Merry Christmas, Happy New Year

 The Blog is taking off for the Holidays.  May yours be warm and happy.

    In the meantime there's a ton of goodies here. Scroll down for the wacky wonderful Coneheads at Silverstone. Or the flip side of that madness to the days of dope and meditation in The Volvo Years.

         if you missed the all-time-record-breaking-hit- monster blog, The Real Allard Story:give it a click.  No, I lied; last week's  tribute to the women who are as"sweet as honey and smile at you like you're made of money," attracted even more hits. And If you missed the 1979 Polish Grand Prix now's your chance.

Or, click on bob judd on the top of this page or slip down the right hand column to click on such gems as  my favorite, How You Look at the Sky.   Or The Kythera Chronicles to shake hands with Barbarossa.

Or just cruise through the links on the lower right hand side of this page, maybe come upon some unexpected little gem like  an excerpt from The Candle,  In Praise of the Belleville Midgets,  The Midgets of Belleville. Part II,  Truth in Grass: a Kansas adventure, The Story of the Larned Eagle Optic, Hollywood Calls, You Pick up the Phone, Hollywood Calls, you pick up the phone part 2 maybe my favorite My Short Happy War in Afghanistan or no, wait, wait, Fangio and the Maserati 250 F for the priceless video of Fangio in a polo shirt and helmet, absolutely relaxed driving a Maserati 250F around a beat up old race track with no run off, no barriers, no safety nothing.  My lunch with Rob Walkeris a good one even though it leaves out the Betty Grable stories. 

       You wouldn't want to miss My Short Happy War in Afghanistan

 

             Then there's Erno Goldfingers house-and-mine, which throws in Ian Flemming, no extra charge. Riding around Laguna Seca with Jackie Stewart was picked up by Jalopnik.com.

              Or Uncle John's Prayer.

               Or Clarence Judd Head-Butts a Truck.  Truck dies. That's a good one. 

             And, of course, the one that started it all, Truck Story.

               Then Virgin calls, and Forrest goes to Hollywood to star with an Electric car. And Forrest does a shoot in bed with Virgin. That one is a lot of fun. 

                Although, you might want to take a look at Pheromone Dreams to see what they are doing in bed in front of a film crew. While you're there it's just a short hop to Nurse Pelvis. 

            Or take a dip in the world's largest concrete freshwater free municipal swimming pool.

           And for a fine rainy afternoon divertimento, click on my dance with a prima ballerina.

 

              For a tasty bite with bon mots check out my friend, Gerry Freeman's foodie blog as  Hungry Gerald.heads for London and Paris.

             Or go visit Elif Batumen, San Francisco's brightest and funniest writer, a fine lady to curl up with for a good read.  Here's Elif's homepage.

             Enjoy, Have a ball.  See you Monday, January 3.

Showdown at Bobcat Creek

             The Coen Brothers have a new True Grit.  Jeff Bridges is the new John Wayne.  I don’t know if Bridges is tougher than Wayne, but neither one of them is as tough as a Bobcat.

                  Bobcats have a swagger, like a big time gunslinger in a small town bar.  Nobody ever messes with a Bobcat. One morning there was a big one, looking like a small lion sitting on his haunches in the middle of the field below the swimming pool, watching the sunrise.  His field, his sky, no question.

           Even mountain lions don’t mess with Bobcats.  Too tough, and too much trouble.  Nothing to eat but gristle and claws.

                 The first one I saw was on the back deck, around the size of a 30 lb. dog, walking like it owned the house.  It saw me looking through the plate glass and went down the steps.  No hurry; just happened to think of something else it had to do.

                  We’d just brought home two little Maine coon cat kittens and they were out back in the garage.  I went out the front door and the bobcat was standing in front of the garage looking at the two little kittens inside. 

I shooed the Bobcat away and the little tiger left slowly,  looking back over its shoulder, annoyed, like “I was gonna eat those little kitties.  So?”

