Category: rants

OK, it is a blog, so yeah… I occasionally rant.

Zagato at it again: Maserati GS Zagato – Autoblog

Zagato at it again: Maserati GS Zagato – Autoblog

There is a term in the Design world called “Zeitgeist”, which is a German word roughly translated as “Spirit of the Time”. I saw the photograph of the custom Zagato-bodied Maserati on Autoblog and I first thought it was a new Jaguar XK, or maybe an Aston-Martin. Both of the latter were designed by Ian McCallum, not Zagato.

Then I remembered Zeitgeist.

Think back to the any era in automobiles and there are thematic elements that strongly identify the cars from that era. Spats, Fins, Curves, Wedges. There, I just defined the 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s for you. 😉

Picasso said it so well, “Bad artists copy, and good artists steal.” Artists and Designers have been copying and stealing from each other since the dawn of time, so the ‘alikeness’ of some things is to be expected. Only rarely do objects appear that are BOTH revolutionary in appearance AND immediately appreciated. Usually when confronted with the revolutionary we reflexively reject it, as it is TOO different. This is true of all avenues of human expression, art, music, cars, movies, fashion, etc.

Think about that old Jaguar I have in the barn. It appeared in 1961 and literally caused a sensation. There was a lot about it that seemed “revolutionary” at the time, but in reality it was just an evolutionary step that was logical in nature. Disc brakes everywhere, independent rear suspension, “supercar” performance at a reasonable price… and of course the styling… all had been previewed before in bits, just never rolled into a mass-produced package. You can see the influence of the very successful D-type Jaguar race cars in the lines of the E-type. It was just smoothed out into something less pugnacious and more elegant. The result was stunning.

You can see its influence (or as Picasso would say, its felonious reappearance) across a broad spectrum of machines that all appeared within two years of the E-type’s debut in Geneva. They span the range from the Ferrari 250 GTO, to the Chevrolet Corvette. You could even say it became such an iconic shape as to have echoes a decade later, with such machines as the Datsun 240Z.

So I expect that the comment whiners all over the Web will complain about the sameness of this design (which by the way the SECOND time I looked at it seem to me to have paternal lineage in the Aston/Jag camp, and maternal links to the new Alfa Romeo 8C) but not realize that this was a one-off, for a customer, who shelled out big bucks, er… Euros, for it. As such it was built to meet HIS needs, not yours. People don’t buy revolutions, they buy comfort.

Does it remind me of other cars? Of course! Does that bother me? Nope.

Love notes from my Alma Mater

Little known fact about me: I graduated from Texas Tech University in 1985.

I attended Tech specifically to study under a professor by the name of Frank Cheatham. Frank taught Design in a method that can only be described as “brutally efficient.” I have a lot of respect for Frank. He was a VERY difficult (but excellent) man to learn from, as he demanded that students *think*, and develop the conceptual skills required, not just the technical ones that are taught in most design programs. Frank had a strong will and ironically those that RESISTED him actually did better in the long run. I was one of those resistors. If you were weak willed, you would basically just do what he implied and your work reflected “Frank” rather than “you.” This meant that you would be unready to stand alone in an intellectual and conceptual way in an industry that was based entirely on intellectual concepts Your ability to promote and defend your ideas became your measure of success.

I argued with Frank a LOT. But it served me well. To illustrate his “brutality” the best example is just number of students. I started the program with approximately 95 other aspiring students, FOUR of us graduated. I’m sure every student experienced the “you should change your major” speech from Frank Cheatham. When it came it felt like a devastating attack on your core values, but in reality it was a challenge for you to defend them. Google tells me that Frank Cheatham died in 2003.

Anyway, I enjoyed my time at Texas Tech, but I do not have any particular fondness for the institution itself. It was merely the broker between myself and the source of my *actual* education, which came from Frank and other faculty there, such as James D. Howze. I met some great peers there too, and still stay in touch with a few other Tech alumni from time to time*… but I have no real affiliation/affection for Texas Tech, or Lubbock. It was just a place I spent four years, got an education, and left.

