Letter of Recommendation: Monster Trucks
Gravedigger getting towed.
I went to Barclay's center to watch Monster Jam today, an experience I can never recommend highly enough. The trucks are huge, they do jumps and wheelies and, in the case of my all-time favorite, Gravedigger, an actual backflip! A girl power truck I hadn't seen before, Sparkle Smash, provided maybe the most consistent entertainment of the day by absolutely wrecking the hell out of her pink unicorn truck suit (I don't know the technical term for the mostly decorative chassis on top of the otherwise identical giant machines). Her unicorn horn also spat out gender-reveal pink confetti when it hit the ground. Smash is the only truck that has its own theme song - others mostly use 80s hits, which will quickly strike you as a better choice once you hear the Sparkle Smash song.
I sat next to a drunk British father, narrating the truck action over FaceTime to his wife, while their son sat more locked in than I've ever seen a small child be. I watched some of the worst downtime hosting imaginable, an intermission with motocross drivers doing backflips, and a whole lot of families going absolutely apeshit for the trucks. I also discovered that Monster Jam has a very half-hearted attempt at a narrative or kayfabe going on. It's poorly done but kind of endearing. I really don't think you need to add a storyline to the show where a giant truck in a zombie costume knocks its lower jaw off while jumping 20 feet in the air, but hey, points for trying.
This experience, delightful on its own, led my friends and I down the Monster Truck Wiki rabbit hole. Always nice to find the obsessive wiki subculture around a weird thing most people don't think about. Big finding: perhaps unsurprisingly, most of the monster truck drivers are nepo babies. I guess it would be a pretty tough hobby to get into if you aren't already close to someone who owns a truck the size of a small house.
Monster Jam will provide you with enough sights, sounds, and smells (they really are cooking with gas) to fill up your sensory tank for days on end. Run, don't walk.
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