I remember buying a DuPont registry around 1996 or so and there was a plain Jane guards red 964 C2 in there. Next to the Lambos and Ferraris and such it was very basic. Listed IIRC at $25k. I remember thinking how restrained I was because I’d rather have that than any of the exotics and it was reasonable and I’d certainly be able to pay $25k for a car some day. I was right. I am able to pay $25k for a car. I didn’t know 964s would be $125k or more.
I am reading this while sitting on the deck of my Monterey Bay beach VRBO as I am attending Car Week.
FWIW, I am concentrating on Laguna Seca racing and I have entered my Boxster in the PCA Werks Reunion concours-simply because that gives me better parking for the event.
I am avoiding all of the “wine & cheese” events and dodging all the hypercar peeping You Tubers.
I just watched a dozen Can-Am cars fly by, including that mighty orange McLaren “Batmobile”, and I trust my manly car cred is not damaged by my attendance here.
Jack, to quote Chris Rock talking about O.J. killing Nicole—“I’m not saying it’s right…But I understand!”
We avoided the “wine & cheese” affairs like The Quail, et al. We stopped at the James Dean memorial and paid our respects on the way in from Bakersfield and drove through Paso Robles on the way to Hwy 1.
We were extremely lucky and drove Hwy 1 all the way from San Simeon to Watsonville before the fire closed the road.
We ran into a badass old man driving a modified BMW Isetta from Missouri to attend “The Little Car Show.”
The guy slapped TWO, 600cc Honda scooter drivetrains into this Isetta and he was railing up PCH. Freaking Man’s Game!
We chatted with him at the McRay Falls viewing site.
So we had to attend that little car show and added it to our itinerary and met up again and had a great visit with the guy.
We then watched the start of the “Tour de Elegance” and got to see the white Ferrari 250 GTO, a DeTomaso Mangusta(!), a Lancia Stratos, a steam car of some kind, classic Bugattis and Duesenburgs, a Stutz Bearcat, and several “Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang” cars along with all the usual classic Ferraris and such and an Alfa “Bat” car make the drive
Had a great lunch and then out to Laguna Seca where we watched Jim Farley climb out of his Cobra, saw all the great Group C LeMans cars and IMSA GTP cars, and stood next to the exhaust outlet of the Mazda 787B, Four-Rotor Wankel LeMans prototype as they warmed up the engine.
Watched lots of great racing for two days.
Then we attended PCA Werks Reunion where I entered my 2004 Porsche “50 Years of the 550 Spyder Edition Boxster S”in the concours, just so that we got a great parking spot.
Had fun talking to kids about my car who just bought an old Boxster and wanted tips on modifying theirs.
It’s funny, my “Porsche with Panties on it” got more love from the kids due to its affordability than I thought I would get in that crowd.
It was fun seeing all the cars.
We made it around without too much traffic hassle thanks to early rising and good planning.
I decided to ditch seeing the Spike’s Car Radio taping today, so no Johnny Lieberman heckling, apologies.
My poor wife needs two days to recover at this lovely beach VRBO in Pajaro Dunes.
So that’s it, we had fun, met some nice folks, saw some cars, got a taste of Car Week, but dodged traffic and rich wankers.
Jack, I understand.
I had to attend it once, just to see. Figured this being the 75th anniversary of the event, this was the year to try it.
Plus my Boxster needed a road trip. Poor girl has been sitting too much since the deer strike in Arkansas last October.
Shooter, sounds like you had a great time, like they say come for the cars but the best part is meeting the people….. and extra extra credit in getting your wife to come along, I took Helen to a Grand Nation in Brookfield Wisconsin a decade ago and that was the last car event I could get her to tag along to…. She says she hates all the “junk cars” (her term fit classics cars)…. :-( :-(
Making me jealous...It's on my bucket list to do just once. I can't imagine a Monterey beach view VRBO doesn't crest five figures per day for car week. Enjoy in good health!
I had a client who was one of the nicest semi-retired old guys I ever met, just a pleasure to speak with, and his address was on Sunset Drive in Pebble Beach.
If you happen to have a box of Cohiba Siglo VI Gran Reserva Cosecha 2003 cigars (99 point rated by Halfwheel multiple times), then the Woodward attendees will have something over which to condescend toward the Pebble set.
For a box of those - a REAL box of those, and I would imagine that 19 out of 20 “for sale” are fake at this point - is easily worth $100K. A fake box could be had for less, but you’d still pay more than $10K for a sufficiently convincing fake presentation. You’d know the jig was up as soon as you lit them, if not before.
Sherman, are you volunteering to be the cigar selector for this confab? As from many posts on this regal site, we have a number of cigar experts and you know that opinions are the coin of the realm of all experts…..
There are a lot of superb cigar retailers in the Detroit metro area. Jack should go to Robusto’s and drop $2,500 or so on Davidoff and rare Fuente / Opus X. That should get the crew through the weekend.
As a non-smoker, the best tobacco I have ever had was when I was extraordinarily drunk on the streets of New Orleans with some friends of mine the night before Mardi Gras... Was probably Marlboro Reds? Maybe lights? Who can say, who cares. The cigarettes were an accessory to a glorious evening of revelry.
The point is, "fine cigars" are completely lost on me. Don't have a taste for the stuff and never really have. Just kinda smells bad and leaves my mouth feeling gross (insert your own joke here).
The best cigarettes are parliament lights so you can take your bump of coke* before smoking those glorious things. I might average a cigarette a year at this point and that might be on the high side.
I feel the same about cigars, expensive liquor, watches, and buying new Range Rovers. But if it gives someone else pleasure, who am I to judge. I have friends that are into all those things. They can't understand why I'd want to own 8 vehicles.
I like to smoke cigars on occasion. I usually smoke Romeo y Julietta 1875s. They run between $5-10 cigar IIRC. I have no idea where on the strata of cigar that lands, they’re just what I like.
i've enjoyed many $20 cigars in my life and ill enjoy many more. i think the act of sitting around licking your lips and commenting on the density and flavor of the smoke is as gay as taste testing a pride parade. cigars should be consumed on your boat, through the last 50 shells of a sporting clays course, or washing your car.
The greatest cigar is a compliment to whatever great thing you are already doing. If I start getting my panties in a twist about the relative humidity and vintage I've jumped the shark
"Anyone who has smoked more than 10 cigars comes to that conclusion."
It's a glossy magazine. You get what you get with those. I read it in... gosh... 1998? and didn't think it was terribly useful. I didn't buy my first box of "upscale" cigars until maybe 2005, so I suppose I'm an arriviste. :)
That being said, cigar rating is inherently subjective and is probably only reliable to within five points or so.
Those Singer 964's are simply an abomination of desolation. Truly the Devil's work.
I dream of a day when collectors will spend money to return them to original 964 configuration, and others will create "Porsches Reimagined by Singer" from Chinese-made repro 911 bodyshells.
I've had mixed feelings about the Singers. You and Speed are right that a lot of the engineering and refinement is impressive. I've seen a couple in the flesh and been given a ride in one, and the finish is first -rate; definitely better than original. They strike me a bit as being like the latter-day repro Auburns and Cords built on Lincoln chassis: all the style (and the street cred among the more aspirational proles) of the prototype without the hassles of period kit and the actual feel and shortcomings of the original. Like a giclee of the Mona Lisa, or a carbon fiber P-51 with a PT6 up front.
Maybe I'm just getting cynical in my old age, or maybe I'm just a snob. I spent my teen years around a '73 RS and a 904. After uni' I was privileged to be a wrench for a few years at a Porsche specialist where I saw/worked on some interesting and rare cars (Pooper, Abarth Carrera, 911RSR 2.1 Turbo, or a100km 954 SCRS, just to name a few). It seems more and more that a lot of what passes for "style" these days - at PAG or anywhere else - is just a relentless mining of the past eighty years or so. Lately I think our culture is exhausted, and we're just picking through the tailings looking for something to sell.
"I sold my Fuchs, but not my stereo." (w. apologies to Simonian & Merchant)
Spot on with our culture being exhausted. I’m exhausted just looking at the exhausted culture. The lack of tasteful originality is glaring.
Now layer on top of the exhausted culture the fact that almost everything that passes for “modern luxury”, whatever that is, comes from a corporation that has to report quarterly earnings, meaning that they always have to sell more. And “more” is the enemy of luxury and exclusivity.
Contrast that with something like a high-end sushi restaurant in Tokyo that serves an omakase dinner for only 12 people per night. You don’t order, you eat only what the chef is serving. If you’re the 13th person to call for a reservation, you’re not getting a seat that night. And a year from now the master chef will not add 4 seats so that there’s dinner for 16. He will still only have 12 seats, because more isn’t better. He knows it and he is not going to compromise his craft to bring in more money by serving a lesser product.
You can still get a very nice, inoffensive “regular” Singer.
They make a Turbo car (looks like a later 930); a cheaper NA car with some ugly looking popup lights and “only” 420 or so hp; a DLS Turbo (that looks like a 934 / 935 mashup); and now this Louis Vuitton thing, the value of which is getting more eyeballs on Singer.
You could easily get the “regular” Turbo in any color you want with any interior you want. GT Silver over saddle brown leather from Bridge of Weir or, amusingly, perhaps Hermes Horizon. And 99.9999% of people who ever encounter it will think: “Look, an old Porsh!”
I know that there is craft and workmanship in the Singers, they just do nothing for me. Their value is whatever people will pay for them. I’m happy for anyone who has one. I see the auction prices on BaT and just think of other cars I could get for that money. So be it.
I would take this 240Z restomod over a Singer anytime. Apples and oranges, I know, but the Z has exclusivity and style. The Singer, no matter how nice, looks like just another 911. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yaatC-WdwpU&ra=m
On the one hand, Singer is (was?) sort of a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It was not apparent to a casual observer that the car was worth ~10X what a “regular” air-cooled 911 was.
But now they’re in partnership with Louis Vuitton so that more people will know that they are supposed to be status symbols!
To me, the appeal of a Singer is that it’s “even better than the ‘real’ thing.” One car that has all of the character of an air-cooled car, but everything has been reconsidered, replaced, renewed, restored. Said another way, it’s an “old” 911 for … driving. It has become a status symbol (and Singer has made an effort to bring that about because it’s good for business*), but it’s really a poor candidate for that when you think about it.
It’s like a house on the Battery in Charleston that’s older than the United States. Yeah it looks weathered on the outside, yeah there is only a small alley for parking (if you’re lucky), yeah the door frames are low and narrow … but doesn’t that exposed brick in the kitchen look nice next to the $20K Subzero refrigerator?
*I know David MacNeil’s now-retired #2 at WeatherTech. He commissioned an early Singer classic, and I rode in it one afternoon when we were both in Malibu (he kept the car in California for awhile). He had paid ~$500K for it and sold it for more than $1MM many miles later. I asked him why he hadn’t bought a Carrera GT or similar (this was 2017/2018 so that was doable) and he said “Oh … I’m not one of those tacky supercar guys. So let’s say you’ve come into some serious bread (sold a company, lottery winner, inheritance, Daddy raised your allowance, whatever) and you want something that (you think) makes you look “tasteful.”
Singer is a good option for that buyer. An orange Revuelto is not.
I think your first paragraph is "restomod," which is how I originally conceived Singer and is at least defensible. These Singers are "gilding/Broughaming the lily."
"relentless mining": I seem to be misremembering, and his more recent writings seem to be dominating my search results, but I think Jaron Lanier wrote something to the effect that nothing new has been created since the Web became popular. Also Ecclesiastes 1:9.
rwb is disgusting but singer spent a fortune making everything better. at the very least singer has substance and are more relevant and valuable when modified than stock
What is old is new again. The gussying up of some Porches is just a reincarnation of the Bill Blass, Louis Voutton, and other designer Lincolns of the late 1970’s and 1980’s. I am surprised the Tom K has not jumped in to comment on this plagerism of Lincoln’s idea.
