T.S Elliot (that anti-Semite bastard) once wrote that, “april
is the cruelest month” but for me it’s always been that period between now and
the end of February. Not only is it cold
and bleak, (Even here in California – although to be fair, much like our hills during
a rainfall after a devastating fire, it’s a sliding scale.) but for a fan like
myself, it’s the sports doldrums.
College football is finished, as is the NFL season and the playoffs with the exception of the Super Bowl… like that matters.
I can watch
and enjoy the Knicks, but it will be a while before the games really count.
I suppose there is college basketball, but it is pretty
boring to begin with and we are over a month away from March Madness…
Quick Side Note: A couple of years ago I came to the realization that I lack the knowledge or interest to make a decent run at any March Madness pool or national contest and have made it my mission to come in last.
Here is my ranking from 2024. I came in 2,856,143rd. This year I’m hoping to break 3,000,000th. Wish me unluck.
So the other day when a friend of mine asked me if I wanted
to go see Monster Jam at the Golden One Arena I jumped at it. Not only was
seeing monster trucks shoot fire and crush smaller vehicles on my bucket list, but he works for a large “advocacy” group, and they have a luxury box. I won’t
say which one but let’s put it this way, it’s a good thing, Luigi Mangione is
in jail.
Part of the problem was that Monster Jam is apparently not Monster Truck Wars. Monster Jam is a two-hour toy commercial fobbed off as a competition between six, I don’t know what to call them, overgrown dune buggies?
You know those radio-controlled truck/go
carts they used to sell at Radio Shack (A Tandy Company!)? They were like a bigger version of that. Sure
they had names like Grave Digger and Jurassic Attack, but there was also one
named Scooby-Doo.
The premise of Monster Jam is, there are six vehicles, that compete in a series of events such as driving over some piled up dirt and doing wheelies, doing donuts, and getting air.
You know… the stuff I did in my parent’s Fiat 124 behind the Pathmark after school.
I even drove it
once down a flight of stairs just like Rémy Julienne.
Another Side Note: Many, many, years later my Dad and I were having a conversation about some of the cars we owned, and he mentioned that while he liked the Fiat, he felt it wasn’t that well-built because it always had a rattle, like the frame was going to come apart.
Heh… Heh…
To involve the crowd, such as it was, you could download a QR
code and be a judge for each event. My favorite instruction was when we were
told to reward the drivers for their creativity during the donut competition.
I’m pretty sure that doing a donut just entails hitting the
brake pedal and the gas pedal at the same time and then keeping the wheel
turned all the way to one side. Not a lot of opportunities for creativity
there.
It was all so so, so boring and pointless. Nothing shot fire. No vehicles we destroyed. Actually that would be pointless too but at least it would be more entertaining.
The "competition" lacked context, villains,
story, and a sense of danger. Nothing was at
stake, and you know that the trophy they gave the "winner” at the end will be
used again the next night. I was a
little far away but I’m pretty sure I saw a bowler on top of it.
It was however, really, really loud, because for some reason, “sporting events” equate volume and excitement.
I felt bad for the little kids in attendance. At least when
I destroyed my hearing it was because I sat in the eighth row of a Pink Floyd
concert at Nassau Coliseum.
The kids in attendance were more interested in the merch. Which I guess was the whole idea.
The National Anthem was sung by a Hispanic woman who kept glancing around like she was expecting ICE to haul her off in the middle of the song. Sad.
Speaking of sad. Pretty much everyone in there was working
class and tickets were not cheap. A family of four probably dropped close to five
hundred bucks to watch this garbage.
Let me put it this way... If you’ve ever been to Vegas there’s always a moment when you see a person or a family, slowly walking in the lobby, totally defeated, questioning why they saved up their hard-earned money only to end up broke and empty inside.
I saw several families like that. Sure the kids had a Megalodon
cup and a $25 plastic framed photograph of them sitting in a mockup of a
Monster Jam vehicle but, at least they got to see this…
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16 comments:
This post is, like, so CALIFORNIA, Doug…
Doug, your story about the Fiat both tickled and warmed my heart. I almost thought, for a split second that you were going to write about fessing up to your dad. Then I thought, "oh, HELL NO"!
I lost my hearing at a Joan Jett concert at a Party on the Pier concert in NYC.
A few years ago, at a restaurant overlooking a beautiful Finger Lake I was with a Californian who mocked these absurd local wines. I got my revenge though. Next day we went to the Yates County Fair. Good old fashioned demolition derby. Sugared dough, flying mud and mangled metal. The huge Spanish speaking family to our right loved every minute of it. So did the three teenage couples to our right on date night. The girls were ruddily pretty under their bonnets, the boys wore straw hats, suspenders, and had forearms to rival Hank Aaron's. Sounded like they were speaking German. God Bless New York.
These are the doldrums. For the next few weeks, maybe we should become a Monster Jam site?
Love me some demolition derby! They still have it at the California State Fair.
There's a circuit, Doug. Sea to shining sea. Great fun.
Winnie, I lost MY hearing at one of the shows the Clash did at Bond's on Broadway. No joke. AND, I saw the Clash at one of those shows at Pier 82 (was it 82?) back in the day, taped it, then gave a copy to some kid years later, only to discover many years after that that it had been replicated a million times. I miss the analog days. Maybe I miss the analog Yankees. They were more 3D than the screen-based variant.
Fiat commercial. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-Fd_GvL_Wk
"C A L I F O R N I A"
82? Maybe. I don't remember. I missed the Clash every time they were in town.
Bitty, was that the legendary one where they were playing in a thunderstorm, all the techies terrified there would be a mass electrocution? A friend of mine still talks about that one.
And hey, Kevin, as to your highly pertinent question about why HAL doesn't use the Dodgers' "pay it down the road" trick: because HAL, annoying as he is, actually DOES think about the future. Just not the future of how his team will do on the ballfield, or how we fans might enjoy it.
HAL understands that that money is going to come due someday, and either he or another Steinbrenner—may they all rot in hell—will have to pay it.
I've come to the conclusion that HAL isn't stupid—only evil. Even in his insistence that the Yankees play every over-the-hill yutz until they have earned every penny of their contracts, may be part of a plan. I suspect that for HAL their poor, late-career performances are not a bug, but a feature. Their bad play is what keeps the team from winning those payroll-busting World Series.
Hey 13bit, I roadied for those Clash Bond shows! Good times! Epic shows. I think the London Calling album cover was photographed at those shows.
I lost my hearing by repeatedly blasting Cream's " Those Were The Days" song through my Koss headset where the glockenspiel was highlighted by Ginger Baker. Over and over again.
Oh, and here I was thinking that perhaps Hal and his minions of financial advisors had missed an obvious gambit. Twixie boy that Hal. Still , you'd THINK that the NY press would shame him. Oh. Yeah.
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