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I feel ashamed. I’ll go further. I feel lazy and dirty and ashamed. There I was in my last post whining about how tired I was and “Oh no, I got my white pointy shoes dirty”. Then I find out that Mikey Lear got his company logo tattooed on his back to get sponsored by his boss.
It happened like this :
“While working for [Ben Iceton - his boss] I noticed that he quite likes his logo. He’s got it on his window, he’s got it on his stationary, on his business cards (both embossed), his brochures, his pamplets, he’s getting it embroidered on his cuffs and he’s getting a signet ring with the logo on it. His ultimate goal is to have a high rise office block in the city called the Iceton tower, and, he revealed, he wouldn’t mind it being in the shape of his logo.
As I clocked all this, I was also trying to think of a money making scam for our joint battle against Captain Cancer and his army of growths. Obviously, since my back was just so much wasted real estate, I could get a tattoo of his logo on it. I put the idea to him, he said no. His reasons were that he didn’t want to brand me and that I’d probably regret it. I thought that since it was such a sweet idea, I’d carry on suggesting it every so often. He kept saying things like “It would look good though… but no, I’m not letting you do that, that would make me Satan.”
But he went and did it anyway because, in his own words “I’m a big wierdo (sic)”. To find out the whole horrific truth go to Mikey’s Page, on the Kill Cancer Death Rally wiki. You’ll also find that he’s begun, with Abi, decorating his car with thousands of mini-animals.
All in all I’m a bit threatened by Abi and Mikey’s activity. I feel like Butch and Sundance looking over their shoulders as they get tracked across land and sea by a crack gang of hired guns. They can never shake them and each time they think they’ve done it, they turn, see them still there and say “Who are those guys?”. I’m getting a severe case of “Who are those guys?” when I see their dedication.
And Abi beat 180 people to win Street Wars London.
I’m clearly going to have to raise my game.
Mikey Lear, freak genius
Here are the ticket details – I’m getting the train out on the 20:29 Eurotunnel on 28th September, and flying back on the Easyjet flight at 18:20.
Remember, no hand luggage on the planes, which will make it hard to hide snakes. Sorry about the lame post, but am feeling slightly tired after the Secret Garden Party. A bit of the double whammy, that. My favourite white pointy shoes also got dirty there.
Who’d have thought that pale leather winklepickers would be a stupid thing to take to a muddy field in Cambridgeshire?
My poor, poor shoesies
Le Mans has been bothering me for a bit. I had been hoping to go there so that we could organise a day of racing on the track, but what with the Renault World Series, there was suddenly a crappy race on.
So instead of sticking with that route, I think it will be better if we head half an hour further south and go to Tours. It’s really pretty, there are lots of students, and it will be a lot more raucous.
Annoyingly this means I’ll have to change a lot on the blog. Drag.
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Wicked, just got my first donation and it’s a peach. £50 from Hugh Lynch. I’m so excited I’m going to break my rule of blogging from work.
Boss, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry but I just can’t help myself because The Kill Cancer Death Rally has actually starting rasing money for Cancer Research UK.
Hugh, thank you so much, you are another Kill Cancer Death Rally legend. And I’ll be seeing you at Carnival.
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If you go to Time Wasting Page, you get to see some funny clips.
More to come.
You’ll have seen in the post below that I said I was going to ask grafitti artists to paint some cars. Well, D*Face has only just gone and agreed. Honestly, I can’t contain my excitement about the whole thing.
I mean I found his site via the Wooster Collective and I didn’t recognise the name. The moment I got there I knew I’d seen his work before. Whether it was in Bristol or London, who knows, but that cheery little face was familiar. So all excited I pinged him a mail. Now, he’s agreed to help
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Senor D*Face’s famous flying head
And not only did he agree to help, D*Face replied with a lovely email and loads of good questions. Signing off with :
“Sorry to reply with loads of questions, but I think what your doing is amazing, I’d like to add to the whole event. I’ll happily take care of the artist side and organise things for that. It’ll be my pleasure.”
Argh! It’s enough to break my heart when folks are that kind out of the blue. My lip starts to quiver whenever Roger Federer cries after he wins Wimbledon – imagine what random charity does to me. D*Face, I’d like to say thanks three thousand times and that still wouldn’t be enough. I loved your mail, we’ll do you proud
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Me when I read the mail
So now we’ve got a load of grafitti artists willing to make the cars look out of this world beautiful. The man even said he could organise 30 painters.
“But we don’t yet have 30 cars” I hear you say.
And to that I reply: “Not yet we don’t”.
It will be the coolest paint job in the world
ps. coming soon : a post that tells everyone where we are with the parties (one in London one in Barcelona), attendance and more travel details. Keep the faith folks.
