And then came the celebrity succubi — those tired, two-bit attention junkies scheming to soak up any spare attention we had left. Reality television stars, in other words. On Bad Girls Club: Miami and The Real Housewives of Miami, weaves were pulled, boob jobs were bitch-slapped, and the bar for human decency sank to an all-time low. At least until South Beach Tow took that bar, shoved some strippers onto it, and raked up the dirty dollar bills that rained down.
But Miami's Mayan prophecy wouldn't be truly fulfilled until the rising of its triple moon: the callipygian Kardashian sisters. We almost avoided it. Producers of Kourtney & Kim Take Miami were denied by Di Lido Island, rejected by Belle Isle, and booted from the rest of Miami Beach. Then — like the ditsy chick in horror films who can't help but mess with evil spirits — the legendarily corrupt Mayor Andre Pierre invited the terrible trio to North Miami with open arms.
Soon the Kardashians had whipped South Florida's worst TV stars into a terrible, T&A-fueled frenzy. One Real Housewives star's son nut-punched a homeless guy, only to get caught after proudly posting video of the assault on YouTube. King of Diamonds dancer Tip Drill broke her face after tumbling more than 20 feet down a stripper pole in pursuit of celebrity cash. Northwestern High School's legendary marching band was pulled into a rap video called "Bandz a Make Her Dance" alongside porn star Alexis Texas (of Buttwoman vs. Slutwoman fame). And Paula Simonds, a mild-mannered Miami mother of three, renamed herself Lacey Wildd and went on a plastic surgery binge. Wildd wanted size triple-M breasts, but after 12 previous operations, not a single Miami plastic surgeon would touch her. And when this city's boob docs take the moral high ground, it must be the end times.
As if this methodical destruction of Florida's moral fiber by celebs weren't enough, the most despicable crowd of all arrived in August: the Republican National Convention. Fox News' four horse-anchormen of the apocalypse flew into Tampa to stoke the hellfire flames of controversy as Mitt Romney took the pulpit and Clint Eastwood grappled with an empty chair. But the real action was outside the convention center. Strip clubs around Central Florida stocked up on talent, including a bevy of busty porn stars (including one who looked like — shudder — Sarah Palin) hired to prostrate themselves as conservative pols showed off their stimulus packages and rained handfuls of fiscal-cliff cash. And everybody and their mother brought their Glock.
Whether it was Republican right-wingers or slutty reality TV stars, by year's end South Florida was so chock-full of famous craziness — and guns — that something had to explode. The stars were aligned, like a cut of pure Colombian yeyo on Nostradamus' gnarly old nipple. All we had to do was snort.
Mayan Prediction: The oceans will rise and the earth will shake.
Florida Reality: In the end, however, maybe it was volcanic ashes — not Kardashian asses — that we should have worried about. If there's one common theme among apocalyptic predictions, it's that nature is about to wreak its primordial revenge. Christians expect drought, famine, fire, and tremors before the Rapture. Norse mythology says the planet will shake as the gods fight it out. For the Mayans, the god of earthquakes was also the god of death. Cizin, a laughing skull with a necklace of eyeballs, was responsible for destroying earlier civilizations. Why not ours as well?
As the year wore on, Miami indeed teetered dangerously on the brink of collapse. After city commissioners agreed to shell out more than a billion dollars for a thoroughly unnecessary project, French engineers began tearing a three-quarter-mile tunnel beneath Biscayne Bay. Like a 12-month enema, a massive, $45 million German drill named Harriet churned underneath us all year long.
Soon, pieces of Miami began collapsing. Three construction workers perished when a five-story parking garage pancaked at Miami Dade College's Doral campus in October. Tropical Storm Sandy's unrelenting rain and wind tore Fort Lauderdale streets to pieces. In the boob-job bastion of Bal Harbour, the entire beach was swept out to sea. And South Beach turned into a Vietnamese shrimping village for six months, with TV anchors in fisherman waders reporting live from flooded street corners like an episode of The Most Dangerous Catch.
Then the animal plagues began. Burmese pythons and aggressive African crocodiles overtook the Everglades. Caribbean crazy ants crept into Miami-Dade. Malarial mosquitoes migrated from Key West. And feral cats turned the University of Florida into an extra-large litter box. Tiger cubs and alligators were suddenly kosher in kiddie pools.
