why extreme channel fucked up the Gumball
I’ve been following the Gumball 3000 since 1999, when you had to dig out home videos on the net, taken from inside super cars driving at 180km in a 50km speed limits, through countries that don’t even have a name anymore, by drivers & passengers coked up to their eyeballs, with hookers in the back seats and no idea where they are going.
Glory days - participants who had more money than they had sense in full on supercars: rich Arabs, record label owners, ex-kgb, gangsters, drug dealers, the legendary hacker Kimble and the odd actor or two. Throw in the ex-jackass crew or the Cuban brothers, the best hotels filled with strippers, pornstars and more coke & booze and you’ve got yourself a rock star, TV-out the window, type boiling pot that’s teetering on the edge of lawlessness, give them video cameras and film the whole thing and put that on fucking TV.
Now, i get some Grub Smith wannabe, Ed Leigh, on an “challenge adventure” V Alex Roy, who used to be worthy of respect.
Don’t make me fucking laugh.
The whole show now is this Ed idiot & Roy having to collect things each episode or they lose, but they actually don’t “lose” anything, they carry on to the next checkpoint as if nothing happened. WTF?!?!!?!? If it was any sort of real challenge then at least they should lose a body part or have to walk to the next stage or some shit, but then still, why the fuck am i being forced into 30 minutes of watching them take Polaroid’s of with police men, or collecting shirts from the backs of Thai peasants who probably can’t afford to replace them?!?!?!?
There’s about 2 minutes of footage of the cars and no onboard shots of these people breaking the law at ridiculous speeds.
Seriously gay.
I forgave Max Cooper for essentially turning it into a yuppie/cad tour, some of the recent “celebrities” that have been through there were amusing, and actually knew how to drive, Jodie Kidd for example, now replaced by following Martine McCutchinson!?!?!!?!?!?!?
WTF!!! Seriously.
But extreme have almost turned into a Glastonbury Festival type event: it was legendary; everyone had heard about it and wanted to go, but, you start getting people that are going because its “cool” and think that it will make them cool in turn, incorrect. These are the type of people, who at a festival, will fucking stay in hotels, come out every morning wandering through the dirty little kids who’ve slept in the same clothes for a week - essentially diluting the hardcore.
I think its called “commercial bollocks”.
Gumball is meant to be the ultimate road rally, full of freaks & larger than life characters. It should be that the racing line hits a beach and straight out to the ocean, those without sea cars should be left behind crying and waving their hats in frustration, those with sea cars just carrying on to the next checkpoint, while the others race twice as fast across land to get there, this is what extreme channel need to be showing. wankers.
Alex Roy says:
Alas, I was not in charge of this or any other show Gumball has shot. Bring back 2004, which was the best coverage Extreme ever did, IMHO.
best,
Alex
www.teampolizei.com
May 27th, 2007 at 5:18 pm