Sharknado!

Last week, Syfy's original movie Sharknado took social media (especially Twitter) by storm. Why Sharknado hit the cultural meme bulls-eye instead of other Syfy shlock classics like 2-Head Shark Attack or Mega Shark vs. Crocosauras we'll never know.

I sat down to watch Sharknado and live blogged the entire thing. Watching with me is my wife, Molly, who was REALLY excited to see it. One thing you should know about my wife is that she's really into extreme weather, real or imagined.

The purpose this live blog serves for you, dear reader, is three-fold:

1. You can read along while watching the film. 2. You've heard people talk about it and you want to pretend that you've seen it, too. 3. You really don't want to waste your life watching a movie about a tornado that has sharks in it, but you still want to make jokes about it with your friends and you need a nice collection of jokes you can steal free of charge.

The following live blog contains SPOILERS.

-Here we go.

-20 miles off the coast of Mexico. Are there any documented sharknados in Mexico?

-We’re on a boat with a guy with Spanish Russian accent and an Asian dude. They’re negotiating something. Probably their contracts with the producers.

-The weather is freshening, smells like tunanado weather. They wish.

-The storms too strong. Got to go around it. You can't outrun a sharknado.

-A shark boards the boat and starts eating a dude. Molly: Awesome!

-Asian guy is shot, drops a case of Monopoly money and then is eaten by a shark. Then the shooter with the bad Russian Spanish accent is swept up in a sharknado and killed. Dorothy had it easy.

-Cut to: THE BEACH!

-Credit sequence:

Tara Reid (American Pie, TMZ) as April Wexler.

Cassie Scerbo (Bring it On: In It To Win It) as Nova Clarke.

John Heard (Home Alone) as George.

Jaason Simmons (Logan Fowler on Baywatch) as Baz.

AND Ian Ziering (Steve Sanders on Beverly Hills 90210) as Fin Shepard

- The beach scenes remind Molly of a particular vollyball scene in 90210 when they worked at the beach club and then Saved by the Bell did the same thing. Molly is really fired up about this.

-Ian Ziering had more hair when 90210 premiered in 1990, but curiously, he has more hair now then when it ended in 2000. He’s a surfer in the movie. It looks like he's wearing Dylan McKay's wetsuit.

-Clouds are coming in. Shark clouds.

-We’re in a seaside bar owned by Ian Ziering's character. Nova Clarke is a waitress. She’s wearing a bikini. Cassie Scerbo’s is providing the T & A since Tara Reid’s new breasts are apparently still on layaway at Cedars-Sinai.

-Fun fact about Cassie Scerbo: she was born in 1990 in Long Island, NY. Strong Island represent!

-John Heard is playing a drunk. He grabs Nova Clarke’s ass (not sure if this was in the script). She has shark-like teeth mark scars on her ass. He asks about it. And she says it from shaving. That makes sense? Ew.

-Molly is questioning why the lighting looks dark in one scene an then light in another. The cinematographer and editor have been put on notice.

-Ian Ziering's Sonny Crockett beard will fight off any shark.

-Dude, there are suddenly like a hundred sharks, which is why Ian Ziering yells, "Sharks!"

-It looks like they're using outtakes from all the Jaws movies randomy edited together.

-Ian Ziering is called "Grandpa" by Nova Clarke. Ouch.

-Ian’s Austrialian buddy, Baz, is on a jetski. A shark gnaws on his leg for a while. Ian gets on the jetski and takes the wheel and drives him in.

-Nova Clarke uses her waitress apron to stop Baz’s bleeding.

-“You could have been killed,” Nova Clarke chastises Ian Zierring’s for saving his buddy from a shark attack.

-A shot of a guy from the Normandy D-Day invasion lying on beach with half a leg bitten off.

-Ian Zierring in classic Steve Sanders-mode back at the bar. He’s in his element. His full name we learn is Finley “The Fin” Shepard. Of course it is.

-Nova Clarke makes a move on Ian Zierring/Steve Sanders. He still’s got it!

-Molly checks IMDB. Ian is 49. A little part of Molly dies.

-A news report identifies the hurricane as Hurricane David. It's the fiirst hurricane to hit California. Where’s the tornados?

-Molly Fact Check: since 1939, 4 tropical cyclones have hit California, but no full hurricane, just remnants.

-Global warming has been identified as the culprit. Sharknados are written off as a liberal conspiracy by Fox News.

