Archive for the ‘Cars’ Category

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Obit watch: August 10, 2022.

Wednesday, August 10th, 2022

Taiki Yanagida, Japanese jockey. He was trampled during a race a week ago, and had been hospitalized since.

Ryan Fellows. He was on a show called “Street Outlaws”, which airs on Discovery, and seems to involve drag races on closed public roads.

Citing “a source connected with the show,” TMZ says Fellows crashed during the eighth out of nine races scheduled for the night and that Fellows was driving a “gold Nissan 240Z.” It’s unclear whether this is actually the orange “Scooby Doo” Nissan documented extensively on social media and described as a 280Z by Fellows on YouTube or a different Z altogether. The Street Outlaws star reportedly lost control near the finish line causing the car to roll and catch fire. Onlookers apparently attempted to get him out but could not do so in time.

Gene LeBell, noted stuntman. 252 credits in IMDB.

During taping, it was reported that Lee was beating up on the stuntmen, prompting stunt coordinator Bennie Dobbins to bring in LeBell to help set the actor straight by “putting him in a headlock or something.”
In his 2005 autobiography The Godfather of Grappling, LeBell remembered grabbing Lee, who then “started making all those noises that he became famous for … but he didn’t try to counter me, so I think he was more surprised than anything else.”
He then hoisted Lee over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and ran around the set as Lee shouted, “Put me down or I’ll kill you.”

If that rings a bell, yeah, Quentin Tarantino says that Mr. LeBell influenced the Cliff Booth character in “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”. Apparently in more ways than just the Bruce Lee bit.

Booth also had an accusation of murder hovering over his head, which might have been a veiled reference to LeBell being charged in the murder of private investigator Robert Duke Hall in 1976. LeBell was acquitted of that charge, and his conviction as an accessory to the crime was later overturned.

Here’s a PDF of a vintage NYT article about the Hall murder, if you want to start down that rabbit hole.

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

Okay. This made me laugh.

Friday, April 1st, 2022

“A few things to know before stealing my 914“.

Especially this line:

Surprise is your best weapon against this transmission.

(Sometimes I think about a 914 as one of those fun cars to knock around in. Even though I have no mechanical talent, the 914 seems like a simple enough car to learn on. Then I come to my senses. A man will think a lot of stupid things when he can’t sleep at night. Also, there aren’t any on Craigslist locally right now.)

Posted in Bagatelle, Cars | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: March 2, 2022.

Wednesday, March 2nd, 2022

THR obit for Veronica Carlson.

Ralph Ahn, actor. He seems to be mostly known as “Tran” on “New Girl”, but other credits include “ER”, “Walker: Texas Ranger”, and “Hunter”.

Lawrence sent over an obit for Nick Zedd, “founder of the Cinema of Transgression movement and an uncompromising auteur whose crude, no-budget oeuvre influenced filmmakers from Christoph Schlingensief to Quentin Tarantino”.

He shot his first distributed film, They Eat Scum, in 1979 on Super 8 film with funds loaned by his parents and by the movie’s star, Donna Death. The short followed a roving gang of nonactor punks turned zombies, whose peregrinations were set to the earsplitting yowls of local New York bands and, inexplicably, the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.” Zedd released They Eat Scum under his own Penetration Films imprint, describing it on the cassette label “a disgusting outlay of cheapness, decadence, nihilism, and everyday cannibalism” and an “achievement of noncommittal, unblinking savagery, a true expression of the punk ethos.”
Future films lived up to this promise, among them 1983’s Geek Maggot Bingo, which starred Richard Hell and was panned in TV Guide as “a nothing little zit of a 16mm movie.” Writing in the East Village Eye, Cookie Mueller, who starred in a number of John Waters movies, declared, “I have never in my lifetime of experience with low-budget films seen one this low . . . It lies somewhere below the subculture, even beneath the New York subway system.” Waters himself would later say of Zedd, “Nick Zedd makes violent, perverted art films from Hell—he’s my kind of director!”

Danny Ongais, one of the great figures in auto racing.

