Night of the Tomatoes

While my pet rock, Seymour, has recently decided that he wants to learn meterology, I may have to curtail this pursuit, if he's going to try combining real science with science fiction, HIS way. Especially when the genesis of it is a verbal gaffe by a real weathercaster.

The other day, a local weather maven (and hottie) was discussing with morning show hosts the agreement that all were "sick of winter", and were more than ready for spring. Then, she went onto remind listeners of what spring could bring: the kind of conditions that generate severe thunderstorms, unbelievably large hail, powerful microbursts and downdrafts, and those vortex leviathans that make for all kinds of inexplicable geographic rearrangement.

She's so meterologically sexy when she talks like that, but I digress.

Whatever she was thinking at the time of speaking, she apparently crossed two subjects in the translation, as she spoke of the usual probability of "tomatoes on the Eastern Plains".

Tomatoes?

The morning show hosts didn't let that one by. They had some fun at her expense.

Unfortunately, neither did my pet rock let the opportunity by, but his *TOING* was of a different notion.

Instead of focusing on the humor in the faux pas, Seymour -- overnight, while I attempted to sleep -- apparently scribbled furiously on about every sheet of paper I had left in the place, crafting what he calls a 'script' for a movie. One Seymour insists combines twists of Nature, man's meddling with same, and the injection of imagination from a mind full of..er...something, to be fleshed out by a special effects studio, and made into a movie called...Night Of The Tomatoes.

I read it. It sucks (figuratively AND literally).

"Does NOT!"

I'll let you read key excerpts from his script, and YOU decide.

In a plot sure to gain acclaim and impetus with the vegetable rights movement, unscrupulous government bureaucrats and businessmen -- all represented as conservatives, Seymour insists, because Hollyweird won't make a movie about unscrupulous liberals -- work clandestinely to engineer genetically-enhanced "super tomatoes" on a confidential, well-guarded government preserve in eastern Colorado, and in the heart of Colorado's "Tornado Alley". On one fateful late May day, summer of '10, a mesocyclonic supercell thunderstorm hits the area head-on, with a resulting tornado plowing right through the heart of the preserve. And in a metomorphosis explainable by neither Man, science or Science Fiction Theatre 3000, one of the largest, genetically-enhanced tomatoes, combines with the fury of Nature, creating....an F-5 Tomato.

This just plain has "bad" written all over it.

"Does NOT!"

At any rate...as the killer veg advances to the east, acclaimed researchers and storm chasers swarm into the path of the wrathful supercondiment, seeking answers to not only how did this happen, but how they can stop it before it garners an Academy Award for Worst Picture in the History of Cinema.

"Will NOT!"

In one of what Seymour insists is a more seminal, gripping sequence of the movie, two researchers -- somehow interconnected sexually in an on-the-rocks relationship that only dire peril and bad script-writing can change* -- encounter the relentless, ravaging leviathan along the I-70 corridor, approaching Genoa, and the "chase" is on (along with the really BAD dialogue..."is NOT!"):

Female: Oh my GAWD...there it is...it's BEHIND US!" *into cell phone*...it's an F-5...we have an F-5 tomato on the ground, moving east at a high rate of speed! Are you tracking?

(Response from person on the other end of the phone is the equivalent of DUUUHHHHH, of COURSE WE'RE TRACKING, with suitably colorful metaphorics accompanying).

Male: Have we got time to deploy?

Female: Deploy WHAT? We have TOTO, not HOTDOG!

Male: Let's get OUT OF HERE!

(music uptempos as the "chase" is on...after a few moments and credulity-stretching scenes of tomatic destruction in their wake, the dialogue resumes)

Female: It's closing on us! FASTER!

Male: I...I can't believe this...it..it HUNTS!

Female: *glares at him*...that's NOT in the script...

Male: I know...but we best get our Heinzes outta here!
Female: *another glare*...keep it up, buddyboy...

(music uptempos more...)

Female: you need to go FASTER! FASTER!!!

Male: I'm trying! It seems determined to ketchup!

Female: *sound of bone-jarring THWACK*...you just HADDA say that, didn't ya?

Male: What are you getting all stewed over?

Female: *another bone-jarring TWHACK*

Male: *into cell phone*..Ow..we have debris..I say again, we have debris!

Female: one more bad pun, and you're gonna think DEBRIS, lizard lips...

Before the climax ripens -- and before he finds himself in the soup and she can paste him for one more pun -- the movie is wisely cancelled by Paramount, only to be picked up by The Cartoon Channel and the South Park gang.

"Is NOT!"

Night of the Tomatoes. A real chili-ing meterological thriller.

*TWHACK* Ow...

*this appears borrowed from the movie Twister, only more poorly-written..."IS NOT!"