4 after 35 here. None more retarded than sherman. All made the good old fashioned way This time egg freezing is bad. Go freeze an egg and make an omelette in a mnth from it. If it tastes funny imagine it being a dentist son in 37 years
"Men's jobs are also disproportionately targeted by the work visa scam (H-1, E-x, EB-x, L-1, OPT, EAD)."
I should have mentioned this; these visas seem designed to put white American men out of work, probably because they are. There are no H1-B visas being held by HR workers or middle managers.
I never realized the market for watches that most would assume the maker was a sewing machine concern was large enough to sell watches at those prices. Also, that is an ugly watch and the car looks like something a pimp would spec. Crap like that makes think that taxing the rich isn't such a bad idea.
He also included a photo of himself leaning on a wood fence in front of a pasture like he was the Marlboro Man, except he was a short and fat Jewish guy.
My assistant was used to being creeped out by guys, but this one really creeped her out.
the older i get, the cringier this becomes. not only because of the transparent sexual undertones, but worse still because it probably sometimes works.
they can try to astroturf the kept man all they want, but reality is there are far, far more young women for sale than young men.
My last assistant was attractive. Not gorgeous or anything but not 60 like my current one. She'd tell me stories of all the simps she was dating and it was astounding how little game all these guys had. Flowers and coffee coming to the office every other day, walls of text after she told them she wasn't interested.
She was the most good hearted and fun loving woman I’ve ever met.
Watching her in action using her charms on others to get her way was a sight to behold. She would kind of give me a slight look signaling “watch this” and then do her thing. Then we would laugh about it later.
I have never tried this, i doubt I will ever try this but you can get a 25 year old sugar baby for like 1-2k a month. That's laughably cheap. My wife costs more. A lot more.
Yeah, but man, that self indulgent, pompous prick deserves every bit of Jack's savage roasting. That perfectly posed photo of him on the main page labelled "Professional Wildman"...he's just asking for it.
The almost sadder part is the people who believe the swill that ol' Wes pumps out. "He shot that shotgun?? An indian girl came to his campsite???" Jezus, the guy is so full of himself he probably actually believes all the nonsense that he writes
Maybe he's taking his inspiration from Papa Hemingway. To be fair, though, Hemingway did actually *do* some of the things he wrote about. It wasn't just cosplay or performative masculinity.
If identifying that a felon who tried and failed to murder a black man in front of said black man's pregnant wife being fixated on me is wrong, I don't want to be right. And yes, unlike Jack, I am legally permitted to both own and enjoy firearms:
Not sure why we're using web archive here? And I dunno man, sometimes photos are as awkward as articles young people try and write about you. That, or the obvious answer is always aliens.
My dad was really into pheasant “hunting”. I went a couple times and found it distasteful. Everyone would brag about how many birds they got. Well yeah. Poor things are lost and just trying to get back to the coop.
He is referring to a deliberate fiction I seeded in the VWVortex Car Lounge back in 2004. I created a fake user who claimed to know the truth about me. Thousands of people still believe it.
Yes, and it is simple: I wanted to make people look stupid. One of those people went so overboard persecuting me over my "crime" that his wife contacted me to express her sympathy, and we ended up having sex in the bathroom at Waterford Hills.
Like the old joke: What's the difference between Michael Jackson and a plastic Bag? One is a threat to small children and the other is good for carrying things.
If you have to tell people how "dangerous" you are, then you're not.
I've met some truly dangerous people - former contract agents, ex-special forces types who'd gone into "security" or mercenary operations, quiet former middleweights They were genuinely dangerous men. If you didn't cross them or otherwise fuck with them, then you'd never know. They certainly weren't going to announce the fact.
BTW: firearms ownership does not necessarily connote that one is "dangerous". I've seen a lot of shooters at ranges - too many, really - who were a threat only to themselves. And maybe the other shooters at the range.
Hahaha, are you forced to subscribe to Avoidable Contact Forever now? You should become a paying subscriber to see whether he mentions you on the non-free, non-open-thread days.
I, personally, think it's absolutely hilarious you return his trolling with trolling. Even if I *am* a bit disappointed you dropped out of the political race.
I'm the weird guy who likes old air-cooled stuff -- 911s, 356s, ACVWs. I have a 356 Speedster replica and a '63 panel van. I didn't buy my 911 when I had the chance (before the market took a turn into the ether) so my air-cooled dance card is full. I'm OK with that -- I've got more on my plate than I can deal with right now without one.
But I was still looking for my 911 when the OG Singer first came out 15-ish years ago. I remember thinking, "What a great idea. Take the 964s nobody really wants and make really cool outlaw/hotrod longhoods out of them". The very first one was a really cool orange (if memory serves) and just looked like a really nicely done 911 with some cool touches -- redone gauges to look like a chronographs, which I then thought (and still do think) is pretty stinking cool, etc. The seats had an actual leather basketweave insert, which was also very nice and very cool. It wasn't overdone or underdone -- it felt like a really good custom. I had an older friend (who was then the age I am now) say something to the effect that the entire conceit was a bit too "precious" for his tastes, which I understood but did not agree with at the time.
I quickly found out the thing cost something like $350K. At the time, stupidly cool R Gruppe longhood street racers were going for south of $100K. Three hundred thousand dollars was (I felt) about $200K+ more than the thing ought to have cost, and I lost interest
... but apparently the eastern European oligarch crowd and what pretends to be the autopress never did. In the same way that a Chris Runge hand-hammered air-cooled car cost less than $100K in 2011 and $500K now, and Gary Emory's outlaw 356s were about $100k when they were building them in Oregon and are $500K now that his son is doing them in LA -- apparently Singers became a $3.5M- $5M car while I wasn't looking. Along the way, they took on the design aesthetic of a Russian boudoir.
The shots of whatever that Louis Viton abomination is trying to be nearly made me throw up in my mouth. If this thing is at Pebble Beach, that also tracks. If this (and Rod Emory's outlaws) are where the air-cooled market is now, I'm not sure I want to be an air-cooled guy anymore. All of the outsider, overachiever, smarter-than-you ethos is out of the thing, and it's just a repository for tasteless nobody to pour money into. It's really too bad.
Right there with you man...but I did get into the air cooled game before it went to crazy town. I owned 43 air cooled 911s from 2004 to when I sold my last one in 2020. Owned at least one of every year 1965-96 except 1968 and 1974...and I did skip the 964 years. I'd buy them needing work in California, turn them into nice drivers, enjoy a bit, then sell them to eager Germans in those days when the Euro was strong. I miss them so much, but there's no way I'd buy one at today's rates. It's really sad what their enthusiast base has turned into. My 996 Targa will have to do until the next economic crisis brings prices back into orbit.
I was absolutely obsessed with them. I had five longhoods sitting in my driveway when I met my wife in 2006. That she was cool with my obsession earned her a lot of points with me.
A woman who can understand that you have interests and hobbies that you're passionate about is great. One who has hobbies and interests of her own is worth more than rubies.
I found one of those when we were both too young to know who we really were. I buy tools and cars. She buys art supplies and brushes. We know when to leave each other alone, and when to come together.
Keep in mind these were the days when a decent driver 911T Targa was worth $12,000. Sold many around that price.
My favorite was a one owner perfectly preserved original paint 1967 911S with German delivery plates. I had faded photos of it at the factory delivery then driving throught the Swiss alps. Sold to a German for $62,000 in early 2007 and thought I'd won the lottery.
the 350k is almost a steal when you realize basically everything is custom and getting everything from extremely high end manufacturers is sometimes impossible to do at an individual level. runges cars are "cheaper" (500k? really? blech. even 100k then was stout.) becuase its a far simpler car.
There's nothing weird about "liking old air-cooled stuff," and a major reason that people are upset about these monstrosities is that they ruin adequate specimens of "old air-cooled stuff."
Is it me, or do the talented people in this world keep getting more and more talented, while the bulk of the world gets less and less capable? I grew up in a town of 2000 souls -- but when I was 18, I knew probably twenty "serviceable" guitar players, and at least 4 who I thought were pretty darned good. At this point, does anybody play guitar besides the guys who can absolutely shred at 14 years old? Can anybody change an alternator -- you know besides the guy building the 2000 hp LS? Can anybody fumble through making a dinner that doesn't come out of a box besides the guy who makes his own horseradish?
It feels like we lost everything in the middle. I liked the middle. I lived in the middle. There were a lot of really great people in the middle.
It sure seems that way. What the average guy used to know when the USA was manufacturing based is quite different now that the average guy sits in a cubicle and looks at a screen.
Even worse, the US is extremely economically segregated in most places. It’s the biggest difference between where I live now and where I used to live in Chicago and its suburbs. Over here the grand mansion built by the original rich guy who formed the village has a trailer park across the road. In the Chicago suburbs you can easily peg someone just by which suburb they live in. It’s a rigid pecking order. I hated it and was glad to leave that world, even though I lived in one of the snobbiest suburbs.
So not only does the middle not exist anymore, America has gone tribal. If you told someone pre-2008 that you just want to live with your tribe and ignore everyone else, they would have been dumbfounded. Now it’s the goal of many, including me.
I came within 1/2 a mile of losing my house in the recent Spokane fires. Since the local media is lame, I was using social media to piece together how close it got to my neighborhood. Good god, some of the posters and their comments. We have no where near hit peak stupid. It was nice when you weren’t exposed to that depressing reality.
I'm the odd guy who wants to mix it up with everybody.
I grew up in a white-bread farm town, and came to faith in a pacifistic, rule-following Anabaptist church. As a very young man, I lived in a 3rd world tribal village for 3 years. I was an elder in an inner-city charismatic church with a homeless/addict outreach. I'm presently a member of a Lutheran Church (the same one that drove my forebears to leave the old country and find freedom to worship in this one). I live across the street from a man who flew his American flag upside down for a couple of weeks in 2020. Three houses down a homosexual couple have moved in -- we swap produce from our gardens. The townsfolk have taken to calling us, "the garage people", because I built my home around a 2-post Bendpak lift and have 10 ft high garage doors. I haven't really changed much, but the world around me has changed enormously.
I've got a daughter who won't speak to her mother and I (as is the current vogue), "toxic" as we are. I've got a sister who exhibits every sign of Munchausen syndrome by proxy (look it up), and gets mad because I don't play along with her fantasy. I've lost friends because I was insufficiently "Trumpy", and family because I was a "closed-minded bigot". My door is still open for any and all callers. Everybody is welcome, even if I find most people to be tiresome idiots. I know I can be a tiresome idiot as well.
Everybody bloviates on the interwebs about the things that divide us, but nobody takes the time to love their neighbor (no matter who they might be, Samaritan or no), which is the command of both Leviticus and Christ.
I'm as crusty as the next guy, and this stuff wears me out. But ignoring the whackjobs of the world doesn't change them or make them go away. I'm just trying to be the change I'd like to see.
But just so you're aware, nice stuff ("good" bourbon/Scotch, etc.) is pretty much wasted on me, as I have no ability to discern the "hint of cloves and licorice" and all that. Kirkland Scotch is just fine with me.
Well, friend-- I feel old a lot of days, and I find myself a Lutheran kind of by default (although I think my theology may be closer to Orthodox at this point), but "wise" is a heavy lift.
I'm a high-school educated pipefitter who reads a bit just trying to do my best. The world was spinning before I made my appearance, and it'll be spinning after I exit.
There's an open invite to anybody who finds themselves passing through Nowhere, RFD on their way to more important places. No visa required for entrance to the People's Republic, you're all friends of the state.
Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation is a 2013 book by American economist Tyler Cowen laying out his vision for the future trajectory of the global economy.[1] It is a sequel to Cowen's 2011 pamphlet The Great Stagnation, which argued that America had exhausted many of the low-hanging fruit (such as cheap land and easily achievable improvements in education) that had powered its growth in the 19th and early 20th century.
