A Sharpie Car
by Nahp Suicide
I came across this truly unique car art while cruising online, and really wanted to share it you. The man responsible, SlAnG 500, owns and operates a car customizing shop in the OC. He’s been building show cars for 15 years, and does “the art stuff on the side.” SlAnG 500 uses nothing but Sharpies to do his artwork, which combines graffiti and tattoo design elements.
“The idea came from a guy in Florida that tried to do something similar a few years ago on a Lambo,” says SlAnG 500, who flipped the idea with his own So Cal graff flavor. His first Sharpie project was a friend’s M3 (pictured) that he’d just finished modifying in his shop. He started work on the front fender, and completed it eight months later.
It ended up being pretty much all pictures mixed with my designs, that’s why it took so long,” says SlAnG 500. “I drew everything freehand – no stencils, no taping, no tracing.” Consequently the project was pretty labor intensive, taking almost 600 hours to complete.
“I wanted to do something that would get my mind off of the shit I was going thru at the time,” says SlAnG 500 of his monumental Sharpie endeavor. “This was the only thing I could do and not think about anything else, due to the amount of work and concentration needed to finish such a huge project.”
Dumbass Steals Car, Gets Caught by Car Forum Members
From Slashdots crowdsourcing-justince department comes the heartwarming tale of a stolen car, the idiots who stole it, and a posse of car enthusiast-slash-forum-posters turned detectives who tracked the orchestrator of the act down and got him arrested.
The car had been imported from Japan by Shaun Ironside for his dealership. Despite its reserved appearance, the Skyline GT-R is something of a performance icon to car enthusiasts and video gamers; it fit well among the Porsches and Mercedes-Benzes in Mr. Ironsides inventory.
One of the men had been to the dealership a week earlier for a ride, but he and Mr. Ironside didnt get far. The car, with an engine modified for extra horsepower, began to act up. When the man returned with a friend for another try, Mr. Ironside was juggling two customers, so he just handed them the keys, explaining that there was only enough gas in the tank for a drive around the block.
The car did not come back. As Mr. Ironside put it, it went for a permanent test drive. He quickly posted a plea for help at Beyond.ca, where in a matter of days, a forum member was able to capture a picture of the suspect, inside the car, displaying the hand disfigurement that unquestionably identified him.
Soon after, another member spotted the suspect driving the car and tailed him, locating the morons home. The picture mentioned earlier was used to track down his Facebook page. Forum members eventually drove to the suspects home, blockaded the road with their vehicles. The owner of the car joined them and called the police, who responded in minutes. Someone had the presence of mind to video-tape the arrest:
you want to go on a test drive? Hows the car? the man behind the camera asks - absolutely priceless. Jamie The Claw Jacobson (nickname given to him by forum members), 18 years old, now faces charges of theft over $5,000 and a court date on April 16th.
His friend in the car lost his hat to an eBay auction. No word on criminal charges for the Yankee's fan, or whether or not he was arrested.
The hat was found after the car was searched, along with receipts from a car wash and a 4-liter jug of oil. I guess Jamie-boy thought he was going to keep his new wheels.
Some are arguing the vigilante-esq tactics of the individuals who were instrumental in catching the thief. Should they have left the police work to the police or gone through with their efforts that ultimately landed Bozo in jail?
punk has been witness to the recovery of at least two vehicles via the efforts of VW Vortex members here in Arizona.
You can view the original call for help and the events that followed in the original forum post, here
Smart Hat Controls Toy Car
A new "smart" cap has been developed that will allow physically or mentally disabled people to control a toy car via radio transmissions. The device was originally made for a 5 year-old boy who was paralyzed in a car crash.
Electronics expert Mike Heath was approached by a charity group who asked him to come up with something to enable the boy to play independently and to improve his cognitive skills.
He later teamed up with Mike Taylor who specializes in marketing new inventions.
Any one wearing the hat can remotely control one of three cars just by moving their head around. The cap has four sensors in it that can detect movement in four directions (forward, backward, right, and left) and can work together to make the car move diagonally. The device could also be adapted to work in gloves or shoes to accommodate individuals who have a wide variety of ailments.
