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USA Today
7 days ago
- Automotive
- USA Today
Legal street racing returns at Roadkill Nights 2025 with a muscle car playground: See photos
Since 2015, cops have been turning a blind eye toward what happens at Roadkill Nights in Michigan. "It's a street legal takeover," Dodge CEO Matt McAlear said. "It's controlled mayhem at its finest." Amnesty from the police is a good thing for the tens of thousands in attendance along Woodward Avenue in Pontiac, who routinely flock to the event to see some of the biggest and baddest drag racing machines. The event, which started in the parking lot of the Silverdome back in 2015, features 11 hours of high-octane drag racing matches between drivers from across the country. Last year, due to construction, the event moved inside the M1 Concourse in Pontiac, with drag races taking place on the straightaway. This year, the event on Saturday, Aug. 9, returned downtown with permits, of course, from MDOT, Pontiac police and even approval from the mayor: "Nothing symbolizes and represents the car culture of southeast Michigan better than driving on Woodward Avenue," said Tim Greimel, the mayor of Pontiac. All day muscle Before the racing began, there was a mandatory safety meeting for all racers. They were told the route to take to enter the drag strip, where to burnout to warm up their tires and other key information about general safety when racing. Once the vehicles came to the track to get the show started, there was a long line of cars ranging from modern muscle, classic hot rods, modified super trucks and even a few electric vehicles. The loud noises of the engines and the scent of burnt rubber attracted the fans engaging in other activities toward the grandstands. As Tom Bernardi Sr., 63, and his son, Tom Bernardi Jr., 28, waited for the races to start, they fit right into the Dodge-powered muscle culture of the event. Both of them drive Dodge vehicles — a 2021 Dodge Charger and a 1970 Coronet for Bernardi Sr. and a '15 Challenger SRT for Bernardi Jr. On top of driving a Dodge every day, Bernardi Jr. is the fourth generation of Chrysler (now Stellantis, Dodge's parent company) employees in the Bernardi family. "My dad worked at Chrysler, my granddad worked at Chrysler, it's going down the chain," Bernardi Sr. said, gesturing toward his son. The two of them weren't there to just celebrate their employer, though. Bernardi Jr. said automotive events are just chances to get out in the sun and bond with his dad. "This is for the memories," Bernardi Jr. said. "So, you know, later on in life you don't have any regrets." His dad backed him up: "We went to the first one of these, and now, 10 years later, we're still coming to it." More auto show photos: See all the best cars from the 2025 Troy Traffic Jam 'It's my first time!' Demi Bagby, a 24-year-old influencer with millions of followers across social media, has been tinkering with cars and getting into drag racing over the last four or so years, she said. At the 2025 Roadkill Nights, Bagby said with nervous excitement that she would be making her drag racing debut. "I've never drag raced before, it's my first time," Bagby said, laughing. "I'm not qualified to be here!" Bagby is one of six influencers recruited by Dodge to compete in the "Grudge Match," a race between drivers whose drag racing builds are sponsored by the company. Bagby built a souped-up, all-black 1987 Buick Grand National (Dodge allowed the drivers to build on other brands' vehicles) to compete in the Grudge Match. Before she raced, she told the Free Press, part of the USA TODAY Network, that she hopes she wins her matches. If she doesn't? "However today goes, it goes," Bagby said. "Everyone is just here to have a good, safe time, and I'm excited to be here and be a part of it." New Durango, Charger news At a media preview a day before the main event on Friday, Aug. 8, Dodge previewed two of its latest product announcements: The long-awaited six-pack powered, internal combustion Charger and a jailbroken Dodge Hellcat Durango. McAlear shared some new information about the Durango. All levels of the Durango, from the entry-level GT to the 710-horsepower Hellcat, will come standard with a HEMI V8 engine. Previously, GT Durangos were equipped with a 6-cylinder engine. Also on Friday, Dodge offered drift rides in the new Sixpack Chargers and gave members of the news media a chance to take a pass at drag racing down Woodward themselves (rest assured, the Free Press performed quite well). Liam Rappleye covers Stellantis and the UAW for the Detroit Free Press. Contact him: LRappleye@ Keenan Thompson covers car culture for the Detroit Free Press. Contact him: KThompson@
CBC
06-03-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Comedian Mae Martin on their move into music — and dealing with onstage nerves all over again
