Random As Rhyme

Scanned up some more classic BMX, this time around its a kids book I have had since I was two (1986), Greg’s First Race.

THE BMX BUNCH – Friends draw together by their love for BMX bikes and daredevil stunts. Enjoy the escapades of the BMX BUNCH and the vivid, imaginative language used by fans of BMX freestyling and racing. The adventure, indexed glossary, safety rules, illustrations of BMX gear, and – of course – the bikes themselves entertain and instruct young readers – those who join in BMX action as well as those who watch.

In Greg’s First Race, Greg competes against Colin an ace racer. Only one buy can win. But eve losing has its rewards.

Growing up my dad had one of those nifty boxes that got pay per view for free. This lead to the two of us watching a lot of wrestling in the late 80s and early 90s. Back then the story lines were a lot easier to follow and it was good fun. I have no idea what’s going on in wrestling now but I woke up this morning with a slight interest in tracking down some of the more popular ones from the golden years. I left out some obvious one just because most people know what happened to them.

Jake the Snake

Apparently Jake the Snake wrestled for a long time, about three decades, at various levels of profession wrestling.
However after lots of injuries (neck and back) most notably after the Honkey Tonk man smashed him with a real guitar he became addicted to pain killers, and alcohol. At one point he got so bad that he would take off his pants to show fans why he was really called the snake. It sounds like he has bouts with sobriety and relapse to this day but is trying to work out his issues.

Jake.. not at his best.

The Macho Man Randy Savage

The Macho Man, who’s real name is Randall, actually has had a pretty decent run after wrestling. He appeared in Spiderman, Slim Jim commercials, and Bolt’s growl in the new Disney movie. He has also been seen around 50 cent and had a rap album based around his fued with Hulk Hogan. Unfortunately his then wife Samantha didn’t fair so well as she died of an overdose.

Be a Man Hulk!

Mr. Perfect

I always kind of hated Mr Perfect. I thought he was a pretentious, pompus, ass. Really that’s exactly what his character was and he did a great job of portraying that. He continued wrestling after the WWF WWE and then suddenly died of an overdose in 2006.

Summerslam entrance in 1991 before fighting Bret Hart.

Bret The Hitman Hart

After the Montreal screw job, WCW, and appearing at local Pizza Pizza’s here in Ontario, Brett suffered a minor stroke in 2002 and was paralyzed for awhile. He has now fully recovered and wrote a book called “Hitman: My Real Life In The Cartoon World of Wrestling” he is not addicted to anything and seems to be living happily. He really really hates Shawn Michales. ” Asked if he had seen or spoken to Michaels since 1997, Hart said, “No. And I hope I never do…for his sake.”

Montreal Screw Job and the aftermath.

Hacksaw Jim Duggan

Hacksaw surprisingly still wrestles. Even after getting kidney cancer, but apparently if you beat cancer hard enough with a 2×4 it goes away. HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

The British Bulldog

Davey Boy Smith, aka The British Bulldog had the coolest beaded braids in professional wrestling. Wiki tells me he started competitive wrestling at 15, and continued doing so until the year 2000. Like many other wrestlers he developed an addiction to pain killers and eventually died of a heart attack which may have been caused by the use or steroids throughout his career.

The Ultimate Warrior

Out of all the wrestlers I have talked about today the Warrior was definaltey my favoirte. His entrances were always amazing, he would run out full speed slide into the ring and shake the living hell out of the ropes all to hard 80s guitars.Who would have though that this energetic bag of muscle would one day settle down to be a republican and motivational speaker? Well that’s exactly what happened, after getting fired from the WWE three times he decided to quit wrestling and be a talking head. Bummer.

Warrior vs Rick Rude cage match intro

This list could go on forever, but while researching for this post I learned that a staggering amount of wrestlers die before 65. It’s all documented here and actually quite a shock. No matter what anyone says wrestlers are real athletes and face real injuries. Next time you think about talking down on wrestlers remember that there is a real person behind the persona and more often than not they are suffering for your entertainment.

I have been on nostalgia kick lately, well more than usual, and I got to thinking about how back in the glory days of cartoons (80s and early 90s) cartoons didn’t have music. They had anthems, anthems that got kids kool aid filled blood pumping and ready for the show.

