Old Timey

Life is changing constantly, as is our technology and way of life.  Confused?  Aren’t we all?  Here’s a guide to determine if you’re hip and tech-savvy, or an old stick in the mud…

You know you’re an old-fashioned, old-timey dinosaur if you:

1.         Used a cell phone that wasn’t a smartphone – to make a phone call.

2.         Watched a movie from Netflix on DVD instead of streaming.

3.         Remember when George W. Bush was President.

4.         Laughed at the horrible Olympic village in Sochi.

5.         Received a package from Amazon not delivered by drone.

6.         Saw the first Peter Jackson Hobbit film when it came out in the movie theaters – and you didn’t see it in 3D IMAX.

7.         Purchased anything from Borders.

8.         Wrote a check in the last year.

9.         You know who Rush Limbaugh is.  Or G. Gordon Liddy.  Or Dennis Miller.

10.        Your car isn’t equipped with Bluetooth.  Does it run on steam?

11.        You can remember freaking out about ebola or ISIS.   Your parents might have told you about “Y2K”, whatever that was.

12.        You used a computer instead of a smartphone or iPad.

13.        Hailed a cab instead of calling Uber.

14.        Played music from a compact disc instead of MP3 or vinyl.

HEMI

This simple word inspired awe and fear from 1966-71, and still does today.  An original Hemi vehicle from Dodge or Plymouth is worth twice as much, or more, than its non-Hemi version – and might be a major star at Barrett-Jackson, a top auto auction. 

First of all, what is a Hemi?  Usually it refers to the 426 Hemi V8 used in Dodges and Plymouths from 1966 to 1971.   The Dodge models included the Charger R/T and Daytona, the Coronet R/T, and the Challenger; in Plymouth this would be the Barracuda (“Hemicuda”), the GTX & Road Runner, and the Superbird.  Plymouth did not make an equivalent of the Charger. 

Ok, fine.  Still, what does it mean?  It means hemispherical combustion chamber.  Each cylinder of the engine could be visualized like a grain silo you see at a farm: a tall cylinder with a hemispherical top to it.  The top has two circular openings, the valves. 

Four-stroke cycle.  Bear with me, this may be interesting (maybe not).  The piston goes up and down the cylinder, lubricated with oil.  Freudian, no?  Sometimes a piston is just a piston.

Intake.  The piston goes from its highest position (top dead center – TDC) to its lowest position (bottom dead center – BDC) in the cylinder.  The intake valve is open.  The piston’s downward movement sucks in the air-fuel mixture waiting outside the intake valve, which ideally fills the combustion chamber and cylinder.

Compression.  Both valves close, and the piston rushes up from BDC to TDC.  In doing so, it compresses the air-fuel mixture.  The ratio of this compression is the “compression ratio”.  The higher the compression ratio, the more power the engine can make, but it also makes the air-fuel mixture hotter and more likely to spontaneously combust without the spark plug’s assistance.  Highly volatile gas has a LOW octane rating, whereas relatively less volatile gas has a HIGHER octane rating.   This is why performance cars typically require 93 octane while economy cars can run on 87, and why running the wrong octane is a bad idea:  87 in an engine needing 93 may result in detonation, while 93 in an 87 engine is wasted.

Firing.  The spark plug fires, igniting the air-fuel mixture.  This is not an explosion, but rather a controlled burn which spreads out from the spark plug like a blooming flower.   Both valves are closed.  This is the stroke which produces the engine’s power: the piston goes back from TDC down to BDC.

Exhaust.  The exhaust valve opens, the piston goes from BDC back up to TDC, and the exhaust gases are pushed out of the combustion chamber.  Bye bye!

In a HEMI engine, the combustion chamber is hemispherically shaped, the intake valve is canted towards the intake side, the exhaust valve is canted towards the exhaust side, and the spark plug is close to the top of the combustion chamber between them.  Thus the valves are lined up parallel to the flow of air/fuel/gases through the combustion chamber.

