Mountain bike movies

After posting "I don't hate Mountain biking" a couple days ago I found these comments at the bottom of the page:

Anonymous said...

I was the rider in the video. Thank you. We thought of doing a few whips or jump footage but decided that that was not what the edit was about, and that we have seen that all too many times before. This was about throwing a bike sideways, throwing dirt, and having fun, all while staying pinned.

Cheers,
Turbo.

P.S: There is nothing more fun than the totally unnecessary cut ties.

And this comment from Acadian which is also pretty rad. He's spot on, we should be seeing some dynamite new footage with the release of all the news Progo's. And solid work on that linked video:

The intranet is full of great MTB videos, just like this beauty that was JUST posted on FB a few minutes ago. With the recent release of the new GoPro and Contour, I cannot wait for the influx of unedited POV footage.

http://youtu.be/Tt1krJOWGHM

First off, it always blows my mind to find out that anyone actually reads this. If reading this is better than your other alternatives, TEAM ROBOT thinks you should probably save us the trouble and kill yourself already.

Prior to reading those comments, I really thought TEAM ROBOT were the only ones on the planet who was seeing this shit, like everyone else was just seeing the chess pieces and we were seeing the whole board. I was starting to think that everyone in the world wanted to listen to pussy music and watch Danny Hart give boring monotonous unintelligible interviews in between a super confusing montage of 2 second slow mo clips of him doing something? on a bike, but you can't really see what he's doing or how fast he's going because the camera's so zoomed in and the clips are so truncated that wtf is going on? I swear, when I watch a Giant Global Team Racing Factory Squad video the only things that I can tell are that Danny must use Oxyclean, because he keeps those whites white, he's sponsored by Fox and Rockstar a lot, and that he's probably doing something that would look cool if I could actually tell what was going on. On the other hand, maybe that's all Giant wants me to see: here's our guy, you can't really tell but we promise he's really fast, and oh by the way here's a close up of his bike and kit with a million logos everywhere. I think Danny is the only person to beat Lopes on the logo count for one person, which is impressive, because Danny's even shorter than Lopes, meaning he has a way higher logos-per-square-inch ratio. Sponsors know it's all about the ratio, just look at Nascar.

If I had to choose between cutting my balls off with a blow torch or watching 24 hours of Danny Hart interviews, easy choice. If Giant could somehow leverage all their Danny footage and make people choose between watching Danny's interviews or buying a brand new Glory at full MSRP, they'd sell a lot more bikes. And yeah, I know this screenshot isn't from a Giant video; that's not the point and you're an idiot.

Also, insider secret: if you show full clips of him riding and full clips of the other guys riding so I can get my bearings and start making comparisons, I'll be able to tell he's going 4th or 5h place speed. But if you just give me little tiny little clips where all I can see is FOX OAKLEY FOX FOX OAKLEY GIANT GIANT SRAM FOX OAKLEY then I can't tell he's going slower than Greg, Gee, Aaron, and Steve, I just have to assume he's the fastest guy out there cuz he looks like the boss.

But we digress. What I'm trying to say is that I felt like I was the only person on the planet who doesn't want to listen to dubstep, squint at lens flare effects, and watch 2 minute intros when I watch bike riding. Mountain bike videos just kept getting shittier and shittier with every passing year, but everyone kept telling me "no, bro, you're gonna love Life Cycles," or "No, man, I totally know what you mean, but 'Follow Me' is going to be totally different." I didn't even watch the recent FreeHuck Productions/RedBull atrocity that came out at Interbike, but wild guess: it also sucks.

So here I am, sat at my computer posting up old Rankin videos for the last four years and saying "I remember when..." and just generally feeling older than shit, and no one is seeing what I'm seeing. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills here. I INVENTED THE PIANO KEY NECK TIE. I INVENTED IT.

So TEAM ROBOT salutes Turbo for making bike videos that don't suck and showing the rest of the pussies what mountain biking actually is:

More of this.

Less of this: