Chopit Kustoms’ Tuff Enuff ’50 Merc was a truly awesome sight to behold. I’ve always loved chopped and slammed ’50 Mercs, but this one tops them all. It was a work of art, stunning from every angle.

I happened to arrive right at the opportune moment where the owner asked if we wanted to see the engine. Sure enough, we all said “Yes!” like a bunch of excited little kids about to open birthday presents.

Good heavens. Walk around this beast and you’ll want to run your hands across its every curve and contour. It was ridiculous. I found myself in that rare emotional state where I love it and hate it at the same time, simply out of a collision of appreciation and envy. Geez.

My favorite part of the car, of all things, was the tiny vent they sliced into the hood as you can see above. It’s such a small but essential detail that really put icing on the cake. The incision is so well placed; so fluid and graceful, that it reminds me of a knife slicing through butter.

This is the car one should see in the dictionary when they look up chopped and slammed. They squished that roof so far down and made that window opening so narrow, I joked with my pal Efren that it would take less than a quarter turn on the manual window crank to close and open it. Forget about going to the McDonald’s Drive-Thru…you won’t even fit a Happy Meal through that slit.

The meticulous amount of attention paid to its every detail was beyond anything I’d ever seen. Sometimes I think people go overboard with flourishes and enhancements. These guys kept it extremely simple, but added just the right amount of embellishment to make me go nuts. Lookit that rear end. It must have been so fun to make this car.

More to come soon. Enjoy.

The TRS-80 Model 1 as it appeared in my junior high's Computing Class. Tape drive was not included. Photo property of oldcomputers.net.

1983: One of our electives in junior high was a “Computing” class, which was held in high regard by many students as a “total kick back class.” Not everybody was interested in computers, but I was, so I signed up for it.

It was situated in a small “Computer lab,” which was basically a regular-sized classroom with long tables set up to accomodate the 30 or so computers. It was chock full of TRS-80s, which were, at that time, the most convenient and easy-to-use machines for anyone looking to learn BASIC programming. It was also ruled by a small clique of the Nerd Elite – 8th grade kids who not only knew BASIC programming, but were adept at it. They actually understood how to use the TRS-80s.

Nevertheless, this class was cake. The teacher was a total laid-back, mellow guy, who spent most of his time hanging out at his desk, feet propped up, chatting away with the Nerd Elite of the 8th grade and budding nerds of the 7th. Oh yeah, this class was nerd central. C’mon. Computers were gaining rep as a viable technological breakthrough, and these brainiacs were allll into them. Meanwhile, a couple of my friends and I were basically just hanging out ourselves, trying to make sense of these TRS-80s.

There was no class instruction, no class lectures, no homework. The only term assignment we had was a box full of a thousand or so Scantron-looking cards, on which we had to fill in certain bubbles with a pencil…there was no explanation as to what these were, nor what they did; the teacher just wrote some code on the board each day and we were supposed to fill in our bubbles accordingly.

Everyone had a box; everyone had to do it. That was that. Oh man and this was so easy. It’s like, all we did was fill out those bubbles for like 15 minutes, and the rest of the class time was spent however you wanted. It turned out that later, at the end of the semester, we had to feed these boxes full of cards into some electronic reader, and voila! Some boring “fun” program fizzled onto the screen. If your program ran, you got an A in the class. I guess, through the filling in of thousands of binary bubbles, we were supposed to be impressed with the magic of computers. I was not.

So how did we regular kids spend our days in this class, if we couldn’t be part of the Nerd Elite? We tried to make use of the TRS-80s. How? Most of the time, it was just staring at a blank screen, that white cursor blinking in the void, as we came up with interesting junior high topics of conversation. Or, we could do the ultra-popular name scrolling program, which meant that we learned an inkling of BASIC. The code went like so:

10 CLS
20 PRINT "(WORD OF CHOICE HERE)";
30 GOTO 20
RUN

This would scroll your name, or favorite band’s name (i.e., Duran Duran, Culture Club, Spandau Ballet, or Def Leppard), or expletive (whichever you chose), down the screen forever, until you hit ESC.

Now if one knew their BASIC shortcuts, they could substitute a “?” for the PRINT command in line 20, thus cutting their coding time by a whopping 20%. Whoopee.