                  Hidden Villa is a thousand acres of open space across the valley, and there’s a nice creek with a path alongside where I used to walk. Big oaks and bay trees arch overhead with an occasional shaft of sunlight.  If you know where to look there’s trout in the pools. The creek runs year round and makes a pretty sound. Just enough so a bobcat, just about to cross the creek on a fallen log, didn’t hear me.

                We saw each other around the same time.  I stopped, the bobcat made an easy turn, bounded off the log, and sat down.  We were about ten yards apart, separated by the stream so neither one of us worried about the other.  And I thought I’ll never get a better chance to look at a bobcat.  So I stared at him and he stared back.  And I thought maybe, if I stare at him long enough, his face will tell me what he's thinking.  

                  Fat chance. The bobcat would have been a good poker player, his face as still as a Chinese mask.  We looked at each other for another minute or two and he casually looked up, over my head.  Then back down at me, then up again, as if there was something up on the steep slope behind me. 

                  He did this again and I started to worry, thinking  maybe there’s another bobcat up there and the bobcat on the other side of the creek is saying, “jump on his head so I can cross the damn creek.”  Whatever it was up there behind me I didn’t want to spook it by turning around.  I thought, "he's just bluffing."  

                 Then I thought, "cats don't bluff." The hairs on the back of my neck stood up and after another minute I turned and walked away.  Not quite running, but not hanging around either.

                  The Bobcat shrugged, hopped back on the log and trotted across the creek.

Underground with the Firecracker Redhead in Tunisia

             I first met Laurie Mulally Mygatt in Tunisia.  The firecracker redhead is headed our way over Christmas and we are very happy to see her.

           Our first year in London  we drove our Allard M2X down to Sicily and back. And when we got home, there was an invitation to a wedding.  My great friend Joe Mygatt was marrying a red head firecracker.  Or, rather, had married the firecracker while we were fooling around in Sicily.  We were too late for their wedding, but there was plenty of time to hop on a plane for Tunis and spend Christmas with the newlyweds.

           Their Christmas tree was a little orange tree in a pot with three oranges and four ornaments. 

             Joe and Laurie were in the Peace Corps and eager to show us around.  One day we went to the market where old blue Peugeot Station wagons sat in the sun while gentlemen in robes ran around the market screaming MADHIA MADHIA MADHIA.  And MATMATA MATMATA MATAMATA.  

The old Peugeots were Louages, mini busses, and Matmata was where we were headed.

              You may think of the desert as graceful shifting dunes with a caravan of camels in the distance.  Tunisia’s desert on the way to Matmata was dirt and rocks under a blaze of sun.  When we got to Matmata there really was no there there.  No houses, trees, no nothing.  A closer look revealed large holes in the ground.  Our hotel was a doorway into the ground.

Hotel Hole-In-The-Ground. As always, click on image to enlarge

            You went down through a tunnel to emerge at the bottom of a large hole, dug over a thousand years ago.  The rooms were on the sides of the hole, reachable by footholes carved in the side of the big hole and a rope.  When you got up to your “room” you pulled the rope up after you so the robbers could not reach you.  It made perfect sense, warm in the winter and cool in the summer.  And you never had to replace the roof.  We slept on slabs like statues on top of tombs.

Laurie Mulally Mygatt buzzing with energy.  Note the rope to the "room"

           Later, when we got back to London, I had a mysterious disease. The British Doctor assured me it was psycho symatic, ie. I was just reacting to the “stress” of London Life.  My temperature rose.  

Finally, on the third visit, my temperature had risen to 104.F.  And I’d turned Easter Egg yellow. 

“Ah,” she said, with an air of great satisfaction, “now I have it.  You have jaundice.  Lie down, and when you feel better, get up.”  

             Which I did.  Our flat was in the basement of a house in Queensgate Gardens so not all that different from the Hotel in Matmata. It took 6 weeks before I got out of bed.  Not before I’d given my wife hepititis.  “Observe all normal hygiene" the old fraud  told me when I asked if the disease was contagious.  Evidently kissing your wife is outside the boundaries of normal hygiene in England.

           The last pic is the first day I’d got out of bed, crouching cautiously alongside the old M2X Allard that Karen called “The Anteater”. The Anteater and I looking a little worse for wear from our southern jaunts.

