As you may remember from my motorcycle project customising my new Honda Shadow VLX 600, I’ve added a few extras to the motorbike itself such as a windshield and also a customised seat with better gel and foam (OEM seat just customised by a local tailor shop, it works the treat!).

But I still had one particular motorcycle topic in mind that I needed to address.

Motorcycle gear aka protective clothing

So my wife Anita, being the great wife she is, told me to either gear up or not ride. She was serious about this and I’ve been reading about how motorcycle gear is actually important and can save your life.

Last couple of days I’ve been following this excellent review website for advice and info on good motorcycle clothing. According to this website (which has tons of great advice), there’s a lot of crap motorcycle gear online and it’s super easy to end up with the bad stuff. So after lots of reading on lots of gear guides, I’ve bought all this motorcycle gear below.

Helmet

Arai Defiant X helmet. It’s full face since I appreciate my ugly mug and don’t want to lose my jaw if I drop my Shadow. Very expensive helmet but great for long rides.

I’ve tried those beanie helmets and there’s no comparison. A full face helmet is miles better in comfort. Lots of geezers riding with beanie helmets over here.

Anyway it costed me $670 with shipping.

Jacket

This is where I went on full cruiser mode. After reading several times this cruiser jackets guide, I bought the Alpinestars Dyno v2 leather jacket. The guide says that cruiser jackets need to be armored and this one is like a bulletproof vest/jacket with the back and chest armor.

A very comfortable jacket and looks incredible. Get compliments all the time. Costed me $615 with addon armor and shipping.

Trousers

Or “pants” as Americans call them. Went with Tourmaster overpants as they’re big around the waist and must I admit, I’m out of shape. I won’t fit inside regular leather pants, already tried at a local shop.

These overpants can be removed on the fly. Comes with knee armor already and I sent an email to the review website on suggestions for hip armor. There’s this thing called CE certification which approves functional armor as protective. No CE armor for hips so looking to see which to buy next.

I love the overpants although they don’t go too well with my Alpinestars Dyno v2 jacket. The overpants are textile while the jacket is HQ leather so it’s a bit of a visual shock to be fair.

I don’t really care. Do you?

Cost: $160 delivered to my door.

Gloves

The amount of gloves that you can buy from is huge. Like real huge-ly and big-ly. So many motorcycle gloves to choose from and again this motorcycle gloves guide comes to the rescue to help me choose a good set of protective motorcycle gloves.

My choice? The Held Sambia gloves. WOW the gloves guide was correct, these gloves are made for riding anywhere. Practical and suit my Dyno v2 jacket even though they’re part leather and part textile (talking of the gloves).

The gloves’ palms have these tiny beads to protect against burns and abrasion. The material is called Superfabric and it adapts to your hands when gripping the handlebar.

A bit expensive but I really think they’re worth the money. Costed me $120 delivered from Germany.

Boots

My cruiser mind went “loco” again and I opted for the Icon 1000 Elsinore boots. Freaking crazy boots! They look all Mad Max styled and ready to kick heads. A bit too hooligan-ish for motorcycle boots, but I get compliments on them all the time.

Problem is the overpants cover most of the boots but that’s until I find a good pair of motorcycle trousers to fit my belly on. It’ll be leather, how not.

The boots costed me $295 delivered to my door.

Now Anita wants to ride…

Reading around, my personal choice is that Anita must also be geared up if she wants to ride with me. I’ve seen enough gory pics to know that you have to ride “atgatt” (“all the gear, all the time”) or not ride at all.

I’m already debating what to buy for her, but that’s another topic to be dealt with as I continue to build upon my custom Honda Shadow motorcycle project.

Loving 2020 so far. Much love for everyone!

Henry & Anita

Here’s my new baby, a 2002 Honda Shadow VLX 600 in spanking good condition. Got it on the second day of the year as my new year’s resolution.

I’ve always been into customizing all kinds of stuff including cars so wanted to move to motorcycles now. This Honda Shadow is super easy to customise or leave as it is. I’m adding some bags to it and using it to commute. Bought it fro a guy wanting to bob the hell out of it but not into that. We’ll see!

Now I need to get the right motorcycle gear like a decent motorcycle jacket and helmet as I still have bits of skin missing in my right arm from trying a mate’s Harley Electra and dropping at 40 mph. Lesson learned!

Here’s to a good 2020 on two wheels!

