Matte Black Cat with a Rat Kings Tat

This week we went to the previously teased Gaslight Anthem and Counting Crows concert. It was a venue I'd never been to before, the YouTube Theater.

The YouTube Theater is in Inglewood, on the same property as our recently added NFL stadium (which I've also never been to before). I had seen a few shows near there at what used to be the Great Western Forum. The first show I ever drove myself to was there, Quiet Riot, with Whitesnake (before most people had heard of them). My friend Sean and I went together. Later we also saw Ratt there, with Bon Jovi opening, back when Bon Jovi had just come out with 7800° Fahrenheit album, so also before most people had heard of them. Much later, my wife and I, along with her brother in law and his wife saw The Scorpions there, around the time their Crazy World album was out. Anyway, the thing I recall from going there was that it seemed like you have to drive quite a ways from the freeway to get there.

But I digress. We got there and parked not too far from the entrance and made our way in. Security is better there in the sense that you don't have to empty your pockets, go through a metal detector, then get wanded down anyway for your belt buckle. I think it was a body scan instead, a guy just ahead of us got pulled out for a more thorough search. Since the place is fairly new, it's real nice, and it was easy to get in and find our seats, which were pretty good. We were on the front row of the first balcony, a bit off to the left. The younger was wondering if there would be an opening act or acts like last time, and I noticed that the setup had a Gaslight Anthem banner, and figured there wouldn't be.

The guys from The Gaslight Anthem start heading out, and Brian Fallon gets on the mic and says his daughter would like to say something. She gets on the mic, and says, “Ladies and gentlemen, The Gaslight Anthem!” From there they go into a song I wasn't familiar with, Have Mercy. Right after that they go into Positive Charge.

They did two cover songs in the set, and another I'd not heard before and haven't been able to positively identify. Since I'd mentioned Tom Petty in the teaser post, it was interesting that one of the covers was a Tom Petty song, Honeybee from the Full Moon Fever album. I recognized the song from the riff!!! The set list was as follows:

1. Have Mercy

2. Positive Charge

3. Handwritten

4. The Weatherman

5. Dark Places

6. Time Spent Playing By Her Side?

7. Howl

8. Honeybee (Tom Petty cover)

9. Mae

10. Here's Looking at You, Kid

11. Lovesong (The Cure cover)

12. Mulholland Drive

13. The 59 Sound

14. 45

Brian was wearing a hat for most of the show, so he wasn't especially photogenic. Once again, I wasn't able to identify who the picture on the drum was supposed to be, but I tried to get a good shot of it. She looks so familiar, I sent a picture and asked my wife, and she wasn't able to tell, either.

Also noticed that they had action figures on several of their amps!!!

Seven of the songs they did in their set they had also done at the previous show. It was cool to finally hear Howl live, and in the teaser post I'd mentioned Tom Petty, so it was cool they covered him!!!

They did the change over with the lights up, and the partition curtain behind the stage up. It goes back a ways, and they have a roll up door for a loading dock at the back, looks like a good design!!!

While we were driving there, I played Spaceman in Tulsa, and told the younger that I bet Counting Crows will play it tonight. It just seemed too perfect for them not to play it!!! They took the stage, and it was the first song they did!!!

The set list was as follows:

1. Spaceman in Tulsa

2. Hard Candy

3. Mr. Jones

4. Virginia Through the Rain

5. Omaha

6. Cover Up the Sun

7. With Love, From A to Z

8. Miami

9. Colorblind

10. God of Ocean Tides

11. Blues Run the Game

12. Round Here + Raining in Baltimore

13. Boxcars

14. A Long December

15. Rain King (intro with something with the lyric, “It would have been fine if you would have been the one”, another song I wasn't familiar with)

16. Under the Aurora

17. Hanginaround

18. Holiday in Spain

I'd never heard Colorblind live before (to be fair, not a song I'd been clamoring to hear live, anyway) but it was another I recognized from the into riff. They did a cool effect where they did a rectangle cone of light over Adam, with brighter chaser lights going around the perimeter. Also did white spots over the rest of the band.

Before he went into Cover Up the Sun, he spoke of how some songs are fables, but rooted in reality and featuring real people. He said the song features Pedro Gonzalez Gonzalez, and his grandson Clifton Collins, Jr.

Before he went into With Love, From A to Z he told the story of how his dad had to go into the military during the Vietnam war. They'd been in Boston, and ended up moving to Texas, and traveled in their Oldsmobile Cutlass station wagon. After he mentioned the station wagon, the crowd cheered, and Adam said that the mention of the car always gets a cheer!!! Adam said he had a stack of books, and read them and watched the scenery of the Appalachian Mountains and the open plains. And how now he travels the country and sees a lot of it. I always had thought that the storytelling of Cover Up the Sun sounded like a tale of touring the country in a tour bus. The line near the end, “Let that diesel fly”, as well as the traveling descriptions from the first verse always made me think that.

They left the stage after Rain King, and I had a feeling they'd be back for an encore. Sure enough, they did!!! I was thinking that the perfect song to end the show with would have been Bobby and the Rat Kings, but I guess they didn't want to play all night!!! Upon reflection later, I noticed that they didn't play any of the 4 songs from the original Butter Miracle Suite One, all of which I've become a fan of. They did play five of the songs off the most recently released Butter Miracle: The Complete Sweets, which I guess makes sense, since Suite One was a few years ago. They did play Boxcars, which has the mention of the matte black cat with a Rat Kings tat that this post title is from (and made me take a look at Kangol hats, to see if any of them appealed to me!!!). After the show, I was looking to see if anyone had posted clips from the show (there are a few), I came across the cinematic official video for Suite One, and it's pretty good!!! Also, it features the aforementioned Clifton Collins Jr.!!! Also where I got the image at the top of the post of the Rat Kings CD.

Oh yeah, I didn't have any trouble identifying the picture of the girl on the Counting Crows drum head, it's the Butter Face girl from the Butter Miracle cover artwork!!!

As we headed out, we swung by the merch booth, to see if there was anything that appealed. As we had headed out of the venue, I saw one guy with a shirt from the hook line from Spaceman in Tulsa, “I'm a Motherfucken' Rock and Roll Star”, that I thought was pretty amusing but probably something I wouldn't wear much. The Gaslight Anthem had one with the lyric from Positive Charge, “It's Good to be Alive” (which, IT IS!!!, and a great sentiment, I thought) with band images underneath that I picked up.

The younger liked the Butter Miracle: The Complete Sweets tour shirt, with the dates in a circular pattern on the back. On the front of his, it has Counting Crows, and the sleeve of mine has The Gaslight Anthem. A couple more overpriced shirts to add to the collection!!!

Machine Work

My dad got his Studebaker back in 1993. A bit of the back story on it is as follows: He had found an old basket case Ford, a '50 I think, for a good price, I think it was $500 but might have been $1,000, that he had wanted to buy. Naturally, it wasn't in running condition. He ran it past my mom, and I think it would be an understatement to say that she was less than enthusiastic. He'd probably mentioned it to me, but I don't recall. My mom talked to my older sister about it, and she had a different point of view. I don't think she was especially crazy about it, either, but she told my mom, “He's a good guy, always works, doesn't drink or do drugs, doesn't gamble away his paycheck, doesn't chase tail, you should let him have something for a little fun!!!” So she had convinced my mom, who reluctantly agreed, but in the interim, my dad had talked himself out of it, thinking it could become a constant bone of contention. He said he wasn't going to get an old project car, “Unless a Studebaker Hawk comes up for sale”!!!

I didn't know that part at all. I was working as a machinist at the time, making tooling for sheet thermoforming, and the other machinist would often look through the classified looking for any interesting classics. He reads one day right around then that there's a '62 Studebaker Hawk, 289” (no, not a Ford motor if you didn't know) and automatic transmission, runs and drives, $1,400. Wow, that sounds like a decent price for just about any running and driving classic to me!!! I knew nothing of Studebaker for the most part, other than that some of them had come with factory centrifugal superchargers, but gave my dad a call anyway to let him know, since I knew he was kind of looking for something. It must have sounded just like what he was thinking. It was up at or near the Van Nuys airport, and I don't remember how much longer it was after that, but he had me come along with him one evening, and it was in pretty good original condition. The passenger side fender had been crunched so bad it had torn the metal, and welded back together and roughed out back to close to the original shape, and there was a big scrape on the passenger side quarter panel ahead of the back wheel. Worth the asking price to him, and he drove it home that night.

Since I was employed as a machinist during a lot of the time that my dad was doing various things on the Studebaker, I ended up making a lot of custom machined items for it!!! I feel like I don't have a lot of items (other than my two 512 keychains) that I machined, but there are several on the Stude!!! Since I recently did a post about license plate frames, I'll start off with this!!! This was one of the few frames I made up with my CNC program. I think I did two 512 frames, a Chicago Cubs frame for Sammy, and this one for my dad that I gave him for Christmas in 2005 (incidentally mentioned on my 100th post!!!). One of my neighbors thought it was a great idea to have it on there, since most people have no idea what it is!!!

Around that same time, I think my dad must have asked me about making caps for the lakes pipes. I wrote a program for the outside profile, then made a couple of designs. On the drivers' side, I did the Studebaker “Lazy S” logo.

On the passengers' side, I did the Hawk logo. They are fairly quick to make, and I think my thought was to see which he liked, or if he'd like to come up with something different. Also, the cap I had been measuring off to make the outside profile apparently is just a bit smaller top to bottom that the actual flange, so these have a bit of the pipe flange showing. I would have corrected this and whipped out a pair of matching ones, but they axed me before I was able to get to that point.

His original vision for the Stude was to keep it fairly factory original, with the original engine and transmission, and have his custom body touches “bolt on”, so the body could be easily returned to stock. He designed custom tail light housings, and custom headlight bezels, and a custom grille shell. Then, while they were heading out to some far flung event, the 2-speed automatic transmission went out. He called me up to see if I'd get my mom's Cadillac drive out to get them, and he'd have it towed back, which we did. He found out it was going to be over $2,000 to get the transmission rebuilt, and around the same time, he had a guy who owed him that totaled his Chevy truck with a V8 and TH700R4 overdrive transmission. The overdrive it a huge plus for something you're going to be driving any distance, and Chevy small block engines are a hot rod classic. He decided he would be better off updating the drivetrain. He wasn't the first to put a small block in the Hawk body, but a lot of people end up mounting them high in the engine bay to clear the crossmember. He thought, since he knew a machinist, he could get a reduced size crank pulley to clear it, and put it in the original's position. This was well before I was running a CNC, and this was just done on a lathe. I don't remember exactly how it worked out, but the bolt circle to the balancer was wide enough that I wouldn't be able to make it as small as he wanted and have deep enough grooves, so I made it as a 2-piece unit, with the pulley portion bolting onto the balancer mounting portion.