How cool! I posted a comment at Make, a very cool site where people talk about crazy shit you can put together - like how to make a rocket from matches, the end of a sparkler and tinfoil. As well as lawn mower shopping trolley mod : The Shopper Chopper.
There I asked for help on how to, amongst other things, create papier mache labia for the Grrrrowlers, the Robertson and Ballantine car (full thread here). And answers came there some. One from Mr. Jalopy himself, the writer of the legendary Hooptyrides blog, which is full of amazing shit about hot rodding cars. This was his advice:
‘I think waterproof papiar maiche is a dichotomy. Consider instead shaping foam and coating with goo. go to plastics suppliers and ask them about the correct goo to use. high density foam is ‘carvable’ and that is what most movie effects are made of.
As far as metal, consider pop rivets. I think issue 4 of Make had my piece on cheap and easy sheet metal fabrication. Also, self tapping screws are quite effective and fast if not as elegant looking. Go to a store that sells air conditioning and heating ducting and you will be rewarded with all manner of tubes and ducts to rivet together. Plus they will sell pop rivets in great supply.
And, of course, check the many art car sites. They will have good advice as to keeping these geegaws from flying off the car.’
Next stop art car sites and air conditioning shops. By the way, check out his site because your ipod case will never be this cool (or this cool), you’ll never drive a 1960s Mercedes, or own a Chevelle station wagon with a faux wood finish.
Mr. J, thanks for your help and for this line on your blog : “That fits clearly into my favorite category of problems – the Department of Somebody Else’s Problem.”.
Can we borrow your cars for a few days? We’ll be careful
Heading to Barcelona from London in a fleet of crapped out grafitti addled, hot-modded bangers will have some folks scratching their heads.
Creating a raft from reclaimed scrap-yard junk and floating down the Mississippi proselytising free art and culture is an entirely different kettle of fish (or buisonniere de poison as they probably don’t say in France). That is precisely what the Miss Rockaway crew are doing. You should check out their crazy ass blog.
Miss Rockaway, the Kill Cancer Death Rally salutes you. (via The Wooster Collective).
See you in Barcelona on Oct 1st
Ghost Dog – tagline “Live by the code. Die by the code” – is a funny old movie. When I say funny, I mean a little bit boring. It’s a flick that people who I would let go to the video shop unaccompanied like, and yet I fell asleep in it. Pretentious, action packed with a wicked Wu Tang Clan soundtrack (and whilst we’re on the subject of the Clan, check out Ol Dirty Bastard life story) – it’s my type of film. Hmmm, a puzzler.
The reason I mention it is that during the movie the pigeon fancying wannabe samurai, played by Forrest Whitaker, occasionally reads from the Hagakure, the code of the Samurai, and one bit stuck with me :
“Each day a samurai should contemplate his own death and consider various ways of dying, from being torn apart in the jaws of a wild beast, to falling from thousand foot cliffs, and during some part of the day, the samurai should consider himself dead.”
The reason that stuck is because I think contemplating mortality is good for the soul. However, now we’re so over-protected you can’t even teach kindergarten classes to juggle with flaming hedge strimmers, without the ‘elf and bloody safety busy-bodies breathing their nanny state fumes down your free decent English yeoman neck, I’d advise you get real, and start thinking about cancer.
A good place to start is the cheery sounding Cancer Stats webpage. It’s like YouTube for hypochondriacs. Did you know there are 24 types of cancer, and yet four types, breast, lung, bowel and prostate – account for over half of all new cases? Good to see that cancer, like any good business, roughly follows the 20/80 rule of getting 80% of your business (read deaths) from 20% of your service providers (read cancers).
For your viewing pleasure, here are the 24 types of cancer. And if we’re contemplating our impending dooms, allow me to paraphrase the Wu Tang Clan : 24 ways to die, chose one.
Bladder cancer Bone cancer Bowel cancer Brain and CNS cancer
Breast cancer Cervical cancer Hodgkin’s lymphoma Kidney cancer
Laryngeal cancer Leukaemia Liver cancer Lung cancer
Malignant melanoma Multiple myeloma Non-Hodgkin lymphoma Oesophageal cancer
Oral cancer Ovarian cancer Pancreatic cancer Prostate cancer
Stomach cancer Testicular cancer Thyroid cancer Uterine cancer
Which one do you want least? And really try to imagine it. To my mind they all look totally rubbish. Except, that is, Multiple Myeloma. I just can’t stop saying it to the tune of My Sharona. Whenever I said I had cancer I’d be able to say “I’ve got a Multiple Myeloma, ma-ma-ma-ma-My-yi-yi-yi-yi-eloma”.
Obviously Cancer Research UK are doing all they can to stop anyone having to sing which terminal disease they have to tunes by The Knack. And the Kill Cancer Death Rally is doing all it can to raise money for those bad ass cancer killing research doctors. Go on then, give us some money.
GSOT : I’ll have it with a side order of fries, please
