World's Laziest Journalist

February 27, 2006

By Bob Patterson

When my friend, Jersey Bill, and I were in high school, in Scranton Pa., we loved cars and wanted to learn all about events in the auto world.  On one particular day, we thought that the chance to attend the 1961 New York Automobile Show trumped the possibility of anything we would learn in school that day, so off we went.

By the time we were in college we were reading Road & Track and wishing we could have seen the racing legends such as Tazio Nuvolari and Juan Manuel Fangio, who were featured in various nostalgic laden stories.

We had the opportunity to see various and sundry events in our area and early on I had a "Saint Paul's moment' and realized that seeing Jimmy Clark and Lorenzo Bandini race in the US Grand Prix at Watkins Glenn was actually seeing future legends building their reputation.  When we had a chance to see the Giant's Despair Hill Climb, we tried to approach it from the point of view that we were recording the contemporary sports car scene for the future.  (Can't prove it, but it makes a much better column if you think I actually said something along those line to Bill at the time.)

Bill got married and had a career as a teacher.  This columnist spent his life doing things like getting a ride in a B-17G and the Goodyear Blimp, while trying to snag an invitation to the Playboy Mansion.

Recently when the idea of researching Ford Cobras for a writing project that the columnist hopes to bring to fruition, we got a chance to join a local car club.  It seemed like a great opportunity to join an LA-based club that is for owners and fans of the products that Carroll Shelby produced in the Sixties.

It has been a great opportunity to learn about more about Cobras, Mustangs, and the GT's.  We are accumulating a file that includes such esoteric knowledge as the fact that the first ten Cobras had a different medallion on the hood than all the rest of the ones that were made.

When we wrote a recent column about the club and the cars, we dug out some photos we had taken way back when and ran them as an illustrations.  The photos were taken at the Giant's Despair Hill Climb during the Sixties.

The 2006 installment of the Giant's Despair Hill Climb will celebrate the fact that the very first one was held in 1906 and when we got a request to use the photos that ran in Just Above Sunset online magazine.  They want them for the campaign to publicize this year's event and its rich history.  We were delighted and immediately put our friend Jersey Bill in touch with them because he has some of his pictures from that day on CD.  It seems we have photos with genuine historic value, because today's young car enthusiasts want to read about the things we've seen, such that Hill Climb as well as other events back then such as The US Grand Prix at Watkins Glenn when Jimmy Clark and Lorenzo Bandini were competitors. 

Yeah, when this columnist got the chance to see and photography the Sebring Race in 1967, it was a chance to see Cobras, GT-40's, Ferraris and Chaparrals in competition with each other get some great pictures.  (You want proof that this columnist really got there? Check out the photo credits on page 40 of the July 1967 issue of Sports Car Graphic, for their photo spread on that year's race at Sebring.)  Younger car enthusiasts want to see the pictures we took back then.

It's time to start digging through a lifetime collection of negatives and slides and see where the heck we've stashed the negatives of Colin Chapman talking to Graham Hill.  Would pictures of Carroll Shelby participating in the Harrah's Golf Tournament circa 1970 be of any interest?  Probably.  They are in one of those boxes of negatives, it's just a matter of looking through them all to find them.

You can't travel back in time (yet) and so you might think that the chance to see the 1967 TV program "Wonderful World of Wheels" was something you'll always  regret missing (or maybe want to see again?).  Well then, you'll be glad to know that old films of cars, including that broadcast, are now being made available on DVD, from a California enterprise named (appropriately enough) Car Films.

When an opportunity to attend the announcement of the lineup for the 2006 Playboy Jazz Festival presented itself, we thought of all the great Jazz performers who had participated in the annual event which got started in 1959.

We thought of a former coworker, Pep Paris, who has been a jazz critic in his youth.  He would always tell the story about how he had asked Miles Davis one particular question every chance he got.  Pep had a son who grew up and began to do jazz criticism and so when he got his first chance, he carried on the family tradition and asked the question again.  Miles blurted out the answer and advised the young critic that he should tell his old man to do something naughty and physically impossible.

The opportunity to see the announcement being made reinforced the lesson that was learned a long time ago.  Don't think of today's photo-ops as a chance to record the contemporary scene; it's better to think of it as a chance to take today, pictures of people who will be tomorrow's legends.  The fact that the press conference was going to be held at the Playboy Mansion only added to our enthusiasm to cover the story and learn who was going to be featured in the 2006 installment of jazz history.

Will jazz fans yet to be born, envy today's audience for the chance they have to hear Hiromi play while she was only 26 years old?  If you gotta ask that question you've missed the point of this week's column.  The Los Angeles Times used the words "Ferociously talented" to headline a review of her February 22 gig at the Catalina Bar and Grill. 

Will the World's Laziest Journalist list all the acts or will he just provide a link to the list on Playboy's website and give his readers the old French advice: cliquez ici?

When Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong was asked "What is jazz?" his reply was good enough to be included in Bartlett's - "Man, if you gotta ask you'll never know."

Now, if the disk jockey will play Harlem Nocturne, we'll split for this week.  Can you dig it, daddy-o?  Have a cool week - one that's all improvisation.

____ 

The Photos

… attending the announcement of the lineup for the 2006 Playboy Jazz Festival at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles, Wednesday, February, 22, 2006.

Hiromi and Heff (of course) –

Photos and Text, Copyright © 2006 - Robert Patterson

Email the author at worldslaziestjournalist@yahoo.com