Monster Trucks in Motor City

March 2022

Detroit drivers suck. Is your first thought about the city upon arriving, having with only two or three navigational mix-ups and subsequent necessary highway maneuvers (switching, in under a quarter-mile, from the fast/leftmost lane to the exit four dotted-white-lines over1) successfully taken the I-75 N/M-10 exit toward Flint/Civic Ctr, kept right at the fork, followed signs for Civic-Cobo Ctr, and merged onto M-10 S/John C Lodge Fwy.

Every city’s drivers suck, true. But at least as far as the USA is concerned, Detroit drivers are the lowest of the low. They’re the scum of the earth, the most wretched, miserable, servile, pathetic trash that was ever shat into civilization. Literally how did you forget to turn on your lights you dickweed it’s FUCKING 11 AT NIGHT AND I CAN’T SEE YOU. Is your second.

Why I’m here

For Jake’s birthday, Jake being a dear Friend and fledgling Detroiter.

When

Friday night to Sunday, last week of February. It’s cold.

Other Characters (2)

Satchel, dear Friend and fellow Visitor. Saba, Jake girlfriend and fledgling Detroiter (Atlanta transplant).

It’s early afternoon in Jake’s apartment, and our Saturday laze is interrupted by a Saba Text Message. Saba, we are told by our host, is going to a Monster Truck Rally tonight. Saba, who I have yet to meet, is not2 the type of person who Goes To such things, though she is the type of person who Tries such things. Saba, who prior today attended a Pistons’ game with her boyfriend and the sprightlier visitor, would like to know if we would like to join her. Said boyfriend and visitor, while currently displaying behaviors that indicate desire to lounge (body collapsed on the sofa with sickly posture upper back 10° above parallel with respect to the ground, such that the individual appears on first glance to be lying down; further investigation reveals that his body is also supported by the back cushions, meaning he is technically reclining3), express the sentiment that such an activity could be exactly what the group needs, two-thirds of the group having been feeling lethargic since the termination of this morning’s Entertainment, which showcased the Pistons — Detroit’s pro basketball team who are considered by PistonPowered.com to be “on pace to be the worst team in franchise history”4 — losing to the Celtics in what one friend described as a ‘pathetic excuse for professional sports’.

The author agrees that a Monster Truck Rally would boost group morale, and, having never attended a Monster Truck Rally and being the kind of person who believes it is generally good to Try such things at least once, tells his friends that he is in favor of accepting Saba’s invitation. Shortly thereafter tickets are purchased. The Rally begins at 7; the group elects to take some amphetamines to kill the time. (More will be taken, it is silently+unanimously understood, when it’s time to go.)

The thing to understand about monster truck shows, besides the fact that 50% of the audience is made up of children under the age of 12, is that they are really really really really loud. And not the nice kind of loud. Not the standing-at-the-base-of-a-giant-waterfall loud, not the sticking-your-head-out-the-sunroof-while-going-eighty loud, not even the thirty-seven-million-horsepower-NASA-rocket-launch loud. No, this is a mean loud. This is a mortar-fire-all-around, machine-gun-pulsing-by-your-ears, napalm-explosion-in-your-face kind of loud.

…

Footnotes

  1. And noticing, while moving from the second-from-left lane to the third-from-left, that the beige sedan in the fourth-from-left lane is also switching to third-from-left at exactly the same time as you, whereupon your safest option is to swerve back to second-from-left, though this is actually very much unsafe since you neglected to check your rearview in that lane due to the present time constraints and thus don’t know if second-from-left is actually free, leaving you the riskier options of honking and/or speeding up, which given the current circumstances you’re just going to have to take. Thus you honk and mash the gas and accelerate past the beige sedan (whose driver now sports an indignant brow), which ends up being a good way to get your exit on time, and collision-free (in this case) to boot, and two seconds later everything is fine again, the only evidence that there was ever even a Situation being the fleeting image of an outstretched middle-finger in your rearview mirror. ↩

  2. Her boyfriend emphatically establishes this. ↩

  3. Though the ridiculousness of this man’s lumbar position, combined with his eerily testudinate head – a head which seems to be merely peeking out of the torso, which looks like it would be more comfortable if it were stuffed down and inside the neck – makes referring to this posture as a plain old workaday recline seem rather dishonest, if not demented. ↩

  4. What enables the head to give such an impression is in this case actually the neck, which is angled down slightly, so as to betray a double chin. (PistonPowered: worst Detroit Pistons season ever) ↩