Attention 80’s junkies: Enough with the covers and remakes!

There are two songs on the radio these days that annoy the piss out of me: Sugar Ray’s cover of Joe Jackson’s Is She Really Going Out With Him? and The Ataris’ cover of the Don Henley classic Boys of Summer. These are two songs that A) should never have been covered, and B) should never have been covered so badly. These covers are soul-less, bland, color-by-numbers crap and they’re just WRONG.

I think I’m annoyed by them because they’re so empty. Boys of Summer always takes me back to my short stint living in Reno, NV in ’85 or so, when hearing it on the radio would make me painfully homesick and remind me of the girl I left behind in L.A., and Is She Really Going Out With Him brings back memories of a warm summer night in Canyon Country a few years later, driving home with the sunroof open from dropping off the much-too-young-for-me girl I was dating at the time. Both songs serve as emotional landmarks for me, both are infused with meaning.

But the covers… They’re just … dead. Sugar Ray’s is overproduced to within an inch of its life, with echoes and goofy modem-connecting sound effects trying to make up for his thin, reedy voice, and The Ataris seem to think that speeding the tempo and hitting all the beats with their psuedo driving electric guitar makes up for the by-the-numbersness of their embarrassment of a performance. Neither song comes even close to matching the heart of the original.

The same thing is happening in movies; they’re remaking movies that can’t possibly be as good as — let alone better — than the original: Rollerball. The In-Laws. Planet of the Apes. And this is where my real fear is. I can deal with lame artists doing lame covers of songs they shouldn’t be allowed to listen to, let alone play, but remaking classic movies has to stop.

There’s a whole crop of 80’s movies that are ripe for the remaking that I hope are left alone, especially the John Hughes library: Breakfast Club. Pretty in Pink. Sixteen Candles. Those movies defined the 80’s, they should be left unsullied — but probably won’t be. I see an inevitable trauma on the horizon, a remake of the sine qua non of 80’s cinema, and when it happens I promise you I’ll crawl under the covers and moan for a week. Two words:

Ferris Bueller.

Starring Frankie Muniz, no doubt.

Please, God, no.

Here in the Bozeman offices, they have us set up in a conference room in the basement. There is a narrow staircase leading down here, and since two of the staff have toddlers who roam the offices at will, the top is blocked by a childproof gate to keep the little ones from falling down the stairs.

I have nearly fallen down the stairs twice opening and closing this gate.

This is the most unfortunately named gas station I’ve ever seen. I’ll let you kum up with your own jokes.

Mighty Girl is back!

Oh. My. God.

Beartooth Highway has the most spectacular scenery I’ve ever seen. There are sections of it that are literally breathtaking.

It’s a challenging drive, especially on a motorcycle, so I didn’t take very many pictures. The old “drive one handed while working the camera with the other” didn’t fly too well here — I kinda needed both hands on the handlebars, especially during the switchbacks.

And those switchbacks… Whoa. There were sections of road where I would look straight up the mountain and see a car 40 feet above me going the same direction, which meant it had gone through two switchbacks to get where it was. It was hairy.

Anyway, here are a few shots I pulled into pulloffs to take or managed the one-hand method during less adrenalized sections of road.

Just entering Beartooth Highway. Switchbacks starting already.

More switchbacks. It’s hard to make it out, but in the center are two stretches of road. The switchback linking them is hidden behind the trees at the bottom.

There’s a huge, broad expanse of meadows and lakes when you reach the top. It’s what I’ve always thought Alaskan tundra might look like. Turns out it is tundra.

One of the lakes up top.

On the way out, Pilot Peak dominates the view.

I put in another long day on the bike — 381 miles today, 8 1/2 hours in the saddle except for stops for gas, picking up a to-go lunch at the end of Beartooth, and in Yellowstone when I stopped to eat it. After nearly 700 miles on the Road King, I can see why HD riders do so much long distance riding — that Harley was smooth as silk and riding it was like gliding. My Road Star is nice, but the Road King just has a little something extra. This rental has turned out to be a 693 mile test drive — I will have one of these one day.

These last two days have been fantastic. This was the best weekend away from home I’ve ever had.