So with this in mind I figured a run down of ten I deem ‘great’ are in order.

10. Jace and the Wheeled Warriors

Let’s kick this off with Jace and the Wheeled Warriors. This one takes a bit to get going, but be patient and you will be rewarded by some decent 80s rock and inspirational lyrics. Reach for the light.

9. Megaman

What this song lacks in overall creativity (it’s two lines in total) it makes up for the basic tempo being faster than most intro songs of the time, which is really saying something.

8. Jem and the Holograms

Had to include this one since from what I can tell it was about an accurate representation of what I have been led to believe 80s MTV was. I would actually rather listen to this than anything by Britney Spears, cause the music is contagious and their songs are better.

7. M.A.S.K.

The green and black grid shots and electrically synthesized voices (Ma Ma Ma Mask) in this intro mean it probably could have doubled for a music video in the early 90s. The lyrics are not to bad either, I wouldn’t mind working overtime if I was fighting crime.

7. Thundercats

Thunder cats HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. The guitar work in this intro makes it a fairly powerful rocker. I wonder who performed these songs was it all one amazing cartoon cover band?

6. He-Man

I don’t really think this intro song is all that epic. But green lantern sampled it for a Ludacris song so it can’t be all that bad.

5. Alvin and The Chipmunks

Dave realized early that he had the first child hit performers living in his house and put them to work. The chipmunks basically set the ground for real people like Miley Cirrus/Hanna Montana.

Did they ever explain how he got those chipmunks anyway?

3. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

The drums don’t stop hitting through this whole song, the lyrics are fairly well rounded, and it starts out loud, and ends with a triumphant “Turtle Power”.

2. Wild Cats

Starts out hard rock, little rap interlude (sort of) then back to hard rock. This intro is pretty well flawless.

1. Transformers Movie Theme

I maybe should not include this one, seeing as how it has an unfair advantage being the only one that is a full length song from a full length movie and credited to some band (LION). However as I have stated before my blog my rules. This just screams 80s hair metal, their is a killer guitar solo that starts at 2:07 seconds in.

Transformers, GI Joe, Teenage Mutant Ninja turtles are all great shows but everyone remembers them.All great but all really easy to remember. What about the old obscure TV shows with classic 80s metal sound tracks? Or the ones you might have been to old to watch? Most people pretend these shows never existed, not me though, I put them into a bad ass list.

12. Bots Master

What’s not to like about this show?

Robots? check
rap intro? check
Cool toys? check.

The only downfall was this show had parts filmed that took advantage of 3D glasses and I never had any around when it was on.

11. Wild C.A.T.S

Rock intros make any show good. Proof.

10. Mummies Alive

This show was pretty ridiculous…ly awesome! Brendan Fraser only started making money from Mummies after this show laid the ground work.

9. Big Guy and Rusty

I have a good feeling I was ‘too old’ to watch this show. But age is just a number, and robots are great.

8. Samurai Pizza Cats

This show was a big parody of itself other popular cartoons out at the time, which was pretty clever. If you listen close they make fun of the Ninja Turtles in the intro.

7. Street Sharks

With the success of the Ninja Turtles it was not uncommon for show creators to make all sorts of animals bi pedal and fight crime. In this case it was Sharks. But it has also been ducks quite a few times:

6. Gargoyles

This show was actually fairly original for the competition at the time. It got popular enough for a game to be released for Sega Genesis that was quite enjoyable.

5. Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors

I actually think I had more books on this show than anything, I should find those books. Anyway this show looks pretty awesome.

4. Biker Mice From Mars

Lyndsey hates when I bring up this show, but this is the only show on the list that was brought back for new audiences. The older show is far, far superior though.

3. Cadillacs and Dinosaurs

Big wig round table discussion:
Boss: Hey guys whats awesome
Worker #1: Dinosaurs!
Boss: Ok, and what else?
Worker #2: Cadillacs!
Boss: Well gentleman we can take the rest of the day off, lets send this one down to the art department.

2. M.A.S.K.

This show is essentially G.I. Joe and Transformers mixed together, sounds good to me. 80stees.com needs to restock this so I can buy it already.

1. C.O.P.S.

I almost didn’t include this one since my gf remembers it so it can’t be that obscure, however after watching the intro I had a huge smile on my face so it made number one. It’s crime fighting time!