Ongais was born in Kahului and remains the only native Hawaiian who has ever competed in the Indy 500. He made 11 starts from 1977 and 1996, earning four top 10 finishes and a fourth-place result in 1979.

…

During the 1981 Indy 500, Ongais survived one of the most dramatic crashes in the race’s history when his car disintegrated after hitting the wall, leaving his legs and arms exposed as it burst into flames and skidded to a stop. He suffered several season-ending injuries, but returned to drive in the race the following year.

Video of the crash. I can’t embed it, because it is “age restricted” and “only available on YouTube”.

Dottie Frazier has passed away at 99. This is another one of those folks you’ve probably never heard of, but the obit is relevant to my interests.

Ms. Frazier was a diver. She learned to skin dive when she was young:

She seemingly had as many diving stories as she had dives.
There was the time she faced down a shark in the waters off Mexico. The time a large seal wanted the fish she was bringing back to her boat and slammed into her, breaking four ribs. The time she broke her leg snow skiing and made herself a special wet suit with an ankle-to-chest zipper so she could be rolled into it and thus keep diving with the busted limb.

She wasn’t initially impressed with the early scuba gear, but it grew on her.

…in 1955 she tried to enroll in a Los Angeles County underwater instructors certification course, sending in the required fee. She was sent a letter saying the course was for men only, but when she told that news to a friend and respected fellow diver, Jim Christiansen, he asked, “Did they return your check?”
“When I told him no, they had not, he said, ‘Just be ready; I’m picking you up,’” she told the podcast “The League of Extraordinary Divers” in 2016.

She went on to become one of the first, if not the first, women certified as a diving instructor in the United States.

In addition to her work as a scuba instructor, Ms. Frazier, a member of the Women Divers Hall of Fame, operated the Penguin Dive Shop in Long Beach for 15 years beginning in the 1950s and designed and sold wet suits and dry suits. She learned hard-hat diving as well — the kind used in underwater commercial work — but didn’t pursue the career possibilities because, at about five feet tall and not much more than 100 pounds, she found the equipment too cumbersome and restraining.
Ms. Frazier was energetic and adventurous even in her 90s. At 93 she went ziplining. In 2019, she finally sold the last of her motorcycles. In the “Neutral Buoyancy” interview, she noted that longevity seemed to go along with diving.
“A lot of the original divers have made it to a great age,” she said. “Being underwater does things to your spirit.”

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

Obit watch: November 22, 2021.

Monday, November 22nd, 2021

Bob Bondurant, legendary racer and founder of The Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving.

Mr. Bondurant began attracting attention in the racing world in 1959, when he won 18 of the 20 races he entered behind the wheel of a Corvette.
“I am an original California hot rodder turned white hot when I started winning everything in my Corvettes,” he was quoted as saying by the National Corvette Museum, which inducted him into its Hall of Fame in 2016.
He continued to win races regularly in Corvettes in the 1960s, but he also began to race successfully in other sports cars and open-wheeled Formula 1 machines, including for the elite Ferrari team from 1965 to 1966.
“He was top of the line,” said Peter Brock, who designed the Shelby Daytona Cobra Coupe that Mr. Bondurant raced with Dan Gurney to first place in the GT, or Grand Touring, class at the 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance race in 1964.

…

Even before opening the school, Mr. Bondurant had some well-known students. He had coached James Garner and Yves Montand in driving Formula 1 cars for John Frankenheimer’s 1966 film, “Grand Prix.” Mr. Bondurant, who was a stunt man and technical adviser to the film, wore 16-millimeter cameras on the sides of his helmet to record racing action on the track while moving at 150 miles per hour.
Soon after Mr. Bondurant opened the school, Mr. Newman and Robert Wagner signed up as students. They had been cast as racecar drivers in the film “Winning” (1969), in which Mr. Newman’s character dreams of winning the Indianapolis 500.
“Paul has a knack of knowing how to learn,” Mr. Bondurant told The St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1988. “He’s like most actors — they know how to listen. He would move at his own pace, and wouldn’t go too quick. He took it step by step, and it came naturally to him.”

