This week, as we launched a new digital experience for Classified Moto, those old feelings came back. The adrenaline in Adam Ewing’s photographs came through my iPad screen. The raw elegance of big bikes, made by hand, each part fretted over, welded with love and driven with anticipation of finding a little piece of that feeling we all had when we saw our first bike.

I was asked to write a post about our new Classified Moto work, but it speaks for itself right here. Instead I want to say a few words about being able to live our dreams. That is what our friend and owner and founder and builder of Classified Moto, John Ryland, is doing. He was in the same business that I’ve been in all of my life. He began to build bikes in his backyard garage several years ago. Then one day, a bad thing turned into a good thing and John was able to do what he loved full time. Soon CNN and Uncrate and Jay Leno and Playboy and everyone else was talking about John’s artistic passion for bikes and his humble attitude towards a profession filled with badasses and tatted-up rebels. John does not fit the stereotype, of a biker or an ad guy. He does fit the stereotype of a man on a mission.

John Ryland is out there right now, scouring a junkyard for the perfect part or sweating behind a welding mask or putting his latest creation into a hairpin turn. And he is smiling that wicked grin. That’s what you do when you get to live your dream.

I know it is cheaper to print a menu on paper than hand an iPad to a table of hungry people in a restaurant. But if we go past the cost consideration, we just may get a glimpse of the future.

A device as sophisticated as an iPad is not needed for making a menu come to life at our table. All we need is a screen capable of playing HD video. Think of a miniature Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. Click on an item and see it being prepared in a two-minute segment; in other words, a living menu.

Some sports bars already have a screen at your table. You can watch any game they have. You could also use that screen as a menu and watch any item they make.

This will eventually happen in a lot of places if not already. And it is not a leap to imagine those little screens replacing waiters at many restaurants because it does their job like the little screen at Sheetz. I’m surprised McDonald’s has not just gone past the person at the counter and installed a wall of easy order screens, certainly at the drive thru.

It will be yet another technological advancement that will cost on-the-ground, local, minimum wage American jobs. And that’s the whole idea.

This post is not about video menus at all. It is about building a non-minimum wage economy in this country. We need to use our immense American imaginations to create more than the minimum. We need the maximum.

Why occupy Wall Street in a protest when we can actually own Wall Street with our ideas?

What happens if we create computer programs that learn us instead of us learning them? What if we turn smartphones into the only device we need because the expandability and contextual nature of the little devices learn how to change to meet our needs instead of the other way around? What if we stopped talking about building smarter and more efficient homes, cars and cities and did it, starting tomorrow, right where you live? Why tolerate the massive waste and cost of buildings when WIFI can turn a bass boat into a corner office? Why have a campus when the Internet is a digital Harvard? What if we diffused our constant state of war in the Middle East by ending our pathetic addiction to their petroleum teets?

We call Steve Jobs a genius, but all he did was what we should be doing every day. Do not admire his genius. Admire his balls for creating an entire new economy from nothing but fearless ideas.

To do this, we have to have the balls to rethink education. There is no arguable reason that a student needs four years to go to college, much less the six years many schools are requiring now. High school could be shrunk to 3 years, perhaps two, if we paid teachers like we pay pro baseball players and held them just as accountable for their performance as we do Pro football cornerbacks. Internships could be the new higher education. But someone has to have the balls to do it.

We hear politicians and preachers tell us that God wants us to do this and that as a nation. But the biggest sin America is committing does not involve gay marriage or abortion or legalizing marijuana. Our embarrassing disgrace is the wasting and mismanagement of ideas.

We value rote test scores over ingenuity and originality. No wonder so many “geniuses” dropped out of college to change the world. They have to. Otherwise, they would have had the genius wholeheartedly beaten out of them one credit at a time, and then handed a diploma in exchange for their imagination and guts.

We do not need to take our country back. We need to take it forward. We do not need more minimum-wage jobs. We need more high-wage jobs. Encouraging and investing in big and small ideas are the only ways to make that happen. And corporate fear is the fastest way to help all of us get a minimum-wage job.

So lets go occupy something more important than Wall Street. Let’s go occupy our brains.

