Guilty pleasures: The press releases of Johnny Rock Page

Is there anyone else who secretly admits to looking forward to the next-level craziness that is a Johnny Rock Page press release?

Ulrich, you kill me. 

Roadracing World actually posts these on their website with a bold “Warning―JRP Content” header. But I’m compelled to read them all, with a kind of morbid Oh-My-God-That-Train’s-Going-To-Hit-That-Car fascination. 

Or, like reading Donald Trump's poll results.

JRP was almost likable at the very beginning. A guy who made a small fortune in the admittedly skanky high-fee/high-risk-location ATM business, but then started to blow it in a way we can all relate to: competing as a perennial backmarker in AMA Pro roadracing. Who wouldn’t wanna’ do that, eh?

I even intuitively sided with him in 2009, after JRP “held his line” and possibly influenced the outcome of a battle between Josh Hayes and Aaron Yates at Mid-Ohio. 

Page may have been over the line when he left his mic on and had a camera rolling while Al Ludington (then road racing tech director) reamed him out afterward. That video went viral. Despite the fact that most AMA insiders felt that Page had it coming, Ludington was forced to apologize. Someone―presumably AMA Pro Racing―has since gone to a lot of trouble to steam clean it off the Interwebs.

The reason that Page was mic’d and had a camera rolling was that he was one of the several AMA privateers who thought he might have what it took to be a reality TV star. Chris Fillmore tried it, too. So did Larry Pegram. In the defense of those other two guys, they were hardscrabble privateers leaving no stone unturned in the effort to fund a racing season.

Page was doing something different. He could just fund his season. He was driven by narcissism. And not your typical, here’s-another-selfie-on-Facebook narcissism. Nope, JRP deserves his own page in the DSM. He didn’t want to become famous as a motorcycle racer, he wanted to become famous for being famous. Like his romantic obsession Paris Hilton. 

He seems to have met her once, after which he hired a plane to tow a banner up and down the beach in Malibu professing his desire to marry her, and bought her a vintage Cadillac that he parked outside the locked gate of her house, which she probably spent a lot of time observing over a video feed from her panic room.

I can see his point though. They are made for each other.

Just when you thought the JRPsych Show couldn’t get weirder, he found God. Seemingly. And declared that he was running for President of the United States.

How great is that?

All of which causes me to wonder if he’s just crazy enough to have put is finger on America’s current national psyche―or at least the psyche of a good part of contemporary America.

Part of the frustration of choosing "reality TV star" as a career path hinges on the simple arithmetic of fame in 21st C. America. Reality TV basically unlinked talent and stardom, allowing anyone (or, at least, anyone with no sense of shame) to envision himself or herself as the next Survivor or Real Housewife. The problem is that there’s a lag time measured in years between the development of the reality TV phenomenon and the realization that, that-could-be-me. So that by the time millions of people have realized, like Johnny Rock, that they too could be famous, millions of other people are pitching themselves to producers, too.

So now, TV audiences are shrinking and fragmenting―fame isn’t what it used to be―and competition for spots is stiffer than ever. True story: back in the late Naughties, I used to ride up I-15 from San Diego on the way to Willow Springs every month or two. And I used to pass a huge billboard for a summer camp for kids. Not a horse-riding camp, or band camp, or Scouts... No, it was a camp to prepare your kids for roles on Reality TV.

Can you fucking imagine?

JRP has now cut all the video from his failed effort to become a reality TV star into a feature film. This trailer's been played less than 1,000 times though. So that's another project that's not looking too good.

I don’t think Page will be successful, but I think the whole “finding God” angle he’s been trying on for the last coupl’a years is clever. He understands that what matters in contemporary America isn’t religious devotion, but rather it's simply religiosity. Most Americans describe themselves as Christian, but they’d more accurately say they’re Christianistic―practicing something that has the trappings of Christian faith, with very few of the commitments. So Page knows there’s no risk he’ll ever be called on it.

