Well hello! Happy 2010 everyone! Now that we’re all coming out of our post-holiday food coma & forced family fun haze, it’s time to shake off the cobwebs and get things rolling in the new year!
Like I mentioned in my previous post, I like to be reflective of the year gone by. Since I made a top 10 list of the most viewed posts of 2009 I thought I’d make a list of my 10 personal favorites:
Sayonara, Myrtle Beach : this post is not necessarily a favorite, but was big news in the MC world and sadly marks the end of the historical rally in Myrtle Beach.
Book review: Chicks on Bikes: I feel the need to pimp this book out as much as possible. Christina Shook created a book that’s a perfect mix of words and great photos about…well, chicks on bikes of course. If you don’t have this book in your library, you really should buy it. (Plus, Christina is a great person in real life!)
I want your skulls. I need your skulls.: OK, so like every other red-blooded woman out there, I like jewelry. I’m like a fish, if it’s shiny then I’m drawn to it. And if you’re a biker who likes quality silver jewelry and you like skulls, then Nino925 is your man. Ooh…shiny…
Rippin-Kitten gets a makeover!: this is self-explanatory but after 2 years of the same old-looking website, Rippin-Kitten got a facelift!
Sons of Anarchy season 2 finale: this post wraps up the last of 13 amazing episodes of Sons of Anarchy and I found out that Kurt Sutter actually read this post when he sent me a tweet saying I could lick his brain anytime. Think he ever saw the movie, Misery?
If you have a favorite Rippin-Kitten post tell me what it is!
Harley-Davidson has declared November “Military Appreciation Month” to honor the services of active and retired U.S. military personnel. Ever since the first American troops rode Harley-Davidson motorcycles during the Mexican Expedition in 1916, the Motor Company has enjoyed a bond with the men and women who have served our nation.
In honor of Military Appreciation Month, we’ve put together a number of different ways for us all to salute men and women who serve our country.
HD declares November "Military Appreciattion Month"
A special section of the Harley-Davidson web site
http://www.harley-davidson.com/thankyou – allows visitors to salute active and retired military members on electronic postcards featuring H-D motorcycles and fellow rider and U.S. military supporter Marisa Miller. Watch the behind the scenes video from the recent photo shoot.
Free schwag
Participating H-D dealerships have free military-themed posters, postcards, and calendars featuring Marisa Miller (calendars available only to those with a military I.D.). While you’re there, don’t forget to sign the H-D flag that will be sent to troops overseas.
Contest
The “Harley Salutes the Military Contest,” created in partnership with Maxim magazine, gives active or retired personnel the chance to win a new Harley-Davidson motorcycle of their choice – delivered personally by Marisa. The winner will also receive Rider’s Edge training and four tickets to attend the Jan. 2, 2010, Ultimate
Fighting Championship event in Las Vegas. Visit http://www.maxim.com/salutes to enter and get exclusive downloads.
The ongoing saga of Billy Lane, one of the most talented motorcycle builders of our generation has reached a new stage as he was sentenced to 6 years in the slammer with a 3 year probation to follow and a lifetime loss of license today.
Billy Lane by Forrest Frazier
I try not to delve too much into other peoples misfortunes but the facts are quite clear. Lane, 39, faced up to nine years in prison after a judge in June OK’d a plea deal in which prosecutors agreed to drop a charge of DUI manslaughter due to a Sept. 4, 2006, crash that left fellow biker Gerald Morelock dead.
Police said Lane’s blood-alcohol level was more than twice the legal limit when he crossed a double-yellow line to speed at 68 mph past three cars on State Road A1A south of Melbourne Beach. He crashed his Dodge pickup head on into 56-year-old Morelock’s small Yamaha motorcycle.
Today Billy’s lawyer plead his case focusing on the positive aspects of Billy’s life and the public service he has done with children, the military, and local organizations. He emphasized the good that Billy can do and has done and his ability to reach out to the younger generation.
Billy spoke to the judge taking responsibility for his actions and got quite emotional regarding the killing of Gerry Morelock. He was surrounded by other bike builders and notable members of the motorcycle business. The support for him from his peers as-well-as the members of Mr. Morelock’s family with whom he has built up a relationship was truly touching. However, in the end the fact remained that one man lost his life because of the lapse of judgment of another man.