Like many performers who make a move into music, Mae Martin was nervous that their debut album, I'm A TV, would come across as inauthentic. "My great fear is that it'll feel like I'm trying to be a rock star," the Canadian comedian tells Q 's Tom Power in an interview. "But it felt like it sounded like me and like an extension of my other work, and so maybe people would be more receptive to it." You might know Martin for their hit stand-up special SAP, their semi-autobiographical comedy series Feel Good, or their popular Handsome podcast, which they co-host with comedians Tig Notaro and Fortune Feimster. But when it comes to performing music, Martin says their success as a comedian wasn't enough to ease their onstage nerves. WATCH | Mae Martin's full interview with Tom Power: "I thought that all those years of stand-up would translate to feeling super chill and confident, because I don't get that stage fright anymore, but it really has not been the case," they say. "I was quivering, shaking." The very first time Martin performed music for an audience was at Largo at the Coronet, a Los Angeles club known for its live music and comedy shows. "I do a monthly show there and I would always have musical guests," Martin says. "And so I would play a cover, and that was the first time I played music in front of people. I loved the energetic shift with the audience, like you could suddenly hear a pin drop. And it was terrifying because I'm so used to breaking that tension with the punchline, you know?" My muscle memory is like, if no one's laughing, I'm bombing. - Mae Martin While Martin thinks all creativity comes from the same muscle, they say performing feels really different between music and comedy. In particular, when you're used to getting laughs on stage and feeding off the adrenaline of the crowd, it can feel alarming to be met with a silent, attentive audience. "With comedy you can bail halfway through a joke if it's not working," Martin says. "My muscle memory is like, if no one's laughing, I'm bombing. So if I'm playing a song and people are just silent and paying attention, I'm like, oh God." The other big difference is that earnest songwriting requires a lot more vulnerability than comedy. "With stand-up, you have to be so careful not to be too earnest or you could be described as being preachy with your message," Martin explains. "With music, yeah, people are up for that vulnerability and they're open to it. There are some things and ideas and thoughts that we have that aren't easily packaged into a set-up in a punchline structure … so it's great to be able to explore them with that amazing veil of metaphor and poetry and stuff. It's great."
Los Angeles Times
25-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Comedian Mae Martin wrote a rock album. When the world's chaotic, 'So much of life doesn't have a punch line'
When comedian Mae Martin first moved to L.A., they held a monthly residency at Largo at the Coronet. Martin, star of the biting sobriety comedy 'Feel Good' and many beloved standpup specials, fell in love with the music history that had passed through the club. 'They had the piano that Elliott Smith played, I think, on 'Baby Britain,'' Martin said. 'Flanny, who runs Largo, encouraged me to have musical guests, so I started doing Elliott Smith covers. It was such a nice feeling that the comedy audience had the patience for that, when you could hear a pin drop and the energy would shift. Those shows built my confidence in music.' That work paid off with 'I'm a TV,' Martin's debut album of original songwriting that evokes the millennial indie they grew up on as well as the arty pop of the Largo canon. The LP is pithy in the way that Phoebe Bridgers or Jenny Lewis write one-liners, but it's an unexpectedly tender songwriter record from one of the sharpest, most self-aware minds in stand-up. Martin will perform it live at the Regent on Wednesday. The Times spoke to Martin about making peace with sincerity in music, how plot lines about cults hit differently now, and what to do about comedy's tangled relationship to the far right. This is obviously a tense time for a nonbinary Canadian comedian in the U.S. How are you holding up? Like everybody, I'm full of existential dread, and trying to not let the doom permeate too much and not to be paralyzed by how hopeless it all feels right now, because I know that it's not hopeless. It just feels like such a massive step back. I have a lot of friends who are articulate activists, and I try to take my cues from them. You hosted a CBC documentary about nonbinary identity recently, it must be disheartening to see people here getting their passports forcibly misgendered. It's always scary when the government disagrees with science. Yeah, it felt like we were really moving toward a place where young people wouldn't have to be defending their identity as much. Or that I could walk into a room and not have that be the first thing that comes up. But visibility is super important, and I try to hope that just by being a happy confident person, that's some kind of resistance. I'm sure we'd both rather just be talking about your album and upcoming show at the Regent on Wednesday. It's life-affirming going on tour, because you have this little microcosm of society, and you're reminded that people are good, and they want to connect and that we have so much more in common than not. So let's talk about the record. It hits my elder-millennial sweet spot of melancholy indie rock. When did you feel like you were ready to make an album? I always wrote songs, but very privately. I made this show called 'Feel Good' in England, and my friend Charles Watson was the composer on it, and I played guitar on one of the songs. It was the first time that I felt empowered to have opinions about music and my taste, particularly the emotionality of music. When I moved to L.A. after 12 years in England, I had a lot of time to myself, and reconnecting with my earnest North American side was nice. One of the guys who produced the album, Jason, I went to summer camp with when we were 13. We used to play acoustic guitars by the campfire, playing Ben Harper and Tragically Hip and Third Eye Blind. I think that comes through, the warmth of the period where I fell in love with music. So much of life doesn't have a punch line, and in music you can be more confessional because you're not saying, 'Hi, I'm Mae, and I'm saying this about this particular incident in my life.' You can really hear that Elliott Smith 'Figure 8' influence on a few songs like 'Garbage Strike.' Oh man, I'm such a deep Elliott Smith fan. I loved his last album, 'From a Basement on the Hill,' which was so dark and heavy, and I love Heatmiser. People have these associations of him with this sort of mournful acoustic stuff. But his arrangements are so full, and there's so much Paul McCartney and George Harrison in there. 