Wednesday night I just wanted to lie on the floor and eat comfort food; I ended up watching drifting videos and listening to Elton John. At the same time. Bloody brilliant.
The drifting bit is easy. I’ve had a long, long, quiet love affair with things that go fast. It’s good I don’t have a driver’s license, because as far as I’m concerned, the correct speed to do things at is as fast as whatever I’m in will go, and considering how I ride a bicycle … imagine if I could go eight times as fast just by pointing my foot. Yes, supernaut is a bit of a revhead, a petrolhead. I blame my dad, who’d been a mechanic and I have a distinct memories of him doing dirty work with a gas axe, racks of tools, and a mushroom of blood oozing from his thumb knuckle.
After I graduated, I went through a phase of watching top fuel drag racing, and in the intervening years have flirted with my probably greatest love, rally driving (and yes, I fucking love the WRX). Some time in the last couple of years, in truth when I went on a Vin Diesel bender and romped my way through Fast and Furious, I went all hoon again. And living in Germany with the glorious Nürburgring, the Green Hell, the Nordschleife, I’m blessed, being well-fond of that particular style of racing.
Anyway, drifting. Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift was a horrible, horrible film. But it was my introduction to throwing a car hard into a corner until the back end cuts loose in a cloud of spinning rear wheel smoke while generally pointing the front wheels where you’d like to go. Sideways. Definitely not my favourite form of racing (that’d be aforementioned rally, or 24h Nürburg), but one that I’m quite gratuitously partial to, especially of the Gymkhana variety.
As for Elton John. Ah, bad TV is to blame there. I watched Almost Human. The episode which ends with the two future-cops singing along to Benny and the Jets. And there I was lying on the floor, Dasniya beside me, and I decided that Elton John was exactly what I wanted to listen to, and drifting vids exactly what I wanted to watch. Dasniya was mesmerised, “What is that?” It’s drifting! With Elton John! And when I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues came on just as I started to watch Ken Block’s Gymkhana 6 – The 100% GoPro Edition! it was so sublime I had to blog it.