           Never mind.  I gotta run.  Laurie Mulally Mygatt is comin to town and this is gonna be fun.

              

Coneheads at Silverstone

Road & Track ran my photo of Coneheads having lunch in the paddock at the British Grand Prix with the Red Arrows cavorting overhead. But, worried that it might be offensive, R&T did not run my caption. We now right that wrong.

"I didn't realize they made crash helmets for Coneheads"

Where to play while the blog's away

                    The blog is fooling around again and will return Monday. 
               But wait, wait, don't go shopping.  if you missed the all-time-record-breaking-hit- monster blog, The Real Allard Story:give it a click.  No, I lied; this week's  tribute to the women who are as"sweet as honey and smile at you like you're made of money," attracted even more fans.  And If you missed the 1979 Polish Grand Prix now's your chance.

Or, click on bob judd on the top of this page or slip down the right hand column to click on such gems as  my favorite, How You Look at the Sky.   Or The Kythera Chronicles to shake hands with Barbarossa.

Or just cruise through the links on the lower right hand side of this page, maybe come upon some unexpected little gem like  an excerpt from The Candle,  In Praise of the Belleville Midgets,  The Midgets of Belleville. Part II,  Truth in Grass: a Kansas adventure, The Story of the Larned Eagle Optic, Hollywood Calls, You Pick up the Phone, Hollywood Calls, you pick up the phone part 2 maybe my favorite My Short Happy War in Afghanistan or no, wait, wait, Fangio and the Maserati 250 F for the priceless video of Fangio in a polo shirt and helmet, absolutely relaxed driving a Maserati 250F around a beat up old race track with no run off, no barriers, no safety nothing.  My lunch with Rob Walkeris a good one even though it leaves out the Betty Grable stories. 

 

             Then there's Erno Goldfingers house-and-mine, which throws in Ian Flemming, no extra charge. Riding around Laguna Seca with Jackie Stewart was picked up by Jalopnik.com.

              Or Uncle John's Prayer.

               Or Clarence Judd Head-Butts a Truck.  Truck dies. That's a good one. 

             And, of course, the one that started it all, Truck Story 

             You really should visit Hiltonpond.org for fabulous pictures of hawks and hummingbirds with the science to back up the beauty. And for a fine rainyafternoon divertimento, click on my dance with a prima ballerina.

 

              For a tasty bit with bon mots check out my friend, Gerry Freeman's death defying foodie blog Hungry Gerald.

             Or go visit Elif Batumen, San Francisco's brightest and funniest writer, a fine lady to curl up with for a good read.  Here's Elif's homepage.

             Enjoy, Have a ball.  See you Monday. Bob

The Volvo Years

Back to the Land, grow your own weed.  Hey man, get your head in the right place and you'll be young and beautiful forever.

I quit my job at JWT.

How To Fall Out of Love (still in print after all these years) was selling well, I had a great advance on Sexual Confidence. I had a log cabin on Hatch Pond, a loft in Soho in New York City, a Volvo 544 for the commute, a Pantera, and a Shelby Mustang in the garage and hardly any brain at all.

To be continued.

Five Minutes of Fame

         I enjoyed fame.  Loved it.  It was only five minutes, OK, maybe five days, but it was a great high, even though it was a only a little fame.  

There were posters for my new book, Silverstone all over London and I'd been interviewed on TV and radio. Now the BigTime, International Bestselling Author was flying to New York from London's Heathrow Airport.   In a hectic, I’m-gonna-miss-my-plane-rush, I skidded to a stop.  The Heathrow Airport bookstore had a big display of Silverstone, with Formula One, Indy, wow, and Phoenix. All my books were up there with the top best sellers.  I snapped a couple of pics and ran for my plane.  

 By the time I landed, fame was over.

          Never mind.  The good parts of the books still feel good.  Here’s a short scene from Silverstone (aka Spin). A couple of real superstars who suffer from way too much fame, Forrest and Virgin have been doing a PR shoot at La Tour D'Argent,in Paris. Forrest bolts for his hotel, exhausted, grieving for his friend.  Virgin follows him into the taxi.

