Piss and moan with whining and bitching in the forecast

I rode a bike twice this weekend.  I can talk about that tomorrow, probably Wednesday.

I read a lot about bikes on the internet this weekend.  I'm gonna talk about that now.

Last Thursday, I shared my disappointment upon discovering that there was not only one, but two new products coming out in 2013 with the name Honey Badger.

For those of you not familiar with the Honey Badger, it's a viral video on YouTube that is about to have its second birthday and has been viewed almost 51.5 million times.  Apparently my feelings that the whole Honey Badger phenomenon has run its course are not shared.  "The industry" has embraced the concept enthusiastically.

"First off, somebody at Kenda deserves serious kudos for what is, without a doubt, the coolest name for any product introduced this year. Honey Badger? Hell, yes! Buy that marketing hack a beer. Hell, send me his name and I’ll buy him a case. As the name suggests, the Honey Badger is supposed to be capable of tackling any kind of challenge put before it"

Really?

Firstly, had the cycling media elite had their noses to the ground such as I, they would have noticed that another "marketing hack" (agreed) had named not only a tire the Honey Badger, but a whole bike.  A whole hot damned bike.  If naming a tire after the viral omnivore weasel was worthy of "serious kudos," naming a whole bike has to be some kind of Stephen Hawking level shit worthy of major fucking kudos.

Secondly, as funny as the video is (was), its 15 minutes are over... like 30 minutes ago.  Virality is a fickle beast.  Do you think William Hung still gets invited to sing in front of a stadium full of people?


The answer is no.

And lastly, doesn't anybody remember what happened the last time (that I can remember) that two different companies in "the industry" released a product with the same name?  Rock Shox introduced a new "long travel" fork called the Diablo only to get death threats from Jamis who had already trademarked the name.

If you don't remember the Jamis Diablo, perhaps you remember the ads for it that were in MBAction.  The magazine, having very puritanical owners, blacked out the word Diablo everywhere it appeared in the ad, complete with black boxes covering the logo on the image of the bike.  Apparently associating the devil with a fun activity goes against their moral code, as well as not using stock photos over and over, not kowtowing to advertisers, and writing anything close to interesting.

Tomorrow, more ranting before I can talk about the Worst Ride Ever.

Good Lord, that's the second time I've mentioned the Diablo in less than a year.  You know what that means?

Maybe I could get a job at MBAction.