Not long after, he was having issues with the accessory mounting, and had me make up this bracket for the power steering pump. This was done on a vertical mill. It's seen better days, but it may just clean up nicely.

This isn't anything I did, but I discovered or re discovered that he'd added a Moon Equipment temperature gauge to the intake manifold. Wouldn't be a hot rod if it wasn't running hot!!!

As a tooling designer, we also did pattern work, and would send them out to be sand cast in aluminum. The aforementioned custom tail light housings needed an end piece for the trim that runs the length of the car. My dad made up the pattern, and we sent them out for casting. I cleaned up and polished the castings. He also made up the pattern for the custom headlight bezels. They actually have a portion with negative draft, which most casting shops can't do as loose patterns, but the place we worked with is pretty good. They came out with a lot of casting flash that I had to machine off, and cleaned them up. In the original configuration, they were both just bolted on, but for the current final iteration, they both (as well as the custom grille shell) were all molded in.

Venn Diagram

This is coming up in a couple of weeks. Two of my favorite artists are having a concert together!!! The Counting Crows and The Gaslight Anthem!!! The two most recent shows I've seen were Brian Fallon and The Gaslight Anthem, and prior to that I've seen the Counting crows nine times, so when this show was announced (and on a night that works for me) it was an easy sell!!!

I'm putting this post together as a way to chronicle the times I've seen both groups. I had to go through some of my previous posts to get it all together.

I've previously made mention that the first time I saw the Counting Crows was in November 16th, 1995 at the Hollywood Grand with my brother in law. It was before they came out with their Recovering the Satellites album, and it was a lot of their new songs, so it wasn't stuff that the small crowd that was there was familiar with, for the most part, but it was a great show, very intimate. I'd heard that there was a bootleg of the show entitled “Launching the Satellites”, and just recently found someone had published it on YouTube!!! I converted the audio, and have it saved. It's all as one track, and I want to break it up into the individual songs. This was the set list:

1. Catapult

2. Angels of the Silence

3. Daylight Fading

4. I'm Not Sleeping

5. Miller's Angels

6. Another Horsedreamer's Blues

7. Wiseblood

8. Rain King

9. Ghost Train

10. Chelsea

11. Margery

12. Have You Seen Me Lately?

13. Suffocate

14. Goodnight Elizabeth

15. Children in Bloom

16. Round Here

17. Good Luck

I have recordings of Chelsea and Good Luck that I'm pretty sure were from this show, and possibly others (I have a lot of live recordings of their stuff).

I fell off for a while after that, and didn't even pick up the This Desert Life album, but was getting back into them when the Hard Candy album came out, and I went to see them again on December 10th 2002 at The Gibson Amphitheater, right by Universal Studios, and I was reminded of what a great live band they are!!! Toad + The Wet Sprocket opened for them. The show started with all the lights down and went right into “Have You Seen Me Lately”, and on the third singing of the line “Have you seen me lately?”, they put on all the lights on the audience, it was very theatrical!!! At some point around halfway through the set, the drummer Ben Mize had an anxiety attack or some kind of breakdown, and was unable to continue. Adam pulled out his song book and they played a couple songs as acoustic versions, then the drummer for Toad + The Wet Sprocket took over for the rest of the show. I was hooked again!!!

I think the next time I saw them was July 17th, 2003, at the Staples Center with John Mayer. This may be the worst show I've seen, the acoustics there aren't great, and there were a bunch of really annoying John Mayer fans there. I don't beleive I'd made posts about either of these shows.

The next show I saw, I'm not 100% sure of the date, but it was December 2003 at The Wiltern. The Wiltern is a place that's general admission with no seating whatsoever, which I didn't much care for, but it was a great show, especially compared to the previous one!!! The Wallflowers were the opening act, and I enjoyed them. They opened the set with Adam and one of the other Crows with an acoustic guitar off on the side playing “Blues Run the Game”, which I'd not heard before. Later on in the show was another first for me, they played “August and Everything After”, and not long after the show I found a bootleg from the same tour, possibly from the show I was at, of that song.

The next time I saw them was October 25th, 2005 at the Disney Concert Hall with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra (I've previously had that as Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, please update my flaky brain error). Awesome show!!! I took my firstborn to this show, and made a couple of posts about it. Great show, great sound (and different from the standard versions of their songs), and we had what could have been terrible seats, but Adam turned around to be able to watch the director for most of the show, and we ended up with awesome seats because of that!!!

The next show I saw was September 12th, 2008 at Irvine Meadows Amphitheater with Augustina and Maroon 5 (I'm pretty sure it was the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater at this point, but it'll always be the Irvine Meadows Amphitheater to me!!!) I think I've seen 4 or 5 other shows at this venue, and this was unique among them (besides being the last show I've seen there) for being the only one I ever had general admission tickets on the field for.