But his sudden devotion could have helped to separate him from the reality TV herd a bit. It didn’t work, but I still think that Page is completely crazy in a way that might, some day fall into synch with America’s national end-of-empire delusions. (Idea for new reality TV show: "Real Narcissists of YouTube.)

Face it―before this election cycle is over, the Republican Party may nominate a candidate who makes no more sense than Johnny Rock Page. If anything, Trump's less of a self-made man (though far more of a reality TV star.) 

While I’m sure that MotoAmerica’s top brass performed synchronized eye-rolls when they read that Page will be back racing this year, there’s a part of me that can’t wait to read his next press release.

Dear Monster: I've got a better idea

So, a few weeks ago I watched Boogie Nights on Netflix. It’s a great film, written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, set in the porn industry in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. Pre-AIDS, just as the business was making the transition from film to video.

Burt Reynolds killed it, in his role as porn director Jack Horner  ― a self-proclaimed auteur with who deeply resents the rise of video and, with it, the (now-ubiquitous) ‘amateur’ genre of porn.

Reynolds perfectly, seriously, deadpans his way through Anderson’s nuanced and profoundly ironic script. Burt’s completely believable as a guy who completely believes he’s a fucking artist. The fact that he’s producing complete schlock utterly escapes him.

My appreciation for this film was enhanced by the fact that, back in the late '70s and early '80s, I sat through hundreds of hours of grindingly boring, terribly-written “story” while watching that shot-on-film porn in dingy theaters and video arcades where, if you dropped your wallet on the floor, you'd just leave it there and report your credit cards as stolen.

That influenced my evaluation of a video that showed up in my Facebook feed last month, called Dirt Shark The Doonies, sponsored by Monster Energy. While the title’s a play on Goonies, the video isn’t a riff on the horror genre. The trite dialogue (thankfully limited) and self-indulgent direction ― not to mention the scantily-clad chicks ― are all just bad porn, made worse by the fact that there’s no sex.

There’s lots of sexism, don’t get me wrong. It’s easily as sexist, if not more so, than real porn. 

A minute or so into this film one rider looks up and sees the female talent, wearing little more than sunscreen, and says, "Look at those girls. They look really thirsty." At this point, if you were just making a bad movie, instead of a bad porn movie, they'd ride to rescue. Instead ― and this shows real creative genius ― They do this...

It’s only 8 1/2 minutes long, but when I went back through it to pick out a couple of frame caps and gifs, watching it was enduring a rerun of Andy Warhol’s ‘Empire’.

It’s so fucking terrible, as a video, that I don’t know whether I’m writing this to achieve some kind of catharsis, or to call out Monster Energy for producing (yet another) piece of trite sexist shit. 

I can totally hear someone at Monster whining, "But it wasn't sexist. There were chicks on bikes, too." Hey, AMA and MIC, check it out; women are riding more.

The motorcycle industry is desperate to trumpet any good news, when it comes to increasing the number of women riders. And the racing industry is hardly in a position to turn down sponsors, no matter how fucking tasteless they (or their products) are.

But I honestly wish they’d just go away. In fact, to encourage them I’ve got a suggestion for a cost-effective sponsorship opportunity that will reach a far larger audience than “Doonies” ever will...

Dear Monster: Has it occurred to you to sponsor actual porn? It’s way, way better than this, and the female talent is probably treated more respectfully.

I suppose I don’t blame the riders in this video. Most of them are not, probably, philosophy majors or noted ethicists. It was probably a pretty good day for them, and after all, Monster writes their checks. And this isn’t a diss on motorcycle racing per se, although I roll my eyes every time I see the Monster Energy “girls” at races, too.

Pikes Peak: Will it be 100 and out?

I’m surprised that more people aren’t talking about the restricted number of motorcycle entries being allowed in this years (centenary edition) of the Pikes Peak International Hillclimb.

Am I wrong about this? I’ve heard from a couple of sources that there will only be 33 bikes accepted this year.

I raced PPIHC twice in the naughties, and remember a field of well over 100 bikes (including quads, yuck) when I was there. But, as more and more of the course was paved and average speeds increased, it seemed that the organizers were increasingly skittish about motorcycles in general.

