Archive | February, 2011

Now I’m as bad as you are.

10 Feb

February 10, 2011

Some time back, 2009 maybe, I signed up for a Twitter account. Until yesterday that was the end of the story. I never used it. Twitter was becoming big so I decided to get an account. (See how behind the times I am? Twitter blew up in 2008 and I first noticed that it was “becoming big” a year later.)  Oh, not so that I could start using it and sending random useless posts like the rest of the world (that’s what this blog is for) but so I could lock in my name in case I ever want to use it in the future. This way no one else could use my name and post ridiculous and stupid things on the internet. (Again, that’s what this blog is for.)

Oh, I don’t mean to imply that twitter is a waste of time. I mean to explicitly state that Twitter is a waste of time. There are some exceptions. For example, Jim, the excellent Radio Master at Relic Radio uses it to inform his followers when a new show is posted, and in between he may tweet some news about a cool movie on TV or something else interesting or funny. JRD Skinner, whom you should all follow, is the CEO of Skinner FM and like Jim he uses it to keep people abreast of his projects, the latest Flash Pulp, FlashCast, and general Flash news and other hijinks.

The other 99.9% of you tweet crap like “OMG I so totally love Justin Bieber!’ or “eating dinner now.”

Longtime readers of my blog may have noticed a couple of things.

1- Justin Bieber has replaced David Schwimmer and Paris Hilton as my whipping boy. Schwimmer has become irrelevant and Hilton is too easy. Yes, that’s a pun. But never fear, I still have room for some random Tom Cruise/Scientology bashing.

2- I am comfortably using terms like “tweet” and “twitter” without making fun of them. “But Mr. Blog,” you whine, “you used to make fun of that stupid babble all the time.” To that I say, shut up.

But I digress. I believe I was talking about Scientology.
NO, no, I was talking about Twitter. I’ll leave it to Tom Cruise to talk about Scientology. He needs the practice with big words. (See? See point 1 above.)

Anyway, the future is now because I logged onto my Twitter account for the first time in a year or so just to see if it was still active. Sadly, it was.

So what did I see?
Somehow I have ten followers. Now bear this in mind- I never posted a single tweet, never searched for anyone, never went beyond the creation of an account. I can give two of my followers a pass. They are people I once knew who must have put their address books into Twitter and found any contacts who had an account. (Does it work that way? I hope so, it suits the story.) The other eight needed a bit of research. By “research” I mean “I looked at their profiles.”

I assumed that they were spammers who trolled Twitter and just followed everybody. A couple of them seem to be but most of them are just regular, albeit nearly empty,  profiles. Here are the eight. I’ve changed their names to protect the innocent. (Ever see Ed Wood? Remember when Criswell said “Let us punish the guilty. Let us reward the innocent.” I get the punishing the guilty part, but what exactly are we rewarding the innocent for? Not getting involved? And how does he propose to reward them anyway? Gift cards?)

Here they are, with statistics.

TWIT ONE
1 Tweet     921 Following     2 Followers.

TWIT TWO
1 Tweet      841 Following     6 Followers

TWIT THREE
1 Tweet      813 Following    16 Followers

TWIT FOUR
1 Tweet     713 Following     8 Followers

TWIT FIVE
1 Tweet     881 Following     18 Followers

TWIT SIX
1 Tweet     620 Following     11 Followers

TWIT SEVEN
1 Tweet     708 Following     25 Followers

TWIT EIGHT
2 Tweets    1,414 Following   43 Followers

Let’s total this out, shall we?
9 Tweets    6,911 Following   129 Followers

All following me with my zero tweets. That’s a big network of nothing.

Frankly, following me is like owning a pet rock. I require no attention and give back nothing. You can forget about me for months or years and be sure that nothing has changed. I’m sure the two people I used to know who are following me forgot long ago that they are following me. Never tweeting a single thing will have that effect.

Anyway, I didn’t title this post “Now I’m as bad as you are” because I think it is snappy and an attention getter. (Is it? I hope it is.) I named it because odds are you are on Twitter and post regular updates. (Seriously, I hope you do. The world can’t wait to hear when you arrive at the office or how much you love the CW.) Well, I can’t say I will ever post regular updates but I now have posted a tweet. Yep, my one and only tweet. So what was it? A plug for this site. Yep, And I even put up a profile picture. And while I was there I started following the aforementioned Jim and JRD.

So log on to your Twitter account, find BMJ2K, follow me, and forget me. You’ll probably never hear from me (you’ll be just like people I actually know!) but maybe once a year I’ll send a tweet. So far, 2009- no tweets. 2010- no tweets. 2011- one tweet. Make a game out of it, take bets- “When will BMJ2K tweet again? I take June 24th!” “Fifty bucks on February 5th, 2012.” “Next leap year, whenever that is, February 29th. I’m all in.”

Or you can be like everyone else and follow Justin Bieber, who today tweeted “still buggin out.” What a poet.

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American Chopper Sr. vs. Jr.: Don’t Let The Door Hit You On Your Way Out.

9 Feb

February 9, 2011

Yes everyone, Odie was fired. That was the big story this week but there were some little things that I found more interesting. I’ll get to them in due time, but let’s start with the annoying kid who doesn’t know his place.