The next time I saw them was July 24th, 2009 at the Greek Theater with Augustina and Spearhead. “The Saturday Night Rebel Rockers Traveling Circus & Medicine Show”, this was, and it was a great show. One of the main recollections I have from it is when the treacherous starter on Janice went out again!!! Oh, and Spearhead had offers to download audio from the show if you signed up with them, and I still get emails from them!!!

Next up was October 1st, 2010 at the Ford Theater for the Freeloaders screening. Great weather for seeing a movie under the stars, the first time I've been to the venue, and it's a great theater, with good acoustics for a great listening experience!!! The Ford is across the freeway from the Hollywood Bowl (another venue that I haven't been to) and Tom Petty (possibly with the Heartbreakers) was playing that night. You could hear them during some of the more quiet parts, it's the closest I ever got to seeing Tom Petty.

It almost doesn't seem possible, but the most recent time I saw them was November 24, 2012 at The Wiltern, this time with Mean Creek and Tender Mercies. Good show, I enjoyed Mean Creek more than Tender Mercies, and Counting Crows did not disappoint!!! I remember between the acts they played Black Keys' “Gold on the Ceiling”, and sure enough, I looked up, and the ceiling of the Wiltern is indeed gold!!! Another thing I remember is for both shows at The Wiltern, while we were waiting to go in, a couple of girls were going down the line and trying to drum up business for a vegetarian place down the street from there.

After that, it seemed like every time they were playing locally, it was on a day that wasn't good for me, or in one particular case, they were playing at a casino with a small theater, and the tickets were quite expensive. I would have liked to have seen them more recently, but it just didn't work out.

Not like this upcoming one, it's come together about as good as I could ask for!!!

The Inheritance

I had made mention five years ago of the passing of my father. Also on other previous posts, I've made mention of his project car of the last several years, a 1962 Studebaker Gran Turisimo Golden Hawk.

He wanted me to become it's owner and curator on his passing. He had told me to get someone to draw up plans to construct a garage on our lot, and he would pay for the construction, so it would have a protected area to reside. I never got to that point, and I don't know if he had a realistic idea of what the price would be to have it constructed. The idea hasn't left my mind, but I digress.

After my dad's passing, the older had moved in with my mom for quite a while. After he had lived with her, helping her with meals and driving her around to shop and doctors appointments, he relocated to Colorado, and she's been on her own for a while. My older sister has been trying to get her into an assisted living facility for a while, and she just last month got her into a really nice place. She is now moving to sell off her house, so the Studebaker had to be moved out. It had been sitting for almost 5 years, and the battery was dead. I took the battery out of the Falcon, and got my tools and a can of quick start. I was there on a Sunday with several friends who were helping move out some other personal effects. With the fresh battery and quick start, it would fire readily, but wouldn't run. One of my friends headed over to a gas station and bought a couple gallons of gas, which we put most of into the tank, and primed the carburetor with some of the rest. It would run for a bit with the carb primed, but stalled out. One of my friends was keeping an eye under the hood, and said it was leaking. I took a look, and asked where, and he indicated the fuel pump. I was out of time for that day, so I came back the next day with the intention of buying a new fuel pump on the way. When I stopped to get it, they didn't have any compatible pumps in stock. I bought a length of fuel hose (I had the thought that it had old hose on both sides of the fuel pump, that could be all it would need) got the address of a hub store with stock, then continued to my mom's house. I jacked up the car, and checked the hoses. Both of them looked fine, but I loosened the clamps and re tightened them, then primed the carb again, and fired it up. This time, however, it stayed running with no issue. I checked, and there were no leaks!!!

My mom had said that it had cooling issues the last times it had been run. This was news to me. Running it in the driveway with the hood open, it didn't get that hot at all. I drove over to a gas station to fill up, and it got hotter, but did fine on that stretch. While heading to the freeway in red light green light traffic, it got up to the higher range of the gauge, but as soon as it was moving along, it came down to an acceptable level. When I was off the freeway again, it started heating up again. I went ahead and headed up our hill. Around halfway, it started hesitating and cutting out, with the gauge climbing. Almost to the top, it stopped pulling, and I threw it into neutral, revved it a few times, and tried going again. It didn't go, so I gave it some more, and laid a patch of rubber and made it the rest of the way. On the way down, I can smell the coolant boiling off, and when I get it down by where I wanted to park it, it was steaming good. Wouldn't go when I tried to back it up, so I left it kind of slanty. A few hours later, I headed back out and backed it into place.

It was terrifying to drive it at night!!! It tracks perfectly straight, but when you're doing any turning, it has that old floaty power steering disconnected feeling. It has that tail dragger stance, so the inside mirror doesn't show much. A choice I never much approved of, my dad had tinted all the windows except the windshield limo black, so visibility isn't great. The outside mirror on the drivers' side has a loose pivot, so it's always going out of whack.

The tint on the drivers' side was damaged by the window mechanism and the slide, so I've removed that, as well as the tint from both of the wind wings. The passenger side front window is next. I've ordered a high flow 160° thermostat, to see if that's all it takes. If not, I'm considering an electric water pump. These are the main things that need addressing, but there's a lot of other things. The windows were rolled down while it was being stored, with a nice cover over it, but mice or rats got into it, and it's smelly and a mess in there.