10 CLS
20 ? "LED ZEP RULES!";
30 GOTO 20
RUN

This too, would also scroll your name, favorite band name (i.e., Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Men At Work, Flock Of Seagulls), or expletive (whichever you chose) down the screen forever, until you hit ESC.

Now if one knew their BASIC shortcuts and a little BASIC tweaking (usually learned from looking over budding 7th grade nerds’ shoulders), you could tweak the space within the quotation marks and add a semi-colon, something like this:

10 CLS
20 ? "YOU SUCK!   ";
30 GOTO 20
RUN

This would scroll your name, favorite band name, school crush’s name, or whatever you chose in infinite diagonal columns across the screen forever, until you hit ESC. The amount of space you put between your name and the end quotation mark equaled the amount of space between the diagonal columns. It was mindless, hilarious fun, especially if you ran the program right when class ended, so that the next student who sat at your computer saw this:

Of course, all this got ultra-boring after awhile, so we had to find new ways to entertain ourselves. So I went to the local library and picked up some handy little books on TRS-80 BASIC programming, and learned a few cool tricks, which I shared with my friends.

I looked for books that basically looked like this. Image property of Ira Goldklang's "TRS-80 Revived" site (click on image to get there).

One thing we picked up on was String Variables, which allowed some genuine, mind-bending interactivity for us twelve- and thirteen-year-olds. It was like, “Oh my God! The computer is talking to me!” A quick conversation with the computer was coded as easily as such:

10 CLS
20 INPUT "WHAT IS YOUR NAME";A$
30 PRINT A$;", YOU ARE THE RADDEST GUY IN THE WORLD!"
RUN

Running the program would have the computer appear as if it was asking you a question:

WHAT IS YOUR NAME?_

You would type in your name…

WHAT IS YOUR NAME?GREG

Hit ENTER, and the computer would “answer” you, like so:

GREG, YOU ARE THE RADDEST GUY IN THE WORLD!

Oh, the hilarity. Oh, the wild entertainment. Depending on how cruel, cynical, conceited, or just plain stupid you were, you could have the computer tell you (or your friend / victim) all kinds of things.

CYNDI, GREG THINKS YOU'RE A FOX!
AARON, YOU RULE AT DEFENDER!
HEATHER, DURAN DURAN SUCKS!
KIM, WILL YOU GO WITH ME?

Yes, we would laugh our asses off at the creative nonsense. But the Nerd Elite just weren’t impressed. They would walk by and see our on-screen antics, and just push their noses up in arrogance. Especially one kid, Alex, who was indeed the almighty emperor of programming nerdness, and knew it. “Oh please,” he’d say, rolling his eyes. “That’s so old.”

My friend Aaron and I had to find some way to show him that we could do something as good as he could, so once again I ventured to the secret resource, the local library. This time I delved even deeper into the books, hitting books with advanced chapters featuring some real hardcore lines of coding—stuff which I just didn’t understand. Then I stumbled upon something awesome: GAMES. Yes!! Now I could write an actual game program, to challenge the emperor’s rule!

I don't remember exactly what the game book looked like, but nevertheless, this game book looks awesome. Property of Ira Goldklang's equally awesome TRS-80 site (click image for URL)

We could hardly contain ourselves as I fetched a little library hardback from my backpack a few days later. I told Aaron I’d found a cool game called “Dog Race,” where 8 dogs raced across the screen, and you could bet which dog would win. It was the ultimate entertainment, and sure to cause some commotion amongst the Nerd Elite ranks.

Oh but it took forever to code. There were pages and pages of coding, and I lost track several times. Once you entered a line, you couldn’t go back and edit it if you made a mistake; you had to type the whole line over again. And then when I tried to run it, it would have a bug, and I would have to proofread my lines of code to see if I misspelled or misplaced anything. Keep in mind that I was basically just cutting and pasting here. Those lines of code were as incomprehensible to me as the tears one of my female classmates was shedding over the wedding of Duran Duran’s John Taylor.

But finally, after a whole class period of coding, the game was finished. I pressed ENTER to race my own little pixelated dogs for the very first time, and the dog I bet on lost. But, I had won. I had accomplished the ultimate in BASIC programming interactivity…a GAME. I showed Aaron, and we both called out to Alex in unison. I made sure to hide the book.

