o xmas tree

i'm trying to ignore all the activity going on behind me. relatives in town are helping my mother-in-law put up the tree and decorations.

there is a mini skating rink with little figures spinning around on the "ice" and the music loop playing keeps making me think the ice cream man is driving outside the window in circles, instead of his twice an evening pass-by. i'm wearing headphones, but i can still hear it faintly. 

anyway, the lens flares through these trees are a more appealing sight for my xmas celebration. and i could really get in the xmas spirit if there was a car like this waiting under the tree for me. it's just stunning. 

my better half seems really interested in this kind of car, and he's mentioned a few he's seen for sale at shows. he can dream, right? no where to put one even if he could buy one, and i doubt they fit in newer garages anyway.

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thinking i'll go to the old memories show tomorrow at bruce's. went there once before, but since it's the toy drive, maybe there will be more to see this time.

next saturday, the whittier xmas parade marches irritatingly close, down the main street here. usually seems to be several old cars participating and lining up nearby, so thinking as long as they and all the school marching bands are going to wake me up, i might as well go out and take some pictures.

then there are a couple of shows to choose from in the afternoon. i wanna say there is somewhere we have to go in the evening, but i'm not finding it on my calendar. stupid iphone. maybe it's on sunday evening.

and i'm kind of craving ice cream now.

puppy love

was going to call this one gravy, in the vein of thanksgiving, was going to babble on how mine went. simply ordinary, with ten other family members and a dog beast; several whom have not made the trek to gramma's house in a few years. but why would you care?

but then i spotted the puppy. he makes this beat up, imperfect truck bearable.

the owner of both wondered why i was shooting a picture of the truck, knowing it wasn't as pretty as other cars. i do this for fun, i enjoy taking the pictures. if you like them, and buy a print, it helps pay for this website, and somewhat towards buying replacement cameras, more backup drives, saving for a new lens.

i take pictures of the cars that i like, that catch my eye. i know i have a hard time accepting compliments. i guess this guy was feeling the same, in a manner of speaking.

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had planned on going out to riverside for a couple of shows tomorrow, but instead will be taking my car in for some unplanned maintenance. so that sucks. december is looking pretty busy, so if i get to a show, i get to a show.

oh, hey, i got a new box of "business" cards, featuring cars i've shot over the past year. a different car on the back of every one. it's fun opening a new batch, seeing how they look in print. collect the whole set.

stylin’

the week at work is going as i thought, very busy, even if very short. hoping to get to leave early like everyone else tomorrow, but its kinda up in the air now. traffic will be hell, so i'll be going to my parents' house. fortunately they are about fifteen minutes from the office if i stay off the freeway.

relatives will be taking the room i usually stay in, as well as the spare. thinking about inviting myself over to my own house with my kid, to avoid sleeping on the couch. or maybe a hotel...that sounds nice too.

gotta spend time this weekend backing up files. maybe a show or two or three.

this one was from the viejitos show back in july. never have really taken the time to post a lot of pics from this show. that was the month i was dog sitting the beast, so i was otherwise occupied. and there have been so many other shows since then.

don't shoot a lot of packards, but the lighting on this one was intriguing.

back to school

yup, another bel air. i can. 

i just liked how i caught the car and the school sign, and how it framed up. could almost imagine that it's the 1950s, save for the overhead electrical lines...did they have those there back then? ditto for the school logo.

and that i got all my shots between groups of people walking down the sidewalk. patience pays off sometimes. must have been an early in the day shot.

second time i'd been out the july show in san fernando, this time on my own, as my better half was very sick. i know he hated to miss it. many more cars there than the previous year. lots of awesome cars, and good vibes. it is included on our do not miss list now, and we'll be there next year.

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countdown to turkey day, and i don't care. family gatherings test my introvert's boundaries.

if anyone has peeked at this blog over the last couple of years, you know how much the march up to xmas just makes me more and more morose. one year, before i remarried, i did just hide out at my house for xmas, because that's what i wanted. so everyone left me be. and i was fine with it.

no, santa didn't leave me any toys there, nor lumps of coal. i found the usual gifts from "santa" over at my parents' house, so curious that he always has had the same handwriting as my mom as long as i can remember. hmm hmmm.

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throwing in this pic of the real reason you guys show up at these shows, apart from the camaraderie. a very large table full of trophies. of the many categories awarded, i just don't know how the judges narrow it down to the lucky few.

candylicious

we used to frequent the other candy store uptown. they had a thing where everytime you bought candy, they'd add credit or punch a card, and once you'd collected X number of credits, you'd get some free stuff. so when my better half's niece and nephews came to visit, off we'd go to the candy store.

well, when we had saved enough credits and went to claim our free stuff, the owner said something to the effect of, "oh, we decided to end that program." like last week. no warning. no consolation prize.

so effectively, they lost a good customer, and we haven't been in there since. we've been to this one once in a while, since we've cut back a bit on the candy intake, and those kids have grown up a bit and don't visit as often. little farther to walk down the street, but they're more friendly here, and convenient to the movie theatre, if you like to BYOC.

