Punching Day: Blood Sweat and Gears (Patreon)

If you weren't around in the late '80s or early '90s, I'm not sure I can convey to you how much real estate monster trucks occupied in the landscape of the popular consciousness. Monster truck shows combined America's two great passions: cars and violence. The American century arguably peaked in 1995 at WCW's Halloween Havoc event, which featured a rooftop monster truck sumo battle between Hulk Hogan driving a truck shaped like himself and a zombie truck driven by an unkillable giant.

Thus: Blood Sweat & Gears, a VHS tape produced by the US Hot Rod Association in 1987, the organization which was also responsible for Monster Wars.

A few different YouTube channels have uploaded a transfer of this tape. One of them, "76hotrodF250," has especially fond memories of it:

Sadly, 76hotrodF250, aka "The Nerdy Redneck," has found himself unable to adapt to the changing trends of YouTube.

Pour one out for the legacy of a YouTuber who once hit six digit view numbers on his tractor maintenance videos and stayed true to himself rather than chase a changing audience. Except for the one time he did this, I mean:

But back to better days. Bloodier, sweatier, more gear-filled days. The tape opens with the sizzle reel to end all sizzle reels.

Tractor pulls!

Feet!

Day drunk '80s guys!

Mud!

Big cars crushing regular cars!

Whatever this is!

'80s gals who are definitely not feigning excitement!

'80s gals pretending to wash cars in their underwear!

Fire!

If you were a white American man in 1987 and made it through this sequence without a raging boner, then you were — according to the social and legal standards of the time — a mega gaywad.

Crucially, Blood Sweat and Gears does not depict a series of competitions between monster trucks, funny cars, or souped-up tractors so that we can follow along with particular competitors and their emotional arcs. There's only one emotion here, and it's "fuck." Only one arc, and it's "yeah!" For instance:

Fuck…

…yeah!!

Fuck…

…yeah!

A surprisingly placid narrator leads us through these sequences, images of worship and sacrifice at the American altar of Car. We are introduced to the concept of monster trucks, a concept which children are now born already aware of through genetic memory.

Did you know? Monster trucks drive. They have big, expensive wheels. Bigfoot is the best monster truck. He is the king of monster trucks, long may he reign, and confusion to the usurpers.

Fuck…

…y- wha? Is that then-AWA heavyweight champion and noted valor thief Sergeant Slaughter busting in like he's Max Headroom? Yes, it is! And he's sick of hearing about cars, an objectively insane thing to say on a video tape about cars. That would be like Jon Moxley appearing in the middle of a Troom Troom video to say "I'm sick of hearing about Ukrainian prostitutes turning vampires into nerds with makeup pizza!"

Well, that was weird. Back to more car footage. Did you know that sometimes, the trucks, they drive in the mud? The wet, wet mud?

The mud, sometimes she is so wet that the truck man, he get a stuck in it. Crawl, truck man. Crawl through the mud. You live in mud. You love the mud.

The children of America salute you, mud man.

But wait, children. What is that?

Oh no. It is happening again.

Sergeant Slaughter is back, and he's brought the cast of the Predator gay porn parody. PreHEADator? Predatool? We'll workshop it.

Sergeant Slaughter has taken a video about the awesome power of cars and turned it into a theatre for a war of man versus machine. He screams into the camera something that sounds like "hold it yer gettin all palledonthosemachinesagain." He and his crew of ragtag steroid experiments are coming for Bigfoot.

Cut to the wilderness, far from where monster trucks dare roam. Sergeant Slaughter leads his Battle Brigade on a death march through the desert. Many have perished. But those who survive are strong.

Strong enough, perhaps, to defeat Bigfoot in a tug-of-war contest. This is entirely what this tape is about now.

This is a battle of America versus machine. We are sick and tired of losing our jobs to the computer, the robot!

Slaughter insists that they must beat Bigfoot, that the machine cannot rule this world! He expresses this with such conviction that I think he might have caught Terminator on cable the night before and believed that it was a cautionary tale about robot skeletons joylessly gunning down children in the post-apocalyptic future. Somehow, defeating a monster truck will prevent James Cameron's dark vision from coming to pass.