One of my lifetime ambitions has been to attend the Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving, though apparently it went bankrupt in 2018 and is now known as the Radford Racing School.

Robert Bly, the Iron John guy. Anyone else remember when Iron John was a thing? I do, though I never actually read it: I just remember a time when people talked about books, instead of what the Kardasians were doing yesterday.

Carolyn Watjen, aka “Caroline Todd“. You wouldn’t know her under that name: she and her son, David Watjen, write (wrote?) mystery novels under the pseudonym “Charles Todd”. I haven’t read any of them yet, but the Ian Rutledge novels sound interesting.

Jay Last. He was an early semi-conductor pioneer: specifically, he was one of the “traitorous eight” who left William Shockley and founded Fairchild Semiconductor. His death leaves Gordon Moore (yes, that Moore) as the last surviving member of the group.

Lawrence sent over an obit for Mick Rock, photographer of musicians.

Peter Aykroyd, Dan’s brother and “Saturday Night Live” cast member.

Art LaFleur, actor. Other than “The Sandlot”, his credits include episodes of “The John Larroquette Show”, two different remakes of television series that should never have been remade and which failed miserably (not due to Mr. LaFleur, they were just bad ideas), “Matlock”, “Field of Dreams”, and “Wizards and Warriors”.

Posted in Books, Cars, Geek, Obits, Photography | Comments Closed

Gratuitous Mannix, some filler.

Friday, October 29th, 2021

By way of The Rap Sheet, through my mother: the cars of Joe Mannix.

Also from the same source: “Curbside TV – The Cars Of Mannix“.

Posted in 1970s, Cars, Mannix, TV | Comments Closed

Quick followup.

Wednesday, July 21st, 2021

The Drive has an article on that spectacular jumping car I posted the other day.

Their coverage adds quite a bit, including a diagram of what appears to have happened and a link to (low quality) security cam video from another angle.

And, yes, the comments are full of Dukes of Hazard references…

Posted in Bagatelle, Cars, Safety | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 417

Saturday, May 22nd, 2021

There’s someone on the ‘Tube who has a channel, “Demolition Dave Drilling and Blasting”. I think he’s ‘stralian, mate.

In this video, Dave reviews a Chinese generator.

How do you say “Harbor Freight” in Australian?

Mike the Musicologist sent me this: it is a little more recent than I’d like, and I think I’ve seen it linked on Hacker News, but I still think it’s worth highlighting here.

“What Really Happened at the Oroville Dam Spillway?” from Practical Engineering.

Finally, here’s something that’s just about 25 minutes long, and that I think some folks will enjoy: “The Unfortunate History of the AMC Pacer”.

“There’s a fine line between uniqueness and strange.”

Dick Teague on Wikipedia.

Posted in Cars, Explosives, Guns, History | 1 Comment »

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 413

Tuesday, May 18th, 2021

Did you know that Chrysler built turbine powered cars?

I’m not talking about the one that raced at Indy: Chrysler had an active program from (roughly) the 1950s to 1979 developing turbine powered passenger cars. Between 1963 and 1964, they produced 55 cars.

“Here’s why the government made Chrysler destroy its 46 jet cars.”

(I know the numbers don’t quite match: Chrysler kept two, five are in museums, and two are privately owned.)

Bonus #1: “The Mazda RX-8 Is a Fun Car You Probably Shouldn’t Buy”.

Bonus #2: Breaking slightly from the car theme, but…”Evel Knievel: The True Story” from 1998.

Posted in Cars, History | 1 Comment »

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 408

Thursday, May 13th, 2021

Travel Thursday!

Since I know there’s at least one person out there who loves Greyhound (“…the awful smell of stale cigarettes, recirculated air with the BO of 50 other people that would linger for a day or two after my 6 hour Greyhound ride from college to home.“) here’s a promo film: “Would You Believe It?” from 1957, promoting the company’s “Escorted Tour” services. In color, even.

The one time I took the ‘Hound on the ground, it was only about three hours each way (Austin-Houston and back), and I think by that time smoking was verboten on Greyhound buses. However, in the interest of fairness…

Bonus #1: “10 BAD Things That WILL Happen on the GREYHOUND BUS” from the “Frugal Travel Guru”.

