MAGAZINE

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THE NEW ONE - YUP - WE DONE IT AGAIN

HOP UP 2002 - VOLUME III

Oh, yeah. it's shipping in a couple weeks, so we want you to be the first - the first in your neighborhood - to see and read................ veritas 2002.

Yeah, Baby.

It's the annual report on traditional hot rod and custom innovation (not invention); it's the gut, the vibe, the style showcased by our people nation and world wide.

The cover is innovative yet again - a Weesner illustration - and - if you are da kine hot rod daddy; if you are cool-livin' and unfettered with fraud-rod doin's; if you want to see what the other Truehearts in the culture are up to.............send the scratch, Man...................you prob'ly still got a job........

AND, you will want to also order the reprint.

THE WHAT?!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh, the humanity! We (and MBI) have reprinted the first 12 issues of Hop Up. Yeah, like Hot Rod Mag did. But this is "HOP UP" For a lousy $24.95 you will have the original tome, the basis of comparison, the marked-in-time, dead-nuts best review of what was (is) meaningful in the day. And it won't cost $10-20 per mag like it is on e Bay or at swap meets.

Not since Montgomery's books came out has there been anything more vital to your library. It's where truth originated. Not exactly the 'Tablets of Stone' but pretty fairly well important to the coolest, realist, most-happening Daddies out there on the pike..........

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THE FIRST 12 ISSUES

******Note that American Auto Mags handles worldwide orders (Europe, Oz, etc.) and Canadian Orders should go directly to Motorbooks.

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VOLUME II STILL AVAILABLE

We hear these are not actually George Carlin's comments, but think they merit the space anyway.

A NOTE FROM GEORGE CARLIN

George Carlin Speaks Out...

I Am Your Worst Nightmare. I am a BAD American.
I am George Carlin.
I like big cars, big hooters, and big paychecks.

I believe the money I make belongs to me and my family, not some midlevel governmental functionary with a bad comb-over who wants to give it away to crack addicts squirting out babies.

I believe that if you are selling me a Big Mac, you'd better do it in English.
I'm not in touch with my feelings and I like it that way.

I believe that it doesn't take a village to raise a child, it takes two parents.
I think owning a gun doesn't make you a killer.

I want to know, which church is it exactly where the Reverend Jesse Jackson preaches. And where does he get his money. And why is he always part of the problem and not the solution.

I believe if she has her lips on your willie, it is sex, and it is sex for both of you. This even applies when you are President of the United States.

I think that being a student doesn't give you any more enlightenment than working at Blockbuster. In fact, if your parents are footing the bill to put your pansy ass through 4-7 years of college, you haven't begun to be enlightened.

I believe everyone has a right to pray to his or her God or gods, just leave the rest of us out of it. This also applies to sexuality. I believe it's called the Boy Scouts for a reason.

I don't think being a minority makes you noble or victimized.
I don't use the excuse "it's for the children" as a shield for unpopular opinions or actions.
I think fireworks should be legal on the 4th of July.
My heroes are John Wayne, the Simpsons, and whoever canceled Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.
I don't hate the rich. I don't pity the poor.
I know wrestling is fake and I don't waste my time arguing about it.
I think global warming is a big lie. Where are all those experts now, when I am freezing my ass through a long winter?

I've never owned a slave, or was a slave, I didn't wander forty years in the desert after getting chased out of Egypt, I haven't burned any witches or been persecuted by the Turks and neither have you, so shut up already.

I think the cops have every right to shoot your sorry ass if you're running from them. I also think they have the right to pull your ass over if you are breaking the law, regardless of what color you are.

I think if you are too stupid to know how a ballot works, I don't want you deciding who should be running the most powerful nation of the world for the next four years.

I think if you are in the passing lane, and not passing, your license should be revoked, and you should be forced to ride the bus until you promise to never delay the rest of us again.

I think beef jerky could quite possibly be the perfect food.
I think tattoos and piercing are fine if you want them, but please don't pretend they are a political statement.
I think Dr. Seuss was a genius.

I'm neither angry nor disenfranchised, no matter how desperately the mainstream media would like the world to believe otherwise.

If that makes me a BAD American, then yes, I'm a BAD American.
If you too are a BAD American please forward this to everyone you know.
We need our country back!