I understand that other people have been in similar situations. A few months ago I lost a relative who was riding his motorcycle because someone ran him over. These tragedies hit our community all too often. Please keep this in mind next time you are in your cage and are driving distracted (read: drunk, on the cell, yelling at your kids, texting) and try to be more aware of cagers, or other potential hazards when you are on your bike.
I don’t want to hear about you being in jail or winding up dead, you are all to important to me.
Harley-Davidson is doing something cool this year for the 2010 motorcycle catalog. The cover of the new catalog is going to be a photo mosaic of images of the people who ride their motorcycles and make up the Harley-Davidson family. Anyone around the world is open to pick a favorite photo with their bike or of a riding experience (rallies, events, etc.) and upload it to the mosaic through the Harley-Davidson website (instructions are on the site).
The goal is to collect at least 10,000 photos by Friday, May 15th. Once a photo is submitted, you’ll get an email to confirm its receipt. From there you’ll be able to review and locate your photo in the mosaic. I’m definitely going to do it so I can play the HD version of “Where’s Waldo?”.
Life has a way of kicking you in the balls, or in my case, punching you in the ovaries. A lot of you know that in addition to writing about my passion for motorcycling, I work full time as an Interactive Designer. I design websites, online advertising, email campaigns and that sort of stuff.
I’ve worked for some big agencies on big accounts. Last year I moved to a smaller agency with clients that were more fun and allowed me to be more creative with my design work. The downside to that is that I’d been working stupid hours with unreasonable deadlines and overall not too happy about it. Other than the ridiculous workloads of late, there were other things at play. Office politics were beginning to play a big part, tension with the offline creative group, pressure from upper management and then my boss was maneuvered into resigning by her new boss, etc. etc.
So it didn’t come as too much of a shock when I walked into a meeting the other day with my writing partner and we were informed that our positions were “eliminated”. I was laid off.
The sucky thing is that I was let go for purely political reasons, not economic ones, not because of poor job performance (in fact I got a more than glowing review just the week before and some of the coolest work of my career is slated to go live very soon). It’s been a long time since I haven’t had a full time job. I’ve been working steadily since I was 16 years old and today starts the first week that I won’t have to go somewhere to work. I can roll out of bed, have coffee with the cat and get my online portfolio together.
Luckily, if you can call it lucky, I had expected it. I had a lot of hypothetical conversations with my husband the week before, made many jokes about the possibility of not having a job the following week.
And so, here I am with a clean slate, at the crossroads, [insert cliché metaphor here]. I think I’d like to get some freelancing going and make a go of it through the summer. And I can also put a lot of focus on riding and blogging. Rippin-Kitten.com is going to be celebrating the two year blogoversary mark next month!
Now I have the opportunity to give more time and attention to this site. It’s time to retire this blog theme and incorporate a more robust layout. My readership has steadily increased over the past year and Rippin-Kitten is now one of the top three motorcycle blogs out there. I’ve been getting more and more followers on Twitter (thx fellow Tweeps!) and I really want to expand it to incorporate all the things people are looking for to take it to the next level. Don’t be surprised if you see some poll action (not pole action, sorry guys!) in the next few weeks so that I can get a better idea of who’s reading. I’m really excited!
Well, that is what’s happening in my world. How are you guys?
For those of us who eagerly wait for the next season of Sons of Anarchy to come about, we will take any little scrap of news about the upcoming second season.
Kurt Sutter recently posted an update on his blog about the progress of writing for season 2:
I’ve finished a draft of the first script and my writers are in the process of writing 202 and 203. We’ve broken the first four episodes and have a pretty solid handle on the arc of the season. Two weeks ago, I pitched the big ideas to the network and they loved them. It’s cool when your boss is also a fan of the show. I don’t just get “that’s good for the network”, I get “that’s great shit for the show”. They had very few notes on the first script, so we are off to a good start with the story-telling. My hope is to have four scripts approved by the time we start production at the end of April.