-Tara Reid is in the house. Ian’s estranged wife. She looks like she’s was out for two straight weeks chain smoking Pall Malls, died and was embalmed. She has a glamour shot of herself on the wall of her house. 

-The storm is freshening.

-A shark flies through the bar glass window. Nova Clarke impales it with a pool cue. That just happened!

-I think John Heard is actually drunk and doesn’t know what set he’s on.

-The hurricane hits. Everyone runs out of the Peach Pit.

-A shark attacks Nova Clark on the boardwalk. She points a shotgun at the flopping around shark.

-Molly: How did they know they needed to pack heat?

-John Heard kills the shark with a barstool. That just happened!

-A shark attacks Baz. He recreates the oxygen tank scene at the end of Jaws.

-A ferris wheel is unmorred and people run away from it like in Raiders of the Lost Ark until is crashes into a building. Yes, that happened, too.

-Dear Anthony C. Ferrante, director of Sharknado. Yes, we get your Steven Spielberg references. His agent still won’t return your calls.

-Everything is calm again. The storm is quiet. Steve Sanders wonders if he can get Kelly back or maybe hook up with Val.

-I decide Ian’s hair beard dye is more reddish than brown. Nice hair work. Can it survive all this sharknado weather?

-Stock footage montage of hurricanes courtesy of the Weather Channel. Where’s Jim Cantore.

-Commerical Break. An ad for Blast Vegas starring Frankie Muniz. No joke.

-Back to the movie. The crew talk about getting to higher ground. Beverly Hills. What’s the zip code?

-They’re stuck in traffic on the 405.

-Water breach flooding the highway.

-“It’s like Old Faithfull” “We’ll need more than faith to get through this.”

-Molly starts singing George Michael for some reason.

-A shark is in the express lane, eating people, passing on the right.

-Ian suggests everyone get to higher ground for the 100^th time already.

-A dog is locked in a car. “Help!” yells a woman.

-John Heard runs toward the car with his barstool of death. He crashes the window, saves the dog. What can’t barstools do?

-A huge waves hits. John Heard is eaten by a shark. “Oh crap,” are his dying words. Thanks, John Heard, your check is in the mail.

-Ian and the crew drive through a giant wave and get through the traffic jam.

-“If there’s one thing I know. It’s timing waves.” – Ian Ziering as Finley “The Fin” Shepard.

-Ian drives the crew to his huge house on the hill. Tara Reid looks like Charo. Her face looks like an old catchers mitt.

-His teenaged daughter and Tara Reid’s boyfriend is in the house. Ian and Tara argue the fine points of marital law.

-A shark breaks through glass and eats the ex-wive’s boyfriend. That just happened!

-The shark is swimming through the living room. The crew tries to attack it with a bookcase. Yes, I know that doesn’t sound right. The shark gets wise and swims UNDER the bookcase. Nova Clarke shoots it with a gun. Uses all her ammo. Better load up on pool cues and barstools, toots.

-Blood in the water. Baz says, “Looks like that time of the month.”

-Molly lodges her protest at that comment.

-More sharks are in the water. Ian distracts the sharks with a floor lamp. Tara Reid, Nova Clarke, daughter and Baz all run out and get in the car parked outside where it’s only lightly drizzling outside. Keep in mind, the weather INSIDE is so severe that sharks are flooding it.

-They drive away as Ian’s house crumbles from extreme water damage and shark infestation for some reason.

-Close up of Tara Reid’s face. I’ll have night terrors.

-Nova Clarke finds more ammo in the glove compartment of Ian’s car. People must be trying to come after Ian’s 90210 residuals.

-A shark swims up to a school bus. Ian gets out of the car to save the children. He pulls out his climbing rope (because he has those) and repels down from a bridge (it’s also stopped raining and it’s sunny outside). The bus is filled with children who only have only watched the new 90210. Poor kids. He pulls the children out. The stoner teacher is last. He climbs up the rope, then Ian pulls himself up while sharks literally nip at his heels. Ian saves the day.

-The wind freshens. The W flies off the Hollywood sign.

-A piece of the Hollywood sign flies off and impales the teacher. Your check is in the mail. Get a better agent.

-Three tornados appear over the ocean called waterspouts.

-Molly Fact Check: A waterspout is an intense columnar vortex (usually appearing as a funnel-shaped cloud) that occurs over a body of water, connected to a cumuliform cloud.

-Back in the car a shark lands on the roof. Ian Ziering attacks it with a baseball bat. Ian is bit. He’s cut! He’s cut! They remember they have a gun and shoot the shark. It flops around dead on the road like Gabriele Carteris’ failed talk show, Gabrielle.

