Jesse James' GS

[Particle Man]

http://www.advrider.com/forums/showp...4&postcount=87

Originally Posted by knee-dragger777

This is my first post on ADV, but have been lurking for some time. A friend sent me this link via email. I saw the show when it aired on Spike.



However, I recently read an editorial published in the Oct or Nov. issue of Motorcyclist magazine by Dexter Ford. I just had to post here.



Well JJ, this pretty much confirms that your spike tv show is BS . Don't get me wrong, I respect you and your accomplishments. But Hollywood has put too much of a spin on this all for sensationalism, all in the spirit of your palms ---"pay up sucka". I guess I would be doing the same thing if I had the ability to do it.



Read on--



http://dexterford.blogspot.com/2009/07/dexter-ford.html

Link leads to:

Thursday, July 16, 2009
Jesse James Is a Dead Man. If He Goes Back To Tuktoyaktuk, that is.

Jesse's new SPIKE TV reality series, Jesse James is a Dead Man, is chock full of spit-soaked hype and manufactured drama. But a couple
quarts low
on reality.

The most egregious sins against the gods of truth and justice crop up in the "Arctic Bike Journey" episode, in which Jesse rode a "custom ice bike" on a frozen river to bring much-needed medicine to a supposedly desolate Canadian Arctic Village.

The grateful, dentist-optional villagers of Tuktoyaktuk welcomed the tattooed American and his snowmobile-riding film crew with open mukluks. Which makes sense, because Jesse was supposed to be bringing a new supply of heart pills to a pitiful, ailing Native village elder who had been videotaped earlier asking Jesse to "Please hurry".

But now, after watching the resulting episode, Tuktoyaktuk's mayor, Merven Gruben, is sharpening his best harpoon, hoping Jesse will be dumb enough to show his fur-lined face in "Tuk" again.

“Right off the bat, (the show) was a pile of crap,” said the mayor, in an interview with Katie May of the Canadian Northern News Services. “I think it was all a big, big lie,” he raged.

Desolation Row

As the show begins, an ominous voiceover portrays Tuk as a terminally bleak, godforsaken hellhole. “Every winter Tuk’s brave inhabitants struggle to survive,” says the voice-of-doom announcer. “Tuk has no hospital" it continues. "No airport."

As it turns out, none of that is true. Tuk is a thriving tourist center and jumping-off point for snowmobile tours, fishing, gas exploration and other Arctic industries. It has a fully staffed health centre with four nurses, free medical care and emergency services. It also has an impressive airport, complete with a 5000-foot runway and scheduled airline service from the nearest bigger village, Inuvik, which is just a half-hour's flight away.

Remote? Tuk was the site of Molson Beers' "Polar Beach Party" concerts and commercials back in 1995, in which bikini-clad dancers rocked to groups including Hole, Metallica, Moist and Veruca Salt. If Courtney Love has thrown up there, just how remote can it be?

Speaking of frozen food, Tuk even has a 19-room underground storehouse, filled with frozen caribou, fish and whale meat‚ just in case Jesse can't make it up on his bike with the next batch of groceries. In other words, if there's anybody good at surviving in style in the Arctic, it's the people of Tuktoyaktuk.

Fly Away Home

It's also hard to understand why Jesse James wasn't clear on this "Tuk has an airport" thing. Because according to the mayor, Jesse flew out of that very same nonexistent airport when the shooting was done.

"We're not that isolated," said Gruben. "We're as far as a plane ride away, and that's how he came back, was on a plane."

"Nobody expected any of that kind of crap, he continued in the Northern News Services interview. "If we knew that any of this kind of bullshit was going to be involved, we would never – I would never have been so open with him," he said. "There's millions of people watching this thing and (they'll say), 'I'm not going up to Tuk, there's no airport there and no health centre, no hospital,' that kind of thing. It wasn't good."