Obviously, I can’t give anything away, but I as I’ve said in a few interviews, this season is all about alliances. We are going to explore and exploit the bonds we have with our brothers, our family, our country and our god. As I was writing this first script, I smiled when I realized that I get to channel all my twisted Catholic angst into a show about men who play God. I love my fucking job.
Still uncertain exactly when season two will air. A lot depends on FX’s development slate. I will keep you posted.
It’s always a good sign when the writer himself is giddy with twisted excitement!
Hey all! Slackey McSlackbag is here back in action. I feel like Rip Van Winkle, or Rippin Van Winkle as the case may be. All of a sudden I looked at the calendar and realized I’ve missed half of the month, my day job is slowly eating away my soul and I’ve seriously been neglecting my blogging duties. So for that, I apologize.
February is my least favorite month of all. Even though it’s short it just feels…so…long…But I’ve snapped out of it and I am raring to go.
Here’s a few interesting bits of late:
All ladies summer tour through Alaska
MotoQuest Tours is planning an all women, 9-day, 1200 mile trip (on all paved roads), with lodging-through Alaska from June 26th to July 4th. An average day will be about 250 miles so everyone can take in the scenery and all the riders will be followed by a 12 passenger van to schlep all the luggage and provide snacks and refreshment. Full details and information can be found at http://motoquesttours.com/09ladiesintro.html
Sons of Anarchy, Season Two
There’s very little to report lately about the next season of SoA. Writer and creator, Kurt Sutter, posted in his blog a month or so ago that they were back in the writing room working away. Shooting allegedly begins in April, with new episodes hitting the air hopefully in September.
Jesse James News
No, it has nothing to do with Jesse’s appearance in the next “Celebrity Apprentice” or his show “Jesse James is a Dead Man.” This video is of Jesse winning a pie-eating contest at the Tennessee Vally Fair. Just because I think it’s funny.
Over the past few months I’ve been trying to keep up with what’s been going on with the Myrtle Beach rallies. At one point, I even had a Myrtle Beach newspaper call me to get my POV on the rallies from a blogger in the biker community.
Sadly, there will no longer be any rallies in Myrtle Beach. Done. Dead. Finito. Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way outta town, buddy. It’s too bad they decided to go this way. I have a sneaking suspicion that their issues are not with the biker community as a whole. I’ll just leave it at that.
Dear Visitors,
Myrtle Beach is no longer the location for two long-running motorcycle events. After many years, our residents grew weary of three weeks of noise and traffic congestion each May, and they asked City Council to end the events. As a result, the Harley-Davidson Dealers Association Spring Rally and the Atlantic Beach Memorial Day Bikefest will not be held in Myrtle Beach.
This was a difficult decision. Myrtle Beach welcomes visitors year-round, but the giant motorcycle rallies simply grew too large. Our staff, residents and businesses strained to keep up with these huge single-focus events. It may surprise you, but our economy is much healthier with a fully diversified visitor base, instead of a concentration on one or two extremely large events.
Please know that Myrtle Beach is not anti-biker or anti-motorcycle. We want folks to come on the vehicle of their choice and enjoy all of the things Myrtle Beach has to offer. We are ending the motorcycle-related rallies because they grew too big and lasted too long. The huge rallies even kept visitors away from Myrtle Beach, and that’s not good.
For everyone’s safety and welfare, City Council has added a few new rules and regulations. We believe these new laws will make Myrtle Beach a safer and more friendly destination. For example, with your safety in mind, we now require that all motorcycle riders and passengers wear a helmet and eye protection. We also have a 1:00 to 6:00 a.m. curfew for everyone under 18. These and other rule changes are explained on this web site. Thank you for understanding. As you know, Myrtle Beach is a great place to visit, and we welcome you at any time. I look forward to your next visit and am confident that you will have a great time in Myrtle Beach!
Sincerely,
John Rhodes
Mayor
The official Myrtle Beach Bike Week site is still up with the would-have-been dates and official bike week merchandise still up. You’d have a pretty sweet keepsake if you can actually buy some 2009 t-shirts. And you can still visit Myrtle Beach as a vacation spot, as long as you adhere to the new rules and regulations. You now have to wear a helmet, eye protection and have a “functioning” muffler for your bike. Oh yeah, and there’s a curfew. Let’s face it, not having those things is what made hanging out in MB fun!
