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!
If you’re a serious blogger, then you probably know some of the big-name blog guys out there: John Chow, Darren Rowse and of course, ShoeMoney. ShoeMoney is one of those guys whose story we all wish was ours. He started a blog, writes about what he knows best and without much effort made serious bank from his website.
Well, Mr. Jeremy Shoemaker has a feature that he calls “Free Shirt Friday.” You send him a t-shirt, he’ll take a picture of himself wearing it and also gives a shout-out to your site. And my shout-out just happened to occur this past Friday when my Rippin-Kitten “Faster Pussycat” t-shirt was featured on Free Shirt Friday.
Rippin-Kitten t-shirt featured on Shoemoney
To my delight (and relief) my shirt received a lot of great comments and Shoe appears to really like it! So, if you like it too and want to decorate the upper half of your fine physique with this fabulous design there are still some available to purchase.
That was the subject of a contest held over at Crackberry.com recently for those who consider themselves BlackBerry addicts. They were giving away 10 BlackBerry Storms to those who were willing to do whatever it took to win one (and they actually had to follow through on their promise!).
They received 3,000 entries to the contest and “a popular theme of entry that emerged was extreme brand loyalty, or in other words, showing off your love for BlackBerry and/or CrackBerry for the whole world to see.”
The first winner was TJ of Revelation Tattoos in Toledo OH, who had a lifesized BlackBerry tattooed on his leg. Two things of note: 1. TJ didn’t pay for his tattoo. He works at the shop and had it done for free. 2. The tattoo artist, Brian, is a total Mac fanboy and die-hard iPhone lover. It must have killed him to do this tattoo!
While I don’t find the fact that he had the tattoo done to win a phone all that shocking (I hang out with a LOT of tattoo fanatics/artists who get work done for less meaningful things), I find the backlash a little surprising. What makes this guy’s tattoo any different from anyone willing to have a Harley-Davidson tattoo put on their body? It’s essentially showing the same kind of “extreme brand loyalty.”
If you’re interested in reading the war of comments you can read them at Crackberry.com and on Information Week’s blog, which also did a post about this today.
Back in September fellow blogger, Micah and the guys from Lucas County Choppers, embarked on a road trip from Ohio to Michigan, traveling 1000 miles in four days (you can read blog entries from day 1, day 2, day 3 and day 4 as well as see the flickr photo sets from Michigan on Two Wheels). As with many road trips on two wheels, they encountered their fair share of inclimate weather, scenic landscapes, good road food and great memories.
They also took video of the entire trip and edited it down into a four-video series, which I commend them on. I know from personal experience that it’s a daunting task to take a ton of video and attempt to edit it down to short, digestible clips for mass viewing.
So, here’s the first video of the series: Toledo to Frankfurt.
It seems to me that women-only motorcycle events are starting to become a big trend in our motorcycle world. I’ve always struggled with women specific events because for me, personally, I don’t think they’re necessary to make me proud of being a female rider. I like to hang with the boys anyways!
I was perusing my news aggregator this morning and Steve over at Biker News Online mentioned the second annual International Female Ride Day on Friday, May 2, 2008, with lots and lots of sarcasm and even raised the question: Why do women riders need a special day to celebrate themselves?
Now, here’s my disclaimer: I’m not attacking or singling out Steve’s post for any detrimental reasons, I’m merely highlighting it because for the first time, someone posted about a women-only event with the question: Who gives a f**k?
That’s what I’m wondering. While the women’s ride to Daytona was kind of a cool thing, I also just read on Women Riders Now about the Diva Custom’s Divas Only bike show that’s happening at the end of May. Are these events a good thing or is this women-only madness spiraling out of control? Is it helping female bikers or is it setting up a precedent for women to segregate themselves from the biker community rather than being a part of it?
And just like Steve at Biker News asks: If a chick can master a motorcycle and hold her own among the biker crowd, does she need empowering?
I opened up a pretty big can of worms when I tackled the subject of social networking for bikers. Back in August I wrote a post about Bikerworlds, the first social site I found geared toward the biker community. In October I wrote a follow-up post regarding BikerOrNot.com, which is another very popular social network (and also a very popular post for this site).
For part three of this subject matter I’m going to highlight a few more sites that I’ve found since I last wrote. One thing to keep in mind, not all of these sites are created equally. While a lot of them share the same basic idea and similar buckets of content, some are technically easier to use and more thought out than others. It all depends on what appeals to you in the end.
Motorcycle Syndicate: This site has been around since summer ‘07. I’m not quite sure what their member base is, but according to their site they “strive to be the premier interactive online community for motorcycle enthusiasts worldwide.” They also use other social networking sites to their advantage when trying to get the word out. You can also win a free T-shirt if you’re a registered member and help spread the word.
Hogstr: I got an email about this site a few weeks ago so I thought I’d check it out. Seems this site is a brand-spanking newbie, having only come into existence in the beginning of February. Not a lot of members or content yet and now that I look at it I’m not even sure if it’s officially “launched.” I see lots of profile pics with half-nekkid chicks on bikes, which kind of turns me off. I’m going to file this one under “wait and see.”
Harley Social: I think the title for this one speaks for itself, but this social network is for HD enthusiasts. It looks to have launched early this year and encourages it’s members to upload photos, videos and to post blogs. It’s a visually robust site, almost to the point where I don’t know where to look first, but the emphasis on this site seems to revolve around just having a good time.
Biker Nation: From what I can tell this site has been around since late 2006. Like all of the other sites it has forums, news feeds, blogs, classifieds, events, pictures, videos and music. It also has a “babes” section (if you’re into that sort of thing) and online auctions. For the amount of time this site has been in existence I guess I expected more. Perhaps they’ve been spending more time focusing on their heavily-tattooed, sister site Inked Nation.
If I had all the time in the world I would love to join all of these sites, but I just don’t. You can still find my profiles on Bikerworlds, BikerOrNot and of course, good old myspace.
Do any of you have a favorite social networking site that you use regularly?
It occurred to me recently that it’s been a while since I’ve done a somewhat personal/informative post, so today I’m going to take the opportunity to catch up on some info.
Way back in October, I was bound and determined to get my ass to Daytona this year. Well…looks like that’s not going to happen after all. Since I just started a new job last month, taking off on a trip so soon didn’t seem like the right thing to do. Sigh. So, once again I’ll have to experience it all vicariously through daytonabikeweek.com. I will also miss being one of the many women participating in the largest Harley Women’s Ride. Repeat: SIGH.
I can happily report that rippin-kitten.com continues to gain momentum in being a successful and esteemed motorcycle blog written by a female. Site traffic shows that this site has been maintaining a increasing stream of visitors. Nice!
Some very exciting news: new Rippin-Kitten stickers are on order and I’m pleased to say that I’ve also got some t-shirts designs finished and ready to be ordered! Look for the new Rippin-Kitten store to be up and running in the next month or so!
This Harley-Davidson V2 engine computer case mod runs for real!
OK, you may be wondering what in the hell I’m talking about, right?
Well, apparently some guy decided that having a cool-looking computer case wasn’t enough: he had to build a computer case that’s a 1:1 scale Harley Davidson V2 engine from scratch. The engine runs for real, pistons pump water through the system to cool the components. He included a bunch of Harley Davidson motorcycle pieces into the mod, including chromed out exhaust pipes.
The actual computer inside this crazy case has an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, Abit AW9D-MAX motherboard, and the 2 x XFX7900GT video card, in case you were wondering.
You can read the full, tech-laden article and see lots more photos at bornich.org.