Aren’t all engines set up this way?  Actually, no.  Most use a “wedge shape”.  The chamber shape is raised on one side and slants down to the other.  Think of those soft cloth caps working class men wore in the early twentieth century.  Nowadays pretentious people like Samuel L. Jackson wear them backwards.  Anyhow.  The valves are side-by-side, perpendicular to the flow of air-fuel/gases, with the spark plug coming in from the side rather than the top.

Looking at it from the outside, the HEMI engine has its spark plugs coming in the top of a large valve cover, whereas a wedge engine has the spark plugs coming into the side of the engine.

Power.   It’s not surprising that Hemi engines do in fact make a good deal of power.  What’s counterintuitive, though, is that the wedge design is remarkably competitive.  So much so, that the Hemi is the exception and not the rule.  Why is this?  In other words, why doesn’t everyone use a Hemi design?

            First, the Hemi head is much larger and more complex than a wedge head.  This makes it heavier and more expensive.  It makes the engine much wider and more difficult to fit in to an engine compartment.  Hemi cars needed special modifications and different suspensions and chassis stiffening.  Putting a Hemi in a car was a major undertaking.

            Second, as noted above, the wedge design works very well.   This includes all GM engines, all Ford engines (though the Boss 429 could be considered a hemi design), and the 440 V8 from Mopar.  With three two-barrel carburetors, the so-called 440 Six Pack was actually very competitive with the 426 Hemi on the street, and many enthusiasts considered it a better street engine than the Hemi. 

            In fact, the current run of GM performance engines in Camaros and Corvettes still keep the wedge design, although the LS combustion chambers are much different than the prior wedge heads.  The same holds true with Ford V8s, even in Shelby format.  While undeniably impressive, the Hemi design is not the only one which makes serious power. 

First Hemi.  From 1951-58 Mopar made the first generation Hemi engine, a 392.  This can be distinguished from the second generation by having a rear-mounted distributor the way most other engines are; the 426 has a front-mounted distributor, as all Mopar big blocks do.  The 392 was dropped, the 426 picked up later, and nowadays the 392 is esteemed only by those preferring the 50’s cars and insisting on authenticity.

Second Hemi.  The legendary 426 Hemi:  from 1966-71.  If someone refers to a classic era Hemi, they probably mean this one.  The Hemi was also used in NASCAR at this time; but the NASCAR engine only had one 4 barrel carburetor, while the street hemi had two – “dual quads”.  The street hemi also used mechanical lifters, which made it an especially noisy engine; to quote Muscle Car Review on a Hemi Road Runner, “even blindfolded you know it’s not a Lexus.” 

Street racing the 426 Hemi.  By now many of us may have seen the YouTube video which claims to show a Challenger Hellcat being blown away by a Tesla electric car at a dragstrip.  Of course, the Hellcat owner redlighted, i.e. immediately disqualified and thus no reason to blaze down the track.   Hemis are good engines, but a poor driver is always fair game for competitors with fast cars and better skills. 

            Jim Wangers, famous for promoting Pontiacs in the 1960s, gave some pointers in his book Glory Days.  What works well at the dragstrip might not translate well to the street: the 426 Hemi had a bad reputation for fouling spark plugs at idle and low speed.  Tactic?  Spool around in traffic for awhile before the race begins, so the Hemi driver’s engine is fouled.  Also, break off the race sooner rather than later, claiming victory; do not let the race go on further, as the Hemi WILL catch up with a vengeance.  This is how Royal Pontiac’s 421 4-speed GTO vanquished a Hemi Road Runner. 

NHRA.  The Hemi never died in drag racing.  Current top fuel dragsters run supercharged Hemi engines with nitromethane fuel: 8000 HP, with the supercharger draining off 850 HP by itself.  The cars go from 0-60 in half a second, cover the quarter mile at 4.4 seconds at 335 mph.  That’s fast.