When you drive past a “Dead End” road sign on your way to the end of a peninsula, things can only get more interesting. Off to the left, in the middle of the ocean, a huge white home sits on a rock island just big enough to fit the foundation, its façade bathed in a stunning, peach sunset.

“That’s one of the seven homes of some CEO,” said a local, greeting us in a wary friendliness exhibited by people who live near water. “Brought it in on a barge and slid it over to the rock. Pretty exciting.”

She said this in a manner that told me she had, indeed, seen more exciting things, but she was being kind to me since I was infatuated by a house on a rock in the middle of the water that she sees every day of her life, just off the coast, just out of reach.

Trees are almost naked on each side of us. Hurricane Irene wrinkled up concrete and docks and decks and roads and first floors of homes all along the coast. The one on the rock, however, looks untouched. The irony is not lost on those who glance at it while cleaning up their middle class messes. Rich people do not just get better tax breaks than the rest of us, they get bigger lives to go with their bigger houses and bigger cars and bigger bank accounts.

I think about that while standing next to the “Dead End” sign, looking at a dead tree lying across a brown and dying yard as the sun goes away and night turns everything to shadows. As if on cue, my smartphone chirps a CNN news blurb: “Apple announces founder Steve Jobs…” I did not need to click the Breaking News app to read the rest of the story.

In the coming dark, with the wind turning into my face, I think about a very rich person who just wanted to do something bigger than making money. And I think he did it.

Social media is constantly changing and adding new sites. If you have an extra 3 minutes in your day, social media will find a way to use 4 of them. Now there is a way to measure your influence across Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. It is called Klout. Get it? Klout is as addictive as all the other digital places you can rub your fingers across. After all, it is all about your score. It’s social media as sports. I know people competiting with each other over Klout scores.

Rudy, our Jack Russell, has a Twitter page (@rudythejack) and a Facebook page (he does not give out info on this one). Klout has him pegged at 47, otherwise known as a “Specialist.” You can be a Thought Leader, Feeder, Socializer, Networker, etc. The moniker depends on the focus of your conversations. The highest number is 100. Rudy has a ways to go.

Rudy, being a dog, has no idea he even has a score with Klout or the credit bureaus or anyone else. I think he may know he is chasing Guy Kawasaki up there near the top, however. You would have to get IM’s from President Obama or pics from Congressman Weiner or retweets from Ashton Kutcher to hit the big numbers. Rudy just talks about dog stuff mostly.

Klout breaks it down for you. Being a specialist means: “You may not be a celebrity, but within your area of expertise your opinion is second to none.”

I’ve been on the receiving end of Rudy’s opinion. It is, indeed, second to none.

Klout goes on to say: “Your content is likely focused around a specific topic or industry with a focused, highly engaged audience.”

Truth.

Rudy’s focused audience of highly engaged dogs, cats, birds, horses and a turtle named Louie stay in touch with him constantly. I’ve seen the conversations. They are deep and involve all kinds of butt-sniffing, furniture-soiling, carpet-dumping, poop-eating, squirrel-chasing conversations. Rudy is a specialist in all of those areas – hence his title. It gets better.

Klout analyses Rudy’s engagement and influence with charts, graphs and probabilities. They are as cool as any PowerPoint presentations I have ever sat through, and better than most, to be honest. You would have to splurge for the paid LinkedIn to get info this solid.

One chart describes how Rudy’s “high-velocity content” will be acted on. Another indicates his ability to capture influencers, and yet another measures his true reach. It is safe to say the chipmunk in our backyard can attest to Rudy’s true reach without using a chart. He has Jack Russell teeth marks on his furry, little Alvin-ish ass.

Rudy’s current top 10 topics are (in order of influence):

1. Dogs  (makes sense)
2. #RVA   (where he lives, so that seems reasonable)
3. Blogging   (he seldom blogs, so this one is a bit hard to grasp)
4. Puppies   (yup, got it)
5. Cats   (Rudy hardly qualifies as a cat expert, but he does know a lot of cats, especially in the UK)
6. #UK   (see above)
7. Pets   (duh)
8. Furniture   (perhaps there are things I do not want to know about this one)
9. Television   (absolutely, he loves TV)
10. Investing  (see below)

Investing? What the hell? If Investing made Rudy’s top topics of influence, this may explain the economic crisis.