      The paparazzi ducked under the barriers and she had to push her way through the photographers holding their cameras high, lights popping.  And it was one of those shots, the one of her pushing through the crowd to get to me that the PR folks sold to the British Papers.  That was the shot that Panaguian said was pure genius.  She caught my arm and whispered in my ear.  "You are a real prick," she said.

    I told the driver the Crillon. Virgin rolled down the window. 

inside the Crillon

     "Don't get the wrong idea," she said, leaning out the window and waving to the crowd, the camera lights flashing like fireworks.  "I am not running after you like some little puppy."  She rolled the window up and sat back.  "I flashed on going to the show at Catafalque.  Where some stinko little snapshooter is going to catch me and this Coquille in a shot together and I am going to look like dead parrot next to her."

    "You look fine," I said.  In the semi darkness of the back of the taxi she looked fresh, beautiful, all eyes and mouth.

Virgin Lookalike

    "So how do you think I am going to look next to a 19 year old kid?  Sometimes these days I get so tired," she said rubbing her eyes. 

    Virgin sat back in the taxi seat, sulking as we crossed the river.  "You ever use any of that stuff?"  she said, looking out the window at a tourist boat, lit with candles gliding under the bridge.

    "What stuff?"

    "That Formula One stuff, dummy.  The stuff we're supposed to be pushing."

    "It's a trick," I said.  "I think they make it out of floorwax."

    "I got a bottle,"  she said, turning her head at the last minute.  "You want to see if it works?"

         

Greg Moore

         I found these snapshots yesterday and they brought back the beautiful, graceful and funny kid who died at Fontana in 1999.  The captions are from an article I did on Greg winning the Indy Lights Championship in ‘94.

Morning Warm Up, Laguna Seca:  Coming up into turn seven the fast uphill turn before the Corkscrew, Greg Moore on a hot lap, flat out on nearly full tanks, dives inside to lap a back marker.  The lapee doesn't see Greg and turns in.

      Their wheels come within a whisker of interlocking as Greg moves up inside the slower car.  Greg lifts for an instant and turns into the curb, launching the car into the gravel.  The car bounds across the gravel trap, short-cutting the turn, hits the back of the curb, and launches, nose up, eight feet over the track.  Greg is twenty, on his way to taking Villeneuve's seat in an Indycar.  He said, in Vancouver the week before, "I'm just a normal guy in a high profile job."      

     Greg Moore won 10 of the 12 races breaking Paul Tracy's record of 9 wins in 14 races in `91.  More telling, Greg won 242 points out of a possible 264.  In a series where the cars are as equal as baseballs this is like hitting a home run ten out of twelve times at bat. According to Greg's race engineer, Steve Challis, Greg is "on track to be one of the great racing drivers of the world."

Picture a young Canadian accountant played by Peter Sellers, that long lugubrious face lit up from time to time with a wicked pickerel grin because he knows there's a naked lady behind the drapes.   He's bright, direct, funny and oh yes, he is quick.  As a goalie in high school, snatching slapshots out of the air, Greg was good enough for a shot at the NHL. 

    At fifteen, leading the finals for the 1990 North American Superkart Championship in Portland, he spun.  When he got back on the track he was 13 seconds down with 13 laps to go.  Greg broke the lap record on the next lap, and again and again.  He caught the leader on the last straight on the last lap, head faked left, went right to win the race and the championship.  A corner-worker came back to the paddock where the team was loading the kart back on the transporter.  "I know it sounds weird," he said,  "but in all my years at racetracks I have never seen anything like it.  I mean we all knew Greg didn't have a chance.  But when he came around again it was like there was this glow.  I know it sounds weird, but I don't know how else to describe it.  This glow."

