This month's report is one month old. We submitted it last month, but Jim refused to publish it because he thought it was too good for anyone to possibly have written in less than two months. I guess he was jealous. We aren't broken up, and if anyone needs proof of that, please email, we'll be glad to send you photos of us sitting together on a couch eating some of those Monterey spicy quesadillas from Taco Bell. As for our future together, I don't know. You people are all total "F"ers for hating us a lot, but perhaps we don't care. Perhaps we do. Perhaps we don't care if you know whether we care or not, or maybe we care a lot. Anyway, please watch for our really good report next month. It will be about how much we can't wait until Boat Trip comes out, and our predictions for Oscar night winners. In the meantime, please read last month's report, because it's quite an important one: The Ned and Daron Report: Our Oscar Predictions!

But I was glad that I saw both The R.M. and Kangaroo Jack as part of my research. As I mentioned, it’s been a couple of months since I’d seen any movies for The Report. I felt a little bit out of touch with current Hollywood morés, attitudes, themes and genres and wasn’t sure I could guess at the recent progress of each of the important filmic movements of our day, those being awesomenism, post-awesomenism, extremenism (very closely related to post-awesomenism), post-extremenism, post-post-extremenism and post-mormonism. This month’s two supplementary movies opened my eyes to a lot of Biker Boyz subtext that I might not otherwise have been aware of. For example, I noticed that Kid Rock (Dog), try as he might, will never be quite as crazy-bad and in-your-face as that A-hole kangaroo. And seeing The R.M. gave me insight to realize that biker clubs are just like very up-to-date religions whose presidents (or prezes) are worshipped as modern day gods, and that they even have their own commandments and teachings reminding bikers that spiritual perspective is needed when dealing with biking, and that if you were freezing on the side of a storm swept highway with a broken down hog, it would be better for you to destroy your motorbike by burning its rubber tires for warmth than to metaphorically “burn your soul” by cursing god and laying down to die.

While watching B.B.Z., it finally dawned on my why Ned would have chosen to see it over the romantic comedy: this was basically the story of his life. Suddenly the film and my highschool memories bent into themselves and similarities between the main character Kid, and the young Ned Clayton became as clear as glass. Ned, like Kid, grew up in a middle class family with a mechanic for a father. And in fact, the only real difference between Kid and Ned is that Ned’s dad was a mechanic for Italian sports cars, not motorbikes, and that instead of motorbikes, Ned was always trying to show his dad what a man he was by fixing up and racing his supped up Alfa Romeo GTV. See, Ned’s dad, who they called Arch, was the “it” man behind the UT Hi-Turbos, a sports car racing group from the suburbs of Salt Lake City, and Ned always thought that if he could only show his old man his stuff, that he could stop hustling, and get his colors to start fly-racing.

I can’t tell you how many days I spent with Ned in the Clayton family garage, helping Arch tune, nos, and supe up various Hi-Turbo member’s Hobs (racing cars). After working on their Hobs, we would sometimes even have time to work on Ned’s GTV…but that usually meant we wouldn’t be done until dawn, and then we would have to jump in, and peeeeel out, just to get to school before the second bell rang.

But Rachel was just looking for something else, I guess. She ended up getting married to a policeman who I didn’t think was really good enough for her—not because he was a policeman, but he wasn’t very good looking and I could tell he didn’t understand her or make her laugh. I’ll bet he didn’t have a smile for her each and every morning, and I think every husband should at least have that to offer to his girl.

Anyway, so at this point I started feeling like I was all turned around backwards, disoriented and lost, and like I was really starting to burn soul and not rubber. Well, I was burning, let’s say, 80% soul and 20% rubber, which I have to tell you is a smoky mixture that tends to burn at one’s eyes and makes them water up just a little bit. Maybe just one or two tears came out of me because of that smoke.

