I have to admit that I'm Not a Beatle-Freak. I always liked the band, but never went bugnuts over them. The anthemic song that John Lennon penned is the perfect tune to highlight what I'm bitching about today...
It's late January 2010 and the new season of the television show, "24" has begun. The first two seaons were riveting examples of high suspense drama. It has steadily gone downhill like a rockslide. Yet I contiunue to watch it. The show could be salvaged if by some fluke, Keifer Sutherland read my blog ( yeah right!) and followed my lead. The first preposerous notion is that these crises all span exactly twenty four hours. It would be much more believeable if the show was called "Real Time" that way they could avert the disaster in sixteen hours or thirty two hours if the need arose. But the shows have gotten overstuffed with meaningless fluff, simply to stretch it out to the given twenty four episodes. Drivel! Alot of these sidebars are red herrings to divert the viewers from out-thinkiong the hero Jack Bauer, who like our former President George W. Bush, also pronounces "nuclear" as "Nuke-You-Lar", which proves he isn't THAT smart. The show has gotten tedious and I find myself getting impatient waiting for the real grit and trying to ignore all the unnecessary chattle that's being crammed in like a giant trash compactor. I'm starting to believe that anything that's successful will be ruined by over-exposure and "24" is a prime example!
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Moving Pictures
Old Age sucks! I'm not positive if this title is an actual song name, or the heading of an album by Rush. I know there's a Kinks song by that title, but I cannot recall how it goes. Either way, I'm using it for the song title this piece is about...
I've mentioned many times that I'm a car freak. My love of working on cars and modifying them so they're different from what rolled off the factory floor is a passion that I don't get to realize on a daily basis. WhenI was young, my parents viewed cars as a way to get from Point A to Point B, and my mother was constantly warning me to stop spending money on my Van, Car, etc. Also, we were not fortunate enough to have a garage where I could comfortably work on my vehicles. My mom has long since passed away and in the economic crunch of being unable to land a job modifying cars for a living, I've been forced to take on a "regular job". ( God forbid!). I had to move out of my apartment and into the home my Dad now inhabits. On the plus side, he doesn't charge me rent. On the negative side, he's let the place go to hell. His way of dealing with problems is by ignoring them. The portion I live in has no heat. He's also become obsessive/compulsive about saving things...EVERYTHING! If a branch falls in the yard, he'll cut it up and put it into paper bags that he gets from the store, tapes them up and saves them to burn in the fireplace. The only problem is: me never makes fires. He does the same with sawdust, pine needles and just about anything else that's combustible. This takes up quite a bit of space. Every sliver of wood has also been set aside. He saves cardboard boxes, old pens, nails, screws, wire, and any other piece of random hardware. This takes up considerable space. I could understand it if he was a mad scientist, Mr. Fixit or amateur inventor and created stuff out of all his hoardings, but all he does is save them, and that's it! Space is at a premium in this abode and I have little of it to claim for my projects, which compounds the problem. So I dream about the day when I can move into a space of my own where garbage is disposed of instead of stashed away, and I can work on my truck.
I spend the bulk of my time planning what I'd do if I was indeed able to do this, but as times goes by, it's become an unrealistic fantasy. I spend more time watching car shows on Speed TV. On a recent volume of Hot Rod TV, they were highlighting cars from movies. The ones they gave the most lip-service to were, The '77 Pontiac Trans Am from " Smokey and the Bandit", the '57 Chevy from "Hollywood Knights", and the Mustangs from "Bullit" and "Gone In Sixty Seconds".
With the exception of "Bullit", I've seen all of these films in the theater. My mother, who was a prudish type, would read movie reviews in "Good House Keeping" magazine or some similar publication. If they didn't approve it for children, that was it, I was not allowed to view these flicks! I had to wait until "Bullit" appeared on network TV. Of the listed films, this was the least preposterous. Naturally the car chase was the highlight and that was the one where more than one car was needed to complete the filming because one car wouldn't stand up to that type of abuse unscathed. "Smokey And The Bandit" was NOT a good movie, despite its' popularity. "Hollywood Knights" was totally forgetable, and a lame imitation of "American Grafiti", the truest car film ever. " Gone in Sixty Seconds" was a total bag of shit, with very little redeeming quality to it, despite a good cast. It was a car chase with a plot loosely wrapped around it, and not a very good one at that. They did not mention the ultimate Mopar lovers' film, "Vanishing Point", but did mention the crappy TV show, " The Dukes Of Hazard". Why is it that motorheads can read and write tech articles for popular car magazines, but their taste in automotive movies is somewhere that gets wiped with toilet paper?
