Tag: entertainment culture

Meet The Cutest Rally Co-Driver In The World

When’s the best time to start your career as a rally co-driver? As with most things, I’d assume the younger the better — and that’s just what this dad has done with his daughter.

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This video comes from Ridonkulous Rally Sports, a YouTube channel that shares videos of a family-run team’s efforts to conquer the local rally world. There are tons of great in-car shots from domestic American rallies for those of you that love events like the Southern Ohio Forest Rally or the Sno*Drift Rally that takes place in the winter.

But there are also plenty of videos of the family having fun, and that’s just what we have with this co-driver clip:

The short video is worth a watch. In it, a young girl has a book on her lap and takes it upon herself to direct the driver where he needs to go. She calls out a series of directions and numbers from her Things That Go book, occasionally agreeing with the driver when he lets her know they have to take a hairpin.

It ends with a wonderful sentiment: “When the kid wants to help, you let her help. When she asks to ride in the car when you’re pulling it in the shop for the night, you give her a ride, even if it’s only a 20 sec ride. When she climbs in and turns that red light on and then pulls out her pace notes all on her own, you always 100% take that freakin ride! Never get so busy that you miss the little things. The most important things.”

Kudos to you, dad. It sounds like you’re raising a future rally champion! And for everyone else at home: get your kids involved with your cars. Many of my favorite childhood memories revolve around being included in my family’s automotive pursuits. Bring the little ones in and have some fun.

I’m Hearing Reports That F9 Might Actually Be Good

Illustration for article titled I'm Hearing Reports That F9 Might Actually Be Good

Photo: Universal Studios

It used to be very important to have a movie critic, or a set of movie critics, that you trusted. Because, at heart, movie reviews are service journalism, in that I need to know if paying $15 and spending two hours in a theater is a good use of money or time. It’s looking like F9 is going to clear that threshold.

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The critics I trusted in the old days were A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis at the The New York Times, Anthony Lane at The New Yorker, and the late, great Roger Ebert. It is not that I thought that any of them were particularly right or smart about movies, though they were and are, it was more that over time I recognized that we liked a lot of the same things. If Ebert thought a movie was good, it almost always was, and vice versa.

But now I don’t read nearly as many movie reviews as I used to because there are too many shows, and what made movies fun in the old days was arguing about them with friends. Now, media is splintered into a million pieces and everyone has their own favorite shows and YouTube channels, video games, and a lot of other distractions that are just a click away.

This was not how it worked in the old days (the ‘90s), when if you wanted to see a show you had to actively think about when and what channel it was on or there was a good chance you would miss it. DVR made “appointment TV” obsolete, while the pandemic has had the effect of making the situation fully the opposite. I couldn’t tell you, for example, what or when the next big shows will be because we already have so many shows and we’re all drowning in choices.

And yet, there are still some franchises that manage to cut through noise, and the Fast & Furious franchise is one of them. F9 is out Friday in theaters here in the States (not streaming), and it’s looking like it’ll be the first true summer blockbuster in two years, with pandemic restrictions being eased. I’m sure you have seen one of the trailers by now:

I stopped watching Fast & Furious movies after Fast Five — it seemed like a peak at the time — and this new Fast & Furious looked to me like it could be incredibly bad, or like it could be incredibly awesome, or like it could be a combination of both.

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I was prepared to ignore F9, in other words, but then I read a positive review by A Movie Critic Whose Taste I Trust — Allison Willmore in New York magazine — and that was all it took to get me amped. You don’t have to take her word for it, though, as F9 is currently at 63 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, which to me says “watchable,” and that is enough.

And it’s entirely possible that critics want the first true blockbuster in two years to be watchable, and that everyone is grading on a curve, but I will be, too, when I see it, my first movie in a theater since Before. I’ll also buy popcorn, which I never do, and get a big drink. It will be almost impossible for it to be nothing short of a blast.