AMERICAN DREAMS:

A Dream Cruise down Automation Alley

August 18-20 is the weekend for the 6th annual "Woodward Dream Cruise", a celebration and tribute to the burgeoning automotive industry that sprung up in and around, Detroit, Michigan, U.S.A., during the early 1900's. During this celebration, over 30,000 different classic and custom "motor vehicles" took to the locally hallowed strip of pavement known as Woodward Avenue.

Back in The Day, Woodward Avenue, which runs for 20-ish miles from the waterfront of the Detroit River up to "The Loop" which runs around the City of Pontiac, Michigan (my hometown!), was "the place" for people young and old to show off (and race) their cars, socialize and "people watch". I'm just old enough to have caught the tail end of the glory days of "cruising the strip".

The two minutes walking distance, from my bedroom window out to the strip slightly mutes the sounds and smells of the rumbling, gas guzzling engines and the acrid smoke born of rubber tires spinning too fast against asphalt roadway, as drivers "Light em' Up" for the mass of over one million spectators. I'm taking it all in with my eyes, ears and camera; later, I had sweet dreams of cruising the strip in my buddy Pete's GTO. More

TABLOID HART

Big Mo'

Some of ya'll may remember that I was kindah attitudinal when I got pulled off my regular Trailer Trash beat to cover this here national Presidential election here in the US of A. I mean, come on! I was expecting the Big Snore. But I gottah hand it to my fellow Texican Ross Perot and his Reform Party. They have made this election totally worthwhile.

Just when I was floundering around for something to chew the fat with with my neighbors down here in Austin, Tejas, besides The Rock showing up at the Republicavik National Confab, the ole Reform Party comes through!

In case you ain't heard, my man Pat Buchanan pulled another good one this week. Trailer Trash high-fives all around, ya'll!

Here's the dish: Pat thought he had one-up on Al Bore, who picked a Jew as a runnin' mate, by pickin' a Black woman. A danged two-fer! Except it seems that this TOKEN is either a danged welfare-cheat or mentally imbalanced.
Stop laughing! More

RECOMMENDED DAILY REQUIREMENT:

Playing the Big Leagues

I'll never forget the day we landed a $300,000 contract for a long-term two-page spread from a company that made leather jackets with classic baseball images woven into them. We shuffled our pagination and planned out a whole six months worth of stuff and everybody was on a real high for this big time magazine startup. Our first big source of actual revenue.

But then, a few days later, Major League Properties told us we couldn't run the ad campaign because the company had no official license to offer such products.

They reviewed our stories, too. We would fax our working drafts to Bernstein's assistant (who I called "The Chimp.") She didn't seem to know much about baseball and had certainly never played the game. But she had to read a lot of our stuff because Bernstein, running his own baseball version of Pravda in New York, didn't have much time for reading about Ty Cobb, Josh Gibson or the Babe.