Exile's Disco 0-fer

Russell Mitchel of Exile Cycles has been on Discovery Channel's Biker Build-Off series, what... three times now? He's also lost out every time. The poor guy just can't get a break.

Granted, on the show last night, he build a friggin' trike. It was the coolest trike I'd ever seen, however. It was also technically very impressive. Those details and the fact that the bike the Detroit Brothers slapped together looked a mess (H referred to their glass oil pan as a "French coffee press".) gave him a fighting chance, I thought, but no.

Maybe it takes a very particular aesthetic to appreciate Russell's bikes, and most Americans just don't have it. Dunno.

At any rate, the guy still has people like George Clooney and Chris Cornell buying his bikes for buckets of cash, so we can't feel too badly for him, can we?

Me? I want something like a Sucker Punch Sally someday. (Like that'll ever happen...) I'm also a big fan of the Japanese-style choppers from Chica and Zero Engineering.

It's official: I'm a jackass

So, I'd heard that Letterman would be doing his tribute to Johnny Carson last night.But when I turned it on, the monologue seemed old, so I figured the show must be a rerun and turned it off.

Well, it turns out those old jokes were what amounted to Carson's last monologue.

David Letterman paid tribute to Carson, who died January 23, by delivering a "Late Show" monologue Monday composed entirely of jokes the retired "Tonight" show host had quietly sent him in his final months.

Only after the monologue was through and Letterman was back behind his desk did he tell the audience who had written the jokes.

Dammit.

From one of my idols to another

The Man in Front of the Curtain — Steve Martin's letter to Johnny Carson

Your gift - though I'm sure you wouldn't have called it a gift - was, as I see it, a blend of modesty and confidence. You wanted to do the job and do it well. You allowed the spirit of your idols, Stan Laurel and Jonathan Winters among them, to creep into you, and you found a way to twist their inspiration and make it new. In you I saw simplicity, joy, politeness, sympathy. Your death reminds me of the loss of America's innocence, the distance we have come from your sly, boyish leers to our flagrant, overstated embarrassments for parents and children.

Very nice.