As much as possible, I try to avoid any pastime that risks my entire skeletal frame at once. I don’t “cruise” often, and when I do it’s in a ’93 Caravan that, despite having the aerodynamics of a tortoise, also has its impenetrable, if dented, shell. No, not an exciting drive; just A to B.
I’m of the opinion that there’s ways to live a not-boring life that wouldn’t have my heart over-pumping like a 16 oz. can of Monster would. Or like dirt moguls taken at 50 mph on an off-balance MotoX bike would.
And I’m a little queasy when it comes to the always adrenaline-spiked X-Games culture and its definition of a success story.
Recent pin-up Cam Sinclair for instance. At the 2010 X-Games, Sinclair re-attempted the double back flip, a trick that he couldn’t pull 8 months earlier—the crash left him in a coma for 7 days. When he landed it in his more recent go ‘round, his was blazoned the greatest comeback in action sports history. As if demise were flirt-worthy, something to be fucked with.
But maybe I'm just being dull; these guys have sold themselves to a hobby that pretty regularly leaves a person with half the bones in his or her body broken, and I’m sure they’ve done it with some sense of acknowledgement.
At the event, Sinclair wore Rockstar in a customarily busy, electric red and gold design. Like a vibrant cloth variation of the tattoo on his right arm, and equally inseparable in his public image. Search him on Google Images: he’ll be wearing a flat-billed ball cap with a big yellow star.
So not only is he (like so many of them) an icon for the “Are out of your mind?” He’s also branded. And, colorful, he’s branded to a product that’s been a notorious recent news item for its link with “heart palpitations, high blood pressure and even cardiac arrest and death,” especially in young people.
The X-Games’ “bulls-eye” demographic is 12 to 17 year olds. To make them a similar brand of self-threatening jitterbugs, apparently.
Of course, while Sinclair was successful at this year’s Big Air—an event aired commercial-free on ESPN because of a Monster sponsorship—not everybody was:
He’s dead. That’s what I thought when I saw this live last summer. ESPN kept replaying Paris Rosen’s four-story fall because he didn’t move for five, ten, fifteen minutes. Go to a commercial, go to a commercial, I kept thinking. But our favorite caffeine-boosting drink made sure to replay the crash as the medics tended to an unconscious Rosen. The commentators who usually voice over with spunky energy reacted with aghast hush. Rosen was eventually carried off on a gurney. The crowd applauded.
Paris Rosen suffered several injuries: a dislocated hip, a bruised lung, torn cartilage holding his ribs together, and a break in one of his lower vertebrae. With a set like that, it seems inappropriate to say that he got off lucky.
His heart is still slowly pumping away. I’m glad for him, though he might think that fact a little boring.
Jordan Langer
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