Ride and Die

Unless you’ve been staying in a Unabomber like cabin, you’ve heard about some Hollywood Stuntz bikers and their incident with an NYC banker.

The biker in front of a banker stops suddenly and he hits him. Accidents happen and it’s harder to read the signals on a motorcycle. SUVs also weigh more than bikes so physics kind of dictates they’ll have a harder time stopping quickly. The banker should have stopped, put on his hazards, exchanged information, and made sure the biker was OK. (As I understand it, he was.)

One of the bikers immediately slashed his tires so I can understand the banker’s reluctance to follow protocol. He feared for his safety and in his effort to get out of what he perceived as a dangerous situation, he ran down another biker and broke his leg. That was bad. He shouldn’t have done that but I 100% understand why he did.

This is some yuppie banker with his wife and young child. He is surrounded by Sons of Anarchy rejects who responded to an accident by attacking his car. I would fear for my safety and be on the phone to 911. Under no circumstance would I get out of my car unless a cop was there. I might try to get on the shoulder but I don’t know if I’d have fled the scene for the exact reason the banker shouldn’t have.

In response to him fleeing, several Hollywood Stuntz bikers chased him for 3 miles until he got stuck in traffic. One biker took off his helmet and used it to bash in the window and drag the banker out of his car. Several bikers then descended onto the defenseless banker. He is currently in critical condition, all of his ribs are broken, and his spine is broken. If he ever wakes up, he’ll never walk again.

To my knowledge Hollywood Stuntz let NYC know about their big trip and extra law enforcement was on duty. They were still responsible for over 100 911 calls many of which reported reckless driving. Some of the bikers involved in the incident are reported to have turned themselves in. That was more than I expected of them.

I think these guys are worthless thugs. They are scum. Maybe the banker would have done the honest thing if they hadn’t immediately attacked his car. They give other bikers a bad name and perpetuate the stereotype. This will have national repercussions for months to come. It makes me feel bad for the decent bikers and think less of that counter culture as a whole.

Music: Hate the Taste by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

Film at 11 3/3

In part three of my thoughts on the Sandy Hook massacre, I take on the media. It’s a popular scapegoat and fuel for the fire. 

‘Movies and video games made me violent’ is one of the most pathetic excuses for committing a crime I’ve ever heard. It’s like blaming McDonald’s for making you fat. Unless someone pulled a Se7en and made you stuff your face, it’s your own damn fault. No character from Grand Theft Auto jumped out of the game and made you shoot the owner of the 7-11 you robbed.

TV, movies, and video games are not directly responsible for violent crimes or violent people. The culture surrounding them, however, is questionable.

Did you know in order for a movie to have a PG-13 rating, it cannot show realistic depictions of gunshot wounds? If you want to show an accurate amount of blood, guts, and gore, it’s an automatic R rating. I think that is an astonishingly backwards system. It desensitizes kids to violence and its consequences. 

Another fun fact about the movies is that the number of thrusts in a sex scene in some sappy love story will contribute to the NC-17 versus R rating. And oral sex on a woman? No matter how romantic, it’s not appropriate for a wide audience. Seppuku in a murder for morality tale is less likely to get you an NC-17 than a realistic sex scene in a love story. That’s fucked up.

What is a more natural part of being human? Killing for sport or two people consummating their love? According to a board of censors, sex is more damaging to teenagers probably already having it than shooting ‘em up.

I’m not a gamer but if I picked the top 10 selling games of 2012, how many require violence to play? How many have more violence than story? How many parents ignore the ratings on the games? How many clerks selling them? Video games are an international pastime that consume hundreds of hours of people’s lives. If you see and do something often virtually, how long until it has an impact on you actually?

Violence is becoming a primary form of entertainment in this country. How many gun massacres happened in the age of musicals? Michael Moore said that in his movie Roger & Me he showed a man getting shot and a woman killing and skinning a rabbit. People reacted more strongly to the death of the rabbit. 

I watched this movie for a film class and realized he was absolutely right. No one, myself included, so much as blinked when the man got shot. It was nothing we hadn’t seen a hundred times over somewhere else. Watching the skinning of the rabbit, the whole class moaned, groaned, and flinched. It was not something we saw too much of. Again, what’s a more natural part of being human? Killing and skinning game or shooting another person?

The news media is no better. A quote erroneously attributed to Morgan Freeman says that people need to remember the names of the instead of the killer. If the media stopped treating these shooters as pseudo-celebrities, maybe we’d get luck and the next one will just off himself rather than taking a dozen people with him. I don’t know who said it originally, but it’s a great point.

Most people can name the Aurora movie theater shooter but how many people can name his victims? The shooter’s name was all over news broadcast for weeks but how many times in those stories did you actually hear the victim’s names? Without Google, how many victims from Aurora, Sandy Hook, and/or Virginia Tech can you name? I couldn’t get out of single digits.

How many of these sick bastards wanted their 15 minutes? What would happen if shooters like this stopped being household names? These men are not rock stars. They are mass murderers. Their names do not deserve public remembrance. The media and the people need to stop giving it to them. It may not solve everything but it will certainly stop a few people.

Creating a culture of violence happens when small things add up to big things. We can’t undo it all at once but small changes can hopefully lead to big changes. I’m starting be refusing to remember the name of the man who slaughtered children. Instead, I’m going to remember Victoria Soto. I wish more people were like her.

Current Jams: Dirty Laundry by Lisa Presley