MONSTER GARAGE

Monster Garage is a cable television show currently in it's second season as of 17July2003 airing on the Discovery Channel. It is a "reality show" where each week, a different team of individuals attempt to modify a vehicle to meet a challenge, which is typically unknown to the team members until the first day of filming. ¹

The "build team" for the show must follow three (3) rules:

When built, the monster must appear to be "stock",²

The team is given a budget of $3000 for parts, and³

The time limit: on the first day, they design, for the next five they build, and on the seventh day - they race.

If the team succeeds and gets the project completed on time, working, and within the budget, each member of the team gets a high-quality set of MAC Tools.

Beyond these simple rules, anything goes - from stealing parts off other vehicles to machining their own from scratch, and everything in-between.

The Host

Jesse James⁴ and the announcers are the only consistent threads to the show other than "The Rules" listed above. Jesse has been a parts fabricator, Navy certified welder, and designer for West Coast Choppers, his own motorcycle shop, since he was 16 or so.

In interviews, Jesse has made it clear he dislikes the idea of deliberately staging things for the benefit of television, goofy ideas from producers and executives, and when asked about the first Discovery Channel special, Motorcycle Mania, that made him a "big television celebrity" he sarcastically said, "Really? Is that what I am?? [and after a pause] You know, here's the thing: if all the television cameras and everything went away, you know what I'd be doing?!? Still making motorcycles."

Jesse appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman to launch the second season of Monster Garage, and the concept car was a conversion of a hot dog cart into a drag racer (Episode#19). Because the car was shown on "The Late Show" BEFORE the new season aired, it was fairly obvious the first project was a success. However, because most of the monster cars are not legitimately licensed or state inspected, they were asked "not to go over 40 mph" when demonstrating the car for David Letterman by New York City officials. "I'm not going to do it, then. Where's the fun in going 40?" said Jesse.

On a personal note, I first saw Monster Garage during a marathon that ran on New Year's Eve of 2001/2002. It was an episode where they converted a MAC Tool truck into "The Ultimate Delivery" truck (Episode#9) by building a trebuchet, catapult, and air-cannon into the truck. Jesse said that he "...wanted to paint the truck blood red, rip off some doll's heads, and glue them to the side of the truck and deliver...fear -- to whoever wants some." That's probably when I became a fan of the show.

Jesse sports MANY tattoo's on both his arms, as well as a hilarious "Pay Up, Sucker" tattoo on his palm specifically for the purpose of humiliating people who lose bets to him.

Previous Monsters

Past MONSTER GARAGE Challenges not mentioned elsewhere in this entry:

Announcers

The show typically airs for (50) fifty minutes of garage work with an announcer narrating the action of the build team highlights, followed by a (10) ten minutes of "the race" which is called by "The Big Schwag" and Frankie Whiteside. These guys are hilarious, and could make a grocery list or a phone book sound exciting. They typically spout Lots of bad puns⁷ and work themselves into a lather calling the action of the race.

Mantra's

Monster Phenomenon

Lots of bikers and wrench-monkeys are fans of the show, and in addition to purchasing t-shirts and other items directly from West Coast Choppers, a fan-group called The Chopperdogs, and a nationwide chain called "Hot Topic" carries West Coast Chopper gear.

Turns out the producers of the show LIKE to see conflicts among team members, as this makes for "interesting television." Several teams have accused producers of deliberately setting the stage for conflict for the benefit of the home audience. There is frequent cursing, and at least twice team members have threatened to beat each other, though we have yet to see team members come to blows.

It is my own, deeply held belief that this show will ingrain the phrase "FREEBIE" (Zip! ZERO! Nada!) into the collective unconsicious of our society. One of the downsides to the show is that as it's popularity has increased, more companies are willing to donate parts for free, giving later teams a considerable advantage over the first few "build teams" who had to scrounge for every dime. (Again, this DOES usually make for cooler cars, but it's slightly unfair.)

While most people consider the garage to be a "Males-Only" club, the show has gone to great lengths to show that girls are just as competent in the garage. There was an "all-girl show"⁸ and there have been several shows featuring very competent welders that were girls.

Tom Prewitt of Damon's Motorcycle Creations typically does the finishing paint job on the Monster Garage creations. He makes some dazzling color schemes, and paints some of the most fantastic designs I've ever seen. He has stated that he uses more "metal flake" paint on one Monster car than he would normally use on three or four "regular" cars.

Failure

Failure is not an option in Monster garage: Every team does what they can to complete the project, and only two teams in (24) twenty-four builds have failed. These failures are "The Grim Ripper" (Episode#7), a hearse converted into a car-crusher, and "The Doom Buggy" (Episode#17) which was a Mazda RX7 converted into a sand rail.⁹ Each of the failures were demolished in spectacular fashion, the hearse by being crushed (with a Propane tank on the seat just for kicks that made a huge explosion,) and the Doom-buggy was shredded into smouldering pieces by a Dillion mini-gun. Jesse says that he keeps a piece of each failed monster on his bedside, "to remind me that failure sucks."