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“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 53

Friday, May 22nd, 2020

Here’s something I haven’t done before. Remember the days of auto stunt shows? Guys jumping over cars? Demolition derbies?

“So You Want Thrills!” No, that’s the name of the movie, not a statement of fact. Featuring Jimmy Lynch and his Death Dodgers. And what do the Death Dodgers drive? If you said “Dodge cars”, take two gold stars and advance to the next blue square.

That one is from 1948. Our bonus video is from the early 1980s, and alsp features Chrysler/Dodge cars: “The Hell Driver Formula”.

That’s something I wish I could have seen when I was younger. Unfortunately, there really weren’t any tracks in the Houston area where a team could do this kind of driving. They did do a stunt show/demolition derby in the Astrodome when I was young, and I remember going to that at least once: the high point for me was the guy who sealed himself in a coffin and blew himself up. There was also a car jump involved, as I recall, but (odd as it may seem) space in the Astrodome didn’t allow for a truly epic long car jump.

(They were doing these shows in the Astrodome at least up until 1985: a Wikipedia search reminded me that Karel Soucek, a “Canadian daredevil” who went over Niagra Falls in a barrel, was killed during one of those shows.)

Oh, what the hell, one more: “Paul Riddell’s Imperial Hell Drivers”. I think this is from Canada, eh? Oh, wait, I’m sorry: I checked Wikipedia, and it is actually from a show in Quebec. Apologies to both the Canadians and the Québécois in my audience.

Posted in Cars, History | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 12, 2020.

Sunday, April 12th, 2020

Stirling Moss died “quietly on Sunday at his home in London”. He was 90. McThag beat me on the tribute watch.

“To race a car through a turn at maximum possible speed when there is a great lawn to all sides is difficult,” he said in an interview with The New York Times Magazine in 1961, “but to race a car at maximum speed through a turn when there is a brick wall on one side and a precipice on the other — ah, that’s an achievement!”
He raced for 14 years, won 212 of his 529 races in events that included Grand Prix, sports cars and long-distance rallying, in 107 different types of car.
He set the world land speed record on the salt flats of Utah in 1957. He won more than 40 percent of the races he entered, including 16 Grand Prix. For four consecutive years, 1955-58, he finished second in the world Grand Prix championship. And in each of the next three years, he placed third.

The man was a class act. And I don’t mean in terms of style (although he apparently was rather stylish):

He came closest in 1958, but testified on behalf of another driver, Mike Hawthorn, who was accused of an infraction in the Portugal Grand Prix. Hawthorn, as a result, was not disqualified. When the season ended, Hawthorn had 42 points, which are given for factors like fastest lap as well as finishing position. Moss — though he had four Grand Prix wins to Hawthorn’s one — finished second with 41 points.

…

In 1962 at the Goodwood Circuit racetrack in England’s West Sussex County, a plume of fire shot from his Lotus 18/21 car. The crowd gasped. As Moss tried to pass Graham Hill, his car veered and slammed into an eight-foot-high earthen bank.
It took more than a half-hour to free Moss from the wreckage. His left eye and cheekbone were shattered, his left arm broken and his left leg broken in two places.
An X-ray revealed a far worse injury. The right side of his brain was detached from his skull. He was in a coma for 38 days, and paralyzed on one side of his body for six months. He remembered nothing of the disaster. He considered hypnosis to recover the memory, but a psychiatrist said that might cause the paralysis to return.
When he left the hospital, he took all 11 nurses who had treated him to dinner, followed by a trip to the theater. A year later, he returned to Goodwood and pushed a Lotus to 145 m.p.h. on a wet track. He realized he was no longer unconsciously making the right moves. He said he felt like he had lost his page in a book.
Though he believed he remained a better driver than all but 10 or 12 in the world, that was not good enough. He retired at 33.
Moss was more than his talent. He was a beautiful name, one that still connotes high style a half-century after his crash, evoking an era of blazers and cravats, of dance bands and cigarette holders. One legend had him driving hundreds of miles in a vain effort to introduce himself to Miss Italy the night before a big race. His 16 books cemented his legend.