Entering the arena carrying a miniature American flag and wearing a shirt with a picture of himself on it, Sergeant Slaughter hails his adoring audience. He has taken the rhetorical high ground by identifying himself with American imagery. Is Bigfoot even American? Can a truck drink an ice-cold Bud? Can it stand for the national anthem? I think not. Mind you, this was all a few years before Sergeant Slaughter abandoned America during the Gulf War because it had become too decadent and weak.

It's still 1987, we don't have to worry about that yet. Sergeant Slaughter is America's last, best, and only hope for defeating the hated machine and its human collaborators. Ever the sportsman, Slaughter nonetheless deigns to shake the hand of the man who would sell out his flesh-brothers to our would-be mechanical overlords.

The Battle Brigade demonstrates their readiness for combat by collectively doing the work of a single blond-haired American karate master or Russian bear wrestler and destroying a car.

And so we begin. The rules for man versus truck rope contest have been set as follows: three rounds of thirty seconds apiece, with Bigfoot restricted to concrete and the Battle Brigade allowed to dig their heels into the soil representing life itself.

The first round goes to Bigfoot. We only know this because our announcer tells us as much — the contest is suspiciously shrouded in darkness such that it's impossible to see what's actually going on. What we can see, however, is a man who appears to be Sergeant Slaughter's second in command. Boy can we ever see him.

I initially assumed this man was Slaughter's tag team partner or crony from wrestling. However, he is never given a name. I sought out his identity online, asked Seanbaby, but nobody seemed to know. And yet, he is unquestionably the star of this video tape. After the first round, he tearfully rushes the ref, insisting that Bigfoot has besmirched the honor of this sacred struggle by jumping the gun.

I can't stop looking at him. He's mesmerizing. A call went out for musclebound extras to appear in a monster truck VHS tape and a stocky fellow in short shorts, suspenders, an ill-fitting t-shirt, and handkerchiefs tied seemingly at random around his body answered. He looks like he let his daughter dress him this morning. He looks like he was a normal midwestern man that was hit with a Sergeant Slaughter transformation ray set on 50% power. He looks like he hit his head on his way to his accountant job and now believes he is Sergeant Slaughter's six-year-old son.

After slipping in the second round, this man, whom I'll call Gary Slaughter, abandons his place on the line and runs over to Bigfoot to hurl invective at its driver. Well, invective, and rocks.

Perhaps as a result of taking a few Gary-powered pebbles to the dome, Bigfoot's driver loses the second round. Gary's dad urges the ref to invalidate the point to make sure everything's fair, but the ancient rules of man-on-truck combat are clear: no do-overs. Gary is suitably punished for his transgression.

Gary returns, chastened, in the third round. He puts every ounce of his strength into these thirty seconds. He has to impress father. Father's boots are ever watchful. Gary must make father proud.

Alas, the third round is declared a draw. The ref throws the holy texts to the wind and decides to break the tie with an audience decision. Meanwhile, Sergeant Slaughter shows Bigfoot's pathetic thrall what a real human being looks like.

The winner is… nobody. After taking a measure of the audience's feelings via applause, the ref simply says, "you heard the vote, you know who won!" In retrospect, there was no other way this could end. Like a mid-2000s crossover horror movie or a threesome where everyone's on SSRIs, we're left with an unsatisfying ending and we all go home feeling a little cheated.

Or, do we?

Fuck no, Sergeant Slaughter ain't going out like that! If he couldn't beat Bigfoot in personal combat, he'll win through the medium of rock! A machine cannot play a custom Sergeant Slaughter X Budweiser guitar! Neither can Sergeant Slaughter, but that's not important!

Hell yes, brother! The song is called "Big, Bad and Blown." I had previously assumed that a blown engine was a bad thing, but in the world of hot rods, it refers to a supercharged engine which compresses a greater amount of air into the air-fuel mix to create a more powerful combustion effect. Wow, Sergeant Slaughter taught me something!

Slaughter was pushing the pro-America angle in his feud with a car, and it occurs to me that a man appropriating military imagery pretending to play an electric guitar shaped like the logo of a terrible beer atop an impractically large truck is perhaps the most American image that has ever existed.

Yes! America!

AMERICA!!

AMURICAH!!!!!!

AMRICAH!!!!!!11!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!

This message was brought to you by Seargant Slaughter.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Adrienne Hisbrook, who is day drunk and ready to drive a monster truck through fire into mud at a moment's notice.

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