Our friend Luis Illades once posted a bulletin on Friendster, back during the short-lived Friendster Epoch, that sounded like it should've been read in the Ultimate Telemundo/Traffic Reporter voice. We notified him of this. Bear in mind that Luis is a homosexual punk rock drummer from Tijuana who claims that he makes world-class ceviche, with a total Alta California accent. He wrote back that at one point he actually had worked as a radio traffic reporter on a Spanish-language radio station. Somehow, this did not surprise us in the least. What did surprise us was Jackass star Ryan Dunn (he of "I love cars so much I'll take a toy one in the boonie" fame), in full Duane Allman regalia, narrating the Gumball 3000 TV show in a hyper-gravelly "He's gonna wrap his legs around your torso and give it to ya, give it to ya give it to ya!" tone, the first episode of which is now available via Google Video.
Featuring our pal in dubious-law-enforcement-guise Alex Roy and British television presenter Ed Leigh in a competition to out-ridiculous each other, it glosses over the real soul-draining tedium of rallying and cuts straight to the good bits, focusing on dildos, Nissans, Porsche-engined classic Type 2s and of course, Roy's Gumball Bentley, which, as safety-first Haller once pointed out, would have turned its pilots into human punching-bags and/or shrapnel target drones had the airbags deployed due to the array of ELINT equipment and cameras arrayed across the car's dash. As for Dunn? Well, .38 Special's bassist was born in McKeesport, PA, along with Mike LaVella and Andy Warhol, so the whole racontour/punk/skate/Penna/Southern Rock thing isn't as far-fetched as one would think.
Gumball 3000 2006, Episode 1 [Google Video]
Related:
More on the Gumball 3000 [Internal]