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American Chopper: Uncharted Territory

1 Oct

October 1, 2012

Uncharted Territory
PJD starts a build for technology company QUBX while OCC assembles and unveils a bike for Wildgame Innovations. Meanwhile, father and son continue their collaboration on a re-vamped version of an old school bike.

The rub: Paulie goes with Nub!

The tension tonight will be built around Paulie, wanting to surprise his father, going to Nub to do the paint instead of a neutral third-party. OHHHH!

In the old days there would be tools thrown, curses screamed, yada yada yada, and today? Hmm, we’ll see.

Paulie’s idea as the show starts is to have Senior’s guy do the base coat and Nub do the details. So far, so good.

“He’s one of the best paint artists I’ve ever seen…. I’ve kind of missed not having him as a painter.” – Senior about Nub. I want to hear what Nub has to say about Senior. He has not been very kind to him in the past episodes.

“We had our moments when the arguments took over. The thing that saved me was that my shop was not in their shop.” – Nub.

The OCC Wildgame bike has a huge pair of antlers on the front. I can’t wait for someone to take a shot at the driver by mistake during deer season. It has arrows and crossbows, a skull, and I’m torn between calling it cool and calling it over-the-top. I’ll have to wait to see the final project.

PJD is doing a bike for QUBX, something or other for your computer. The bike is going to somehow incorporate a tablet, a working tablet, built into the frame. It is harder than it sounds due to the heat and vibration of the motor. And as usual, it is much more interesting to see Paulie and the guys design on the fly than to see OCC work from yet another Jason drawing. It is more creative and, even though the overall vision is Paulie’s, everyone gets input.

BTW- I’ve been unable to find out for sure. Does Vinnie still have his own shop? With his new kids and working at PJD, where would he have time?

9:25: Jason sings. Because that’s what we want to see. He also uses a knife to unwrap freshly painted parts. At this point does he really need to be told not to do that? This guy is always playing to the cameras, acting for the cameras, being the kid in fifth grade who acted like a clown when he thought it would get him some attention. and it works. Around OCC he is the teacher’s pet. Senior loves him.

Paulie brought the tins to Nub, who is a true artist, but it was funny seeing him run his hands over and over and over the tank. It was almost as if he were psychically reading the tank.

At 9:35 we got that weird little 2 minute segment Discovery sticks into a lot of their shows in order to cram in a second set of commercials. On Deadliest Catch it is usually the goofy side of crab fishing. Here it was Jason plugging a company that did some paint effects for them.

The Wildgame bike plays all sorts of animal calls. It is official: the bike just jumped the shark. Senior took the bike out for a test ride and with the huge antlers on the front it looked insane.

Insanely stupid.

And whatever they did on the rear fender looked lousy too.

At 9:42 almost the entire PJD crew was wearing their new light blue t-shirts. Normally I wouldn’t mention that and I don’t hold anything against anyone for merchandising, but the light blue really stood out since they almost always wear black. It was jarring. But the shirts were nice, and in this episode Paulie wore at least four different PJD t-shirts.

The less said about the bizarre Wildgame unveil the better.

So did Senior freak out about Nub doing the paint? Did he explode? Did he throw stuff and scream?

Beats me. They didn’t show it.

NEXT WEEK ON AMERICAN CHOPPER:
I don’t know. Neither Discovery nor TiVo has a description.

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What’s up with Japan? (Classic Allen Keyes is MIA Repost)

1 Oct

October 1, 2012

Where is Allen Keyes? Is this any way to start October, with Mr. Keyes MIA? Well, he’s not really MIA, I know exactly where he is. He’s too heavily invested in his fantasy sports league to do a little thing like write a blog. And I can’t blame him, since the season is winding down and the playoffs are about to begin. This is a serious time in the World Cricket Championships.

So I asked Mr. Keyes what I should run and he said to pick something at random. So I did. Luckily it fits his worldview as well as mine.

February 14, 2011

I have always maintained that culturally, Japan is as far away from us as, well, North America is from Japan. To a certain extent I can understand. There is something paradoxical about a culture which so quickly adopted Western garb and certain Western habits while also keeping alive traditional Japanese values. It is not uncommon to see men and women in business attire mixing with people in kimonos and robes at the local marketplace. However, it is hard to give them any kind of a pass when I read things like this:

I see Japanese people in masks around New York too but I simply chalked it up to fear of the bird flu. Turns out I was wrong. To say I don’t get it is to grossly understate it. I shouldn’t be surprised though. Compared to America, huge number of teenagers (and not-so-teenagers) spend entire days and weeks online in cyber-worlds that are more important to them than life itself. It isn’t uncommon to see young Japanese kids styling their hair to emulate their favorite manga or anime characters. OK, so maybe people over here wear Superman t-shirts and get Batman tattoos, but have you ever seen whole age groups dyeing their skin green like the Hulk?

But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m making broad, unsubstantiated generalizations.

No I’m not.

Of course, this comes straight out of Japan.

Yeah, strapping yourself into a harness which electrically pulsates will really add “a human-like level” to online conversations. I wonder what the electric chair would add? More to the point, how long before this gets adapted for porn?

What is happening to human to human interaction when people think that a shirt which squeezes you while looking at your mother on a computer screen is the equivalent of a good night hug from your mom before you go to bed?

“For a while technology has been driving people apart, locking them in front of computer screens. Now we hope to use it to bring them together.”

No. All this new technology does is make it easier to be apart! Nothing can compare to another person’s touch, a parent’s embrace. Perhaps what we need is a device that kicks people off their computers so they can spend time with their families and get some genuine human interaction.

Taking this to the logical extreme, once this is perfected, you can take the human out of the equation completely. Once a computer screen and a hug shirt can mimic the human experience, how long until they can be programmed to do it with no person at the other end? Parents can program their computers to play goodnight messages, hug their kids, even tuck them in without all the hassle of actually doing it or even thinking about it. Kids are such a bother.

So why have them? The next step is not to replace the parent, but to replace the child. Why have a real child that poops and cries when you can have your computer mimic one? It can hug you, it can give you “a deep immersive experience.” All you would need is one child and millions of users can “interact” with it via these machines hooked up to computers. And it doesn’t even need to be a real child, just a computer program. Remember, this is the country that gave us the Tomagotchi.

Virtual parents and virtual children. The only upside is that with virtual sex, these losers will die out without ever procreating and maybe this whole stupid idea will become extinct.

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