Honorable Mentions

Tranzor Z

I put this under honorable because its so obscure that very few people actually remember it. It took me about 10 years just to remember the tittle.

Bobbys World

Perhaps the best thing Howie Mandel ever did.

Brave Star

Cowboys + future + some crazy shit = This.

Tail spin

I know you wanted to be able to surf behind a plane on a boomerang as much as I did.

My Pet Monster

Again, I was probably too old but whatever.

I could do this all day, and I really shouldn’t. So that’s it for now… maybe.

I have had this book for a very, very,  long time. If I recall I purchased it at a book fair at my elementary school in grade 1. Which would put the year about 1989, which was 8 years before I raced my first race.

I figured since this book was publish in 1987 making it over twenty years old it would be pretty interesting to scan it and post it online for everyone to see.

Enjoy.

The next book I need to scan is also pretty interesting. I won’t scan all of this one though cause its pretty big.

This is going to be the first of many, many, remote control devices I wanted over the years. These things were like crack to me, electric wheeled crack. I wanted as many as I could get, and as soon as I got one I got a custom to it and then bored and wanted a newer faster better one. My suppliers tended to be Tyco, Radioshack, and New Bright as they put out the most gimmicky eye catching toy quality RC cars at the time, and my dealers were my parents.

One of the cars I remember wanting really bad was the XRC Ricochet (Tyco had a similar one called the Rebound).

The car was a 2 sided remote control car with big tires that allowed it to run upside down, right side up, on its side, basically as long as a wheel touched the ground this car would orient itself in a way where it could move. What the video doesn’t clearly illustrate however, was that for a toy it was fast as hell.

I remember one day running my mouth of at Jr high saying I had a car that could beat anyone’s and my friend Erran challenged me to a race. So we both ran home and charged our cars and four or so hours when our ‘quick’ chargers finished (whoever thought making kids wait 4 hours for 20 minutes play time is sadistic) the race was on.

I got crushed, ruined, destroyed, humiliated, and emasculated all at once. It was a sad day for my playground ego.

I quickly deemed whatever piece of junk I had at the time inadequate and used up whatever occasion I had coming up (birthday, Christmas, chore completion, passing marks whatever) to acquire one.

As was often the case my parents screwed up and bought me the wrong thing normally I would be devastated however, just this once what they did buy me happened to be better than what I actually wanted.

Instead of getting me the car they got me the bike version I didn’t even know existed. I scoured the Internet wide and far for a photo of this marvel but all I could find was the damn instruction manual.

The bike, like the car, had big tires went fast and could bash off anything and keep going. The big wheels made it stable enough to go on and off road, which was something most remote control motorcycles of the time could not do.

This thing was so much fun that not only did I hold onto it for years, but I also distinctly recall playing with it as recent as 5 years ago before giving it to a neighborhood child who lived near me at my last dwelling.

That kid no doubt soon broke it as after years of punishment at my hands it was starting to show some cracks. The thought of kind of that kind of sucks but I probably started his electric crack habit and the thought of that is kind of awesome.

I wrote this 10 years ago, so I guess I am going on 10 years of BMX. WILD. Expect an I still ride 08 soon.

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I was on a solo mission a few days ago and had just got out of a feeble in my local supermarket complex thingy and almost ran into my friend Jay B’s cousin. He looked at me with this shocked look on his face and asked you still ride? I replied of course I still ride what would I do if I didn’t, I would be completely lost and I proceeded to say later and go ride.

Now that I think about it I would be completely lost without my bike. My bike is a form of self expression, its helped me get stuff out of my system whether it is joy or anger or whatever.

Without my bike I would probably be a druggie or something stupid like that wasting my life. I need my BMX bike it is a part of me, no wait I need to ride, it doesn’t really matter what type of bike or terrain as long as I am on a bike I can have fun (even on a tricycle can have fun).

A lot of people think it is strange that a bike can mean so much to me but it does. Take it away and I will not be me I will be a bazzaro me (superman reference).

I won’t be the guy who never seems pissed of of sad about anything, I won’t be the dude who is always up for having fun or chillin, I dunno what I would be like, thinking about it just scares me.

So next time you feel like asking me If I still ride don’t because you already know the answer. When I am 40 I will still have a bike and ride it as much as physicall possible.