…

Stirling grew up excelling at horsemanship, but said he gave it up because horses were hard to steer.

…

…for a couple of generations, British traffic cops sneeringly asked speeding motorists, “Who do you think you are, Stirling Moss?” (Moss, who had been knighted, was once asked that question, and answered, “Sir Stirling, please.”)

Lawrence emailed an obit for Tim Brooke-Taylor, British comedian:

Brooke-Taylor was reunited with Cleese and Chapman on ITV’s At Last The 1948 Show, another collection of sketches and quick-fire repartee.
The first episode featured The Four Yorkshiremen sketch, co-written by Brooke-Taylor, which would later be revived by the Monty Python team.

I apologize for the quality. But: this is (according to YouTube) actually from “At Last the 1948 Show”.

Posted in Cars, Obits | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 7

Monday, April 6th, 2020

Time for something a little lighter.

Mike the Musicologist pointed out to me the other day the most 70s thing ever, at least according to MeTV:

(That reminds me: Hi, Saturday Dining Conspiracy regular who shall remain anonymous but likes “Xanadu”! Hope you guys are doing okay!)

Now, I will concede that this is probably the high-water mark of the 1970s: as Hunter S. Thompson said about the 1960s, “that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.” But here’s another vintage slice of peak 70s for you.

If you’re unemployed, it might even help you find a job…selling cars to women.

On a historical note, this may explain why Chrysler needed that bail out…

Today’s bonus video, which actually might be suitable for those of you who are homeschooling your children: how does an oil refinery work?

Posted in 1970s, Cars, TV | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…

Tuesday, March 31st, 2020

…I’m gonna go have me some fun!
And what do you consider fun?
Fun, natural fun!”
–Tom Tom Club, “Genius of Love”

Now that I’m on indefinite home confinement (like the rest of Travis County) I’ve found myself not just reading more, but also watching more crap on YouTube.

“Crap” may not actually be fair. I’ve enjoyed the USCSB videos for a while now. AOPA’s Air Safety Institute videos are educational as well. And, yes, I’ve been watching my share of Ian’s videos in these times of struggle. Shamefully, I’ve also been watching clips from “Bar Rescue”.

My point, and I do have one, is: some interesting things have been showing up in my YouTube recommendations, and I thought I’d start highlighting those. At least, until the crisis passes.

Rules: I want to keep them short, and ideally want to pick ones that people haven’t heard of. So no “Surviving Edged Weapons”, because that’s close to an hour and half and has been highlighted on Red Letter Media. But I think at least some of these will be vintage police training videos…

…let’s start with this one, “Vehicle Ambush: Counterattacks”. If for no other reason than that awesome 1970’s wakka jawakka opening soundtrack.

Tomorrow: I’m trying to decide if I want to go with Jack Webb (although I don’t think the video quality is all that great) or possibly a vintage US Navy training film. (Nothing about VD, though.)

Posted in Cars, Cops, Guns, Law | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: March 25, 2020.

Wednesday, March 25th, 2020

Terrence McNally, noted playwright.

Mr. McNally’s Tony Awards attest to his versatility. Two were for books for musicals, “Kiss of the Spider Woman” (1993) and “Ragtime” (1998), and two were for plays, and vastly different ones: “Love! Valour! Compassion!” (1995), about gay men who share a vacation house, and “Master Class” (1996), in which the opera diva Maria Callas reflects on her career.
And those prize winners were only a small part of his oeuvre. With some three dozen plays to his credit, as well as the books for 10 musicals, the librettos for four operas and a handful of screenplays for film and television, Mr. McNally was a remarkably prolific and consistent dramatist.

Hattip on this to Lawrence, who also pointed out that Mr. McNally did a guest shot on “The Greatest American Hero”. He actually did guest shots on a small hand full of TV shows, including “Salvage I” (that sounds like a “blink and you’d miss it” appearance), “CHiPs”, and “The Young and the Restless”.