I was reading an article in one of the many car mags I get, and it mentioned the anniversary of "Project X" a yellow '57 Chevy that was featured in "The Hollywood Knights". I had forgotten about that movie, and I'm still scratching my head trying to recall this vehicle. Most notably, it was yellow! Hardly a manly color, but it would at least make it stick out. Yet I have zero recollection of it. Apparently the big scene was when it raced a Cobra, yet I haven't the foggiest idea of what happened. I DO remember Robert Wuhl singing " Volare" and the fake sounds of farting when he put the microphone up to his ass, that accompied it, and that's about all.
There was a sequel to "American Grafiti" that was surprisingly good, yet that seems to have dropped into the void of automotive movies. Try locating "More American Grafiti" on DVD, and see how much that's going to set you back! Car themed films are like the vehicles themselves, they're all a matter of taste...and mine is in a distinct minority!
I've mentioned many times that I'm a car freak. My love of working on cars and modifying them so they're different from what rolled off the factory floor is a passion that I don't get to realize on a daily basis. WhenI was young, my parents viewed cars as a way to get from Point A to Point B, and my mother was constantly warning me to stop spending money on my Van, Car, etc. Also, we were not fortunate enough to have a garage where I could comfortably work on my vehicles. My mom has long since passed away and in the economic crunch of being unable to land a job modifying cars for a living, I've been forced to take on a "regular job". ( God forbid!). I had to move out of my apartment and into the home my Dad now inhabits. On the plus side, he doesn't charge me rent. On the negative side, he's let the place go to hell. His way of dealing with problems is by ignoring them. The portion I live in has no heat. He's also become obsessive/compulsive about saving things...EVERYTHING! If a branch falls in the yard, he'll cut it up and put it into paper bags that he gets from the store, tapes them up and saves them to burn in the fireplace. The only problem is: me never makes fires. He does the same with sawdust, pine needles and just about anything else that's combustible. This takes up quite a bit of space. Every sliver of wood has also been set aside. He saves cardboard boxes, old pens, nails, screws, wire, and any other piece of random hardware. This takes up considerable space. I could understand it if he was a mad scientist, Mr. Fixit or amateur inventor and created stuff out of all his hoardings, but all he does is save them, and that's it! Space is at a premium in this abode and I have little of it to claim for my projects, which compounds the problem. So I dream about the day when I can move into a space of my own where garbage is disposed of instead of stashed away, and I can work on my truck.
I spend the bulk of my time planning what I'd do if I was indeed able to do this, but as times goes by, it's become an unrealistic fantasy. I spend more time watching car shows on Speed TV. On a recent volume of Hot Rod TV, they were highlighting cars from movies. The ones they gave the most lip-service to were, The '77 Pontiac Trans Am from " Smokey and the Bandit", the '57 Chevy from "Hollywood Knights", and the Mustangs from "Bullit" and "Gone In Sixty Seconds".
With the exception of "Bullit", I've seen all of these films in the theater. My mother, who was a prudish type, would read movie reviews in "Good House Keeping" magazine or some similar publication. If they didn't approve it for children, that was it, I was not allowed to view these flicks! I had to wait until "Bullit" appeared on network TV. Of the listed films, this was the least preposterous. Naturally the car chase was the highlight and that was the one where more than one car was needed to complete the filming because one car wouldn't stand up to that type of abuse unscathed. "Smokey And The Bandit" was NOT a good movie, despite its' popularity. "Hollywood Knights" was totally forgetable, and a lame imitation of "American Grafiti", the truest car film ever. " Gone in Sixty Seconds" was a total bag of shit, with very little redeeming quality to it, despite a good cast. It was a car chase with a plot loosely wrapped around it, and not a very good one at that. They did not mention the ultimate Mopar lovers' film, "Vanishing Point", but did mention the crappy TV show, " The Dukes Of Hazard". Why is it that motorheads can read and write tech articles for popular car magazines, but their taste in automotive movies is somewhere that gets wiped with toilet paper?
I was reading an article in one of the many car mags I get, and it mentioned the anniversary of "Project X" a yellow '57 Chevy that was featured in "The Hollywood Knights". I had forgotten about that movie, and I'm still scratching my head trying to recall this vehicle. Most notably, it was yellow! Hardly a manly color, but it would at least make it stick out. Yet I have zero recollection of it. Apparently the big scene was when it raced a Cobra, yet I haven't the foggiest idea of what happened. I DO remember Robert Wuhl singing " Volare" and the fake sounds of farting when he put the microphone up to his ass, that accompied it, and that's about all.
There was a sequel to "American Grafiti" that was surprisingly good, yet that seems to have dropped into the void of automotive movies. Try locating "More American Grafiti" on DVD, and see how much that's going to set you back! Car themed films are like the vehicles themselves, they're all a matter of taste...and mine is in a distinct minority!
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