My friend had just turned 21 a few days after New Year’s and we needed to get him drunk, so we headed out to the one sure place to find alcohol on a Sunday Sunday Sunday the U.S. Hot Rod Thunder Nationals. All-Terrain-Vehicle racing, transforming car robots and most importantly monster trucks, all for the low, low price of $13.50. Could there be a better birthday present?
None of us had been to a monster truck rally before, but what red-blooded American male doesn’t thrill to see six-foot tires crushing inferior sedans as engines roar and exhaust pours out of numerous chrome tubes? It stirs something primal in us, the combination of driving and destruction, an urge not only to smash big things, but to smash them with even bigger things. Not that women are entirely immune from this instinct; there were quite a few mothers and daughters cheering on Bigfoot and Backdraft.
First though, we had to deal with the emcee, who momentarily forgot his persona at the beginning of his patter and used a relatively normal voice to welcome us to the arena (normally home to minor-league hockey games and my high school’s graduation). He quickly dropped his voice an octave and rolled out his enunciation on ‘THUNNNNDERRRR NNNNNATIONALS!’ but his apathy seemed a bad omen.
This was the last day of the tour’s three-day stop in Rochester, and the crowd barely topped 500 souls. We started to sneer. The emcee briefly interviewed a driver, whose mumbled and jumbled drawl was a dead ringer for that of King of the Hill’s Boomhauer. We started to snicker with the irony that makes everything funny in the same way. Even the wheelie competition, which saw the trucks rear back and leap over the wrecks below (but they took out the window glass! How lame!) failed to completely engage us.
Until American Guardian pulled up. Boasting two American flags, a POW-MIA banner flying from the bed, glittering chrome exhaust pipes and an airbrushed bald eagle paint job, the truck was nearly a rolling parody. But on its wheelie, the Guardian turned on its simulation jet engine and shot out an eruption of fire. If there’s one thing better than smashing things, it’s burning them. We went nuts, and American Guardian obliged us with another burst of flame. While this technically had no impact on the truck’s actual wheelie, the crowd and special audience judges were in agreement perfect tens all around.
Now we were getting into it. The next event was ATV racing between the heroic New York team and the scurrilous scoundrels from New Jersey. The pre-rally showdown between the two team captains seemed contrived and chauvinistic, but now it was a matter of state honor. New York beat the stink out of Jersey in the first race, but two more were still to come.
The monster trucks took reckless teenage driving to the next level during the donut competition. After a few sub-par competitors, American Guardian took the floor, spinning a perfect donut and yes! turning on the fire, looking like a roided-out Batmobile hitting a patch of ice. Pre-rally favorite Virginia Giant, on the other hand, turned a lackluster three-quarter donut, drawing boos and ratings of five and under. The truck backed up and tried again, but began to tilt. As we rose to our feet and cheered, the Giant fell. We gave him a perfect 10.
The wait for the crew to right Virginia Giant (who subsequently bowed out) was less amusing, as the announcer tried to get the sparse, spread-out crowd to perform the Wave, which is annoying in any sporting event but even more pointless when the Wave has to jump canyons of empty seats. But the monster truck freestyle competition was compensation enough, as American Guardian once again burned away the competition.
The show’s real intermission was also a drag. A good third of the audience got up and left, not waiting to see who would win the ATV race or monster truck competition (although it was pretty clear American Guardian and its fire power had that in the bag). We felt jaded again, listening to forgettable hard rock and bemoaning the cutoff of beer sales. But help came from an unexpected source outer space.
Galactron, an alien robot disguised as a minivan, entered the arena to synthesizer strains and proceeded to laboriously transform. He informed us of his benevolence toward the human race but brought bad news as well. Evil, his greatest enemy, was in the building at this very moment! Evil, otherwise known as Reptar, made its appearance, metamorphosing from an ordinary race car into a fire-breathing snake with arms. Galactron’s very arms were made of fire, though, and he made short work of Reptar. After encouraging us to ‘use the power of good to fight evil,’ Galactron resumed his minivan disguise and exited the building, leaving us primed for the show’s finale.
American Guardian was the easy victor in the monster truck races, blowing out more fumes and fire in celebration. The state of New York, however, did not have such a clear path to victor. The hated New Jersey won the second race, tying the teams at 1-1 before the penultimate 10-lap race. Jersey broke away early, but New York caught up and raced neck and neck until the final lap. Then, the New Jersey captain lived up to his birthright and tried to illegally ram the gallant New York leader out of position. He succeeded, but another New Yorker managed to pull ahead and win by a tire, while New Jersey was rightfully disqualified anyway. Our primacy assured, we headed for the exits.
So it wasn’t exactly what years of television commercials had led us to believe. The rally didn’t conform to stereotypes good and bad, and instead made us appreciate it on its own merits. Sometimes it’s good to rise to the role entertainment demands of us, instead of only appreciating it through our own well-worn tendencies. I walked away with a renewed appreciation for my state, the power of good and fire in general. The only disappointment was the transition from the trucks to our reliable yet ordinary Focus. Our jet engine is in the mail.
Dan Atkinson, a junior in the College of Communication, is the editor of The Daily Free Press.