what's up?

put me in coach

hudson

went home from work yesterday, after four and a half hours. caught me a cold the day before, but had a job to finish, and my better half didn't want me working at home and getting his mama sick. this he says after he'd already been home the week before, sick himself, or at least talking himself into being sick.

so i'm at my mom's again. and now i hear that his mama be illin' now anyway, so what's the diff? just chill, y'all.

had tickets to a concert tonight, but he already called to say he can't go. i expected that would happen. now do i eat these tickets, and just stay here and play sick myself? i've already been sleeping with prince nyquil for a couple of days, and i feel fine. just have that vocal veneer of barry white going on, and an occasional coughing fit, but never got a fever for the flavor of a pringles.

so i asked my mom if she wanted to go see an xmas concert. she said sure, she had no other plans. the thing is, i think she thinks it's some kind of choral or lovely musical thing. actually, it's gary hoey doing a ho ho hoey show, so should just be him jamming on a guitar, with a drummer. probably not what she is expecting, but who knows?

been a while since i've been to the coach house. i wanna say they serve up some crap dinner before the show. proximity to the stage is directly proportional to how much cash you slip the doorman, so i'm guessing we'll be first out of the parking lot after the show. i'd like to listen to a few songs before she decides it isn't her cup of tea.

saw this huddie drive in at huffarama. only one there, and pretty sure i've not seen another chopped and dropped like this anywhere else. pretty cool. i like it. a lot.

no pressure or nothin’

chopped mercury

a while back i mentioned that they asked me at work, if i would be able to consult or maybe even shoot portraits of management types at the office. and then it never happened. next big event, they hired the outside guy to shoot it. fine by me; didn't want to deal with that many big cheeses from all over the states, in one setting, much less one after another. that would be dealing with a lot of people and my little introverted circuits would be overloaded pretty quickly. and i shoot cars, not people.

well, i guess the usual guy that shoots quick and dirty stuff is out of the office this week. says he has an ulcer. that didn't take long; he's only been there a year or two. j/k. sucks.

so the public relations girl asks if i might be able to take a picture of someone who is visiting the office tomorrow, if i could bring in my camera...not sure where the company camera is, but most likely its a canon or nikon, and i'd be pretty dumb using it, not knowing my way around either one. her existing picture is fuzzy/blurry. i have a kick-ass hundred millimeter macro, so i think i can do better.

i've had to go back and review all the class notes and the book i studied on doing portraits, and did a crash sitting with my better half being my test subject. i think it'll be ok. only thing to worry about really is that the room they'll have me shoot in has windows on two sides and an obnoxious orange wall on the other. hoping they know where the green screen might be hiding.

i could take her outside, in natural light. just pretend she's a car, and aim for her headlights, i mean her eyes, not her hooters.

speaking of green, this car was pretty bright. i wonder if i could use it to strip in other backgrounds, like the memes have been doing with the queen elizabeth birthday pictures and that bright green suit she was wearing.

i thought the shot straight from the camera was pretty clean, so i only kicked the pixels a little bit.

father and son

1951 mercury and 1950 ford

1951 mercury

putting up a few shots of these two cars, since the kid asked. well, he asked my better half, and then i got the email.

i like the idea of the nose to nose shot, but i'm not so sure my wide angle lens does them justice. just couldn't get up high enough. maybe next time i should climb on top of another car or truck.

not sure if these are works in progress or if this is it. better half said the headlights are really meant for motorcycles is what i think they told him. whatever they are, the headlights on the black one had small red lights around them and they made the grille glow red.

black one belongs to the dad, the other to the kid. nice to share the same interest, and to pass your knowledge on to the next generation.

goldie lox

1940 plymouth

at my parents' house. they're outta town at a mini family reunion. all my dad's sibs in one place, probably for the last time...it's a good thing. my brothers are there too, maybe to keep the peace, i don't know.

they're all getting old, and don't travel well. at least i know how my old people grumbled as i dropped them off at the airport. my mom would have preferred not going, or maybe a roadtrip, but then my dad would have fallen asleep at the wheel, and taken them both out. i'd really prefer to take his keys away now, even for local trips, but we'd have to pry the keys from his fingers.

mostly, he's fine. it's keeping him away from costco that'd be preferrable just now. no two people need that much food on hand that often, especially stuff that is sold in twenty-four packs and ripe right now. mostly i think he forgets that he already went shopping.

back to my point, i'm here, watching the house, feeding a turtle that is apparently not hungry and sleeping somewhere in the backyard, and an ancient bird who hates everyone that isn't my mom. it's also sort of creepy being alone in this house i grew up in. i just don't live here anymore, so i am not used to the sounds it makes. and there has been someone calling and not leaving messages all day, who also hung up on me when i did answer. probably just a telemarketer, because they're a-holes that way.

i also half expect my kid to sneak in and scare the shit out of me, since he also has a key. he used to do that to my mom, until i pointed out that he was going to literally give her a heart attack. he felt bad and stopped doing that at least. i'm tired, but don't want to turn the light off...little kid in an old bod.

there are several beds to choose from, one that's too hard, one that's too soft, and a couple that fred flintstone would have been happy to sleep on, until i bought them thick foam mattress pads to ease guests' suffering, most often that being me.

anyway, one more day and they'll be home. i'll probably miss ruby's season opener car show tomorrow, but my better half may go just to send me pics of what i'm missing. it's raining here right now, and probably tomorrow, so maybe the show will start next week, if the clouds head to whittier...

such a busy month ahead for me, i will just have to endure it, and fit in a couple of weekend shows as i can.

i've seen this plymouth before, in previous years at chicano park. people mostly shoot it from the other side, and from the front. i got that shot too. but i am hoping to see things a little different, so here's a shot from the back. i need to post some cars from other areas of the show, than just by a mural wall. the cars are interesting on their own, without the added prop of the art. that is, unless it's more about the location and the car is incidental to the scene...

