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Tuesday, January 11, 2005
Local guy stitches onto ‘Biker Build-Off’
Will Cascio is one tough hombre — who wields a sewing machine at his South Austin home off William Cannon Drive.
He custom designs leather seats for motorcycles. His company, Heavy Magic Fine Leather Customs, was created in 1995 and has been based here since 2001.
Turning out intricate leather designs is quite a change from Cascio’s earlier careers, which include nine years as a rodeo cowboy, four years as a jockey, eight years as a graphic and Web designer and 13 years as an actor/stuntman.
His handiwork — and the designer himself — can be seen on tonight’s season opener of “Biker Build-Off,” at 9 on the Discovery Channel.
On tonight’s third-season opener of the bike-building reality show, Cascio is on the team that’s souping up a motorcycle for Warren Vesely, who competes against bike-maker Jerry Covington.
The building portion of the episode, including making the seat, was filmed in Indiana in July; judging took place in Pennsylvania; and the “reveal” took place in front of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.
As you might imagine, this isn’t just any old motorcycle seat. It’s top-quality leather with scarlet stitching and 24-carat goldleaf trim. If you were in the market for such a chopper seat, it would cost you about $1,200. Cascio’s most expensive seat so far cost $3,000.
“It was my first ‘Biker Build-Off’ show, and I sure hope another one comes up because it was a lot of fun,” Cascio said. “I got to do something extreme. This is pretty intricate stuff.”
Cascio, 41, came to Austin to work on the film “Secondhand Lions” and liked it so much here he decided to stay. He was born in Houston and grew up in different areas of the Southwest.
Permalink | | Categories: Reality TV
Rather’s tainted legacy
Would Dan Rather have been fired if he hadn’t already resigned?
Probably. The CBS News anchor was the correspondent of record on the flawed story about President Bush’s National Guard duty. Although the investigation made public Monday did not overtly blame Rather for the “60 Minutes” story, the firing of four CBS execs and producers — just about everybody but Rather who worked on the story — seems suspect.
The report aired Sept. 8 and immediately stirred controversy when documents that were used appeared to have been forgeries. But Rather and CBS News stood behind the story for two weeks, until all semblance of credibility had collapsed.
Then Rather apologized on the air, but the damage had been done. On Nov. 23, he announced he would remain with “60 Minutes” but step down as anchor in March. Although he insisted his resignation had nothing to do with the controversy, CBS president Leslie Moonves indicated otherwise on Monday when he said Rather wasn’t punished because he had already apologized and resigned.
There are many troubling aspects to this mess, not the least of which is Rather’s apparent lack of involvement in the final broadcast. He certainly knew the content of the story, and he had certainly worked with producer Mary Mapes, who was fired Monday, on the piece.
But if Rather had in fact not seen the final product before it aired, that’s shocking. It doesn’t matter if he was busy with the Republican National Convention and Hurricane Frances. If a report is broadcast under his name as the primary correspondent — and he did actually conduct the primary interviews — he should have been intimately involved with its preparation.
Although Rather has been criticized over the years for a stiff anchoring style, especially compared with his avuncular predecessor Walter Cronkite, he has been credited as a hard-charging, hard-news reporter.
Now he’s damaged that positive part of his legacy, and it will interesting to see if he can make some repairs before his departure from the “Evening News” in March.
Permalink | | Categories: News coverage