The car is called "Dream-Racer" and the inventors are now touring the United States showcasing it to disabled children. This device could also be developed to work with more then just remote control cars.
The company is also developing the Dream-Gamer interface, a cap that works with Sony's PS1 and PS2.
Although not compatible with all games, particularly those that require combinations of quick fire button presses, it works well with arcade classics as well as titles such as Crazy Frog Racer 2.
It's good to see motion sensing technology being used in more then just over priced gaming consoles.
The Dream-Racer website is found here.
There is also a Dream-Racer blog here to track its progress.
Dude, Your Car is So Gay!
And when I say gay, I dont mean it in the 7th-grade-synonym-for-lame kind of way. I mean in the boy-on-boy-hot-manlove kind of way. Thats right. Some cars are gay. Totally, seriously, completely gay. The Mazda Miata? Gay. The MiniCooper? Gay. The Jeep Cherokee? Huge lesbian.
Dont believe me? Im sorry, but the New York Times says its true. As a card-carrying member of the vast left-wing media conspiracy, Im contractually obligated to take every word the Times prints as Gospel.
Ron Geren, an actor in Los Angeles, commutes to auditions and jobs throughout Southern California in a sleek black Mazda MX-5 Miata convertible. But for a recent date with a woman, he rented a Cadillac Escalade because he was so used to friends saying his Miata is gay.
Guys say, Hey, thats cute, Mr. Geren, 40, said, adding that the comments come from gay as well as straight men. You have to fend off that perception.
A few years ago, Meghan Daum, an op-ed contributor to The Los Angeles Times, wrote about a promising first date with a man that never led to a second one because, she later learned, the guy saw that she drove a Subaru Outback station wagon and concluded she must be a lesbian.
See? Someone alert the 700 Club! That car youre driving, that inanimate object with no possible sexual preference whatsoever could actually be a homosexual. Sweet Heavens!
Cars are no more straight or gay than cellphones, office chairs or weed whackers.
Oh my God its spreading! Eeek!
But in recent years that truism has not stopped a perception among some motorists that certain cars can, in the right context, be statements about a drivers sexual orientation.
At a time when car makers are marketing aggressively to gay consumers and mainstream culture has become more literate about stereotypically gay tastes through television shows like Will & Grace and The L Word (on which one of the main characters, Alice, drove a Mini Cooper), it may not be surprising that some people make such assumptions about motorists based on their cars.
Ahhhh, so thats what Im missing. That the actual car itself is not a potential Friend of Dorothy, but that its being marketed to those who are a little light in the loafers. Gotcha.
Well that isnt anything new, is it? I mean, maybe its because I live in San Francisco, but I see gay targeted advertising all the time, for everything from travel websites to home and garden stores to (ahem) automobile dealerships. Hell, directed marketing to gays and lesbians is even something of a cottage industry, and theres even a website for gay auto buyers called GayWheels.com. In other words, this local trend is expanding to gay up the whole darned country!
But what is also slightly different in this case is the implication that a straight person might buy a car that would make them seem gay. Not to mention the idea that a gay person might try and avoid purchasing a certain car to avoid being labeled as too stereotypical. And speaking of stereotypes, couldnt this entire notion be a little politically incorrect? I mean, isn't it kind of offensive that we now have marketers exploiting perceptions about a particular class to help their bottom line?
But to some people, such stereotyping is homophobia, pure and simple. A poll seeking to determine the most gay automobiles, conducted by a South African Web site, was a topic of heated interest last December on Gizmodo, the New York-based technology blog, where one reader wrote: Since when are cars gay or straight? Were really polling peoples prejudices here.
Others, though, including gay theorists, say many gay motorists happily embrace certain cars as reflections of identity.
People presume you want to throw off a stereotype, said Judith Halberstam, a lesbian who is a professor of gender studies at the University of Southern California. She drives a black Mazda 3 hatchback that she considers butch. But, she said, If you are a masculine woman, you might not feel bad about it, so you might become excited about knowing how to fix your pickup, or driving a 68 Mustang.
