Posts tagged “motorcycle”

ChittahChattah Quickies

  • Harley-Davidson: You Can File Our Obituary Where The Sun Don't Shine – Passionate and 100% on-brand response to rumblings about Harley not making it through 2009. Seen as full-page ad in today's New York Times and presumably elsewhere
  • Very slight story on how and why we use lines from movies in regular conversation – It also turns out that using movie quotes in everyday conversation is akin to telling a joke and a way to form solidarity with others, according to a researcher who has actually studied why we like to cite films in social situations.
    "People are doing it to feel good about themselves, to make others laugh, to make themselves laugh," said Richard Harris, a psychology professor at Kansas State University.
    Harris decided to ask hundreds of young adults about their film-quoting habits after he and his graduate students realized it was a common behavior that no one had looked at closely before.
    He found that all of the participants in his study had used movie quotes in conversation at one point or another. They overwhelmingly cited comedies, followed distantly by dramas and action adventure flicks.
    As for horror films, musicals and children's movies, "fuh-get about it." They were hardly ever cited.
    When asked about their emotions while quoting films, most people reported feeling happy.

Tiny stories on a hot day

  • At the gas station this morning: a man on a motorcycle pulled up, stopped in front of one of the pumps, picked up the windshield-washing squeegee, washed the visor of his full-face helmet without removing it from his head, and took off again.

  • I walked past an elderly man in a straw hat, carrying a single golf club as he walked towards the local golf course. “Traveling light,” I asked? “Too hot to carry the whole bag,” he said.

  • And finally, . . .

    Dog in motorcycle sidecar, Highway 1, El Granada, California

    dog-in-sidecar.jpg

  • WTC WTF2

    This AM outside the hotel, in front of the WTC site on Church St., is some kind of motorcylist rally. There are a lot of Harley-looking bikes (I’m just looking out the window, I can’t tell) and a guy in a monk-outfit standing on top of a trailer announcing stuff. Finally, the manly chant of “USA! USA! USA!” has come wafting through the windows. I have no idea who these people are (and they may disperse before I make it out to find out), but it seems always interesting here.

    Update: the waiter in the restaurant says that these are all people who contributed in some way to a commemoration of September 11, and are there in support/acknowledgement of that.

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