In one of the most shocking twists to occur in Miami-Dade County over the past several Memorial Day weekends, nothing absolutely bat-shit insane occurred to forced locals to question the decency of the human species and the meaning of life itself.
After the 2011 Memorial Day Weekend during which police attempted to pump 116 rounds into a man in the middle of a busy street for reasons still under debate and a 2012 incident that involved a man actually eating the face off another man in broad daylight, locals had grown accustomed to the fact that the three-day holiday weekend would mean the literal manifestation of Hell on Earth in the county's urban core. However, Miamians were left stunned that nothing excruciatingly horrible went down this time.
"I hate to use the word 'disappointed' to described how I feel about the fact that no one's life actually ended in a way that you figured could only be dreamed up by the hackiest of Hollywood screenwriters, but yeah I would say I'm disappointed," said Kendall resident Tomas Lopez-Schwartz. "I mean, in the office pool I placed my money on one of those Everglades pythons somehow washing up on South Beach and strangling a beach goer or two, but it turns out no one was right, and I guess we'll have to give the money to charity or something."
Local tourism officials also expressed mixed feeling.
"Sure it's great to send the message that Miami is just a regular city that isn't actually a total panic-inducing nightmare involving every inhuman sin imaginable, but, let's be honest, that 'Miami Zombie' incident has lead to an influx of weird tourists who wanted to have their picture taking at the spot where that one dude ate that homeless dude's face off," said county tourism spokesman Yvette Sanchez. "All publicity is good publicity, so they say. The fact that nothing really crazy happened here isn't exactly going to get us on the Drudge Report or The Today Show, you know what I mean?"
Elsewhere, the city's local media also expressed disappointment.
"Everyone knows our internal motto is 'If it bleeds it leads,' but we consider this a really disappointing paper cut-type weekend," said WSVN news director Roger Tomlinson. "Not a lot of blood. Oh, sure, we had the regular Miami horrors of run-of-the-mill shootings and apartment fires, but none of the life-shattering phantasms that would really spike ratings. All in all I would say that the entire staff is disappointed that, say, we didn't get to cover a cruise ship hijacked by terrorists and rigged with explosives running full steam into Bayside Marketplace or a mass killing spree by a busty woman in a leather catsuit going down in South Beach, but you learn to take the good with the bad in this business, and sometimes you just have to deal with a relatively boring three-day weekend."
Adds Liza Robertson, the Miami Herald news editor, "I mean, for cris-sakes, even the arrest numbers during the shit show that is Urban Beach Weekend were down. How are you supposed to turn that into Pulitzer-worthy coverage? You know when you have a local police force turning a section of their city into a literal police state and you can't even get a good story off of that it makes you wonder why you even entered this business in the first place."
"But, hey, you never know. Maybe something absolutely stomach-churning occurred we just haven't learned about by now," added Robertson. "Here's hoping a bunch of a young disabled children's bones wash up on Key Biscayne a week from now or something."
When reached for comment, Kyle Munzenrieder, the writer dedicated to The Miami New Times' tabloid-y news blog Riptide said, "I don't know, I guess we'll go with some second-rate The Onion-style satirical news story to express the fact that nothing occurred that ravaged my soul to the point I briefly considered moving to Des Moines, Iowa, to cover the local school board to get away from the absolute inhumane depravity of this city once and for all."
At press time Munzenrieder was left wondering if he had the actual comedic chops to pull that off and secretly hoping that notoriously troubled former child star Amanda Bynes would pilot a helicopter into the top of the Freedom Tower while shouting racial slurs before early Tuesday morning so he would have something actually juicy to cover this week.
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