Rebellion is a dish best served lukewarm.

(If you say so.)

Have you ever woken up in the morning determined to take life by the balls, only to realize that life is a woman and she owns you completely, at which point you surrender in short order?

Me too.

Still, that doesn't stop us all from pretending we're heroes in our own personal narratives, or that we have any measure of control over the vicissitudes of existence.  Take the videos of Lucas Brunelle, daredevil cinematographer and expert bike handler:



He and Benny Zenga have collabo-ated on yet another video, this one entitled "Road Sage," to which I was alerted by the latter party:

I think you'll enjoy this one. 

Advanced perspective transcendent urban cycling -or- suicidal tendencies cyco-vision. At any rate, it’s a nudge to forgo being a spectator and go for a bike ride.

Thanks,

Benny

ROAD SAGE from Zenga Bros on Vimeo.

And which, mere moments before press time, seems to have mysteriously and inconveniently disappeared after I went through the trouble of taking screenshots and everything:

I cannot stand the smug error messages you get from websites.  "Sorry, there seems to be like a problem, dude.  We're totally working on it and stuff."  Fuck you.  I especially can't stand them when they suggest that something I watched with my own goddamn eyes just moments ago may not have ever existed, because that's both flippant and Orwellian.

This didn't happen back when we used VHS, even if we did have to constantly futz with the tracking.

Anyway, the video starts thusly:

If I may offer the filmmakers a word of advice, you should really stop with the whole dictionary definition opening title thing, because it's trite:

trite adjective \ˈtrīt\
: not interesting or effective because of being used too often : not fresh or original

In fact, the above descriptor applies to the entire video, which could be why they deleted it.  Predictably, it features all the usual hallmarks of Lucas Brunelle's work.  There's the skitching:

The obligatory "Ooh, they ran a light in front of a cop, take that, system!" clip:

The "elbowing your way through a yellow cab Malachi Crunch like a dumbass" maneuver:

And of course the ever-present car-and-truck touching:

Yes, always with the touching:

It's like they're priests and the cars are little boys.

(There's a good word to describe that joke, by the way...)

Of course, before you fondle a motor vehicle you should always engage in a bit of foreplay.  For example, try mounting the sidewalk:

Skidding in front of an elderly pedestrian:

And then groping the bus:

He sure showed that old guy and that bus who wears the "jorts" around there.

Speaking of urban cycling clichés, there's even fixed-gear freestyle, which means Brunelle must have been sitting on some stale footage from 2008:

To be perfectly honest I kind of miss fixed-gear freestyling.  Those people used to get sooo defensive when you'd tell them how stupid it was, and somehow they managed to live in complete denial of both BMX and artistic cycling for a good year or two.  Then, all of a sudden, they all gave up and bought road bikes--though evidence of the "sport" lives on in videos made by aging people struggling to remain relevant, like this one.

Nevertheless, you've got to give Brunelle credit, because he's the undisputed master of petty rebellion porn:

(THEY'RE NOT PAYING THE TOLL, THEY'RE NOT PAYING THE TOLL!)

Check out these duders falling all over themselves in traffic like a bunch of Cat 5s (probably because most alleycat racers are Cat 5s):

And thrill to this flagrant salmoning:

At this point I started getting bored, so I skipped ahead to some of the rider interviews, and those made my brain hurt so I gave up.

Now the video's gone.

Sigh...

Speaking of adrenaline-charged thrill rides, a reader informed me of this commercial for the 577-horsepower Mercedes AMG Über-Teutonic SpörtzVagen complete with MILF-Drive and Wank-O-Tronik paddle shifters:



Which the woman in the commercial uses to get to a spin class:

You'd think that if you wanted some exercise on a lovely autumn day you could just ride a bike outside instead of driving to an indoor spin class.  Then again, the roads are probably too dangerous for that, thanks to all those rich suburbanites rushing to spin class in their supercharged luxury cars.

I think you call that "irony."

As for me, you won't find me in spin class.  I do exercise inside though, and I've been using this workout to good effect (via another reader):

 

Laughter is good for the core.