Perhaps so; as I said, I haven't read the book. But the idea that modern technology results in more "winner take all" outcomes seems fairly self-evident (I'd have to actually read the book to know if that's even its thesis).
Interesting observation, if true, because, from the outside, he seems to have all the makings of a good life (except posterity, which he affirmatively rejects).
I have at least two members of my immediate family with this affliction. I tell myself they're doing the best they can, but I suspect that's not the truth. Everybody has a choice to face the hard thing, or shrink from it.
He has never had an original idea and when it comes to AI or modern tech he is deranged. Like, he sounds like he is reading from a sales brochure. He is too stupid to understand the tech, its limitations, or even how it works at a fifth-grade level.
I'm going to answer a slightly different question: how a dumb as shit guy is relatively famous. My answer, without having actually read his books, is that there is great wealth in "speaking lies to power," or "comforting the comfortable and afflicting the afflicted." See Matt Taibbi's hilarious takedown of Thomas Friedman, "Flathead": https://web.archive.org/web/20051024235026/http://newyorkpress.com/18/16/news&columns/taibbi.cfm
Part of that is modern social media and connectedness.
It’s difficult to be “locally good” at something when you can queue up someone on TikTok or YouTube from halfway across the world who’s an indisputable savant when it comes to at the subject at hand. That, in turn, intimidates people who would otherwise develop that level of skill with time and patience…because they are siting in front of their screen comparing themselves unfavorably to ten or twenty people they see online who have already “mastered” it, instead of just getting out there and doing it.
And that’s assuming it’s not a category like fitness, where the subject-matter experts and celebrated Internet individuals frequently use PEDs for results that look impressive, but that are improbable without those aids and unsustainable in the long term.
One thing I've noticed is that the YouTube kids grow up playing with a metronome and a backing track, so they really suffer and/or panic in a real live situation.
I took a lot of criticism from musical friends for the way I educated my son: very little theory, always playing live with another person, no backing track, rarely practicing for more than an hour until he got into his teens. Then I took him to NYC and watched how easy it was for him to play and communicate with musicians on an ad hoc basis, which made me feel the tiniest bit vindicated.
It was dead even in the Nineties, when we had the Marsalis Museum Revival.
My son has never enjoyed listening to Blue Note records. But he digs playing the tunes. Jazz is like, I don't know, autocross; only compelling if you're doing it.
"Is it me, or do the talented people in this world keep getting more and more talented, while the bulk of the world gets less and less capable?"
Yes, because the talented people have access to better resources and the bulk continues to decline in intelligence.
My son is 17. Until recently, no 17-year-old could play the electric bass like he does. Nowadays, I'm not even sure he is the best 17-year-old player in Ohio.
The first Singers really were tasteful IMHO, and I was very impressed with the craftsmanship of an early example I got to look at closely. But those LV collabs remind me of the coke inspired Gemballa and Rinspeed 930s of the 1980s. Gold trim looked good on a black LS400. In 1990.
To think...these same guys control the fate of Willow Springs Raceway now. 🤦🏻♂️
I think essentially all of the Singer product to date is tasteful*, and certainly so if you had the opportunity to spec it yourself (i.e., to your own taste).
This collab with LV almost certainly arose because Singer has taken some private investment and they’d like to move it more toward a luxury brand positioning. Which is sensible. Look at, e.g., Ferrari’s Board of Directors: Delphine Arnault (LVMH); Francesca Belletini (Kering); John Galantic (L Catterton aka LVMH).
The execution of this collaboration is poor. I don’t think anyone in this comment section doubts that. They could, conceivably, have done a tasteful collaboration, but that wouldn’t have been as eye catching, right? There is at least one Ferrari F12 TdF out there with an interior featuring Loro Piana (part of LVMH) fabric from the Ferrari factory; that car is beautiful. Based on the pictures, I think that the seats (just the seats) in the Singer cabriolet look nice.
I subscribe as well. The concept was cool. In reality it’s a ton of QR codes to go read or watch online content which I thought was exactly opposite of the point of the newspaper. The most recent two issues are sitting on my office credenza unread. I really need to cancel.
"There is at least one Ferrari F12 TdF out there with an interior featuring Loro Piana (part of LVMH) fabric from the Ferrari factory; that car is beautiful."
Sir, you are reaching here; Loro Piana shares nothing aesthetically with Louis Vuitton even if they're both under the same ownership umbrella.
BOTH brands did a branded collaboration with a luxury automaker.
BOTH brands are capable of making pleasant products, as well as vulgar products. As Loro Piana has become more widely known, they have made more products bearing logos and text.
I attended the University of Colorado and still work in Boulder County. Ever since Deion Sanders signed on as our football coach he - and more so his son/QB Sheduer, prior to heading to the Cleveland Browns - has made a lot of waves with car purchases: matte black F650 with smoke stacks, Cybertruck, custom Maybach, Lambo, and and Rolls (all SUVs, of course). Everything costs serious money and makes a statement but is completely devoid of taste - especially when most of said news centers around the younger Sanders racking up parking tickets on campus with multiple $300k+ automobiles.
Anyway, that's who the "Louie" Singers made me think of. Absolutely shameful effort from a company supposedly founded on driving purity!
Only one of the things that make America great is that if you have money you can spend it as you please. That doesn't mean that it will be spent tastefully. Some of the fearfully rich ape each other microscopically. Check out the gold chains around the necks of various professional athletes. Others, a few, have the sense of self that doesn't require ostentatious display for validation.
I agree with that, but some kinds of excessive spending are naturally more palatable than others. I may work in Boulder (deep blue), but I live in Weld (bright red), and a lot of my friends and neighbors are white trash-and-proud type of oilfield guys. A lot of Raptors, jet skis, boats, side-by-sides, etc. around. Tacky, to be sure, but at the same time I can respect it because it all has a use (bringing joy) and is what these guys work for.
The Shedeur model - a fleet of identical-mission throwaway luxury SUVs as fashion accessories - by comparison, just feels wasteful and scornworthy, especially when it's done by a college kid.
YouTubers - and similar - bring out these same feelings in people because it's all for show, while the excessive collections of a Jay Leno get a pass and even admiration because he's a connoisseur curating things of beauty out of passion. Then again, as Jack so often calls out, there's a high percentage of low self-esteem wealth out there that desperately apes the connoisseurs and might be even worse than the Sanderses of the world. Basically, it all boils down to authenticity.
Jay Leno doesn't want his stuff to be a museum but he operates as a sort of internet museum. Preserving things nobody else could store or fix. Sharing the stories of cars that many people would not otherwise know. Very little ego there. Imagine Seinfeld or Ralph Lauren or Letterman doing the same.
Dave Chapelle hilariously does a bit about Kanye arrogantly saying he doesn’t wear chains because he’s a billionaire and billionaires don’t wear their wealth, right before he shot off his mouth and cost himself the Adidas deal and a whole ton of money. “Welcome back Kanye, put your chain back on!”
remember when a highzoot company called b&b would put the exact bugs on the front of your rover etc. that's make it look like it's run the safari rally?
Speed can impregnate her as part of his citizenship bid.
After turning on the charm, he can seduce her with lots of hot Canadian socialism talk - "Justin's policies were so sexy... the GST isn't high enough....We really don't do a good enough job importing Indians and Pakis into our beautiful country..."
Then right in the middle of the wild lovemaking, he can announce that he actually loves internal combustion engines and capitalism, then see if he can stay on her for 8 seconds.
Timeline checks out, really. Think about it: the wave of "neoclassical" autos emerged around 1960, with cars that appealed to people who remembered the originals - Dusie, Stutz, Auburn, Cord - from their youth four-plus decades before.
The Singers ape the "longhood" style of the 911's built up to 1973, which is now more than four decades ago, and a distant memory to guys like me. (I had a neighbor in 1972-73 who was a proto yuppie, and he and his wife had a Kelly Green 911 coupe and two dalmatians.)
Basically, it's very retro style for aging guys w money who want the cars they recall from childhood/adolescence/teens.
But as Haligonian noted, it was a product of its time for a certain select clientele. Gotta have some swagger if you’re going to drive that, unlike today’s cars.
Cars are so bland and boring today that l love outlandish cars like the Stutz. Even something like a 1971 Eldorado is absurd and outlandish today when back then it was just supremely cool.
Manufacturers and buyers alike want safe things that are within very narrow norms of acceptability, but that’s soul crushing. Human being are meant to create great things and not default to dumbing everything down. Design should lead the way on what’s possible, and not produce identical bars of soap because that’s what the wind tunnel liked.
Also even Wikipedia admits some dudes have what is essentially permanent pain from the procedure that never goes away. Risk isn’t gigantic but still taking a chance there
i had cataract lens replacement. works fine but there's a faint loss of some kind of internal feedback that eversoslightly has affected my depth perception. no problem driving though.
Enjoy that while it lasts. I used to easily get double the life out of contacts and then I turned 37 or so and I have to get the most premium of the premium dailys. Still, safer than surgery.
I am not looking forward to, um, 5 years from now I guess? Lol
Have already found that I can simply never sleep in contacts again though. Used to be able to get a couple sleeps out of a pair of I really needed to. Now, if I close my eyes for like 20 minutes they need to be tossed.
Lasik is where the upper level of the corneal tissue is folded back and the underside is then laser modified.
PRK, which I had 25+ years ago in Cunuckistan, just laser modifies the upper corneal tissue.
LASIK is much less painful and has a faster recovery time. However, a clean room level environment is needed as dust can get under the flap. Also, the flap could detatch under head rapid head movemeny from contact sports or high-g manuevers. The military and athletes are often required to get PRK.
PRK takes longer to recover. It is painful for a day. The first week is tough as your vision improves. I don't understand the pain dynamic, but it's there.
But there's no flap to detatch with PRK. And PRK is better suited to a second correction (which I am considering). For almost 20 years I was 20-20. Now I'm 20-40 (maybe 20-50 in my left eye). PRK has a longer track record - although good luck getting marketing-free data from this industry full of LASIK pimps.
Datapoint: Prior to my PRK, sedatives were offered to the dozen or so in the surgery group. (Yes. Laser eye surgery is an assembly line!) The only 2 who refused were me and another ex military dude. And we were the only ones getting PRK.
PRK gave me slight halos around bright lights at night. I got used to it.
Great distance vision without glasses when driving, playing hockey, and shooting was a huge life improvement.
That said, I knew of a Toronto cop who had the old manual spatula-scalpel type RK back in the 80s. He was allegedly 20-20 for decades and talked up the procedure to US cops. It wasn't legal in the US at that time. Maybe the FDA was right since the Canucks developed the standards from the Soviets and Euros.
After re-reading my post, I understand I'm not the best advocate for the procedure. It's not for everyone.
I've worn glasses for, checks math, nearly 32 years, my vision has not changed in the past 7. 2 years ago I asked my eye doctor about having Lasik or PRK done, and how long he thought it would be before I would need to start wearing glasses and/or have to have the procedure done again. He did some research and found that the average span between the first and second procedures was 11 years. I did the quick math on what I spend on glasses and contacts and under those circumstances it would never cost justify.
I do still think about how cool it would be to wake up and see my feet without having to reach for glasses. Maybe if I've got a free 5-10k burning (no pun intended) a hole in my pocket I'll do it but I'd probably rather spend that on a car, or watch or something else.
I can function well without glasses at home..it’s when I go out that I need them for distance (license restriction), and for reading a menu, choir score, etc.
For computer work on big monitors at work, or even on a laptop, depending on circumstances, I have a third pair, which stay at work.
It’s a personal call reflecting how you think of risk.
I’ve seen studies saying 5% of vasectomy-havers enjoy permanent peen pain forever after surgery. But recent studies I’ve seen (maybe 5y ago) suggest the lasik complication rate is like 1-2%.
I’ve got good vision so don’t have to weigh this sort of Faustian gamble, but IMO these two surgeries are not on the same level.
