Blood for Oil (Fuel-Mad Americans)

http://bzfd.it/1GUWZmk

The one weapon worldwide that warring people always reliably count on against "evil" America is our supposed lust for oil and petroleum products. Speaking as someone who walks downhill daily as part of her commute, I can assure you that there is no such person, at least not how it's portrayed overseas as an excuse for violence and murder.

Americans use transportation regularly because one of our states, that land called "Texas", may be the size of your entire country and then some, which is difficult to envision if you've never been. When I lived and worked briefly in Germany, Arnold Schwarzenegger was a newly-elected Californian governor. The next day, my studio-mates in the atelier tried to use it against me, which was baffling, because I lived in New York City. I tried explaining it to them, but without an illustration like the one you see below, it's almost incomprehensible to a Euro.

The distance from Berkeley to New York City is 2,900 miles—driving time of 42.5-48 hours.

It felt like my time in Denver, when I tried (in vain) to explain to the designers and editors around me how many people we watched die, live on t.v. during the 9/11 attacks, because they also tried to dismiss it immediately. America is so vast, it is a state of mind that's much bigger than other countries on the globe, which makes it unknowable to anyone who hasn't seen it or tried to travel across it. Freedom, like being American, isn't a state or ethnic group; it's a choice.

When I explained to my German co-workers that I would have to fly on a plane (or two, or three, depending on fares and airline hubs) for SIX HOURS just to reach California from New York, I could see an "Aha" moment spreading through the group, which was solidified later on in  my trip when an editor and I blithely mentioned we were driving to Amsterdam for the weekend. They were shocked and scared beyond belief by such a journey as ours (and by beautiful women, too!), until we once again mentioned that we could drive for hours in New York and still remain in our home state. 

To us, driving a mere 2-3 hours to be in another country is so easy and ridiculous a hurdle to accomplish, we cannot imagine NOT doing that regularly. Same thing with the English language: if you had to fly for 10 hours just to get to another country, you'd probably use less languages, too, Euro. Trust me on that. Anyway, English has become the lingua franca for world business and trade, which makes sense to me, because New York City is the capital of the world. 

Writing that is still no excuse for gluttony, just because you may like shiny new things. I love good design and classic American cars as much as the next person, but to pull ourselves out of this mess, we have to buckle down and conserve. This means you! I really liked the German system of limiting car usage and petrol to orderly days of the week divided by neighborhood, like so: on Mon-Weds., these streets conserve fuel and cannot drive, so my co-workers biked as part of their daily commute instead, to a train equipped with bike racks. 

"Petrol" is considered a very expensive luxury in Europe overall, which is the right idea to have, because the cost of using too much gas is a price we can't afford to pay anymore. Think about the melting of the polar ice caps, and you're already there. Same with your air conditioning running at full speed whenever you feel like it, because you're overweight and always overheated. Fuck that! Staten Island has already experienced crippling power outages and it's not even August (the hottest month here), yet.This world needs to go on a diet, and not a Texas-sized one either. We need to change the world.

Dream Car

Can you guess what this is?

When I was a little girl, Mailbu Barbie's dream car was THE BOMB. 
It's as true today as it was back in the day, as evidenced by this scene (and others) from the "Toy Story" series of movies:

"Tour Guide" Barbie gets all the guys AND Ken, yo!

I had other cars I really liked, like the one described in a Nancy Drew series of green cloth-bound books that my mom borrowed from her cousin Nina, so I could read them all. Nancy Drew had a little red Miata that she tooled around in, solving crimes and beating traffic (and criminals) with her boyfriend Ted, going from book form to movies, and groovy 70s t.v. shows:

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/belongings-nancy-drew-author-auctioned-sunday-toledo-article-1.1540850

I also liked "Herbie, The Love Bug" as a kid, but in real life nothing beat the good ole sex appeal of an American-made Mustang, because it's hot and cool at the same time. Like so much in my life, it was no surprise when I saw one parked in the lot next door, colored a light yellow that almost matches a certain Dutch farmhouse on a street named after a boy named Henry. It's perfect for me, n'est-ce pas? 

It's got a cute lil' nose, right? Such nice personality for a car!

Happy motoring out there today, friends. It's finally warm enough to take the top down and drive around, in beautiful New York state. Enjoy the ride!

What else, but a Mustang in pale yellow with removable hard top?

Folk Art: The Bazzanobago

Grrrrrr >:( It's game time! Get your "gameface" on!!