Modern Hemi.  In 2003, after 32 years of dormancy, Mopar reintroduced a hemi V8 engine, in 5.7L displacement.   The new version has an aluminum block, aluminum heads, electronic fuel injection, and electronic ignition.  No more dual quads!   The modern Hemi came in Jeep Grand Cherokee, Ram pickups, the Dodge Durango, the Magnum (an oversexed station wagon) (2005-2008), the Chrysler 300M, the Charger (2006-present) and Challenger.  Like the drag racing versions, the modern version has two spark plugs per cylinder.  They’ve also introduced MDS (Multiple Displacement System), which is a cylinder deactivation system supposed to improve fuel economy without sacrificing power.

SRT8.  This is a 6.1L version of the engine in Chargers and Challengers.  The 370 HP of the 5.7L is bumped up to 425 HP.

Hellcat.  Very recent – and very powerful.  Finally the factory put a supercharger on a Hemi, and the result is 700 HP.  Be careful.

Crate Engines.   Mopar actually sells 426 Hemis (and an improved, larger version, the 528 Hemi) as crate engines.  They’re brand new and have a warranty, but they are very expensive.  Potential uses:

1.   Replacing a valuable original Hemi engine;

2.   Replacing a non-Hemi engine (e.g. 383 or 440) in a non-Hemi car, e.g. Road Runner or Charger which was originally available with a Hemi;

3.   Here’s the fun part:  putting in a small, light car like a Demon or Duster which never came with a Hemi.  Don Yenko was terrified by 427 Novas, imagine how terrified you can get with a Hemi in a Demon.

Birthdays

This Friday will be my 46^th birthday.   Happy Birthday to me!   Remarkably, I’ve yet to comment on birthdays in my blog.  So here goes.

Naturally as children, we celebrate birthdays more aggressively, with much more pomp and circumstance.  My father used to set up a movie projector and rent films – in those big flat metal cans – and we’d enjoy Paul Bunyan, the Red Balloon, Sinbad, and other exciting films.  Later, living in Paris, birthdays would typically be celebrated by going out, en masse, to the Champs Elysees to watch American films in “version original” (“V.O.”), i.e. in English with French subtitles.  French movies had a long “séance” (summoning of commercial spirits, hopefully naked women) before the previews and then the film itself.  French movie theaters also liked to exit directly off onto the street, which was disorienting if the movie ended in daylight hours.

My most recent “party” was in January 2000, when we gathered at Dave & Buster’s at White Flint Mall, mostly playing video games while the Vikings lost to the Rams.  Later that month the Rams beat the Titans in the Super Bowl – and it snowed big time here.  I'd given myself a present: traded a 1990 Fender Stratocaster, '62 Vintage Reissue, for a more modern "Fat Strat" with a humbucker in the bridge position and a 70's headstock...which I still have.  

As we grow older, too many people cast aside birthdays as things to be noticed, let alone celebrated.   They claim it’s because it’s a reminder they’re getting older.  Well, of course.  But my argument is the opposite: precisely because we’re getting older, that’s all the more reason to celebrate surviving another year.   “I plan on living forever: so far, so good.”

I’d suggest we simply find more grown up ways of celebrating, which doesn’t take too much brainpower.  No more clowns, magicians, or kiddie things.  Go to Hooters or Tilted Kilt.  Go to a nice restaurant.   But above all, celebrate continued life – celebrate that it’s a birthday and not a funeral.  Please.

Cake.  I’m actually not a big fan of cake (“pass it on, Milton” “But..but…!”).  I like chocolate cake with chocolate icing, or red velvet – ideally as a layer cake, not a flat cake.  Ice cream cakes I can’t stand.  Nor do I like carrot cake, or “gallette” (that horrible cake in France – trying to find the king somewhere inside).  Simple is best.  Easier to low out a 4 and a 6 candle than 46 individual candles.  

Trouble in Paris

Yet again, the Islamobastards are causing trouble in Paris.   I’ll use this as a catch-all for these issues, though I can’t claim to be an expert on French politics.  My colleague, teaching history down in Boone, North Carolina, deserves that distinction. 