The thing is a rolling work of art!!! Every time I'm out working on it, one (or several!!!) of my neighbors will stop and ask about it, or talk to me about it. I'd get some of that while driving the Falcon or the Sky, but this is to a much greater degree!!!

Happy Get Day II

Happy 2nd Get Day to Sidney!!!

I caught him waking up while he was up on the perch. The perch has become his regular afternoon napping spot, often with the toe beans hanging over the edge!!!

Pictures was kind enough to make a collage of the day we got him!!! Every picture from the post when we got him was included in the collage!!!

Back when I had my broken foot, I wasn't taking showers at first, so I had moved a chair into the bathroom to sponge bath myself. Of course, Sid was sure it was meant to be a new napping spot for himself.

He's still very much a people cat, and very friendly and playful. He's not much of a lap cat, though, with one exception. Whenever I'm sitting in the bathroom, he gets up on my lap!!! Always starts out snuggly and lovey, with lots of purrs and licks. But almost always, the licks progress to nibbles and bites, and grabbing on with his fore paws!!! He's considerate with his grabbing on, though, it's always with his claws retracted, and he's always purring while he play fights. Bites are one of his love languages!!!

ReDecorating

I had made mention of a couple of items recently. One was that I would likely be replacing my printer in the near future. The other was the lack of content I've had recently.

Well, I took care of both of them today!!! I was going to try and scan a form the other day, and I couldn't get my printer to get past the “Print Head Not Installed” portion. I messed with it for a few minutes, then called it, and ordered a new one!!!

I stuck with Canon, since I've been happy with the one I had, present experience excluded. Got a Canon Pixima G6020, another all in one with print, scan, and copy functions. Since it's a much newer model, it's also wirelessly connected, and since ink has been a major expense with my previous printer, this one is an ink tank model with big reservoirs. Oh yea, I can also scan and print from my phone now, as well.

As a side note, I had long ago mentioned the artwork on my file cabinet upon which my desktop computer tower and printer have always sat. Never had an actual picture here, only a link to a page on a long gone Geocities site. When we were living in Long Beach, my wife had saved up and bought a set of chairs and a love seat that were black with blue and maroon pattern shapes all over them, and when I got a 2-drawer file cabinet, I painted it black, and hand painted similar blue and maroon pattern shapes to match. The chairs and love seat are long gone, but the file cabinet remains, so I've included it in the picture here!!!

A little over 12 years ago, I had painted the bathroom in a black and white theme. My dad made up the custom painted toilet seat that has been the base for many of the pictures posted on this blog, and when I'd painted it up, I picked up three black 5”x7” picture frames, with the idea that I could rotate in various black and white pictures. (The only picture that actually shows much of the black and white was the third on this post) The first three, I printed out pictures of Mochi sleeping on the top of the cat tree, Leo relaxing in the sink, and a vertical picture of both their paws. I'd added the picture frame effect in Paint Shop Pro, and had them printed at WalMart. Well, those pictures have stayed there since that day, until today!!!

After setting up my new printer and printing the test page and a test picture, I printed out these pictures to replace the old ones. The first two are from out Texas trip from a few years ago, both taken in Galveston. The first was looking out from the window of the Best Western (second picture from the end of this post). The next was on the beach on the Gulf of America (the final picture on this post). When I saw both of these pictures, I knew they'd work great for the theme I was using in there!!!

For the third, I kept with the theme of having a cat picture. I used Sid's X-ray showing the repair!!! Hey, it cost me a lot of money!!!

The Follow Up Random Post

I feel like I'm lacking content to blog about these days, so I'm going to post a few minor things somewhat related to previous posts!!!

A couple weeks ago, I bought myself a rechargeable battery type tire inflator. It's a no name deal, and wasn't very expensive, but I'm quite pleased with it. You can set your desired pressure and it'll turn off when it hits the correct pressure. The tires on the Falcon tend to lose pressure while it's sitting, and with the Moon hub caps, it's more involved than most to top them off. This is when I took off one of the caps, you can see the levels of receding waters from the rains of January!!!

I'd gone down to sweep up some of the constantly falling pine needles a couple weeks ago, and there was a ticket envelope on the Falcon, and the tires had been chalked, so apparently we've got a bitchy neighbor. I moved it, then topped the tires. Last week we took it to the car wash, and it cleans up nice!!! There was quite a bit of silt under the hub caps, so it took some cleaning out.

I had completely forgotten back when I did my Literary Stack post about a couple of books I'd read. The first was an autobiography of Mark Thompson of the Mark and Brian show, which had been one of my long time favorites. It's entitled, “Don't Bump the Record, Kid”, and I learned of it from Woody of the Woody Show. He was listening to it as an audio book, and was enjoying it. Of course, I prefer an actual book, but this appears to have been a limited release. When I first went looking for it, there was only one available, for over $50. I wasn't going that high. I checked back around a month later, and someone was selling a copy for around $20, and it was signed!!! I'd heard a lot of the stories, and lived a good amount of them, and I enjoyed the book quite a lot!!!

Another book I found in a give away box probably a couple years ago was the Jack Kerouac classic, “On the Road”. It was “The Original Scroll” version, and it had a lot of the history and told of the edits that were made for various publications. It's one of those I'd heard of forever, so I had to pick it up and check it out. It wasn't a great book, but it was an enjoyable read, and now I can speak of it from having read it.

