March 19, 2012
American Chopper: Senior vs. Junior
Drastic Step
Mikey launches a “Fill the Diaper” fundraising campaign for March of Dimes, OCC starts an eco-friendly build for CIMA Green and PJD unveils the March of Dimes bike. Meanwhile, Senior takes bold steps to reunite with his sons.
The tease this week is that Senior appears, unannounced at Paulie’s house (who appears to not be home) and then he pops up at Mikey’s (snicker) “art” studio. It is the OCC version of Where’s Waldo?
PJD’s purple March of Dimes bike build continues. And I seriously mean purple. So far, it is solid purple. It is a nice purple, but so far, nothing but purple and chrome. As Paulie says, it is all up to Nub and how he designs the tins.
OCC is building a bike for a biofuel company and they take a tour of the factory where soy bean and vegetable oil gets turned into diesel. Bikes running on biodiesel smell like french fries. Literally. The exhaust smells like french fries. I’ve complained in the past that Jason didn’t go on these tours but there he was this week, drinking smelly soy oil.
For The March of Dimes, Mikey has come up with some sort of “fill the diaper” challenge. Mikey’s huge, legally blind personal assistant was there this week, carrying a sign and standing much closer to the edge of the road than a legally blind man should be. So what was the “fill the diaper” challenge? Mikey stood my the side of a road with a diaper in a bucket and screamed at passing cars to toss in some cash. That was it.
“We resonated the echo of what people need to hear down the line.” -Mikey, describing a good days work. Huh?
Why isn’t Mikey auctioning off some of his art for charity? I asked Mr Allen Keyes, watching with me this week, and he replied “because nobody would buy that shit.” Mikey, BTW, with shorter hair and a shorter beard, looked pretty much presentable this week.
Paulie and Mikey are being interviewed by The March of Dimes newsletter for their website, and of course they were asked about Paul Sr. “He’s got a real poison sort of mentality.” -Mikey, talking about his father.
“The problem doesn’t lie within us. We are not the ones perpetuating the hatred.” -Paulie, taking the blame off himself and Mikey. “He’s always the victim. That’s his mentality.”
Over at OCC, Jason has, for some reason, named the twin CIMA bikes. One is Sally, the other is as yet unnamed. The bikes will be mostly green since the company is CIMA Green. Mike pointed out that the bikes will have turn signals and be street legal and EPA compliant in all fifty states. That is worth noting. When was the last time you saw an OCC bike that had turn signals?
OCC bought a fender this week for $1,000 and it was too small for the wheels. Rick offered to make another fender. Senior explained that OCC was under a time crunch which is why they bought a fender rather than making it. I think OCC buying a fender is a cheat. In the end, they compromised and modified a stock fender. Same with the tank- not an original OCC part.
Nub showed up with Paulie’s March of Dimes tins and Nub knows his stuff. He used various tones of purple and a lot of silver. Nice job.There was some drama with a plug fused into the socket on the bottom of the tank which had to be drilled out but it all turned out well in the end.
Speaking of all turns out well in the end, at 9:39 the show finally got to what it promised, with Senior driving over to Paulie’s house. As noted earlier, Paulie wasn’t home. “BLEEP,” Senior said. “BLEEP.” Where was Paulie? Filming an American Chopper special in Florida, according to the bumper. How edited is this show? How far apart in tine are the March of Dimes build and Paulie visiting his son’s house? The show makes it appear like they are concurrent events but you have to wonder if they are days or even weeks apart. The show is filmed for a certain amount of weeks, then they are edited down into separate episodes. How much mixing and matching across time do they do when creating each “reality” show?
After the break we are back at PJD working on the March of Dimes bike. We have apparently also traveled back in time. either that or he got back from Florida really fast.
Cut to the future, where Senior is telling his wife he just came back from his son’s house. Senior liked Paulie’s dogs.
His next move is to go to Mikey’s studio and donate some money for The March of Dimes. “I’m gonna walk in there, ask him how he’s doing, and give him a bunch of money for the March of Dimes… Here, how are ya, here’s some money for The March of Dimes.” Does he do it? How does it go? I don’t know yet. It is commercial time.
9:52, back from commercial, and Senior drives over to Mikey’s gallery. Guess what? It isn’t open! Mikey isn’t there. “I guess I’m striking out.”
Amazingly anticlimactic.
NEXT WEEK: Muscle Car Special. Junior builds a muscle car.
Mr. Blog's Tepid Ride 
One thing that I caught while senior was knocking on Paul jr’s door and the dogs were barking was a yell from the inside of the house and the dog stopped barking. Nobody home my ass. This show used to be great but now it’s the wwf of chopper building. Predictable,Semi scripted,heavily edited reality tv crap. These guys are all probably together with the shows producers discussing how they intend to keep shoveling this crap into main stream media to turn a profit.
R.I.P to the early original series that showed the building of not just bikes but the maturation of a small buisness into what it is today……
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Nice catch. I agree, there is too much behind the scenes tinkering for this to be reality.
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