So, I took a cue from my dad and really immersed myself in motor culture, you know? I had calendars and everything. Hey, Daron, when that was going on you didn’t call me up and make me go on any mafia adventures to other countries or anything like that, did you? I can’t remember?

I don’t know if you remember very well, Ned, but Excite Bike and the Paperboy are totally great! They are totally like playing video game versions of our real lives back then…only with bikes instead of supped up racecars. On one game, I was doing some really excellent pop-a-wheelies while delivering the papers, and I was getting a lot of points for hitting the porches with them. After I got through the whole neighborhood, I finally got to the really extreme BMX dirt track. It was great. I almost got 800 points on that game.

Hmm…sorry, I think I kind of got sidetracked. Where was I? Oh yeah, that Stunt Man guy from Biker Boyz totally does remind me of Freddie Mercury, you’re right! And, he is probably one of my favorite things about the movie…but that shouldn’t surprise anyone since he was also in the WB’s Roswell (only the best TV show ever written about hot teens that are also aliens). Remind me sometime, Ned, to tell you about when I went to Roswell, NM on a TV’s Roswell tour and ate at the Crash Down Diner (where all the hot alien teens work)…it was great.

Absolutely. And I’ll tell you something about Stunt Man in case some of you didn’t actually see Biker Boyz yet. Although Stunt Man wasn’t the character in B.B.Z. with the most screen time, I think it’s safe nevertheless to say that he carried the movie. Kid, although very good looking and talented as a motobiker, is also a very serious person, and almost studious in his pursuit of street racing excellence. He’s perhaps too serious and dedicated to adequately give the kids what they want in terms of extremeness and crazy over the top in your face behavior. That is, the two characters are like two sides of the same coin. If extremity was a coin, Kid would be heads and Stunt Man would be tails (if you see what I mean) but, to the extreme, it makes no sense to pick heads. When you’re in the middle of a really good upside downey kick flip or grinding the upside down railing under a train or something are you thinking with your head, or are you kicking with your ass? If the former, then you won’t be upside down grinding for very long. The extreme are never afraid to land heads on the ground, tails in the air, if you see what I mean, and they wouldn’t have it any other way or else they wouldn’t really be all that extreme in the first place. That’s why Stunt Man is so important thematically to Biker Boyz.

And the guy from Roswell does a really great job at portraying Stunt Man or the real life Dare Man (Daron). As a matter of fact, I don’t think I’ve seen a better depiction of a guy whose last name was “Man” in a movie about driving really fast since Norman Reedus played Recovery Man in Octane (tagline “Driven By Evil”) earlier this year. And although Nor Man doesn't look like Freddie Mercury, he will be appearing later this year in a new movie called Killer Queen (tagline “It sends you ballistic”) which I think cements the most important concept you should take with you from this month’s report: the future of really good movies is something to do with Queen.

If you don’t believe me, just think about how awesome that song “Another One Bites the Dust” is. Also, please note that biting dust is what most X sports such as sk8boarding, dirt skiing and BMX’ing are all about. Also, remember that song We Are the Champions? That was a good one too.

But if you take one thing with you from this months report, I hope it’s Daron’s story about when he went to Roswell, because that’s a good story indeed. Daron, would you mind telling that story please?

Anyway, so I bought my tickets and in August, I boarded the bus and anxiously rode out from CT to NM. We pulled into Roswell, and while the sun was down, the streets were lit up with beautiful, beaming lights, welcoming us to this amazing city of governmental secrets and hot hot teens.

I really can’t remember many details after that…but I did have a chance to eat at the Crash Down Diner. It had a menu with hamburgers named after each of the characters. I ended up ordering the Isobella burger. The burger was a little disappointing, but I did see a Roswell Poster (with the whole cast, including Tess!) on the wall of the diner, and that was pretty neat. Crash Down Diner 3/12, Roswell 12/12, Biker Boyz 5/12, Paperboy Arcade Game 10/12, How To Lose A Man In 10 Days 2/12, Hot Hot Teens 12/12.