            At Laguna Greg was third quickest on the Friday morning practice.   The whole team hates being third.  Owner Gerald Forsythe prowls the garage looking at Greg's car as if it needs a bath.  Towards the end of the afternoon qualifying session a full course yellow brought the cars into the pits.  When the course went green again, Greg was first out on the track.  The car didn't "glow" but I saw what the corner-worker in Portland was talking about.  A race car is a finely tuned instrument and when it is wound out the edge it has a buzz.  It vibrates between charging out of control and control, the will of the driver reigning it in and urging it on.  Greg broke the track record and pulled into the pits.   

        Qualifying Saturday was something else.  With three minutes to go, Alfonso Giafone breaks Greg's new track record.  Greg half a lap behind, breaks the record again.   Alfonso answers breaking the record again.  Greg comes across the finish line and he's not quick enough.  Steve Challis is on the phone with the news as the checkered flag drops.  Greg is on his last lap and Challis is saying You gotta go now. You're not on the pole anymore.  And it is what champions do under pressure.  Going farther, deeper and harder, and bringing the car home with the fourth track record in the last three minutes, over a 1.2 seconds faster than last year's pole.

   

Here's to Those Racing PR Girls; They're Sweet as Honey and Smile at You Like You're Made of Money

        Just a note to say thanks to Tamy Valkosky, Susan Bradshaw, Annie Bradshaw, Kathi Lauterbach,Carol Wilkins, Katie Brannan, Tara Ragan, Chris Mears, and all of the men and women who toil in the fields of racing PR.


         The folks I mention above are all superb professionals, and many of them have their own company now. They were the ones who could get you an interview when you needed one and tell you who knew stories you hadn't heard before.


         Racing PR is an especially tough job.  Plenty of jobs pay badly, make you work  weekends, put in 14 hour days back to back for weeks, and keep you away from home for a month at a time. Motor racing journalists for example.  But there are very few that also require you to be sweet and fun to be around.  The PR folks do it because they really love racing.


           Here’s one example of how hard this is.  One racing journalist who was unable to write an interesting sentence and never, to my knowledge, ever got off his butt to get an original story was sitting along side me in the press room at Twin Ring Motegi.  Susan Bradshaw was passing out the race summary she’d just written up for Marlboro Team Penske.  It was the end of a long week in rural Japan.  (“I thought they were taking us out in the woods to shoot us,” Dario Franchitti quipped when he saw the track on top of a sawed off mountain.)

           The “journalist” irritated me because he was lazy. My Dad was a journalist and I respect the craft. You have to get up, go out there and dig it up.

          He found out that he could sit on his butt and collect pr pieces, watch the broadcast of the race, and patch together a few PR bits for his “stories.”   Didn't matter,  he still got to go to the parties and dinners the teams were always throwing for sponsors and journalists (organized by the team’s PR person) and rub shoulders with racing drivers.


             Anyway, Susan is passing out her last sheet of paper for the weekend.  She’s organized the team’s transportation to Tokyo, their various hotels, and seen to a zillion details for her team’s sponsors, drivers, management and her team’s owner, Roger Penske. She’s not had much sleep for a week, and she’s exhausted.

Susan Bradshaw Crowther

            And this reptile says, “I just want you to know, I’m available for dinner in Tokyo tomorrow night.”


             And Susan smiles at the toad and says, “Oh great. Where would you like to go?” 


            


          

Introducing The New Ford Fiesta

          Introducing the new Ford Fiesta  ads are cropping up here and there in North America.  Where have I heard that before?
 

          Those words summon up a year and a half of my life devoted to drama, chaos, confusion, and pain. Running back and forth across Europe and back and forth across the Atlantic. 

         Seems like a lifetime ago Ford was introducing a new small car called the Fiesta in Europe.

 

          Ford had never built a car for this end of the market before.  Little cars were 25 % of the market, so a big deal. Especially for Ford; they'd spent billions on a new 3 mile long plant in Valencia, Spain to build their new little car.  It was a huge gamble.   Needless to say they were not relaxed about what their advertising would be.

