Big Bikes

Twoogling

The plan for this morning's blog post was to do a sort of photo essay on my snow ride over to Allston last night to see The Stooges tribute band "The Scrooges." But for some reason the memory card in my camera was blank this morning. I had no plan B, and the story isn't actually that great without the photos, so I will now subject you to an almost tweet-like assortment of random half-thoughts.

Twitter.

I finally signed up for a Twitter account. I'm not sure why. My two "tweets" are"

"Not Tweetering...ever (until further notice)."

I followed that with:

"Nothing to see here, it's all happening over here: http://wellonabigbikeya.blogspot.com"

I don't have a fancy phone, and tweetering on my computer seems weird when I spend so much time blogging. And at the risk of pissing off all the tweeterers out there — I just don't get it. I heard Biz Stone (blogger co-founder, Twitter founder, my former classmate, who I am very proud of) on NPR a ways back talking about Twitter. He said something about how he was re-carpeting his apartment, so for example he would post "I am re-carpeting my apartment right now." I scoffed, "Ya Biz, blogger is pretty awesome, but that twitter crap...good luck!"

And we all know that Twitter was a huge failure. THAT IS NOT TRUE! Biz (or Issac as he was known when he was a, little bowl-hair-cut-having kindergartner) Stone and I went to the same elementary school and the same high school, but while I was off drinking beer under a bridge, he was off planning world domination in his mom's basement. We took very different paths and on my path when someone tells me about an idea like Twitter I say "that is really dumb." On Biz's path when someone offers him a quarter billion dollars for the company he started he gets to say "no thanks, I'm holding out for a better deal."

Rooter did point out a very viable use of Twitter the other day. He told me he googled "Cyclocross World Cup" on Twitter (I told him that the kids call it "twoogling." Made up) and found a live video feed of Sunday's race in Kalmthout. That's pretty cool.

If the kids call looking up things on Twitter "twoogling," then searching blogger for things would, of course, be called "bloogle-ing." Of course.

Shortest youtube video ever.

I've got something kooky in the works with the Double Hop guys (more on that later). The subject of skateboarding came up during an email exchange. To show them that not only did I skate back in the day, but that I can still dust off a trick or two even at my advanced age, I linked to the video above. But I saw that in the comments section, one dissatisfied customer had written:

"Quickest video I've ever seen on YouTube. "

I was deeply hurt. I had to see what kind of Youtube comment monster had lashed out at me so harshly. Turns out the guy is a stand up comedian. Then I thought, "this guy is a stand up comedian and that's the best he could come up with?" Upon watching his self-proclaimed pretty good Vincent Bugliosi impression I realized that, yes, that probably is the best the guy could come up with.

I also noticed that the video of me skating had been viewed quite a few times (more than any of my bike vids anyway). I wanted to comment on The Comedian's self-proclaimed pretty good Vincent Bugliosi impression saying, "Hey douche bag, my video might be the quickest video on Youtube ever, but it's been viewed WAY more times than your self-proclaimed pretty good Vincent Bugliosi impression, so HA!"

Then I noticed the title of the me skateboarding video: "Gleaming The Cube." My buddy Jason who had posted it had borrowed the title of the seminal 1989 Christian Slater film of the same name.

People were not Youtube-eling "Thom Parsons on a skateboard."

The only reason it has so many views is because folks were looking for clips of bad dialogue and stunt doubles performing a Hollywood movie director's idea of radical skateboard stunts. Without the title my video would have far less views than my critic's self-proclaimed pretty good Vincent Bugliosi impression.

Just imagine if Jason had entitled it "Paris Hilton Nipple Slip."