Bonus #2: This one’s a long one, but probably somewhat more pleasant than traveling by bus. Especially if you have a good car: a man with a good car doesn’t need to be justified.

“100 Years on the Lincoln Highway”, a Wyoming PBS documentary about the first coast to coast road.

Posted in Cars, History, Roads, Travel | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 406

Tuesday, May 11th, 2021

I want to post some more safety related videos, but it feels too early for that. I am tempted to make “Safety Saturday” a thing. But I probably won’t, for reasons.

In the meantime, how about some cars?

No, the other ones. At least a couple of folks seemed to like that General Tire promo video I posted a while back (how can you go wrong with children and firearms?) so here’s something from DuPont: “Facts About Tires”.

Bonus #1: “Why the Ford Model A is the best American car ever made.”

I don’t know that I would call it the “best American car”. But there is something pleasing about the looks, you can work on it yourself…

Bonus #2: Speaking of working on it yourself, back in the day, my dad changed his own oil. And he always put STP into his cars. These days, you don’t hear much about STP. (At least, not the oil treatment. Maybe more the octane booster and gas treatment. You can get all this stuff from Amazon. (affiliate link))

“The Racer’s Edge”, a promo film about the history of the STP racing teams, featuring Andy Granatelli.

Posted in Cars, History, Sports | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 404

Sunday, May 9th, 2021

Science Sunday!

My paternal grandmother was a teacher. There were always books and magazines around the house, many of which were appropriate for the younger set.

One book that I vividly remember (and wish I could find today) was a book published by Scholastic about the coelacanth: specifically, about how it was thought to be extinct, until a museum curator found one in the daily catch of a local fisherman.

I was fascinated by this. Still am: I haven’t found the original Scholastic book, but Samantha Weinberg’s A Fish Caught in Time: The Search for the Coelacanth (affiliate link) is a pretty swell book, and is targeted more at the adult reader. And I think my grandmother would have endorsed this (ditto).

(I was hardly a “reluctant reader”, but I believe the kids she taught sometimes fell into that category.)

“Diving With Coelacanths”. Be warned: the people in this video are doing highly technical diving at great depth. Which means mixed gasses. Which means they sound like Donald Duck. There are subtitles: but as some of the comments point out, what’s in the subtitles doesn’t always match up with what’s actually being said.

Bonus: Another one of the Scholastic books she had lying around was a biography of Clyde Tombaugh and how he discovered Pluto.

“Reflections on Clyde Tombaugh” from NASA.

And here’s an approximately 30 minute interview with Dr. Tombaugh from 1997, shortly before his death.

Bonus #2: This is borderline science and/or technology, but I have a reason for posting this. A week ago Saturday, for some reason, we got into a discussion of auto racing and racing technology. I mentioned, but could not recall the details at the time, that there was a gas turbine powered car that competed in the Indianapolis 500, back when you could still do stuff like that. You know, before everything became standardized and homogenized and experimentation was limited…

“The Silent Screamer”, a short-ish (17 minutes) documentary about Andy Granatelli’s turbine powered car at the 1967 Indy 500.

Posted in Books, Cars, Fish, Geek, History, Sports | 2 Comments »

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 403

Saturday, May 8th, 2021

There have been a couple of incidents recently involving old guys falling off boats into the water and dying.

I’m not making fun of them: mad props to these guys for being out there. But, as Lawrence put it: “Important safety tip: try not to fall off the boat.”

From the National Safety Council, circa 1972: “Find a Float”.

Bonus #1: in honor of the late Bobby Unser, “Hazards of Mountain Driving”.

Bonus #2: “Blasting Cap Danger” brought to you by the “Institute of Makers of Explosives” circa 1957.

I remember when I was young and reading “Boy’s Life”, every now and then they’d have a public service advertisement depicting various types of blasting caps and warning young Boy Scouts not to mess with them. My question was: why? Was there a real problem with people just leaving blasting caps lying around for kids to find?

Posted in 1970s, Boats, Cars, Explosives, History, Safety | 1 Comment »

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