Geezer with a Grudge: closer to the edge

Showing posts with label closer to the edge. Show all posts

Jun 2, 2013

Closer to the Edge - Isle Of Man - TT Race, FULL MOVIE!

This might be the coolest thing YouTube has ever published. The full freakin' movie:

[That didn't last long. YouTube pulled the video about a week after I'd posted it. Now, there is no way for US viewers to see it because it still hasn't made it here in any format. Along with the hundreds of cool bikes that don't come to the US, this is one more piece of evidence that we are 3rd world.]

When no place in Minneapolis/St. Paul ran this movie, I seriously considered moving somewhere civilized. I still am. I do not understand a single word Guy Martin says, but I love what he does with a motorcycle.

I can't say that the TT is high on my list of "things I gotta do," though. The archaic rules and arrogant timekeeper bureaucracy is too much for me. It feels too much like golf or even the crazed way observed trials is judged. (How can you roll backwards and not have lost "forward motion?") A 30S penalty for supposedly being 0.1mph too fast out of the pits is insane and cost Martin the Superbike title in the first race. I can't watch that kind of shit without wanting to hang an official. (Of course, hanging officials is pretty high on my list of favorite things to do on good days.)

These guys are either the craziest people on earth or the bravest. Could be both. The tank-slapping when those bikes come down off of the rises in the roads is insane. Totally insane.

NOTE: This does not qualify as a "movie review" because I loved every minute of Closer to the Edge and I have no useful criticism to offer.

Mar 28, 2011

One More Movie for the "Must See List"

Watch this trailer and get ready for the next "Faster." The movie is TT3D: Closer to the Edge by Guy Martin and like all great motorcycling things, it isn't coming to US theaters any time soon. We're too old, too slow, too timid/conservative, and too lame to even get movies about great motorcycle events, let alone an actual event. Yeah, I'm pissed off. Deal with it. We don't even get the DVD in US format.

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

"Nobody else does this emperor's clothes kind of thing!" Kevin Cameron August 2009
"Criticism is something we can avoid easily by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing." Aristotle
"You are a motorcycle bigot." Known and Unknown
"This is not a video game. This is your life. Ride to stay alive." Mrs. Elvy Day
“If I'd written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people - including me - would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.” Hunter Thompson
"Truth is more of a stranger than fiction . . . It is not worth while to strain one's self to tell the truth to people who habitually discount everything you tell them, whether it is true or isn't." Mark Twain

Warning: If you're looking for a pleasant conversation about motorcycling from a frozen-north Minnesota Nice perspective, good luck with your search. As Bobby Dylan once said, "it ain't me, babe."

This blog was a companion to my MMM magazine column. MMM died and went to website oblivion in early 2020, but I have continued to find things to squawk about even after myasthenia gravis doubled my vision and may have ended my life on a motorcycle.

Google has continued to defeature and abandon Blogger, including making it very difficult to include pictures, video, and audio. I have copied all of my old stuff to my Wordpress blog, GeezerwithAGrudge.com, and there are now essays on that site that I won't be duplicating on this site. AND you can subscribe to Wordpress blogs.

The Geezer Story

I stumbled upon this column name (Geezer with a Grudge) almost 20 years ago, in 1999. The first Minnesota Motorcycle Monthly editor I worked with, in late 1999, complained that the magazine was getting no mail and the editors wanted to know if any readers were still out there. I fired off a sarcastic note, as a joke, intended to provide a little humor and some feedback. He published it as an article and later called me to say he'd received more mail on that letter than he'd received in the past year! I followed that with an offer to write a monthly column attempting to piss off a particular section of the magazine's readership to see if that tactic would generate some mail.

It did, probably more regularly than the magazine wanted at times, and I wrote a monthly column for MMM until the magazine died in 2018.

I plan to post an occasional old Geezer article into the blog, followed by short comments about the current status of my perspective on our activity/sport/vehicle of choice.