A couple weeks ago I picked up a pack of Mountain Dew Baja Blast, thinking it was just the classic Baja Blast, not realizing it was Tropical Lime. It tastes better to me than the canned classic Baja Blast, but not as good as the on tap that you get from Taco Bell.

I took the younger to a dentist appointment the other day. In the stairwell, they've got one wall that's painted a little reminiscent of my license plate frame!!!

Last week we went to the beach with a huge and shifting group of friends. Surrogate son and his brother were there, a couple of other families, and a couple of our other friends. In the afternoon, one friend left to get his girlfriend when she got off work, which took more than an hour. The younger fell asleep for a bit while this was going on.

A couple more friends showed up around when the sun went down, and a little after that, SpaceX did a launch from Vandenberg!!! I'm pretty sure it was dropping off Starlink satellites.

I took a couple of pictures of the younger and a friend in the dark with no flash, and they came out kind of fuzzy, and each picture had one looking good and the other not so much, so I did a merge of the two pictures!!! You can totally tell it was two different pictures, but it's plausible!!!

Passed!!!

Finally did it!!! Finally got both of the cars that require a smog check to pass!!!

As previously mentioned, the check for Zonker was coming up. If I'm not mistaken, it would have expired tomorrow. I'd been having a lot of frustration with my normal place, and a friend had referred me to his place, who he's had great success with getting more difficult cars to pass. I'd taken Kutcher over there to see if he could help me out, and apparently since one shop has already entered the information, they wouldn't be able to do anything for me.

Not wanting a repeat of the issues with Kutcher, I took Zonker there around a month ago. As mentioned, I hadn't been having any issue with the check engine light or trouble codes since I'd had the exhaust done, so I didn't think it was going to be an issue. The guy pre checks it, and tells me he can't pass it as is, since it has a cold air intake installed. I'll either need to replace it with the factory intake and filter, or get a California Air Resources Board exemption number for the current intake.

I check into it, and it looks to be the dealer installed GM Performance Parts intake, part number 19157849. I locate the CARB exemption order number for it, and make note of it, and return to the smog check place. The guy tells me I can't just have the EO number, I have to have the underhood sticker. Grrr...

I try to get in touch with the manufacturer, AEM, who were the ones who made it for GM. Apparently, they are now under K&N's umbrella, and they were unable to locate any record of them having used this CARB exemption order. To be fair, it was at a minimum 15 years ago. OK, plan B...

I located a GM Performance Parts logo, and made up the sticker myself!!! Picked up some label paper, and... when I went to print it out, my trusty printer says the print head isn't installed!!! I pop it out, put it back in, and now it's showing... only I'm out of black ink!!! I order a new set of inks, and when they're delivered, I install them, but the printer is saying that the print head isn't installed again!!! I pull it out, give it a thorough cleaning, put it back together, and it finally shows that it's installed. I do the test and alignment pages, and partway through, it has the print head issue again!!! Mess with it some more, and finally get it to get set up properly, and print out the sticker. I also printed out the CARB EO paperwork, and took it along when I got it checked. It passed without any further issues!!!

In other news, there's a good chance I'll be picking up a printer to replace my beloved Canon Pixima MP610. I could possibly buy a new print head, but they're not cheap, and there's no guarantee it would fix the issue.

Kutcher, on the other hand... when I'd last mentioned the trouble I'd been having, I had installed a new set of injectors. They seemed to be working great, they even bumped the MPG up a decent amount!!! Naturally, took care of the vacuum leak. Still had the P0031 code, Oxygen (A/F) Sensor Heater Control Circuit Low, though, so I took it back to the smog check place. They say, “Oh, we're going to have to do a further analysis to determine the issue, another $175, but we'll take that off any other repairs”. Go for it, I pretty much have no other options. The tech checks it out, and first pulls the connector, and says, “there's the problem, whoever put this O2 sensor in bent the contacts and it's not connecting”... OK, first, it was you that put it in, second, the plug is pretty well protected, there's not really much chance of that happening... He supposedly gets them so everything is making contact, and it still has the same issue. It's almost their closing time, so they tell me to bring it back tomorrow. This was back when I was still working, so I had my wife take it back. She gets in touch with me the next day and tells me they're telling her, “whoever put the O2 sensor in cross threaded it...” Once again, it was you that put it in, you damned clown!!! They finally locate the original transaction where they did, and said it was bad and needs replaced, which they did at no cost. Shockingly, the same code I've taken it there four damn times for still is coming back!!!

I consulted with the guy who'd done the engine swap on the Kutch. His shop is right next door to an exhaust shop, and he double checks with them. He tells me that the O2 sensor has to be an OEM Toyota or a Denso, almost none of the other suppliers O2 sensors will work. I did a bit of research after he'd told me that, and it's well backed up on a lot of Toyota forums, for all kinds of Toyota vehicles.

I ordered a Denso replacement, and put it in, and that took care of it!!! However, it now has a new check engine code. P0420, Catalyst System Efficiency Below Threshold. A lot of the information out there indicates it could very possibly be a bad catalytic converter. However, on a lot of the Toyota forums, other owners had success by installing a O2 sensor spacer on the second O2 sensor. I located one that was very reasonably priced, but I didn't realize that it was coming from freakin' China. It took way longer to get here that I would have liked, but it finally got here. Right around the same time, the oil change light came on, so I was able to do both of them at the same time, since I had it up anyway. I reset the computer, and I didn't get that code anymore...

