Day 3: Racial Harmony

Growing up in Alabama is weird. There's a lot of racism, and there's also a lot of black people. I was fortunate enough to be raised in an adamantly non-racist household, and so legitimate racism, once I encountered it, was as alien an idea as thinking that the act of eating will kill you.

At the same time, growing up in the South makes you very aware of racial issues, just because of all the history of prejudice in the region and because everybody outside the South thinks all the white folks down here are racist.

Watching THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS: TOKYO DRIFT through those eyes, then, is quite intriguing. Here we have a summer movie about a white redneck, a black dude, a girl from Australia, a Korean-American and a bunch of Japanese people.

Compare that to Inception, the current summer "it" movie. That movie has a bunch of white people and Dileep Rao, the American son of Indian immigrants. Yes, that's just one example, but it's also the norm.

The fact that the cast of TOKYO DRIFT is ethnically diverse is not why I find it enthralling -- the driving sequences are the best of the series -- but it's just a nice thing to note. This is what colorblind casting looks like, and it's a very pleasant sight.

OK, so I didn't have any jokes to make tonight, and I'm sooooooooooo soooooooooo sorry. My bad. I'll correct that tomorrow, I promise.

Day 1: Goddamn Street Racers

Today I watched THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS. It was, predictably, pretty awesome, and the relentless seriousness of the whole thing didn't bother me at all this time. And I still got aroused when Vin Diesel motorboats Michelle Rodriguez during that Rob Zombie montage, so this is starting off well. Substance (sort of) below:

I was a few weeks shy of 14 years old when THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS came out in 2001. To that point, I had spent my entire life in Huntsville, Alabama, a decent-sized city for the Deep South but a pretty boring place nonetheless. The idea that there was somewhere in the world in which a hundred cars would line a street to block it off just so other folks could race down it was beyond my imagination, and I knew immediately I wanted to get in on that shit.

I would later witness a few races outside the Target I worked at in high school, and when I moved to Los Angeles later on, I could watch street races outside my house after midnight most nights. It turns out this could be pretty annoying if I were, say, trying to sleep when they roared by. "Goddamn street racers," I'd mutter to myself, and then I'd smile ironically when I realized that my entire perception of reality, a perception that was ingrained in me by a Rob Cohen movie, had been turned on its head. Here's why.

Before Paul Walker and Vin Diesel and Ja Rule race at the beginning of THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS, Leon blocks and intersection with his car, and a pizza delivery guy immediately rolls up. "Goddamn street racers," he mutters to himself after Leon tells him to go away.

"So what you're trying to say, Phil, is that you're such a tool that you even quote shitty movies when you're alone in bed at night." Well, that wasn't really what I was trying to say, but, yes, that is absolutely true. What I'm actually trying to say is that I identify more closely with the fucking pizza guy than I do with any of the cool people in the movie.

I just looked in the mirror. To my chagrin I found I have no tattoos and am not wearing a muscle shirt or tank top or Chucks, and I don't look like Paul Walker or Vin Diesel or even Jesse the shrimpy car nerd. I am a huge disappointment to myself.

That concludes day 1.

A Quarter Mile at a Time, 365 Times

This past weekend, I watched 2 FAST 2 FURIOUS twice. I also watched FAST AND FURIOUS. Over the three weeks before this weekend, I watched all four of the movies in this franchise one time. If you're not good at math, that means that in the past month, I watched THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS one time, 2 FAST 2 FURIOUS three times, THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS: TOKYO DRIFT one time and FAST AND FURIOUS two times.

Near the end of my most recent viewing of 2 FAST 2 FURIOUS, I had a profound thought. What if I, over the next year, watched 2 FAST 2 FURIOUS every day? I pretty quickly realized how dumb of an idea that was, so I then came up with a perfectly sane alternative: I'll watch at least one entry in the franchise every day over the next year, and I'll also blog about it. That doesn't mean I won't end up watching 2 FAST 2 FURIOUS 300 times, but it also doesn't mean I have to.

I know what you're thinking. "Don't you have a job or a social life or something?" I do, in fact, have a job, but I do it from my couch. This means I will be physically capable of watching one of these movies every day without it interfering with my absurdly busy social life, which mostly involves not leaving my apartment and drinking liquor from the bottle.

One note: It is inevitable that there will be days when I cannot fulfill my self-proclaimed duties as a FAST AND FURIOUS connoisseur, whether it be because I'm tailgating all day on a football Saturday or because I am traveling for business or because I get fucking sick of watching these movies and instead experiment with hard drugs for that day. These "absent" days will not count against the 365-day total. I promised you a year's worth of days, and I ain't gonna cheat you by not giving 'em to you.

Day one is tomorrow, and I'm starting with film no. 1. Get excited.