Jesse and Me

Even before I discovered that Tuktoyaktuk's inhabitants wanted Jesse's head on a flensing knife, I had my own doubts. I had interviewed Jesse on the phone recently, researching a piece for The New York Times, and he initially seemed like a nice-enough guy. Not many of his quotes were printable—I think “f-----d” was the fourth word out of his mouth—but for a guy whose job description is “edgy rebel chopper guy”, he came across as a human with whom I might like to have a beer.

Wanna see something really scary?

I even suggested an episode for his new series, “Jesse James is A Dead Man”. I said that instead of jumping another nitro-burning monster truck through an erupting volcano, he should try doing something that’s really scary, like leaving a chain-lube handprint on the wife’s new slipcover. Or speaking when she asks if that dirndl makes her ass look big.

Glowing with the knowledge that Jesse and I, were, well, BFFs now, and that he and Sandra (Bullock, you know) and the kids would probably be dropping by for dinner next week, I looked forward to the next episode of JJIADM. He was going to cheat death, yet again, by riding his “custom ice bike” up the "ice road, before it's even built" to deliver much-needed medicine to that desolate, wind-swept Inuvialuit village.

Expectations were high. Questions hovered above my micro-fiber, heated-massage Lazy-Lounger. “What bike would he use?” “Can he ride worth a damn?” And “How had all these apparently disease-ridden Inuvialuits survived without prescription medication all these years before Jesse came over the hill like some frosty, tattooed cavalryman?”

Flame on

The “custom ice bike” turned out to be a stock BMW R1200 G/S Adventure, with an Akrapovic pipe and flames thrown on. Jesse and his crew didn’t seem to have much idea of where they were going, or what they could expect, or how to prep the bike, but they did know enough to mount tires with ice studs. Did I mention the flames?

Once in the Canadian upback, Jesse gathers the "essential" heart drugs, and he and a local rider tiptoe out into the snow, heading North. The going is slow, but the medicine must get through, gosh darn it. So on they go, into the teeth of the gale, Jesse dragging his feet, it seems, all 125 miles of the trip.

That’s when things started to smell funny.

Not that kind of chopper...

Jesse was battling the elements, carrying vital medicine to Tuk. But aerial shots of the two bikes, brave specks in the frozen wasteland, revealed that along with the snowmobile-equipped film crew there was also a HELICOPTER along for the ride. The thought kept occurring: “Wouldn’t it be a better idea to put the medicine, I don’t know…into the HELICOPTER?”

The hovering HELICOPTER also puts the overhyped "he'll be frozen and drowned instantly if he breaks through the ice" BS into perspective. Yeah, he'll be cold and wet, for about ten seconds, until the HELICOPTER swoops down, picks him up, and warms him up in its sealed, heated, cozy cabin. And just how soft can the ice be when it's December in the Arctic, supposedly 45 degrees below zero? I once drifted my Dad's Capri, going over 90 mph, all over a snow-and-ice-covered lake in Lee, Massachusetts, where it's a record-breaking day that drops below zero.

Visible from space...

When our heroes camp for the night, it turns out that, along with the snowmobiles and the HELICOPTER, they have managed to bring a chainsaw, a gas-powered ice auger and, for all I know, a Honda-powered margarita blender. They chainsaw down half a forest and build a fire big enough to be seen from space—while commiserating about their impending hypothermia.

The next day, as they near Tuk, I can see the HELICOPTER still there, hovering over Jesse’s shoulder as he wobbles along.

I was outraged. Jesse James, my new best bud, a fake? A phony? A tattooed Paris Hilton, but with better arc-welding technique?

I hit the Wikipedias, to see if Jesse and the boys had fudged anything else. And found the Northern News Report story that uncovered the worst of the transgressions.

The Case of The Disappearing Heart Patient

Remember the village elder who begged for Jesse to bring his life-sustaining heart medication? As it turns out, according to the Northern News Service, that man wasn’t even in Tuk. He was safe and warm in Inuvik—the town where Jesse got the "drugs” in the first place.

Mayor Gruben deserves the last word. As he said to the Northern News Services: “People were saying Jesse James is a dead man…if he comes back to Tuk."



Posted by Dexter Ford at 1:07 PM