Archive | 10:00 pm

American Chopper: Senior vs. Junior: Senior Reaches Out

26 Sep

September 26, 2011

I have been given no reason to believe anything the Discovery Channel shows on their commercials for American Chopper so I’ll just post the description from their website and we’ll see what’s what at the end.

Post-settlement, Senior tries to commission a painting from Mikey but gets mixed  signals from his son. OCC starts a build for a hybrid seed company and PJD works  on a modern build for a medical technology company.

Before you get too excited, there is no description for next week’s show but it is called Mikey’s Decision, so expect nothing to be resolved this week.

I think last week’s post covered the Senior/Mikey relationship pretty well so let’s just jump right in. But I will say this, no matter what else I and others say about Senior, he is making a move so give him a drop of credit.

The show opens and what are the odds of this? Two competing companies who make hybrid corn seeds have come to OCC to get a bike built. How many hybrid corn companies are there? Seriously, is this just a coincidence? But OCC can only do one and they pick a -get ready for this- father and son company, Beck’s Hybrids. And who went out to the seed place to do research? Jim who never seems to leave the office and Jason Pohl, who thinks it is funny or cool to say “motor-sicle.” The only other option is that he can’t say “motorcycle” properly and even I don’t think he’s illiterate. Annoying yes, ass-kisser yes, illiterate no. At any rate, OCC is going to build some sort of reverse trike that should look like it is ready to harvest corn. And in the “what are the odds of that?” category PJD just made a trike last week. But I am sure it is all a coincidence. OCC makes trikes every week, right?

PJD is building a bike for a medical research and supply company, Cepheid. And in a moment of TV history, we got to see someone stick a swab in Mikey’s nose for some sort of bacteria test. It was negative.

Cepheid makes medical technology, computerized testers and such, and the bike is going to incorporate some of their technology and the clinical look of the Cepheid products, charcoal grey and white, with some chrome. It would be clean and functional, with curves instead of edges, but as the build moved along Paulie was still poking around and trying to figure out what he wanted in the bike. Brendon and Vinnie were not totally sure what Paulie had in mind since, as usual, there were no plans or diagrams to work from and Paulie seemed vaguer than usual with his ideas. In fact, Brendon seemed to have a clearer idea than Paulie this week.

But unclear plans are also a problem at OCC. Jason saw that the frame wasn’t like the plans he made. Why? Because he didn’t take into account the way bikes are built and knew nothing about the structural integrity of the frame. And he had the nerve to say that the fabricators would have to work around it. Work around it? Why not make plans that are buildable to begin with? At least Mike Ammirati (and I think I spelled that right) had the balls to get pissed and curse at him. After Jason walked away, of course. He knows which side his bread is buttered on, and getting Senior’s pet angry at you is not a good idea.

Paul Senior got involved in the build by cutting pipe and some metal work, which you have to admit he is good at.

Senior said that “Mikey is persuaded easily” and blamed Paulie for keeping Mikey away from him. I do agree with the easily persuaded part, but I don’t think Paulie is actively keeping them apart, I think it is a case of Mikey wanting to fit in with Paulie so he goes with Paulie over his father. Senior did say that both of them “did some damage” and seemed a little more honest than usual. That might be because he was away from the shop, by the water with is wife. In front of the guys or in the shop he is all bluster and bluff, but he let his guard down a little and- for a second!- seemed human. After some thought, Senior decided to go to Mikey’s studio with no cameras. (About time!) Hopefully, they could talk about painting and his life and not get into anything with Paulie or OCC. If he came up with it himself, I think it is a very good move.

And for those of you who remember the late, lamented Gus, Senior played around with a younger dog of the same breed. I have  no clue if Senior already owned that dog before Gus died, but he showed more love to his dogs than anyone else on that series.

Meanwhile, in a feat of amazing timing, Senior showed up and missed Mikey by ten minutes.

Senior left his number with the receptionist and asked her to call him when Mikey came in, so of course Mikey didn’t want her to call back. (And neither did she.) Mikey, and here I think he is being a total tool, said that he wanted to take baby steps, like emails. Hey Mikey- YOU STOPPED ANSWERING HIS EMAILS! Remember when you were supposed to meet him for lunch and you didn’t show up? Remember when you made therapy a condition of seeing him and he went and you still wouldn’t meet him? GROW UP. (And his art? I still think it is a joke.)

