All Fun & Games

Unreal Overboard

Some of Unreal's earliest and fondest memories are of summers spent at the Lake of the Ozarks aboard our fifteen-foot 1972 Delta. These days the Lake's overrun with Scarabs and idiots, but our love of boats endures — and after a few beers we can still slalom our Unreal ass off.

So we're pumped when Seebold's Champ Boat Race Team invites us to a late-summer run on Creve Coeur Lake in one of their racing boats. Bill Seebold, the owner and manager of St. Louis' Bud Light Racing Team, raced for 46 seasons in Europe and the U.S., starting back when boats topped out at 26 mph. He tells us that a series of fatal crashes in the mid-1980s spurred a revolution in boat safety. So what's more dangerous, we ask: riding in one of his boats or inadvertently swallowing Party Cove water? The latter, says Seebold. "You never know what goes on in that water."

Good point. Vastly reassured and sporting a helmet straight out of Speed Racer (water's still more lethal than concrete), we step into the cockpit with our driver, Nathan, who warns us to hang on. Hang on is right: Creve Coeur Lake is small, but it's a frickin' puddle when you're taking turns at 105 mph.

Scary, yes, but it sure beats our usual Friday-afternoon routine: watching the office plants wilt. Though we're still waiting for Seebold to follow through on his offer to let us slalom behind that sumbitch.

Local Blog O' the Week

"eTony's Blog"
blog.myspace.com/skinflaps
Author: Tony Scharf
About the blogger: Tony is a 25-year-old single parent, comedian and a mortgage consultant. "I like eating grass and being shaved," he states on another of his MySpace pages.
Recent Highlight (September 11): DISCLAIMER: Not funny

Why do I hate 9/11 so much? 9/11 is the one day of the year when American's show their true colors more than any other day. 364 days of the year, everyone is a bunch of mindless apathetic assholes, but on 9/11, suddenly everyone cares. I seen so much 9/11 bullshit today that it made me want to shit my pants.

More than the actual event itself, I'll never forget how after 9/11, suddenly everyone was proud to be American. There were American flags coming out of peoples' asses.

The funniest thing about it is how most idiots truly believe that that event had anything to do with them, and that the terrorists were attacking us for any other reason than the following: Our country represents Christianity and an asshole government.

The existence of our current government is an every day tragedy. Maybe if everyone cared every day as much as they cared on 9/11, we could solve some REAL problems.

Know of an Unreal-worthy local blog?
Send the URL to unreal@riverfronttimes.com.