Charlie Hebdo.   From growing up in Paris I seem to recall several of these highly provocative political publications staring at me from the newsstands.  They had poorly drawn cartoons which poked fun at all sorts of targets.  I ignored them, mainly because the cartoons were so crude I couldn’t even be bothered to ascertain their message to even be offended by them.

            The Mohammed depictions I saw seemed to be less targeting Mohammed himself than his followers here on Earth among the living – and killing – mortals.  I’ve noticed in the US that while many offensive depictions are made of Jesus (e.g. Jesus having sex with himself, aka Jesus f**n Christ) others are more targeted at the Modern Day Pharisees who invoke Jesus’ name for all sorts of moronics of which Jesus Himself would never have approved.   A Brazilian cartoon shows Jesus complaining, “I NEVER told you to crucify homosexuals!” and an angry crowd ignores His disclaimer, accusing Him of being a “maconheiro” (doper).

            I’m aware that Muslims consider even depicting Mohammed – no matter what the intent or context – as per se blasphemy.  Of course, that doesn’t give them the right to kill the offender.  As Bill Maher might point out, when Jesus or the Church are unfavorably described or depicted, we don’t see the Pope’s Swiss Guard show up (“No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!”), halberds blazing, getting medieval on asses, at the scene of the crime.  

            “They had it coming.”  Did they?  If you piss someone off, they’re entitled to kill you?  Survey says…”[X]!”

Action Directe.   Back when I lived in Paris (1979-1990) the terrorists we were concerned about were these home-grown Marxists, Action Directe.  They threatened my high school, the American School of Paris, even to the point where I had to take some IB exams elsewhere; this was in 1986.  Shortly afterwards, the authorities arrested and imprisoned the leaders of the group and it fell apart, which is why we haven’t heard of these clowns since 1987.

Front National.  They’re still around, and thanks to these recent events may pick up more political steam in the next elections.  They’re France’s most prominent and strident far-right party, with the symbol of a tricolor (red/white/blue) flame.  The current leader is Marine Le Pen, the daughter of founder Jean Marie Le Pen.  It seems Marine is more telegenic, media-savvy, and David Duke-y than her father.   In recent years the FN has edged out the PS to become the second most powerful party in France, and although they haven’t yet translated this into absolute numbers of Assembly seats or a Presidency, the FN candidate made it to the run-off in one of the more recent presidential elections. 

Fifth Republic.   Some people complained, “why didn’t the French government censor Charlie Hebdo and prevent his from happening?”  I don’t know… something like freedom of the press?  France is not an Islamic theocracy – yet.  France is a republic, and they’re on their FIFTH version (RF 5.0).  Let’s review the prior versions.

1)   Up to 1792.   Monarchy, ending in Louis XVI.  We all know how he died.

2)   1792-1804.  First Republic.  The French Revolution ushered in RF 1.0.  This included the Reign of Terror under Danton and Robespierre, the Thermidor Reaction, and a bewildering pair of provisional democracies called the Directory and Consulate.  Oh, and RF 1.0 had its hands full fighting full-fledged wars on its eastern frontiers against European monarchies intent on restoring the Bourbons to power.  The last ruler of RF 1.0 was a guy named Napoleon Bonaparte.

3)  1804-1814.  The First Empire (EF 1.0).  Napoleon I crowned himself Emperor and kicked butt across Europe for some time before finally losing at Waterloo and banished to St Helena.

4)  Louis XVIII (1814-1824). The Bourbons returned.

5)  Charles X (1824-1830).  Another King.

6)  Louis Phillippe (1830-1848).  The last King.  In 1848 Europe erupted in revolutions.  This was the time the Communist Manifesto was first published.

