That’s maybe a little unfair, as there is more of a plot than just a few quakes happening and people and cars being swept en masse off the collapsed Hoover Dam and Golden Gate Bridge. A bit more anyway. This is it: Several very high-magnitude earthquakes suddenly destroy the west coast of the USA out of the blue, and an Action Man figure of a helicopter rescue pilot and his estranged wife fly to San Francisco to find their daughter amid the rubble and water left after a 9.6 magnitude quake hits the city followed by a tsunami. Somehow they know without a shadow of a doubt that because she’s so smart, she’ll have figured out a way to stay alive when all those around her are not, and somehow they find her from their speedboat as she flags them down by flashing a small green light at them from the top of a crumbling high-rise building. Somehow she’s become trapped up there with her love interest – a foppish, ineffectual Hugh Grant–type British chap – and his little brother. Somehow, even though the daughter very clearly drowns at one point and can’t be resuscitated, Action Man brings her back to life after getting very angry about it all. Somehow the US flag then unfurls – as of course it would do – over a destroyed Golden Gate Bridge and the reunited happy family, at which point the no-longer-estranged wife says, ‘What now?’ To which Action Man stoically replies, ‘We rebuild.’ The End. Oh, and Kylie Minogue’s in it somewhere, but I can’t for the life of me fathom where. Maybe she was the small green light.
Well, it passed 114 minutes, so I can’t complain.
It’s now the next morning and I’m in my brother’s apartment in Manhattan, trying and failing to get connected to the wi-fi. I woke earlier thinking it was 8.30 am but was confused by the fact that it still seemed to be dark outside and all my devices showed different times. It turned out to be 3 am. I think it’s now just gone 7. I should still be asleep as I’ve only had a few hours’ kip, but in UK time it’s past noon, so I’m more than ready to be up and hitting the streets of New York. My plan is to play an open mic tonight. We’ll see how bright eyed and bushy tailed I still am by then, however…