I'll just put it right out there by saying it bluntly: "guineas" love cars. Guidos have a big hot rod history here in the tri-state area, which is ironic to me, because my Italian-American grandmother never learned how to drive. She didn't have to because she was from the city and it was unnecessary. Besides, that was my grandfathers' job, because he liked cars and taking care of them. My grandma liked sitting in the passenger seat, so she could look out the window and relax, like a real Queen would. It was so cute!

But starting with junior high school, the kids in my town started going nuts about cars quickly, their hormones linking up to mechanical equipment that goes fast like peanut butter goes with jelly, and why not? This country has tons of curvy hilly back roads that are a blast to drive. Our humble little county goes dead at night, and as teens, we took full advantage of that road freedom to turn off the headlights and turn a mountain pass into a scary roller coaster ride. 

I had family that lived over the Bear Mountain Bridge, and the fastest route from here to there in this single terrifyingly narrow road with a tiny guardrail between the mountain side and the Hudson River lurking way down below. In the winter (just in time for Christmas holidays), it freezes with a fierce ferocity that randomly drops huge chunks of ice onto the road, making you swerve into another tiny single lane of murky incoming traffic that was blurred by the river's thick blanket of fog and the alcohol my parents may have ingested. We always made it home, but it was often an unwelcome white knuckle ride.

"Jetting" away, but still makin' stops.

As a result, I've learned to have a healthy respect for the climate here, and the dangerous twists of weather that occur so quickly, you have no choice but to drive through it. I'm an excellent and safe driver, but such is not the case with a lot of my friends, family, and neighbors. As their 80s mullets grew in, so did the cheesy red cars their parent's bought them for their 16th birthday fill the parking lot before school started each morning, making it a testosterone-fueled danger of its' own, with smirking, nastily leering boys sitting on car hoods wearing big gold chains. Uh, pass.

I love cars, but unfortunately, they tend to be of the suavely cool 60s kind, hard to drive and even harder to maintain. Sigh. C'est la vie. Luckily for me, my paisans in Pearl River have cars and trucks so weird, that the garage next door has turned into a cooler and less scary version of that high school parking lot of my youth, with a procession of tricked out pieces appearing every week. 

Also lucky for me, it's football season, another big boy-time filled with beer, food, parking lots, and cars. Every time I see this proper GuineaMobile back for a tune-up, I smile to myself. Can't you just hear their conversation? I wonder what their horn sounds like? It's another piece of Rococo genius, the owner having rigged a series of ever-smaller orange horns in descending order behind the front grill, and that's just fun.

Enjoy the game, guys! Have a great season, and have a beer (or two) for me.

The 'Bago's back!

Sting Ray!

Sting Ray in the sun.

If this car doesn't conjure up "Mad Men" type associations, like excellent James Bond movie getaways and hip, swingin' jazz tunes, you ain't alive. Feelin' it, and feeling groovy about it: that's diggin' classic cars in a hugely serious way, kids. 

P.S. - The paint set on this ride is so iridescent, it's like there's small, glowing points of starlight mixed into blue finish: a real tight job that only shows it's true colors up close and personal, master craftsman-like. Yeah, baby!

Sticker Art: Crazy Cats & Headbangers' Balls

"Crazy Cat!',  coming at you from the back bumper, baby.

The Headbangers Ball with some politics, religion, and $$$ thrown in.

Old Cars: Thunderbird

Wow! Some car.

I've written prior about my love of old cars, for their great lines and cool designs, (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2013/10/old-cars.html), and I'm not someone who's typically into retro for retro's sake. It's just that the designs were simply better in the past. Anyway, since I see so few cars that reflect my taste, I become a big fan when I finally spot one I like. It's like discovering while channel surfing one day that you've always liked NASCAR but you never knew it. 

The perfect robin eggshell blue.

I don't, but that's the rare feeling I get when I discover an automobile that flashes "cool": I didn't even know I liked those kind of cars until I saw one in person. Great design, like great designers, achieve a kind of commonplace, every day immortality that's also shockingly stand-out different, too. 

Check out the lines...

Someone once wrote that a being famous designer is like being a famous dentist, and the same can be said about automotive designers: gifted, but not heralded in the same way as their work, like a clothing designer who sees you wearing their shirt as (s)he passes you on the street but says nothing. And that's the particular beauty about an anonymous kind of fame; it's quiet, gentle, but still very powerful.

The classic American Thunderbird.

Here's a pic of me, taken on Memorial Day.

Welcome back, readers. 

Memorial Day, Spring 2014.