A couple of years ago I was told that I was going to host a gossip and rumors show at the AMA nationals. It seemed like a good idea and a lot of fun. Davey Coombs wanted to bring the nationals to the people and had hired a crew of guys to follow the nationals around and present them to people in a way that they’ve never been seen before.
A couple of years ago I was told that I was going to host a gossip and rumors show at the AMA nationals. It seemed like a good idea and a lot of fun. Davey Coombs wanted to bring the nationals to the people and had hired a crew of guys to follow the nationals around and present them to people in a way that they’ve never been seen before.
So my show was planned and I really didn’t get a ton of direction one way or another but knew that DC wanted it to be on silly season and what was going on with that. There was only one problem with that. No one wanted to talk to me about it and after show number one, I realized that me just spouting off rumors and gossip wasn’t going to that exciting.
The shows started getting wackier and wackier as the nationals went on. I literally would be thinking of things to do on the show while sitting there filming a segment. It wasn’t exactly scripted film at its finest. But slowly, stuff started coming together and to me, it was funny. No one ever told us no and no authority figure ever gave us any feedback good or bad so we just kept on doing stupid stuff.
It started out that a few different people in Wes Williams’ crew would film me but by the third or fourth week it was me and this guy from New Jersey named Rob. He loved hockey (which made him the first American that I have ever met that actually liked the sport) so we bonded over that. He oftentimes wore a New Jersey Devils jersey at the races even if it was 100 degrees out. He had a thick mane of hair that covered his face and sometimes he reminded me of Captain Caveman. He was a great guy and we had some great times together.
Weege was all over it and would help no matter what, Mitch Payton was very excited and contributed to the show, team JGR was great, the Kawasaki guys got into it and soon, whenever Rob and I were walking around the pits, we had fans and teams asking us what we were doing and to come on by.
Some of my favorites were shot-gunning a beer at Red Bud and almost throwing up, calling DC the morning of Saturday practice and asking if I could spend 100 bucks on a garbage can that would fit me and then walking around inside that all morning, the Andrew Short contract signing, the hot dog contest with Ping while Weege announced, Weege meeting Barry Carsten and…well there was so much more.
The show was a hit and I thought for sure we’d do it again in 2009 but there just wasn’t money in the budget to do it again. All I was getting was my expenses but that adds up to quite a bit for 12 races. Also with the new one-day format, I’m not sure how well it would have worked as we got a lot of filming done on the Saturday practice. Anyways, it’s all over now and the films are part of folklore and legend
Rob put some of the later films on his Youtube site right HERE, we’re not sure where the first eight episodes are but we’ll try to get them up at some point. Check these out and you tell me these aren’t comedy gold.