Somewhat annoyed, he answered. “What?”
“Dood. Come over here. Look at this.”
“C’mon. Don’t show me some stupid stuff. I’m busy.”
“No, it’s not! C’mere.”

He came over, expecting to see the ever-so-familiar diagonal columns of expletives flowing across the screen. But no. This time the screen was blank, except for a rectangle, in which eight faithful pixel-dogs waited patiently for the starting gun.

He tried to hide his surprise. “What is that?” He asked.
“Pick a number.”
“Why? Ok, 7.”
“Watch.”

I pressed ENTER, and the dogs moved across the screen in varying speeds. Some fast, some deathly slow. The whole time, I knew Alex liked what he saw. He really liked what he saw. Nobody had done anything with graphics in the class. But he tried hard to hide his interest. The dogs ran… #7 ran moderately, but not quite fast enough. At the end of the race, number 3 broke the tape. He held his face stern, showing the slightest disappointment in the results, and fighting harder to not look excited at the graphics display.

7 LOST, the screen read bleakly.

“Hahahaa…you lost!!” We both said, slapping our knees in laughter. “Cool, huh?”

“Ah, whatever. I can do that,” he said, shooing the screen with a wave of his hands.

Despite his claim, he never could top my feat. I had, for once, faced up and defeated the Nerd Elite Captain. Yes, by dirty, scoundrely means, but it was still fun. But of course, this achievement went unnoticed, unannounced, as we once again returned to filling in those thousands of bubbles on those thousands of cards for that mystical, awe-inspiring “fun” program we all had to look forward to at the end of the semester. But that “Computing” class remained, and still remains, one of my favorite classes of all time.

For those of you who want to experience the magic of a TRS-80 (and I highly suggest you do), I present you a wonderful link to a TRS-80 Level 1 BASIC Simulator. Go ahead, enter the coding that I did above, and you, too, can see how fun it was in 1983. Who said there was no such thing as time travel?

What was your first experience with computers? What was the funnest / funniest thing you were able to do?

The band didn’t have an official manager yet, so we had to do our own promotion. We were so excited to have these made, that Joey, the original bass player and I packed these press kits in manila envelopes one weekend and drove around L.A.’s Westside on his Vespa, hoping to promote ourselves to whatever clubs we could (I think we did 3–4 of them total). I could only hold so many of those envelopes ‘coz I had to hold onto him at the same time!

Looking back now, I just realized how much effort it took for our band to gain exposure. These days with online social networks, band information is passed instantaneously to dozens, hundreds, then millions of people upon the click of a button, and if the band hits it just right, they can become instant celebrities overnight. Twenty years ago, it took a lot of work for us to put together press kits and pitch ourselves personally to a handful of local clubs and venues, whom 9 times out of 10 wouldn’t even blink an eye for a band like us. I distinctly remember going to a club on the Northeast corner of Lincoln Blvd. and Washington Blvd. in Venice, which back then was called Miami Spice. Joey and I pulled over, convinced they would totally go for it since we had that “Caribbean appeal.” Yeah right. The person in the venue looked at us like we were crazy when we said we played Ska.

After we’d established ourselves as a band in 1990 and played a couple of parties here and there, we hired a professional photographer to take some press pics of us in and around Venice Beach. We took a lot of great shots, but ultimately this shot became the one for our press kit. This was taken in Venice Beach’s Pit Pavilion, infamous for its elaborate graffiti murals often done by top local graf artists and crews. You can see a good montage of the Pit Pavilion’s graffiti here. Sadly the Pit was destroyed in 2000 as part of Venice Beach’s renovation.

Here’s another angle, from Joey’s own archives:

Perhaps you’ll notice that I’m the only one in the picture wearing jeans, taking on a much more casual approach than everyone else, who were decked out in nice slacks, button up shirts and even vintage suits. That was totally me at the time. I’d lived the late ’80s as a mod, then skinhead, completely obsessed with the scene and its fashion, and by ’89 I’d completely dropped the scene and any image of it altogether, figuring that I could dress any way I wanted, without having to prove to anyone by my appearance and clothes that I loved ska and reggae. I joined Hepcat later that year, and, well, what they saw was what they got.

