It is that time of year again. Where I get the urge to ‘spring clean’ the car and freshen her up with some new parts. Where last year’s parts bonanza was focused on function… this year’s fiesta is looking more towards form.

I picked up a fresh set of headlight lenses. 5+ years of running the yellow lamin-x film… and it is time for a change. My ‘old yellers’ are pretty haggard. They have taken beatings from cones and cars alike… have been epoxied back together several times, and the yellow film is looking more like a muddy brown these days. It will be nice to get a clean set on there.

New bulbs for the Xenons from DDM Tuning. The old set were dying, shifting the light output to a brownish green color.

In lieu of going with clear lenses… I want to hit the highbeam reflectors with clear yellow. A popular method is to use Krylon Stained Glass spray paint… but I couldn’t find it ANYWHERE. After reading some positive reviews… I decided to order some Vans paint instead. I felt better about this product… since it is designed for this very purpose.

Used set of fogs so I can finally replace the one I shattered in ’06. I need to polish the lenses up on these, and I may try and hit the reflectors with yellow as well. I still need to find a driver-side foglight bezel.

Picked up a Hamann knockoff window spoiler for an amazing price. I think it is going to look sick once it is all painted. It has way more contact with the car… so I don’t think this one will fly off the car like the last one.

Greg, Kyle, Byron, and I caught Megadeth, Testament, and Exodus last night at the Tabernacle. The sound was totally screwed up… especially for Exodus’ set… which wasn’t even running through the PA. Even the first half of Testament’s set had the vocals sounding like they were coming through a tin can filled with shop-rags. They eventually got it sorted out. Megadeth played ‘Rust In Peace’, the from start to finish… and it was AMAZING. I swear they never missed a note… even during the most blisteringly fast solos. Their musicianship still shines after all these years. After Rust In Peace, they played a varied assortment of solid tracks that made for a great show… even if the PA was still sounding terrible.

I got fed up with trying to work on the car in pitch darkness, so I put up a couple fluorescent light fixtures. The difference is remarkable. Next on my list for the garage is to get some more shelving up and re-arrange the space better so working on the car is less of a hassle. This garage is much smaller than my last one, so every inch of space counts. I still have a TON of wall decor to go up… but that will make it’s way to the walls in good time.

I got a chance to see an unbelievable documentary called “The Art of the Steal” by Don Argott. I won’t go into details of what the documentary entails… because the trailer above does a great job of that. What I will say is that I left the theatre VERY very angry. For a moment, I couldn’t even believe that something like this could happen… but then I remembered that we live in a country where the almighty dollar rules all… so to hell with things like legality, wills, or trusts. The city of Philadelphia could obviously care less about these things, as they have tourism to drum up! They want to portray themselves as one of the leading cities for art and culture, however they are showing that they are a city writhing in corruption hellbent on getting what they want… even if it means breaking the law.

This film was very well produced, and I really enjoyed it immensely. If you have any attachment or relationship to art whatsoever… I would highly recommend it.

And to the city of Philadelphia… you will never see a red cent of MY commerce.
EVER.

A couple weeks back, my buddy Clint Davis gave me a shout about a feature he wanted to do for the Longshots section of Import Tuner. This section is normally reserved for automotive photography, but Clint wanted to switch things up a bit, and feature some video content.

It is VERY flattering to be featured in a tuner magazine for my endeavors behind the keyboard instead of behind the wheel. It is even more of an honor to be paired up on the same page with my ‘Keep Drifting Fun’ buddy, Will Roegge!

This feature really turned out cool, and is available on newstands nationwide. Thanks Clint!!!

photo c/o Sir Shawn the Smith

The private DM test-session on the road course at Atlanta Motor Speedway was SICK. Insane high-speed entries, and equally as fast course-exits. I remember looking down as I was apexing the last clip and the speedo was at 85mph. GNAR.

Stay tuned for more details.

I finally got around to installing this piece. I think I ordered this in late 2004… and it has been by the wayside on my install list ever since. Truth be told, it would up in a toolbox, and I forgot about it. Matt had to drill out the existing hole and re-tap it for the VDO temp sender, because for some reason it didn’t fit right out of the box.

Install was SUPER easy, and now my oil-temp gauge works!

Matt Foerst stopped by and helped me fix my stripped oil pan. He came armed with a HeliCoil set and had it knocked out in no time. Have I ever mentioned how much of a badass this dude is? Well… HE IS. I watched him change a clutch in my car in 45 minutes once… and he wasn’t even rushing. That same task took me and a friend 6 hours to do. Matt did it in 1/8th the time. BAD. ASS.

On a totally unrelated note… I love the HeliCoil logo. It is so stylized in it’s simplicity. The intersecting elements representative of the thread coils are a great element that really makes it what it is.

I just finished up a four-page piece for S3 Magazine. This gully SC400 just screamed heavy metal to me, so I went for a darker approach. Within the article, Wooley mentions how people are afraid of it, and seeing it drive down the street is like seeing the shadows of death… so “Creeping Death” seemed all-too-fitting for the title. The second two pages are not actually a double-truck, they are separated by full-page ads.

I’m still on the fence about the overall layout. I like it, but I don’t love it. I guess time-crunches can do that sometimes.
Regardless, it was definitely a fun bit to put together!

Completion Time:		8 Hours			Software Used:		Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign (CS3)

I lended a creative helping-hand to Lieze, and did up a poster design for her art show next week. She and I have both been up to our necks in this project. It’s scale is huge, and she still has a million things to complete before the show… but I figured I could take care of the poster, and leave her with one less thing on her plate.

The premise of the show is how advertising uses imagery and photographs that relate to our personal lives to appeal to us on a subconscious level. It will be using an array of 35mm slides projected using vintage slide projectors, with a motion graphic advertisements projected on top of the slide projections, using digital projectors. The projections are to be cast on a giant box constructed of plywood, shipping palettes, and analog VHS cassette tapes. She has sourced an insane amount of vintage technology to make all of this work.

If you’re in or around Atlanta on March 10th… come on out!

Completion Time:		2 Hours			Software Used:		Photoshop (CS3)