Have you been watching the X Games? Have you been recording it so you can watch it when all your fuckin’ skater friends come over and you can converse about gnarly flip kicks and Ollies and then after a few beers you can go out front and skate off your curb? How cool would that be?

Ugh, well, not fuckin’ cool at all actually. X Games is to sports as video games are to entertainment – that is to say, a kiddie scene for dudes who have taken up permanent residence in their granny’s basement.

Riding a motocross bike doesn’t make you an athlete and being nutty enough to spin seventeen times off of the lip of an empty swimming pool is not a measure of sporting prowess, it’s a measure of faulty genetic wiring.

Nothing does more to divide our society than the creation of a pierced and tattooed counterculture that encourages kids to jump off buildings and gives generations of slackers the false impression that building ramps and hanging at the skate park is the same thing as having a job and making a valuable contribution to society.

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I had no idea these “games” were still taking place actually, only I made the mistake of catching an inning of baseball on ESPN, and for that ten minutes, I was bombarded with results from a “competition” that grown-ups had thrown away fifteen years ago along with the last of their OP shorts. Turns out this X thing has now been going on for over twenty years, a testament to the twisted egotistical mind control practiced by media whores like ESPN.

Of course, ESPN invented this whole thing to attract Gen X and Gen Y – who in 1995 craved attention that same way a fat girl craves Nacho Cheese Doritos and Oreos. It sounded something like this, “Hey Gen X, if you ride your skateboard off of that building, we’ll film it and maybe put it on TV, and if you survive, we’ll give you free t-shirts and stickers and stuff, okay?” …. “Okay, sounds rad dude!”

And so the Do-Something-Rad/Stoner-Slang Games were born. The ironic thing is that the bros and Bettys who are into this see it as so alternative, so long-hair and freedom, but in fact, the biggest media conglomerate in the world owns them and every motocross rider from Brazil or skate dude from Buena Park is ESPN’s bitch. While they risk life and limb for fake Olympic medals and stickers, ESPN is taking them to the bank. The measly prize money they hand out amounts to what ESPN executives hand out to bathroom attendants.

They make up new events every year, with, like, rad names like vert and big air and street and the BMX Fliparoni (I made that one up). They’re keeping it so fuckin’ real aren’t they?

I know, I know … I know there’s a generation gap here that’s wide as hell and that I’m not the target demographic for these “games” that will never be confused with sports … I get that it’s a cultural thing and maybe a lifestyle that I’m not hip enough to understand … But I just hate to see entire generations committing their lives to and lining ESPN’s pockets with what amount to stunts, life is one big stunt, one big triple backflip that comes with a gnarly road rash.

So when you were eleven, when your parents were out to dinner, your friends talked you into riding your skateboard down the roof and into the pool. That was a stunt! Not a career, not a lifelong pursuit, not something you put on your resume or ever do again after elementary school!

Well, for Gen X and Gen Y, it’s all gone hideously wrong. At their twenty-year high school reunion, the conversation goes like this, “Hey man, remember when we were little and Kevin and Jared and me talked you into skating down the roof into the pool? That was, like, so sketchy and rad. I betcha never tried that again.”

“Sure I did! Now I do that trick riding a BMX bike and I do three backflips before hitting the water. I’ve landed on my head a few times, but you should see the sweet gear and stickers I get.”

The Stunt Generation. Makes me sad. Makes ESPN rich

Photo on Visualhunt