Episode 1
On the second night the ballots were being counted, right around the time it was becoming clear there would be no races called that night, Smoke N’ Scan tweeted a link to their live stream, suddenly active, showing a different kind of race. A car chase was in process, southbound on the 101. By the time I went fullscreen on the feed, the chase was crossing the 405.
The car being chased was not a car, but a pickup truck, a Ford, with an extended cab and an extended bed and six wheels. Six wheels! It had an extra set of rear wheels under its extended bed because the thing was so long. It also had some kind of rooftop exoskeleton, and a tinted windshield, and some kind of lighted sign at the top of the windshield.
"No way that thing gets more than ten miles to the gallon," coughed the Smoke N’ Scan host. The Smoke N’ Scan host noticed a metal box at one end of the bed. "That, I think, is an auxiliary fuel tank." He cough-laughed. "This might go on for a while!"
Meanwhile, Sean Garrett was texting me.
"what’s going to happen dude"
"what the fuck is going to happen"
He wasn't talking about the car chase. He was talking about the vote. Earlier I'd been the one to break it to him that the Supreme Court was reviewing Pennsylvania. "If Nevada goes to Biden," I said, "he's at 270, and that would make Pennsylvania irrelevant." Because of PTSD from Bush v. Gore, I was anxious about what the Supreme Court might do, and I freaked Sean out.
"Suspect exiting at Woodman" said the policewoman on the police scanner broadcast by Smoke N’ Scan. I stopped texting. Anyone who knows me knows why --Woodman was my exit off the 101 when I was a kid. The hell truck turned north, toward my childhood home. The newscopter video feed showed the truck speed by my 76 station, by Notre Dame High School where I went to sports camp, and then right through a red light at the intersection of Woodman and Addison --my street.
Endorphins kicked in. What a needed jolt of comfort on an otherwise nervous night.
"It's a lot easier to stop a count than to overturn a result," I texted Sean, much more chill than before. "If PA isn't done by the time this thing is in front of the Court… I mean they already showed their hand. They wrote 'election rules are the province of the state legislature, not the state court.' They're going to invalidate thousands of ballots."
"Omg"
"But if Nevada gets their results in, and this thing is at 270, it won't matter, and maybe the Court won't want to go out on a limb if it doesn't mean anything."
The six-wheeled truck made a hard right onto Chandler, sending tire smoke into the air. "Man, look at that thing corner," said the Smoke N’ Scan host. I texted my childhood friend, Jack Compton. "Car chase headed your way." He didn't respond. The truck turned down an alley, which forced it to slow down. Then it turned again back onto a main street, and at its new snail's pace bumped gently into a light pole, which fell over like a nudged broomstick.
"He took that thing out!" laughed the Smoke N’ Scan host, thoroughly delighted. "Going that slow, that thing took out a light pole! Ahhhhhh ha ha haaaaaa!"
The police got the now-crashed suspect to leave the cab of the truck with his hands behind his head, and we all got a look at him. The Smoke N’ Scan host squinted as he focused in on our suspect. "Is that guy wearing jorts?"
The next morning, TMZ revealed the backstory of the chase. The truck was a half-million dollar custom job, owned by an apparently famous DJ named DJ Marshmello. DJ Marshmello's gimmick is that he only spins while wearing a giant marshmallow for a head. Imagine Daft Punk, but more Stay-Puft. He'd left his truck at a dealership in Malibu, from which it was stolen, for an election-tension joy ride by a man in jorts.
I texted Jack the link to the TMZ article and he texted back. "Sorry I didn't get back to you," he said. "I passed out drunk watching the news."