Neat Tricks: Quick! Somebody Boot That Pigeon!

According to a commenter yesterday, this is my one thousandth post. I have no idea if this is true, because I haven't ever bothered to count. My guess is the commenter is wrong, since I'd be shocked if he or she actually counted these two--which, I suppose, would put the tally at 1,003.

Either way, the sheer volume of posts I've "curated" since launching this blog in 1996 surprises even me. It also depresses me, since I'm still not making enough money. That's why I've decided to drop this whole blogging thing like a Cat 5 on a moderate incline and go into advertising instead. I've already got an awesome concept for a commercial (or, as we call it in the industry, a "spot"), too, and I'm hoping the pitch will land me a high-paying job in a modern office space with a progressive collaborate cubicle-free layout where you get to wear $75 t-shirts everyday instead of $75 button-downs. I'm confident you could use this commercial to sell pretty much anything, but just for the hell of it let's say we're selling light beer.

OK, here goes. First a guy in really tight pants walks out of a modern office space--but not so modern that he gets to wear $75 t-shirts. We don't want to alienate anybody. Anyway, you know the type: sport jacket, designer satchel, vaguely douchey... The sort of guy who lives in a condo that looks exactly like his workplace, has an artisanal axe hanging over his giant TV, owns an unridden snowboard, and calls his friends "duder:"

At first, it's like any other day, and he's about to get into his imported sports sedan with the roof rack he doesn't know how to use and drive the two miles home before meeting the "duders" at the wine bar to spend some more of that disposable income:

But then, he has a crazy idea. "I'm no stuffed shirt. I'm an edgy sort of duder who's not afraid to shake things up," he thinks mischievously to himself. "How 'bout I totally shake the shit outta this day by riding a bike instead?"

We're going to need a guy who can act, by the way, 'cause he's going to have to look like he's just caught a glimpse of a hot co-worker's vagina.

Then--and this is where we're going to have to use some expensive special effects, but it will totally be worth it--he actually replaces his car with a bike with the swipe of a finger, just as easily as he switches from Vampire Weekend to Band of Horses on his iPad/Pod/Pud:


Oh, also, it should be a really awesome bike. I don't know a lot about bikes, but I did do some research on Forbes.com, so it should probably be something custom:

Yeah, just like that.

Next, he's on his awesome custom bike wearing a helmet from 1986, and as he zig-zags all over the street like a sprinter cracking on a climb he looks over his shoulder triumphantly like Lance Armstrong flashing Jan Ullrich "The Look:"

Except, unlike Lance Armstrong, he's not dropping anybody. Instead, it's because he's now realizing he hasn't ridden a bike since he was 14 and he's reasonably sure he's going to die.

Oh, and for the music, we should get somebody who rawks to write it, but I did come up with some heavy lyrics:

C'mon...

Yeeeah, c'mon...

C'maaaooowwwn!!!

Of course, no sooner had I fleshed out my idea than I discovered that somebody stole it, because it turns out a commercial suspiciously like it has been in heavy rotation during the Tour de France on Versus. Speaking of the Tour de France, today's stage will surely go down in the cycling history as one of the most epic Tour stages of all of 2011. If you've been trying to avoid seeing the results, you can read on with confidence, because I have no intention of revealing them. I have another blog over at Bicycling.com for that (updated precisely just as soon as I feel like it new post here, get excited), which means I have no reason to issue one of these:

Anyway, even though someone stole it from me, I'm hoping my beer commercial concept gets me some work. Then, maybe I can even come up with ads for companies that make bike stuff. Let's say, for example, that a tire company asked me to create an ad campaign for them. Well, I'm enough of a sophisticated ad man to know that I shouldn't pitch them something like this:

(Puncture-Resistant Tire+Ironic Nail Placement=Tirony)

The above photo was forwarded to me by a very unlucky reader, and of course my first thought was that he could boot it like that guy from the "Triple Rush" video:

(Person living hand-to-mouth using our nation's flagging currency to repair tire=Tirony)

This in turn led me to wonder if there were any new "Triple Rush" videos featuring handy tricks. Well, it turns out there are. In fact, there was a video in which one of the messengers explains how to make a pigeon diaper out of a maxi-pad:

Not only that, but as you can see, he's finished the maxi-pad pigeon diaper in a delightful pirate skull-and-crossbonesway.

If the producers of "Triple Rush" are still wondering why the show got cancelled, it could have something to do with the narrative detours into the bizarre world of bird-diapering. I thought the world of bicycle messengering was supposed to be a non-stop thrill ride. A man who lives in a home full of pigeons wearing diapers and dressed as pirates is the sort of thing I'd expect to find on Animal Planet at like 3:00am.

This is not to say I wouldn't watch the crazy diaper pirate pigeon man show. I mean, I probably wouldn't stay up until 3:00am, but I'd almost certainly DVR it--especially if the guy who lived with the pigeons also rode around in this, which was forwarded to me by a reader:
I smell a "Triple Rush" spinoff--and maybe a hint of pigeon feces.

By the way, if you ever need to diaper a pigeon in an emergency and you don't have any maxi-pads, there's a neat trick you can do with a dollar bill, and hopefully that's the subject of the next "Triple Rush" video.

Lastly, a reader in Philadelphia has spotted an Ikea bike in the wild, complete with backwards fork:

Saw this in center city Philly today. Looks like the classic reverse fork set up for a combination of speed, handling and flat box load portaging.

I'm imagining a home full of improperly-assembled sensible furniture.

Posted in: cycling