Speaking of hattips, great and good FOTB Borepatch sent over an obit for Albert Uderzo, co-creator (with the late René Goscinny) of Asterix and Obelix.

Edited to add: NYT obit.

A followup from “The Drive” that I’ve been meaning to post for a couple of days: Kenny Rogers, dirt racer.

Rogers paired up with Sprint Car Hall of Famer C.K. Spurlock and campaigned his own team for several years before the two formed Gambler Chassis Company. Taking its name from Rogers’ famous song The Gambler, this project was anything but a gimmick. The company would go on to win races with stars like Steve Kinser, Sammy Swindell, and Doug Wolfgang behind the wheel. Simply put, Gambler cars were consistently some of the fastest in the United States, taking victories at primetime events like the Knoxville Nationals.

Posted in 1970s, Cars, Obits, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed

Flaming hyenas updates.

Tuesday, February 18th, 2020

A couple of quick things from the weekend that I’m just now getting around to:

Catherine Pugh’s sentencing hearing in the “Healthy Holly” scandal was last week. The government is asking for five years. Her lawyers are asking for a year and a day.

The statement of facts accompanying Pugh’s plea in November described how Pugh defrauded businesses and nonprofit organizations out of nearly $800,000.
Prosecutors said Thursday that Pugh’s “personal inventory” of Healthy Holly books never exceeded 8,216 copies. But through a “three-dimensional” scheme, they say, she was able to resell 132,116 copies for a total of $859,960. She gave another 34,846 copies away.
“Corporate book purchasers with an interest in obtaining or maintaining a government contract represented 93.6% of all Healthy Holly books or $805,000,” prosecutors said.

Also, this would kind of amuse me, if it wasn’t so sad:

Included in the sentencing memorandum is a scene from an April raid on Pugh’s home. FBI agents came to seize, among other items, her personal cellphone. Prosecutors say Pugh handed over a red, city-issued iPhone, but investigators said they wanted her personal phone, a Samsung. She told them she had left it with her sister in Philadelphia.
An agent then called the Samsung phone.
“Almost immediately, the agents heard a vibrating noise emanating from her bed. Pugh became emotional, went to the bed and began frantically searching through the blankets at the head of the bed. As she did so, agents [started] yelling for her to stop and show her hands,” prosecutors wrote.
Pugh had grabbed the phone from underneath her pillow, and the agents took it from her.

In other news, remember Mohammed Nuru, indicted San Francisco Director of Public Works? This broke over the weekend: the current mayor says she used to date him, “20 years ago”.

I wouldn’t consider that “bad” or “newsworthy” by itself, but this is: she also took “a gift” from him.

The mayor said her 18-year-old car broke down and Nuru took it to a private mechanic who fixed it up. Nuru also helped her get a rental car. Breed said the value of those favors was about $5,600.

But she claims this isn’t “a gift that she had to report under the city’s ethics laws”, even though accepting gifts from your underlings is questionable in any environment, and possibly illegal under ethics laws.

Also, and I say this without snark, having been in this position myself recently: Mayor Breed, if your 18 year old car is going to cost $5,000 to fix, maybe you need to be looking at another car instead.

Posted in California Über Alles, Cars, Law, Politics | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 21, 2019.

Saturday, December 21st, 2019

Junior Johnson, legendary NASCAR racer. NYT. ESPN. News and Observer. NASCAR.

“The Last American Hero Is Junior Johnson. Yes!” by Tom Wolfe.

