For those of you asking, "Is this real?" or maybe saying, "No way this is real," or "I wish this were real:" I've got news for you: it's real. It's super real. And it happened last night. SyFy channel plugged all the best possible elements of a perfect C-movie* action thriller into an algorithm (washed-up 90s teen soap star + made-for-TV + disaster + screaming, wet, half-naked girls + Kevin's dad from Home Alone + hit species of Discovery Channel's ratings-binge week + weapons + 'copters + Tara Reid), and it turned out to be exactly what you'd expect: the most amazeballs thing ever.
If you didn't see it, you were pretty much alone because apparently all of Twitter did; the internets went about exactly as crazy as you would expect for this kind of thing. Here's a graph made by a real, paid, working, adult person that shows last night's tweets-per-minute about "Sharknado," and also an answer to why our country is falling apart.
If you're jonesing for more, here's an interview with the writer (WHOSE REAL NAME IS THUNDER LEVIN) where he explains that the movie is just what we already know about flying sharks taken to its "logical" conclusion. He also explains the genesis of the idea:
[The production company] asked me to pitch them ideas for a movie called 'Shark Storm'. I asked if this would be a straight up movie about sharks attacking during a storm or a crazy storm made up of sharks. They said it would be straight, so I declined, feeling like we’d seen enough shark movies and enough storm movies. A month later they came back to me and said they really wanted me to write a movie called 'Sharknato' (at least that’s what I thought they said), and I asked what sharks had to do with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization? I was suddenly seeing the army battling sharks invading Europe… But they said 'No, Sharknado!' They gave me about half a page of notes which I read and replied 'This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever read… I’M IN!'Yeah, emphasis added. And if you're thinking, "Oh man I really want to watch 'Sharknado' but I only have so much time in my day..." here's a link to THE scene that Gawker (prematurely) calls "iconic:" And here's Vulture's crowning editorial piece, "SyFy's 'Sharknado' in Five GIFs"
Special thanks the Stapp siblings for bringing this to my attention (and happy birthday to one of you!). Here's a birthday .gif for you:
*Wikipedia calls it a "B-movie" but I don't think it deserves that much credit.