Twisters teaches lots of stuff: DOTL

My buddy Shay Clarke and I recently headed to the super-duper XXL XD WD40 big screen theater to see Twisters.

Given the weather around Illinois lately, it felt like a documentary. Or not.

Twisters, like the 1996 predecessor Twister, is set in Oklahoma. I have never been to Oklahoma. It looks like a hillier version of the parts of Illinois where there’s a lot of corn, soybeans and what passes for country music these days.

Turns out, last year Illinois had the most twisters of any state. Much like Oklahoma’s college football team, the state of Oklahoma wasn’t even in the Top 10. Go figure.

Despite that, I learned a lot from this Twisters movie.

In fact, it inspired me to look into getting a roll cage for my sedan and pneumatic screws for my Camry. That way, I can anchor it into the ground should twisters come my way, just like in the movie.

I have started to carry adult diapers and those little silica gel packets that come with medications with me wherever I go. Twisters posits that such material can somehow stop a tornado in its tracks.

The very least I can do is throw the diapers and pill bottle packets into any twisters that happen in my neighborhood. Maybe if I get the whole block in on this, it will work even better!

We need to get silver iodide to seed the clouds, too. Apparently, though it seems counterintuitive, you have to cause part of the storm front that causes twisters to rain and make the other part of the storm stop raining.

Like most things, you can buy silver iodide on Amazon. Until my shipment arrives, I have plenty of Morton Iodized Salt in my cupboard. I now keep small restaurant packets of salt in my glove compartment. The stuff’s bad for your heart, so I might as well put it to good, movie-science use.

Worse turns to worst, I can head to McDonald’s for fries to fling into a twister. I am fortunate to live close to two Mickey Ds and to two Wendy’s, even. I guess that’s fortune.

The flick made me wonder if tossing tons of box cake mix into a tornado-type storm would make a giant funnel cake.

Past that, I grow dandelions in my driveway. I use their puffballs to determine if atmospheric conditions are such that twisters might form. Now if I can just learn my cloud formations.

Annual Pierogi Fest or not, I am staying away from Whiting, Indiana or any other place near an oil refinery. If a big enough tornado hit there, it could cause a fire-nado, according to Twisters. That would turn the doughy celebration into a frightening mass of Polish pot stickers.

I’m never going to a rodeo, either, especially on a cloudy day or or a day when there’s already been a tornado.

Unlike the stormchasers in Twisters, I  don’t have a weather app. I keep up on conditions through the one true harbinger or truth – social media.

Plus, here in the Chicago area, all the TV stations are obsessed with bad weather. During one  of the recent periods of bad weather, they kept their forecasters on air until the very last threat of a tornado had cleared the viewing area. I was Doppler-ed out by the end of that 3-hour-plus marathon.

Twisters also taught me that if my house is leveled by a tornado, land sharks will arrive. These apex predators gobble up distressed properties. In Oklahoma they wear bolo ties and cowboy hats.

I need to make friends with someone who has an in-ground pool, too. One they keep empty or are willing to empty in advance of a tornado. Apparently they make great places to fend off a cyclone. I bet bungee cords would work well in such a such situation. That’s why I’ve started to stash them in a fanny pack.

Finally, the movie gave me ideas for sequels, or at least for memes.

Adding a bit of Irish to the plot, this one would be set somewhere near the Cliffs of Moher.

Ireland, Scotland and the rest of the UK typically only get a few weak, tiny twisters a year – somewhere between 10 and 50. Hell, Chicago and vicinity had 38 in one night this July.

In Celtic Twisters, for some strange reason the Cliffs start getting hit by a series of twisters, fresh off the Atlantic. (Hint: that reason would be the awesome CGI opportunities). Sea creatures of all sorts wind up out of the ocean and flailing about the lanes of Liscannor.

A rugged American agri-businessman/young widower on vacation and a sultry ginger scientist lass/step dancer team up to figure out why and what can be done about it.

Theories emerge. Those center around the following:

• Irish farmers are being paid by a sinister shadow company to plant lots and lots of corn and soybeans. These aspirants add warm moisture to the Irish air, leading to twisters, it seems.
• Burning peat has gone out of fashion in Ireland. Our heroes figure out that peat puts particulates into the air that fend off tornadoes.

Somehow the corn has been growing on what were peat bogs. So the romantic leads and their friends hack into the government computer system to access heavy equipment. They use it to dig up corn and peat, which they bring to the Cliffs to light a massive bonfire to stop the biggest damn doomsday twister in its tracks!

I’m working on a Scottish version, too. It would involve bagpipes, highland single malt scotch whisky and portable air conditioning units.

 

 

Hitting the recent Milwaukee Air & Water Show gave me ideas for a Top Gun Twisters.

It’s already been suggested by one guy in the know that launching nukes into hurricanes could end tropical storms once and for all. So why night use slightly less powerful bombs delivered by chiseled, if aging, fighter pilots?

Maybe they could use drones to attack the twisters. That would appeal to people who watch people play video games online. (If you don’t know that’s a real thing, you’re really old.)

For the rest of us, the pilots with attitudes would fly over – and possibly into – the twisters.

From what I saw in the air show, maybe they wouldn’t use bombs. Maybe these cinema scientists will discover that putting compounds into the chem trails of the jets would kill a killer tornado.

Maybe it could be something as simple as gluten from pasta water. What inspired that idea was seeing the Italian Air Force Aerobatic Team perform.

What blockbuster like this with Italians wouldn’t include pasta AND amore – or at least heart-shaped smoked?

Anyway, that’s what I took away from Twisters. I just wish it had a country cover of this REO Speedwagon number.

Ciao.

Mike Danahey is a freelance writer living somewhere near Chicago. He’s available for hire and can be contacted by leaving a message for this post.