A quick check of entry lists for the last couple of years shows 60-some bikes and quads. In spite of the fact that few competitors were racing, a rider was killed in 2014 (ironically after crossing the finish line) and then another was killed last year.

At least once in the past, organizers discontinued all bike classes after such fatalities. But it seems that this year, they’re taking a page from the TT organizers' book. After David Jeffries died in the 2003 TT, they reduced the number of entries and then discontinued morning practice, thus reducing the total risk exposure.

Some people have said that by reducing the number of competitors, PPIHC will increase the number of practice runs available to each rider. That may be true but it doesn’t follow that increased practice will make the race safer. If anything more runs might encourage riders to seek the limit, raise average speeds, and make the race even more dangerous.

In any case, if the stories I’ve been hearing are true, and there’s only going to be 33 slots available for motorcycles this year, I have to wonder whether the race will survive the next fatality at all. I always thought that the Isle of Man might finally kill off the TT once it had reached its centenary. They didn’t, and in fact it’s gone from strength to strength since then. But Pikes Peak doesn’t have nearly the TT’s profound sense of its own history.

One more high-profile incident and the organizers may well say, “We got to 100. That’s a good time to call it quits.”

Careful up there, eh?

UPDATE... Shortly after posting this, a little bird told me that a few months ago, the number of motorcycles was destined to be zero. But, the bikers negotiated one third of the 100 scheduled race slots. Watch for an improved new-rider program (perhaps modeled on the Isle of Man's program) to be announced in the coming weeks.

Hit me again: On the one charity motorcyclists should support

A few months ago, I wrote an admittedly provocative post criticizing the Distinguished Gentlemen's Ride, in support of prostate cancer.

I made a point I've made over and over: there are all kinds of worthy causes out there... that other people should support. But that we, motorcyclists, should focus our charitable efforts in one narrow area, spinal injury research.

No column I've ever written has triggered so many comments or personal attacks. Many motorcyclists would rather stick a camera up their butt than admit that that their next motorcycle ride might result in spending the rest of their lives on another set of wheels.

The motorcycle industry will, by and large, ignore me because it's made up of motorcyclists who are so afraid (with good reason) of paralyzing injury that they can't bear to think about this problem. And they last thing that an industry desperate for first-time rider wants to confront is this fact: riding motorcycles is dangerous.

But here's the thing: There are still many in the medical establishment who feel that spinal lesions are and always will be incurable ― that's an entrenched belief that, itself, discourages research. The truth is a different. There is some very promising research being done.

Last month, there was a great story in New Yorker magazine about an operation performed in Poland, based on research conducted in the U.K. You can read it here.

The key thing to take away from it is this: these research projects are happening at a very small scale. The guy in that photo seems to have benefitted from an experimental procedure that nearly wasn't performed, for the lack of $10,000.

A million bucks, or $10 million. That's money the people behind the DGR or the Susan G. Komen Foundation waste on business-class upgrades and planning retreats in the Caribbean. But that kind of funding could literally speed the development of an effective treatment for spinal-cord injuries and paralysis by decades.

Dan "Grizzly Adams" Haggerty dies. For real, this time

Actor Dan Haggerty is dead, of cancer. This time. He's got quite a few connections to the motorcycle world, most notably that he coordinated the building of the Harley-Davidson panhead choppers used in Easy Rider.

After Easy Rider, he appeared in a string of low-budget bikesploitation films. Perhaps the most interesting of the bunch was 'Bury Me an Angel', directed by Barbara Peeters ― who was one of the very few women directing trashy B-movies.

Haggerty (on bike) claimed that he'd restored the only surviving original Captain America bike from Easy Rider. Michael Eisenberg (the guy standing behind Haggerty) must've believed him, because he paid $1.35 million for the machine at an auction in 2014.

Haggerty was, it seems, pretty much a genuine biker, although his public persona was reshaped by his starring role in the feature film, "The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams" in 1974. A few years later, he reprised that role in the TV series.