           They would do lot of advertising.  But just what it would be was up to our Creative Teams in Frankfurt (Ford of Germany) Paris (Ford of France) Italy (yes, Ford of Italy) and Spain (Ford of Spain.)  Each country wanted their own stuff, and Ford of Europe wanted everybody to run the same campaign. We had a year and a half to put it all together.  We produced hundreds of campaigns, storyboards, print ads, billboards for all of them.  And they were all turned down.  The photo on the left makes it look like creative director Judd is talking to head writer Grant Montserrat, while the gent in the tie, JWT Europe chief Dennis Lanigan, listens in.

But, as the picture on the right reveals,  I'm really talking to the local creative director's girlfriend, Marjory, whose body language says I could use a lot more deodorant.

          Ford had a bureaucracy devoted to the marketing of the new little car, and there was no way they would ever say, until the very last possible second, "yes, great idea. That’s the campaign." Because if they did, they'd have nothing to do. And their bosses would say, "what else have you got?" So we churned out the campaigns, and Ford would say in various and angry ways, "crap."

 

           My partner, Art Director Sven Mohr and I were the Creative Directors of the project. Theoretically responsible for the whole shebang. We were the hot-shots, the young Turks, the ones who could come up with the revolutionary, brilliant, amazing stuff.

            Which we did.  And all of it went into the trash.

             One hot afternoon we were coming back from a shoot in southern Spain in the mountains somewhere west of Gibraltar. We were in the back of a taxi pounding over on thirty miles of potholes and dust. We were hot, tired and sweating, heading for meetings in London and Frankfurt.

   We'd had no sleep, no breakfast, no lunch, and we were both catatonic, exhausted.  Our meetings promised, as they all did, catastrophe.  I turned to Sven and said, "you know, when this is all over we are really going to miss it."

      We did.  Combat is addictive. Even when you know the war is pointless, the drama is real.

     So after  two year’s flat out effort, millions of dollars in travel, experimental shoots, dozens of writers, art directors and producers working non-stop to produce fresh, memorable, prize winning advertising what was the winning theme?  What was the great campaign that ran all across Europe to introduce the new Ford Fiesta.

                Oh rats, I’ve given it away.  'Cause that’s what the billboards said, “Introducing The New Ford Fiesta.” Looks like that's what they're still saying in their PR.

Where to play while the blog is off fooling around

The blog is off  and will return Monday.  But if you missed the all-time-record-breaking-hit- monster blog, The Real Allard Story:give it a click.  And If you missed the 1979 Polish Grand Prix now's your chance.

Or, click on bob judd on the top of this page or click on such gems as  my favorite, How You Look at the Sky.   Or The Kythera Chronicles to shake hands with Barbarossa.

Or just cruise through the links on the lower right hand side of this page, maybe come upon some unexpected little gem like  an excerpt from The Candle,  In Praise of the Belleville Midgets,  The Midgets of Belleville. Part II,  Truth in Grass: a Kansas adventure, The Story of the Larned Eagle Optic, Hollywood Calls, You Pick up the Phone, Hollywood Calls, you pick up the phone part 2 maybe my favorite My Short Happy War in Afghanistan or no, wait, wait, Fangio and the Maserati 250 F for the priceless video of Fangio in a polo shirt and helmet, absolutely relaxed driving a Maserati 250F around a beat up old race track with no run off, no barriers, no safety nothing.  My lunch with Rob Walkeris a good one even though it leaves out the Betty Grable stories. 

 

             Then there's Erno Goldfingers house-and-mine, which throws in Ian Flemming, no extra charge. Riding around Laguna Seca with Jackie Stewart was picked up by Jalopnik.com.

              Or Uncle John's Prayer.

               Or Clarence Judd Head-Butts a Truck.  Truck dies. That's a good one. 

             And, of course, the one that started it all, Truck Story 

             You really should visit Hiltonpond.org for fabulous pictures of hawks and hummingbirds with the science to back up the beauty. And for a fine rainyafternoon divertimento, click on my dance with a prima ballerina.

 

              For a tasty bit with bon mots check out my friend, Gerry Freeman's death defying foodie blog Hungry Gerald.

             Or go visit Elif Batumen, San Francisco's brightest and funniest writer, a fine lady to curl up with for a good read.  Here's Elif's homepage.

             Enjoy, Have a ball.  See you Monday. Bob