But... now I was getting another code, P0172, System Too Rich. Well, all systems will start off rich when you first start them up. I reset the computer again, and started letting the car warm for a couple of minutes before taking off, and I wasn't getting the code. Nice, I'll run a week to get a good data set and take it on over.

It makes it almost a full week, and it comes back on again. I put in a fresh air cleaner element, even though it wasn't that dirty looking, it had been in there a couple years. That didn't work. I ran a tank of gas with a bottle of fuel system cleaner. That didn't work. I pulled out the mass airflow sensor and cleaned it off. That didn't work. I kept warming it up for a couple of minutes every time I'd start it. It would go for a couple of days with no check engine light, but it was coming back even sooner than it had been at first. There's several things that could cause the rich condition, but since the injectors are fairly new, I was suspecting that one of them wasn't closing off completely. I viewed a couple of tutorials on cleaning your own fuel injectors, and that was going to be my next move, clean the original injectors and put them back in. I took the original set of injectors, and was soaking them in Marvel Mystery Oil, and made up an adapter tube to spray from a nozzle of a can of carb cleaner to the injectors. One of the things the tutorials mentioned was that the filter screen cones will need to be replaced. I looked around at a couple of the usual places, and no one had them, so I went to check Ebay to see if they had them. I found a couple of kits that have a set of filter cones and the seals for just under $20, but while I'm looking, I see a few items down someone is selling a set of 4 new injectors for just under $30!!! That's about what I was paying for 1 injector from Rock Auto!!! Can't beat that, so I order a set.

They show up a few days later, and I install them. I go to start the car, and it's running very rough, and I let it go for a minute to see if it gets them all primed. The check engine light comes on. I turn it off, and check the computer. No codes. I fire it up again, let it run until the check engine light comes on again, shut it down again. Now it has the code stored, P0304, Cylinder #4 Misfire. Since I hadn't been doing anything with the ignition part, I rather suspected it wasn't really a misfire, but an injector not firing. I checked the connection, and when it was verified good, I moved the cylinder #4 injector to #2, and the code followed, now it was P0302. Bad injector out of the box. I pulled the original injectors out of the Marvel Mystery Oil and cleaned them off, swapped the seals from the new ones, and put it back together. Reset the computer, and I haven't seen a check engine light since!!!

After driving Kutcher for a week, I took it back, and it passed without issue!!! I had been considering getting litigious about the $220 and $175 they'd charged me, since I've got a little free time, and could likely prevail for at least part of it, but decided against it. I just don't think I'm going there anymore!!! The last time I'd had Scruffy there for it's smog, the guy's father was running the place (he's the one who pointed me in the right direction on the driving procedure to get all the monitors set back then), but it looks like he's passed it off to the son, and his son doesn't seem to be up to the task!!!

Oh, and while I was working on various electrical systems, I was disconnecting the battery, and towards the end, the battery terminal was falling apart again, and I used a C clamp to hold it together again until I got a replacement. For some reason, that car seems to go through them!!! Actually picked up the replacement on the way back from the place that smogged Zonker!!! I'm pretty sure I'd bought a few before I was axed, but I couldn't locate them. Got one that's made of zinc instead of lead, hopefully that helps it last longer.

I'd made mention that the phone holder – charger in Kutcher wasn't staying in place as it should. Shortly after, the suction cup portion lost it's connection to the arm. I located this one, and have had it in for around a week. It was working quite well, and it actually charges, but my wife knocked it off yesterday, and it hasn't stuck to the center console for any length of time since then. I re positioned the suction cup to the rear center console with the arm pointing straight up, and it seems to be working there!!!

The previous holder had a weight activated holder, where the bottom edge being pushed down would cause the sides to close. This one, as soon as it senses there's a phone in it, it closes the sides with a motor. It has a couple of little buttons on the sides that are touch activated to release the grip. It's supposed to contain a battery to be able to release when the power is off, but if it does, it hasn't charged. It's also not illuminated like the old one was, either.

Do the Dew Review

When a company comes up with a special edition or alternative recipe of one of their flavors, it piques my interest. Some of them just sound bad, and I usually won't try it unless I hear otherwise. Other times I'll think it sounds good, and I'll have to try it!!!

The other day I was at Little Caesar's picking up some pizzas, and they had a new Mountain Dew flavor. This reminded me of the time I was there last year, and they had pineapple Pepsi in their cooler. I had to get a couple to try them out, and let the younger try it as well.

It was... different. It wasn't great. It had some pineapple flavor to it, but it was mostly Pepsi flavored to me. Ah well, I gave it a try.

This time it was a mango flavored Mountain Dew. Apparently, Mountain Dew has previously had a mango flavor, Mango Gem, but this is Mango Rush. It's supposed to have some spice to it, but I wasn't feeling it. It has the mango flavor to it, which is pretty good, and pretty sweet. Much better than the pineapple Pepsi, but I don't think I'm getting any more. I bought three cans, one for myself, and one for the younger and surrogate son, and for three cans you spend about as much as you do for a pizza at Caesars.

