Sonny Barger is a completely literate man. In the past he’s used his incredible ability to read to pen four books, maybe design motorcycle gang sleeve patches, and practice his cursive until it was pretty enough to win fourth at a state-wide cursive derby.

Also he used it to found the Hell’s Angels.

Yet even with such an impressive, well written, grammatically correct resume, HBO doesn’t seem to care. They think he’s a bandana-wearing douche that smells of rusty switchblades. They probably think that. We assume that is what they probably think.

And now the opinion that the mega channel may or may not have is getting them drawn into court. Because Sonny Barger reads well enough to know he’s been cut out of a pretty big development deal in a biker series he helped pitch to them.

Allegedly allegedly allegedly.

Perhaps it is because the guys at HBO didn’t want their dead skulls and the skulls of their immediate family for three generations in either direction to adorn Sonny Barger’s keychain. Or perhaps it’s because the guys at HBO were just uncomfortable watching all those bugs jump out of his beard every time he’d sneeze. Whatever the reason, HBO has decided to cut all ties with Barger and and run with the show he gave him. Allegedly again.

You see, Barger is a biker – and not just any biker – he founded the Hell’s Angels, and came up with the idea that they should sell grasshopper cookies as a fund raiser instead of robbing immigrants, bar-keeps and one-legged strippers. Well we’re not actually sure about that last bit actually, but he did found the Hell’s Angels.

And he claims to have used his gang-forming ability to craft a show concept so good it had HBO drooling in their would-be used leather motorcycle chaps. But then something so horrible happened only the Hollywood Reporter can find the proper words for it:

“Hells Angels founder Sonny Barger filed a lawsuit last week against the pay cable network, the production company behind the project and its writer/executive producer Michael Tolkin claiming that the concept and the script for the show were developed with his collaboration. The complaint, filed in Los Angeles federal court, contends that HBO, the White Mountain Co. and Tolkin cut him out of the project and violated many of his publicity rights when he demanded changes to protect his own brand.”

His own brand, we assume, being stinky and accidentally dreadlocked. But seriously – HBO better be careful – Barger’s biker boys would probably still do anything for him. After all – it was them who were trying to murder Mick Jagger’s face off, and it was them who unleashed such a horrid legal torrent against the Disney movie Wild Hogs. Remember that?

HBO – you don’t need him. What you do need is a fantastic pilot about the goings on in the office of the 45th most powerful blog in the world. We have all kinds of drama. For instance Stu hoardes staplers, and Laidlow keeps what we all think is Bill Bixby‘s remains in an extremely tattered refrigerator box under a cafeteria table.

Come to think of it, you could even put Bixby in the credits. If that’s not an audience draw ain’t nothing an audience draw.

Read More:

Report: Hells Angels Founder Sues HBO Over Biker Series – Associated Press

Hot news from almost four decades ago – some men on motorbikes thought about killing Mick Jagger once.

According to a BBC documentary, some Hell's Angels tried sailing a boat to Mick Jagger's house to kill him in 1969, but they were crap at sailing and all got thrown overboard so they just decided to go home again. 

We know, we know. Deep breaths. As shocking as it when a public figure is murdered with no warning, it pales into insignificance when compared to when a man doesn't get murdered without warning. In fact, right now, just this second, we didn't get murdered either. And there was no warning. Hecklerspray: officially the Mick Jagger of the internet. In one hopelessly tenuous way.

Mick Jagger's whole entire life has just involved standing next to Keith Richards – a man who, even in the throes of old age, can fall out of a tree onto his head, flout loosely-officiated Scottish smoking rules and ingest his own dead father through his nose – and trying to look cool too.

He's failed time and time again, of course – the crap haircut, fondness for shiny blouses and mistaken belief that writing songs advocating a strong work ethic in the unemployed have seen to that. But it's turned out that Mick Jagger almost got assassinated the Hell's Angels in 1969. And that's sort of cool, isn't it? It certainly puts Mick Jagger up there with other failed assassination targets and icons of coolness like Ronald Reagan and Hitler.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves here. It has been revealed that in 1969 some Hell's Angels tried to kill Mick Jagger. And they would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for their meddling inability to navigate nautical storms with due attention to safely. The Associated Press reports:

A program to be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Monday says the rock star was the target of the plot following a purported dispute with the motorcycle gang over concert security… "The Hells Angels were so angered by Jagger's treatment of them that they decided to kill him," Tom Mangold, the presenter of the program, was quoted as telling Britain's Sunday Telegraph newspaper. Mangold said the men tried to reach Jagger by sea. "The boat was hit by a storm and all of the men were thrown overboard," he was quoted as saying. They all survived but made no other attempt on his life, Mangold said.

'Jagger's treatment of them' is obviously a reference to the 1969 Altamont Free Concert, where the Rolling Stones' Hell's Angel security were accused of stabbing 18-year-old Meredith Hunter to death. Although they denied the murder, Mick Jagger publicly stated that didn't want any more Hell's Angel security guards at their concerts. So they reportedly tried to kill him as well.

Nobody knows if Mick Jagger had any idea of this supposed assassination attempt or not, but this news will almost certainly start people thinking about the what ifs. Imagine if Mick Jagger had been successfully murdered in 1969, and what the world would have lost as a result.

If Mick Jagger had died in 1970 there'd have been no Dirty Work, no Freejack, no Dancing In The Streets. And Jerry Hall would probably be a lot less famous than she is now, as well. Phew, right?

Read more:

BBC: Hell's Angels Sought to Kill Jagger - AP