7) 1848-1852.  Second Republic (RF 2.0).   Louis Napoleon, aka Napoleon III, won the election in December after the Revolution deposed Louis Phillippe.  Wondering what happened to Napoleon II?  He was Napoleon Bonaparte’s son, who died in exile in Austria without taking power.  LN/N3 was Napoleon’s older brother’s son, i.e. his nephew, and technically the next in line.  LN/N3 spent most of his life before this in Switzerland and London, de facto exile.

8) 1852-1870.  Second Empire (EF 2.0).  LN/N3 took over as Emperor like his famous uncle.  Nowadays he’s remembered for unsuccessful romps in Mexico and Italy, plus beginning French colonization of Indochina.  I say he should be remembered for remodeling Paris into the form we see today – thanks to his good friend Baron Haussman. 

   The Second Empire ended with the Franco-Prussian War (July 1870-January 1871), followed briefly by the Paris Commune (March-May 1871).

9) 1871-1940.  Third Republic (RF 3.0). This emerged after the Paris Commune and survived World War I.  It came down when the Nazis invaded France in May 1940 and set up the Vichy Republic.

10) 1946-1958.  Fourth Republic (RF 4.0).  After World War II until 1959, when they changed the constitution and form of government – without a revolution!  It took the crisis in Algeria to show that RF 4.0 wasn’t good enough.   Charles De Gaulle was the last prime minister of RF 4.0 and the first president of RF 5.0, until his resignation in 1969.

11)  1959-present.  Fifth Republic (RF 5.0).  That’s what we have today.  The biggest difference between RF 4.0 and 5.0 is that the new version is led by a President, yet they still have a prime minister, he’s just not the top guy anymore.  As you might expect, as a republic this country has free elections, freedom of religion, and freedom of the press.  So Charlie Hebdo has a right to publish anything it wants without fear of violent retaliation by Islamobastards. 

French Military.  As I said, a catch-all.  I’ve read some recent articles written by US soldiers in Afghanistan.  They were consistently highly favorable about French soldiers serving there.  The general idea is, “we’ve all heard the jokes about French surrendering, but these soldiers – and they’re not even Foreign Legion, they’re regulars – are all highly motivated and competent.”  Let’s look at the big picture

1.  Napoleon I.  France conquers Europe until everyone gangs up on Napoleon.  Not a bad track record.

2.  Napoleon III.  France suffers defeat in the Franco-Prussian War.  The Prussians outmaneuvered the French, helped immensely by their Krupp guns.  At a tactical level, the French Chassepot rifle was superior to the Prussian “needle gun”.

3.  WWI.  The French fought hard and bravely.  The leaders were a bit stupid, sometimes, but Petain was no slouch.

4.  WWII.  Here’s the doozy.  Hitler completely outflanked the French with his cut through the Ardennes.  Also, the French military was heavily demoralized in the interwar years, as the country itself was polarized into far-right and left-wing factions who couldn’t agree on anything.  Thus the French were completely unprepared for WWII.

5.  Dien Bien Phu.  The French screwed this up big time, mainly because they completely underestimated the Viet Minh’s abilities.  The Germans in the FFL complained that the training they received was in Africa and had no relevance to jungle fighting.  Mind you, the French also lost to the guerillas in Haiti back in the early 1800s, marking twice that its conventional forces have been defeated by a guerilla army. 

            French forces in Afghanistan are up against the Taliban.  Since the Islamobastards have a long track record of causing trouble back in France, you can expect French soldiers to be very motivated to sticking it to the Taliban on its own turf.  

In the Beginning (Guitar)

These days I’m teaching guitar – informally.   And it brings me back to my earliest days learning to play guitar.  Here are my thoughts.

Guitar Learning 101.   My first attempt at learning guitar was at Marymount, with a teacher giving lessons, who we’ll call Mr. M.  Mr. M gave me some basic strumming exercises which bore no resemblance to any music I wanted to learn, and did not even deign to inform me as to their relevance or importance as any skill set I would need for any particular form of music.  Possibly they related to the Beatles’ skiffle origin, but again, I was arrogantly given these instructions without the least bit of instruction.  Needless to say I gave up on that immediately.