I welcome other stats or better/more recent numbers if you have them
My wife did it 10 years ago and the dry eye never went away, she is constantly using eye drops throughout the day. According to her it was still worth it.
I'd like to note for the record that avoiding a child in the developed world saves ~ 9441 tons of CO2 when counting descendants, or ~58.8 tons per year for each year of the parent's life (to the extent carbon counting can be reliable) (1).
One Canadian physician, in his spare time, single-handedly spearheaded a lonely, long battle to save one of Pickering Nuclear Generating Station, one of Canada's carbon-free nuclear plants (2).
The added lifespan of Pickering, directly traceable to one man's effort, will avoid 120,000,000 tons (3) of CO2, and each year Pickering operates, 2,100,000 tons of CO2 is avoided (4).
Which is 35,715 kids on an annual basis (2,100,000/58.8) or 12,711 kids using the cumulative incremental avoided CO2 from extending Pickering's life (120,000,000/9441).
I'd suggest focusing your CO2 efforts on promoting actions that produce 10,000-35,000x returns rather than avoiding a single child.
I got snipped RIGHT after child #2 because I knew my wife was going to try to talk me into child #3 and I’d be powerless to resist. Worry free cream pies for the win.
I grew up in a family of four (2 adults/2 kids) so to me that’s the “right” number for a family. More than 2 kids and you’re signing yourself up for a minivan, 20% more airline tickets, 2 hotel rooms instead of one, and 50% more college tuition and daycare payments.
Then I’d have to drive a Telluride. Ugh. And you can’t drive to Europe or Hawaii, and my family lives on the east coast which is a PITA to drive to for a weekend. My wife is 50% of our HHI, and like 90% of our retirement savings (company equity) so I’d be dumb to give that up.
I'd have another kid in a heartbeat. I'm done at one wife. That is enough. Imagine 2 things staring at me after they've had one too many glasses of wine.
It's great, right?
I turned down a lot of 911SCs at 10k and Carreras at 15k.
I remember buying a DuPont registry around 1996 or so and there was a plain Jane guards red 964 C2 in there. Next to the Lambos and Ferraris and such it was very basic. Listed IIRC at $25k. I remember thinking how restrained I was because I’d rather have that than any of the exotics and it was reasonable and I’d certainly be able to pay $25k for a car some day. I was right. I am able to pay $25k for a car. I didn’t know 964s would be $125k or more.
Yes, me too. Those were the days, eh?
I am reading this while sitting on the deck of my Monterey Bay beach VRBO as I am attending Car Week.
FWIW, I am concentrating on Laguna Seca racing and I have entered my Boxster in the PCA Werks Reunion concours-simply because that gives me better parking for the event.
I am avoiding all of the “wine & cheese” events and dodging all the hypercar peeping You Tubers.
I just watched a dozen Can-Am cars fly by, including that mighty orange McLaren “Batmobile”, and I trust my manly car cred is not damaged by my attendance here.
Shooter, you are intentionally making our humble leader jealous. Please you are better than that. 😂😂😂
Am I?
I am sure you are…
I am genuinely happy not to be there. I had to go for work and I did not enjoy it. But I'm also happy if other ACFers are enjoying it.
Alright, Saturday Car Week update.
Jack, to quote Chris Rock talking about O.J. killing Nicole—“I’m not saying it’s right…But I understand!”
We avoided the “wine & cheese” affairs like The Quail, et al. We stopped at the James Dean memorial and paid our respects on the way in from Bakersfield and drove through Paso Robles on the way to Hwy 1.
We were extremely lucky and drove Hwy 1 all the way from San Simeon to Watsonville before the fire closed the road.
We ran into a badass old man driving a modified BMW Isetta from Missouri to attend “The Little Car Show.”
The guy slapped TWO, 600cc Honda scooter drivetrains into this Isetta and he was railing up PCH. Freaking Man’s Game!
We chatted with him at the McRay Falls viewing site.
So we had to attend that little car show and added it to our itinerary and met up again and had a great visit with the guy.
We then watched the start of the “Tour de Elegance” and got to see the white Ferrari 250 GTO, a DeTomaso Mangusta(!), a Lancia Stratos, a steam car of some kind, classic Bugattis and Duesenburgs, a Stutz Bearcat, and several “Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang” cars along with all the usual classic Ferraris and such and an Alfa “Bat” car make the drive
Had a great lunch and then out to Laguna Seca where we watched Jim Farley climb out of his Cobra, saw all the great Group C LeMans cars and IMSA GTP cars, and stood next to the exhaust outlet of the Mazda 787B, Four-Rotor Wankel LeMans prototype as they warmed up the engine.
Watched lots of great racing for two days.
Then we attended PCA Werks Reunion where I entered my 2004 Porsche “50 Years of the 550 Spyder Edition Boxster S”in the concours, just so that we got a great parking spot.
Had fun talking to kids about my car who just bought an old Boxster and wanted tips on modifying theirs.
It’s funny, my “Porsche with Panties on it” got more love from the kids due to its affordability than I thought I would get in that crowd.
It was fun seeing all the cars.
We made it around without too much traffic hassle thanks to early rising and good planning.
I decided to ditch seeing the Spike’s Car Radio taping today, so no Johnny Lieberman heckling, apologies.
My poor wife needs two days to recover at this lovely beach VRBO in Pajaro Dunes.
So that’s it, we had fun, met some nice folks, saw some cars, got a taste of Car Week, but dodged traffic and rich wankers.
Jack, I understand.
I had to attend it once, just to see. Figured this being the 75th anniversary of the event, this was the year to try it.
Plus my Boxster needed a road trip. Poor girl has been sitting too much since the deer strike in Arkansas last October.
Cheers!
Shooter, sounds like you had a great time, like they say come for the cars but the best part is meeting the people….. and extra extra credit in getting your wife to come along, I took Helen to a Grand Nation in Brookfield Wisconsin a decade ago and that was the last car event I could get her to tag along to…. She says she hates all the “junk cars” (her term fit classics cars)…. :-( :-(
sounds like an absolute blast man
Making me jealous...It's on my bucket list to do just once. I can't imagine a Monterey beach view VRBO doesn't crest five figures per day for car week. Enjoy in good health!
I had a client who was one of the nicest semi-retired old guys I ever met, just a pleasure to speak with, and his address was on Sunset Drive in Pebble Beach.
Same re: bucket list stuff.
Don't need to do it more than once, but I certainly would like to do it the one time. Seems fun.
Same applies to Dream Cruise as well, though, in the sense that I enjoy a dive bar Jack & Coke as much as I do Pappy Van Winkle.
You had me at "mighty orange McLaren 'Batmobile'."
" I have entered my Boxster in the PCA Werks Reunion concours-simply because that gives me better parking for the event."
That's how it STARTS! That's how they GET YOU!
don't forget to check out this beauty at The Quail, https://www.cadillac.com/electric/celestiq/night-test, then rush down to your local dealer to place an order.
The paint on that actually looks really nice.
So which 97(+) point cigar(s) are you providing, Jack?
https://halfwheel.com/reviewlist/
If you happen to have a box of Cohiba Siglo VI Gran Reserva Cosecha 2003 cigars (99 point rated by Halfwheel multiple times), then the Woodward attendees will have something over which to condescend toward the Pebble set.
For a box of those - a REAL box of those, and I would imagine that 19 out of 20 “for sale” are fake at this point - is easily worth $100K. A fake box could be had for less, but you’d still pay more than $10K for a sufficiently convincing fake presentation. You’d know the jig was up as soon as you lit them, if not before.
Sherman, are you volunteering to be the cigar selector for this confab? As from many posts on this regal site, we have a number of cigar experts and you know that opinions are the coin of the realm of all experts…..
There are a lot of superb cigar retailers in the Detroit metro area. Jack should go to Robusto’s and drop $2,500 or so on Davidoff and rare Fuente / Opus X. That should get the crew through the weekend.
Seems like it would be easier to just roll up a stack of Benjamins and smoke that.
I'm with you, friend. Never understood it.
As a non-smoker, the best tobacco I have ever had was when I was extraordinarily drunk on the streets of New Orleans with some friends of mine the night before Mardi Gras... Was probably Marlboro Reds? Maybe lights? Who can say, who cares. The cigarettes were an accessory to a glorious evening of revelry.
The point is, "fine cigars" are completely lost on me. Don't have a taste for the stuff and never really have. Just kinda smells bad and leaves my mouth feeling gross (insert your own joke here).
I like a nice cigar when sober.
I LOVE a good ol dart when I'm hammered.
The best cigarettes are parliament lights so you can take your bump of coke* before smoking those glorious things. I might average a cigarette a year at this point and that might be on the high side.
*I've never taken a bump from the recessed filter
Not hardly.
Because then the money would be gone, but no one would’ve had the pleasure of enjoying “97 point” cigar(s).
I feel the same about cigars, expensive liquor, watches, and buying new Range Rovers. But if it gives someone else pleasure, who am I to judge. I have friends that are into all those things. They can't understand why I'd want to own 8 vehicles.
I agree in general, but one of those things is not like the other :)
Like expensive everything. You get get 99% of the experience for 50% of the price
I like to smoke cigars on occasion. I usually smoke Romeo y Julietta 1875s. They run between $5-10 cigar IIRC. I have no idea where on the strata of cigar that lands, they’re just what I like.
i've enjoyed many $20 cigars in my life and ill enjoy many more. i think the act of sitting around licking your lips and commenting on the density and flavor of the smoke is as gay as taste testing a pride parade. cigars should be consumed on your boat, through the last 50 shells of a sporting clays course, or washing your car.
If you’re smoking a great cigar, you should let that be the centerpiece!
The greatest cigar is a compliment to whatever great thing you are already doing. If I start getting my panties in a twist about the relative humidity and vintage I've jumped the shark
I *am* bringing a box of "Opus X Forbidden X 13 Pasion D'Amor", but that's not a 97-point cigar, I don't think.
A 97 on the Halfwheel scale is very hard to come by. Particularly a Charlie Minato review.
Forbidden X is the “special” Opus X and the only Opus X variant that is routinely superior to the regular Opus X.
its not possible to relight an already smoked and extinguished cigar right?
It is absolutely possible; when it is done by an accredited cigar aficionado, it is called a "touch-up".
99.99999% of people cant tell those from romiet and juliets and 99.999% of those people are taller than you
Romiet y Julio: El mejor cigarro transgénero
https://www.cigaraficionado.com/top25cigar/montecristo-1935-anniversary-nicaragua-espeso-2024
Cigar Aficionado is more corrupt and unreliable than Jonny Blubberman and co.
Anyone who has smoked more than 10 cigars comes to that conclusion.
"Anyone who has smoked more than 10 cigars comes to that conclusion."
It's a glossy magazine. You get what you get with those. I read it in... gosh... 1998? and didn't think it was terribly useful. I didn't buy my first box of "upscale" cigars until maybe 2005, so I suppose I'm an arriviste. :)
That being said, cigar rating is inherently subjective and is probably only reliable to within five points or so.
Cigar Aficionado, along with the rest of Marvin Shanken’s portfolio, is particularly bad.
For a period of time, they would not even rate cigarmakers who did not advertise with them.
OMG, I didn’t know there were that many upscale cigars in the world. It’s worse than watches!
There are many.
But if you want to develop a new and costly (time and money) habit, I recommend dropping into your nearest Davidoff retailer and buying a few.
Those Singer 964's are simply an abomination of desolation. Truly the Devil's work.
I dream of a day when collectors will spend money to return them to original 964 configuration, and others will create "Porsches Reimagined by Singer" from Chinese-made repro 911 bodyshells.
I'm looking at you, too, Rauh-Welt Begriff.
The Louis V collab is dreadful to say the least.
But the regular Singer cars (i.e., all the others) are ultra desirable. A Porsche from PAG is just a consolation prize versus a Singer!
