Hot Wheels Ultimate Challenge on NBC

Ok, so technically this isn't Science Fiction or Fantasy. But, I mean, it IS kind of Speculative Fiction, except it's not because it's real life, and well, honestly, SHUT UP YOU'RE CONFUSING ME!!

Listen guy. It's like the song (kinda/sorta if you can't hear right because your ears are plugged due to a cold) says: "It's my bloggie and I'll post if I want to. Post if I want to. Post if I want to. You would post too if it happened to you!" And, let's face it, I started this blog because I'm an annoying geek who likes to run his mouth about the stuff that he likes and I really like this show/

Ok, I hear you asking out there in internet-land: What show? It's a show called Hot Wheels: Ultimate Challenge and it's freaking amazeballs. Or maybe it's amazewheels? Amazetires? Listen, stop throwing this crap at me. It's three in the afternoon on my day off and I'm not scheduled to wake up until dinner time. I don't have the mental capacity to run my mouth if you're going to keep cutting me o...

Huh?

Just my imagination, huh? Yeah, I knew that. Seriously. Just joshin' ya. 

Or sumfin'

Okay, so I'm totally going to talk about the show now that I'm over two hundred words into this thing. I swear it.

So, here's how this goes. The show starts. We meet our hosts Rutledge Wood, Dalal Elsheikh, and Hertrech “Hert” Eugene Jr. and whoever else that week, and we meet out contestants. This is where things start to get really cool. I mean, Wood is a good guy and I loved his work on Top Gear but this show is, and really should be, about the contestants. And so we meet them and learn a little about who they are, why they love Hot Wheels (and who didn't when they were a kid) and what specific year, make and model of car they'll be working on, as well as why. The why can be very important, too. Whether it's because it was a car that they drove when they were having a hard time and driving someone to cancer treatment, or because it's the car they rode in while dating their late husband, or someone who grew up racing cars, it's all about them and their story and I like that about this show. 

There are a lot of game shows out there. But, when you're watching classic shows like Wheel of Fortune or Jeopardy, there usually isn't a whole lot of story to it. Here's the question/puzzle/whatever. Either you solve it or you don't. The story is basically about striving to win. But not so much in Hot Wheels: Ultimate Challenge. The story here is partially about the competition, but with the way they include the backgrounds to the cars, it's about the contestants in a way that a lot of other shows try to be but just aren't.

And then there are the cars themselves. The idea here is to take an actual vehicle and turn it into a new Hot Wheels car. The contestants and their teams (and trust me, the teams do most of the actual work and provide nearly all of the skill) get a week to turn real cars into real works of art using the Hot Wheels motif; over the top, overbuilt and just plain cool looking. Trust me, no one is going to win their week with a car from stock. They cut, chop, add, rebuild and just plain go crazy. HUGE engines, massive exhausts, wild paint schemes, etc are the rule of the day. 

And yes, there is a bit of a cheese factor. They've got a gas gauge displaying how much time is left in the build. They've got little vignettes of the teams/contestants freaking out when this or that aspect of the build isn't working right. They keep right on with the stories of the contestants talking about their ties to their car. And the judges are critiquing everything that happens. It may sound a bit overwrought, but it builds drama. Without tension there is no story and this is a series that is all about story. And what could be a better story than having your car turned into a real Hot Wheel that you can buy at the store? That is, after all, the grand prize. Well, that and some cash.  Money is good, too.

Of course, all of the newer shows feature a twist somewhere (I blame Jeff Probst and Mark Burnett) and Hot Wheels: Ultimate Challenge is no exception. About halfway through the week/show the contestants are stopped in their work and a car emerges from the Inspirationator 5000 (picture above behind Rutledge Wood) and the contestants are forced to rethink their designs to incorporate parts of that vehicle. It's always a good time watching them freak out. 

With Hot Wheels: Ultimate Challege being pre-taped (and heavily edited. They fit a week's work into sixty minutes) you'd think they'd accidentally telegraph who is going to win, but they don't. I've been surprised by a couple of the winners so far, and the finale doesn't conclude until next week. It's a two parter and, being a geek, I reserve the right to go into a total nerd rage and tell everyone how everything they ever did sucks if they pick the wrong winner. That's what geeks do. It's what we're good at.

