I just wanted these beautiful beasts to run free

good morning ~

(click the link / monster trucks to listen)

My Big BreakI just wanted these beautiful beasts to run free

today’s track really reminds me of that Deep Forest album

tomorrow the Deluxe reissue edition of Youth Pastoral drops! I think I will email you about that again, though.

I’ve also got this extremely sick show coming up on Tuesday in Greenpoint at a secret loft location that I’ve been hearing a lot about - doing some ambient swirling, good friends gonna DJ, it’s going to rip, flyer below and here’s the ticket link

It was more crowded than usual on the concourse. Avoiding rain we walked through the weird indoor mall corridor that runs under the Empire Plaza, a retro-futurist dystopian hallway that's lined with restaurants that are closed on weekends and surprisingly thoughtfully curated art. Usually the place is abandoned, but on this Saturday it teemed with people in ponchos walking the other direction, most holding signs that were probably a little too clever to cross any aisles ("These are the cuts that we can make!" next to a painting of a guillotine - excellent premise but I think we might need to just say something like "We are going to put you in this guillotine and use it on you"). Ah, these folks were returning to their cars after the Hands Off! protests. We arrived unknowing as they petered out, and this was the truth of it: instead of gathering in an effort to protect liberty, we gathered in an effort to watch monster trucks.

Not only had we eschewed our patriotic duty to protest, we had wisely chosen to attend the 1pm matinee Monster Jam which, as I quickly learned while we queued up to go through the metal detectors, was definitely 100% for children. Tiny little over-the-ear headphones as far as the eye could see. We began our climb, settling into our nearly last row seats. The show was just beginning. Below us, on however many tons of trucked-in dirt, stood six jacked-up trucks with fiberglass exoskeletons and preposterously huge tires, lined up majestically in dignified anticipation, the colored LEDs under lights making them resemble a video game's selected characters.

But before the Jam could begin there's a holy duty to attend to - military personnel of unspecific designation and a tiny blonde child must be beamed out on the jumbotron, the nation's anthem must be sung. Rise you tired parents, rise you stoned teenagers, rise you brutally overstimulated iPad kids, sing of our great nation's freedoms. The trucks' drivers stood at attention atop one each their enormous wheels, jumpsuited with their hands over their hearts, like Navy men perched awkwardly on the deck of a submarine. I removed my camo/hi-vis hat and placed it to my chest, thinking incorrectly that I could blend in a bit - sometimes you have to code switch as someone who respects the military. The singer failed to hit her notes, but that's okay, our union is imperfect, too, full of miserable charlatans and exhausted strivers. And if the roar of applause that ran through MVP Arena weren't quite stirring enough, the Monster Trucks firing on in unison and taking a lap or two around the dirt drove it home - I do think this was perhaps the loudest single sound I have ever heard in my entire life.

The trucks and the jumps and the wheelies were all extremely cool - we were thrilled, and my friends and I were hooting and hollering along with all the iPad kids for sure. But it was all really...organized. The trucks did their tricks one at a time. And, you know, there wasn't anything wrong with watching Krazy Train get up on his front two wheels for like a whole minute and then assertively blast his gimmicky train horn. In fact it was rad. But it never felt like something unpredictable was going to happen, plus the majority of the show's runtime was taken up by interstitial segments, like the announcer asking one kid to name as many animals as possible in 15 seconds. They were stretching that taffy pretty thin, but the taffy was really entertaining.

You have experienced something like Monster Jam before - you've seen a wrestling match, you've been to Medieval Times or a ren faire jousting match, you've seen a kids soccer game. Actually a kids soccer game might be more dangerous and chaotic. The framework of competition, the arbitrary need to crown a winner at the end of some efforts exerted - and fear not, Sparkle Smash, the unicorn truck that shot pink confetti out of its horn during its freestyle run, did indeed get crowned champion (friend to my left: omg, it's driven by a girl? [driver removes helmet, revealing long blonde hair] AND SHE'S HOT???).

The third act motocross riders did some of what I was yearning for - were they to miscalculate their landing they would probably die, and I guess that passes for spectacle in my book? Why did the stadium cheer so loudly when Gravedigger tipped over? Or when Terminal Velocity broken an axel? I think at the end of the day I just wanted these beautiful beasts to run free, to gallop unfettered on our highways, jumping over our houses, rupturing ear drums all across this great nation.

At what point did Monster Jam decide that their t-shirts were just going to be absolutely the most bitchin', bar none? "Look, we've cornered the market on graphics that look like early speed metal album covers but more so, now we just need to keep this aesthetic up for 30 years and by the time the style comes around again we'll be sitting pretty." Truly visionary marketing tactics, but having bought my friend an enormous and very expensive Miller Lite I could not part with another thirty five of my American dollars - they were becoming more precious to me as their value in the world fell precipitously. I did not buy a shirt, and my neighbor did not buy a remote control car for her cats to enjoy - the unicorn confetti model was not available.

Afterwards this crew gathered back up for what I consider to be one of the more radical acts of patriotism: savoring deeply the cuisine of an immigrant culture, otherwise known as eating a huge bowl of pho in the rain. I did not attend the protest, I half-heartedly stood for the flag, but for spring rolls over vermicelli I threw down my money with gusto, a tear of national pride threatening to roll over in my eye.

But what about you? Are you revving your engines? Are you leaping through the air? When and how do you love this country?