Captain Picard

Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) was the real hub of the crew, not just because of his rank, but also because of his balanced personality. Star Trek is fun and I wouldn’t change anything in it, but for this sort of show, an over-confident, adventurous he-man wouldn’t have worked as the ship’s captain (leave that part for Commander Riker!).

Picard had to be extremely educated and a real diplomat. He had to be tempered yet firm, confident yet willing to rely on the judgment of others, and also something of a salty dog (or a stardust dog or whatever the space equivalent of a salty dog might be! He had to have the equivalent of sea air in his veins). He was a visionary and a realist, but he was also deeply sentimental at times. His “home” was a place where there was no horizon, and that was thrilling to him. Yet he was sentimental for the memory of his Earth home. He wasn’t a very good singer though!

Commander William Riker

Commander William Riker started out as sort of an action hero, and even a bit of a ladies man. I believe it was the third season in which he first appeared with his beard. The creators of the series actually designed the look of his beard and it suited him well. He seemed more like a commander: more contemplative and patient. He seemed to be following Picard more closely, trying to learn from and emulate him. He was more mature but he still kept his charming ways (i.e.: turning on the ladies or playing practical jokes with his friends). He also played a mean trombone.

Lieutenant Commander Data

Lieutenant Commander Data (or “old yellow eyes”) was of course an android, and was the most colourful and interesting character on the ship. He had even greater capabilities than the ship’s computer, yet the innocence of a child. Like Spock in Star Trek, he saw things in a literal, logical way. He kept his cool at all times, and he spoke in a mild, calming voice without contractions or emotion (although his comments were occasionally peppered with “hmm”s). And he was very gentle, despite being capable of incredible strength. As an android, there was something built into his system that was always looking to improve his functions. Therefore, he had a curiosity of humans and wanted to understand them.

Many of the shows’ most humourous and touching scenes revolved around this fact. Unfortunately late in the show’s run and in all of the Next Generation movies, the writers created Data to actually have desires to be human. It seemed an obsession with him, which was not only illogical, but also dangerous. A healthy android should know that he can only be fully functional if he is what he was programmed to be. The creators of Star Trek, even in the movies, never changed Spock’s Vulcan behavior. It was a shame that Data was “fleshed out” so to speak.

Lieutenant Commander Geordi La Forge

Lieutenant Commander Geordi La Forge was interesting to watch because one automatically tends to look at a person’s eyes when they talk. But as he was blind and had to wear a visor to see things through infrared radio waves, we could never see his eyes. The windows to his soul had to be viewed through his voice and mannerisms, yet I found it very easy to adjust to Geordi as a person without eyes. He was overall a friendly type who was not terribly interesting, but he was nice to have around.

So that’s my geeky time over! I’ll continue with the rest of the cast in a next post, so until then, keep on trucking, lads.

Introduction and Cast

I’ve never really watched more than a handful of Star Treks in my life, so I was sort of probed into watching this series. I first caught it at the end of the second season, which was a great time to catch it, as the first season was overall, rather poor. Like Star Trek, The Next Generation first started out focusing on cool sets and costumes. I had a lot of fun with them and with the weird aliens with funny-shaped heads. And some of the stories were very innovative. But as the series progressed, it also took on thrilling concepts.

We in the audience had to use our imaginations more. Unlike other sci-fi dramas that are just fun, after watching this series, you’d find yourself still thinking about the worlds and characters you saw that day as if they were real. Or you’d put yourself in the picture of wondering how you’d handle a tough situation. There were also fun things to wonder about, like who vacuumed the floors, or why the crew never wore seat belts, at least while traveling through meteor showers or being attacked by photon torpedoes!

The wonderful irony about The Next Generation (and Star Trek too) was that through telling stories of alien cultures, we learned and experienced more about our own human qualities. We could use ourselves as measuring sticks to gauge our own behavior by watching how alien cultures created and/or solved their problems. Almost every episode of The Next Generation made this working theory available to us.

And it was quite a visual feast. It started out looking a little cheesy like Star Trek (which is fun), but with each year, there were new technological developments and a bigger budget. By the third or forth year, The Next Generation could easily hold its own with any of the finest-looking fantasy – sci-fi feature films out there. The art direction in particular, was exemplary. Even the aliens became truly lifelike and chilling. But like with all great TV shows, why we tune in every week is ultimately because of the cast. And this was one of the finest.

Can you imagine a country with no social dancing? That’s what we discovered when we went for a holiday to Russia in the beginning of September. Rock’n’Roll dancing is associated there with Sports Rock’n’Roll – couples train for competitions and it is more a sport rather than a dance.

