The Quake Offers Solace in Scary Times

Featured Funny Video: The Quake

Earlier this month, Southern Californians kicked off Independence Day with a 6.4-magnitude earthquake that reminded us all of the seismic block party happening on fault lines that sprawl beneath, lying in wait every moment of our daily lives. Horrifying. And there have been more, even larger quakes since. With the utmost respect and concern for our neighbors and friends affected by the earthquakes and with a healthy awareness of what tectonic Tetris is still to come, we bring you a video from Eliot Schwartz and Sheila Carrasco that will, hopefully, lighten the mood.

Written by and starring Schwartz and Carrasco and directed, shot, and edited by Ryan Turri, The Quake shows us the spectacularly overblown ways in which a barely perceptible 1.1-magnitude earthquake “destroys” the lives of two attention-starved L.A. residents. Bookended by title and finale sequences that anoint this one-location short with a tiny taste of a San Andreas–style blockbuster, the grounded nature of Griffin’s (Schwartz) increasingly heated cell-phone conversations with his mom on the eve of her knee surgery is balanced nicely by the sudden and absurd return of Tildy’s vertigo.

Sometimes the best way to get over the omnipresent fear that we’re all in danger of falling into a giant ground chasm at all hours of the day and night is to laugh a little at that very fact … right?

Luke Kelly Clyne is executive producer and head of development at Big Breakfast and a watcher of many web videos. Send him yours @LKellyClyne.