Guitar Learning 201.  Fast forward a few years – 1985 – and my brother came back from lessons with Joel (where is he now?) beaming that he’d learned the intro riff to Whitesnake’s “Saints & Sinners”.  Woohoo!  Now we’re talking.  The next week I went to Joel and started learning AC/DC and Black Sabbath riffs.  Not the entire songs or any solos, just the intro riffs.  You’d bring a cassette of what you wanted to learn, and Joel would figure it out by ear and teach you how to play it: he’d even write it down on blank tablature sheet so you could refer to that at home and practice from that. 

Of course, learning that way got us started out quickly, but eventually you realized that it was sui generis: without learning principles, you would need his assistance to learn everything and weren’t learning the basics.  Joel was happy to teach those if you wanted.  He also explained that reading sheet music was of marginal utility for a guitarist:  standard music notation was designed for classical instruments like piano and violin, while tablature was expressly designed for guitar. 

Guitar Learning 301.  Fast forward (not all that far, actually) to freshman year at University of Maryland, College Park, fall 1986.  I met a friend named Baron (where is HE now?) who showed me what I thought was impossible: he had learned, note for note, practically all of Black Sabbath’s songs – including the solos.  WHOA.  That blew my mind.  Eventually he let slip that he hadn’t figured them out himself, he simply referred to The Black Sabbath Anthology and learned them from the tablature.  However, that does take immense patience, for which he deserves superlative credit.  For my part, I did the same and learned the solos for various Black Sabbath songs, including “Paranoid”, “War Pigs”, “Iron Man”, and “Black Sabbath”. 

    But here’s something even funnier.  If you listen to live material, you’ll notice that Tony Iommi, Angus Young, and most other guitarists rarely play the solos note-for-note in concert.  In interviews, Iommi admits that he never had the patience to sit down and actually write a solo that way, or learn to play his own recorded solos verbatim.   So when Baron blazed away at these solos, as I did later, we were doing something the guitarist himself never bothered to do.  Alex Lifeson, of Rush, is among the few guitarists who meticulously works out a solo and diligently reproduces it live. 

Guitar Learning 401.  By my junior year of college, I had learned the secret:  blues & pentatonic scales, from the Heavy Guitar Bible.  Once I learned these scales, picking out AC/DC and Black Sabbath solos myself became simple, and the Black Sabbath Anthology – which I’d lost moving in summer 1988 and never replaced – became unnecessary.  I even managed to learn the extended solo of Black Sabbath's “The Warning”, and the solo to Judas Priest’s “Dreamer Deceiver”, on my own without any tablature. 

First guitar.  My brother and I started out on an old acoustic we’d had for years.  For Christmas 1985 we got our first electric guitar: an Ibanez Roadstar II (black, no pickguard, rosewood fretboard) with three single coil pickups, essentially Ibanez’ proprietary-styled copy of a Fender Stratocaster.  We still have this guitar. 

            For my part, I was enthralled by the Fender Stratocaster, but I realized that those guitars were too expensive to justify a purchase by a beginning guitarist.  Over the Christmas vacation, I worked at the Office of American Services (OAS), the US Embassy section which makes tourist passports.  I earned enough over 2 weeks to buy a cheap copy – by a company called Applause – of a Stratocaster, in cherry sunburst with a maple fretboard.  By November 1986 I’d replaced it with a Japanese Fender Stratocaster in black, rosewood fretboard, and locking tremolo (we’ve since sold both guitars long ago).  But the Ibanez and Applause were my starts.

I still need to refer to tablature for trickier songs, and I never did master the skill set of the Beatles’ strumming and skiffle basics.  But thanks to Joel, I started out on guitar and never gave up.  Thanks to Baron, I learned solos - and indirectly, learned to improvise on scales.  I imagine the next level will be learning the skill sets behind the Beatles’ and Grateful Dead guitar techniques.