Tim Reeves' Big Day Out: MPH07

I had a very enjoyable day at MPH07. Some of the vehicles on show were spectacular and, needless to say, so were the prices. Here’s the vehicle I bought with my initials on the front as an extra:

The sticker on the back of this car will read "My other car is a wreck".

The spectacular theme continued in the arena performances presented by Clarkson, Hammond and May with breath taking internal combustion engine based stunts: car football, a flying car, and formation hand break turning. Four motorcyclists not only managed to squeeze themselves into a spherical iron cage but also managed to ride at speed as well. It was not just the wall of death, but floor and ceiling of death as well. So precisely coordinated was their riding that a dangerous collision was only small fractions of a second away:

With its 80% male attendance this was a show for the lads. It fulfilled all those stereotypical notions of testosterone charged males fascinated with danger, risk taking and fast sleek phallic looking machines. And if Richard Hammond’s recent antics are anything to go by, Top Gear’s blustering presenters are not pseuds but really do engage in risk taking. But as well as dangerous antics the show was also about being naughty boys and breaking the rules. Jeremy Clarkson drove his range rover up a 38 degree slope, but gleefully told us beforehand that Rover only recommends a maximum slope of 35 degree. Clarkson was pushing the envelope and certainly not doing as he was told:

It was all a refreshing change from today’s church experience, an experience so crushingly and slushily feminine in style, intuitions and behavioral expectations, that it habitually expresses the faith in quasi-sensual and romantic terms. Its notion of risk is that of listening to the prophetic intuitions of the limbic mind when you know that the prophetic hit rate in recent years has been all but zero.