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i took a long walk today. not feeling too good now. i spent the evening trying to decide what to post. running out of room on the computer, so started by looking at 2011 pics. i had a couple of hundred images i'd marked as favs to work on then. but there just wasn't one screaming to be seen today. same for 2012.

thinking i'll be pulling the 2011s off to backup drives pretty quick to free up 450GB of space for that year alone. it was a good year, is all i can say.

so back to 2013. i've already tagged over 400 images for consideration. then i whittled that down to 21 for today. then i had to ask my better half to help me decide from six that were standing out the most.

he liked this one best. probably because the colors popped. and they match the candy store...they might have parked there on purpose.

i've seen it a few times recently, at other shows. i considered another picture of it, but i'll save it for another time.

i like the minimal pinstriping on the front by the headlights, and on that air cooler thing.

and standing behind it was this guy, who must be friends with the owner. he remembered who i was, and said he'd seen me at one of the shows where this one was at a couple of weeks earlier. last time i saw him, he was at ruby's and said he was still working on his car. all it takes is money and time. and i'll be waiting to take another picture of it when it's done.

aliens

nighty night. at least its friday. i'd say at least next week is only a three-day work week, but i will be having to jam a full week's work into a shorter time. here's to hoping everyone is out of town, and traffic will get me home in under two hours. i doubt it.

so the sprinkly rain the last couple of days doesn't bode well for weekend shows. i don't have any one particular planned to go, so if its not raining, i may go see what's out there. or i could just as happily dip into my digital garage all weekend and try to post a few.

this car is from back in january at the broiler and the infamous red skies the camera picks up there. must be the lighting in the neighborhood. or martian atmosphere. what else could that purple thing be in the sky? invasion coming?

one family

when i was in high school, i had an armenian english teacher. he was funny. he talked funny, like he had a mouth full of marbles, he mumbled through the day. i took several classes with him during my years there.

he liked the way i wrote. so much so, that for one of my finals, while everyone else furiously wrote their minor tomes on whatever the topic was, he had me write a satire about the students in the class. i was already gonna get an a, so why the heck not?

i took classes on shakespeare and the classics from him. the papers i wrote for that class, i used for term papers in college. i knew how to write, i guess.

i think about him once in a while, joke with my brother about him too, since he took classes with him after me.

he was older then, so i can only guess that he's gone now. but i do wonder what he would think of this late night drivel i scribble without thought of order, more of a stream of consciousness than anything else. i suppose without wringing it out and editing it over days and hours, this is what you get. but i wasn't an english major, and i mostly just write whatever pops into my head at the time i'm sitting here.

and that had nothing at all to do with this car. this is anthony's car. i know his name is anthony because his shirt says "anthony" on the patch. oh, and that he spent a lot of time talking with my better half.

i suppose i should be jealous at how easily my better half can work a crowd, get into a conversation on a wide variety of topics, and come out the other side with lots of stories to tell.

but i'm not jealous. he's just that kind of guy, not shy. big, gregarious...greg-garious. lol. he gets more stories. i get more pictures. i'm the innie to his outie.

and to my dad, who seems to be reading this blog more often than i think, no, there's no competition with who gets better shots. just simply the joy of taking the pictures and for me, of getting out, trying to get more out of my comfort zone. but i'll never get as comfortable as my better half just chatting people up. my mouth freezes up, just like in high school, when we had to give a speech.

but it all depends on the person who wants to converse. personality trumps shy anytime. or, if you're a richard, i'll just stare at you in amazement and write about it later.

back to the car. clean, basic, classic. the guys were sitting on the curb behind it eating their mickey d. i was perfectly happy to just squeeze down nearby and shoot the car, but they politely moved their feast away from the car, happy to have someone taking a picture of it.

yes, my better half took a similar shot. his is better. my opinion.

ditman and first

the owner of this truck stopped me up the street and asked if i'd shot it and where he would be able to see pics. i hadn't been there long, so no, i hadn't at that point. i asked which car was his and got "the black truck down there," as he abstractly waved his hand toward the street.

so i'm assuming this black truck was his, since it was parked with the other bomb club cars and he happened to be wearing a bomb club shirt. there were other trucks up there in the vagueness he'd motioned to, but i don't think there happened to be another black one nearby.

i don't always take a shot just because they ask. depends on the person. some just assume i will. ask nicely and/or have a nice car parked in an interesting spot. he lucked out on all counts.

the car was clean. i liked the details.

was out of town this weekend, and had hoped for rain. didn't take my camera with me. woke up to a bright, sunny day. fine, as there weren't any shows going on where we were, and if no one tells me about one i missed it will be like it didn't happen, right?

dearly departed

soon after we arrived at the show on first street, we ran into a guy who asked about pictures we might have taken of his car at the whittier dia de los muertos show a few weeks before. he'd been looking for them online, but i don't recall handing him a card, so it would have been a bit more difficult to find it anyway.

wouldn't have mattered, as i hadn't posted too many from that show. haven't posted much at all, really, been so busy and sitting in traffic too often.

here are a few shots from that day. he was parked up toward the donut shop, at the end of the street, away from the street vendors and crowds and the other pod of cars at the next intersection.

yes, the door and trunk were open, and i normally would have not taken it. they're missing some dearly departeds, so i'll admire the shrine.

and i usually pass up cars when they have the dolls up on the bumpers too. just don't like them. not in the creep me out way, just kinda whatever.

i don't think i took one shot of the car from the first street show...it happens sometimes.

nash it up

another quick one. again. tired.

to avoid posting yet another truck, thought i'd post this one. he didn't actually talk to me directly; he talked to my better half, who had taken a picture of it at the bomb club show that i didn't make it to a couple of months ago. pretty sure i've seen it before, and if i did a search of my files, i'd probably find it.

i liked the hood ornament and the emblem on the front, with it's slight pitted imperfection.