a swanky hotel where our hero and heroine can go and have disaster sex at some point.

So, the camera is panning down the idyllic scene of kids playing, cars driving and waving. Imagine the opening of Blue Velvet before the guy has a stroke and the beetles devour the screen. When, suddenly it spots that expanse of white. And it’s CLOSER! Not impending doom or anything, but it’s significantly closer. Pretty close. Close enough to see anyway.

Cut to the town hall where our hero is beseeching the city government to DO SOMETHING about the glacier because it is coming and it can destroy the city.

“Tell us, when do you estimate the glacier will be an imminent danger,” the mayor asks.

“Well,” our intrepid hero says, “A couple centuries? Maybe more. But the resulting changes to topography could have devastating effects on that skate park that Old Man Jenkins is building south of Pritchett Road.”

“My GOD”, the mayor says, “this is serious. We’re out of donuts.”

Then there is mass confusion. Everyone fights over the artery clogging goodness of the last Krispy Kreme and, like all government institutions, chaos reigns over who will pay for the next dozen.

Our hero leaves and heads out to the glacier. A note about our hero. He is wholly unoriginal. He is a combination of every movie scientist. Geeky, but not nerdy. Dashing but down to Earth. Always wears some sort of khaki. Wears glasses for dramatic effect and, naturally, can bag amazingly attractive women because in this world men who understand physics are viewed as sexy, not as pale, basement dwelling freaks with bad skin.

He goes out to the glacier and talks to it.

“I know you’ll kill us all someday. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not me. Or my children. Or my children’s children. Or my children’s children’s children. But you’ll kill somebody and I aim to stop it.”

He goes back to town and finds an amazingly attractive and fabulously well-to-do female in his office. She’s the daughter of the mayor, a bit of a bad seed, but that’s how our scientist likes ‘em. They banter, they smolder. She says she believes him. She believes in him when no one else would. They go back to the swanky hotel for disaster sex.

Finally they set up camp at the glacier to measure its movements. It’s crazy and dangerous, they know. But that’s the type of people they are.

Eventually their measurements reveal that the glacier has actually retreated by a foot. There is much rejoicing. But it is short lived. Flash forward to two years later. It has advanced by two feet. Everyone screams. For centuries.

But the town learns nothing. And after several flash-forwards the town is destroyed. But there is no mass chaos and no one dies, except from natural causes as things go. Because the people were sensible enough to realize the glaciers don’t kill people. People kill people with various forms of fire.

And in the end the only person to die in this whole experience was our hero. He slipped on a falling piece of ice from the glacier and hit is head, fell down a cliff and was shot seven times by his attractive mate because they could never see eye-to-eye on the politics of capital punishment.

Fin

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