Having discovered previously on the Internet a list for Russian Rock’n’Roll contacts, we spoke to some of them and we were privileged to see a training session of one of the teams. We were astounded by the incredible agility and professionalism of these dancers breathtakingly performing air-steps with complex footwork – some of them as young as 13! No wonder Russian couples win a lot of medals at competitions and are invited to teach this type of dance (or should we say sport?) all over the world!

Impressive as it may be, Sports Rock’n’Roll is not a social dance. After a long search, we did find one place for social dancing – the Moscow University. There you have a choice between a Hustle disco (a Ceroc type of dance that came from America in the late 70’s) and a small dance class where one can learn a mixture of Lindy and Boogie-Woogie moves.

The teachers, Vladimir and Kseniya used to take part in international Boogie-Woogie competitions and are now studying Lindy Hop which is virtually unknown in Russia. Their original worm-up and professional teaching technique made this class a memorable experience for us, especially since we had a chance to have a dance with them afterwards and compare our styles.

Facing the lack of social dancing as a concept in Russia and the economic situation which makes it impossible to organise dance classes or parties on a big scale, Vladimir and Kseniya are still determined to bring this dance to Russian people. We thoroughly enjoyed our dancing experience in Moscow and would recommend anyone visiting Russia to investigate the local Rock’n’Roll scene over there.

I’ll watch Derek Jacobi in virtually anything but this series wore thin on me after about half a dozen viewings. Set in the middle ages, Jacobi plays a monk with a gift for herb cures and solving murders.

The show has some interesting looks at the period and the day-to-day lives of monks, and the supporting cast is usually quite good. But the first few shows were laughable in how much the sets and costumes looked like Disneyland. The setting is in Wales, yet everything and everyone looked so clean and shiny!

By the time I stopped watching it, the roads were appropriately muddy and people had dirt-encrusted fingernails. And at least the autopsies looked like they were taking tips from the production of The Name of the Rose. But this isn’t quite as good as The Name of the Rose (based on the book by Umberto Eco, about a monk who must solve a string of murders).

The murders in this show are all basically the same since motivations in the middle ages were not as varied as they are now. And the murders weren’t usually done in any terribly imaginative way. It overall was more Robin Hood than Umberto Eco, so I didn’t stay with it. But maybe it got better.

It says a lot that this show has to be produced in England because the American networks don’t want to handle a show so controversial. Michael Moore, creator of the documentary “Roger and Me”, continues his attacks on corporate America. He finds people who are experiencing some sort of problem like layoffs or financial discrimination, or maybe their lives are being threatened by toxic waste or the fine print on a contract that even no attorney can understand.

Moore finds a way to confront the corporation in some comical form that is of course steeped in dark humour. He rarely gets beyond the front door or able to speak to anyone but a PR man (or woman), but sometimes, the fact that a company’s dirty dealings are being brought to the public’s attention, is enough for them to change their policy.

Moore helped a man’s HMO pay for an operation that saved his life, and he’s helped people get back their jobs. So his methods are at times, quite effective. But after several viewings I stopped watching because his aim seemed to be in just making fun or corporations and not really doing anything constructive.

It’s great for the working class to have a voice, especially one as striking and humourous as his, but I’d like to see him hit those companies where it will do the public some good instead of just below the belt. His show does have other types of satire as well though.

One of the funniest bits was a commercial he made with Sally Struthers, based on her commercials for people to send funds for starving children in Africa. Here she pleads for people to send TV sets to Afghanistan [the sets are parachuted out of airplanes].

• By the way I updated my long hair diary if you’re interested in knowing about my journey to long hair!

Undercut hairstyle and hipster haircuts instead of long hair in Heavy Metal culture?

With this website we are trying to bridge the long hair men culture of heavy metal with heavy metal itself. Back in the 1990s, long hair in all its glory was a must for heavy metal goers and it kept itself like that throughout the 2000s too. However over the last 3 years, we have seen a kind of hairstyle entering our long hair culture, and that is the undercut hairstyle.

Enter the undercut hairstyle

Now for those of you long hair guys, an undercut hairstyle is a type of hairstyle where a haircut is down in a bowl cut so the hair at the top of the head is long while the sides of the head, including the back, are shaved or buzzed. Usually the undercut hairstyle is reserved for stupid hipsters and yuppies but the undercut and similar hipster hairstyles have entered the heavy metal scene.