WINTER IN CALI

Rained-out. Or in. Even out here you can get run inside because of the weather and because we sometimes don’t have heat in garages (seldom needed) we can even get run out of there once in a while. That’s been the last couple days. Propane heaters or not, it’s just too frickin cold to go out there.

The longing hasn’t gone away, though, so you gotta do something about hot rods and you grab some recent mags and take a look. Hmmmmmm. the Big One has a trad car on the cover. Hmmmmmm. A whole bunch of ‘em. That one on the cover only took 10K to build, they say, so what are the advertiser types thinking? There probably weren’t too many 1-800 parts on that one! Have they begun to realize that a complete reflection of the hobby has lots of trad cars in it? Do they realize that any Goomba who has the taste to accomplish a car like that is irreversibly stuck in the hobby and is inevitably going to need the goods/services of the advertisers in their book? Maybe so.

Maybe they’re (the advertizing cats) comin’ to the party? Doubt it. Must be an aberration.

Oh, here’s the other one. They ‘been on a reasonable balance of new/old for some time now, maybe even heard the bitches about too few customs......... and that top 100 ain’t bad. This is OK. We need these mags...’specially when we’re ‘shut in’. Right in the middle of this the next one shows up with NO customs in it but has features on alternate power plants. That’s cool, but sure looks like HRM that way. Always has had a good look.

Now we get the one that was a 12 monther, then 9, then bi-monthly and it was our favorite for about 12 years...but they had this hic-cup and went muscle car-included for about a month and apparently the subscribers raised hell so they went back to the formula, confounded by (maybe) too much modern style and oo la wee I sho gotta pee the latest issue harkens to the mag that promised to fill Ganahl’s shoes after he left the other one about the time this one started up. We like it.

When immersed in any of them, you find yourself looking for ideas.....different ways to express something on your project. You grouse out loud when something doesn’t match your refined taste...you applaud most of it ......and the varied takes on what you see... nerfs you closer to your own lane. And that lane will have a wheel track a couple of fractions of an inch different than anybody else because you, my man, are a Hot Rod Daddy. That lane will be miles apart from some of them.......albeit aiming in the same proximate direction. You can both get there from here, and you can arrive kinda together.....although that guy may be pulling a trailer made out of a Coke Box...and the Philistines will think you’re kin.

Golly, that part is a shame.

IN 1978 SOME HOT RODDERS COULDN’T READ AT ALL!

There seems to be only one formula for successful (profitable) monthly publishing in this hobby and that is to cover the whole magilla....Coke trailers and all. The narrowly-focused start-up periodicals have a limited target market and the jury is out on which ones will survive. The frustration in the traditional market is obvious, since the 1993 attempt to put a pocket size Hop Up on the market (It was the only one that could have pulled it off: timing, product, market, but sadly...no hot rods, no jobs and no......you know) there have been and are about a half dozen efforts out there trying to ‘Pete’ their way into viable business. We don’t think that with their collective markets combined they’d make it, owing to the esoteric nature of the clientele: there just ain’t enough of us.

On the other hand, there are enough of us to make the mainstream rod mags cover our act. And our act, in Hop Up terms, is everything from greasermobile scrappers to the finest pressed-out, slammed, polished and huffed TRJ feature car.....excepting, by the way, the occasional ‘over the top’ concession to professional streetrod builders. Traditional rods and customs......even Oakland quality.... are a different cut than the streetrod of today. The most distinguishing feature, though, may be invisible, and that is the motivation of the owner or builder. As a generalization, the sought audience for the coolest guys is smaller and the craft is undertaken almost in spite of the fact that the larger audience prefers smoother, lighter weight stuff. The larger audience wants flash and the clever adaptation of modern stuff like wheels that are so tall (with o-ring tars) that they look like they’re all wheel and no tar. Now, we have always believed in all 15’s or all 16’s all around even when the cool, cool thing was 15’s on the back and 14’s on the front. Go figure. We’d run 15’s or 16’s and people would figure ‘how passe‘. Now the same trendy guys are seeing how tall a wheel they can put on something and they may not look good, or right, or balanced, or tasteful....only common by now.....so a whole generation of newbies will think it looks cool because so many apparently cool jazzhonkies are runnin’ the shit. (Note that we think there are applications of 16”, 17” and such wheels on some 70’s and 60’s and even 50’s cars that look righteous.)

