Grunt Cadillac Hotel
Jun. 10th, 2003 11:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hirez(Lifted from the 'much better last year before it was popular' BoingBoing) : A Japanese custom truck show.
This is one of those websites which seriously displays the cultural gap between here and there. Y'see, one can (usually) look at a modified motor and go "Ah, that'll be a leadsled / kustom / gasser / pro-mod / pro-stock / lowrider / post-apocalyptic Mad Max wannabe/Nasty Escort with a bean-tin pipe and a loud wireless." - the cultural cues, even if they're borrowed from some random Americana-via-Canvey-Island vibe, are reasonably obvious.
However, if you look at that page. Say the last of the daytime shots... You're confronted with... I dunno... Judge Dredd's Chromed Chariot of Waste-Management? The Cars that ate Paris via Blakes-7 and a noseful of Ajax? With the lights out, they look like panchinko(sp?) arcades. Hm. Maybe that's it. Or they're all cunningly disguised Killer Alien Robots...
Brief attack of toy-frenzy
One of these.
To paraphrase a very old Sony advert with a Cleese-robot: "Play yer MP3s with a packet of fags." Bit of a squint-and-fiddle UI, but it works cheerily enough with Ho-Lee-Fuk CF cards and now contains a gym-going playlist to scare the daylights out of the punk-aerobics people.
This is one of those websites which seriously displays the cultural gap between here and there. Y'see, one can (usually) look at a modified motor and go "Ah, that'll be a leadsled / kustom / gasser / pro-mod / pro-stock / lowrider / post-apocalyptic Mad Max wannabe/Nasty Escort with a bean-tin pipe and a loud wireless." - the cultural cues, even if they're borrowed from some random Americana-via-Canvey-Island vibe, are reasonably obvious.
However, if you look at that page. Say the last of the daytime shots... You're confronted with... I dunno... Judge Dredd's Chromed Chariot of Waste-Management? The Cars that ate Paris via Blakes-7 and a noseful of Ajax? With the lights out, they look like panchinko(sp?) arcades. Hm. Maybe that's it. Or they're all cunningly disguised Killer Alien Robots...
Brief attack of toy-frenzy
One of these.
To paraphrase a very old Sony advert with a Cleese-robot: "Play yer MP3s with a packet of fags." Bit of a squint-and-fiddle UI, but it works cheerily enough with Ho-Lee-Fuk CF cards and now contains a gym-going playlist to scare the daylights out of the punk-aerobics people.
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no subject
Date: 2003-06-10 03:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-06-10 03:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-06-10 03:54 pm (UTC)They're... very. Aren't they?
no subject
Date: 2003-06-10 04:23 pm (UTC)I can only imagine that some mechanic in Yokohama (or wherever) is smoking a half-time rollie and leafing through a copy of Hot Rod going "What the piss are these buggers on? Jag IRS? What's that all about?"
I hope someone who's been there may be able to shed more light.
no subject
Date: 2003-06-10 05:02 pm (UTC)It is a whole other world. Some of the stories of the bosozoku are pretty left field, too. I especially recall the stories of successful albums of engine noise.
For more on this, I (and Bill Gibson) recommend Karl Taro Greenfeld's Speed Tribes. [IIRC. Enough to google for.]
no subject
Date: 2003-06-10 07:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-06-10 04:01 pm (UTC)One to run past Marcus or Tom Ng next time you're in Nam as our resident Transformers experts.
In other news: I have, for the first time since the Jag e-type fallen in love with a car. And it's made by bloody VAUXHALL (http://buypower.vauxhall.co.uk/showroom/search/standardVehicleColourCar.jhtml?loadCurrentCT=true).
no subject
Date: 2003-06-10 04:25 pm (UTC)Or is it a Velox and you're too horrified to show us the depths to which your taste has plummeted? Don't worry - we'll only laugh a bit.
no subject
Date: 2003-06-11 05:27 am (UTC)Auto-love? I want a Smart Car, the open-sided one that looks like a rollerskate, anyone feeling generous?
no subject
Date: 2003-06-10 04:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-06-10 04:16 pm (UTC)I finally cracked under the strain of alternating Jackie Chan and John Woo films. She arrives next weekend.
Don't tell Pat.
no subject
Date: 2003-06-11 01:16 am (UTC);P
You Bastards
Date: 2003-06-10 04:44 pm (UTC)You know I have the attention span of the amphetamine-fuelled gadfly.
You know what I ought to be doing (arguing with
So now, before the night is out, you'll have a doctoral thesis delivered on the role of iki in Japanese custom trucks, and I still won't have this fecking paper written.
<sigh>
It's the synergy of polytheistic folk art, and the absence of an indigenous industrial revolution, isn't it.
To you, it's a weird truck. To a Philipino, it's no stranger than a corrugated iron Citroen van looks to us.
There are some obvious influences: chrome, spikiness and multi-panel artwork and styling.
We don't do chrome in Europe. We did industry century before last, and invented the working classes to deal with it for us. Chrome is exciting, new, industrial, and something no decent Chap would be seen with. If European culture had ever developed the combat Mech (http://www.wizkidsgames.com/mwdarkage/mw_article.asp?cid=36984&frame=news), it would have four legs and a saddle. This is Japan though - there's still a folk-aspiration to achieve America in the 1950's. It's the Grandma Moses rendering of the omniscient Hindu pantheon - the Gods see all, they see it all simultaneously, and they see it all laid out in front of them like the mimic diagram at Cla'ham Junction (short story concept: the Genesis story, as related by Mission Control at a heavenly Cape Canaveral).
The multi-panel artwork is standard practice from religiously inspired artwork. From the Tibetan thangka (http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3523925888&category=357&rd=1) to the Japanese woodblock, this multi-panel cartoon style is just how perspective was seen over there. It's no weirder than medieval theological allegory in Europe, or the use of a similar (but linear, not two dimensional) spatial narrative in the Bayeux tapestry.
Spikiness is just architecture. You build from wood in a climate that's prone to occasional downpours and has a risk of earthquakes and you'll evolve a roof structure that is lots of external spikes under the roofline, supported on pillars. When the English motorcar caravan appeared in the '30s it needed to be more stable (a lower floorline) than the barrel-top Romany caravan and lighter than the steam-hauled showman's caravan. A new vernacular of caravan design was needed and it took its inspiration from half-timbered stockbroker architecture, right down to the bay window. All these trucks are doing is the same thing - deriving their detailing from local architectural norms.
And then these things are built by 30- 40- something spods who watched too many Saturday TV cartoons. If we'd done it, they'd look like Gerry Anderson (tell me again, how did I end last year with neither a woodland nor a Stollie ?)
no subject
Date: 2003-06-10 05:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-06-11 10:42 am (UTC)Based on what I've recently learned about American truckers, all of these look like an exceptionally good way to get your ass kicked inside-out. Bear in mind that I've seen some pretty serious parade floats out there on the highways of North Carolina, too.
This is going to sound terrible, but the thing that I've always noticed about Japanese culture is how phenominally devoid of anything even resembling taste certain facets of it are. Credit where credit's due, I mean you've got to give people props for fearless flamboyance, but Jesus Christ, some of this stuff I look at and wonder; "who in their right mind (first of all) dreamt this up, and second of all decided that it was a good idea?"
I dunno. Maybe I've become The Ugly American in my old age. . .