I've had mixed feelings about the Singers. You and Speed are right that a lot of the engineering and refinement is impressive. I've seen a couple in the flesh and been given a ride in one, and the finish is first -rate; definitely better than original. They strike me a bit as being like the latter-day repro Auburns and Cords built on Lincoln chassis: all the style (and the street cred among the more aspirational proles) of the prototype without the hassles of period kit and the actual feel and shortcomings of the original. Like a giclee of the Mona Lisa, or a carbon fiber P-51 with a PT6 up front.
Maybe I'm just getting cynical in my old age, or maybe I'm just a snob. I spent my teen years around a '73 RS and a 904. After uni' I was privileged to be a wrench for a few years at a Porsche specialist where I saw/worked on some interesting and rare cars (Pooper, Abarth Carrera, 911RSR 2.1 Turbo, or a100km 954 SCRS, just to name a few). It seems more and more that a lot of what passes for "style" these days - at PAG or anywhere else - is just a relentless mining of the past eighty years or so. Lately I think our culture is exhausted, and we're just picking through the tailings looking for something to sell.
"I sold my Fuchs, but not my stereo." (w. apologies to Simonian & Merchant)
Spot on with our culture being exhausted. I’m exhausted just looking at the exhausted culture. The lack of tasteful originality is glaring.
Now layer on top of the exhausted culture the fact that almost everything that passes for “modern luxury”, whatever that is, comes from a corporation that has to report quarterly earnings, meaning that they always have to sell more. And “more” is the enemy of luxury and exclusivity.
Contrast that with something like a high-end sushi restaurant in Tokyo that serves an omakase dinner for only 12 people per night. You don’t order, you eat only what the chef is serving. If you’re the 13th person to call for a reservation, you’re not getting a seat that night. And a year from now the master chef will not add 4 seats so that there’s dinner for 16. He will still only have 12 seats, because more isn’t better. He knows it and he is not going to compromise his craft to bring in more money by serving a lesser product.
You can still get a very nice, inoffensive “regular” Singer.
They make a Turbo car (looks like a later 930); a cheaper NA car with some ugly looking popup lights and “only” 420 or so hp; a DLS Turbo (that looks like a 934 / 935 mashup); and now this Louis Vuitton thing, the value of which is getting more eyeballs on Singer.
You could easily get the “regular” Turbo in any color you want with any interior you want. GT Silver over saddle brown leather from Bridge of Weir or, amusingly, perhaps Hermes Horizon. And 99.9999% of people who ever encounter it will think: “Look, an old Porsh!”
I know that there is craft and workmanship in the Singers, they just do nothing for me. Their value is whatever people will pay for them. I’m happy for anyone who has one. I see the auction prices on BaT and just think of other cars I could get for that money. So be it.
I would take this 240Z restomod over a Singer anytime. Apples and oranges, I know, but the Z has exclusivity and style. The Singer, no matter how nice, looks like just another 911. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yaatC-WdwpU&ra=m
There’s some tension in this.
On the one hand, Singer is (was?) sort of a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It was not apparent to a casual observer that the car was worth ~10X what a “regular” air-cooled 911 was.
But now they’re in partnership with Louis Vuitton so that more people will know that they are supposed to be status symbols!
To me, the appeal of a Singer is that it’s “even better than the ‘real’ thing.” One car that has all of the character of an air-cooled car, but everything has been reconsidered, replaced, renewed, restored. Said another way, it’s an “old” 911 for … driving. It has become a status symbol (and Singer has made an effort to bring that about because it’s good for business*), but it’s really a poor candidate for that when you think about it.
It’s like a house on the Battery in Charleston that’s older than the United States. Yeah it looks weathered on the outside, yeah there is only a small alley for parking (if you’re lucky), yeah the door frames are low and narrow … but doesn’t that exposed brick in the kitchen look nice next to the $20K Subzero refrigerator?
*I know David MacNeil’s now-retired #2 at WeatherTech. He commissioned an early Singer classic, and I rode in it one afternoon when we were both in Malibu (he kept the car in California for awhile). He had paid ~$500K for it and sold it for more than $1MM many miles later. I asked him why he hadn’t bought a Carrera GT or similar (this was 2017/2018 so that was doable) and he said “Oh … I’m not one of those tacky supercar guys. So let’s say you’ve come into some serious bread (sold a company, lottery winner, inheritance, Daddy raised your allowance, whatever) and you want something that (you think) makes you look “tasteful.”
Singer is a good option for that buyer. An orange Revuelto is not.
I think your first paragraph is "restomod," which is how I originally conceived Singer and is at least defensible. These Singers are "gilding/Broughaming the lily."
"relentless mining": I seem to be misremembering, and his more recent writings seem to be dominating my search results, but I think Jaron Lanier wrote something to the effect that nothing new has been created since the Web became popular. Also Ecclesiastes 1:9.
I agree, we've gotten to a point where we just recycle through a lot of covers instead of creating new art.
rwb is disgusting but singer spent a fortune making everything better. at the very least singer has substance and are more relevant and valuable when modified than stock
What is old is new again. The gussying up of some Porches is just a reincarnation of the Bill Blass, Louis Voutton, and other designer Lincolns of the late 1970’s and 1980’s. I am surprised the Tom K has not jumped in to comment on this plagerism of Lincoln’s idea.
Those designers Lincolns were great and very popular. The Singers don’t even rise to the level of the AMC designer editions. https://www.hemmings.com/stories/amc-designer-interiors-levis-gucci-cardin-cassini/
Uh, https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=docking
If 1:20 unfreeze their eggs, the number of live births must be 1:500. Live, healthy and not 'spectrum' 1:10000.
'healthcare, education, prostitution'
/they're the same picture meme
The feds are upping the automatic selective service registration to 26 to deal with all of those boyfriends.
4 after 35 here. None more retarded than sherman. All made the good old fashioned way This time egg freezing is bad. Go freeze an egg and make an omelette in a mnth from it. If it tastes funny imagine it being a dentist son in 37 years
I'm not clicking that link.
You are wiser than me.
Docking and bug chasing. Two things I wish I didn't know.
i was told they just want to get married and i should deal with it
At least the slope wasn't slippery
Men's jobs are also disproportionately targeted by the work visa scam (H-1, E-x, EB-x, L-1, OPT, EAD). Consider The Graph: https://xcancel.com/ThomBrady5/status/2086152573518492022
"Men's jobs are also disproportionately targeted by the work visa scam (H-1, E-x, EB-x, L-1, OPT, EAD)."
I should have mentioned this; these visas seem designed to put white American men out of work, probably because they are. There are no H1-B visas being held by HR workers or middle managers.
It's not exclusively white American men, but it's _disproportionate_; here's an exception:
Missouri University (@Mizzou) just posted a notice of intent to hire an H-1B Strategic Communications Associate
Salary: $64,000
https://xcancel.com/chrisbrunet/status/2049563774537863203
And I suspect that H-4EADs (no vetting, no wage floor) often work in recruiting/HR, filtering out any non-Subcons who apply.
But yes, ~overwhelmingly~ white men: POSIWID
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does
Another fresh exception:
Stanford University (@Stanford) has just filed 3 notices of intent to hire H-1B workers
...
- Marketing Specialist ($170k, working remotely from Ohio)
https://xcancel.com/chrisbrunet/status/2087270204321481103#m
(As a university, these applications are EXEMPT from the annual "cap")
because stanford of all places doesnt graduate enough marketing specialists
or something
its all so gay and retarded
I never realized the market for watches that most would assume the maker was a sewing machine concern was large enough to sell watches at those prices. Also, that is an ugly watch and the car looks like something a pimp would spec. Crap like that makes think that taxing the rich isn't such a bad idea.
Yeah, it’s hard to imagine there is a market for more than 3 of those watches.
And those cars might look ok in Miami Beach, but nowhere else.
"Brougham Porsche" definitely wasn't something anyone would have predicted in 1986! These make The Homer seem tasteful.
That’s perfect.
Guaranteed there will be a creepy old guy showing his Barista watch to an actual young barista chick thinking it will impress her.
I would stake the life of my child against five bucks that this has happened or will happen.
I looked up the cocktail watch and its self description is right on the face: Fruity.
See my comment below on a creepy client.
that's quite a line. It would work if you said it differently.
He also included a photo of himself leaning on a wood fence in front of a pasture like he was the Marlboro Man, except he was a short and fat Jewish guy.
My assistant was used to being creeped out by guys, but this one really creeped her out.
the older i get, the cringier this becomes. not only because of the transparent sexual undertones, but worse still because it probably sometimes works.
they can try to astroturf the kept man all they want, but reality is there are far, far more young women for sale than young men.
I once had a creepy client tell my gorgeous assistant that some of his dead wife’s clothes would probably fit her, so she should come over.
thats pretty good. dangerous having an assistant that good looking. not because of you, but because of what you are sometimes forced to witness.
My last assistant was attractive. Not gorgeous or anything but not 60 like my current one. She'd tell me stories of all the simps she was dating and it was astounding how little game all these guys had. Flowers and coffee coming to the office every other day, walls of text after she told them she wasn't interested.
She was the most good hearted and fun loving woman I’ve ever met.
Watching her in action using her charms on others to get her way was a sight to behold. She would kind of give me a slight look signaling “watch this” and then do her thing. Then we would laugh about it later.
I have never tried this, i doubt I will ever try this but you can get a 25 year old sugar baby for like 1-2k a month. That's laughably cheap. My wife costs more. A lot more.
cant even lease a range rover for that. these sugar babies need to re-evaluate their pricing models.
Too much competition. The free market rules all.
A range rover is more reliable than a 25 year old woman.
is that like having a prostitute on retainer
Sorta
OT: When the government is openly at war with the citizens, do "terrorists" become legitimate government? 🙃
https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-16038861/New-IRA-terrorists-plan-drive-migrants-Ireland-campaign-violence.html
I suspect the New IRA is about as real and relevant as SPLC funded white supremacist groups.
https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/12/politics/exclusive-splc-fraud-cfo-charges
IRA is a sock puppet, for sure, in this matter. The real org is way more organic among the Irish. Or so I hear.
"erm.... productive actions? must be a fed! you glow in the dark! what next, get married and have children?"
Uh oh! Somebody is "obsessed" again.
Yeah, but man, that self indulgent, pompous prick deserves every bit of Jack's savage roasting. That perfectly posed photo of him on the main page labelled "Professional Wildman"...he's just asking for it.
Thats just pompous stupidity. Do you think he even knows how to load and shoot that shotgun?
The almost sadder part is the people who believe the swill that ol' Wes pumps out. "He shot that shotgun?? An indian girl came to his campsite???" Jezus, the guy is so full of himself he probably actually believes all the nonsense that he writes
Maybe he's taking his inspiration from Papa Hemingway. To be fair, though, Hemingway did actually *do* some of the things he wrote about. It wasn't just cosplay or performative masculinity.
As a French businessman who was a friend of my late father once sardonically observed, "Americans like to wear the clothes."
"Then in the distance, I heard the bulls. I began running as fast as I could. Fortunately, I was wearing my Italian Cap Toe Oxfords."
To be clear, my comment was meant with a tremendous amount of snark.
Duly received that way.
If identifying that a felon who tried and failed to murder a black man in front of said black man's pregnant wife being fixated on me is wrong, I don't want to be right. And yes, unlike Jack, I am legally permitted to both own and enjoy firearms:
https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/environment/how-pheasant-hunters-protect-american-biodiversity/
k
nobody thinks youre cool because of that
or at all really
https://archive.is/t6WUT
Why the crossed fingers? https://d8fadn6wzp02bf.archive.is/t6WUT/378e471ec4e910f38dd1de4222becf1f7a908bde.jpg
Not sure why we're using web archive here? And I dunno man, sometimes photos are as awkward as articles young people try and write about you. That, or the obvious answer is always aliens.
The archive is because you posted a paywalled link and most of us don't subscribe to your publication, Einstein.
lmao
Ah, I always forget they have a terrible paywall system. That is so stupid.
