And it is suppose to be crazy.
I’m at home the other day and I’m squirming in my chair, hiding my face in my hands and biting my knuckles.
Why?
Because guys are falling out of the sky on a hard wooden ramp from 20 feet in the air. They land like carp hitting the dock, with such a THUD, I wonder how they will ever get up. These guys have perfected the art of landing on their knee pads and bouncing up. They often smash their faces onto the wooden ramp, and yet still, hop right up.
If I fell like these crazies, I would have brain damage and a serious inability to keep saliva from leaking out of my lips.
In case you don’t know what the hell I’m talking about; X-Games is a high intensity energy drink of skateboarders, moto-crossers, and otherwise surferdudes with no fear and apparently no pain threshold.
I am watching this spectacle and I cannot look away. It’s a punk rock video sprinkled with gasoline. It’s a hurricane with Geraldo Rivera’s hair piece tearing off while he hangs onto a lamp post from the French Quarter. Needless to say, it’s just good TV.
I watch as a plethora of Skate board dudes geek hard on adrenaline, sliding sideways on a massive bar suspended 60 feet up. I am hypnotized as men on tiny bicycles spin their front wheel around like a gyroscope as they float 19 feet in the air. The speed is unfathomable as pierced and tattooed crazy dudes push the limit.
Remember when you stood on your skateboard and went down a hill. You were happy not to skin your knee. These guys crouch with stealth, like a predatory cat hunting prey. These wild eyed maniacs caress their boards, flipping them like anti gravity boots, upside down as they suddenly tweak their bodies in a new direction.
I had a bike as a kid. Who didn’t? I had a bunch of bikes as a kid. I might have ridden without hands a few times. Maybe I jumped a curb. I thought i was a dare devil. I thought I was pushing the envelope of street side insanity. I was really just a Big Wuss!
I have come to the conclusion that these X gamers have big balls that are apparently not wired for pain. I say this because they land at 50 mph from 50 feet up and they smash their jewels into the bike at break balls kind of speed, if you get what I am saying?
The crowd loves it. They cheer as testicles scatter across the floor and bones snap like October twigs.
At the Circus; it’s the trapeze act. At a Bruce Springsteen show; it’s Born to Run. In a bad porn flick it’s the climax. I’m talking about the finale. It’s the reason you came, the reason you paiyou hard earned money, the reason you stayed in your seat.
At X-Games, motorcycles are KING. The men who brazenly climb aboard these powerful rockets jump over limbo poles 32 feet in the air. These brazenly insane men pilot 400 pound motorcycles down steep ramps only to flip their bikes over backwards and then stick the landing before they crash into a concrete barrier.
I am watching these nitrous burning mad men riding motorcycles in mid air. They have no apparent fear as they fly next to their motorcycles in a low motion spectacle of awe. many of them push off their seats and hold onto the throttle with a pinky as they do flips Mary Lou Rhetton style. Amazingly, the bike is the only stability in this suicidal equation. If you can call a 500 cc, pulsing balance beam flying through the center of an indoor arena stable. Then at the last second, the rider, pushes himself back onto the seat and sticks another insane landing at 80 mph.
X FREAKING GAMES BABY: It’s the Olympics for people with a freestyle attitude and a home detention ankle monitor.
This high octane sport is bandannas and tattoos and body piercings and scraggly ass hair. It’s knee pads and slang, and sponsorship from companies I’ve never even heard of.
The announcers are current and former adrenaline junkies who know the sport. I listen in as they quickly let me know what I should know and why I should care.