Last night the Teutels showed up on one of my favorite shows: My Name is Earl. Now, if you’ve never seen this show I have to tell you it’s one of the funniest shows on tv (and I’m super-critial of comedies. Or maybe I just have a strange sense of humor…but I digress).

The premise of the show is that Earl has done a lot of bad things in his life and after winning the lottery & then getting hit by a car, he has an epiphany and decides he has to cleanse his karma by righting the wrongs he’s done.

Last night’s show, Stole a Motorcycle, details a night that Earl and his brother, Randy, stole a motorcycle from the OCC guys shop (not a chopper, it was a crappy beater bike that looked like a Sportster) that someone left the keys in. Paul Sr. and Jr. did their typical arguing schtick and Mikey was the jokester who left the keys in the bike. Screen time was short and sweet.

(the videos are from nbc.com, so sorry if there’s ads in them)

The interesting thing is that OCC was also approached to create a My Name is Earl theme bike to be auctioned off for the Make a Wish foundation. If you watch the show, then you can understand how humorous the paint job and plaid shirt seat cover is.

The actors talk about the Teutels’ acting abilities and Paul Sr. talks about creating the charity bike:

If you can try watch the episode either in a re-run or somewhere online. I highly recommend it!

Yes, ’tis true. A music video by Criss Angel, the magician.

It’s kind of formulaic for a “metal” music video.

• Rock stars: check. (Introduction on the bullhorn by none other than Mr. Vince Neill, Sully from Godsmack and Nuno Bettencourt from Extreme in case you were wondering.)
• Cool motorcycles: check.
• A hip-looking crowd with some hot babes that have big boobs: check.

‘Nuff said. Throw up the horns and rock on with your bad selves!

When I started this site a year ago, I really didn’t know what the goal of the site was going to be. Initially I wanted to put the call out to other young, rockin’ biker women (like me!), who maybe were part of Gen X and not quite ready to be a grown up (like me!). And quite honestly, I wasn’t even sure if I could maintain posting consistently week after week (I’d be out riding in the summer and motorcycle news is scarce in the winter months-or so I thought) to make this blog worth reading. It was difficult in the beginning: I would sit in front on my keyboard, staring at the screen wondering what the hell I was going to write about.

But something weird happened: I finally found my groove, my posts started getting attention and I found not only was I enjoying the whole blogging thing, I was “meeting” a lot of other my fellow biker bloggers and people who were becoming regular readers and I was also getting great blog reviews and awards from my blogging peers.

I didn’t really know the first thing about blogging. I’d kept a personal journal but a motorcycle blog is different. How would I find people to read my blog and who would care anyway? Through some cool blog communities like BlogCatalog I met a bunch of people and learned lots of things about writing a blog. And through social networking sites like myspace and BikerWorlds I found other bikers who are interested in the same things I am.

Traffic started increasing, people were linking to the site and honestly the highlight for me last year was when Greg White and Kawasaki asked me to test ride a Vulcan 900 Custom. I mean, who the hell was I? Just some biker girl from MA who happened to start a blog a few months before…

In one year, I’ve gone from a few readers a week to tens of thousands of page views. I’m not going to make any grand claims like you see on other blogs, but I will tell you that I’m happy to see my google page rank on the rise (link to me!), my Alexa rank continues to move up and the number of people who view the site goes up almost every week. Fellow bikers in 114 different countries have checked in on the rippin-kitten.com blog. And I’ve been getting inquiries from major companies regarding advertising opportunities. Not too shabby.

Anyway, enough of boring blog stats and me marveling at my own success. Stay tuned later this week as I roll-out a new feature for Rippin-Kitten.com and share some other things that I’ve been working on.

Thanks to everyone for making my first year of blogging a great one. It’s been a great learning experience and I’ve enjoyed our many discussions. Looking forward to another year!

Inspired by watching a show on Fuse TV called Talking Metal I decided to dust off this strip club classic video by Motley Crue. Love it or hate it, you gotta admit, they look like they’re having a great time.

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?

One of the most popular posts on this site has to be the one that featured steampunk-inspired motorcycles. Not only are the motorcycles art to behold, they’re just really frickin’ cool.

Which brings me to a creation that’s been making the rounds all over the internet: a steam-electric hybrid motorcycle called The Whirlygig Emoto, built by an artist named Tom Sepe. The frame is 1967 Tote-Gote and while it’s steam-powered it actually doesn’t “go” using steam, it’s propelled by propane and batteries. But the steam still gives it a cool effect, even if it sounds like the tea’s done!

If you’d like to read up on this kooky creation, here’s a few links:

Steampunk Workshop

Tom’s Flickr page with lots of photos

Hey everyone! I just wanted to let you all know that I’m on the health upswing and getting back to normal. Thanks to everyone for the well-wishes and kind thoughts.

It’s been a crazy couple of weeks for me and I’m glad to be returning to my normal routine. I’m looking forward to writing a regular post for tomorrow. There’s lots of new news and interesting things to catch up on!

Hello all,

I just wanted to let you know that the reason Lizzie hasn’t posted in a few days is that she is in the hospital. She had been sick and was misdiagnosed, this lead to a rush to the ER the other night. Right now she is resting and doing well. We expect her to be coming home this weekend. She misses you all and is looking forward to posting again next week.

I admit this is not the most exciting video in the world, but recent news indicates that American IronHorse is a fast-sinking ship. Reports say that the company is being forced into bankruptcy to pay debts to investors. The company ceased production last month and they pretty much fired all of their employees.

But I guess we can’t write them off just yet. They do plan to sell their assets to new investors and continue with their operations. We shall see.

Whenever there’s a bike week somewhere in the country it seems the accident/death toll always trumps other events that are newsworthy. Daytona 2008 is no different, with the death toll reaching seven as of Friday.

So, here’s some good news for a change, regarding the first ever Harley-Davidson Woman’s Day Ride:

Some 500 women cruised into Daytona Beach, Fla., March 4, as part of the first ever Harley-Davidson Daytona Women’s Day Ride. The event garnered a whopping $60,520.50 in contributions to help send children with neuromuscular diseases to MDA summer camp, the Muscular Dystrophy Association announced today.

Harley-Davidson Motorcycle Company of Milwaukee organized the historic ride, the largest women’s ride in the company’s 105-year history. In addition to providing recognition to women motorcycle riders, the event will enables MDA to send more youngsters to camp, where they’ll enjoy a week of accessible activities such as swimming, horseback riding, fishing and arts and crafts.

Karen Davidson, great-granddaughter of one of Harley-Davidson’s founders, William A. Davidson, led the group, including the six winners of Harley- Davidson’s “Get Down to Daytona” contest. They left Atlanta March 1, and were joined by the rest of the riders for the last 10 miles of the approximately 500-mile trek, which ended at Ocean Center.

Three women received special recognition as the top fundraisers for the event: Joanne Mold of Forest Hill, Md., ($3,055 raised), Dee Roberts of Bernville, Pa., ($2,717) and Lynne Cone of Houston ($2,715). Each received a 105th Anniversary Harley-Davidson women’s jacket, and had lunch with Karen Davidson and the six “Get Down to Daytona” contest winners and MDA ambassadors.

Story source and full article: The Auto Channel

As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t need to be involved in women-only events to show my pride in being a female rider, but I think this would have been a cool event to be a part of and for a really great cause. And for that, kudos to all those ladies who participated!