I should hope ALL of us.
By "your [his] publication," I meant _Outside_, where other contributors sometimes write decent articles, not "Wes Siler's Newsletter."
"Hunting" farm-raised birds is an apt metaphor of your entire shtick.
My dad was really into pheasant “hunting”. I went a couple times and found it distasteful. Everyone would brag about how many birds they got. Well yeah. Poor things are lost and just trying to get back to the coop.
His wife was pregnant? I thought she was just fat.
jack, you're missing the important part. he was BLACK. that makes it a DOUBLE CRIME.
two wrongs dont make a right
or maybe they do idk
I wish you really had done this, it would have so much cooler than what really happened
He is referring to a deliberate fiction I seeded in the VWVortex Car Lounge back in 2004. I created a fake user who claimed to know the truth about me. Thousands of people still believe it.
There must be a story behind why you did that!
Yes, and it is simple: I wanted to make people look stupid. One of those people went so overboard persecuting me over my "crime" that his wife contacted me to express her sympathy, and we ended up having sex in the bathroom at Waterford Hills.
So... totally worth it.
0. Why are we bringing race into this?
1. This is a weird "wanna-be tacticool operator" flex." It has "grunt style T-Shirt and a $300 vape" vibes.
2. You can buy the accessories (and/or firearms,) you can't buy the authenticity.
Somewhere else in the thread he brags about how both he and his wife are "genuinely fit and dangerous people". Dangerous to whom, one wonders.
they have guns so they think theyre dangerous to everyone
probably are a danger to everyone just not in that way
My reaction to this reminded me of a similar feeling when Michael Jackson titled his new album Dangerous back in 1991.
It would make sense if the full title were: "Dangerous...to children"
Like the old joke: What's the difference between Michael Jackson and a plastic Bag? One is a threat to small children and the other is good for carrying things.
If you have to tell people how "dangerous" you are, then you're not.
I've met some truly dangerous people - former contract agents, ex-special forces types who'd gone into "security" or mercenary operations, quiet former middleweights They were genuinely dangerous men. If you didn't cross them or otherwise fuck with them, then you'd never know. They certainly weren't going to announce the fact.
BTW: firearms ownership does not necessarily connote that one is "dangerous". I've seen a lot of shooters at ranges - too many, really - who were a threat only to themselves. And maybe the other shooters at the range.
Special Forces Barbie and Ken.
You were afraid to go hunting in the wilderness because you weren't vaccinated. At this point, you have to be trolling.
say what? not vaccinated? against what, some sort of deep woods plague?
erm,..... black! the guy was black! black! he was BLACK!! doesnt anyone care? HE WAS BLACK!!!!!
Looking back, I think he might have been Moroccan, which is kind of a halfway point.
oh, god! brown! north african! immigrant! thats even WORSE!!!
Hahaha, are you forced to subscribe to Avoidable Contact Forever now? You should become a paying subscriber to see whether he mentions you on the non-free, non-open-thread days.
I, personally, think it's absolutely hilarious you return his trolling with trolling. Even if I *am* a bit disappointed you dropped out of the political race.
I mean if some weirdo is going to devote this much of his life to making up weird fantasies about me, who am I not to give him more material?!
The whole state senate race thing was just an exercise in disappointment all round.
I'm the weird guy who likes old air-cooled stuff -- 911s, 356s, ACVWs. I have a 356 Speedster replica and a '63 panel van. I didn't buy my 911 when I had the chance (before the market took a turn into the ether) so my air-cooled dance card is full. I'm OK with that -- I've got more on my plate than I can deal with right now without one.
But I was still looking for my 911 when the OG Singer first came out 15-ish years ago. I remember thinking, "What a great idea. Take the 964s nobody really wants and make really cool outlaw/hotrod longhoods out of them". The very first one was a really cool orange (if memory serves) and just looked like a really nicely done 911 with some cool touches -- redone gauges to look like a chronographs, which I then thought (and still do think) is pretty stinking cool, etc. The seats had an actual leather basketweave insert, which was also very nice and very cool. It wasn't overdone or underdone -- it felt like a really good custom. I had an older friend (who was then the age I am now) say something to the effect that the entire conceit was a bit too "precious" for his tastes, which I understood but did not agree with at the time.
I quickly found out the thing cost something like $350K. At the time, stupidly cool R Gruppe longhood street racers were going for south of $100K. Three hundred thousand dollars was (I felt) about $200K+ more than the thing ought to have cost, and I lost interest
... but apparently the eastern European oligarch crowd and what pretends to be the autopress never did. In the same way that a Chris Runge hand-hammered air-cooled car cost less than $100K in 2011 and $500K now, and Gary Emory's outlaw 356s were about $100k when they were building them in Oregon and are $500K now that his son is doing them in LA -- apparently Singers became a $3.5M- $5M car while I wasn't looking. Along the way, they took on the design aesthetic of a Russian boudoir.
The shots of whatever that Louis Viton abomination is trying to be nearly made me throw up in my mouth. If this thing is at Pebble Beach, that also tracks. If this (and Rod Emory's outlaws) are where the air-cooled market is now, I'm not sure I want to be an air-cooled guy anymore. All of the outsider, overachiever, smarter-than-you ethos is out of the thing, and it's just a repository for tasteless nobody to pour money into. It's really too bad.
Chris Runge's cars are still pretty cool.
Right there with you man...but I did get into the air cooled game before it went to crazy town. I owned 43 air cooled 911s from 2004 to when I sold my last one in 2020. Owned at least one of every year 1965-96 except 1968 and 1974...and I did skip the 964 years. I'd buy them needing work in California, turn them into nice drivers, enjoy a bit, then sell them to eager Germans in those days when the Euro was strong. I miss them so much, but there's no way I'd buy one at today's rates. It's really sad what their enthusiast base has turned into. My 996 Targa will have to do until the next economic crisis brings prices back into orbit.
FORTY
THREE
WHEW
I don’t think I even owned 43 Hot Wheels as a kid.
I was absolutely obsessed with them. I had five longhoods sitting in my driveway when I met my wife in 2006. That she was cool with my obsession earned her a lot of points with me.
A woman who can understand that you have interests and hobbies that you're passionate about is great. One who has hobbies and interests of her own is worth more than rubies.
That should be in “Proverbs”.
I found one of those when we were both too young to know who we really were. I buy tools and cars. She buys art supplies and brushes. We know when to leave each other alone, and when to come together.
You can't buy that kind of woman.
Only the rich kids had 43 Hot Wheels.
Keep in mind these were the days when a decent driver 911T Targa was worth $12,000. Sold many around that price.
My favorite was a one owner perfectly preserved original paint 1967 911S with German delivery plates. I had faded photos of it at the factory delivery then driving throught the Swiss alps. Sold to a German for $62,000 in early 2007 and thought I'd won the lottery.
"lois, we're measuring W2s again, and this time, I get to decide where the base starts"
the 350k is almost a steal when you realize basically everything is custom and getting everything from extremely high end manufacturers is sometimes impossible to do at an individual level. runges cars are "cheaper" (500k? really? blech. even 100k then was stout.) becuase its a far simpler car.
There's nothing weird about "liking old air-cooled stuff," and a major reason that people are upset about these monstrosities is that they ruin adequate specimens of "old air-cooled stuff."
Today’s theme is performance, and Kent Nishimura is the only one whose performance isn’t fake.
And the fake performances presented here are really really really fake.
That boy can certainly play.
Is it me, or do the talented people in this world keep getting more and more talented, while the bulk of the world gets less and less capable? I grew up in a town of 2000 souls -- but when I was 18, I knew probably twenty "serviceable" guitar players, and at least 4 who I thought were pretty darned good. At this point, does anybody play guitar besides the guys who can absolutely shred at 14 years old? Can anybody change an alternator -- you know besides the guy building the 2000 hp LS? Can anybody fumble through making a dinner that doesn't come out of a box besides the guy who makes his own horseradish?
It feels like we lost everything in the middle. I liked the middle. I lived in the middle. There were a lot of really great people in the middle.
It sure seems that way. What the average guy used to know when the USA was manufacturing based is quite different now that the average guy sits in a cubicle and looks at a screen.
Even worse, the US is extremely economically segregated in most places. It’s the biggest difference between where I live now and where I used to live in Chicago and its suburbs. Over here the grand mansion built by the original rich guy who formed the village has a trailer park across the road. In the Chicago suburbs you can easily peg someone just by which suburb they live in. It’s a rigid pecking order. I hated it and was glad to leave that world, even though I lived in one of the snobbiest suburbs.
So not only does the middle not exist anymore, America has gone tribal. If you told someone pre-2008 that you just want to live with your tribe and ignore everyone else, they would have been dumbfounded. Now it’s the goal of many, including me.
The Internet introduced all of us to each other, and it's gone downhill ever since!
I came within 1/2 a mile of losing my house in the recent Spokane fires. Since the local media is lame, I was using social media to piece together how close it got to my neighborhood. Good god, some of the posters and their comments. We have no where near hit peak stupid. It was nice when you weren’t exposed to that depressing reality.
1) So thankful your home was spared
2) So sorry about what Washington state has become. The crazy used to be kinda' contained to Sea-Tac.
Thanks Stan. Wildfires now scare the crap out of me.
Funny thing is that we are moving back to the Puget Sound area in about 3 weeks.
We gave Eastern Washington a try, but our Western Washington roots are too deep.
All the crazy people found their soulmates.
I'm the odd guy who wants to mix it up with everybody.
I grew up in a white-bread farm town, and came to faith in a pacifistic, rule-following Anabaptist church. As a very young man, I lived in a 3rd world tribal village for 3 years. I was an elder in an inner-city charismatic church with a homeless/addict outreach. I'm presently a member of a Lutheran Church (the same one that drove my forebears to leave the old country and find freedom to worship in this one). I live across the street from a man who flew his American flag upside down for a couple of weeks in 2020. Three houses down a homosexual couple have moved in -- we swap produce from our gardens. The townsfolk have taken to calling us, "the garage people", because I built my home around a 2-post Bendpak lift and have 10 ft high garage doors. I haven't really changed much, but the world around me has changed enormously.
I've got a daughter who won't speak to her mother and I (as is the current vogue), "toxic" as we are. I've got a sister who exhibits every sign of Munchausen syndrome by proxy (look it up), and gets mad because I don't play along with her fantasy. I've lost friends because I was insufficiently "Trumpy", and family because I was a "closed-minded bigot". My door is still open for any and all callers. Everybody is welcome, even if I find most people to be tiresome idiots. I know I can be a tiresome idiot as well.
Everybody bloviates on the interwebs about the things that divide us, but nobody takes the time to love their neighbor (no matter who they might be, Samaritan or no), which is the command of both Leviticus and Christ.
I'm as crusty as the next guy, and this stuff wears me out. But ignoring the whackjobs of the world doesn't change them or make them go away. I'm just trying to be the change I'd like to see.
Stan, you are a better man than many of us. Just keep on doing your thing.
I'm really not, Steve. I'm keenly aware of my (many) shortcomings. But thanks.
Stan, I think I would enjoy sitting down with you for a drink to talk about all of this someday… Hey Jack, is First Principles coming back?
I'd like that a lot.
But just so you're aware, nice stuff ("good" bourbon/Scotch, etc.) is pretty much wasted on me, as I have no ability to discern the "hint of cloves and licorice" and all that. Kirkland Scotch is just fine with me.
My taste buds stop at about 35 bucks a bottle.
It is. I have been "in the struggle", as the kids say, in a lot of ways over the past couple of years. But it's coming back.
^Your next book title.
You are what my neighbor calls an OWL. Old Wise Lutheran.
Well, friend-- I feel old a lot of days, and I find myself a Lutheran kind of by default (although I think my theology may be closer to Orthodox at this point), but "wise" is a heavy lift.