But later on he did text his father to see if everything was OK (it was very unlike him to drop in without a camera crew, so maybe something was wrong) and Senior texted back that he’d like to paint with him. With about thirteen minutes left Mikey said he invited his father over to pick out some art. So of course they went back to the bike build.

During the build, Rick asked Senior how things were going with his sons. Senior, unusually, kept quiet. He was very subdued. If anyone had never seen this show, never heard about the feud, they would have a completely different view of Paul Teutul Senior than long-time viewers do. I wonder why the change?

After a long text exchange, Mikey waffled and finally said “I’m not sure what to make of this.” Man, just meet him. If it goes bad, you don’t need to meet him again. Just man up.

NEXT WEEK: Senior says about a text from Mikey “I feel like he is talking to a client, not his father.” Interesting point, too bad Senior says it to Jason.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Absolutely Fad-ulous

26 Sep

Septener 26, 2011

I’ve never been much for fads. I never got a mullet haircut, wore MC Hammer pants, or played with those stupid virtual pet toys. (You know the ones, those things that looked like electronic eggs and beeped every few minutes so you could “feed” them or “give them medicine” or “change their diaper” or whatever.)

I am not a team player, nor am I a follower. I laugh at fads and scoff at those who follow them. Unless I like them, in which case they are not fads, they are cool.

Going back there were some pretty stupid fads, like swallowing live goldfish. How did that start? And why pick on the poor fish? More dangerous was stuffing people into phone booths. What was the point of nearly killing a dozen people in a little glass booth? Maybe it just gave some pervs an excuse to rub up against a woman, I don’t know. And flagpole sitting? What was the point? And more importantly, how did they go to the bathroom?

Things have not gotten any better over the years. One recent fad that swept the world started in Australia, which tells me that people are starved for entertainment Down Under. I am talking about planking. And unlike goldfish swallowing which requires you to suppress your gag reflex, and flagpole sitting, which requires you to suppress your intellect, anyone can go planking anytime, anywhere. It is this simple: You lay down.

That’s it. Lay down wherever you like and take a picture because WHOO HOO! it is so much fun we all have to see a million stupid pictures of you laying down on the street on your facebook page. And no matter what the spell check says, I am not capitalizing facebook.

Does planking sound like fun? It is not. You do it every night, It is called going to sleep. And pictures of people planking are not exciting, to say the least.

For some reason that is totally incomprehensible to my highly intelligent mind, this planking thing became amazingly popular for a few months. Celebrities got into the act and tweeted pics of them planking. Here is a disturbing pic of Hugh Hefner planking.

No, Hef is not dead. He is planking. WHAT IS THE POINT? WHERE’S THE FUN? WHERE’S THE FUNNY? I am looking at an old man who is either dead or fell asleep on the dinner table. If I saw this on my twitter feed I’d probably forward it to the police for an investigation.

And speaking of disturbing celebrity planking pics, here is one that Richard Simmons posted to his twitter account.

Yes, he posted that himself. I have to believe that he has a thousand pictures just like that, mostly sans pants. I DO NOT GET THIS PLANKING CRAP.

Fortunately the planking fad is waning (I wanted to write “fad is fading” but that is hack writing,) It is already being replaced by Batmaning. This is where you hang upside down from something, like a wall or a sign.

WOW! THOSE ARE GREAT! What amazing pictures! Really? Seriously? Who cares? OK, I get that maybe it is fun for a couple of seconds to hang there, and I bet it helps to be totally ‘faced, but to look at those? BORING.

But there is the element of danger because you know that someone is going to have weak ankles and will come crashing down on their heads. Don’t look for sympathy here.

But take heart, Batmanning never really caught on, probably because the average American is too fat and lazy to hang upside down. However, there is a new craze gaining popularity and I am totally for it because not only does it take creativity but the pictures are great. No, I don’t mean topless beach voyeur photography, I mean horsemanning, as in the Headless Horseman.

This takes some effort and imagination. The point is to make it look like you’ve been beheaded and are carrying your own head, like The Green Knight. You do remember Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, don’t you? Sheesh, the internet needs to get out more.OK, that last one is a bit ghoulish, but since Halloween is coming it is totally appropriate.

I think horsemanning is very cool and when I do it, I will post the pics here. Send me yours and I’ll post them too.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,