Texas Tech does have some Ninja-elite Alumni finders though, because they never fail to track me down… no matter where I move. It isn’t like I let them know when I move. I have never sent them a dime, at least after my last semester there in 1985! But they track me down and send me newsletters, credit card offers, invitations to football games, etc. They even found me when I was in the UK!

They’re a 2nd tier University, with a serious inferiority complex, driven by history and location. Every state has one of those, such as the cow college here in my home state. They just try harder because of it. Of course in some situations effort will never get you to rise above your true limitations. Like black roots on a bad hair dye job, the reality peeks out around the shiny polish applied over everything.

I received a communication from the Texas Tech Alumni today… an email newsletter. In it, was this verbatim series of headlines:

CNN Spotlights Recovery Program
Business School Ranked 3rd in Big 12
Meat Evaluation Team Wins National Title
Experience Gourmet in Lubbock

Sigh. What can I say?

* If you were in my class in Design Communications, or shared space in the first floor, short wing of Clement Hall between 82 and 85 let me know!

Bill Maher: New Rules: March 16, 2007

HBO: Real Time with Bill Maher: New Rules: March 16, 2007

“after 9/11, President Bush told us Osama bin Laden could run but he couldn’t hide. But, then he ran and hid. So, Bush went to Plan B: pissing on the Constitution and torturing random people.

Conservatives always say the great thing Reagan did was make us feel good about America again. Well, do you feel good about America now? I’ll give you my answer, and to get it out of me, you don’t even have to hold my head underwater and have a snarling guard dog rip my nuts off. No, I don’t feel very good about that.

They say evil happens when good men do nothing. Well, the Democrats prove it also happens when mediocre people do nothing.”

Well said.

The guy’s a dork, but…

…I have to agree with most of what he says here.

The current administration is made up of liars and people incapable of doing right, the war is a disaster, Iraq’s future is destined to be far worse than its past, and we, the USA, and specifically the Bush administration has squandered the opportunity of all time.

I guess even blow-hard New Yorkers are occasionally correct.

Bush supporters keep chanting “cut and run” in answer to his suggestion. But really… other than “stay and watch our soldiers get killed” WHAT THE HELL IS THE STRATEGY? Seriously. Has anyone in the Bush administration EVER laid out for us what their strategy actually is? What is the PURPOSE of this conflict? What is the exit strategy? Can they finish ANY job they start? Remember Bin Laden? Afghanistan? Hello?

Ugh.

WILLIAM FUCKING SHATNER

Wil Wheaton’s Geek in Review: WILLIAM FUCKING SHATNER, Part I
Wil Wheaton’s Geek in Review: WILLIAM FUCKING SHATNER, Part II

Ok, so I have this William Shatner story that I have to tell. If anyone knows Mr. Wheaton (or even has a TypeKey account so they can comment on his blog) and can pass along the URL, maybe he’ll get a chuckle out of it.

The scene is New York City, in the autumn of 1988. I had recently married Sue (9/9/88…. guess who picked that hard-to-forget date?), and my parents lived in NYC at the time. My dad was transferred there for work on a two year assignment and they decided to “live like tourists” for those two years and experience NYC to the fullest. Sue & I flew out from Seattle and stayed with them for about 4 or 5 days. Mom & Dad had met Sue just once, very briefly before we for all practical purposes, eloped, so this was a more formal “get to know Chuck’s new wife” visit. We too were swept up in the “Goolsbee’s Do Manhattan” theme. Sue had never been in NYC, so she was awestruck by it all. The whole time she was playing up her whole country girl persona and asking when we would see a celebrity. None were to be found. My parents took us and my little sister (who was in high school at the time) to a Broadway play. “Phantom Of The Opera” (I found it to be rather lame and overdone… but I guess all my years of art school ruined me for appreciating simple melodrama.)

So Sue & I were sitting in our seats, waiting for the show to start. My parents and sister were sitting in the row in front of us, a little to our left. Our seats were perfect (too bad the play sucked) right in the middle of this huge slice of parabola that was this very nice theater. Sue is chatting with my sister diagonally in front of her as I’m just sort of scanning around at the architecture. My eye catches sight of … you guessed it “WILLIAM FUCKING SHATNER” edging down our direction from the right side of the theater, but two rows below. I nudge my wonderful wife and whisper, “You wanted to see a celebrity? Well here comes William Shatner.” I see my little sister’s eyes light up, and Sue says ‘Who is that?” I answer: “You know… Captain Kirk.”