In the Korean War, not a very heroic performance by American soldiers generally, there were seventy-eight Medal of Honor winners. Thirty-nine of them were from the South, and practically all of the thirty-nine were from small towns in or near the Appalachians. The New York metropolitan area, which has more people than all these towns put together, had three Medal of Honor winners, and one of them had just moved to New York from the Appalachian region of West Virginia. Three of the Medal of Honor winners came from within fifty miles of Junior Johnson’s side porch.
Detroit has discovered these pockets of courage almost like a natural resource, in the form of Junior Johnson and about twenty other drivers. There is something exquisitely ironic about it. Detroit is now engaged in the highly sophisticated business of offering the illusion of Speed for Everyman—making their cars go 175 miles an hour on racetracks—by discovering and putting behind the wheel a breed of mountain men who are living vestiges of a degree of physical courage that became extinct in most other sections of the country by 1900. Of course, very few stock-car drivers have ever had anything to do with the whiskey business. A great many always lead quiet lives off the track. But it is the same strong people among whom the whiskey business developed who produced the kind of men who could drive the stock cars. There are a few exceptions, Freddie Lorenzen, from Elmhurst, Illinois, being the most notable. But, by and large, it is the rural Southern code of honor and courage that has produced these, the most daring men in sports.

Randy Suess. He and Ward Christensen built the first computer bulletin board system in 1978.

Posted in Cars, Geek, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

And speaking of Christmas…

Friday, December 20th, 2019

I’ve been good this year, Santa. Do you think you could bring me one of these?

I don’t need the tactical operator: just the truck and the minigun. You can even leave it in the driveway along with the ammo, so you don’t scratch up the hardwood floors.

Posted in Cars, Christmas, Guns | Comments Closed

Merry farking Christmas, y’all.

Saturday, December 14th, 2019

I was cautiously optimistic, tending almost towards excitement, about Christmas this year. I’m mostly getting along with almost everyone, and Daddy didn’t spend the Christmas money on brakes this year. (As a matter of fact, Daddy got his car inspected without any issues, got the oil and filters changed, got a minor repair done, and Daddy’s new vehicle registration is in the mail and should get here before Christmas.)

You know what depresses me at this time of year, though? (“Almost everything!” cries the peanut gallery.) They’re not too far off. But one thing that gets under my skin is car wrecks.

We live in a part of town where car wrecks are a distressingly common sight. The roads are heavily trafficked and carrying more than designed capacity. But car wrecks at Christmas really get me down.

I see someone with the whole front end of their car smashed to heck: obviously, this is a total loss. The ambulance is standing around nearby, and even if it doesn’t look like anyone was badly hurt, I’m thinking to myself what a shame it is. The kids were looking forward to that Playstation 5 (sorry, Playstation V) or the XBox 720 (“now with tint control!”) or the new Banana PCJR Pro, Mom goes out to the grocery store, and both parents come home hours later. “Sorry, kids. No Christmas this year. The car’s totaled and we’ve got to get a new one.”

I know I’m probably stretching a little: out here, I think everyone has comprehensive on their cars, and they’re probably not out more than the deductible (and the gap, if they don’t have gap insurance). But it still bothers me.

The other problem out here, oddly enough, is deer. The hooved rodents are belligerent and numerous, there’s strong opposition to doing anything about them (“They’re so cute! How dare you trap them!”), and people frequently have unpleasant encounters with them, even on heavily trafficked roads like RM 620 or SH 71. Our next door neighbor hit one a few weeks ago: it didn’t do a lot of damage from what I could tell, but her car was in the shop for a bit.

Last night, it was my turn. We were driving back from dinner down a two-lane road that’s a shortcut between US 290 towards Dripping and SH 71 towards Lakeway/Bee Cave when one bounded across the road in front of us. I saw it out of the corner of my eye as it was crossing the road towards the driver’s side but didn’t even have time to react: we clipped it pretty solidly on the passenger side.

The good news is, the car’s driveable: there’s some loose plastic around the passenger side wheel, and a fairly large dent in what I’d call the under-bumper. But there’s no hood damage, the headlights still work, and I think the front running light on that side does as well. There’s no evidence that the engine compartment took a hit, and I don’t see any fluids leaking. And the airbags didn’t go off.

I know it could have been a lot worse: we could have hit it square on and done more damage, it could have ended up going through the windshield into the passenger compartment…as I said, the car’s driveable, we have coverage, and Mom’s calling the insurance company Monday morning. We may even have dashcam footage if I can find it.

I guess what I’m trying to say this holiday season is: be careful. Look both ways. Turn with a light when you can, even if it takes you a little out of your way. Don’t pull a U-turn in the middle of the highway.