But there's this, too: I'm a huge Survivor fan. I have been since Season One. One thing I don't necessarily like about Survivor though, especially it's earlier seasons, is the rancor between the contestants. I mean, they're playing for big stakes, but it's a game and people get butthurt. I'm not as big of a  Big Brother fan, but I remember that the same way. HWUC doesn't seem to have that, at least from what I can see on camera. The contestants come out, pour their hearts out and pretty much always shake hands afterward. HWUC is the type of show you can watch with your kids while you're teaching them about sportsmanship. Seriously, it's good wholesome fun.

And that's why only real beef with HWUC is its time slot and that's no reflection on the show itself, it's just frustrating. It comes on at ten o'clock, right after America's Got Talent and I feel like that's a little too late. HWUC is the type of thing I'd encourage parents of young kids to watch with their families. It's toys. It's fun. It's creative, It oozes with wholesomeness in a world where that type of thing is getting harder and harder to find. 

Needless to say, I'll be watching the second half of the finale on Tuesday night at ten. I still think it's crap that Lauren Partin didn't get into the finale, but it is what it is. I haven't torn anything down yet, but I'm not happy. Then again, it's not up to me, even if it should be. And the special guest judge is Jay Leno, so at least they've got a real car guy (and if you don't believe me on that, do some research) along for the ride. I can't wait. Oh, and here's hoping for a Season Two.

Bottom Line: 5.0 out of 5 Wildly Extended Tail Pipes

Hot Wheels Ultimate Challenge
Mattel Television, et al., 2023

Some Hot Wheels products are available at the following links. If you click a link and buy literally anything from Amazon I get a small percentage of the price at no additional cost to you.

Warpath: One Vietnam Veteran's Journey through War, Disillusionment, Guilt and Recovery by AJ Moore

This post is dedicated to every veteran of the Vietnam War, but most especially the American troops who were degraded, spit upon and ignored by the same people who sent them off to fight and die. The way my country treated them was both sickening and offensive. I have no right or responsibility to apologize for something I never took part in or had the power to prevent, having been born over a year after the fall of Saigon, but I will never, ever, for as long as I live, show support for what happened to you or those that did it. They have no love for you, but I do. Thank you for all that you've done, both during the war and for society since you came home. 

 

It strikes me as ironic that I found Warpath: One Vietnam Veteran's Journey through War, Disillusionment, Guilt and Recovery by AJ Moore the day after I announced the lineup for my annual Memorial Day Event here at Jimbo's, but one thing I've never been accused of is having a perfect system. For those that missed it, this is a review of a work of Non-Speculative Fiction, specifically a memoir by an American Veteran. I know that this is a space where I usually stick to the world of SF/F, but this is my blog. My blog, my rules and Lord knows that Moore has earned a review, both with his writing and his sacrifices.

Warpath is the story of AJ Moore, a man who willingly enlisted to serve in Vietnam (as did roughly 70% of the troops who served there) and then volunteered for combat duty despite the fact that he was a helicopter mechanic who could have stayed on post. He wanted to experience combat. He got his wish and went through some things that no human being should have to deal with, but many have. It's only through luck and a bit of skill that he managed to get home and work in IT instead of ending up as just another name on the wall. 

But it's weird because Moore never once calls himself a hero or acts like he deserves any special type of recognition, at one point turning down a chance to apply for a Purple Heart. Having been through some things myself, although nothing to compare what he has to deal with, I'm tempted to believe that Moore wrote Warpath as a form of therapy. I've done similar things myself, I've just never written anything this extensive, or thought to get paid for it. Regardless of the reasons he wrote it, I hope it helped him to do so.

Moore does not go for the heavy description I've seen in many works of fiction and for that I'm actually thankful. He has seen and done some truly horrifying things and, while he is graphic enough that I don't think I'd let my eleven year-old daughter read Warpath, it could have been much, much worse if he had added too much detail. I kind of wonder whether he did it that way on purpose or if he just didn't think to include the details, but it's the right decision either way. 

