Drizzle: The Movie

RANDOM THOUGHTS DURING A WET WINTER IN SEATTLE

There have been movies about tornados, hurricanes, severe snow storms, and many other weather related disaster scenarios. Without a doubt the most underrated and overlooked natural disaster is drizzle. As a Seattleite I feel that this oversight has kept this city from achieving its due share of fame and fortune. Sure, no one has ever died from light rain but what about the accompanying mildew? What about the wet spots on slick tile floors left by children too careless to wipe their feet? What do you get when you add kids’ wet shoes to a tile floor? I’ll tell you what you get; you get something that is as slippery as snot—the substance with the highest viscosity rate known to man (In diagnostic testing performed at Comedy Central snot was proven to be 110 times more slippery than banana peels). Write those things into a movie script and Arnold Schwarzenegger would pause before signing onto a project with that sort of body count.

Next to drizzle, a plague that wipes out 99% of the world’s population seems like pretty tame subject matter for a horror film. Have you ever just missed your bus in Seattle and then had to wait a really long time for the next one without a raincoat in DRIZZLE? If you have you can bet your sorry ass you spent your wait praying desperately for a humanity-ravaging plague to take you away from your misery. Film makers tried to frighten us with a movie about a really big storm at sea. Big fucking deal. You grab a hold of a piece of the boat’s wreckage and you kick back to shore. You think being washed overboard in the middle of the ocean is hopeless? Try living in Seattle where you don’t see the sun for months on end. Floating around in that big scary ocean will suddenly seem as cozy as sitting in front of a blazing fire, sipping hot chocolate.

Wake up America! What if global warming turned other areas of the planet into a drizzly hellhole like Seattle? Worse yet, what if you got transferred to Microsoft’s home office and actually had to live here like the rest of us miserable wretches? Hollywood has done a wonderful job of educating the masses when it comes to other weather disasters: Don’t live in a trailer in Oklahoma, don’t go fishing during a storm, button up your coat and wear gloves if you are going to climb Mount Everest. Although the problem of drizzle doesn’t lend itself to such easy solutions, simple awareness could prevent senseless tragedy.

And what about humidity? How many action movies have you seen that deal with this, the most deadly of all meteorological phenomena? Just ask any Florida retiree and they’ll tell you (even if you’re not asking) “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity. Ooooyyyy!” Another common quote heard on any Miami Beach park bench is “It’s like a sauna out here.” Although technically saunas are dry heat you know what old Ray is saying. He’s saying that the humidity is “murder.” How many other weather terms are referred to as “murder?” Humidity stands alone above all the rest of the weather villains yet Hollywood, in its ‘wisdom,’ has decided to give humidity a pass.