Face Planting Media Sale

I can't read the paper anymore. I get asked every day "did you see that so-in-so article in the post?". Or, "last night on CNN...". The Anna Nicole crap, the continuous seek out and report on what is hot concept of the...common media. I can't stand the common media and, if I suffer intellectually because of it, so be it. I can't read pro sports either, waste of time. I gave up football, golf, pretty much anything mainstream. I want to be in the outdoors, get stranded and fight my way out of the jungle for the sport of it. It seems dangerous to me that the general public views sports at play this way, usually nothing more than a means for making money, selling ads, products and services. The real athletes are the hard core survivalists, those that conquer the challenges of our environment and learn to live in harmony with it. I haven't given up my car yet or anything. But I have stopped printing brochures.

Yesterday was an all time low. AOL had on its front page a graphic picture of a basketball player who had dislocated his knee. Click on the gore picture and presto, a top 25 gore moments in sports history, which covered injuries like Joe Theisman's compound fracture, Dave Drevecki's arm, other rubbernecker photo's used to sell advertisements, memberships and services.

The world has turned in to one long DVD of "Faces of Death" a 1978 documentary movie on "the way people die". Banned in 46 countries, the movie paved the way for the broken arm, Jackass, You Tube skateboard clips of today. I can't watch the stuff. I feel a piece of my spirit is lost each time I see a fellow mountain biker fall face first into the side of a sandy ledge out in Moab. Not long ago I clicked on a link from a message board, a short vid of a couple guys on a trail. They were circling a big bowl, doing some extreme dessert riding, I have been there, done that. The third rider lost his balance and fell, oh, couple hundred feet, dead, caught on video, horrifically documented by his friends. It has been distributed time and time again, through email and newsgroups, people just can't get enough of it.

I have a message to those who seek out stuff like this. Suffer through an experience of real trauma, be in the real situation where someone died or was severely injured. See if you spend your rainy Sunday afternoons surfing gore.

Last year it was Schuck who set the stage for my commentary. We were out on a Tri-fecta, a 35 mile mountain bike ride starting from the mound in Weldon Springs MO. The Mound is a radioactive heavy water burial spot from a munitions plant during the Cold War or something like. Email The Smartest Man in the World and he will most likely provide you with the 411.

Anyway, it was not an exceptionally spirited ride. We had powered though Lost Valley, climbed the gawd awful hill to Matson and ripped that, we had made our way to the back side of Klondike and were approaching Donkey Kong, a trail with drops and ledges for experienced riders only. I cleaned the first jump in to the sand without problem. Eric was right behind me and, as I turned to see if he made the three foot drop, his front wheel dug in and he went over the handlebars. He face planted, chin to chest in the sand. I chuckled out loud as I came to a stop, the sand was soft and it really didn't appear that he would have been injured. When I came to check on him he dropped the bomb. "I can't feel or move my arms or legs!"

The next two hours were spent doing what you see on TV re-enactments. Use the cell phone with no juice to call a selection of emergency resources who needed very specific detail as to where we were. Eric started twitching and becoming quite uncomfortable but stayed calm and understood what had happened. Thrasher and I , the only others in the remote location of the park, a solid 15 miles from the car, began the task of getting him out. We had a helicopter there waiting, after hiking him on a body board some two miles back and up, and with the help of several hikers who had come to assist. The feeling was that of bewilderment, concern over this persons well being, everyone was upset and bothered by what the outcome might be. Is this it for him? Are his arms and legs dead? Will he be in a wheelchair? Will he piss through a tube? I had to call his wife and explain things. So how about a video of when the family when the arrived at the hospital, walked in to the room and saw him for the first time? Lets sell deodorant on bahalf of that.

It was a life changing experience for me. Now, Schuck ended up in surgery to repair a ruptured disk and made it back to race late in the season. His life is on track somewhat but not completely, most of it is behind him. I think about our world of media "gore vignets" from time to time and can only think of the world "exploited". We exploit these types of images and experiences things in order to win, make money, find comfort and/or excitement. It is a sad commentary when gore videos and images grace the covers, the forefront of common media.

If that is the case, I will regress further again, in to that of my own understanding of the way life is or should be. I will write my own stories that make sense to me and whomever and post them on this blog as a message to society to get a life. I will use underbelly examples of the common media to contrast that which is real, genuine. Stepping down....off soapbox. -r