I'm a high-school educated pipefitter who reads a bit just trying to do my best. The world was spinning before I made my appearance, and it'll be spinning after I exit.
Stan, I'd have a beer with you any time. You seem like good people.
There's an open invite to anybody who finds themselves passing through Nowhere, RFD on their way to more important places. No visa required for entrance to the People's Republic, you're all friends of the state.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average_Is_Over
Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation is a 2013 book by American economist Tyler Cowen laying out his vision for the future trajectory of the global economy.[1] It is a sequel to Cowen's 2011 pamphlet The Great Stagnation, which argued that America had exhausted many of the low-hanging fruit (such as cheap land and easily achievable improvements in education) that had powered its growth in the 19th and early 20th century.
[I haven't read the book]
Tyler Cowen is an utter moron. He is probably the least intelligent person publishing in America today.
Perhaps so; as I said, I haven't read the book. But the idea that modern technology results in more "winner take all" outcomes seems fairly self-evident (I'd have to actually read the book to know if that's even its thesis).
It's entirely possible he's right about something, like the proverbial stopped clock.
Odd thing to hang on a guy, given the company we find upthread
Wes isn't stupid, he is just emotionally damaged to the point that he doesn't live in reality.
Interesting observation, if true, because, from the outside, he seems to have all the makings of a good life (except posterity, which he affirmatively rejects).
I have at least two members of my immediate family with this affliction. I tell myself they're doing the best they can, but I suspect that's not the truth. Everybody has a choice to face the hard thing, or shrink from it.
And yet he outranks you on the FP masthead!
Hugely so. He earns a lot more money from the FP than I do. However, we are both outranked by Mayim Bialik.
Would love you to hear you expand on this.
I don’t know anything about him; just would be interested to know why a relatively famous guy is dumb as shit
He has never had an original idea and when it comes to AI or modern tech he is deranged. Like, he sounds like he is reading from a sales brochure. He is too stupid to understand the tech, its limitations, or even how it works at a fifth-grade level.
He writes like a guy who has never read a book, only the Cliff Notes version dumbed down for high schoolers.
I'm going to answer a slightly different question: how a dumb as shit guy is relatively famous. My answer, without having actually read his books, is that there is great wealth in "speaking lies to power," or "comforting the comfortable and afflicting the afflicted." See Matt Taibbi's hilarious takedown of Thomas Friedman, "Flathead": https://web.archive.org/web/20051024235026/http://newyorkpress.com/18/16/news&columns/taibbi.cfm
Part of that is modern social media and connectedness.
It’s difficult to be “locally good” at something when you can queue up someone on TikTok or YouTube from halfway across the world who’s an indisputable savant when it comes to at the subject at hand. That, in turn, intimidates people who would otherwise develop that level of skill with time and patience…because they are siting in front of their screen comparing themselves unfavorably to ten or twenty people they see online who have already “mastered” it, instead of just getting out there and doing it.
And that’s assuming it’s not a category like fitness, where the subject-matter experts and celebrated Internet individuals frequently use PEDs for results that look impressive, but that are improbable without those aids and unsustainable in the long term.
Fifty years ago, Karen Carpenter was a one-in-a-million voice. (maybe a billion?)
Now any idiot with an iPhone can auto-tune a song to sound just like her.
So yes, it's hard for great talents to emerge when every average joe can put out perfection with no effort.
I preferred Joan Baez.
USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS COMMENT
Him or me? I presume him as I have received no official notification of banishment.
just a joke bro
It is an old joke from 4Chan.
You are not banned, even if you have the effrontery to prefer Joan Baez. Plenty of people did!
As do I.
As did Dylan, for that matter.
Throw these YouTube savants into Keith Richard’s Nellcôte basement studio circa 1972 and see how good they are. If they survive.
One thing I've noticed is that the YouTube kids grow up playing with a metronome and a backing track, so they really suffer and/or panic in a real live situation.
I took a lot of criticism from musical friends for the way I educated my son: very little theory, always playing live with another person, no backing track, rarely practicing for more than an hour until he got into his teens. Then I took him to NYC and watched how easy it was for him to play and communicate with musicians on an ad hoc basis, which made me feel the tiniest bit vindicated.
Can’t replicate the real thing no matter how hard you try
Jazz is pretty much dead because it’s taught in schools.
The live stuff is still fun, though.
It was dead even in the Nineties, when we had the Marsalis Museum Revival.
My son has never enjoyed listening to Blue Note records. But he digs playing the tunes. Jazz is like, I don't know, autocross; only compelling if you're doing it.
Being able to hear cures a lot
That must be my problem...
Many thanks for the memories, amigo.
My Dad made his/our own horseradish. None of us could remain in the kitchen when he ground it.
He was definitely a "one off."
"Is it me, or do the talented people in this world keep getting more and more talented, while the bulk of the world gets less and less capable?"
Yes, because the talented people have access to better resources and the bulk continues to decline in intelligence.
My son is 17. Until recently, no 17-year-old could play the electric bass like he does. Nowadays, I'm not even sure he is the best 17-year-old player in Ohio.
The emergence of the Cognitive Elite plays into this.
It only feels like we lost the middle because we see so much online, and the algorithms select for the extremes.
Interesting point.
The first Singers really were tasteful IMHO, and I was very impressed with the craftsmanship of an early example I got to look at closely. But those LV collabs remind me of the coke inspired Gemballa and Rinspeed 930s of the 1980s. Gold trim looked good on a black LS400. In 1990.
To think...these same guys control the fate of Willow Springs Raceway now. 🤦🏻♂️
I think essentially all of the Singer product to date is tasteful*, and certainly so if you had the opportunity to spec it yourself (i.e., to your own taste).
This collab with LV almost certainly arose because Singer has taken some private investment and they’d like to move it more toward a luxury brand positioning. Which is sensible. Look at, e.g., Ferrari’s Board of Directors: Delphine Arnault (LVMH); Francesca Belletini (Kering); John Galantic (L Catterton aka LVMH).
The execution of this collaboration is poor. I don’t think anyone in this comment section doubts that. They could, conceivably, have done a tasteful collaboration, but that wouldn’t have been as eye catching, right? There is at least one Ferrari F12 TdF out there with an interior featuring Loro Piana (part of LVMH) fabric from the Ferrari factory; that car is beautiful. Based on the pictures, I think that the seats (just the seats) in the Singer cabriolet look nice.
*Drive Tastefully
I get it...I even subscribe to the shamelessly pretentious Petrolicious newspaper.
But for these Singers I think it's more a case of Drive Distastefully: https://youtu.be/kWF-hH1nloo?si=BhURdHCK4_FKgEni
I subscribe as well. The concept was cool. In reality it’s a ton of QR codes to go read or watch online content which I thought was exactly opposite of the point of the newspaper. The most recent two issues are sitting on my office credenza unread. I really need to cancel.
I look at a screen all day, so its nice to relax at the end of the day with a paper to look at. I've never tried the QR codes.
"There is at least one Ferrari F12 TdF out there with an interior featuring Loro Piana (part of LVMH) fabric from the Ferrari factory; that car is beautiful."
Sir, you are reaching here; Loro Piana shares nothing aesthetically with Louis Vuitton even if they're both under the same ownership umbrella.
I’m not reaching at all:
BOTH brands are part of LVMH.
BOTH brands did a branded collaboration with a luxury automaker.
BOTH brands are capable of making pleasant products, as well as vulgar products. As Loro Piana has become more widely known, they have made more products bearing logos and text.
Anyway, here’s the F12 TdF:
https://luxurypulse.com/sales/show/4888-ferrari-f12tdf
That is undeniably beautiful. But 2 mil after taxes beautiful?
That price is old / inaccurate / currency converted.
If that car were for sale in the US today the price would start with a 5 (as in $5MM+).
Your favorite wool brand did a Ferrari interior? Neat!
I attended the University of Colorado and still work in Boulder County. Ever since Deion Sanders signed on as our football coach he - and more so his son/QB Sheduer, prior to heading to the Cleveland Browns - has made a lot of waves with car purchases: matte black F650 with smoke stacks, Cybertruck, custom Maybach, Lambo, and and Rolls (all SUVs, of course). Everything costs serious money and makes a statement but is completely devoid of taste - especially when most of said news centers around the younger Sanders racking up parking tickets on campus with multiple $300k+ automobiles.
Anyway, that's who the "Louie" Singers made me think of. Absolutely shameful effort from a company supposedly founded on driving purity!
Monster Truck behavior
Or just monstrous.
Is there a difference?
Imagine how … IMPOTENT … someone with a small penis truck like an F-250 or F-350 or F-450 or F-550 would feel next to a behemoth like that.
Probably like that loser in the Plymouth in the cinematic masterpiece Duel.
Sanders was famously measured by the NFL at five foot and 11 3/4 inches, which explains it all!
Speaking from personal experience, the cool thing about being 5’11” is that it’s really easy to lie on Hinge/Tinder and say you’re 6ft.
The bad thing about being 5’11” is when someone who IS 6ft stands next to you.
Only one of the things that make America great is that if you have money you can spend it as you please. That doesn't mean that it will be spent tastefully. Some of the fearfully rich ape each other microscopically. Check out the gold chains around the necks of various professional athletes. Others, a few, have the sense of self that doesn't require ostentatious display for validation.
I agree with that, but some kinds of excessive spending are naturally more palatable than others. I may work in Boulder (deep blue), but I live in Weld (bright red), and a lot of my friends and neighbors are white trash-and-proud type of oilfield guys. A lot of Raptors, jet skis, boats, side-by-sides, etc. around. Tacky, to be sure, but at the same time I can respect it because it all has a use (bringing joy) and is what these guys work for.
The Shedeur model - a fleet of identical-mission throwaway luxury SUVs as fashion accessories - by comparison, just feels wasteful and scornworthy, especially when it's done by a college kid.
YouTubers - and similar - bring out these same feelings in people because it's all for show, while the excessive collections of a Jay Leno get a pass and even admiration because he's a connoisseur curating things of beauty out of passion. Then again, as Jack so often calls out, there's a high percentage of low self-esteem wealth out there that desperately apes the connoisseurs and might be even worse than the Sanderses of the world. Basically, it all boils down to authenticity.
Jay Leno doesn't want his stuff to be a museum but he operates as a sort of internet museum. Preserving things nobody else could store or fix. Sharing the stories of cars that many people would not otherwise know. Very little ego there. Imagine Seinfeld or Ralph Lauren or Letterman doing the same.
Dave Chapelle hilariously does a bit about Kanye arrogantly saying he doesn’t wear chains because he’s a billionaire and billionaires don’t wear their wealth, right before he shot off his mouth and cost himself the Adidas deal and a whole ton of money. “Welcome back Kanye, put your chain back on!”
That was comedy gold!
remember when a highzoot company called b&b would put the exact bugs on the front of your rover etc. that's make it look like it's run the safari rally?
NO. That really happened?
Maybe you all can invite AOC to the Dream Cruise meetup and introduce her to some genuine midwest guys.
Heh, maybe she can sponsor Speed for citizenship.
Speed can impregnate her as part of his citizenship bid.
After turning on the charm, he can seduce her with lots of hot Canadian socialism talk - "Justin's policies were so sexy... the GST isn't high enough....We really don't do a good enough job importing Indians and Pakis into our beautiful country..."
Then right in the middle of the wild lovemaking, he can announce that he actually loves internal combustion engines and capitalism, then see if he can stay on her for 8 seconds.
IM NOT RACEMIXING FOR A GREEN CARD
funniest shit ever tho lol
Oh come on, do your part, we can’t be stuck with a spinster socialist president down here.
At least we’d have cats in the White House rather than dogs.
Please reconsider. Right now you would be the one getting alimony from Sandy.
Dude, you gotta take one for the team.
No, we have enough Canadian anchor babies as it is.
At least we would have a few Canadian anchor babies that are into sports cars and club racing!
Saar!
