totally, like, yeah
I left work ten minutes ago, taking my car out onto on the northbound highway and angling for the most direct route to the Museum of Science. That was when my phone went off and a distraught silentq told me that somebody had slashed her bike tires and that she needed a pickup for our date at the museum's IMAX theatre. I should've been heading south then, but going in the wrong direction only amounted to an extra ten minutes or so, and we still had time. We just ditched dinner before hand and got a sandwich at the museum. That was a mistake.
Not the sandwich, mind you -- though, frankly, it was in serious contention for one of the most mediocre Chicken Caesar wraps I've had in my lifetime, economy class airplane food included -- it was more the decision to eat at all was a mistake. If one isn't supposed to swim 30 minutes after eating, one really really really shouldn't be eating right before going to watch an IMAX movie. Especially if it's a movie featuring extreme skiing. I'm only glad that they didn't include any BASE jumping footage. That would have ended in tears.
If you aren't familiar with the genre, most adrenaline sports documentaries are essentially fifteen minute music video montages featuring hardcore athletes doing awe-inspiring things like ice climbers ascending frozen waterfalls or tow-in surfers riding waves that looked like they came out of the stock footage for Deep Impact. The soundtrack tends to stay within a certain proscribed set of categories, and whether this is reflective of the tastes of a small population of filmmakers is an open question. I like to think that the songs are actually picked out by the athletes themselves, and that you can infer a lot from whether or not a snowboarder's sequence is using, say, Tiga or Morcheeba (ie. trance music = adrenaline junkie, triphop = stoner). There's also a lot of superficial environmental philosophy strewn in, like, "The Mountain is totally awesome, man. It can totally, like, kill you if you don't respect it. So you need to focus, you need to respect the Mountain. That's what the natives say. And they're totally, you know, wise because they're primitive and stuff. Respect Nature. Or it will kill you. Totally kill you." Yeah.
It was a little more than a year ago when silentq got me, heatray and tegin to go catch the Somerville stop of the Banff Mountain Film Festival tour, which is the premier showcase for the year's extreme sports docs and "mountain culture" films. And it was totally awesome. Like, yeah. Totally. No, seriously, there were a lot of cool films in the 2003 selection, each one paying some measure of tribute to that human urge to climb a new mountain or surf a larger wave, just because you can. It was also prime people watching territory, since 90% of the festival audience were all tanned and toned rock climbers or alpine skiers hopped up on vicarious adrenaline. They were all jocks, but they were a certain breed of mellow surfer jock that was much more tolerable than the standard football jarhead, void of the testoterone tinged exceptionalism that turns most athletes into assholes.
Indeed, I don't have any kneejerk disrespect for athletes, just jocks who are all brawn with no brain. At least most adventure sports force you to plan strategy, whether it's navigating a rapids course or plotting a climbing route, your brain stays engaged and your reactions aren't on that lizard level of fight or flight. Watching folks plan their expeditions can sometimes be more interesting than the actual execution. Just, you know, don't ask them to explain why they're doing it, because that's usually when things fall apart.
It is, of course, a hard question to ask. After all, there's a sense of decadence in hiring helicopters to fly you into remote Alaskan mountains just so that you can slide down them. Like the pinnacle of human transportation and fabric technology, in the end, yields nothing more than a day of play for a few photogenic twentysomethings. You just have to buy into the premise that filming these exploits will make an audience appreciate the wider world outside of them, and will encourage a few of them to ensure that the pristine places stay pristine, if only so that the audience can devirginize them all over again with deep powder runs.
Personally, I appreciate the conservation angles, but can do without the half-baked rationalizations. Mountains and streams are pretty, let's keep them that way ... mmkay? The IMAX film at the Museum, in the end, was fine, if a little rote in its presentation. I'm looking forward to this year's series of Banff selections, and will probably be at the Somerville Theatre for this year's stop. You should come, too.
Not the sandwich, mind you -- though, frankly, it was in serious contention for one of the most mediocre Chicken Caesar wraps I've had in my lifetime, economy class airplane food included -- it was more the decision to eat at all was a mistake. If one isn't supposed to swim 30 minutes after eating, one really really really shouldn't be eating right before going to watch an IMAX movie. Especially if it's a movie featuring extreme skiing. I'm only glad that they didn't include any BASE jumping footage. That would have ended in tears.
If you aren't familiar with the genre, most adrenaline sports documentaries are essentially fifteen minute music video montages featuring hardcore athletes doing awe-inspiring things like ice climbers ascending frozen waterfalls or tow-in surfers riding waves that looked like they came out of the stock footage for Deep Impact. The soundtrack tends to stay within a certain proscribed set of categories, and whether this is reflective of the tastes of a small population of filmmakers is an open question. I like to think that the songs are actually picked out by the athletes themselves, and that you can infer a lot from whether or not a snowboarder's sequence is using, say, Tiga or Morcheeba (ie. trance music = adrenaline junkie, triphop = stoner). There's also a lot of superficial environmental philosophy strewn in, like, "The Mountain is totally awesome, man. It can totally, like, kill you if you don't respect it. So you need to focus, you need to respect the Mountain. That's what the natives say. And they're totally, you know, wise because they're primitive and stuff. Respect Nature. Or it will kill you. Totally kill you." Yeah.
It was a little more than a year ago when silentq got me, heatray and tegin to go catch the Somerville stop of the Banff Mountain Film Festival tour, which is the premier showcase for the year's extreme sports docs and "mountain culture" films. And it was totally awesome. Like, yeah. Totally. No, seriously, there were a lot of cool films in the 2003 selection, each one paying some measure of tribute to that human urge to climb a new mountain or surf a larger wave, just because you can. It was also prime people watching territory, since 90% of the festival audience were all tanned and toned rock climbers or alpine skiers hopped up on vicarious adrenaline. They were all jocks, but they were a certain breed of mellow surfer jock that was much more tolerable than the standard football jarhead, void of the testoterone tinged exceptionalism that turns most athletes into assholes.
Indeed, I don't have any kneejerk disrespect for athletes, just jocks who are all brawn with no brain. At least most adventure sports force you to plan strategy, whether it's navigating a rapids course or plotting a climbing route, your brain stays engaged and your reactions aren't on that lizard level of fight or flight. Watching folks plan their expeditions can sometimes be more interesting than the actual execution. Just, you know, don't ask them to explain why they're doing it, because that's usually when things fall apart.
It is, of course, a hard question to ask. After all, there's a sense of decadence in hiring helicopters to fly you into remote Alaskan mountains just so that you can slide down them. Like the pinnacle of human transportation and fabric technology, in the end, yields nothing more than a day of play for a few photogenic twentysomethings. You just have to buy into the premise that filming these exploits will make an audience appreciate the wider world outside of them, and will encourage a few of them to ensure that the pristine places stay pristine, if only so that the audience can devirginize them all over again with deep powder runs.
Personally, I appreciate the conservation angles, but can do without the half-baked rationalizations. Mountains and streams are pretty, let's keep them that way ... mmkay? The IMAX film at the Museum, in the end, was fine, if a little rote in its presentation. I'm looking forward to this year's series of Banff selections, and will probably be at the Somerville Theatre for this year's stop. You should come, too.