There’s an electric semi-truck race out there, and everyone’s putting out their best, from Volvo to Tesla. There are some upstarts out there, too, and some of them are finding out that, like cars, building semi-trucks is hard. Apparently, for Windrose, so is keeping track of the truck you did build. You know what that means!
Thomas wrote a Morning Dump that contained a story from the Wall Street Journal titled “A Trucking Startup Aims to Challenge Tesla. Now, Paychecks Are Missing—and So Is a Truck”. Sid Bridge:
Two former employees fired in January, Travis Waite and Harold Keller, refused to help locate the vehicle until Han paid them a combined $91,000 in unpaid wages and benefits. They still haven’t been paid, they say, and the truck remains at large.
Given the striking similarity to the plot of “Airwolf” I really hope these two guys have the truck painted black and are stashing it in a hollowed-out mountain, only going to get it when they need to be champions of justice for the downtrodden.
If you have no idea what Airwolf is, the show’s Wikipedia entry seems to summarize its plot well enough. Here’s a sweet intro video:
I wrote a COTD about the hilarity of our first-ever Members’ track day. Kevin Rhodes keeps the jokes flowing:
I’m pretty sure a grandfather clock is overkill for timing a stock 2CV. I recommend a sundial.
David wrote about why his kid really loves wheels. Sid Bridge makes a return:
I guess the idea of babies establishing schemas really does hold air in a roundabout way until they get tired of it.
7Cincinnatus:
We can just assume that Torch got stuck on the “red plastic, sometimes amber or clear, illuminated from within to convey information” schema and has yet to move to his next stage of development.
Matt DeCraene:
I’d just assume that in 20ish years Delmar (NHRN) will be the proud owner of the wheel enthusiast bar, “Rolling Stock” that he renovated from the failed taillight enthusiast bar, “The Scarlett Glow”
Thomas also wrote about the Ferrari12Cilindri Manuale, and its gated DCT. V10omous:
This seems a bit silly, in that if there’s really demand for a 6 speed, the customer who demands one would pay enough to cover development costs, whatever those are.
I hate the “rich people are rich, so they’ll pay anything” attitude, but in this case it’s probably true. 1500 units, charging an extra $100,000 for a gated manual option, and you have $150 million to cover engineering and testing. Not enough? Charge $200,000 for the option. Force someone to buy 3 Luces. Whatever, they wouldn’t care.
Have a great evening, everyone!
Top Graphic Image: CBS
One of the things we miss today that we had in the past was a shared cultural experience. You went to class on a Tuesday and the entire school was reliving Airwolf, or Dukes of Hazard, or Carol Brunette or The Muppet Show or whatever. If you had missed it, it was a big deal, because your best friends wouldn’t talk to you because they were too interested in reliving the shows they watched, even with kids that they normal didn’t talk to.
As a result, getting in trouble and not being allowed to watch TV was a MAJOR punishment, because it was socially isolating.
There magic of this shared experience. Channel 20 was an independent TV station. Every Saturday, they had Kung Fu Action Theater, which was a series of insanely corny Martial Arts Movies that always ended up with some dude dying from a terminal case of getting nailed in the nads. On rainy Saturdays, there was absolutely nothing interesting to a kid in that time slot.
During graduation rehearsal, we were all dressed in robes and told to put away our coat hangers. Someone said “coat hanger Action Theater” and it was ON. We all started slow motion jumping around and making crazy noises and acting like we had be nailed in the nads or whatever. Prom queen, class president, dope dealer, flunk out, Rhoads scholar, nerd, jock, cheerleader, whatever. We all knew the jokes, all knew moves, and we all, regardless of where we were int he high school social cliques just joined into the mayhem. It was this weird bonding experience that was only possible because of 10 years of being bored on rainy Saturday afternoons. I
Today’s kids don’t have that. Sure, kids from all over the world get into a TicToc trend and it’s cool that your kid is sharing something with a kid 10 time zones away. But that sharing a thing with the kids next door is missing.
Now for the soapbox. All of us kids were forced to watch national news because we were the antennas so our parents’ could watch Cronkite. Our parents all had the same news from the same dude (And that’s the way it was….) The adults might not have agreed on the best way to deal with the news, but they all agreed upon the facts. Today, you and I might get news from completely different sources and have a complete disagreement on what the facts are. Missing out on shared experiences like Coat Hanger Action Theater is not that bad compared to missing out on having a shared understanding of what is happening in the world, even if we cannot agree to the solution.
Why is the intro video to Airwolf in a Roxette YouTube channel? It’s almost unreal.
I loved Airwolf. That had to be a very expensive show to produce. Theme song was killer!
When my mate passed his helicopter license I changed the ringtone on his phone to the Airwolf theme 🙂
There’s a great bit on a Conan episode where Conan O’Brien and Brian Cranston bond over their shared love of the show (Cranston had an early role in an episode), particularly its theme.
It was, which is a big reason why the 2nd and 3rd seasons reused aerial footage from the 1st season. The history of the downfall of that show is quite interesting.
One of the best TV themes EVAR.
I have a vivid memory of that intro coming on when I was just a few years old. Airwolf, Knight Rider, The A-Team. One major reason to love growing up in the 80s.