His career was nearly derailed when he was busted for cocaine possession ― though a criminal record made those earlier biker roles seem even more authentic in hindsight.

In the early '90s, Haggerty was in a very serious motorcycle accident. A post-operative infection nearly cost him his left leg, and may have put the kibosh on a plan to resurrect the "Grizzly Adams" TV series. After the crash, his wife got a letter of condolences from the  Screen Actors Guild and, so the story goes, Haggerty got a 'get well' letter from the Pope.

To make this even more of a cautionary tale, Haggerty's wife Samantha was killed in another motorcycle accident in 2008. Riding home from a dinner date, without a helmet, she hit a deer.

The last time Haggerty was in the news, it was because the 'Captain America' bike from Easy Rider was back in the news. As the story goes, Haggerty supervised the build of four bikes for the film ― two copies of the Peter Fonda bike, and two of the one ridden by Dennis Hopper. Three of the four were apparently stolen, although a couple of years ago, Haggerty claimed he'd rebuilt the one surviving Captain America bike, which had been wrecked in filming. The catch was, he'd done the very same thing in 1996. I've personally seen the letter he wrote that time, attesting that it was the real McCoy.

In 2014, a collector paid over a million bucks for the second "authenticated" Captain America bike. Which, if any of them, is the real thing is a secret that now seems to have gone to the grave with Grizzly Adams.

Harley-Davidson and the GOP have the same problem

In the last few months, Harley-Davidson’s stock has fallen about 20%. Most of that drop occurred in one day last October, when Matt Levatich told an investment call the company was cutting guidance for overall 2015 results based on a lackluster Q3.

Harley’s problems are not, however, of a quarter-to-quarter (or year-to-year) nature. Harley shares the same big, structural issues with another brand that is very much in the news: the Republican Party. In particular, where the 2016 Presidential election is concerned.

My fellow Canadian ― the economist David Foot, author of ‘Boom, Bust, and Echo; How to Profit From the Coming Demographic Shift’ ― once said, “Demographics explains two-thirds of everything.” And both Harley and the GOP face the same demographic challenge. That is to say, both brands are favored by angry old white guys; a market that is literally dying off, while the U.S. gets younger and more diverse every year.

There are guys back in the smoke-filled rooms at the Republican National Committee who cringe every time Donald Trump says he wants to build a wall along the border with Mexico, because they know that he’s alienating Latino voters in states like Nevada and Colorado that are in play in 2016. Even reliably-Republican Texas will become a swing state before long, as Hispanic Texans will outnumber white ones by 2020 and be an outright majority in about 30 years.

When Mitt Romney ran against Obama, he barely pulled 20% of the Latino vote. It’s now accepted wisdom amongst political strategists that it is not possible to win that office with less than about 40% of the Latino vote.

"I don't actually ride a motorcycle, but if I did, I'd ride this douchebag's motorcycle.

Harley-Davidson needs a far more diverse market too. Although the company has long owned the angry old white guy demographic ― and those guys seem, if anything, angrier than ever ― as they age, they will inevitably stop buying new motorcycles. And the scale of Harley’s problem is, to say the least, challenging. Put it this way: about half of all the ‘heavyweight’ motorcycles (over 600cc) sold in the U.S. are still Harleys. 2008 was the last year that Harley released its data on customer ages. But back then, it admitted that the average age of new-Harley buyers had already climbed to nearly 50.

Harley blithely says it is targeting younger riders and a more diverse crowd. But that really doesn’t address the scope of the problem.

They say “50 is the new thirty”, and “Seventy is the new 50” and shit like that. But the problem for Harley is, 85 is still eighty-five. If most of Harley’s buyers are over 50 and most of those guys, by definition, are going to stop buying new bikes sooner or later... simple math says that Harley doesn’t just have to do a better job of attracting the young, less-uniformly-white audience that currently favors other brands; it has to do a way, way better job.

Think about it: Harley still has almost half the market, but if the half it has is aging out and the company wants to preserve its sales, it has to capture virtually all of every competitor’s market share ― not to grow, just to maintain volumes.