I’d only gone once a few years ago, but I thought Myrtle Beach was really nice and I think back on that trip fondly because it was my first long distance ride. Before I had this blog I actually wrote about my trip on a personal blog that I kept. This was how my week went while I was there:
Friday- Day 1 of a two day ride begins when we hit the road at 7:30 a.m. The ride isn’t so bad but we hit traffic in RI, NY and DC. We grab a hotel room somewhere in Virginia. I’m so tired and achy that I take a Tylenol w/codeine and a shot of whiskey and go to bed.
Saturday- Day 2 of riding goes better with little traffic. We know we’re getting close when we see start seeing billboards for South of the Border, Cafe Risque (it’s a TOPLESS! TOPLESS! TOPLESS! donut shop) & the Ava Gardner museum (yeah, I didn’t know there was one either).
We make a pit stop at South of the Border because it’s just so cheesy you can’t not stop. We got an ice cream because it was hot outside, posed with Pedro and perused the trinkets before hitting the road. We arrived in Myrtle Beach around 5:30 and had dinner. Later that night we headed out to meet friends a local bar called Fatboy’s. There’s no open container law there, so drinking beers outside feels weird! The gang decides to head to Hog Wild and it appears that the entire attendance from the bar leaves.
Sunday- Caught up on much needed sleep! We lounged about for a little while & later that day we surveyed the area around us, grabbed lunch at a steak house and just chilled out.
Monday- We got up kind of early and headed down to Murrell’s Inlet where the old Suck Bang Blow (SBB) & the Beaver Bar is. There were lots of vendors all around so we looked at all the merch. I broke down & bought a pair of chaps. We spent a few hours there and then headed over to the Broken Spoke Saloon. They also had vendors there and Easyriders magazine had some show bikes on display. We saw Goth Girl there, who looked like she was setting up to play music but it started to rain so she scrambled to keep her equipment dry. When it stopped raining we used the opportunity to head back to home base for a little while.
The weather cleared up that night so we checked out the new Suck Bang Blow (I guess the building it’s in used to be a Lowe’s or Home Depot. It’s enormous!). We had a couple of beers there, checked out the burnout pit and the vendors in back. We called some of the guys that we knew were there and met them at another bar called “Sundown’s.” Bikes just kept coming and going the whole time we were there.
Tuesday- The sky was still cloudy this day but no rain. We headed north and stopped at Broadway on the Beach. It’s a mall-like area and there were supposed to be a lot of things going on there. We saw a lot of trailers but not a lot of people had things set up. ArtBiker had arrived from Texas & met up with us there. We stayed there for the bulk of the day and then we went to the Rat Hole. We watched a “biker rodeo” which just ended up being a bunch of games done on motorcycles.
That night we picked up a good friend of mine at her place and went back to the big SBB. We drank beer and chatted up some folks. ArtBiker met us there and we ventured over to the other SBB for a while. Then we hung out at the Angry Beaver for a few beers (the boys enjoyed stogies) until they kicked us out for the evening.
Wednesday- Back to the Broken Spoke Saloon where Billy Lane & Discovery Channel are filming a show. We got bored there after a while and hit the Harley shop where we had lunch and Forrest bought me a cowboy hat! That night the big SBB had the first round of the”Baddest Biker on the Beach” boxing matches. I’d never seen live boxing before so I found the experience kind of interesting. There was a lot of energy flowing while the matches were happening, the crowd was completely digging it. We stayed for a little while after the matches were over. More burnouts, more scantily-clad skanks.
Thursday-Checked out a bike show at the Dog House (south). Was a hot and sunny day so lot’s of PBR talls were had. On the way back we decided to hit Broadway on the Beach again because it appeared that everyone was set up. Exile Cycles was there. I immediately went into stalker-mode and got another photo of me taken with Russell Mitchell (and once again was reduced to a babbling idiot while talking to him). We also managed to get a photo of Eddie Trotta while we were there. So, it wasn’t a wasted visit.
