As football season begins and Psycho sports wood, I began to reflect on my favorite sport: the High Speed Chase.
There was a time when I just thought I enjoyed the thrill of watching, from the comfort of my living room, the helicopter view of the inevitable end to some guy’s wild ride. Then it hit me: in a city where sports fans are more fickle than teenage girls, we DO, in fact, have our own Official Sport. It is, most definitely, the High Speed Chase.
I mean, look at the parallels: sports fans of the more, shall we say, traditional nature, know the stats of every player on every team. Okay. I used to teach traffic school for the Improv Comedy Club, so I know the point violation and accompanying fine associated with each bold maneuver my car chase dude executes.
Sports fans cannot be interrupted when their sporting events come on TV. All right, just try to distract me while a car chase is on.
Football fans can predict which team will win, and by how much, but they still choose to watch the game as it unfolds, cheering and screaming at their TV sets. Me too. I know the cop will win. He always does. Whether the guy being chased has stolen the car, tossed drugs from the window, hit unknowing cross-traffic during his chase, or started running just to avoid that damn third strike, he will, unquestionably, be caught. Will it be a spike strip that flattens his tires? Will it be a PIT maneuver that ends the chase? Will his family and friends rush the street as he drives through his own neighborhood? Will he try to flee on foot after the car chase itself ends? All of those variables make my sport of choice exciting, and just the same as my football fan friends, I watch from the edge of my seat.
Now, I don’t know much about football commentary. I personally prefer NBA basketball and Major League Baseball, when it comes to watching sporting events. But, I’ll assume, for the sake of this comparison, that football announcers are just as annoying, with their attempts at humor and droll observations of the, well, obvious, as my favorite newscasters are in covering the play-by-play of a Car Chase. These pretty idiots chime in with their, “Oooh! He narrowly missed that pedestrian!” and “We’re not sure what started this chase, buy since we’ve joined the pursuit, we’ve seen erratic behavior on the part of the suspect as he drives, sometimes on the wrong side of the street.”
Last week, one of my heroes on KCAL-9 made the comment that the Geo Metro being pursued was, “the type of car you want in this situation, as its fuel efficiency will keep you on the road for hours longer than some other cars.” Oh my God. Did this woman just recommend a car for use in High Speed Chases? Well, I guess it’s no different than Howie Long hawking Radio Shack products. And there was that weekend that sales on Range Rovers skyrocketed in the LA area after one in a High Speed Chase survived three popped tires and an off-road pursuit better than any other car in recent Car Chase history.
Anyway, I realized that the only thing different about my favorite sport is the fact that I can’t look at TV Guide to know when it will air. What I can do, however, is listen for choppers overhead. If they are hovering in small circles, I know what’s going on, and I head for the remote! Of course, I could sign up for the service that pages you when a High Speed Chase is on in your area, but I don’t think they notify you quickly enough. Still, I may try it. It’s never as much fun watching the highlights on the evening news as it is watching the sport live! Now, if I could just find a way to buy tickets to ride in that helicopter….