Moore also talks about the cost of war to the survivors. He is open about the mental anguish he has suffered and the fact that he suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I hesitated to review Warpath for precisely this reason, but it's a subject that needs to be openly discussed. It's important to note that, while some of the action Moore took were not necessarily perfect, he never once seems to have intentionally harmed a human being since getting home or intentionally harmed anyone mentally or emotionally. There were some things that he did that weren't good for his kids or his spouse, but he didn't realize it at the time. And...

Well...

Dear Lord, if there is any chance that I can do any good in your name with this blog, let it be this:

Let some veteran of the Iraq or Afghanistan wars see this, or let someone they know show it to them, and have it help them to get the help they need to spare their family the same thing. If it does I'll never know it and that's okay. All glory goes to you. 

*AHEM*

I guess that's a little off topic but I needed to do it.

At some level, I wish they would teach works like Warpath in history classes. I know the cool thing in academia is to ignore military and political history in favor of breaking things down to the lowest common denominator, but the bottom line is that military and political history is something that has effected, and continues to effect, literally every culture on Earth once it hits a certain size. Warpath is the kind of document that details the actual emotional effects of war on the people who fight it on a level that nothing else ever could. 

Seriously, when Moore talks about what he went through just trying to take a shower in Vietnam at his base camp or the time he got crotch rot (which is an actual thing) from living in the wet conditions in Vietnam it adds something to what you're learning. Historians call this a "primary source document" but there's more to it than just being a primary source. I've read dry, clinical after action reports before and they can't come close to matching Warpath for what it is. 

Warpath is an actual recounting of things as they happened, at least to the extent that a human being is able to remember things accurately. But it is also a collection of the impressions of the person who lived the war and who paid the price that all people who were there paid. It's something that a work like Maus or X-Men: Magneto: Testament never could be, because it is told in the realest terms possible. Moore is a man who learned to work on helicopters in the states and how to fly them in Vietnam so he could get home if his pilot was injured. He was a man who actually shot at the enemy and took fire himself. He did things for real. This isn't some comic book which, while certainly well-written, probably contributes to the fact a third of North American students think the Holocaust either didn't happen or is exaggerated. Comic books create that aura. Those who teach comic books in a classroom setting perpetuate it. An honest memoir does not.

Moore tells it like it was. He was there. He saw it. He did it. He changed his mind about whether he should have been there or not. Then he came back to a world of suffering that he never would have had to endure if he hadn't set off to do what he thought was right at the time. He's honest and open. That is what true authenticity looks like. 

This is a book worth far more than the time it takes to read it and the money it takes to buy it if you don't have Kindle Unlimited and can't just read it that way. Seriously, put the time in. 

And seriously, if someone in Washington can find a way to create a medal/decoration to award to people who serve their fellow veterans after their time in service ends, award one to AJ Moore. He's got it coming.

My apologies to Specialist Moore if this became more of a soapbox for me to speak from and less of a review than he deserved. I am responsible and could have prevented such and didn't.

Bottom Line: 5.0 out of 5 Thankful Bloggers

Warpath: One Vietnam Veteran's Journey through War, Disillusionment, Guilt and Recovery
AJ Moore
Apache Press Books, 2022

Warpath: One Vietnam Veteran's Journey through War, Disillusionment, Guilt and Recovery is available for purchase at the following link. If you click the link and buy literally anything from Amazon, I get a small percentage at no additional cost to you.

Kevin Antcliff's The Divorced Daddy Diaries: Acceptance, Adjustment and Adventure in the Post-Divorce World 2nd Edition

(Author's Note: Nope, no Science Fiction or Fantasy here. This is just something that I thought deserved a review.)

You know how people tell you that you don't know how something feels until you've been through it? Well, sometimes you have been through it. I mean, I just read a book about a guy who is divorced and has two little girls. I was actually kind of afraid to write this review because I thought people might assume I wrote this book under a pen-name and then reviewed it myself. I mean, that describes my situation pretty well. Well, no, I didn't write this book. Kevin's story is completely different than mine. And, oddly enough, despite the similarities, he seems to feel a lot different about it than I do. That was a bit of a shock.