'Garbage Strike' is the most Canadian of the songs, because it's about the garbage strike in 2003 in Toronto. But that's a cool comparison, I love that album so much. There are songwriters like Jenny Lewis or Father John Misty who are very funny, and comedians like Tim Heidecker who have written evocative music. How does wit work differently for you in these two different settings? If I have moments of wit, it's probably referencing a true irony in life. I had to unlearn the muscle memory of taking people to a poignant place and then relieving that tension with a punch line. That's so ingrained in me, to not bum anyone out. Playing those Largo shows was really like ripping the Band-Aid off, because there's a temptation to wink at the audience or bail halfway through with a joke, but I had to commit to the entirety of a song. Speaking of L.A. nightlife, we've seen queer bars like Ruby Fruit close over the last year, and it's going to be hard to preserve small clubs of all sorts. Do you worry about nightlife here? I remember in my early 20s in Toronto, there were tons of amazing lesbian or queer bars that aren't around anymore. We're definitely feeling that retraction. Most of my life I've felt more a part of the comedy community than the queer community, because most of my nights I'm in comedy clubs. I've never really made a concerted effort to enmesh myself in queer nightlife, but now I feel compelled to do it because I want to support those businesses, and community feels more important than ever. You've been candid about addiction in your work, especially 'Feel Good' and 'Dope.' When the world feels like it's falling apart, is it hard to keep recovery as a priority? I try to be vigilant about when addictive behaviors are bubbling up. But you're right, when the world is feeling increasingly apocalyptic, those self-soothing behaviors are so at our fingertips. Growing up and being in rehab, I felt like addiction was just something that was for drug addicts. But a big shift for me was when I understood addiction as a soothing mechanism for underlying things, and how we all participate. It's such a boring thing to say, but I'm so profoundly addicted to my phone. I feel like I have a pretty good handle on substances, but I definitely feel myself slipping into numbness because of the scale of the bad news. I do a lot of escape rooms. I think I've done over 60 in L.A. I have this app for them that was like, 'Hey, here's an award for doing so many escape rooms.' It's a healthier diversion, but I found myself being chased through a labyrinth by a guy dressed like a Minotaur, and I was like, 'This seems like a red flag that this is the way I unwind.' 'Wayward,' your upcoming Netflix series, is set within the troubled-teen industry and explores cult dynamics. Do those themes land differently now then when you started working on that show? Definitely. I've been working on it for years, and a couple of years ago, that topic entered the zeitgeist with the Paris Hilton story. It has a truthful framework about the troubled-teen industry, but it's also a cult genre thriller, and cults are such a great analogy for the coerciveness of society. It's set in 2003, and that's been interesting thinking about the differences between then and now, the intergenerational conflict and all the critical thinking that you have to suppress as an adult just to participate in these systems. We spoke to a lot of sociologists and cult experts who talk about the language that cult leaders use, the double-speak that I've definitely noticed in current discourse. This election cycle showed how some elements of stand-up comedy culture drive a lot of the far right, with President Trump going on Joe Rogan and Tony Hinchcliffe performing at a Trump rally. Dave Chappelle arguably contributed to the current anti-trans backlash in his work. Is it unnerving to see people with backgrounds in stand-up having this direct line to the far right in power? Yeah, it's very strange. But I can see where they met, because governments reach into reality TV now. You've got the host of 'The Apprentice,' so of course he's gonna want to talk to the host of 'Fear Factor.' But those guys that you're referencing, they're not a part of my comedy community. I don't think about them. What they want is for you to engage in combat with them. I'd rather be aligned with qualified people and thinkers and scientists. I hope that heroes of mine are still fighting the good fight and not falling into this perception that the enemy is the woke left. I think back to the bit in your recent special 'SAP' where you talk about how our minds are these little rooms we're showing off to others to be known. Given everything happening here, do you think your room will always be in L.A.? I just bought a house here, which I never dreamed I'd be able to do. But will we crumble into the sea or light on fire? L.A. gets such a bad rap, though. After living in England for so long, and being Canadian, L.A. was so mysterious to me. I had the sense that it was this scary, vapid, lonely place, and I've found that so not to be the case. I've found people who have come here with so much enthusiasm, looking for collaborators and community. It's such a cliché, but I've got this sunset out my window and my palo santo. I'm becoming very L.A. and I love it.
