LESSER CRIME: EXTREME SPORTS
Let ‘em die, I say. Those guys who think it’s a great idea to rock climb a 5000-foot vertical cliff face and then end up trapped with a broken leg on a six-inch ledge? Let ‘em die. Why should we risk the lives of rescue personnel for people who do the dumbest, most dangerous things they can possibly think of? The Universe instilled us with instinct for a reason, to keep us from taking a header off a cliff or launching ourselves from a homemade trebuchet. Of course, if your entire object is to prove Darwin right by removing yourself from the gene pool, go right ahead. Just do it far away from me so I don’t get any of your jellied brains on my shoes.
I swear these guys sit around smoking pot, dreaming these things up.
“Dude, I got it. We’ll strap a giant rubber band to your ankles and toss you off a fuckin’ bridge!”
“Excellent! Wait, couldn’t we do it from a helicopter instead?”
I find myself cheering for the bulls when I come across rodeo on ESPN. “C’mon Lightning, let’s see that redneck go into a low altitude orbit!” You know how rodeo was invented, don’t you? One day in the 19th century, one drunk cowhand said to another, “Betcha ten dollars you can’t ride ol’ Ballsmasher around the coral.” To which Tex replied, “You’re on Zeke. You got some rope, so I can strap my arm down tight enough to make sure it comes out of it’s socket?”
And speaking of bulls, what about these wankers that Run With the Bulls in Pamplona every year? Mainly men suffering from mid-life crises and adolescents who think it will somehow help them get laid. In reality, all the women use this event to winnow out the guys they’ll never have sex with. “Well, he’s kind of cute, but what a fucking idiot. I’ll never give him any.” I love the news footage of this thing. All the macho bullshit ends when the guys see seven or eight furious bulls raging six inches behind them. You can see it on their pale, bloodless faces, eyes the size of frisbees, lips pulled back to expose cigarette-stained teeth. Men leaping over the wall, through windows, throwing other guys under the churning hooves. Inevitably, some lard-ass American ends up getting twenty three inches of angry bull horn imbedded in his posterior, thus ending the mid life crisis and ushering in the life-with-a-walker phase of is existence. Way to go, Sgt. Rock.
On the lesser end of the extreme sports spectrum we have skateboarders, those irritating, selfish bastards who are scraping the paint off of all the handrails in the nation. Isn’t that a great sound when you’re sitting in the park trying to enjoy a Dr. Pepper on your lunch break? Grrrriiiiiiinnnnnddddddd! Look at Skippy, he’s riding his skateboard down the handrail on the stairs near the fountain. Oooh, ouch, he just face-planted into the concrete. Like I’m supposed to care that this little stumpfucker knocks his own teeth out. Maybe he’ll learn not to do stupid shit in the future. If he was a kid, I’d cut him a break, but no, this guy is thirty goddamn years old. We all did dumb things as kids (especially those of us who are male; it’s one of our tragic flaws, I guess. In other words, we’re idiots.) Most of us learn that pain sucks and give it up. I remember learning that: 1. Black powder bombs are uncool, because they tend to blow off essential body parts, like your head. 2. Riding a bike without your hands on the handlebars can result in unexpected acrobatics and Sudden Deceleration Syndrome. 3. After age thirteen, males must stop scaring girls with snakes, frogs, etc., because girls simply do not fuck around once they start kicking your ass. Also, at some point in the near future, you’re going to want to see these same girls without their pants on, and trust me, if they remember you as “frog-boy,” it ain’t gonna happen. Now that’s an extreme sport.
I’ve got a few more extreme sports to for people to try. I think that in order to get a bear hunting license, the applicant must agree to hunt in the nude smeared in honey. Hey, these guys want to find bears, right? Maybe hang a big Porterhouse steak around their necks, too. They’ll find bears, alright. And I guarantee great ratings for the TV show.
How about Hand Grenade Tennis? A show called Slap-A-Cop? Or Let’s Rip Off The Mob. I know, let’s drop a bunch of these rich, rock-climbing yuppies off on foot in Chicago’s South Side and see if they make it out alive. They can even use their little GPS devices to help out.
Now, if we could get Congressmen involved in extreme sports, that would be worthwhile. I’d pay a lot of money to watch Trent Lott windsurfing across a well-chummed feeding frenzy of Great Whites, wouldn’t you?