Fan of "Breaking Bad" and/or Taylor Swift?

The ultimate mashup!

Check this out - from Jon Stewart's "Nights of Too Many Stars," a telethon to fight Autism.

s

Yesterday, I rode to celebrate the birthday of Sonny Barger, famed outlaw biker, founder of Hell's Angels Motorcycle Club (the inspiration for the F/X hit show "Sons of Anarchy") and Cave Creek area resident.

It was a blast. Those guys ride really, really fast, which brought to mind the opening scene from Season 5 of Sons of Anarchy.

From SOA, Season 5 Episode 1:

Jax (v/o): Something happens at around 92 miles an hour - thunder-headers drown out all sound, engine vibrations travels at a heart's rate, field of vision funnels into the immediate and suddenly you're not on the road, you're in it. A part of it. Traffic, scenery, cops - just cardboard cutouts blowing over as you past. Sometimes I forget the rush of that. That's why I love these long runs.

Sorry to disagree, Jax, but after the ride yesterday, I have to rewrite.

Kevin (v/o): Something happens at around 92 miles an hour - thunder-headers drown out all sound, engine vibrations travels at a heart's rate, field of vision funnels to where you can only see the bike 8 feet away to your left/forward diagonal and the bike about 12 feet ahead of you. You watch that bouncing piece of white along the side of the interstate, wondering if it's a discarded styrofoam cup or a rock that's going to bounce up and smack you in the face (good choice going with the 3/4 helmet with clear faceguard today). You glance down at the big silver speedometer and see it pass 90, and then the mirror, hoping for a gap that will let you slow to something more civilized like...80...No luck, and just as you say to yourself "wow, this is the dumbest thing I've ever gotten myself involved in," a road captain flies past you on the left, hanging on to his mini ape-hangers, feet on the highway pegs of his Harley, no-helmet, long white-grey hair almost touching the top rocker of his Hells Angels colors like you're standing still. 

All of a sudden you realize, you are John Travolta's character in "Wild Hogs" and instead of accidentally burning down Ray Liotta's MC's clubhouse, you're in the pack, riding with them and you decide not to wear the yellow and black Harley Davidson skull cap at the next stop, because it looks too clean, too new, like you just bought it the day before.

Which you did.

In two days, NBC's The Office returns in what will be the final season to watch the machinations of the Scranton branch of the Dunder Mifflin Paper Company.

Little trivia:

Strange and goofily creepy Creed Bratton may well turn out to be "The Scranton Strangler," a mysterious killer who has terrorized the city for a few years. Here's a picture of Creed, who plays a fictionalized version of himself in the show:

Creed was actually in a popular 60s band. Which one?

Okay, I won't tease. Creed played in "The Grass Roots." Here's one of their hits:

David Pogue, tech columnist, music composer and all-around really cool guy, recently proposed to his girlfriend in the coolest, most complicated way ever. Here it is:

SOA did it. Tuesday night's "Sons of Anarchy" Season 5 premiere was the biggest night in FX Network's ratings history. Sons of Anarchy creator and Show Runner Kurt Sutter made the promise that if ratings improved even by one person, they'd fly 4 randomly selected (from Social Media) SOA fan out to the set. He wanted improvement. He GOT a network record! 

Well, okay. Just over the QUARTER-way mark. Season 5, the final series of the getting-darker-by-the-episode AMC show is being split into two 8 episode "seasons," the first eight of which we're halfway through, the second starts in 2013.

Okay, enough of that.

Last night's ep 5, Dead Freight, was arguably the most exciting to date. There's a old adage in the theatre that if you have a gun hanging above the mantlepiece in Act 1, that gun better be fired by Act 2 (or 3, depending on which version of "Chekhov's Gun" rule you abide by - and just to be clear, we're talking about the Russian playwrite Anton Chekhov, not Ensign Chekhov of Star Trek fame). In terms of Breaking Bad, if you see someone unfamiliar appearing in the opening scenes of an episode, expect their appearance to be fully explained sometime between the end of the current episode, or the end of the season (example: the Hazmat clothed figures pulling the burnt stuffed animal out of the Whites' pool a couple seasons ago). Last night's ep provided a much quicker payoff.

In beginning, we see a kid on a motorcycle. We meet him again before the end of the show, at a time that could not be worse, both for him and for us, thrilled by the heist our boys had just pulled off, adrenaline in living rooms all over America running every bit as hot as it was through Jesse's veins.

Until the very end. Last night's drama was a return to the "2 steps forward, 1.94 steps back" progress that has plagued Walter and Jesse from the start.

Let me make this clear. As sympathetic as the characters of Breaking Bad can be, they are, in the end, not sympathetic, except maybe the one stone-cold killer we know as Mike. As strange as it is, Mike has become the story's moral compass, the one guy who knows right from wrong. I just know that he is not happy with what happened last night. Not happy at all.