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This month Daron and I thought we’d tell you about the new movie Biker Boyz with a z. I was pretty excited to be writing about a movie again, especially one that looked like such a great post-awesomenist (extremenist) blow out of dump truck levels of kill assedness. This movie looked like it was going to have dumps like a truck if you consider dumps to be really fast motorbikes and you’re talking about a truck of motorbikes. So anyway, I was so excited that I decided to take the review really seriously, and do a lot of research and put a lot of thought and time and consideration into things. So I went and saw Biker Boyz and then for additional research purposes I went ahead and saw Kangaroo Jack the next day. Then this morning I went back to the theater again to see Final Destination II. I was kind of about fifteen minutes late, though, and I was sure I’d miss the previews (which I don’t prefer to do) and once I bought delicious corn and soda water I knew I was going to miss some of the actual scenes of the movie, important scenes of death and dismemberment, so I chose to see a different movie instead. The movie I chose was one called The R.M.. This is a very special movie, one that you may not ever have the opportunity to see if you’re not lucky enough to live in the great state of Utah, because it deals with uniquely Utahn themes. And even if by some chance The R.M. does happen to come to your town I’m not going to suggest you go see it (that’s even though my good friend Jake Suazo stars in it) because it’s poo.
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.
I had originally suggested that we see How To Lose A Man In 10 Days, a romantic comedy staring someone and Edtv’s Ed, because I know how much Ned loves the romantic comedies, and I have been trying to be a little more generous and benevolent to him in our friendship. Nonetheless, when he suggested to me that we write about Biker Boyz, I couldn’t have been more excited. Ned knows what I like; blazin’ motorbikes, burning tats, tough action kicking, four-wheeler stunt action, action packed moto-grinding, and total pop-a-wheelie combat, and B.B.Z. had all that. But not only did it have all of that, but you were also able to watch all that hot racing in totally awesome blurry-biker-tunnel-vision.
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.
Yeah, it’s true, everything was super Biker Boyzesque for me and Dare back then, and then all of the sudden my girlfriend dumped me, which was totally weird and sucked and was unfair because that was from The R.M. which was a total other movie. I was all, “WHOA…dear god, why are you picking and choosing the crap fart parts of movies to make my life parallel to? Is this some sort of freaky alternate universe or something?” You see, Jared, the guy in The R.M. is what some people call a douche bag, which is the same thing as a big bag of no-good or in other words no awesomeness. I guess Jared is not no-good, he’s a good boy, but he is not very way out at all. He’s just a little bit limp wristed. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not objecting to him just because if you put a moustache on him he’d look like the lead singer of Queen—I mean, in Biker Boyz Kid’s good friend Stunt Man looks EVEN MORE like the guy from Queen, and you don’t see me objecting to him, do you? But Jared is the exact kind of guy you’d expect to get dumped by a fine lady, and on the other hand, I was out there every day, busting my butt, working on motors, practicing dragging my metal encrusted feet out the car door to shoot sparks, going off jumps, etc, Daron and I were making enough money hustling drag races that we could afford rent on both of our apartments plus a really good post-apocalyptic looking hang-out space for us and the several hundred other people in our brand new car club to enjoy, we were getting respect from other clubs for our abilities to make pretty cool entrances where we would, like, drive in formation and then at the last moment fan out and build a wall with our cars after which we would step out of our cars and salute me, all in perfect robot like synchronization, and what did I get for my efforts? The life of some cheesey whining dork donger who can’t even keep his girlfriend. Even that total wuss from Sliders in Kangaroo Jack manages to pull out a respectable love life and all he does is jump his Jeep a couple of times and crash a plane (he wasn’t even driving the plane at the time, no insane points for that). So I was all “screw that”.
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 remember doing that, but I do remember once a few months earlier when you and I were headed up to Rachel’s house to sing some karaoke with her dad, but instead, we ended up playing Excite Bike and the original Paperboy at Smiths Food King and Drug for 4 hours. That was totally awesome. At first I was pretty pissed off because I had never played the Paperboy before, and you were hogging Excite Bike for so long, but once I started on the Paperboy, man, it was totally great.
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.
Man, that was a fun time. Just playing those video games and not going to hang out with Rachel’s weird dad at all. We were really cool how we just didn’t care about stuff. I would like to tell everybody reading this that Daron is a lot like Stunt Man, both in fake, and in life. That’s because I’m like Kid. Remember how I’m like Kid?
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?
Thanks for reminding me, Ned. Basically, this is the story: May 2002, the worst month of my life, the month that they unjustly cancelled the WB’s Roswell (I can only assume due to some sort of governmental pressure). I, like so many other fans of hot teens, and alien TV shows, leaped at the opportunity to go on the Official Roswell Reality Tour to Roswell NM. Tickets only cost $175 + hotel costs, and I just had to find out exactly what happened to Max, Liz, Michael and Isobella. Did they fall in love? Did they live happily ever after? Did they continue to avoid all those shapeshifting aliens and government assasins? And, most importantly, is the Crash Down Diner really as good as they claim on TV?
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.
 As a result of all this, I have to give Biker Boyz a near perfect score of approximately 6/12. The R.M. gets a solid 5/12, not because it was good, but primarily because that guy looks like the guy from Queen, and secondarily because I can identify with him to some extent. I mean, I’m not Jared, I’m Kid, totally, but I guess I can see Jared’s whole thing. Kangaroo Jack gets a 0 from me, firstly because it wasn’t in my face, secondly because nobody looked like anyone in Queen, and thirdly because Daron was right earlier when he said that he and I never went to other countries for the mafia. We didn’t. Well, if you think about it REALLY hard, the rapping Kangaroo maybe looks a TINY bit like John Deacon, but that just isn’t enough to do anything.
daron gardner
2003 mar 21 |
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.