The reliable smell of gasoline, grease and motor oil makes me feel like I am in the old barn where my grandfather used to fix his John Deere tractor, except this room is filled with motorcycles. Metal springs and shocks lay organized under a workbench next to transmissions gears and brake rotors stacked like plates. The walls in one corner are covered in chalkboards and scribbled notes about how wheels can move people in more ways than just on a highway. This is John Ryland’s favorite place outside the seat of the Frankenstein’d Yamasaki – a Yamaha and Kawasaki welded together – sitting over by the fridge filled with juice and bottles of golden Miller High Life.

Working in a Richmond, Virginia ad agency, John had never really been a bike guy until three years ago when he began riding a little. Then he began building motorcycles from parts and frames he found in junkyards and classified ads. He called this part-time operation Classified Moto.

“I named it that because most of the bikes and parts I found were in the classifieds,” he says with a smile that does not end for several more sentences. “After a while people started wanting me to build them one.” He continues smiling, riding the memories of those first bikes.

Using his hands to create something more lasting than an ad campaign appealed to John. Calling it a hobby would be an insult to his devotion to turning steel into machines from ideas that kept him awake at night. He studied manuals and scoured YouTube and eventually found a calling that had been hiding under the outward appearance of an art director for years. Then a couple of months ago, he got laid off from his adverting job and his passion for motorcycles turned into something a little more urgent.

“If I hadn’t planned this for a long time, I wouldn’t be in a position to do what I’m doing now,” he said. “You have to be proactive.”

John is proactive to a fault. Orders started rolling in from Germany, Australia and California.

“That bike over there is for a woman in Georgia who’s never really ridden bikes,” he said. “I want my bikes to be approachable to everyone.”

John is hardly the stereotypical, tatted-up, badass biker portrayed in popular culture. He is a soft-spoken, salt and pepper-haired craftsman who talks about his unconventional creations like they are his children. He knows each one by name and jokes that because he has rescued these motorcycles from want ads and backyards, “when one falls over, it just adds to the character, making it more valuable.” He gently rubs the beautifully rusted surface of a gas tank, a patina resembling natural art. “Just like with people, scars are part of the story of each bike. That nick right there is from a trip to Colorado. That scratch happened on a ride in North Carolina. It’s like riding memories.” Then he catches himself. “I don’t sound like J. Peterman, do I?”

No, I assure him. His stories are better.

John’s machines are not American Chopper slick and polished. His bikes look like they could have been ridden by extras in the old movie “Road Warrior.” The design is brutally sparse and elegant. The work is not hidden. You see the steel and welding straight up and honest. These are two wheels of brutal beauty welded and hammered and loved into an approachable creation that doesn’t scream, but whispers. People walk past and look twice.

When he started making lamps out of shocks, rotors, gears and crankshafts, his wife had to start helping. Friends helped. VCU sculpture students show up to weld this and that. Posters and apparel ideas filled his laptop and now his website. His Posterous blog (http://johnryland.posterous.com) is being read daily by thousands of people all over the world. With all of that, this is still not an assembly line by any stretch of the imagination. This is a man doing what he loves in his backyard while people fall in love with his unpolished authenticity.

“It’s not exactly a normal situation here,” he said, sipping a Miller High Life. “I make motorcycles and lamps from the same parts.” He nodded like he was trying to figure out the dichotomy himself.

Last week, after meeting with Matt Crawford, Richmond motorcycle mechanic and famous author of “Shop Class as Soul Craft,” CNN called and wanted to do a piece about John on AC360:

http://bit.ly/jQN8vK

It has caused a sensation. But you would never know it by talking to John.

“I’m humbled. I work hard. And I’m lucky, I guess. But I make my luck. That’s what I want people to know.”

John does make his own luck, but right now, he’s busy making a killer bike and 28 lamps.

