Lake Peigneur : The swirling Vortex of Doom

Okay, so as my summer has dwindled I have found it more and more necessary to find meaningless things to do - most of which are somewhere on the interweb and entertain me for countless hours. But of all of the DAYS of websurfing I have done over the last 3 months, the winner of best time wasting site of the year has to go to DamnInteresting.com, simply a blog of interesting stories that are, in fact, damn interesting. I have spent DAYS here, literally. I have posted my favorite, but there are several that came close (and I have not read them all yet...I must need another summer off). My book is almost done, with about a chapter or two remaining, but it would have been done months ago if not for websites such as DamnInteresting.
So here's to the time wasters!

Written by Alan Bellows on September 28th, 2007 at 9:38 am
From DamnInteresting.com
Please enjoy this classic Damn Interesting article which was originally posted on 06 September 2005.

Early in the morning on November 21, 1980, twelve men decided to abandon their oil drilling rig on the suspicion that it was beginning to collapse beneath them. They had been probing for oil under the floor of Lake Peigneur when their drill suddenly seized up at about 1,230 feet below the muddy surface, and they were unable free it. In their attempts to work the drill loose, which is normally fairly easy at that shallow depth, the men heard a series of loud pops, just before the rig tilted precariously towards the water.
At the time, Lake Peigneur was an unremarkable body of water near New Iberia, Louisiana. Though the freshwater lake covered 1,300 acres of land, it was only eleven feet deep. A small island there was home to a beautiful botanical park, oil wells dotted the landscape, and far beneath the lake were miles of tunnels for the Diamond Crystal salt mine.
Concluding that something had gone terribly wrong, the men on the rig cut the attached barges loose, scrambled off the rig, and moved to the shore about 300 yards away. Shortly after they abandoned the $5 million Texaco drilling platform, the crew watched in amazement as the huge platform and derrick overturned, and disappeared into a lake that was supposed to be shallow. Soon the water around that position began to turn. It was slow at first, but it steadily accelerated until it became a fast-moving whirlpool a quarter of a mile in diameter, with its center directly over the drill site.
As the whirlpool was forming on the surface, Junius Gaddison, an electrician working in the salt mines below, heard a loud, strange noise coming down the corridor. Soon he discovered the sound's source, which was rushing downhill towards him: fuel drums banging together as they were carried along the shaft by a knee-deep stream of muddy water. He quickly called in the alarm, and the mine's lights were flashed three times to signal its immediate evacuation. Many of the 50 miners working that morning, most as deep as 1,500 feet below the surface, saw the evacuation signal and began to run for the 1,300 foot level, where they could catch an elevator to the surface. However, when they reached the third level, they were blocked by deep water.
Clearly, the salt dome which contained the mine had been penetrated by the drill crew on the lake. Texaco, who had ordered the oil probe, was aware of the salt mine's presence and had planned accordingly; but somewhere a miscalculation had been made, which placed the drill site directly above one of the salt mine's 80-foot-high, 50-foot-wide upper shafts. As the freshwater poured in through the original 14-inch-wide hole, it quickly dissolved the salt away, making the hole grow bigger by the second. The water pouring into the mine also dissolved the huge salt pillars which supported the ceilings, and the shafts began to collapse.
As most of the miners headed for the surface, a maintenance foreman named Randy LaSalle drove around to the remote areas of the mine which hadn't seen the evacuation signal, and warned the miners there to evacuate. The miners whose escape was slowed by water on the third level used mine carts and diesel powered vehicles to make their way up to the 1,300 foot level, where they each waited their turn to ride the slow, 8-person elevator to the surface as the mine below them filled with water. Although it seemed to take forever to get out, all 50 miners managed to escape with their lives.
Meanwhile, up on the surface, the tremendous sucking power of the whirlpool was causing violent destruction. It swallowed another nearby drilling platform whole, as well as a barge loading dock, 70 acres of soil from Jefferson Island, trucks, trees, structures, and a parking lot. The sucking force was so strong that it reversed the flow of a 12-mile-long canal which led out to the Gulf of Mexico, and dragged 11 barges from that canal into the swirling vortex, where they disappeared into the flooded mines below. It also overtook a manned tug on the canal, which struggled against the current for as long as possible before the crew had to leap off onto the canal bank and watch as the lake consumed their boat.
After three hours, the lake was drained of its 3.5 billion gallons of water. The water from the canal, now flowing in from the Gulf of Mexico, formed a 150-foot waterfall into the crater where the lake had been, filling it with salty ocean water. As the canal refilled the crater over the next two days, nine of the sunken barges popped back to the surface like corks, though the drilling rigs and tug were left entombed in the ruined salt mine.
Despite the enormous destruction of property, no human life was lost in this disaster, nor were there any serious injuries. Within two days, what had previously been an eleven-foot-deep freshwater body was replaced with a 1,300-foot-deep saltwater lake. The lake's biology was changed drastically, and it became home to many species of plants and fish which had not been there previously.
Of course numerous lawsuits were filed, and they were subsequently settled out-of-court for many millions of dollars. The owners of the Crystal Diamond salt mine received a combined $45 million in damages from Texaco and the oil drilling company, and got out of the salt mining business for good.
No official blame for the miscalculation was ever decided, because all of the evidence was sucked down the drain, but the story described here is the generally accepted theory of what caused this massive disaster.