Here's one I've tried that I really liked, Mountain Dew Baja Flash, that has a pineapple coconut flavor!!! Yes, I like Piña Colodas!!! I know I got it when we were vacationing in Running Springs at the store there, and I think I got it again somewhere else.

While I was looking through for Mountain Dew pictures, I happened on this picture from Christmas 2021. Another collaboration, this time between Pringle's and Halo, Moa Burger flavor!!! I picked up a tube for both myself and the younger. As I recall, this was another hit, meaty and salty flavored. This was also the year he'd asked for some Spamton glasses, which he's wearing for the picture.

There's a web sourced picture of both sides of the can, since my picture came out a little fuzzy. I like that Mr. Pringle got a boom mic headset!!!

Anyway, the mention of the Spamton glasses reminded me that I'd found him a Spamton T-shirt for Christmas 2022. I'd taken a shot of the graphics on it, most likely in anticipation of making a post, and never used it. Here it is!!!

Looking Back: The Antenna Install

I have made reference in a couple of recent posts about the antenna I installed on the Sky. This was back in January of last year, so it's been a while. It's a bit of a story, and here it is!!!

As I mentioned, the original style antenna is a tall solid mast, and it's on the rear fender, right where it's in the way when you are putting the top down or up. All that remained of the original was the plastic base, and around an inch of the original mast. I purchased a little rubber antenna of the style that had been popular during the mini truck craze of the 80's. I had figured I would just remove the original, and plug the replacement in wherever the original cable plugged in. Of course, the radio is a ways from the stereo head, so as a plan B I was thinking I could just splice the cable as needed.

Not previously mentioned, Zonker actually has two antennas, the standard over the air antenna mentioned, and a satellite radio (and probably OnStar as well) “Shark Fin” antenna on the middle back of the rear deck, and of course, both have cables that pass from the trunk area to the interior.

I removed the rear body panel and the center console cover, figuring they would pass through and probably run down the console. That's what you see here, there's a lot going on. The box in the middle of the picture is, I'm pretty sure, the satellite radio receiver. Towards the bottom of the picture, you can see the subwoofer of the Monsoon audio system (which I also previously mentioned that I had repaired by gluing the cone back to the surround) and towards the top is the Monsoon amp. I tried to trace the over the air antenna cable, but was only able to positively ID the satellite cable.

I took a step back, and reconsidered the approach I was going to take. The old antenna base was going to have to be removed to put the new one on. While I was antenna shopping, I saw that almost all of the antenna masts are internally threaded. I went ahead and worked the stub off, and unscrewed the large flat nut on the top of the base, which revealed the threaded rod base. The replacement antenna has a near opposite approach, with a threaded bolt extending down, which is captured and kept from turning with a couple of flats in the metal portion of the antenna base. OK, what can I do with this??? How about using a nut in place of the bolt, and screwing it down to the original threaded stud??? Yes, that could work, but it may end up needing to be shortened, or some sort of adapter made up. I found a flange nut with the correct thread, which of course was too wide for the slot in the metal base. I used a cut off wheel to slice two sides off, and shortened one end, to make a nut where everything lines up.

Next up, how to get everything to line up... The metal base to the antenna is too small to work with the original plastic base. The plastic base for the new antenna has a similar shape, a tapering cone, with the correct size recess for the metal base, and a little extra flange and height on the bottom. Since I already had the cut off wheel set up, I trimmed the flange and a little height off the base, and things were getting close to the right height to sandwich it with the original base, but of course the shape wasn't matching up. I ran a bolt through the newly trimmed down base, and chucked a couple of nuts in my drill, and attached it to the drill. I had the younger run the drill, while I used some coarse sandpaper to shape it down into more of a spherical shape. After the shape was good, I used fine sandpaper and a sanding pad to smooth it out, and it actually polished up beautifully!!!

It ended up looking something like a snowman, with a base cone of the original base (which actually follows the fender contour nicely), the new base turned spherical, and the metal base, which already has a round shape, being two halves that you can use to adjust the angle!!!

At the same time I had ordered the antenna, I also picked up a couple of phone holders. When I had started working from home, I picked up a wireless charger stand for my phone, since I was using my phone a lot for work (I've got a whole folder of work apps I need to uninstall), and the wireless charging was working great!!! I figured I'd look into a similar holder for the cars, and found a couple of these for not a lot. I still hadn't come up with a good holder for Kutcher, and since it tends to get a lot more use, I'd put one in it first. I'm usually not impressed by suction cup style bases, but these work great!!! It's a clear silicone cup with a release lever, and I was able to stick it to the middle of the console, and have the phone holder just back from the gear shift. Just recently, something went wrong with the indexing of the arm, and now it wants to rotate down, guess I'll be taking it back to the drawing board soon. Also, for some reason, it doesn't seem to charge nearly as well as the home unit did. Anyway, here's the one I put in the Sky, it sets it right between the instruments and the heater controls, and it's stuck to the smooth part of the dashboard right over the middle HVAC vents. Lights up a cool blue!!!

So, there you are!!! 80's antenna installed!!! Not going to snap off putting the top up or down, and it seriously improves reception!!! Cool 80's aesthetic vibe, as well!!!

And a happy 512 day to all!!!