Blogging is not dying; it’s just getting tired. Have you noticed this trend? People are rambling and posting stuff from other blogs and repeating themselves. Sometimes they just post pics, and why not? No one reads anymore. Do you want to read three pages or watch a 40 second YouTube video showing a guy with a bottle rocket in his butt? Perhaps the days of blogging are numbered. Then again, if you write a blog, you’re hoping I’m wrong – especially if you get paid to blog (and I don’t).

Some blogs have a tight focus, a concise topic. Many are awesome. Blogs about business or branding or social media or financial advice thrive. Blogs filled with insane rhetoric do really well because they cater to our basest instincts. But do you really have something interesting to say every single day? Probably not. And with Twitter tugging at you using only 140 characters, it becomes easier to just slide over there and toss in a few comments or share a link or pic and get back to your paying life. That said, nothing will make you better at writing and expressing your thoughts than forcing yourself to post a blog regularly, no matter if anyone ever reads it (see video above).

The aggregator blog is extremely popular. You don’t even have to write anything. Just repost other’s posts. These are the blogs that cull cool stuff from all over the Internet and toss it up hourly like magazines at the grocery checkout. I am particularly addicted to these sites.

Unfortunately, I am not smart enough to aggregate or fill a niche with my posts. If you read my blog regularly, you already know that I have no focus whatsoever. I do everything wrong. One day I may attempt some deep insight into branding and the next day tell a story about my cousin being impaled by a 12-point buck. Or I may not even post anything for a week.

This randomness may explain why I’m not Seth Godin. And while I appreciate the kind folks who read my verbiage, I am at a loss as to why. Consultants and Web experts have told me to make my posts about something specific, like branding, since that’s the business I’m in. However, I do branding all day long. Do I want to go home at night and wax on about something covered better or worse in 39,498 other blogs?

See, that’s what happens with blogs; you can do whatever you want. You can entertain people, instruct them or bullshit and lie and skew the truth and tell your side as fact and who’s there to edit you? It’s your opinion, right? It’s your blog. These days whole TV networks are basically televised blogs. Flip over there and see one pissed-off guy grinding the Democrats into meatloaf and then two channels later, some equally pissed-off pundit is ripping Republicans like cheap wallpaper. You can take your pick of “facts.” That’s how blogs work. Grab a hold of the First Amendment and let’s go.

Websites are even better at tossing us the half-baked turkey and calling it grandma’s home cooking. And what website doesn’t have a blog or two or ten. Blogs have become like butts: everyone has one. Sadly, I have two, so I am a chief offender.

Blogs are not dying; just the opposite. Everything is like a blog these days. There are no facts, just opinions and spin. Screw Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow, most journalists are really commentators, leaning the news one way or the other based on who’s cutting the check. Politicians’s blogs blow smoke so far up our asses our hair smells like beef jerky for a week. Company CEO’s lie so easily in their blogs it’s as if their bonus is connected to the amount of BS they can manufacture. Those mortgage companies forging signatures on foreclosure papers? That’s no different than a blogger making up stuff that seems like truth to people who aren’t paying attention. Blogging is the ultimate ode to “here’s my story and I’m sticking to it.” That’s kind of fun of it. After all, who doesn’t love a good lie, even if it is presented as the God’s honest truth?

So when you see Seth Godin saying something extremely smart in his blog – and he does every day – remember, there’s always some guy who wishes he was Seth Godin. But he’s not.

If you follow college hoops, I do not need to rehash how the upstart Rams, after placing 4^th in the regular season of their own Mid-Major conference (The CAA), shook the world of March Madness. In a run of pure grit and audacity, VCU almost won the CAA tourney beating league powerhouse George Mason and almost downing Old Dominion University. On selection Sunday, when most of the NCAA Tourney teams waited on national television for their names to be called, VCU’s team was studying or eating at Subway when their name was announced.

A cry went up from the entire country, especially from the fans of teams that did not get in, teams that were certain they were better than VCU. The Rams were quickly shuffled into what some pundits called “The Junk Bracket,” a 4-game Dayton, Ohio pre-tourney add-on of teams that barely made it into the NCAA’s. VCU pulled an 11 seed bid and faced off as the decided underdog against the University of Southern California.