And if you’re in an area where it is hunting season and you have a license, take as many deer as you legally can.

Posted in Cars, Christmas, Mammals | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: August 30, 2019.

Friday, August 30th, 2019

James R. Leavelle.

He was the man standing next to Lee Harvey Oswald when Jack Ruby shot Oswald.

Ningali Lawford-Wolf, Australian Aboriginal actress. She was perhaps most famous as the mother in “Rabbit Proof Fence“.

Official NYT obit for Jessi Combs.

Ms. Combs was a lifelong racing fan whose love of cars and the sport led her into television, with a short run of appearances on “MythBusters,” the popular science program, and continuing hosting roles on “Xtreme 4×4,” a show about off-roading, and “Overhaulin’,” a show about revamping cars.

Ms. Combs was killed on Tuesday while attempting to set a land speed record.

Posted in Cars, History, Movies, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: July 3, 2019.

Wednesday, July 3rd, 2019

Lee Iacocca.

Max Wright. He has an interesting back story: Mr. Wright knocked around a lot in television, movies, and theater.

His other television credits include appearances on “Murphy Brown,” “Quantum Leap,” “Misfits of Science,” “Cheers,” “Buffalo Bill,” “Taxi” and “The Drew Carey Show.”
He also appeared in early episodes of “Friends” as the manager of Central Perk, the coffee shop where the show’s main characters hung out, and played Norm Macdonald’s boss on the ABC sitcom “Norm.” His film credits include “All That Jazz,” “Snow Falling on Cedars,” “Reds,” “The Sting II,” “Soul Man” and “The Shadow.”

…

On Broadway he was the Second Murderer in “Richard III,” starring Al Pacino, in 1979; a neurotic landlord in Jean Kerr’s “Lunch Hour” in 1980; and an accident-prone clerk in an Andrei Serban production of Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard” in 1977…
He made his Broadway debut in 1968 in the original production of “The Great White Hope,” Howard Sackler’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play based on the life of the heavyweight boxer Jack Johnson, which starred James Earl Jones and Jane Alexander. He earned a Tony nomination for best performance by a featured actor in a play for his role as Pavel Lebedev in the Chekhov play “Ivanov” in 1998, a performance that also earned him a nomination for a Drama Desk Award.
He performed Shakespeare regularly; one of his most noted roles was Sir Andrew Aguecheek in the Lincoln Center Theater production of “Twelfth Night” in 1998.

Sadly and tragically, he was best known as the father on “ALF”, one of the worst television series ever to pass across the small screen.

By the time the show’s four-year run ended in 1990, Mr. Wright told People magazine in 2000, “I was hugely eager to have it over with.” In fact, on the last day of filming, his colleagues told People, he grabbed his things and got into his car without even saying goodbye.

Lawrence sent over this THR obit for Milton Quon. Speaking of back story, wow: Mr. Quon was one of the Golden Age Disney animators (he worked on “Fantasia” and “Dumbo”).

The Chinese American Museum in Los Angeles presented a retrospective exhibit of his work in 2005; he was one of five artists featured in ” ‘Round the Clock: Chinese American Artists Working in Los Angeles” at the Vincent Price Art Museum in Monterey Park, California, in 2012; and he received the Golden Spike Award from the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California in 2013.
And in 2017, he was featured in a father and son art exhibition in Red Bank, New Jersey, with his son Mike and in a solo exhibition at Santa Monica College’s Emeritus Gallery.

He also had a career as an actor and extra: he may have been best known as “the old Asian guy on the bus” in “Speed”. Mr. Quon was 105.

Posted in Cars, Movies, Obits, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed

TMQ Watch: December 4, 2018.

Tuesday, December 4th, 2018

If we had thought ahead (and hadn’t been putting out fires all day long) we would have scheduled this week’s TMQ Watch to post at 4:20 PM.

Why? After the jump, this week’s TMQ…

(more…)

Posted in Cars, NFL, Sports, TMQ watch | Comments Closed

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