In the long, long ago I lived in California; right around Silicon Valley to be exact.

California was a great, but strange place to live; the weather was perfect, people would towel-dry their cars after one of the three days it rained in a year, and in the courtyard of my apartment building I used to watch an old Chinese man practice what I?assume was Falun Gong exercises while wearing a hat that I’m certain was given to him directly by Mao.

But the strangest thing always happened at night.

Not like, “crazy night life” kind of strange. Santa Clara actually kind of buttoned up at night, unless you were at the 24 hour party that was Safeway.

Every night, in my apartment complex, in the adjoining complexes, in the yards of the McMansions around us, we all got to take part in what I called “the mechanical ballet.”

At some scheduled time just past sundown a small army of sprinklers, sprayers and over zealous hoses would click on, misting the surrounding plant life that has no earthly reason to exist in that environment, and keep the courtyards green for another day.

Also- it made everything smell like a zoo.

Seriously.

The sprinklers used “reclaimed water,” according to signs that were posted once every fifteen feet to remind you to please not drink this water as it is water in the molecular sense only.

Now, I don’t know why reclaimed water makes me think of the zoo.

Maybe they hosed the animal cages down with reclaimed water? Did they give it to the animals? It doesn’t matter; what matters is that every night just past sundown, if you were outside, you were treated to hundreds of these little robots springing up from the ground to provide a gentle layer of artificial dew on all the alien vegetation.

Every. Day.

Well, maybe that wasn’t the best idea, since it turns out California is kind of running out of water.

NASA, the collection of scientists trying to find something to do now that the space program was shut down as part of Congress’ “Bring Back the 19th Century” initiative, announced last week that California has about one year’s worth of water left unless drastic measures to curb water use are instituted right now.

I know what you’re thinking: Is this going to cause a loss of courtyard shrubbery?

I’m sorry to say there are even more grave concerns than courtyard shrubbery, if such a thing were possible.

Turns out water, a basic necessity of all life on Earth, is somewhat important to the economic and actual health of a state.

Many in California are calling for the implementation of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act of 2014 which would require (and I’m quoting the LA Times here) the formation of numerous, regional groundwater sustainability agencies by 2017. Then each agency must adopt a plan by 2022 and “achieve sustainability” 20 years after that.

So … create a bunch of councils to talk about how bad the problem is, then figure something out by 2022? Aren’t you guys going to be out of water by then? Does somebody in the California legislature own stock in Evian?

We’re not talking about some simple problem you can ignore forever like nuclear waste or Guantanamo, we’re talking about not having enough water to make that Thai peanut pizza I?know you guys love.

Just take a minute and imagine a world without water … actually, imagine “Waterworld,” starring Kevin Costner, instead.

Sure, there was a bunch of water everywhere (natch) and only Kevin Costner could find “dry land” and even though paper was supposed to be the most valuable commodity on Earth than why did all the bad guys smoke paper-wrapped cigarettes throughout the ENTIRE movie and nobody said a word about it?

Well, this is pretty much what California is looking at becoming in the next couple years.

A dystopian future ruled by bad guys on jet skis led by Dennis Hopper?

Unfortunately, no.

California’s situation is more like a high stakes boondoggle that a whole bunch of people know isn’t going to work but they’ve procrastinated so long and sunk so much money into this faulty project that no one is going to tell the Emperor he’s naked until after the parade has started.

So what is to be done? Some kind of reverse “Grapes of Wrath” scenario where California rapidly depopulates via troves of people in beaten up Prius’ heading east because they heard “they got water out Michigan way?”

Hopefully not, mostly because I don’t want to see somebody make an updated “Grapes of Wrath” and pretty much ruin one of my favorite books.

No, California is the home of Silicon Valley, Disney Land and fast food places that have burgers, tacos and egg rolls all on the same menu; California is where dreams come true!

And nobody makes dreams come true quite like Hollywood.

This is a perfect Hollywood problem to solve. The scale of the issue, the enormity of the impact on the citizens, the potential for disaster; these kind of stakes may befuddle a state government but this is what Hollywood deals with on a daily basis.

And I?think Hollywood may have already given us the answer, courtesy of the 1985 Richard Pryor and John Candy comedy “Brewster’s Millions.”

Brewster (Pryor) has to spend $30 million in a month in order to inherit $300 million, but he can’t tell anybody what he’s doing. So Brewster starts gambling big, funding ridiculous renovations, and he starts buying weird businesses … like the one from Dr. Jay Tyler Whitaker, also known as “The Iceberg Man.”

I’ll let Dr. Whitaker explain.

“(pointing to a globe): Up here, this is the North Pole. It’s an ice floe and floating randomly throughout this entire region of the North Atlantic are many, many icebergs, sir, and nobody owns them. They’re PDI, Public Domain Icebergs … what I would like to is go to the North Pole, select a good sized iceberg, and simply dig out a chamber from the rear end of it, drop in two 20,000 horsepower marine diesel engines and sail Brewster’s Berg No. 1 to Mecca.”

Ok, Whitaker wanted to sell the iceberg to the Saudis, but we can just ship it straight to Los Angeles instead.

Hollywood, you’ve done it again! Now all we need to do is head up to the North Pole and grab an iceberg; it should be pretty easy because they’re all breaking up and melting … for some reason … doesn’t matter; as soon as we drag down one of these icebergs things can get back to normal.

Bring on the mechanical ballet!

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Copy Editor Wes Burns is a Sunday columnist. The views expressed in this column are personal views of the writer and don’t necessarily reflect the views of the T-R. Contact Wes Burns at 641-753-6611 or wburns@timesrepublican.com.