Skating, Trucks: Near, Yet Worlds ApartBYLINE: DOUG PAYNE
Staff
DATE: January 11, 2004
PUBLICATION: Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The (GA)
EDITION: Home; The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
SECTION: Metro News
PAGE: C9
MEMO: final sentence is incomplete in the newspaper
Like television during sweeps week, Atlanta was host Saturday to two great entertainment offerings on one night, just a couple of blocks apart.
How to choose? Over here, grace, beauty, the pursuit of perfection, young women in short, form-fitting skirts. Over there, deafening noise, bizarre vehicles with flames painted on them, jacked way up on huge, huge tires, grinding junk cars into scrap-metal salad.
At Philips Arena, the U.S. Figure Skating Championships put the country's top skaters and young up-and-comers on the same ice. At the Georgia Dome, the Superbowl of Motorsports featured "monster" trucks, all-terrain four-wheel-vehicle wars (Quad Wars to the cognoscenti) and Pro Stadium truck racing.
"They play on ice, we play in the dirt," said Tim Murray, vice president of Clear Channel Entertainment, producer of the Monster Truck Jam tour. "And we drink more beer."
Katherine Morgenstern, U.S. Figure Skating Championship public relations director, conceded the point. "Most of our stars are underage," she said. "They drink milk."
But lots of skating fans were ordering martinis at the numerous bars around the skating rink while waiting for Michelle Kwan, Sasha Cohen or Sarah Hughes to take the ice.
The sophisticated skating audience quietly conversed as the lower-ranking skaters moved to classical or New Age music. Across the square, no conversation was possible at the Georgia Dome, possibly because the PA was turned to maximum as it cranked out a blend of heavy metal country classical. Who'd have thought the ballcap-and-bluejeans crowd wanted to hear Orff's "Carmina Burana" with their mufflerless monster motors?
"It's great for the kids. There's something that mesmerizes them about it," shouted Tony Hagler of Marietta, with Brandon, 8, and Jackson, 3. "It's kind of fascinating how they can maneuver."
On the dirt, trucks named Reptoid, Maximum Destruction or Gunslinger, and the monsterest star of them all, Grave Digger, maneuvered like skaters, twirling, spinning, bouncing on 6-foot-tall tires.
Skating fans appeared unmoved at missing all this.
"You hardly ever see skaters with flames painted on their boots," said Linda Lawrence of Long Island, visiting Atlanta
