61 Frames Per Second by John Constantine Today in Nerve's videogame blog: Street Fighter. The movie. A new one. With that chick from that Superman show. Don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about!
The Remote Island by Bryan Christian Mad Men's January Jones struts her stuff in Vanity Fair. Plus: Damages returns, the latest Gossip Girl guest star and Donna Martin capitulates.
Alyson and three of her friends from Maryville, Tennessee, were so excited to get to spring break in Panama City Beach, Florida, that they left home at five a.m, which was way, way earlier than their six remaining girlfriends. After the sun came up, a couple of guys in an Acura blew the girls kisses and then threw marshmallows at their car, one of which got stuck under a windshield wiper and turned all goopy as they drove farther south and the day got hotter. When the tank finally read empty, the girls stopped for fuel and provisions, which included Marlboro Lights, a case of Bud Light, a bag of light popcorn and a sticker, GIRLS GONE WILD.
"Yeah, the ride down was as fun as being here," says Alyson, a freckled blond who is a devout Southern Baptist and, she'll tell you proudly, the first girl on her town's golf team. "Well, it was almost as fun. But not quite."
It's 10:30 a.m. and Alyson has just woken up at the Days Inn, a vast and completely booked motel in the heart of Panama City Beach (PCB, for short). Dangling a half-full water bottle of Kool-Aid and vodka from her pale blue nails, she meanders down to the beach along with her nine pals — most of whose bodies are more mature than Alyson's (her face is still round and girlish) and who are maybe a little less daffy (she tends to say whatever's in her head), but who all share her giddiness about being here, a sense of excitement that comes with having the independence to act freely, and maybe badly. In addition to Alyson, there's Lauren and Lindsey (who are twins) and another Lauren, there's a Jenny, two Sarahs, two Jessicas and a pretty Japanese newcomer to their hometown, Ayoko. "Another of our best friends was supposed to come, too," explains Alyson, carefully laying out her tiny hotel towel on the sand. "But she was lame and bagged."
All of these girls are eighteen or almost eighteen, and they are all wearing pastel-colored bikinis. They're high school seniors with after-school jobs as lifeguards or salesgirls at Baby Gap; eventually, they'd like to be lawyers or doctors or managers at Alcoa, which is where some of their parents work, back in Maryville. This week, however, they are all about Limp Bizkit, "shaking that ass," camcorders, licking guys' earlobes, henna tattoos, funneling ("bonging") beers in hotel hallways, shots in the hot tub, tanning oil with glitter in it, "Truth or Dare" and "Wazzzzzzzup!"
"Wazzzzzzzzup!" yell the guys, cruising the beach for babes.
"Wazzzzzzzzup!" yell the babes, cruising the beach for guys.
"This week is all about being wild wirls," slurs Alyson, who's already taken a few healthy swigs from her water bottle. "I mean, girls."
Even if you've never bought a copy of the $8.99 Girls Gone Wild video off late-night cable, the commercials — which invariably feature images of girls flashing in public, black bars covering their nipples — tell you everything you need to know about the sensibility of the species (although actually flashing is the domain of only the very most wild). The wild girl is the girl who carries around a lighter shaped like a penis and can bump-n-grind on top of five-foot speakers; she's the one in halter tops emblazoned with PLAYBOY PLAYMATE, FLIRT or SLUT, apparel designed to be playfully ironic, but which also has the nifty side effect of making the girls look super-sexy. The wild girl is the girl who screams deliriously from her hotel balcony as some guys streak across the beach, and the girl who, if she doesn't enter a bikini contest herself, cheers on other girls from the front row: The wild girl doesn't discriminate on the basis of gender — as long as it's sexy, it's all good. One night, the ten from Tennessee planned to have dinner at Chippendales, but when they found out that there wasn't one in town, they decided to go to Hooters instead.
If there is one habitat in which the wild girl is most at home, it is the beach during spring break. She's there amongst twenty percent of the college-age population, a self-selected group of partiers proudly carrying on a tradition at least three generations old and further popularized by MTV's annual coverage of the event since 1985. These days, an approximate five hundred thousand students party in PCB each season, kids coming mostly from schools in the South and Midwest. It's a crowd that attracts sponsorships from businesses like job site Monster.com (whose blimp drifts overhead) and Big Red (which dispenses free packs of gum at taco stands), as well as events like a WCW show and the taping of MTV's Jackass ("We all got up onstage," says the Lauren Who Is a Twin. "And then I kissed Stevo!"). Also in town to get their message across are members of the Campus Crusade for Christ, a clan of three thousand hardworking Christian youths here this week in mid-March to save a few sinners. Looking a lot like the wild girls, but sober and a little less scantily clad, these mostly female evangelists roam the motels to greet their peers, provide a free pancake breakfast every Sunday and transport breakers to and from nightclubs in their Campus Crusade van. They also administer thought-provoking surveys to their peers, asking questions like, "What happens when you die?" and "Have you prayed to the Lord today?"
"Usually, I pray three times a day — once when I wake up, in my car on the way to school and before bed," says Alyson, who even considered showing up with her own Christian youth group at the Crusade before she made plans to come to spring break with her friends. "But I didn't last night. 'Cause I was too smashed."
All of the action in PCB takes place on the main drag, Front Beach Road, a two-lane highway with sea and motels to the south and hair braiding stands, McDonald's and bars to the north. It's a cruiser's paradise out here, bumper-to-bumper with kids hanging out of sunroofs, pickups spray-painted PANAMA BEACH OR BUST and motorcycles flying Confederate flags.
If you're a woman, you don't even need to stick your thumb out on the strip: Cars nearly collide in their haste to stop for damsels on the sidewalk. It might be gallantry, but more likely it's got something to do with percentages; though almost no one brings along a significant other, or friends of the opposite sex — it's all guys with guys, and girls with girls — there are four times as many boys as girls here in PCB. "It's a freakin' sausage-fest, dude," complains a buff Georgian, wearing a St. Christopher's medal and a white Miami Heat visor the way you wear visors at spring break, flipped backward and turned upside down.
He walks over to one of the Jessicas, a Kirsten Dunst look-alike who was voted her high school's "Best Dressed" (she lives up to her title by accessorizing her bikini with a pony-skin purse). "Can I stand here beside you? Will that be cool?"
"Why not, sugar," she purrs, hooking his arm with her pale white one (it will soon be a fiery red).
giddiness about being here, a sense of excitement that comes with having the independence to act freely, and maybe badly. In addition to Alyson, there's Lauren and Lindsey (who are twins) and another Lauren, there's a Jenny, two Sarahs, two Jessicas and a pretty Japanese newcomer to their hometown, Ayoko. "Another of our best friends was supposed to come, too," explains Alyson, carefully laying out her tiny hotel towel on the sand. "But she was lame and bagged."
from schools in the South and Midwest. It's a crowd that attracts sponsorships from businesses like job site Monster.com (whose blimp drifts overhead) and Big Red (which dispenses free packs of gum at taco stands), as well as events like a WCW show and the taping of MTV's Jackass ("We all got up onstage," says the Lauren Who Is a Twin. "And then I kissed Stevo!"). Also in town to get their message across are members of the Campus Crusade for Christ, a clan of three thousand hardworking Christian youths here this week in mid-March to save a few sinners. Looking a lot like the wild girls, but sober and a little less scantily clad, these mostly female evangelists roam the motels to greet their peers, provide a free pancake breakfast every Sunday and transport breakers to and from nightclubs in their Campus Crusade van. They also administer thought-provoking surveys to their peers, asking questions like, "What happens when you die?" and "Have you prayed to the Lord today?"