now i'm just rambling, and i should get some sleep. i'm sufficiently tired enough to not give a rat's ass if the bogey man showed up.

long way to go

1940 mercury

i've seen this car before. probably at chicano park.

i was chatting with a car owner when i spied this car drive by at the end of the lane. he off-handedly mentioned that the merc owner had driven up to city of industry from san diego. that'd be about a three hour drive on a good day. but on a friday, it must have been hellish.

gave me more hope that this frisco's show was worth the effort to get here. having the previous show shut down before it had barely got off the ground, definitely was a good sign.

but what if this guy drove all the way the eff up here, just to have to leave?

i guess it was a gamble he was willing to make. i did not hear that the authorities shut it down after we left, so he lucked out.

i bet he has plenty of friends to hang out with as a back up anyway. nice car, no problem meeting people, i suppose.

rained a bit today. predictions put it at eighty percent chance of rain all day saturday and sunday, so i guess my weekend outings are off. shows may be on, rain or shine, but my lenses don't like rain that much. maybe i'll actually pack up my camera that crapped out on me last summer, and send it in for repair. does me no good as a paperweight.

sucks

we just got back from a walk uptown. passed the whittier community association office, where they post flyers for all the local activities going on, up on their windows.

this year, the annual uptown car show has been moved up from mid august to june fourth.

in a normal world, i'd have said that's great, since it's always hotter than hell in august. but it's not perfect, and my world has been a bit of a crazy whirlwind lately. so, checking my calendar, i've just noticed that i have to catch a train to san diego that same day. perfect.

i can make it work, though, since the show is physically, just up the street. i'll just have to be sure to be all packed and ready to go the night before.

we're usually up and out by five-thirty in the morning anyway. organizers are up and telling vendors where to set up, and cars are stuck in purgatory, i mean, staging.

we'll just get up and out, shoot the cars for a few hours, as usual, but then i'll go home, download the pictures, and head to the station, instead of back to the show. just sucks that i won't be able to do anything with them until i get back a week later.

------

shot this car before, at a different show, from the back end. even sold the file for cheap, to an unnamed shop not too far away, with their idea of putting it on tshirts. perhaps they didn't have a shop to do it, or the cost prevented it.

i suspect, the more likely scenario is that they just gave the owner a nice print of the car. enjoy, i guess.

doña rosa

two hour drive home. wanted to go to frisco's, but i see they already got shut down on that one. damn. briefly considered heading to whittier blvd, or, just going uptown and waiting to see if anyone drives by the theatre.

nah, might to the whittier community car show in the morning, and i gotta get some sleep. not seeing any other show going on at the same time, or i'd probably go somewhere else for a change. also think i have to work all weekend to meet an arbitrary deadline, on a job that has been repeatedly pushed aside.

another car from last month at pomona. nice car, not overdone. almost thought it was a merc, but the chrome is all ford. nice chop job.

chopped

dear specific whoever is reading this blog and hitting the refresh button repeatedly, you get to the other pages by scrolling down, and using the numbers at the bottom to navigate through these pages, or go to the search tab.

there are two hundred and nine pages, at this point, so it might take you a while. if you're looking for a particular car, send me an email, i'll see if i've done anything with it, and maybe i'll put it up. i'm just afraid you're going to wear out that f5 button on your keyboard...i don't get any brownie points for page views, and neither do you...you'll just get frustrated.

i've got things to do, and will be away again tomorrow, so i'll just put this chopped bel air up for now. don't think i've seen anything like this one before. wonder how far they are going to take it.

choppy waters

i've heard that to help keep your heart healthy, you should do ten thousand steps a day.

the internet says that adds up to about five miles. who the heck has time to walk or run five miles a day? says the girl chained to a computer ten plus hours a day...

i don't have a phone or an app to track steps, but i'm pretty sure i'd be lucky to do that many in a typical week. i think the only time i can is when i'm on vacation, when we have all day to casually walk as far as there are things to do and see. but alas, i'm not on vacation everyday.

today was sunday. i had some time. i walked about three miles. went the other way, from a where i'd take a typical walk, out and about in whittier.

sadly, i didn't see one old car. saw a guy on a harley, who waved to me. maybe i've seen his bike around, but he went by too fast to know for sure.

purposely headed back home down a particular street, hoping to see an old fleetline that used to sit in the same place, on the same road, all the time. i wanted to finally get a picture of it, since i was going to walk past it, but it was gone.

saw a porcelin throne, sitting randomly in the middle of an alley, and a sign in a window that said, "prepare to meet thy god." what the hell kind of message is that? would it be some kind of indiana jones dart blowing fun run, if i had chosen to take that alley path? freestyle target practice? strange way to express your religion, or maybe my mind just ran off on a tangent, and lost the message completely.

saw a few cars from crazy life car club, but didn't shoot them. maybe the one that was parked sitting there, on its highest hydraulics setting would have made a decent picture, but nah. didn't.

not sure when i'll take another long walk. still pretty warm out. i'll wait for the cold. or the rain. or even better, a big car show.

and cars like this one. all the way down at the end of uptown--that walk must have done my heart good, right?

hot chocolate

been a hell of a week at work. but now i have to go. a week away from computers, work, and worry. i am tired. and my side hurts off and on. still cannot contemplate how i cracked a rib. so bizarre.

i am sorry to have to miss a few car shows. i did want to go to the bomb club show, but i'll be on a plane while they roll in. maybe next year.

saw this brown car, on a particularly hot day at mooneyes open house. the warm, rich color just makes me think of chocolate. milk chocolate. not that bitter dark stuff. ick.