I remember Deston, our keyboard player (to my right in the photo, with hat and shades), thinking I was nuts when I showed up to the shoot that morning. “Dood, you couldn’t find anything nicer to wear? Why are you wearing jeans??!” Truthfully, that was the nicest thing I had in my wardrobe; in ’90 I was typically wearing oversize hoodies and really baggy, sagging fray-bottomed jeans with Adidas Superstars and fat laces, ironically more in tune with the graffiti surrounding us in this photograph. Imagine if I showed up wearing that! Who would look out of place then?

Man! After winning Boardpusher’s Levi Huffman deck design contest, they told me they’d send over a deck with the new design. Well guess what—they hooked me up with a complete! Crazy!

An added bonus is the printed custom grip tape which I designed to compliment the graphic. Awesome!!

I was debating whether to hang this up on the wall or take it out to shred. You know what? I’m taking it out. It’s just too good to pass up.

Get one for yourself over at Lefty Limbo’s Skate Shop! *Note: The printed custom grip tape is sold separately, but makes the perfect compliment to the board!

Thanks Boardpusher and Levi Huffman!

This week’s topic:

Besides the Batmobile, what is the sweetest ride cruising the streets of pop culture?

I’ll tell you the sweetest ride I’ve ever seen in my life, and it’s something I used to see all throughout the late ‘70s and early ‘80s parked on a fenced hillside right off the Hollywood Freeway near Universal Studios. And every time I saw it, I wished it was mine. I actually never knew what it was until now, thanks to the blazing speed of the information superhighway.

The Landmaster from the 1977 film Damnation Alley.

Image property of http://www.snowcrest.net/fox/landmaster/

Man that thing is just awesome beyond words. I’ve never even seen the movie, but here’s a clip of the Landmaster in action, appropriately called “7 minutes of awesomeness.” I couldn’t agree more.

Funny that 1977 would also host another sweet ride in a movie which I did see, and it was equally awesome. Ladies and gentlemen, my 2nd Place nomination: The Car.

That thing was so dark, mysterious and evil…it was love at first sight for me. Sigh.

Tied for 2nd would be Mad Max’s car from Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. Dood. I get goosebumps at the mere thought of owning it. What’s worse? AutoArt makes a 1:18 diecast model of it! ::passes out::

::comes to:: …ugh. Okay, where was I? Oh yeah. Sweet rides.

3rd Place would be none other than Stallone’s ’50 Merc from Cobra (1986). Pulling a J-Turn on the freeway with machine guns blazing? Freakin’ RAD! Check out the car chase scene here!

But the following scene from the movie was the best, and hilarious in so many ways. There’s no way a real L.A. cholo would take this treatment, but the depiction is still comical nonetheless.

Now let’s see what other League members hailed as sweet rides:

• Shawn at Branded in the ’80s talks about motorcycles, choppers and heli-choppers!
• Haxbee nominates The Black Beauty from Green Hornet!
• Turns out I’m not the only one who digs Cobra’s ’50 Merc…lookit Brian over at Cool and Collected!
• Same goes for that Mad Max’s Killer Kar…Rob at Afchat knows what’s goin’ on!

More to come! Enjoy. =)

Grab Rufus and head to the phone booth, because this week, we’re going back in time! Dial up the year you turned 12, and revisit the last official year of your “childhood.”

Ah, 1982. The last year of innocence. Or so it seemed.

There are so many memories I have of being 12 years old. As my memory banks have begun to lose their sectors in my old age, I’ve had to take a look at this site to refresh it. Ahh. Feels better. Let us begin.

• Michael Jackson released his second adult solo album, Thriller: I vividly remember listening to this album over and over at my friend’s house while we played his Atari VCS CX2600. And when this video came out, forget it.

  
  At that time, I didn’t know anybody who didn’t like Michael Jackson. Even my younger brother begged and begged my dad to get him the red zippered leather jacket from Fox Hills Mall (which was selling for $99.99 at the time, total hot item). Does anyone remember that the sleeves were actually removable so you could wear that freakin’ thing like a vest? My dad never gave in, but that’s one thing I wish my brother was able to acquire.

• Poltergeist scared the living shit out of me: Dood. Nothing, absolutely nothing made me more scared of what could be under my bed at night than this movie. The infamous clown scene is listed as #80 in Bravo’s 100 Scariest Movie Moments (see video below), but the movie overall is creepy as hell and still resides in my Top 10 as far as horror movies are concerned. I agree with each and every testimony in the video.
  