Even the show’s  announcer seems to hate him. At the top of the show, he said that after he gets fired from PJD, “Odie crawls back to OCC.” That’s giving him too much credit.

Odie’s problems began this week with him donning Paulie’s hat and sunglasses and walking around making fun of Paulie. Remember the last guy who did that? Jason Pohl. What a role model.

Later, Odie and Vinnie walked in with some parts for the Universal Insurance bike and Odie wasted no time ragging on the handlebars. I usually don’t criticize Vinnie, but I fully expected him to say something to Odie. He’s not a boss, he’s not an owner, but if PJD is a team and Paulie is the owner and manager, then Vinnie should be the captain of the team. He has the experience, he runs his own shop, he is the most professional, he is closest to Paulie. I’m not blaming him at all for Odie’s mouth, I’m not giving Odie a pass, but I still say Vinnie should have said something. It probably wouldn’t have done any good, but I think he should have stepped in. Just my opinion.

Odie’s screw-ups weren’t limited to his fresh mouth. He put parts on backwards (and blamed Paulie for making them wrong) pried pieces apart like a caveman and scratched them, and still had the nerve to tell Paulie (who had the patience of a saint with him) “I’ll go home right now. I couldn’t care less.” I hope he didn’t think that was a threat because he did Paulie a big favor. “Get out of my fucking shop right now,” Paulie said with surprising calm.

Odie had the balls/stupidity to call back a little later, hinting he was going to OCC. Like he’d actually be an asset there and Paulie would miss him.

Odie then went up the road to OCC where Senior welcomed him with open arms. He sat back and believed every word Odie said to him. I hope Senior watches his own show so he can see the real Odie, how Odie lied to his face and is just a terrible person in general. At any rate, if anyone has anything bad to say about Paulie he’s a friend of Senior and, not only did Senior hire him back but he (say it with me, I’ve typed it often enough over the weeks) badmouthed Paulie to him. Senior is such a classless louse.

So what did Odie say to Senior?
– He said that he quit. No he didn’t, Paulie threw him out.
– He said that Paulie “never appreciates anything I do for him.” Like what? Showing up late? Messing up the paint on the parts he works on? Mocking him? Glaring at Cody?
– He said that Paulie is always up against a deadline, which is true, but how is that any different than OCC?
– He said they work 20 hour days. Not him. Just last week he made a big deal of leaving at four in the afternoon.

So what did Senior say to Odie?
You’re hired.

Speaking of guys with less than sterling characters, remember Robb? He was the painter last week who designed a bike an then cried like a baby and threw a tantrum when some changes were made. In a small piece of poetic justice, he screwed up the paint on the Bic bike this week and had to redo it. Oh, so sorry.

And as for the bikes, all of them looked great, and that makes two weeks in a row I’ve said that. Even the bike Monkey Boy made for OCC looked good. It was simple and sleek with clean lines and a great color scheme.

PJD gave away a bike to one lucky insurance agent. The guy who won the raffle looked like he has never in his life been on a bike and probably never will be.

The less dramatic but more interesting part of the show cam when a group of kids from a technical school visited OCC. One of them asked Senior what he thinks of Paulie’s bikes. Senior didn’t answer but had this to say about Paulie: “His gift is designing. I don’t think his gift is building. The mechanics do all the work.” OK, he complimented his son’s design skill but he couldn’t leave it at that. He had to say that Paulie isn’t a builder. He’s talking to a group of kids and still he had to take a shot a Paulie.

The same student then asked “what would you say your specialty is?”
“Yelling at people.”

Paulie, to an extent, echoed what Senior said when he told the kids at his shop “You can’t manufacture creativity. That’s what makes us a little different.” The kids saw it too. One of them told the camera that it seems to be more technical at OCC and more creative at PJD. Frankly, that is what should make Jr. and Sr. a good team- they each bring different strengths to the table. Ironically that is what also drove them apart.

Then it got weird. As the kids were leaving OCC Senior asked one of them to give to Paulie a picture of them together. “That particular picture meant something to me so hopefully he’ll take it in the same way.” Interesting that he said it in the past tense. Not “it means something to me,” but “it meant something to me.” Small but meaningful difference.

Paulie had no idea how to take it and was just confused.

As for the rest of the show, Senior refused to shave his mustache for charity and OCC played hockey. Senior was in goal and that pleased Rick. He wanted an excuse to plow into him. Senior was not too mobile but actually not bad, making a lot of stops. Jason acted like a jerk on the ice and I waited to see someone slam him into the boards head first but sadly no one did.

PJD went to Florida to unveil the Universal Insurance bikes and Paulie took the crew to Discovery Cove to swim with the fish, er, dolphins. Seeing Mikey in a wetsuit was quit a sight.

This seems to be the last episode (Of the season? Series?) since Discovery doesn’t have a new one listed on their site. There was a lot of hype during the commercials for Nic Cage’s new film, Drive Angry. It looked awful.

Discovery left it hanging if it was the season finale or not. If it was you’d expect some hype. Some weeks back they were advertising the final episodes but their count didn’t match the number of shows aired. It seems like they added one or two. Will the show be back? Will OCC be foreclosed upon? Will Sr. and his sons reconcile? We’ll have to wait and see.

But my guess is no, they won’t reconcile.

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