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American Chopper: THE END

17 Dec

December 18, 2012

One last time, check back as I update this blog as the show, and the series, draws to a close.

series finale reallyAmerican Chopper (Season 9)
The End
Senior, Junior and Mikey make a lasting impression by donating the TEUTUL Bike.   Senior pulls one last prank and the threesome takes a raucous ride through the most dramatic  and defining moments of American Chopper.

One last prank. They really are going out with a whimper. The pranks on this show have almost always been lame or embarrassing. I think the biggest prank has been on the viewers. Well, at least Mikey is back. I can’t wait to hear how many finger paintings he’s sold.

This is going to be a clip show and I generally don’t like clip shows. I skip them, but not this week.

Look at Senior from ten years ago- he was huge back then. Sorta like how Mark McGuire was huge…

The show opens with Paulie, Senior, and Mikey (back for the finale) looking back on the past. The first bike they built? The Jet Bike.

Jet bike

Jet bike

Senior said (complained) that discovery showed all the screaming and yelling “things you don’t want people to see.” NOTE TO SENIOR: If you didn’t want people to see it, you shouldn’t have done it.

The focus shifts to Mikey, who has some nice things to say about his father. WTF? Last time we saw him, he had zero nice to say about him and wouldn’t even face him. Maybe since the show is over he feels he can step out of character?

Senior: “We did corporate bikes and what they got was a 42 minute commercial.” This may be the most honest thing he has ever said.

The next montage is of Senior in psychotic mode, driving his car through walls, tossing a sofa out the window- but safety first! At least he wore a helmet.

Remember the very first episode of american Chopper? Wow, how things have changed.

Remember the very first episode of American Chopper? Wow, how things have changed.

9:17: The show highlight! Senior wipes out on a surfboard.

They next had a montage of celebrities that came to OCC for a custom bike. I mean that Discovery set up.

And of course fight after fight after fight after fight after fight after fight after fight after fight after fight after fight after fight after fight after fight after fight after fight after fight after fight after fight after fight after fight after fight.

Senior: “Looking back some things you wish you didn’t do.”
But even better, he said “it’s pretty obvious I didn’t care how I came off on TV or I would have changed it.”

And he said “I’m not too good with words.” True dat.

(In a clip) Senior: “My outbursts aren’t good for morale.”
Rick: “Yeah, it kind of sucks.”

At 9:30 came the PIVOTAL breaking stuff and blowing stuff up montage.

Senior: “We had a basement full of doors because we broke them all the time.”

When talking about firing Paulie, he said that all the stress was causing his health to fail, and after he fired Paulie he got healthy again. No comment.

BLAST FROM THE PAST #1Whatchoo gonna do? Vrooom!

BLAST FROM THE PAST #1
Whatchoo gonna do? Vrooom!

duo

BLAST FROM THE PAST #2
Separated at birth?

At 9:43 they showed what was probably Paulie’s lowest point- unsuccessfully pitching a line of PJD dog toys.

Paulie: “Me and my father have no business working together.”

Meanwhile, here is Mikey hugging and joking with his father. Why? Because Paulie is talking with Senior again. Mikey is a follower. Always was, always will be.

The Teutul bike got donated to a museum because, you know, it is that important. “I think people will like to see it,” Senior said.

The show ends with everyone from the show riding off into the sunset.

And from me, thank you for reading this blog, week in and week out.

The Saturday Comics: Happy Hanukkah Ben Grimm!

15 Dec

December 15, 2012

cropped-sat-com-logo.jpg

They truly are the First Family of Marvel Comics:
Reed Richards, Mr. Fantastic!
Susan Storm Richards, The Invisible Woman!
Johnny Storm, The Human Torch!
Ben Grimm, the Thing!

I am a big fan of The Fantastic Four and of them, I am first and foremost a fan of The Thing. He is easily in my top five, possibly top three comic book characters. And speaking of the First Family of Marvel Comics, Ben Grimm was created by two men who surely were the First Family, albeit a feuding family, of Marvel Comics, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.

thinggreatest1

And while many of the legends of the comic industry, like Superman creators Joe Siegel and Jerry Shuster, Will Eisner, Stan Lee and Jack “King” Kirby were Jewish, it doesn’t necessarily follow that their famous creations are Jewish. Superman is not Jewish, The Spirit is not Jewish.

But Benjamin Jacob Grimm is.

From wikipedia, oy vey!:

In keeping with an early taboo in the comic superhero world against revealing a character’s religion, the fact that Grimm was Jewish was not explicitly revealed until four decades after his creation, in the story, “Remembrance of Things Past” (in Fantastic Four, vol. 3, #56, August 2002). In this story, Grimm returns to his old neighborhood to find Mr. Sheckerberg, a pawn shop owner he had known as a child. Flashbacks during this story reveal Grimm’s Jewish heritage, and he even recites the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer often recited over the dead and dying, over the dying Sheckerberg, who eventually recovers. In a later story, Grimm even agrees to celebrate his Bar Mitzvah, since it has been 13 years (the age a Jewish boy celebrates his Bar Mitzvah) since he began his “second life” as the Thing. To celebrate the ceremony, Grimm organizes a poker tournament for every available superhero in the Marvel Universe.

The story of the Thing was unusual for another religious reason, as well: the fact that the Thing was actually brought back to life in one story not by science, magic, or alien power or technology, but by the hand of God.

It is a fact that The Thing is in many ways just Jack Kirby writing himself on the page. while The Spirit may be what Will Eisner wished to be, in many was The Thing is what Jack Kirby was.

jack-kirby-self-portrait

Some personality traits of the cantankerously lovable, occasionally cigar-smoking, Jewish native of the Lower East Side are popularly recognized as having been inspired by those of co-creator Jack Kirby, who in interviews has said he intended Grimm to be an alter ego of himself.

So on this final night of Teh Festival of Light, it is only appropriate for Saturday Comics to wish both Ben Grimm and Jack Kirby a very

hanukkah_happy

thing