• Rocky III made me stand up cheering at a movie theater: If I can remember right, this was the first movie that my parents let me see alone with my friends at a movie theater in Marina Del Rey, CA. And boy oh boy was it worth it. The final round between Rocky and Mr. T had all of us leaping to our feet and spilling our popcorn, yelling “Get him, Rocky! Get him!” You can see the fight here, but Survivor’s Eye Of The Tiger has got to be the best workout/fight/inspirational songs ever made. I never saw this video back in the day, but the song RULES.
  
• I fell in love: After graduating from 6th Grade and entering junior high in September, I was introduced to a whole new world where the female species began to appeal to me as much as model airplanes and arcade games. Yet I was still undeniably a total geek/nerd and not one of the “cool” nor “cute” kids on campus (which both boys and girls seemed to figure out and nominate within the first week or two). Nevertheless, it was always nice to fantasize of heartbreak and love lost, even though I had yet to experience either (unless you consider getting glue on a Focke-Wulfe 190 cockpit one)—and Chicago was always the best way to do it, especially with this song:

Here’s some lesser known events which occured in 1982, that had lesser impact on my life, but were, nonetheless part of my 12-year-old existence:

• Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands/Maldives on March 19th: I was too young to understand the politics of war, but I do remember the constant news coverage of this conflict, and the jokes that ensued afterwards which totally went over my head.
• Disney Futuristic Park EPCOT (Experimental Community of Tomorrow) is opened: Ah, nothing said The Future more than the giant golf ball (aka Spaceship Earth that I wished I had in my backyard. To this day, I’ve never been to Disneyworld, but when I heard that opened in ’82, suddenly Disneyland seemed so bland in comparison. Funny, it’s only now through the magic of the internet that I realize what EPCOT stood for all this time.
• Tylenol capsules laced with potassium cyanide kill 7 in Chicago September 29th: I remember Halloween being a pretty big deal in Westchester, CA. In 1980 and ’81 I totally loaded up on candy by walking the blocks. But in 1982, this event totally had people super paranoid (even though it had nothing to do with candy), and I remember nobody was giving out candy that Halloween, and nobody was even going Trick or Treating, except for me, of course, who walked down the windy streets in my army fatigues and machine gun like a total dork. It was surreal.
• Time Magazine nominates a computer as Man Of The Year: I don’t even remember this issue of Time magazine, but I’m not surprised. Computers had finally started to take over. Image property of Jeff Emanuel.

  

Now for some great trips down memory lane from other League members:

• Michael at Memories of Toymorrow fondly recalls toys and collectibles, before Metallica turned him into solid metal!
• Ashley of Life with Fandom remembers his craze over cheap neon plastic!
• Dex at AEIOU and sometimes Why referenced the same site as I did to remember what was going on in 1982…and he rocked it!

I’m beyond stoked after learning that I won Boardpusher.com’s Levi Huffman Deck Design Contest just a few minutes ago. There were tons of submissions from some talented folks out there, and for my board design to get picked is freakin’ awesome. So, much thanks to the Boardpusher staff and Levi Huffman, who’s gonna be posting vids of him skating my deck soon! Congrats to PJFlanniganfest who also scored a win with his TMNT design.

Check out my other decks at Lefty Limbo’s Skate Shop!

Last Sunday was the perfect day for flying kites and teaching my kid how to skate/scoot city concrete structures. Just wait until I build his board—then we’ll really have fun.

“What is the one item in your collection you would save if your house was being swallowed by a sink hole, carried off in a tornado, and then swept away in a flood?”

I’ve gotta say this one was a toughie. I’ve got quite a few collectibles and/or ephemera that I’d be devastated if I were to lose. But rather than ramble on about ‘em, let me narrow it down and give you the two runner-ups before showing my most prized possession.

Third Place: My 1969 Sears Screamer

Being a sucker for vintage things, in 2010 I had the most random craving for a Classic Schwinn Stingray, especially something like a ’68 Orange Krate, which is freakin’ awesome. But sure enough, 99.99% of the time, those who wanted to get rid of their old Stingray knew what they had, so finding an Orange Krate for a good price was next to impossible.