Basketball experts (among them, Jay Bilas and Dick Vitale) immediately jumped on the Rams, saying they “did not belong” and their selection was a mistake so heinous, the commentators questioned if the selection committee even “knew if the ball was round.”

One sportscaster said the VCU defense was so bad they could not defend even him.

The Cinderella die was cast at the bottom of the bracket. When VCU handily beat USC, people called it luck. When they destroyed legendary basketball powerhouse, Georgetown, the experts said VCU caught some breaks. By the time the boys from Richmond massacred 3^rd seeded Purdue, the nation was either in shock or hopping on the underdog bandwagon.

VCU had won more games than any team left in the tourney. They faced Florida State, another team that had clawed their way into the game by dismantling a heavily favored Notre Dame. No one but Sports Illustrated picked VCU to win. Within minutes of the Rams victory over FSU by one point in overtime, the nay-saying continued. VCU had won four games. They were not supposed to even be in the tourney. They had made the Elite Eight by sheer determination and a blistering style that left opponents ragged and tired halfway through. Charles Barkley called VCU’s speed and 3-point barrages “Organized Mayhem.”

VCU met number 1 seed Kansas next. You didn’t need a degree in basketball to predict the Rams would lose this one, especially after Kansas embarrassed the University of Richmond two days earlier. Everyone said it was the end of the luck train for the Rams. According to one TV hoopster doofus, the Jayhawks would “wipe the floor with VCU.” “Kansas’ second string would destroy VCU,” said another. “Kansas will send the 2^nd Richmond team home today,” smirked a sports analyst who’d mis-predicted 4 previous VCU wins. Even a Kansas player said, “I don’t even know where Richmond is, and besides, I’ll never go there anyway.”

Kansas had a 44% chance to win the national title. VCU’s odds: .09. Like Hoosiers, it did not look good for the Black & Gold from the capital of Virginia Sunday afternoon when the two took the court in San Antonio. But sometimes a good brand wins.

VCU just beat Kansas by a comfortable margin to go to the Final Four. At one point VCU lead by 18. The bad-mouthers were in the bathroom gargling. Crow was served in the cafeterias at CBS, TBS, TNT, TRU and ESPN. A lot of people lost money on this one.

What are the branding parallels here? Build a brand on a great story. VCU has one. Engage people at every touch point. VCU did. Have a colorful leader. The Rams have Shaka Smart (impossible to forget that name). It helps to be the underdog, to be sure. And then go out and play your game, not theirs. Two weeks ago, few people in America had ever heard of VCU. That changed today.

Lesson: you don’t have to read branding books to understand what makes a great brand. You just need to go to B-Dubs and watch some basketball.

NOTE: By the way, that’s my daughter up there. She is one of the three best brands I’ve ever had a part in creating.

Detroit has been maligned for years, some of it deserved, some of it not. I do not have to replay news stories of the auto industry’s collapse or houses going for $1 or unemployment over 30% and entire neighborhoods going up in flames. There is no shortage of videos on YouTube blasting Detroit for being a hellhole. And parts of it are, indeed, just that. Then again, we all saw the Chrysler commercial up there at the top featuring Eminem on the Super Bowl, touting “Imported From Detroit.” Last week, I was imported into Detroit and this is what I saw.

It was cold. No surprise there. But the people were just the opposite of the weather. There is a pride in Detroit that goes deeper than the chassis of a Ford F-150 or a Chevy Volt. People here believe in their city, even when it hurts. And it hurts a lot sometimes. But day after day, these people are applying a hard-won Mid-western work ethic to pull it back from the depths of crime, poverty and despicable corporate stupidity and greed.

The heads of the automobile companies did everything in their power to destroy the city that gave them life. And they damned near did it. A drive down 8 Mile Road reveals a few of the scars. A drive down a lot of roads up here breaks your heart.

Detroit has its share of blight – like any city in America. You may not drive into those neighborhoods in your town, but they are there, not far from where you are sitting right now. I spent today shooting images of the poorest most crime-infested neighborhood south of New York City – right in the heart of Richmond, Virginia. So Detroit does not have a lock on desperate poverty no matter what you see or read. We could all learn a little from their resilience, though.