I blame Skrillex for the long hair undercut

Some of you will know Skrillex. He is that hipster with long hair and an undercut. He used to play heavy metal and rock before he moved into making noise, or as it has been dubbed, dub-step. For some mysterious reason, the new age heavy metal fans have adopted those hipster haircuts and undercut hairstyles like it’s going out of business.

Is heavy metal going the hipster way?

Had you asked me this same question in the mid 2000s, I would have said that our heavy metal fan base was strong enough and diversified enough to kick out any hipsters and yuppies. However, we all grow older, get jobs, get married, have children and we stop going to gigs. The kids who replace us are those who are in an era of Youtube, Porntube, Facebook and Xbox 360 live. These kids will listen to a Metallica song on their hipster Iphones and the next song will be a Skrillex track.

I seriously believe that long hair is being lost in heavy metal, and hence this website I have built to recreate the long hair and heavy metal union. Seriously, the hipster mentality and fashion is creeping into heavy metal and last time I went to a gig I lost count of how many guys had short hair. In fact the most common hairstyle was the slicked back undercut (yeah check that hairstyle website for some hipster comedy) and I could only count with one hand the amount of long hair guys in the concert. Not good news.

Stop it with the undercut hairstyles and grow your hair long!

I am going out of my way to post interviews with heavy metal guys with long hair. We simply cannot let the long hair status be lost and have the undercut hairstyle, slicked back undercut or whatever other hipster haircuts take the place of long hair. I for one, will try my best and lend a hand by keeping this website up and helping any of you with haircut doubts choose the right hairstyle path.

By the way I’ve updated just now my list of interviews and my long hair blog!

Turns out that today our team at work had to visit a team of associates at another corporate site of our company. Basically we have two corporate sites, and I work at one when I’m working in the office. Because of my job, I get to work at home most of the time which means that I can wear whatever I want, and that includes my long hair too.

So, I suit up, put my long curls into man bun, as it is known, and proceed to go with my three colleagues to visit this team at the other location some 30 minutes away from our site.

The situation

We get there at 2 PM, the plan was to have lunch and then do a series of meetings so as to go through the quarterly reports and how we can improve the cross-performance of both our teams.

We choose the restaurant in downtown Buenos Aires and get on with it. For the record, I hate going to restaurants to eat with co-workers. I want to enjoy my food alone or with my wife and kids, not with some guys I’m pretending that I like.

It turned out that there was a bald guy in the other team, his name is Mike and he’s English too as we have quite the international team at our company. The guy is in his late 20s and he’s already a Director of Operations, which is one of the highest ranks at our company. He got there so soon because he’s the nephew of our company’s CEO, which is so typical of countries like this one where family members are given priority status in a company. As soon as we met outside the restaurant, Mike had been looking at me in a funny manner right from the get-go. I hadn’t met this team before as we do our communication via emails and phone calls, so I had never met this chap called Mike.

So, we sit down and proceed to order our food. It’s customary here in Argentina to have some kind of soup as the first dish of the meal, so off we go and we all order chicken soup. What’s to follow is an exchange of words between Mike and I; I’m going by my memory (of this event), so I’ll be paraphrasing the entire conversation as you’ll read below.

Mike continues to look at me funny as we wait for the chicken soup. Once the waiter brings our first dish, the bald guy proceeds to yell out, in front of our co-workers, “Henry, you should watch out that you don’t get one of those frizzy hairs of yours in your soup!”. The rest of my team laughs briefly so as to leave the matter there, after all, they know I’m a big freaking lover of long hair and I feel very strong about the cause. I stare at Mike for a couple of seconds, then shrug it off and continue with my soup.

The bald guy ain’t happy that I’ve not given a toss about his stupid comment. So he then says (I’m paraphrasing) why is it that I have long hair considering my job; that long hair only belongs in jobs for pizza-delivery boys or for guys working at a warehouse away from the public. What this guy is trying to do is pick on my long hair to humiliate me. I ain’t gonna let this idiot get away with it.

“You’ve got a problem with my long hair, pal?” I tell him.

“Well, everyone at your job position has short hair and so do those of us above you in the corporate ladder. Don’t you think that’s just more than a simple coincidence?” he says.

“My long hair has nothing to do with my job and my job performance. So stay away from trying to associate my long hair with my job position. Thank you.” I reply.

“I’m sorry, Henry. But you trying to be yourself and a free spirit by having long hair goes against the corporate ethos of our company. We’re a serious company with a formal code of conduct which means that scruffy long hair isn’t welcomed here”, he yams about again.