Then one day I hit up Craigslist on a saved search for “Schwinn Stingray,” and found a listing for a “vintage Sears bike.” Out of curiosity I clicked the link, and found what you see above, for $150. It was love at first sight, and my interest in Stingrays totally folded. In fact, I’ve been interested in everything but Stingrays in the muscle bike genre since, but won’t pass one up if it’s going for cheap!

I saw this bike only a couple of weeks before my birthday, and typically around that time my better half starts asking me what I want. So this time I called out loud from my desk, “Hey babe? I know what I want for my birthday!” She could not believe that I wanted this crazy bike of all things, but yep, it’s what I wanted, and it’s what I got.

It’s a 5-speed muscle bike, and when I bought it, it was missing the shifter console on the frame. My search for a replacement was a whole journey in itself, along whose roads I met a whole bustling underground community of Muscle Bike enthusiasts, whose love for these beasts is absolutely phenomenal! Without them I know I would’ve never found that missing part, and I wouldn’t have known that there truly are some serious collectors out there.

Nevertheless, as much as I love this bike, it was made a little before my time, and my connection to it is much more novelty than it is sentimental. I’d be torn to shreds if I were to lose this bike because it’s super rare, but when I think about it, I’d be worse off if I were to lose my Second Place candidate, which was a legendary icon of my ’80s childhood: My Atari VCS CX2600-A.

Don't let the dusty exterior fool you; I brought this thing back to life after being boxed for at least 15 years. Click the pic to read about it.

As the original owner of this beloved console since 1981 (still remember the price: $139 from Fedco), I can’t even begin to tell you how significant and definitive this is to my existence—from the thousands of after school or late-night hours with eyes burning, trying to beat my high scores, to the countless times of trial and tear-filled torment when my dad would hide the switchbox out of punishment for not having done my chores and/or homework because of my obsession. Yes, my Atari 2600 made me what I am today—a grumpy old 40-something who wags his wrinkly finger and shakes his head in diehard defiance at those who call the Nintendo NES “old school.” Nuh-uh.

So, speaking of old school, there is only one proud possession of mine that barely, just barely tops my Atari. I mean, these two were practically tied for first place, but in the end there could be only one:

My 1980 Mongoose BMX Bike.

Yes, I’d have to say that this Cro-Moly creature is the most prized possession in all of my collected treasures and junk, as it completely captures and embodies the spirit of my coming of age in early ‘80s Los Angeles—one of seemingly endless sunny SoCal summers, listening to AC/DC and REO Speedwagon on The Mighty 690, launching off dirt ramps in the fields with my friends until having to go home for dinner, the miracle of MTV, and, yup, you guessed it, having sleepovers and playing Atari until the joystick bases made permanent indents in our palms. The memories are endless. A cool BMX bike was probably the only thing that mattered before girls—or, rather, girls in Dolphin shorts—came along.

It was the ultimate symbol of freedom and pre-adolescent recklessness; the one thing every kid in my neighborhood longed for, and perhaps the only affordable option, as other brands such as Red Line, Diamondback and Kuwahara were nothing more than wet dreams for kids whose parents just couldn’t understand the price of a well-made, well-built BMX bike. You can read more about this bike here.

The best thing about this bike though, and undeniably the biggest throwback to the decade of rad, is its number plate.

I can’t count how many times I saved up my allowance to head to the local bike shop to buy my favorite prismatic BMX stickers to adorn my bike with. My own BMX bike is long gone, but this baby has the exact same ones I had…and more!

I go riding with my son at least 3–4 times a week, and this bike gets even more heads turned than my Screamer does, especially from 40-something doods, who, with a knowing smile and confirming nod of the head, know exactly where I’m coming from.

Well, that about does the deed for me. Let’s look at some other League member contributions:

• Geek Show Ink shows off some incredible original art!
• Toyriffic’s Silver Bullet is one of legend!
• Flywheels at Random Toy Reviews reveals his priceless Transformer collection…and the ones that matter most!
• Ashley of Life With Fandom knows it right off the top: His He-Man!
• Shawn of Branded in the ’80s reveals his true BFF from childhood: A Plush Ewok!
• TL of Flashlights Are Something to Eat explores his priceless audio tape recordings from his childhood!