The GOP has successfully gerrymandered Congress; it will have a majority in the House for decades. (Sorry, Democrats, but in all that ‘Change’ euphoria, GOP strategists completely outplayed you.) But when it comes to electing Presidents, the lily-white GOP is basically reduced to hoping that the Democratic candidate self-destructs and young, non-white Dem-leaning voters stay home.

Harley and the GOP don’t just have a problem in that their brands are favored by angry old white guys; it’s way worse than that. They’ve both styled their brands to appeal to the same base of (often Confederate-) flag-waving, ‘Murica-Fuck-yeah, open-carry conservative white guys. Neither brand is eager to alienate that base; in fact, they’re afraid to stop pandering to it. And that means they’re wrapping their brand in imagery that strikes younger and more-diverse consumers as out-of-date at best and coded racism at worst. But wait, it gets worse; the core supporters of both brands are angered when the brand even attempts to woo new fans with language and imagery that deviates from the arch-conservative.

(To be clear: There will be guys in the marketing dept. in Milwaukee who'll read this and think, "But what about our product placement in the Captain America movie?" That was an attempt at dog-whistle marketing; an effort to reach out to the young, liberal movie audience that Harley's conservative base despise, but that Harley's base would either not see at all or if they did see, would interpret it differently. It was a nice try, but you can not build a great brand on product placement.)

Harley-Davidson is smart enough to realize that it has to be on the right (read: 'left') side of some conservative image issues. For example, The Motor Company has officially said no dealerships can sell Confederate-flag clothing. That doesn't change the fact that its customer base is overwhelmingly made up of the very same angry white guys who support The Donald. If you don't believe me, set up a booth registering Democratic voters at next summer's Sturgis rally, and tell me how it works out for you.

Harley and the GOP’s dilemma is that they can either attempt the tricky challenge of crafting two entirely different messages; one for the base and one for new fans, in the hope that neither group is exposed to the others’ message. Or, they can suck it up and just make the brand-jump from the old image to a new, younger message that will resonate with a diverse audience.

Way back in the ‘90s, there was a business book called, If It Ain’t Broke, Break It. Back then, I remember thinking that it was total bullshit advice. As an ad guy, I knew that for every client who stuck with a good campaign too long, there were two or three clients who abandoned good campaigns too soon.

But Harley really should have broken the brand. What would that have looked like? Building a bike to compete with the more technically advanced, sportier brands favored by younger buyers. 

There’s an object lesson in an iconic American brand that was stuck with an obsolete product that appealed only to aging consumers, and worked its way out of the bind: Cadillac. Back in the ‘90s, If you had told me that some day I’d want a Cadillac, I would have laughed in your face. (And ironically, I wrote a ton of ads for them.) 

Remember when Cadillac said, “Fuck it, we’ll race at Le Mans”? That was the beginning of a beautiful thing. In the last decade or so, Cadillac relentlessly improved tech and performance, without fear that they were inevitably alienating their old customers. 

A couple of years ago, Cadillac briefly tried to recapture the brand's old, original, conservative white male market with this famous ad. To get a sense of how it went over, try entering the phrase "Cadillac ad d..." in Google and watch it fill in '...ouchebag'. 

There must’ve been a group in Milwaukee that thought that way, too, when Harley briefly attempted to build the VR1000 superbike and compete with Ducati on the race track. Some day I’d love to write an in-depth assessment of what went wrong with that project. I have a little more insight into the Buell debacle; I think that a big part of the problem, for Buell, was that there were people in H-D head office (and far more at the dealer level) who actively resented the Buell brand. There were plenty of people in orange and black who had grown to hate the jeering sport bike riders, and those H-D employees resented Erik Buell for trying to make a competitive sport bike and, worse, failing.

In 1994, Harley-Davidson attempted to take on European (and possibly to a lesser extent) Japanese competitors with the VR1000 Superbike. That project limped along until about 2000. That was when the Cadillac LMP ('Le Mans Project') broke cover. Neither of these race machines was very successful. But Cadillac sent a signal with the LMP that it was willing to reinvent itself, and build cars to compete, technically and performance-wise, with the European and Japanese luxury brands. Sadly, Harley concluded, "Let's never do that again."

