Nov. 7th, 2008

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And it still kind of does.

Long years ago, when I was writing a chapter of Chillin' Out every month or so, I thought I was being inventive and it turned out instead to be a piece of synchronicity. Or perhaps photographic memory that I forgot came back to haunt me.

Let me just pull out a segment from the chapter "Veni, Vidi...Vicisemmi!":

Remember that Levi's blue jeans TV commercial in which a Prague citizen shows off the barely-functional jalopy for which he traded his britches? Well, the brownish two-door hatchback awaiting Sofia and me in the studio parking lot...might have been too scruffy to pass audition for that role. I was laughing so hard at the thing my back muscles got to aching. Dial BR-549!

Sofia said, "Good Lord! Is this car even street-legal?" Amadea just nodded, with a big grin on her face. I opened the hood of the vehicular eyesore...which was fastened down with pitted chrome clasps that seemed to be the same type made for fastening shut musical instrument cases.

I whistled when I saw the engine.

"What's in there, Stefano? Squirrel cages? A wind-up key? Rubber bands?" And then I saw her shock reax when she looked herself--a race-prepared Alfasud engine sat in the engine compartment, barely fitting between the wheel wells. It looked like an advertisement ripped out of a hot rod builder's magazine--the latest issue! Nothing cruddy in here; a fellow could have eaten off of the chromed valve cover.

"Somebody really has a sense of humor," I mused.

"Sofia, dear, you know how your father still has friends in the Gran Turismo garages, yes?" Amadea asked her.

"But--why? What kind of car is this?"

Amadea replied, "The kind that I wouldn't care if the fenders get scratched. Because they already are." She explained that she bought the main carcass of the machine in Hungary just after that country began opening itself to the West. She eventually took it to one of the outfits that built GT racers and let them play Dr. Frankenstein with it. Bits and pieces were reused from run-out, obsolete competition machines and totaled passenger cars.


I describe the car in further detail but wait till a later chapter to give it a name: The Puli.

Some years later a reader from Hungary told me there was, in fact, a two-door compact car built in Hungary called the Puli!


And to further freak me out, Paul Francis very recently picked up the following car for a hot-rod rebuild...


Which, while not really a Puli, is more than close enough for jazz fusion. (It's a Citycar, from the middle Seventies. Originally an electric vehicle, Paul thinks it's too expensive to rebuild for electric power so he's thinking of putting in a motorcycle engine and kludging a drivetrain.) I showed the portion of Chillin' Out above and more to Paul, and he was very amused by it and likes the ideas. And remember, he knows the guys who build stuff for movies.

If there's somebody out there who wants to get together with me and adapt Chillin' Out into a movie set Stateside, I can tell you we have the car!

FP (who is still VERY freaked out)
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Pop Culture. I'm living proof. Remember, the term "fanatic" comes from the people who used to hang out at the temples even on days when no services were planned. All fandoms, whether they are of sports or entertainment or games or other forms of amusement, come from this cultural root.

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Stephen R Bierce

March 2022

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