Few cities have Detroit’s guts. This is the town that cranked out America’s transportation for over 100 years. Those cars were not always great, but when you make that many vehicles, you learn how to go somewhere. You learn how to build an engine that can push two tons of metal 200 mph and still have a gear left, just in case. Building things is what Detroit does. And now they are busting ass to build a new Detroit. It is a tough job, to be sure. Parts of the city look like Beirut. Parts look like Georgetown. Parts look like every city in the world.

Lifting Detroit from the ruins will not happen by tomorrow or next week, but it will happen. You can see it in the eyes of the woman in Birmingham, and in the jaw of the man in Dearborn, and the words of the kid from Oak Park. You feel it when you drive through River Rouge or Troy or Midtown. No matter how tough it is, or has been, people are finding ways to reinvent the city that invented America.

That’s a strong couple of words: inventing America. Yet when you drive down any road in the country, you are part of what Detroit means to all of us. And when you see a car “Imported From Detroit,” take a closer look. That’s your reflection in the paint.

If you haven’t heard the story, last week a former Texas state trooper, Harvey Updyke, under the guise of being an Alabama fan, admitted to poisoning two 130 year-old oaks at Toomer’s Corner, a legendary celebration point next to the Auburn campus. The trees will likely die.

Toilet paper always hangs from the branches of those two big old trees after Auburn gets a big win, like the one against Alabama this past season. We yell “Roll Tide!” and they just cuss real loud (“War Damn Eagle”) and roll trees. Traditions are like that. In a “Dumb Asses Gone Wild” moment, however, this particular Toomer’s Corner’s celebration seems to have pissed off “Al from Daleville,” according to his own admission, when he called Paul Finebaum’s popular Birmingham radio program and said this:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=hm8AqL9FV-o

I’ll be damned. I’m not sure which is worse, killing two ancient and respected trees or being stupid enough to admit to it on the radio. The man was a Texas state trooper for a while, so perhaps that explains some of it. Needless to say, “Al” was picked up and faces one to ten years in a prison, where, no doubt, he will run crossways with some of those Auburn graduates he arrested for speeding on their way to Canada back in the day.

See, that’s sort of an inside Auburn joke right there. Alabama fans tell jokes like that. In case the punch line was lost on you, only Auburn graduates would drive through Texas to get to Canada. You tell jokes like that because Auburn fans put a Cam Newton jersey on Bear Bryant’s statue on the Tuscaloosa campus this past season. See, this Auburn/Alabama hatred can be both subtle and obvious all at once. But with this ridiculously bone-headed tree-killing incident, it has taken a national turn. Hey y’all, our underwear is showing to everyone on this one.

“This is just the beginning of hostilities,” said an Auburn friend I talked with on Friday. “We might just have to break into y’all’s library and leave a book.”

I’ve seen Auburn fans bolt a toilet to the roof of an Alabama student’s car and paint these words on the side: “Roll Tide Roll! Around the bowl and down the hole! Roll Tide Roll!” It can get worse than that. Stories circulate about people being shot, knifed, beat up and fired over their loyalties to one team or the other. Houses, cars and boats have been defaced, burned, stolen, and repainted in a rival’s colors. This is not Harvard and Princeton we are talking about here, people. Those rivals steal each other’s Porsches. This is a diehard situation that makes Lee Corso sweat bullets when he pulls on the Elephant or Tiger mascot head on GameDay visits to the respective campuses. It’s a dangerous job, being a fan of Auburn or Alabama. Always has been.

I have many friends and family who went to both schools. In the years since I left the University of Alabama, my feelings have mellowed from the days when a loss to Auburn would give a boy the “loser’s flu” for a couple of days. When I read about this oak poisoning incident at Auburn, however, I felt pretty bad as well. Then again, I remember the Alabama fan hating her Auburn neighbor so bad, she seduced the neighbor’s husband – a Notre Dame fan.

Let me tell you something about Alabama: if you want to get even with your Auburn neighbor so bad you’ll sleep with a Notre Dame fan, you just might poison a whole forest.