the shrewdness of apes

...."Viva Knievel" (1977) starring Evel Knievel, Gene Kelly, Lauren Hutton, Red Buttons, Leslie Nielsen and Frank Gifford. i'll let the imdb synopsis handle this:

"As the legendary stuntman travels to Mexico to prepare for one of his greatest stunts yet, he takes time out of his schedule to meet his fans, help out lonely orphans, and try to get his alcoholic mechanic to reconcile with his son. While all of this is going on, Evel's main rival is plotting to have Evel killed and then get rich by using the Team Evel 18-wheeler to smuggle cocaine into America."

no luck locating an mp3 of the theme song, which as you might guess is freakin' great for about 20 seconds. the wife and i had a brief discussion as to who the modern day equivalent of Evel would be. the best we could come up with was David Blaine - that's just depressing. surely someone out there can come up with a better answer. meantime, check out Evel's astrological chart.

unknown to me until just now: one of Kathleen Hanna's pre-Bikini Kill bands was called Viva Knievel.