What's on John Lennon's iPod?

Did I say "iPod"? I meant "portable 40-record jukebox". Excellent documentary on what were apparently the late Beatle's 40 fave 45s.


[via Smashing Telly]

Attention, hepcats

"Art Ford's Jazz Party", circa sometime in the '50s.

Found on Chime.tv, which is most definitely the new hotness of Internet video sites.

See America right

For some people, a journey as long and daunting as a drive from Tennessee to Las Vegas ought to be done in a reliable, comfortable, high tech late model sedan--something with full climate control, plush seats, loads of legroom and a full DVD/GPS navigation & entertainment system with more transistors in it than the Starship Enterprise. However, for the Baron of Bias-plies, the Wallah of Whitewalls, Corky Coker--who runs a tire company that repops every form of obsolete rubber from Model T-era skidless pneumatic whatchamacallums to hot rod-approved pie crust cheater slicks--your old man's Accord won't do. No, he's making the journey in style, in a freshly built '32 Ford roadster, complete with supercharged flathead V8. And in a rare (and welcome) concession to the bugaboo of modernity, he's blogging it on his Blackberry. Go and read it, folks, at least you'll learn what "raining pitchforks and hammerhandles" means.
[via The Jalopy Journal]

The '50s called, they want the future back

Fantastic gallery of '50s "Googie" signage and architecture--the flashy, futuristic style scientists say will adorn the amazing bowling alleys and drive-in restaurants of Tomorrow.
[via this MeFi thread, with even more tailfin-era goodness.]

Big Daddy is our leader!

"Tales of the Rat Fink" is the forthcoming docutoon about Ed "Big Daddy" Roth's chrome-plated, fuel-injected and steppin-out-over-the-line influence on nearly everything that is awesome in America. Here's the trailer for y'all [via The H.A.M.B.]


Expect the ride to the theatre to look kinda like this:

(Aaron von Mindin's blown Model A coupe as filmed by the Mad Fabricators Society)

Filed under:

• cars
• hotrods
• kustom-kulture
• movies
• video
• big-daddy-roth

The years of sand and speed

Coop has a wonderful post featuring scans of Veda Orr's Hot Rod Pictorial, a late-'40s yearbook of the dawn of SCTA land speed racing. Orr was a fascinating woman--the first woman dry lakes racer, the first hot rod journalist (she wrote and edited for the SCTA's newsletter before the outbreak of WWII, and even put a couple of issues together during the war as a morale booster for the boys overseas)--and the period between the mid-1930s and late-1940s was a hugely influential one in terms of the look and technology of the traditional hot rod. Well worth a look.

Go fast, turn left

Before "stock cars" meant rolling billboards with multi-million dollar budgets that bear no resemblance to the cars they supposedly represent, the American midwest was full of dirt ovals, where local daredevils would brave bodily harm in stripped down, homebrewed specials. Hotrods & Roadsters of Central Kansas offers a glimpse into this bygone era.

Found on the HAMB, alongside this video:

Oh what a feeling

Traditional American style executed with obsolete Japanese hardware. Somebody needs to build one of these full-scale--mind you, a '59 Toyota is probably pretty tiny, so you'd have to be Vern Troyer to actually fit in one with that radical of a chop.

Original image here.