Time lapse TV, twitter and things

I’m bored, so I thought I’d blog again. Naturally that means that the content of this post may well be lacking in quality or content. Or both. Read on at your peril.

AMA superbike racing has gone from something that I watch regularly to something that I barely pay any attention to. That’s not because I’m not interested in it, but rather because DMG and SpeedTV have royally fucked up. Somehow they have decided that people who watch a motor racing event (in this case, motorcycle racing) are quite OK with watching it 3 weeks after the event. At 10:30pm. On a Saturday night.

Seriously.

Just think about that for a few seconds. There are, oh, 10 or so online magazines dedicated to motorcycles and motorcycle racing of some description. ALL of them cover AMA racing, not to mention World Superbike, British Superbike and MotoGP racing. If you’re a motorcycle fiend as I am, then you tend to read those fairly regularly, and it’s kinda hard not to see them posting things like “Mat Mladin wins Barber”, or “Mat Mladin sweeps Road Atlanta”, or “Mat Mladin wins again” when the broadcast is delayed for two days, let alone 21 days.

But the folk at DMG are rich businesspeeps, so they must be wicked smart and all, because clearly their plan for generating interest in the series eludes most people, as evidenced by all the chatter on various online forums and the declining attendance at AMA events. They obviously know better than all the fans who have clearly stated their disgust at the situation.

The same can’t be said for World Superbike and MotoGP (at least thus far this season): SpeedTV has managed to show most of the races on the same day, or at worst with a 2 day delay. Clearly SpeedTV can get it’s shit together, so I’m going to lay the blame squarely on DMG’s feet.

So, what to do if you can’t actually see the races in a faintly timely fashion (and who is DMG kidding – who gives a rat’s ass about seeing a 3 week old race)? Well, you go web surfing. And looking at twitter. And then you start to see fun things like Lance Armstrong’s twitter page, and oddly enough you see interesting people who (at least at some point in time) follow Armstrong’s page.

Like Mat Mladin, for example. You know, the guy who has completely dominated AMA superbike racing for the past several years and who has managed to develop a reputation for being a relatively brusque S.O.B.

Mat Mladin at Daytona

So anyways, there I was browsing twitter because I was bored and was waiting for the weekend where I’m going to get my ass handed to me on a platter at the Sterling Classic Road Race and then hopefully watch some World Superbike racing when what did I see? Yup, I saw that Mat has started blogging. And it is actually somewhat interesting. Like, for example, the discussion about the pace car. From my perspective a rolling start just looks stupid and should be sent back to the nether depths of hell (commonly known as NASCAR). However, Mat actually seems to like it, or at least likes it enough that he seems to view it as a potentially good thing. Or that Mat actually doesn’t seem to hate riding in the wet (which seems to be what all the media wants you to believe); rather he wants to do so in a safe manner.

But there is a small problem in wonderland – you can’t comment on his blog. That’s a cardinal baddie in my book. So Mat, buddy, you need to fix that. You need to let the comments fly and open your blog up to the great unwashed hordes of your fans (and probably detractors) so that we can commence with the great mud slinging experiment.

And you need to post more flying pictures. So let me know when you’ve done that. M’kay?