Nose Bacon

On this day in 1925, John DeLorean, a maverick auto industry executive and founder of the DeLorean Motor Company, is born in Detroit, Michigan. The DeLorean Motor Company produced just one model, the DMC-12, a sports car with gull-wing doors that opened upward, in the early 1980s before going bankrupt. In 1982, John DeLorean was charged with drug trafficking; prosecutors argued that he was attempting to raise money for his struggling company. In total, approximately 9,000 DMC-12s were produced. The car became a collector’s item and got a big publicity boost when it was featured as a time-travel machine in the “Back to the Future” movies starring Michael J. Fox.

Starting in the 1950s, DeLorean worked as an engineer for the Packard Motor Company and later moved to General Motors (GM), where he was credited with developing the Pontiac GTO, the first “muscle car.” DeLorean quickly rose through the corporate ranks at GM, becoming the youngest general manager of the Pontiac division and then, several years later, the youngest head of Chevrolet. He earned a reputation for corporate innovation as well as his flashy, jet-set lifestyle.

In 1973, DeLorean resigned from GM and eventually formed his eponymous company. With a major investment from the British government, as well as celebrities including Johnny Carson and Sammy Davis Jr., DeLorean opened a factory in Dunmurry, Ireland. In 1981, he began producing his dream sports car, the DMC-12, which carried a then-hefty price tag of $25,000. However, the company soon ran into financial trouble and on October 19, 1982, the British government announced the plant would be shuttered. That same day, DeLorean was arrested on drug trafficking charges in Los Angeles. Several months earlier, DeLorean had been approached by a former drug smuggler turned federal informant and the two men engaged in a series of discussions about a deal involving cocaine smuggling and money laundering that would potentially save DeLorean’s business. During the highly publicized trial that followed, DeLorean maintained he had been set up by the government. A jury acquitted him in August 1984.

DeLorean died at age 80 from a stroke on March 19, 2005.

Today I went to a cemetery that, unfortunately for me, was located pretty much in the heart of a college town (Ann Arbor, MI).

The problem for me is that in Ann Arbor the people have the right of way on the roads. 

Not really a big deal, except that they take it WAY too far, not even bothering to look as they step right in front of your fucking car. 

Its a damn hazard to drive through the extremely crowded streets because crowds of college kids basically throw themselves under your tires as they are too busy looking at their damn phones or talking to each other or basically being self important douche bags.

ARRRGGHHH. 

All I want to do as I drive by them on the sidewalks is this:

On this day in 1979, “The Dukes of Hazzard,” a television comedy about two good-old-boy cousins in the rural South and their souped-up 1969 Dodge Charger known as the General Lee, debuts on CBS. The show, which originally aired for seven seasons, centered around cousins Bo Duke (John Schneider) and Luke Duke (Tom Wopat) and their ongoing efforts to elude their nemeses, the crooked county commissioner “Boss”Jefferson Davis Hogg (Sorrell Booke) and the bumbling Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane (James Best).

“The Dukes of Hazzard” was known for its car chases and stunts and the General Lee, which had an orange paint job, a Confederate flag across its roof and the numbers “01” on its welded-shut doors, became a star of the show. The General Lee also had a horn that played the first 12 notes of the song “Dixie.” Due to all the fast driving, jumps and crashes, it was common for several different General Lees to be used during the filming of each episode.

The General Lee also had a CB (Citizens Band) radio and Luke and Bo Duke’s CB nicknames or “handles” were Lost Sheep #1 and Lost Sheep #2, respectively. “The Dukes of Hazzard” (along with the 1977 trucking movie “Smokey and the Bandit”) helped promote the CB craze that swept America from the mid 1970s to the early 1980s.

Among the other cars featured on the show were Boss Hogg’s white Cadillac Deville convertible, Uncle Jesse Duke’s (Denver Pyle) Ford pickup truck and various tow trucks and vehicles belonging to Cooter Davenport (Ben Jones), the local mechanic. Bo and Luke’s short-shorts wearing cousin Daisy Duke (Catherine Bach) drove a yellow Plymouth Roadrunner with black stripes and later a Jeep with a golden eagle emblem on the hood and the word “Dixie” on the doors.

The final episode of “The Dukes of Hazzard” originally aired on August 16, 1985. The show spawned several TV specials and a 2005 movie starring Johnny Knoxville, Seann William Scott and Jessica Simpson.

I wish I was an Oscar Mayer Weiner
That is what I’d truly like to be
Cuz if I were an Oscar Mayer Weiner
Everyone would be in love with me

Henry Ford Museum

Dearborn, MI