Come on, then

You can say what you want about the 80's. Much of it was bullshit, sure. But this song is awesome. Put it on my end-of-the-night bar closeout playlist with Journey and The Killers.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Late to this, but happy St. Patrick's Day anyhow.

Loved every second of this right here: http://youtu.be/kGIjetX6TBk

It's a motogp video of motorcycles doing motorcycle stuff. So if you're not into that don't bother clicking through. I would have embedded it but embedding is disabled. Lame.

@ 2:40 you will see Casey Stoner get pitched onto his front windscreen at 160 MPH. That was at the Sachsenring in Germany during a practice lap. The slow motion footage doesn't do it justice; you don't really get a feel for how fast he's going until you see the whole crash. That high side (and several others) encouraged Bridgestone to (finally) produce an asymmetrical front and rear tire. Sachsenring has something like 9 lefts and only 4 rights, and the first right-hander is the fastest. And it's downhill. 

Guilty pleasures

Made a list of watchable RomComs a while ago. The link below reminded me of another one I remember with great fondness: Can't Buy Me Love (1987). The summary from Deadspin covers all the important details:

 http://deadspin.com/5893117/the-shocking-proof-that-tim-tebow-and-tebowing-are-cosmically-linked

Ah, that's a great flick. For the uninitiated, CBML is a classic '80s-style comedy where a high school nerd (Patrick Dempsey) pays the popular girl (Amanda Peterson) $1,000 to be his "girlfriend" for a month. Seth Green, in his first big movie role, plays Dempsey's precocious, wise-cracking younger brother. (If you need me to tell you how it ends, you haven't seen nearly enough '80s movies.)

I haven't seen the movie in many years but it was charming and cute when I last caught up with it. I was (am) a nerd and could identify with feeling excluded and wanting to date/know the popular people. Adolescence is like that. Dempsey became Dr. McDreamy and he races cars in his free time. Lame. We all know that 2 > 4. AmIright?

Incidentally, McDreamy also appears in one of the other movies on the 'watchable RomCom' list (Enchanted), 20 years later! Well played, sir. Well played. 

Sweet ride

Since we (re)joined soul-crushingly miserable corporate America this week I haven't had as much energy to devote to the blogspace. Mostly because sitting in a 6' x 8' beige cube is depressing and once I get done with the gym I can't even imagine looking at a computer screen. The upside is I have a job. And I can go to the gym. It's the little things.

My friend Lindsay has a job and she is training for an Ironman-distance triathlon. She had been looking all over for some sweet wheels and she sent me a picture of this bike a couple months ago when she bought it. I've been wanting to post it ever since. She's short so it was hard for her to find a frame that fit. This one does. The only drawback (if it's a drawback) is that it's insanely expensive and fancy pro-level shit. It's a Felt SRAM something or other with SRAM Red Action lever jobbies and some wheels and blah blah blah. It says FELT on the side. Whatever that means. She did tell me what it all meant but like I said, it was a while ago. 

Back in the day I used to stay at Lindsay and her husband's house and she would get up at 5 AM to run miles and miles before work. Sometimes she would talk me into going. I usually slept on the guest mattress on the floor so her strategy for waking me up was to run around and kick the mattress saying, "Come on Houston! We got a war to fight! Get up! Are you going to sleep in? [Ed: it's 5 AM, mind you] COME ON!!" Over and over again. She's not very tall but she is mean. It was annoying and irritating then but it's annoying, irritating and funny now.

Anyway, word is that the new bike is beyond awesome now that it's been properly fitted and set up for her. She's already doing faster splits and feeling very comfortable. Look out, lake placid triathlon. She's on a mission.

Muppets + LCD Soundsystem = Sweet

This from Ze Newbs.
Anything Muppets is going to get a thumbs up around here.

I wouldn't put it past you

This image comes from the tumblr site Alligator Sunglasses, who got it from regions unknown (but definitely English speaking). The title was 'Graham is Awesome', and you'll no argument from me on that assessment.

I laughed.

Unrelated:
Barring a change of heart over the weekend, I am going to put the Repsol up for sale. Planning to give that some serious thought over the next several days. I've committed to either riding it or selling it and the cost/benefit of street riding on the Repsol isn't adding up for me. Could run it at the track but I already have a perfectly good track bike. And it's a good time of year to sell. So we'll see.

The tricky part is that I am very invested in motorcycle riding, and also in the bike. It was my dream bike and it's still just as gorgeous as the day I bought it. Probably moreso, since I got rid of the rubbish bits and put on fancy (expensive) custom parts.

If I'm being pragmatic I'd say it's time to sell. But if I were being pragmatic I never would have bought it in the first place, and fuck that.

Count me in: AC III

I haven't even peeled the wrapping off the most recent AC game (Revelations) - too busy with Skyrim and shooting dudes on the internet in Battlefield 3 -  but I need to finish it before 30 Oct 2012 because the next one is coming.
Pumped.

Fans of The Last of the Mohicans movie (and I think there are a few of you in the readership that fit that description) will notice a similarity between an action sequence in the movie and the trailer embedded below.  Works for me - I thought that movie was great and the particular sequence they cribbed is one of my all-time favorites. So far, so good.

 

This and that

Had this photo in the pile for ages. Cribbed it from the New York Times because I love the muppets. Was saving it to use the individual frames and re-caption them but since it hasn't happened yet I don't know that it ever will. Busy working on that other thing. Anyway, the text is meh but I love the pictures of the muppets so I'm posting it now.

The big news around here is that after over a decade of working from a remote office I have to move to the corporate office. With a dress code. No jeans. I own exactly one pair of khakis and two pairs of dress shoes and I'm not going to wear a suit or slacks to sit in a box all day.  The dress shoes are too nice to wear to the office so it'll be some combination of loafers and, umm, something else until I get another pair of casual shoes. I don't even know. There wasn't a dress code at any point of my job until now, and that was one of the reasons I took the job in the first place. Times change so it looks like I'll be trading in my cushy office with shorts for a 7' x 7' box and uncomfortable shoes. Because we need to look 'professional'. My exemplary work performance over the past many years hasn't been impacted by my dress, but that's not the point. It's all about appearances. It's one of those things that's so bullshit you can't really get bothered by it. Work is like that sometimes. Whatever. I still have a job and I enjoyed my shorts-wearing days while they lasted.

See you out there.