Below is Stoplight.TV’s coverage of Vespa Attack 4 held November of last year. Aside from showing the various colorful scooters on display, the segment also features Dominic Ochoa’s interview of the different club presidents — me for Vespa Club, Edgen Dy-Liacco of Scoot66 and Randy Villa who’s the current VP of EuroScoot.
This episode was first aired last Jan. 04, 2009. Special thanks to Eggay Quesada and DJ Matt Montoya for the coverage. Watch it here:
Top Gear is a British television series about motor vehicles, primarily cars. It is presented by Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May. The show is famous for its fantastic visuals and humorous commentaries by the program’s hosts. It also gave rise to the popular character of The Stig(he’s even got a fanbase in Facebbok!) the show’s anonymous and silent test driver.
Last December 28, 2008, Top Gear presented an epic episode where the three program host were presented a challenge which took them to Vietnam and required them to travel 1000 miles from Ho Chí Minh City (Saigon) to to Ha Long City (near Hanoi) in a span of eight days. That’s practically from the bottom to the northern tip of Vietnam!
Each were handed a shoebox with 15 million Vietnamese dongs so they could buy a vehicle of their choice to use for the challenge. But they soon realize that the ‘enormous’ amount couldn’t afford them a car so they settled for something cheaper.
Hammond bought a Russian-built 125cc two-stroke Minsk; May a 50cc four-stroke Honda Cub (a bike very common in Vietnam and ranked No. 1 among the World’s 10 Greatest Ever motorbikes); and Clarkson, who claimed to have never ridden before and knew little about motorbikes, purchased a green vintage Piaggio Vespa. It should be noted that Clarkson despised motorcycles. Bikers might find his tounge-and-cheek humor a bit condescending, but personally, I find his Brit humor amusing. In the scene when they were buying crash helmets, he quipped: “The reason why crash helmets are small is because people who wear them haven’t got a brain. Otherwise they’d have a car.”
Here’s the first part of that epic episode.
Will the vintage Vespa finish the challenge? Those who hate Jeremy Clarkson’s guts for “insulting” two-wheel riders may find a little satisfaction towards the end of the episode.
This one’s the actual episode I was talking about in this post: “This blogger will guest on TV!” Special thanks to Vexel9 for giving me a DVD copy.
I have to warn you though that this video may take forever to load. The files are so large that youtube won’t even accept them for uploading! hehehehe I don’t know how to make the size of the videos smaller. Instead, I divided our interview into two parts.
Last week I was invited to guest on the show “The Sweet Life” – an early evening lifestyle talkshow hosted by Lucy Torres with Wilma Doesnt as co-host –as their topic will be about bloggers. The episode was taped early last week and I was informed it will be aired on Friday (Feb 29) on QTV channel 11. Since the station airs American Idol season 7 (which was promoted locally by way of a Vespa motorcade) in the former’s timeslot at 7PM, it would be safe to assume that the bloggers’ episode will be moved an hour earlier or later. hehehe
Anyway, the guest lineup consist of both celebrity and non-celebrity bloggers. Here’s a snapshot that my wife took while we were taping. Read the rest of this entry ?
Yesterday marked the premiere telecast of the 7th season of American Idol which now airs locally on QTV 11. To drum-up awareness, the GMA marketing division invited VCOP (Vespa Club of the Phils.) to participate in a motorcade that will go around Makati CBD (Central Business District) with a roving billboard truck at the tail of the scooter convoy.
They requested 30 participants and it’s a good thing that our friends from other clubs and other indie Vespa riders gladly joined us to fill-in the slots. It was a good turnout. Final count… 31 riders! That exceeded what they requested but it’s all good. I don’t know if the boys came for the gas allowance, for the free shirt, or for the potential TV exposure for them and their scoots. hahaha!
Two more AI-Vespa motorcades are slated sometime soon: one when the Top 12 idols are announced, and another one in time for the finals. Hope those push through as planned as well. Special thanks for Jon Lara and Meleen Carlos of GMA for making all these possible.
By the way, the pic above courtesy of Minggoy. See more pics from the fun event.
The white Italian scooter seen on national TV last weekend was indeed a Hello Kitty Vespa ET4 loaned by Gift Gate especially for Tessa Prieto’s performance in Celebrity Duets”. Vexel, my Vespa Club buddy, saw the unit firsthand at the time the show was being taped in the GMA studio. He shared with me some pics that his wife took using her phone:
Vexel notes that if one looks closely at the scoot’s odometer, it reads only 18km. Proves that this Vespa is a display piece only.
side view: Check out the glove box; it doesn’t say ET, but KT!
during Tessa’s performance
The Hello Kitty Vespa being used as a prop for a rock song is great. But Gift Gate could’ve gone the extra mile had they lent both performers some added accessories to complete their look and for some good old product recall for Kitty. Here are my suggestions… Read the rest of this entry ?
Since my side of the family is not exactly small, the whole brood gathers at least once a month to celebrate someone’s birthday. It’s usually held on a Saturday, and for the past three or four birthday dinners we’ve had, we never failed to get a glimpse of a show called “Celebrity Duets” on GMA. Hmmm… if catching the show happened on several occasions already, it couldn’t be dismissed as a mere coincidence anymore. Someone in the family is obviously following every episode religiously; but I’m not one to reveal who it is.
Anyway, there was a segment last Saturday where Tessa Prieto-Valdez (she’s one of the contenders) had a duet with the legendary Mike Hanopol singing, what else, but the anthem of all jeproks (Tagalog street slang for ‘tough’) called “Laki sa Layaw.” As a prop to this live performance, Tessa posed beside a white Vespa ET right up there on the stage at the start of the song. What’s the connection, right? I guess it’s jeproks to have a Vespa… hahaha
I went to youtube to see if I could grab a broadcast recording of the show but only found this home video of the said performance taken by a studio audience. It was uploaded by a certain hkpirate/DV which I could only assume as Dennis Valdez, Tessa’s better half (Note: If you’re following the show, you may be interested to read his blog and read about rumors about what the other contestants are doing to get text votes).
Watch their performance:
The vocals weren’t clearly audible because of the quality but the band sounded great… and Mike Hanopol still rocks!
During the break, I saw this commercial — with pretty newcomer Maja Salvador — where I spotted another Vespa. The ad is for a product called Lewis & Pearl cologne and I think the ad was shot in Downtown Manila. If you haven’t seen it, take a look at it here. Read the rest of this entry ?
This is the station ID which BBC America came up with when they introduced their new logo and tagline early this year. It’s very different from the three little branding blocks that audiences worldwide has gotten used to. But I would say that the new logo is “younger,” witty, less serious, and very Brit (veryMOD in particular). The spot involves motorcycles and has a twist on this familiar American culture. It has a subtle “British invasion” theme to it. Check out this 10-seconder they aired to launch their new identity…
When I fist saw the ad above mentioned in 2StrokeBuzz, I went straight to YouTube to look for other interesting ad the company has made in the past.
There is this one-minute TV ad for BBC Radio which involved a powerhouse cast featuring great music legends together with this generation’s music sensations. It’s sort of an Alternate Reality. This ad won several awards including the Gold in Best TV Ad category in the 2007 Creative Circle Awards and recognition for its direction, editing and computer graphics/special effects.
Last week I was invited to guest on the show “The Sweet Life” – an early evening lifestyle talkshow hosted by Lucy Torres with Wilma Doesnt as co-host – as their topic will be about bloggers. The episode was taped early last week and I was informed it will be aired on Friday (Feb 29) on QTV channel 11. Since the station airs American Idol season 7 (which was 