-The car stalls. They smell gas. They run out of the car. It explodes!

-They seek cover at a liquor store. Uh- oh. Better shut down production, Tara’s gonna be here a while.

-They find a new vehicle at a movie car rental place. They take a Hummer.

-They drive the Hummer through a police blockade. Police chase!

-It’s sunny and dry as a bone out. And so are the actors. Ian’s hair dye isn’t even running yet.

-They get to Van Nuys airport, which is located next to a senior center. Both prove to be important to the plot

-“It’s time to leave Kansas, mate” the Baz says.

-No ones gotten eaten in while. Molly is getting restless.

-The tornado is freshening. Ian’s hair plugs are in trouble.

-Ian’s son works as a pilot trainee at the airport. Ian decides flying a helicopter in a tornado is bad idea. They find an equipment room. They load up with chainsaws, weedwackers and bombs.

-Poignant moment between Ian and his daughter. That’s one for the acting reel! If Harry Hamlin can snag a role on Mad Men, why not Ian Ziering? Are you telling me you he couldn’t kill it as Don Draper’s hard-drinking wingman?

-Son and Nova Clarke are flirting. Steve Sanders is going to lose the girl all over again just like when he lost Kelly and Clare and Hilary Swank.

-Nova Clarke has her Robert Shaw in Jaws moment and tells her Indianapolis scar story. "And, you know, the thing about a sharknado... he's got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll's eyes... " She doesn't actually say that in the movie but it would have been awesome if she did.

-The new plan is to get in the helicopter and fly into the sharknado and drop bombs.

-Molly: does Tara Reid always look tan? That’s not tan, honey, that’s leather.

-The pilot son and Nova Clarke fly into a tornado er sharknado, and drop a bomb into it. The sharknado evaporates. Not sure about the science there.

-A shark flies down from the sky. Ian chops it in half with a chainsaw. Money shot!

-Ian’s now shooting sharks out of the sky like clay pigeons.

-At the senior center. The seniors are just hanging out in the pool, refusing to go inside. They were in the war, you think a little thing like a sharknado will get them to move? 

-A shark flies at some random dude. Eats his arm. Then his leg. Then a hammerhead falls on him and crushes him. The actor is probably telling his family back home that he’s “making it” in Hollywood.

-Ian pulls a senior out of the pool, which now has a shark in it. He pours gasoline in the pool and lights it blowing up the pool and the one shark. Don’t they have bigger fish to fry? Sorry.

-The seniors inside are playing Connect Four.

-We’re back to the helicopter with the son and Nova Clarke and their magical cure for tornados.

-Ah, a shark flies up and bites down on the helicopter. Nova Clarke takes a knife and tries to cut it off. She slips and falls and another shark swallows her whole in mid-air. The son yells “Ohhhhhhhh.” That all just happened!

-The son tries to land the helicopter while Ian watches from the senior center. Inside, the old dude who wouldn’t leave the pool instructs everyone to get away from the window. Folks, they don’t call them the Greatest Generation for nothing.

-The helicopter lands. Ian runs to his son and pulls him out of the cockpit. There is also a sharknado bearing down on them.

-Ian says he’s going to finish this.

-Ian has an idea.

-He gets in the car. He drives INTO the sharknado. Unscrews the top of the bomb. He jumps out of the car and the sharknado takes the car. The bomb explodes. The sharknsado dissipates. Dead sharks rain from the sky like frogs in Magnolia.

-A shark is raining down on Ian’s daughter. Ian sees this. He pushes her out of the way.

-He revs his chainsaw.

-He jumps toward the shark.

-The shark swallows him whole and lands.

-Wait for it.

-Wait for it.

-Ian cuts himself out of the shark with the chainsaw like a C-Section.

-Wait for it.

-And drags out Nova Clarke, too. It’s the SAME shark that ate her!

-The son gives her half-assed CPR. She coughs. She’s alive! She’s alive!

-“I really hate sharks,” she says.

-And that friends, is the new greatest scene in film history!

-Ian is covered in shark guts, but Tara Reid looks worse.

-Tara and Ian have the most awkward kiss I’ve ever seen. She pushes him away like, “That WAS NOT in my contract.”

-“Hell of a day,” Ian says.

-Fin.

-No really, that’s what the title card says.

-The movie is over and all is calm.

-Molly checks the Weather Channel just in case.