Friday-The day threatened rain but we headed out anyway. We met ArtBiker in N. Myrtle Beach and went to Barefoot Landing- also another mall area with lots of vendors and stuff set up. Biker Billy was there doing a cooking demonstration promoting his new book Biker Billy Cooks With Fire. We got to try some of the food afterwards and it was so yummy & spicy! I’m totally getting his book. Now that I think of it, I should have gotten one there and had him sign it. Oh well.
As it were, it did rain on us sporadically but luckily never while we were on the bikes. We had all of these grand illusions of going out that night because it was our last night there. We were going to take a little nap to rejuvenate ourselves but we just never woke up. We were so tired from running around all week and we had to ride the next day.
Saturday & Sunday- full days of riding. Sunday sucked because it was cold and rainy. It rained on us from NY all the way home and we hit traffic in NY & CT and that delayed us about 2 hours. When we saw the “Welcome to Massachusetts” sign I got all teary-eyed because I was so thankful to be almost home. My feet & hands were completely soaked and frozen to the point of numbness. I had so many layers on under my rain suit that I could barely move, my body ached and I was so tired. When we got to the 5 miles to home mark, a little pebble hit me square in the middle of my forehead and sent me completely over the edge. I had a complete meltdown and started crying. I was hating life at that very moment.
When we finally pulled off the ramp at our exit my poor husband was stunned to see tears streaming down my face, ha ha!!! We made it to his house around 7:30 and I was so happy to be off my bike.
While that trip had it’s difficulties for me, I really did have fun. I’d hoped that I might get to enjoy that feeling again going to the MB rallies.
I think The Donald is going to have his hands full in the boardroom this season. The cast of the next season of NBC’s Celebrity Apprentice was recently announced and among them is none other than Mr. Jesse James. (I suppose when you have a new show coming out around the same time, a little extra publicity can’t hurt right?)
Jesse James. In a suit.
Joining Jesse on the show are: Clint Black, Andrew Dice Clay, Annie Duke, Tom Green, Natalie Gulbis, Scott Hamilton, Claudia Jordan, Khloe Kardashian, Brian McKnight, Joan Rivers, Melissa Rivers, Brande Roderick, Dennis Rodman, Herschel Walker and Tionne Watkins. I know, I haven’t heard of half of these people either, but with the Dice Man, Tom Green and Jesse-I gotta think things will get pretty interesting.
Here’s Jesse’s bio for the show: JESSE JAMES can be called many things: custom bike and car builder, producer, publisher, television host and restaurateur. James is currently in production for his new show “Jesse James Is A Dead Man” which will premiere on Spike TV. This past summer, James hit the road and toured across the United States to talk to the American worker one-on-one to launch his new clothing line Jesse James Industrial Work Wear, which is currently available in Wal-Mart stores nationwide. James also founded West Coast Choppers, which creates custom made motorcycles. In 2000, James was the subject of “Motorcycle Mania” which chronicled his everyday life as a motorcycle builder on the Discovery Channel. James established a loyal following who would tune in for 85 episodes to watch the anti-host in his best known role on the international television hit “Monster Garage,” which he produced and starred in. In 2006, he opened the restaurant Cisco Burger, named after his beloved pit bull Cisco. James will be playing for the charity, “Long Beach Education Foundation.”
I have never been a huge fan of The Apprentice, but my husband is and I confess that I watched Celebrity Apprentice last season and enjoyed it. So, if you’re curious like me and wondering how long Jesse will last in the board room (and if he can bring himself to wear a shirt and tie every day), then let your morbid curiosity get the best of you and tune in on Sunday, March 1 at 9pm (EST).
There’s a new landing page up for Spike TV’s Jesse James is a Dead Man. Apparently, they need our help!
“Jesse wants your ideas for crazy, stupid, and ridiculously dangerous stuff for him to do. He’ll pick the wildest challenge, bring you out to LA to explain what it is on the show and then he’ll do the challenge on the show!”
Send in a video challenging Jesse to perform whatever crazy stunt you come up with! (In order to submit your idea, you will need to register for an account on spiketv.com, which is just a bullshit way for them to capture data, in my humble opinion…)
