Mash

Tonight, completely by accident, I bumped into the Tokyo premiere of the new Mash movie.
Mash is a group of cyclists from San Francisco who are notoriously, as the media probably calls them, "reckless".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTEWIiFPDN4

I have never really liked stuff like that, sure I ride a fixed gear and love it, but I started riding one because I actually raced on the track.

The movie wasn't great, but I stuck around for a little, because I wanted to ask some of the guys some questions. In only about a dozen clips in the entire movie does anyone wear a helmet. I thought that if these guys, who have a very large influence on new entrants into the bicycle community put a little more thought into it, they could really flip the image around, and show that they aren't so reckless, and that might get more people onto bikes.

At first, the manager or director or whatever was a jerk towards me, but after I helped them with some translating stuff, they all lighten up a little.

Here is the truth about me, put so very eloquently by this other foreigner, who I have disliked for a long time, but now that he lost his job at Nova, I at least feel a little sorry for:

"You piss people off. Nobody likes you." Or something like that. I think he used the word "shit" somewhere, but I can't remember where.

Yeah, I know. I'm glad that I am myself, because that way I won't ever have to meet me.

Not super proud of that.