Not all gays want to present an image that is normative, she said.
Fair enough, but not all straight folks do either. On the other hand, Id be lying if I said the idea of purchasing a Miata didnt make me chuckle at the assumptions that people in this city might make about my sexuality. And while around SG I might act a little swishy from time-to-time, in San Francisco Im never clocked as a homosexual. This is because on some level I consciously engineer my image so that Im perceived as a straight male. I dont think theres anything wrong with that, so is it then wrong to avoid buying a car that might compromise that image?
Im not quite sure. Something about the idea of allowing other people define which cars mean you're gay and which don't rubs me the wrong way. What if I just really, really dig the idea of flitting around town in a white Volkswagen Cabriolet with leopard-print seat covers? That doesn't make me gay, it just makes me ironical. Or something.
Of course, it truly makes little difference to me because I have nowhere near enough money to buy a car nice enough to where any of this would be an issue. As you can see from About.coms list of 2007s gayest cars, most of the rides are pretty swanky.
Which really brings us to the bottom line of this minor cultural phenomenon. The gay community has proven that it wields enough market power to demand attention from conscientious companies looking to sell their higher-than-average-end wares. That's encouraging to me because beyond any political, psychological or philosophical debate about the fairness of stereotypes associated with the advertisements, the issue for marketers is a much simpler one. One GM marketing exec summed it up thusly:
I dont think internally we ever asked the question, If we put Cadillac in The Advocate, are we going to lose straight Cadillac buyers?
Frankly, he added, the moneys all the same color.
That, my friends, is social progress. And a coming out party of an entirely different sort.
Stay tuned for Part Two in Subrosa's exploration of perceived homosexuality entitled "Yes I've Just Ordered an Appletini and No, There's Nothing Wrong With That", due on the Newswire this Summer.
Cameron Diaz in Freak Out Hit and Run
After Cameron Diaz tussled with a photographer, the photog tried to run her over. At least thats Camerons side of the story. The actress filed a police report this week claiming the guy attempted to hit Diaz and her boyfriend, Justin Timberlake, as they left a friends home. Diaz stated the photographer jumped from some bushes, took some pics, then took off. In a rather unwise move, the couple chased the fleeing man.
The photographer got into his car and drove toward Diaz and Timberlake, causing Diaz to jump out of the cars way, Harding said.
No one was immediately arrested and no suspects have been identified.
The investigation is in its initial stages, Harding said.
Considering Diazs rep with photographers, the guy could claim self-defense.
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Jessica Gets Greedy for a Good Cause
Jessica Simpson, to the shock of nobody, didnt to win any Moon Men at last weeks MTV VIdeo Music Awards. What is shocking, however, is the truckload of shit she walked away with, but didnt need. Simpson snagged thousands of dollars worth a clothes, jewelry, gadgets, and most perplexing, a $50,000 Chrysler convertible. After media outlets caught wind of the haul, Simpsons rep, Rob Shuter, immediately vowed the singer would donate all the items to Simpsons favorite charity, Operation Smile. Shuter even took a moment to explain to the New York Daily News, that its cool, because Simpson didnt need any of that shit.
"People like her don't really need these things because they already have everything," Shuter told The News, explaining that she's giving to the charity that provides cosmetic surgery to children with facial deformities. Sometime later, Shuter hastily notified Operation Smile.
"He didn't say anything specific, but she wanted to donate some stuff," the group's celebrity liaison, Dee Dee Sides, told Lowdown. "I think the car. Maybe we'll do an online auction? I don't really know."
When the Daily News followed up with Shuter regarding the promised donation, the rep appeared to forget Simpsons promise.
I don't think she has thought about it yet," Shuter E-mailed Lowdown.
Needless to say, the charity is still waiting for the swag. No word yet on how Simpson feels backing out of a promise she made to a charity.
In other Simpson news, check out the singers Today Show performance, in which her laryngitis reared its ugly head at an inopportune moment.
Dirty Car Art
Here's an unusual portfolio of an artist dedicated to making art (and art replicas) out of dirt, quite literally. As the site says, "Scott can't resist a dirty rear car window."
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