What followed was one of those exquisite moments in time. Where physics seems to become irrelevant and time suspends and elongates. Here we were in a huge, crowded, acoustically perfect space. There were hundreds, if not over a thousand people all around us, every one of them murmmering their little conversations while they passed the time awaiting the rest of the crowd and the dimming of the lights. Sue, finally getting her wish, was basking in the presence of celebrity… even if she really wasn’t sure the stature of the celebrity she was in close proximity to. WILLIAM FUCKING SHATNER (thanks Wil!) was accompanied by a woman, who was shuffling along the row of seats in front of him. Just as the two of them passed directly in front of me, time and space distorted even further and at that very moment came one of those silent pauses in a crowd where all noise ceases. It was as if every person in the entire theatre had just completed their sentence, hitting the terminal punctuation mark with a pause for breath, in a perfectly synchronous, simultaneous fashion. That silent pause was just long enough for all echoes to settle and be absorbed. At that very moment you could have heard a pin drop.

Except no pin dropped.

Instead my wife opened her mouth and uttered in her rarely used, but distinct Oregonian Hick tone:

“He’s SO fat!!”

Those three words filled the acoustically perfect, and perfectly silent-for-a-fraction-of-a-second-before-and-after, gigantic space of the theater. The words blurted out and orbited the space. They travelled at the speed of sound and reflected off every surface of that theater and were absorbed by every human being there. Eardrums wiggled and three tiny bones did their little jitterbug dance to the tune of my wife’s flat Oregonian-by-way-of Alaska accent. I felt like a black hole had just opened in the seat next to me and the universe did a huge optical zooming effect towards us. I gasped “Sue!” an instinctively shrank a few sizes in an attempt to blend in with the velour pattern of my padded seat. It was one of those moments that could have provoked an interstellar war lasting generations. Thankfully before a million sleek and horribly beweaponed star cruisers unleashed electric death, the vast murmur of the crowd returned.

WILLIAM FUCKING SHATNER never even blinked. But the sleek and horribly beweaponed star cruiser female companion of his rotated her weapon turret towards my wife and flashed her twin phaser banks while narrowing the firing slits in a very threatening manner.

If looks could kill, I would have been widowed before my first anniversary.

Hypocrisy in the Middle East

Hypocrisy in the Middle East
“If honest democratic elections were held throughout the Middle East tomorrow, many countries would elect religious fundamentalist leaders hostile to the United States.”

In six short paragraphs this Congressman has summarized exactly why the US’ actions in the middle east over the past six years have been complete blunders. As Robert David Steele, the founder of the Marine Corps Intelligence Command famously said: “America has begun a hundred-year war on six different fronts precisely because the President lacked intelligence in every sense of the word”

The boobs in the White House have gone off half-cocked in all the wrong directions, over and over again. Completely unable and unwilling to finish what they start. If you recall the initial attacks were to bring Osama bin Laden “to justice”… well they abandonded that after a while and decided to institute a “regime change”… leaving that job unfinished, they then dropped that to win an election at home… something they actually accomplished, but with the message “stay the course.” I kept asking “What Course?” but nobody ever answered that question. Go figure. Now they’ve decided to “bring democracy to Iraq.”

Congressman Paul states the obvious point that I have always made, which is IF we allowed the citizens of these Arab nations actually vote in free elections, they all vote for Mullahs. Mullahs whose campaign promises and platform would all be “Death to America!”

Even a dim bulb like George W. Bush should be able to figure that out, right?

Apparently not.

The Truth About Cars | At some point in the not-so-distant future…

The Truth About Cars | At some point in the not-so-distant future…
“At the moment, car dealers’ profits increase in direct proportion to their ability to screw their customers and bilk the manufacturer.”

Farago does it again… distills the ills of an entire industry into one sentence. This is one of the reasons TTAC is by far my favorite “car” site on the Internet. The editorials and commentary are the most insightful and entertaining reading to be found on the subject. Anywhere.