Family Idol

In case you didn't know, somebody in the family tried out for the famous reality show. They shall remain nameless, because if you are in the club, you already know the outcome, and if you are not, well, due to a confidentiality agreement that yours truly signed, you will get to know some time around January or February when season 8 airs...or the person that tried out gets in lawyer trouble. But I do have a semi related story that should be known.
When waiting for the audition, there was a girl there that was, what would probably be considered "special needs" by most people. She sat right next to our own auditioner (is that a word?) and clapped off time, sang out of key, forgot her words, but was all in it for the big victory and really whooped and hollered her head off at all times. She threw everyone around her off, and distracted us all, for hours and hours and hours.
Your contestant was right next to her. But when I asked if the contestant wanted to trade me seats, or try to move elsewhere, the contestant said no. The woman (otherwise known as the distractor) forgot lines to the songs she had prepared, and every time she spoke to our contestant, she spit on her accidentally as she spoke. Our contestant took it all with a grain of salt and kept her cool. It was only a matter of time before somebody arond us blew their top and said something to her. (namely, me, as protector and notarized guardian of the contestant). She screamed too loud, and basically was just getting on everyones nerves in the whole area.
The song that the lady was going to audition with was "Bye Bye Bye" by N'Sync. and she kept having trouble with it, as evidenced by her frequent cell phone calls to somebody that was helping her from home. The distractor was all alone with thousands of people that probably didn't like her.
Our contestant, nervous about the songs she had chosen herself, and trying to practice on her own, then stopped what she was doing and took the time to coach the distractor by giving examples of lines (our contestant knew all the N'Sync song) and singing with her until she was more comfortable with the lines and could do them again on her own. And this is why, winner or not in the reality show, our contestant is a winner in the family and in life in general. I wish you were all there to see it. Aside from my wedding day, I've never been more proud, seriously.

Mamma Mia! What a show!

Continuing on our movies-are-the-only-thing-to-do-when-it's-1000 degrees-outside activities, We went to see Mamma Mia...and before I begin, allow me to say that yes, I WILL be giving some of the story away in case you have not seen it. I usually do not, but this time I will. So stop reading if you do not know the story...

I've seen the play, twice, and both times were generally enjoyable to me, even though I am not by most standards, a "chick", which is whom the entire thing - the music, the story line, the costumes, the dialogue, the setting, etc... are for (dot dot dot). and after seeing the movie, all I can say is that, it must be genuinely difficult to write something for film that has been on stage. The whole thing felt squirrelly as a film, and I can't pinpoint exactly what it was (nor can the Lester). But, some of the critical aspects are as follows:

Casting was far and away the worst thing about the film: The big money stars, Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan, were both miscast, and it would have played better with relative unknowns for the whole movie, not just all but the two (I know, the groom to be is an up-and-comer, but he's not at the level of Meryl and Pierce, yet). Meryl holds her own in the acting and singing, but I still don't feel that she was cast right as the hippie of yesteryear holding down an inn at an out of the way foreign port. She doesn't fit the part of the girl-group singer, either. She does do an amicable job of singing, though, unlike her male counterpart. The pair of old friends that used to be her singing group are a little less than believable, as well. A horse-faced broad that is supposed to have ample plastic surgeries (not enough?), and a dwarfy little troll thing that is actually quite good in her part.

Pierce is just simply out of place and is only cast in an effort to draw boomer ladies into the theatre that ogle over him even as he grows older. He looks like he's in pain or at least constipated as he sings like a dying yak. They should have voiced over his singing parts. It is most distracting, and by the end you are praying that he doesn't get any more singing parts because he sucks like nobody has sucked before in a musical, singing, acting, delivery of lines, all infinitely horrible. Usually I like the guy... (dot dot dot).

And the (somewhat) unknown bride to be, I feel, is not really up to the standards of one of the main stars of the show. Simply put, she looks funny. She has these wall-eyes that just look wonky, and for it to be that one of the men she invites to her wedding is her father, well, I think not. She has the looks of some half-alien, downs syndrome thing that none of the men, nor Meryl, possess. this leads me to believe that mom (Meryl) must have gotten busy with yet another man, or alien, at about the same time. that would have changed the movie for the better...(dot dot dot).

So aside from horrible casting, everything else suffered a little too, I suspect because of the change in formats from stage to film. Dialogue and character development may as well have been on-stage, and the story line only differed by the slightest margin dealing with setting - there had to be cameras set up for differing scenery, so the very nature of the go-stop-go-stop of filming made it seem like the whole story was go-stop-go-stop as well. It could have benefited from radical changes in dialogue, or tweaks to the story line, otherwise, why bother with making it a movie? There just didn't seem to be enough change for it to be successful. Is this for the people that are too afraid to go to a live-action theatre to see it? Or the I don't want to dress up type?I can't help but thinking setting up a single camera in the orchestra pit of a Broadway theatre and filming the whole thing there would have been better received by everyone, and it sure would have saved a lot of cash on Brosnan.

1 of 5 Toes. Success with the formula was solid. This film resides in a wheelchair.