Add in Dukes of Hazard and Macgyver and you have our family TV schedule. Loved it as a kid but now cringe trying to watch them again as an adult.
Cars are the only thing influenced by those “rose colored glasses”
oh man, on saturdays WHNS was killer growing up. all the saturday morning cartoons, then starting at 12 it was fall guy, black sheep squadron, airwolf, and knight rider back to back to back to back. what a time to be alive lol.
It’s weird which shows are still watchable. Somewhat surprisingly I find the Rockford Files still enjoyable.
I just rewatched the entire Rockford Files series lately. It is still enjoyable.
Madgnum PI is still good too.
Same. I am in the middle of binging it on Prime and it’s downfall is painful to watch in real time. Season one is intense and aimed at adults. Season two is more of the same, but starting to become aware that kids are watching and doing some silly stuff. Season three they fire the producer (and his significant other, who played Marella, with no mention of it), and make things a bit more kid friendly – except that the bad guy straight-up gets blown out of the sky in every episode. The budget seems to have gone up for the middle seasons, but the rug gets pulled before the absolute train wreck that is season four with a totally new cast. In season four they somehow manage to shoot a bunch of episodes even though they don’t have the helicopter.
And yeah, as mentioned below, the show was a trainwreck backstage. Jan-Michael Vincent was doing a lot of bad things and drugs, and after the show ended the helicopter went back to normal helicopter life where it eventually kids all of its occupants in a crash.
But the THEME SONG IS AWESOME.
Amusingly during his run on Airwolf JMV was the highest paid actor on TV.
I’m fairly certain season 4 was only produced so they would have enough episodes for a syndication package. I have it on blu-ray as part of the box set, but I tend to pretend it doesn’t exist, much like any Indiana Jones movie after Last Crusade (third one).
Season four was when it switch networks and the new TV station didn’t want to spend the money to pay the old cast (or get the helicopter). They also insisted on making it more kid friendly, which I kind of get since I was infatuated with the show as a kid. How many of us begged our parents for Airwolf toys? All of us. While singing the theme song. And then we had to find out if we could get a Redwolf toy after season 3.
Sadly all the toys I ever saw were garbage. I don’t want a die cast Airwolf with “Airwolf” printed on the side. I keep hoping Playmobil will do an Airwolf set. The general attention to detail for the Magnum Ferrari, A-Team Van, Ecto-1, BTTF Delorean, and James Bond DB5 is pretty hard to beat for something meant to actually be played with vs a display piece. Maybe one day I’ll splurge on the Playmobil USS Enterprise.
One of my prized possessions was an Airwolf patch like the ones worn on the flight suit. A friend gave it to me back in the 1980’s. These days you can go on Amazon and find them easily, but I have no idea where he scrounged one up back then.
But part of the appeal was that it was a “grown up” show, no? Did their pivot to kid-friendly make it more or less enjoyable for kid sid?
I honestly didn’t remember many of the details from when I was a kid. Re-watching it, things seem to get worse when they try to make it more kid-friendly. I’m in the middle of season 3, and it’s been hit-or-miss. Some of season 3 is great (The Redwolf episode is actually fun, with an obnoxious Wings Hauser being obnoxious), but the plots get more outlandish as it goes along and it loses most of its continuity after spending the first two seasons pretending to almost find String’s brother.
I’m going to go into season four with an open mind – the only thing I remember as a kid is seeing the first episode of that season, then being constantly disappointed.
Season 4, ugh. I just can’t. I seem to recall the episode with Dick Van Dyke as the bad guy where the Airwolf lair had computers and other equipment like some kind of Batcave. I had to nope out after that. Odd considering I had no issue with a Mach 1+ helicopter.
I think season 3 is so uneven because JMV was deep into his addiction at that point. He frequently looks flushed. Season 3 also has the worst episode ever, “Tracks”. Airwolf vs a man with a bow.
While you can for sure tell JMV is drugged out of his mind in season 3, it’s the scripts that are all over the map. The first episode goes straight to B-movie royalty (not in a good way) Richard Lynch in a ridiculously stupid story that sounds like a 15-year old wrote it, trying to establish him as a recurring super-villain even though he never returns. Still, we got a few scripts that were way better than that one (I really dug the Redwolf episode).
The last season on USA Network was horrible. I think I watched two episodes and noped right out.
The Grumman Mallard from Miami Vice also later crashed, killing everyone on board.
My second COTD! Thank you very much, I’ll be here all week, please tip your servers.
I’m actually in your ‘hood this week Mercedes, working in Naperville. Our ridiculous giant datacenter project finally caught me. Planning to head out to my old law school stomping grounds in DeKalb one evening – I haven’t been back in 30 years, though I have been to Chicago itself a few times.
Welcome to the COTD lounge! I’ll show you where we keep the coffee stirrers.
Coffee stirrers? I take mine shaken, not stirred.
I like to use them as straws. It makes your drink last longer.
Good point. You can also selectively sip the liquor if it separates from the coffee.
Hopefully there is some Coke Zero for me – I can’t stand the taste of coffee. Love the smell, oddly enough.