Notice how we ‘stream-of-consciousnessed’ ourselves all the way from rainy day magazines to an op. ed. about taste? ‘Guess we’re just talkin’, here, anywho, aren’t we?

The real skinny on the current mag business will appear in the next DIEHARDS issue, we understand. At least there you won’t suffer tangents and sugar-coating! Can’t wait.

Remember to check the credentials of your ‘expert’. “The older I get the faster I was.......” applies to endeavors other than just racing.

Here’s ‘to’ all you cats that are out in the shop - cold or not - working on your next “a-salt” project. See ya there in August!

T n’ A

Model T Fords. The original Gow Jobs. Simple, base as you can get, yet stimulating. Inspiring. Nostalgic. Went for a ride during the Holidays with another Fool/Dreamer.........and on a 28 mile tour...... we ‘built’ about sixteen cars while settin‘ off car alarms in nice neighborhoods with an open cut-out T. About half of those ‘Build-Ups’ were bangers. Not many of them will ever get built. But some thing recanted in that daytime dreamin’ will happen. Some day. Some portion or element of that pseudo-creative dialogue will become material......... the builder won’t remember when he devined the thing; won’t recall when or where the seed of thought ocurred....since the palaber (note PAL-aber) goes on all the time with car guys.

A lottery win would be the only fitting end to such a conversational circle-jerk

Was looking at the MTFCA page and saw an ad from the Central Coast Chapter of the Model T Ford Club that said “Youth movement hasn’t reached us....” and they needed members. Now we are pretty hep that the T Guys are goin’ away and all, and that 55 year old guys are hardly a “youth movement” but how can anything automotive, that much fun, that nostalgic, and IN the best area in the state not be noticed? One of the best rides we ever had in a car was rockin’ over tarmac, concrete, gravel , and dirt roads up to a gear head barbeque in a canyon up there on the Central Coast.....in a damn Model T Ford.

Yeah, you may not be able to get them to the Rod Stop at Mid State without a trailer, but you can sure just use them near where you live.....or does a guy have to have an audience to validate his hot rod exploits? Do you do it for them or for yourself ?

There is no more austere (kind word) group in the world than T Guys: most of them were depression babies and wouldn’t pay retail for...well.....for anything. But that can translate in to bargain-basement prices for complete cars when they’re all done with them, too. You can own a complete model T for the cost of a paint job on a ‘streetrod’. Then you get some early ‘speedster’ books, ask around, get a very few hop up parts and have the time of your life ruinin’ the thing.

Just a thought. Any crybabies who say ‘It’s so exPENsive’ to do hot rods today, must just want to do them where everybody is looking.

We just learned that SCTA has certified a class of Vintage Four Flathead Roadsters and will prob’ly sanction Hop Up in its’ sponsorship of the 100 Mile Per Hour Club. That means that all River City Roadster members, The Strawman, E.V. and all the rest can take out those plans drawn on the inside of a MGD box and start fabricating. Oh Boy.

It’s said that the Model A Ford Club will be in River City this summer with their bud vases and flag holders and perfectly painted Tacoma Cream wheels and all, for their National Meet. Cool. Wonder how many A-Bone Gows we could gather up to pay a visit? Wonder if they’ll embrace us? Their coon-yows at Orange sure as hell don’t. We drove in to that little pancake-bake once in a ‘29 on deuce rails and the haughty ol’ fuck who was directing traffic said, “It ain’t a Model A.....don’t know what the hell it is, park over there”. Made us feel all warm and tingly to think the shallow dickweed thought we were defective somehow. SEE?!!! We still got it! We’z Hop Up Guys, and some people still reject us cuz we’re younger and cuz we mess with their institutions. And ain’t it fitting that the way we been doin’ it has become kind of an institution in its’ own way and damn if some of us don’t get cross-eyed when some greaser dares to take ‘artistic license’ with some feature that we thought was indisputably bitchin and permanent and not-improvable???? Ha!

Siegmund tells us there’ll be a hillclimb - said Brierly is setting it up at Riverside City College (you can see the spot from the penthouse of the Hop Up Towers).

Whoa, Daddy!