Super High He

You'll believe a man can fly. For seventeen seconds, at least. (photo by John Anderson)

Never let it be said that Tim League is one to fear signing off on reams of liability insurance forms. He's already overtaken the late, great William Castle in the Ballyhoo Department by orders of magnitude (you'll remember his Amityville Horror stunt, the "House of One Million Flies," or, as we like to recall it, the "Ohmygodgetitoffmegetitoffmegetitoffme Shack"), but for yesterday's sold-out local premiere of Jon Favreau's Iron Man, the Alamo Kingpin topped not only himself but also the roof of his theater, literally, when he hired Eric Scott of Denver-based GoFast! Sports and Jet Pack International to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that a) mad genius Robert Downey, Jr. isn't the only (formerly) high guy associated with the newly forged Marvel Studios comic book franchise, and b) Motorhead is relatively quiet when compared to a guy in a jet pack hovering 20 feet over your head.

Developed in the Sixties by Bell Aerosystems, the jet pack Scott uses also proves that the future isn't now, or even tomorrow, but actually yesterday, ever since the U.S. military put the kibosh on what could have been the coolest troop transport ever way back in El BJ's day. Sure, we made it to the moon, but when it comes to the real-world equivalent of Iron Man alter ego Tony Stark's repurposed weaponry, we can't even get out of the parking lot. So much for Futurama. Still, the sight of a man in a slightly off-tint Iron Man outfit whooshing around the original Alamo Drafthouse sign was, we've got to admit, jaw-droppingly awesome. As an added bonus, League, sporting his own Iron Man getup, handed off Old Glory to an enthusiastically hyper young scamp while Lee Hazelwood's version of "God Bless America" double-teamed Europe's "The Final Countdown" on the PA. Sadly, Captain America was a no-show and we've lost our hearing to jet-wash, but on the other hand we're pretty sure this reaffirms Austin's weirdness and then some.

So, seriously, exactly how loud was it?

"The noise level is right around 150 decibels," said Scott, which is louder than a 747 taking off 100 yards away and way too capable of rupturing eardrums. Luckily, we had our iPod headphones jammed in our ears, but the high-pitched shriek of 325 lbs of fanboy jet-blast created when 90% hydrogen peroxide rapidly decomposes over a silver-screen catalylizer and vaporizes at 1400 degrees Fahrenheit – thus the thrust! -- was still way too piercing for sonic comfort. [This is not, by the way, an issue in Favreau's reel-world version of aerodynamic superheroics, a fact that audiences will forever appreciate even if they aren't aware of it.]

"I'm actually only the eleventh pilot to fly one of these things," said the post-jaunt Scott. "There's been more men that have walked on the moon than have flown a jet pack. I'm lucky to have the job."

Could you make it to the moon if you had the oxygen?

"No, unfortunately this only has thirty-three seconds of fuel. It's a very efficient, very reliable fuel source, but you get about six seconds of flight time a gallon out of this stuff and the jet pack only carries five-and-a-half gallons."

Fair enough. Who wants to tangle with the Silver Surfer anyway? Here's scotch in your eye, Tony Stark. Now go save the world, or at the very least the summer movie season, which is officially off to a high-flying, eye-popping, tinnitus-inducing start. Excelsior!