“First of all, there is not a single line in our code of conduct or dress code that goes against long hair. Second of all, did you just say that my long hair is scruffy? I ask him, now looking “slightly” intimidating to him.

“Oh… I’m sorry, Henry, it’s the only way that I can describe the type of hair that you have. Never have I seen such bushy hair. Like I say, we work in a formal place and if you ever want to be promoted and leave your mere management position to a position like ours (referring to his position in the company), you just will not go anywhere with that hair. You can call it free speech or freedom of doing whatever I want, if you will. But that does not mean that you can get to write your own terms while looking out of place from the rest of your work colleagues as they have to confirm to the implicit rules about hairstyles in the workplace”, the bald guy yaps again.

“Listen up, bald guy. There are no rules about long hair in our company. I wear long hair because, unlike you, I can grow hair and have my wife caress it while we’re getting intimate. She loves my hair and so do the majority of women. Women love hair, be it short or long. You, on the other hand, have surrendered your follicles like a pussy and you’re bald for life. How’s that for a fucked up life while trying to stir up crap over your own inferiority complex, you bald idiot? I shout at him staring directly into his eyes.

My co-worker sitting next to me said something along the lines of “Henry, chill out, Mike is just teasing you”. No, I ain’t chilling out, this bald guy knows very well he’s trying to pick on me because he’s got an ugly shiny dome for a head. Not going to let that happen.

As soon as I finish my sentence calling him a bald idiot, he looks down and shakes his head, as if not believing what had just happen.

I then proceeded to tell him, “Hey Mike, look here”. Guy looks at me again and I follow the sentence with this:

“Fuck your ugly bald head, mate”, I tell him again. I then stand up, stare at him into his eyes again, he looks down and then I walk away to head back to the office.

This isn’t the first time that I have to deal with some idiot calling me out for being in my 40s and having long hair. It’s the fist time though that a co-worker picks on my long hair, especially since the company that I work for has a very relaxed dress code and not once have I been told that my long hair is inappropriate.

I’m not willing to allow anyone to give me crap. Sure enough I may have overreacted, but believe you me when I say that, next time, this bald idiot will think twice about projecting his inferiority complex on a non-balding human.

The only thing that I’m having to now worry about is if this gets reported to my department’s director. While I show no remorse for what I did, I may be getting into deep waters with this.

I’ll let you all know how that goes.

Henry

Lamberto Bava directed this Dario Argento produced gorefest in 1985.

The premise is quite simple. A group of people gather in a new movie house called The Metropolis” to view a film. We are (slightly) introduced to the characters and the movie (in the Metropolis) begins. The folks are watching a movie about demons when the events portrayed in the film start happening for real, right there in the theater.

From there on out we have what is basically an Italian zombie movie (if you are bitten you become one) with the normal people trapped inside the Metropolis protecting themselves against the demons. I’ll be the first to admit that there is not too much of a plot to this film. But hey, plot is not what this is all about.

The film maintains a level of excitement continually, there is never a dull moment. Add to this some stunning visuals, cool special effects by Sergio Stivaletti, and a rocking soundtrack featuring Motley Crue, Accept, Billy Idol, Claudio Simonetti (of Goblin) and others. All in all this is simply a fun film to watch.

There were only 18 episodes of this and I’ve only seen half of those but most of the time I was laughing my head off.

Edina and Patsy (Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French) are a perfect example of the kinds of upscale, vacuous, chi-chi, forty-something women who have nothing better to do than indulge in the latest fads and trends, and exercise their credit cards at every opportunity.

I’ve seen so many women like these; I can honestly say that French and Saunders are spot-on in their interpretations. They are selfish women, and the show does nothing to hide it, especially in Patsy’s case. She pretty much despises Edina’s teenage daughter Saffron (“Saffy”), and taunts her and even puts her cigarettes out on her (and in one episode set in Morocco, she even sells Saffy into white slavery!). But no matter how wicked the humour ever gets (and it does get wicked!), every punch is directed at Patsy and Edina themselves since they’re showing what women like this do and how they really act (believe me, it’s not stretched as far as you think!).

The whole cast is great, including Julia Sawalha as “Saffy” (or “sweetie-darling” if you prefer. How she ended up “normal” is beyond me!). Jane Horrocks as “Bubble” is also endearing. Well, at least her voice is! There are also some great guest appearances, including Lulu, Helena Bonham Carter, Marianne Faithful, Miranda Richardson, Britt Eckland and Eleanor Bron.