fly

It’s seventy degrees and sunny out.  Every time I look down at my corporations casebook, all I see is riding, riding, riding.

Finals suck.

Well, you don’t know what we can find
Why don’t you come with me little girl
On a magic carpet ride /
You don’t know what we can see
Why don’t you tell your dreams to me
Fantasy will set you free /
Close your eyes girl
Look inside girl
Let the sound take you away

Nothing gets me excited about the summer like a little Steppenwolf – Magic Carpet Ride cruisin in through the stereo.

hi steve

There are much, much worse ways to spend money.  I would have framed this photo better, but if I had zoomed out any more you would’ve seen the clutter on the floor.

french kiss

It’s French Car day at liveveloce, otherwise known as “How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Just Feel Overwhelmingly Ambivalent About French Cars:”

The car above, the Citroën DS, was recently voted by Car Designers as the Most Beautiful Design of All Time.  The list also included other ugly cars like the Lotus Elan and Ferrari 250 GT, so I’m guessing the voting instructions included something along the lines of “close your eyes and point at a list.” I actually spotted one near the tennis courts next to the Claremont.  You can decide if it looks like the Most Beautifully Designed Car of All Time, or a crappy old french Prius.  I salute it for being different but is it beautiful?

Once you stop scratching your head, ask yourself if you’d rather drive that DS or this truly inspired, coachbuilt, early-post-war Bugatti.  I usually feel pretty ambivalent about Bugattis (probably because everyone else has such a raging clue for them) but this unbelievably imposing symphony of curves and 20,000-league-deep paint is just…breathtaking.

I’ll conclude French Day with this shot.

I don’t love it, but it’s a good preview for an upcoming post about pinup (female model posing on, in, or around an auto) photography.  I absolutely love good, well-composed and executed pinup photography and I think it deserves a discussion on the blog.  Until then, adieu, adieu, to yeux and yeux and yeux.

your boys have no spirit. but this guy does.

110-89

Meet Bill Caswell.  He likes cheap cars, fast driving, and rally racing. Caswell recently became one of my all-time heros when he bought a cheap 1980′s BMW 318i off of craigslist, swapped in a high-mileage 1st gen M3 motor, hand-built a FIA approved roll cage, and entered the damn thing in the World Rally Championship Mexico to race among professional teams with $400,000+ cars.  And kick some ass.

I love a good underdog story.  I’m not sure why, since it seems like every time I face a challenge, I either crush it with a wry smile and overwhelming superiority (cockiness?), or crumble when I get my ass handed to me on a room service cart garnished with white silk tablecloths and etched silverware.  In taekwondo, I usually won by a 7-point gap or literally got my head nearly taken off by a national-level fighter’s foot.  In Battlebots, my robot either left the ring on fire or the other bot left in pieces.  In school, I could write publishable essays all day but simple arithmetic confuses me with its mysterious and magical ways.

I’d love to say that I love underdogs because I was bullied in elementary school and junior high (high school?  Look the other way, people.) and I certainly was, but it’s really not fair of me to dwell on those times.  My parents have given me everything I’ve needed my whole life: no door was ever shut and no opportunity has ever been foreclosed.  But that doesn’t mean I need to be blind to the real underdogs: the 17 year old hispanic kids who go to school surrounded by gangs and face up to three years in prison for around their friends (CA Penal 186.22(b)).  The Muslim women growing up in countries that see them as second class citizens and the women in our country that are seen as the same (I actually found that blog when it directed some traffic to my post about the female insurance murders).  The homosexuals who live not fifty miles from me who don’t have the right to live freely.

Bill Caswell, this rally racer, is absolutely not underprivileged in the same way that those groups are, but what he has accomplished was very difficult, and his fighting spirit was real.  Let’s learn a little from Bill.  Let’s wake up tomorrow and want it a little bit more. Let’s be lock up the doubts and courageously throw away the key.  Let’s go out there and fuck some shit up.

Let’s be awesome.

-

EDIT: I forgot, this post was supposed to be about the guy who beat WRC cars with a $500 craigslist BMW.  Here’s the link to the story.

never grow up

I pretty much like anything with BOV noises.

pacific pondering

Tonight’s post is shortened courtesy of How to Train Your Dragon.  It’s a good movie with a little bit in it for everyone.  I recommend it.  It was better than Up which, as far as Pixar films go, didn’t really do it for me.

I am beginning to miss the open road.  I’m sad I had to cancel the Winter Escape earlier this year, but now that my back problems will soon be behind me (you know what I mean), the prospect of another solo adventure grows in the distance.

My MRI report described my lumbar spine area as being “beautiful.”  Take that skin deep.

nod shlee eff eh

Just figured out my bar trip: head to Germany and drive the Nordschleife.

Nürburgring 2011, baby.

less is more

About three weeks ago, Archdaily.com posted pictures of this profoundly beautiful house in Kanagawa, Japan.  Kanagawa often known by its association with the iconic “Great Wave of Kanagawa” wood-block painting that manages to find its way onto every faux-oriental trinket and decoration.

The house would be the shape of a rectangular box except a wave-shape is “cut out” of the center of the design, forming two separate living spaces.  The feeling evoked is best described by the archdaily editor:

The wood structures and finishing materials of two houses are standardized to emphasis the relations of two volumes being originally from “one great volume” and that they are one though apart. Carved volume in the middle became a courtyard leading to the approach to two houses.

The interior follows the theme of simplicity and open space by using glass and mellow hardwoods almost exclusively.  I especially like how the openings in the white siding of the courtyard face each other so you can still feel like you’re in the same house as the people on the other side.  I also love how the design places the car right next to the kitchen table and living spaces so it can be enjoyed by everyone inside.  Of course, Jalopnik posted this house to emphasize how appropriate it was that they parked an e30 M3 in the garage, a car that is itself a symbol of simplicity, focus, and mechanical beauty.

Draft the jump to see my thoughts on applying this to my current living space.

twenty-four

Hot. You’ve already inspired me a little, be awesome and inspire other women to upset traditional gender stereotypes.

—

non-sequitor

—

Good night internets.  I’ll see you soon, James (1931-55).

rollin dirty

I just drove a Rolls Royce about 50 feet.  It made me smile.

That is all.