Despite all of that, this book still hit me pretty hard. I really wish I had a copy when things finally went to shit between myself and Nicole. Granted, Kevin was still married at the time and hadn't written the book yet, but it still would have been nice. Because, despite the fact that situations were different and we reacted in totally different ways emotionally, there are a lot of things we both went through. I would think that most divorced men with kids have a ton of similarities and even divorced dudes with no kids have some.

To me, The Divorced Daddy Diaries by Kevin Antcliff is a book about one man and his journey, but in a way it stands for all of us guys out there and I think that's a good thing. Something I seem to have been bombarded with since before I started dating is the refrain of the divorced woman/single mom and how bad she has it. Oprah has done shows about it. Books are written. Studies are conducted. It's legit. I'm not saying it's easy for women either, but you never hear about the man's point of view.

And it's not easy for us. Reba McEntire once did a song called It Always Rains on Saturday about how sad it made a mother when her son left for the weekend. I remember how much my dad used to love that song. I also remember catching crap for asking how the father in the song felt when his kid went away for a week. No one wants to hear it, but it's a valid question. People with penises are not immune from emotional pain, especially when it involves something as important as their children. Kevin talks us through what that feels like. It's not a good feeling.

Reading about what Kevin went through with his daughters was rough because I've been through it. I had to hold it together while reading The Divorced Daddy Diaries because I read the whole thing while sitting in the waiting room at a car dealership while my vehicle got worked on. Crying in public is just not something that dudes do. It wasn't easy though. That hit me hard.

There are a lot of emotionally rough moments in this book, both for the writer and the reader. That's important though, because divorce is a rough thing to get through. Kevin was married for thirteen years - and then he wasn't anymore. If you haven't been through it, that's a rough feeling to describe. He had also lived with his daughters for their entire lives, until he didn't anymore. That hurts folks. He does a good job of showing how much.

Don't get me wrong. This isn't some scholarly treatise on the emotional state of men after divorce. This reads more like a conversation you had with your buddy over a couple of drinks one night. It's raw. It's emotional. It's not clinical in the slightest and I loved that fact about it. Clinical terms can be so detached. The Divorced Daddy Diaries are not detached. They're real. That in and of itself is what makes this book worth reading.

It's not organized like a doctoral dissertation either, and I love that about it. A lot of going through a divorce as a dude is trying to make things better for yourself while waiting for life to kick you in the nuts again. I don't care who you are or how many people you have seen go through this process nothing prepares you for it. Life as a divorced dad is a disorganized mess. You control the things you can and ride out the things you can't. The Divorced Daddy Diaries seems to follow that pattern pretty well. There is no real logical progression of chapters toward some kind of ultimate climax at the end of the book, but it works.

My perverse side (and yes, I definitely have one) wants to present this book as a gift to one particular professor at Wayne State University who is known for her love of academic formalism. It's not because I think she'd like it. It's because I think she'd shit her pants and send the book flying across the room at warp factor nine. I picture myself standing behind her belting out my best wicked clown laugh. That's awesome though. I was a graduate student in history when I took her class and I still enjoyed this book more than any of the works that she assigned.

And there are some fun parts to go with the emotional stuff as well. If you've tried online dating for any length of time you know that there are some real whackadoos out there. Kevin found a few of them and recounts his experiences with them. I found myself chuckling more than once at some of the things he went through. I've been there. It's all true.

All in all, I'd recommend The Divorced Daddy Diaries to everybody but I consider it essential reading for any man who is going through, has been through, or is thinking about (or fearing) going through a divorce. Seriously. You're not the only one dealing with this, bro. It's rough out there, but there are others who know what it's like. Buy the book. It's a quick, informative read and you'll enjoy it.

Bottom Line:5.0 out of 5 Broken Hearts

The Divorced Daddy Diaries: Acceptance, Adjustment and Adventure in the Post-Divorce World 2nd Edition
Kevin Antcliff
Self Published, 2018

The Divorced Daddy Diaries: Acceptance, Adjustment and Adventure in the Post-Divorce World 2nd Edition is available for purchase at the following link: