hans.gerwitz

Princesses

Posted on March 8th, 2007

One of the amusing aspects of life Downtown are the waves of visitors. It is often enter­taining to guess what sort of convention is respon­sible for a new wave of similar people in the CBD, and it’s usual simple to determine whether the home team won the day’s game. Many crowds are familiar, the Promise Keepers around the arena are a partic­u­larly rude bunch, and the cheer­leading compe­ti­tions are disturbing with their waves of blonde mothers living vicar­i­ously through their exposed-​​midriff, exaggerated-​​makeup 8 year old daughters.

But tonight saw the annual invasion of the cute: the princesses. A Disney show brings in crowds of families, each with their 3-​​foot replica of Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Ariel, or whoever. It’s like Halloween with an “adorable” theme.

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Monster Trucks

Posted on February 17th, 2007

Ryan and Kelly talked me into joining them for the Monster Truck Jam. Kelly’s a fan. It was every­thing I expected.

The national anthem was preceded by a cheesy ritual of military personnel being asked to stand. Then veterans. Then their parents. Then police and fire fighters. I was disap­pointed that it didn’t continue to include all tax-​​paying citizens. Then the anthem itself was accom­panied by video of monster truck action. It was all very ‘Merican.

The “races” were inau­thentic. While there was a noticeable difference in a few driver’s abil­ities (only two didn’t late-​​apex every single turn), the announcer’s commentary was amaz­ingly predictive and several very controlled “loss of control” events led to the crowd favorites making it to the final rounds. Very close times were announced, but the score­boards displayed no actual data, there were no timing lights, and not even a stop­watch was made public.

The high­light, of course, is the “freestyle” event, for which scores are announced but no compe­tition appears to be involved. Mostly this consists of the trucks smashing into things until they “break”, but the only damage they took consisted of losing external parts (a wheel, fiber­glass shells) and the only spec­tacular destruction was the smashing of a Winnebago. Hardly worth the price of admission or the unpleasant reminder of how main­stream redneck culture is.

If you need rural culture and authentic destruction, I’d recommend a real demo­lition derby.

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Daily Bookmarks

Posted on February 15th, 2007

Links book­marked on 2007-​​02-​​15

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Daily Bookmarks

Posted on February 7th, 2007

Links book­marked on 2007-​​02-​​07

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Daily Bookmarks

Posted on January 30th, 2007

Links book­marked on 2007-​​01-​​30

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