Saturday, February 18, 2012

Hands on a Hard Body



           

           Most people can think to a song or album that grabbed hold of them and had such an impact on them that it was integral in shaping their musical taste.  Hands on a Hard Body was that type of movie for me.  Hands on a Hard Body is the movie that is responsible for making me want to see other documentaries.  The story line is so simplistic yet so full of cinema gold.  The title makes it sound dirty yet nothing could be considered dirty in this movie.  The documentary centers around a contest held in Longview, Texas, where a car dealership has selected contestants place their hands on a new Nissan Truck and the last one to take their hand off the truck wins the truck.  There is no sitting, no sleeping, and no resting on the truck, just standing beside the truck with your hand on it as long as you can.  One slip up and you are out.  The contest doesn’t make the movie, the characters that are on the truck and the relationships between them as the competition goes on is what makes this movie magic.  As lack of sleep sets in they begin to go crazier and crazier.  The combination of east Texas country bumpkins, early 90s hair, and quite frankly lack of teeth on some of the characters will make anyone finish watching the movie and say to them selves, “My life is not that bad.”  It is currently out of print but I believe you can find used copies on Amazon.





            The joy of this movie is to watch the craziness unfold.  I can think to two times in my life when I have had the opportunity to profit off a challenge, and they take place about 8 years apart from each other but involve the exact same people in my life.  My senior year in college my fraternity brothers were preparing to go on our Fall Break road trip to watch Baylor play Colorado and the caravan of guys going on this road trip were meeting at the house I shared with 3 of my best friends.  We were waiting out in front of our house for a couple of guys who had not yet shown up, when one of my fraternity brothers makes the claim, “Rhodes I’ll give you a dollar if you try to jump that hammock.”  We had a broken hammock strung between 2 trees in our front yard at the time.  My reply to him was, “Not for a dollar.”  That response prompted several other guys to claim they would pitch in a dollar to see me jump the hammock.  At this point I am getting encouragement and prodding and a nice little pool of money to give me the courage that I can do this.  I can jump a hammock that is 4 feet wide and about a foot and a half off the ground.  I assess the hammock to come up with my best option of making the jump. Upon seeing how the hammock hangs it looks like my best bet is to jump from the side that is in the grassy area and land on the side that is on our pea gravel drive way.  I seem to remember that by this time my name is being chanted and my courage level is at an all time high.  I take a running start at the hammock and jump.  I am looking at my goal of the ground on the other side of the hammock.  I realize that I have the height to make this jump and then I look down at my feet, and when I see my foot I notice the front of my foot has some of the broken piece of hammock wrapped around it.  In the air in a split second my thoughts go from, “ ha ha suckers you thought I wouldn’t make it, to OH  CRAP this is going to hurt.”  Right as I would have been clearing the other side of the hammock ready to land cleanly that piece of hammock wrapped around my foot causes the front side of the hammock to sling forward throwing me from an upright position to a flat on my face position in our drive way.  I have never hit the ground so hard in my life. As I got up you could see an indention of my body in the pea gravel driveway like I was Wiley Coyote falling from a cliff hitting the ground and leaving a coyote shape hole in the ground.  Although I did not succeed in jumping the hammock cleanly, and I am reminded of the hammock jump every time I see the guys who were there, I made 8 dollars and got a picture of the moment when I realized I was in for some pain.



          8 years later my buddies decided to get together to hangout over the Christmas break.  We were sitting around when one of the guys throws out they would give me $20 to shave my head.  My hair is worth so much more to me than $20 dollars.  My reply again, was not “No” but, “Not for $20.”  Other people there saw an opportunity to see what it would take for me to do it.  I kept saying no, no, no until the dollar amount hit about $250.  I had to then ask myself, is there ever another time that I will be able to make $250 in just a few minutes? So I agreed to take $250 in exchange for being their spectacle of entertainment for the evening. 
 I still think that I made the right decision, but I did get weird looks from people for about 4 weeks and had to field questions from people at work, like “Are you in chemotherapy?”.  I also realized I have an ugly shaped head with a ridge down the middle of it that makes my skull look like it has grown into a faux-hawk.  I love Hands on a Hard Body for so many reasons but ultimately I think I have a soft spot for people who are willing to compete for the entertainment of others even if failing means you fall on your face.









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