I thought that Harley had played a strategic master-stroke about a year and half ago, when I rode the Livewire. As I wrote at the time, Harley could leapfrog right over those high-performance ICE sport bikes and bring out the first truly mainstream EV motorcycle. I was sure that the Livewire was not a 'market test' but a real prototype. Now, I'm not so sure; if there are any plans to commercialize the Livewire, I’ve not heard about it. And in the meantime, Polaris has purchased Brammo. (And Polaris’ Indian brand seems to be doing a better job of taking an iconic American motorcycle brand, and upgrading its technology and performance.)

Right now, the GOP is desperately hoping that, somehow, more than half the American electorate will forget the appalling rhetoric of the Republican primaries, and that the GOP nominee ― whoever he or Carly Fiorina is ― will be able to wrap himself in less overtly racist imagery for the general election. The Republicans may succeed in convincing a few younger, less white voters to come over. But really all they’re hoping for is that he Democratic nominee will self destruct and, as a result, Democratic leaning voters won’t show up on November 2. The only long-term strategy for the Republicans is to field a candidate that a more diverse U.S. actually finds palatable, and the party cannot do that unless it’s willing to alienate its base. 

That definitely isn’t a strategy for Harley. They can't wait for competitors to self-destruct; not by a long shot. So Harley can either age out of relevance with its current customers, while perhaps succeeding in selling its current bikes in, say, half the volume at best to a younger and more diverse audience. 

Or, Harley can learn from the painful failures of the VR1000 and Buell ― and perhaps pay attention to some of the things Polaris is doing right with Indian ― and develop a strategy to grab market share from a younger and more diverse demographic with a revitalized 21st-century brand.

So, here's my executive summary for Matt Levatich: In the long run, winning does not look like convincing younger and more diverse consumers that they are wrong about the Harley brand. Winning looks like building bikes those people actually want.

Skull Masks, a rant

A few days ago, a post from Cycle World publisher Andy Leisner showed up in my Facebook news feed.

His message was directed at motorcycle industry marketing types, "Don't advertise on Facebook. Advertise in Cycle World, where your ad won't be lumped in with this tasteless shit that shows up in my Facebook feed just because I love motorcycles."

I'm not going to dwell on the fact that the small ads in motorcycle magazines are full of equally tasteless shit. Though I can't help but recall the first time Motorcyclist ran a full page ad for penis enlargement. I remember going into Boehm's office and telling him that he had to tell the publisher to stop running it.

"If you think business is shitty now," I told him, "wait until Motorcyclist's readers come upon that ad and conclude that they're holding a magazine for guys with tiny dicks. Yeah, lots of guys want to subscribe to that magazine, for sure."

Leisner's post was self-serving (or at least CW-serving) but it reminded me how much I fucking hate those skull masks.

Honestly, what fucking asshole would ever choose that as an accessory? Thank God they are only worn by idiots who also wear useless helmets, when they wear helmets at all. Do you have a skull mask? Please fall off,  so you can die as soon as possible.

Would it be legal to just shoot people wearing these masks? At least in stand-your-ground states I think you could get away with saying you thought the mask-wearer was a zombie. It's legal to shoot zombies, right? If not, it will be soon in Kansas.

Fucking skull masks. There's basically no overlap whatsoever between the kind of bikes or the kind of riding I do, and the kind of riding those fucking skull-mask-wearing twats do. But when I see one of those pathetic fucks on the road the thought occurs to me that I could walk away from motorcycling and never look back.

The next time some cager purposely narrows the gap as you're lane-splitting up behind him, or the next time someone strings a wire across trail, remember that to us, there are all kinds of motorcyclists but to non-riders, there's just "guys who ride motorcycles".

Those skull masks and all the other violent, sexist, racist, xenophobic shit worn and spewed by assholes who want to look like badass bikers... that shit sticks to all of us.