The Animation Pimp

Last year a Hungarian chum convinced me to go to the Montreal Grand Prix. Figured what the hell. We bought $60 standing area tickets. Kids are free so we brought our boys. Race didn’t start till 1 or 2pm but he figured we should leave at 6am to find a good spot. Fine. He was driving. We got to the grounds around 10am. In no time, we found a spot on some dirt by a fence. That was that. So…now we had 3 hours to kill and it was REAL hot. At least 40 with the humidity. Standing in dirt in front of a chain link fence with two 7 year olds who are hungry, bored and REAL hot. Real fun. While the buys play with in the dirt, I ask my eager Hungarian friend about the racing scene. He tells me about the different drivers and teams. I ask what has happened to Montrealer Jacques Villeneuve—the only guy I’ve heard of- who since winning the grand prix season back in 1997 has done little (seems to me) but fail to finish races. Montreal loves their homeboy. Not sure why. The guy lives in Switzerland and can’t finish a race. Anyway…he tells me about the teams Toyota, Ferrari, Renault, McLaren etc… about the drivers like Montoya, Alonzo, Schumacher (who I’m told is more famous internationally than Gretzky).  Like most sports, I’ve gotta know a bit about the people to get a feeling for it….to give it a context. So I listen with interest as my friend goes on about the different Grand Prix races..what makes their tracks so special etc… Meanwhile…the place is getting packed. It amazes me. There must be a 100,000 people here. And it’s all kinds of people. Kids, guys, gals. All shapes and colours. Finally the race starts…or at least the whole fuggin parade leading up to the damn thing. Drivers come out seated on cars waving helmetless to the crowd. Then they do a little warm up lap to check their cars and the track. Oh yeah… forget to tell you…you need earplugs. It’s pretty fucking loud..even when they’re goin slower. Kinda like one of those annoying leaf blowers being held up to your ear for five seconds. Okay…apparently the race is about to start. Course I can’t be sure because there’s no tv screen or announcer to tell us anything. In fact, my friend is, get this, calling his Hungarian friends in Budapest (who are watching it on television) to get updates. He confirms that the race has started..and sure enough we can hear the engines approaching from afar. I’m getting excited…and – earplugs in place-peer through the fence with anticipation…then it starts…the engines get louder… I can sound it out but can’t really describe it… maybe imagine the buzz of a bee beside your ear times 1000 or maybe 10,000. Just a ear piercing high pitched BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ or WHIRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR. Either way…it’s real loud and I can’t tell which car is what, which team is who let alone whose driving the damn things. I can’t even tell if they’re cars. Just a blur. And then it ends. Silence. It’s all just whizzed by in a matter of seconds. It’s about another minute before it happens again. And so it goes. Fuck me. As Ms. Peggy Lee asked, Is that all there is? Apparently so. let’s see…we see maybe 5-10 seconds per lap. There’s something like 70 laps. Hmm..so what we see maybe 7 minutes of the damn thing. Anger fades into laughter when I see my ex-Hungarian friend calling Budapest again so that he can find out WHO IS WINNING THE RACE.

And so it goes… until the noises finally end for good.

I’ve no idea who won or how many cars finished. Neither did my friend… until he called Budapest.

So… frankly…I just don’t get the fascination. Okay…I can see watching it on television cause at least you can see the whole race—course I can’t understand who wants to watch guys race around in circles for hours. But seeing it live is like…well… imagine going to a hockey game and only being able to see one corner of the rink.

After a long, hot and exhausting day, we returned home in the early evening. My mother in law greets us and says, pouring salt on the wound, “it seemed like an exciting race. Did you see the big crash?”

“No… no we didn’t,” I mumble. “Didnt see much of anything.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 26th, 2007 at 11:57 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.