Monster Truck Weekend

A friend once took his young boy to witness an exposition of monster trucks — for the boy’s sake, not his own — and returned home a full-throated proselyte of the spectacle. So complete was his joy at the performance of these machines that in his breathless recap, I do not believe he mentioned the boy.

The memory of that charming little turn-of-time has always been at easy recall, so recently, when I saw an ad for Monster Jam (I am not sure if these are the only monster trucks which parade for public affection, or if other circuits outside of Monster Jam’s jurisdiction exist), I alerted this friend, who I’ll call Jaybee.

ME: [texting] Monster Jam back in town March 3. Interested? Could bring kids.

JAYBEE: [no reply]

Thirty or forty seconds later, he had purchased tickets for us and our two children, and sent me the receipt so that I could cover my half. It was only then that I noticed these tickets cost $86 each, plus a Convenience Fee* of $27.52 each, plus a Delivery Fee of $9.95. Thereby satisfied that I was on my way to having a full-scale, properly-corrupted American entertainment experience, I forked over the money, though I neglected to exact a Delivery Fee, not seeing a button for that.

Anticipating a stadium full of twitchy hill people walleyed on beer, I wore a capacious flannel which would allow for comfortable fistfighting. Jaybee, sensing my tactics as I settled into the taxi, soothed my apprehensions by confirming that virtually 100% of the crowd would be young middle-class fathers with between one and four little boys in tow. I, now able to reason that by price tag alone the true hill people would be at their own unsanctioned BYOB vehicle-crashing events, relaxed and prepared to enjoy the promised thrills of flying trucks, roaring engines, and the patriotic rain of sponsor-emblazoned body shrapnel. Privately aware of the glory of monster trucks since the tenderest age, yet beholden to my lifetime identity of elitist sneering, I now loosed the inward shackles and allowed for the unrestricted roiling of my blood.

It makes me sad to share this, but none of that happened.

Sure, Grave Digger’s massive, 1,450hp Merlin engine sounded pretty cool, but the decibel meter on my phone never registered above 110, which is about as loud as your neighbor two doors down starting his Kawasaki. Sure, the dirt bikes that did flips at intermission suggested impending disaster, but they were landing on a giant inflatable ramp. And sure, my kid only took one sip of the $9.50 orange Fanta that I bought for him, thereby making it a complete parenting experience**. But the whole event seemed a bit tired, a lot staged, and entirely choreographed by insurance tables.

From the very earliest moments of the performance I had sensed something amiss: the cartoony plastic bodywork of the trucks. One was made to look like a shark, complete with a floppy dorsal fin; one looked like a Rottweiler’s head, complete with five-foot long flappy ears and a stubby, inflatable tail that made me embarrassed for pretty much everyone in the building. I longed for one of the trucks to have a few busted window screens and some faded beer cans shifting around in the bed, or at least expired tags. And where was the line of seized vehicles for them to flatten? If a monster truck does not flatten at least one common vehicle, can the event even be classed as entertainment? 

When things were wrapping up, and it was clear that Grave Digger’s one desultory flip had been the pinnacle of the performance, I recognized the impending feeling of being had.

I get now that they’re just trying to hit the sweet spot of adolescent ear comfort, parental pocket-loosening, and inflated legacy. It’s a business, not a public service. (Judging by the Fanta prices alone, I estimate that the event netted just north of two hundred million dollars.) But as the crowd murmured out of the stadium, and as their river of profoundly expensive urine swished slowly down a dark cement pipe to the water treatment plant, so did my disappointment subside.

Why? Because these are the things we do at empire’s fall, when the bread is stale, and the circuses deserve no more crowds. We recognize that we are alone in this world, falling through an endless vortex of neon lies and glistening barker’s tongues, eating the cyanide potato chip of stolen destiny. If anything, Monster Jam was a bargain, for it steeled my resolve to cast only my wariest eye across the world, and batten my defenses anew against the unceasing thievery of this and all lands, as it always shall be, so long as Mother Earth’s creatures can spread the saliva for the calorie. 

Next week: How To Make The Burger King Chicken Sandwich At Home! (Recipe)

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* Is there any world in which the “Convenience Fee” should not just be renamed, “We Are Also Taking This Additional Amount of Money”?

** At least he said it was “too sweet,” which did me proud.