.....before he internally combusts!!!
Doofus a and doofus b are sherman masturbating. Back to the article!
Sherman will laugh all the way to the bank when he posts that video on his OF page.
Right until the bank has a height requirement to walk in
Those Singer “cars” remind me of the awful 1980’s era pimpmobiles with the fake 1930’s spare wheels on the front fenders.
Exactly!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoclassic_(automobile)
The Zimmers are what I was thinking of.
The Zimmers were coachbuilt; they are arguably at least equal, morally, to Singers, and possibly superior!
The Zimmer is a modern redesign of the '72 Lincoln Mark IV. Once you see it you can't unsee it. Also, I want a Zimmer.
De gustibus non est disputandum!
"Good taste—What a dreadful thing! Taste is the enemy of creativeness." — Pablo Picasso
To each their own.
I also like those baroque Sevilles turned into 2 doors. So bad they’re good. Of course, not good that they cut up a real Seville.
Especially the ones with the spare tires on the front fenders!
Timeline checks out, really. Think about it: the wave of "neoclassical" autos emerged around 1960, with cars that appealed to people who remembered the originals - Dusie, Stutz, Auburn, Cord - from their youth four-plus decades before.
The Singers ape the "longhood" style of the 911's built up to 1973, which is now more than four decades ago, and a distant memory to guys like me. (I had a neighbor in 1972-73 who was a proto yuppie, and he and his wife had a Kelly Green 911 coupe and two dalmatians.)
Basically, it's very retro style for aging guys w money who want the cars they recall from childhood/adolescence/teens.
You've hit the nail directly on the head.
Willy Mays’ Stutz Blackhawk. https://www.orlandoclassiccars.net/vehicles/1428/1978-stutz-blackhawk
I like this. I remember seeing these on the road back in the day.
an unbelievable amount of money and effort into something fairly ugly
incredible in some regards
But as Haligonian noted, it was a product of its time for a certain select clientele. Gotta have some swagger if you’re going to drive that, unlike today’s cars.
Cars are so bland and boring today that l love outlandish cars like the Stutz. Even something like a 1971 Eldorado is absurd and outlandish today when back then it was just supremely cool.
Manufacturers and buyers alike want safe things that are within very narrow norms of acceptability, but that’s soul crushing. Human being are meant to create great things and not default to dumbing everything down. Design should lead the way on what’s possible, and not produce identical bars of soap because that’s what the wind tunnel liked.
Well said, Garland Fiske approves
That thing is eye searing FUGLY. Makes the Aztec look like it was styled by the Italians.
Let's not get carried away...
Imagine getting a vasectomy before you have kids. I refuse to get one now. “If you want to be done, you can be”
With you.
Theres always other ways.
Also even Wikipedia admits some dudes have what is essentially permanent pain from the procedure that never goes away. Risk isn’t gigantic but still taking a chance there
The risk is she got you. My wife leaves me I will knock up a chick 15 years younger. Like, id rather not but the possibility matters.
Same here same reasons.
As with any elective surgery there are risks...
I'd LOVE to get lasik so I can wake up without fumbling for glasses for the first time in over 20 years, but cost and the horror stories keep me away.
So it goes.
Yeah, I am *never* having eye surgery.
My dad has to get something done to his in a few months.
I am dreading it for him!
i had cataract lens replacement. works fine but there's a faint loss of some kind of internal feedback that eversoslightly has affected my depth perception. no problem driving though.
You're effectively immortal, so your experience doesn't count!
Same man. Like, my vision isn't that bad.
Mine kinda is, but several hundred dollars per year for contacts that I wear for too long before changing them out seems to work well enough.
Enjoy that while it lasts. I used to easily get double the life out of contacts and then I turned 37 or so and I have to get the most premium of the premium dailys. Still, safer than surgery.
I am not looking forward to, um, 5 years from now I guess? Lol
Have already found that I can simply never sleep in contacts again though. Used to be able to get a couple sleeps out of a pair of I really needed to. Now, if I close my eyes for like 20 minutes they need to be tossed.
Get PRK, not LASIK.
Lasik is where the upper level of the corneal tissue is folded back and the underside is then laser modified.
PRK, which I had 25+ years ago in Cunuckistan, just laser modifies the upper corneal tissue.
LASIK is much less painful and has a faster recovery time. However, a clean room level environment is needed as dust can get under the flap. Also, the flap could detatch under head rapid head movemeny from contact sports or high-g manuevers. The military and athletes are often required to get PRK.
PRK takes longer to recover. It is painful for a day. The first week is tough as your vision improves. I don't understand the pain dynamic, but it's there.
But there's no flap to detatch with PRK. And PRK is better suited to a second correction (which I am considering). For almost 20 years I was 20-20. Now I'm 20-40 (maybe 20-50 in my left eye). PRK has a longer track record - although good luck getting marketing-free data from this industry full of LASIK pimps.
Datapoint: Prior to my PRK, sedatives were offered to the dozen or so in the surgery group. (Yes. Laser eye surgery is an assembly line!) The only 2 who refused were me and another ex military dude. And we were the only ones getting PRK.
A friend of mine got PRK 25 years ago; his only real concern was "starbursts" around light sources, a problem that has never gone away for him.
PRK gave me slight halos around bright lights at night. I got used to it.
Great distance vision without glasses when driving, playing hockey, and shooting was a huge life improvement.
That said, I knew of a Toronto cop who had the old manual spatula-scalpel type RK back in the 80s. He was allegedly 20-20 for decades and talked up the procedure to US cops. It wasn't legal in the US at that time. Maybe the FDA was right since the Canucks developed the standards from the Soviets and Euros.
After re-reading my post, I understand I'm not the best advocate for the procedure. It's not for everyone.
I've worn glasses for, checks math, nearly 32 years, my vision has not changed in the past 7. 2 years ago I asked my eye doctor about having Lasik or PRK done, and how long he thought it would be before I would need to start wearing glasses and/or have to have the procedure done again. He did some research and found that the average span between the first and second procedures was 11 years. I did the quick math on what I spend on glasses and contacts and under those circumstances it would never cost justify.
I do still think about how cool it would be to wake up and see my feet without having to reach for glasses. Maybe if I've got a free 5-10k burning (no pun intended) a hole in my pocket I'll do it but I'd probably rather spend that on a car, or watch or something else.
As you age, you'll like need reading glasses if laser surgery corrects your distance vision. That's a known tradeoff.
Although you would have likely needed bifocal glasses without surgery
Bifocals are worthless now as everyone reads almost straight ahead as opposed to reading a book in your lap.
I can function well without glasses at home..it’s when I go out that I need them for distance (license restriction), and for reading a menu, choir score, etc.
For computer work on big monitors at work, or even on a laptop, depending on circumstances, I have a third pair, which stay at work.
If the lasik doc himself is wearing glasses, there is your answer.
One time, a doctor told me I had “just the most beautiful eyes for LASIK” and at that point it was one of the nicest compliments I’d heard in years
He meant checkbook.
Jokes on him I was making like $45k then!
My eye doctor told me not to do it.
Allow me to be the lone retard here:
It’s a personal call reflecting how you think of risk.
I’ve seen studies saying 5% of vasectomy-havers enjoy permanent peen pain forever after surgery. But recent studies I’ve seen (maybe 5y ago) suggest the lasik complication rate is like 1-2%.
I’ve got good vision so don’t have to weigh this sort of Faustian gamble, but IMO these two surgeries are not on the same level.
I welcome other stats or better/more recent numbers if you have them
I do not and I certainly trust your numbers.
Was just stating my feelings about the general risks of elective surgeries, and one that’s more topical to me specifically
The thought of having someone come at my junk with a sharp object is something I couldn’t imagine!
The recovery, using a freezer’s worth of frozen vegetables, doesn’t sound good either!
Then the possibility of having..uhh..NERVES cut! 😬
My wife did it 10 years ago and the dry eye never went away, she is constantly using eye drops throughout the day. According to her it was still worth it.
https://wessiler.substack.com/p/i-got-a-vasectomy-and-you-can-too
Did your wife make you do it
“A vasectomy is an out-patient procedure with no side effects that can save the person you love from a multitude of negative outcomes.”
LMAO brother. Negative outcomes — like meeting the loves of her life, her own children.
Honestly pretty incel-coded to not want kids
Translation: Not 'she doesn't want children' but 'she doesn't want YOUR children'.
Manjaw Mommy realized she'd married a moron, and decided to focus her attention on her personal trainer.
Otherwise known as “CrossFit Adultery!”
I'd like to note for the record that avoiding a child in the developed world saves ~ 9441 tons of CO2 when counting descendants, or ~58.8 tons per year for each year of the parent's life (to the extent carbon counting can be reliable) (1).
One Canadian physician, in his spare time, single-handedly spearheaded a lonely, long battle to save one of Pickering Nuclear Generating Station, one of Canada's carbon-free nuclear plants (2).
The added lifespan of Pickering, directly traceable to one man's effort, will avoid 120,000,000 tons (3) of CO2, and each year Pickering operates, 2,100,000 tons of CO2 is avoided (4).
Which is 35,715 kids on an annual basis (2,100,000/58.8) or 12,711 kids using the cumulative incremental avoided CO2 from extending Pickering's life (120,000,000/9441).
I'd suggest focusing your CO2 efforts on promoting actions that produce 10,000-35,000x returns rather than avoiding a single child.
(1) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959378008001003
(2) https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/opinion-refurbishing-pickering-nuclear-station-180802573.html
(3) https://www.opg.com/news-resources/newsroom/our-stories/story/opg-celebrates-green-light-for-pickering-refurbishment-heres-whats-next/
(4) https://www.canada.ca/en/services/environment/weather/climatechange/climate-plan/clean-electricity/overview-ontario.html
manmade co2 has an unmeasurably small effect on the world.
Who would brag about this on the internet? Would a dog neuter himself if he had a choice?
These idiots think they're saving the world by sterilizing themselves. It's astounding
Was it PJ O'Rourke who observed that everybody gets excited to go save the world, but nobody wants to help mom do the dishes?
I got snipped RIGHT after child #2 because I knew my wife was going to try to talk me into child #3 and I’d be powerless to resist. Worry free cream pies for the win.
I could easily be talked into child #5. I'm the one who wanted #4
I'd also definitely have a vasectomy baby.
I grew up in a family of four (2 adults/2 kids) so to me that’s the “right” number for a family. More than 2 kids and you’re signing yourself up for a minivan, 20% more airline tickets, 2 hotel rooms instead of one, and 50% more college tuition and daycare payments.
More than 2 kids and you’re signing yourself up for a minivan: Telluride seats 7!
20% more airline tickets: We drive!
Fair
50% more college tuition: Taken care of already
daycare payments: Wife stays home and the 4th kid at Catholic school is free. I'd be foolish not to take advantage of that.
Then I’d have to drive a Telluride. Ugh. And you can’t drive to Europe or Hawaii, and my family lives on the east coast which is a PITA to drive to for a weekend. My wife is 50% of our HHI, and like 90% of our retirement savings (company equity) so I’d be dumb to give that up.
It would have been a lot harder decision if my wife made north of 200k
We saved for a couple years for our trip to Japan this spring. We might not go again, that is a LOT of money to spend for just a couple of weeks.
"My wife is 50% of our HHI, and like 90% of our retirement savings..." Same but even moreso because she's 65% of our's.
We have 3 kids, and the CX-9 seats them all in comfort AND style, which more than you can say for a dowdy-ass Telluride.
I wanted the Mazda! But it wasnt my car to choose and I'm not controlling enough to make her get what I wanted.
seems like what you need is wife #2 and have more kids. someone has to prevent the population collapse.
I'd have another kid in a heartbeat. I'm done at one wife. That is enough. Imagine 2 things staring at me after they've had one too many glasses of wine.
How my wife looked at me before the 4 kids
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEsXSJvpfnQ
I don't see this one as much anymore.