Tag / cars

Highlights from my spot on Speed TV’s My Ride Rules, featuring the Grape Space Coaster in all her “professional bad ass” glory! I’m called a “vegan vixen who works as a burlesque dancer” and a “dirty hot chick with a dirty hot car”. Watch the highlight clip and let me know if they were accurate.

So many radically cool things happened as part of this filming and my mom and my detailing session, with dish soap and toothbrush, the days prior to shoot was just the beginning. First of all, I was brought on to film the pilot episode. The show hadn’t even been picked up yet! For all I knew, this pilot could have gone to the great tv graveyard like so many other pilots I’ve been in (including one with Gary Cole and Ted Lavine). But no (how fascinating!) – we must have killed it because this pilot got picked up for series. During the pilot episode filming, I got to drive three other cars on the show and really, that was totally rock and roll for me – the BMW was responsive, but annoying. The Mustang looked sexy, but felt dry and needed some attention. The Dodge two truck was hard to drive, but wow, did I feel like a Queen pulling up to a school bus and waving to a load of 7 year olds – at eye level – nodding my head and playing it cool while they got excited and started licking the windows.

I got to take my baby on the race track! Driving Willow Springs Race Track was fun, fun, fun and I found out just how well this 45 year old car really does grip corners, break in and out of acceleration and fish tail. We can dance if we want to!

If all that wasn’t kick ass enough, though, I also met some of the most wicked people ever. Co-director Lorena David, PA Kari Kurto, Mustang daredevil Jason Van Doornick and the epic Scooby … these folk are unforgettable human beings who all happen to dig cars, like I do, too. Maybe someday I’ll host my own car show and end up combining two of my big loves: cars and performance. It’s either hosting a car show or burlesque dancing (with cars) at auto conventions. Wait … I think I’ve got a car show I need to pitch myself – I’m surely not the only one who wants to see that idea happen!

Enjoy my highlight reel:

Tonight on Speed TV you can watch me and the Grape Space Coaster (1965 Buick Riviera) on the premiere episode of the new series, My Ride Rules. 9pm PST!

Early this year the Grape Space Coaster and I were asked to be on a television pilot, then titled Come Drive With Me. Similar to the English series Come Dine With Me, where four couples invite the others over to their homes for a dinner party and then for fun and a small prize, rank each others’ dinner parties and award the victor. Come Drive With Me brought four car lovers together in much the same format.

Well, we must have ROCKED that pilot because Speed TV picked us up to go to series! I’m an actress in the tv/film industry and have been in several pilots, including one where I acted a big scene with Ted Lavine opposite Gary Cole. None of those pilots – not even the Lavine/Cole one – got picked up. It’s hard for a pilot to make it to series. Come Drive With Me is the first pilot I’ve been in that’s been picked up. And it’s a fascinating process to be a part of.

The pilot cars/stars had to reshoot our episode finale and wow – what a difference a funded studio budget makes. Crew, lights, efficiency – pow! Congratulations to co-directors and creators Laurena David and Mark Roberts – it must be exciting to have the network backing your creativity.

As for me, it’s gonna be fun to get some beauty footage of my Riviera on camera. It was a TON of fun to hang out with other car lovers and drive their rides. The time from filming our pilot to going to series and reshooting our finale was about 3 months and the directors kept telling me not to cut my hair or paint my car in case we got picked up and I had to match in continuity. Well, it’s official; the Grape Space Coaster and I will be on Speed TV’s My Ride Rules (official new title) August 3rd. And I can now celebrate by taking some length off these dreadlocks and taking my lady in for some paint and chrome.

Jasmine. Trumpet lilly. Purple tree drops flowers on me.

And my purple car. Jasmine. May June July and more. Baby birds and wet sidewalks. Early morning lucid dreams: feeling the sounds you made.

Ginko tree and citrus blossom. Mediterranean architecture and really unique succulents in glazed outdoor pots. And pot. And it’s good to have so much in common in some ways with someone. Let’s never forget this day, why don’t we not?

It’s a small world, after all. And, California, we’ve found one another already.

I love the last line in this advertisement for the 1965 Buick Riviera, cut from a magazine of the time; “Check with your Buick dealer soon. He may convince you you’re younger, richer and more romantic than you thought you were.”

I’ll take two!

I do have to admit, driving this powerhouse does make me feel things, but I’d use the words “badass, unstoppable and renegade” before I’d say romantic. This is the size and type of back seat a girl could loose her virginity in someday, it’s true. But that’s not exactly a sentiment worthy of writing on the inside of a Valentine’s Day card. “Check with your Buick dealer. He might convince you you want to do it in the rear.”

Whoops, did I say that?

I came into possession of these two original 1965 Buick Riviera advertisements recently and read this story about the trend setting new design of this auto for the 1963-65 class. The 1963-65 Buick styling was considered so revolutionarily elegant and sexy, that Sergio Pininfarina, Farrari designer, is quoted as calling it “one of the most beautiful American cars ever built”, and Raymond Loewy, Stedebaker Avanti and Champion designer calls it the handsomest American production car at the Paris Auto Show. Renowned fashion photographers were hired to capture the new design on film. Just look at the female models in these adverts: plush designer clothing and noses in the air. This class car innovated manufacturing by introducing the first framless side glass flush, adhesive-mounted rear window and windshields. It was the fastest car on the road, with the exception of high-power sports cars and did 0-60 in 8.5 seconds and the 1/4 mile in 16.5. The transected script Riviera logo was released in ’63 to reflect the sophistication of these luxury muscle cars and it worked. People thought this car’s styling was seriously landmark.

Unfortunately, the marketing campaign was TOO effective and people got the idea that the car was so plush and rare that it was utterly unaffordable, so in ’65 Buick made a few design upgrades and adjusted their marketing angle to draw admirers in rather than alienate them; “Check with your Buick dealer soon. He might convince you you’re younger, richer and more romantic than you thought you were.”

The 1965 maintained the same luxury body styling, but offered a Gran Sport option with B&M; transmission and a monstrous 425 engine block to satisfy the muscle car aura. The 1965 also incorporated the still famous “clam shell” headlight covers and was the only year this option was manufactured. With the innovative ’63 luxury body styling, the ’65 clam shell inclusion and the ’65 Gran Sport package, the 1965 Buick Riviera specifically stands out as an extremely uncommon and highly praised classic today.

I secretly like driving her dirty. Not only does she feel like she runs better that way, but I feel better, too.

Tank Girl didn’t run her counter-attacks on a show room floor and I’m not the type of chick keeping a collection of cars just to look at. I drive this thing. That’s the whole point. I don’t need people to be amazed at how much money I have to waste on something that comes out of the heated garage and down the hills once a month – I need to have some fun. Frequently. And right now. These muscles are for USING, don’t you doubt it. And things that get used get dirty. Things that get used well get real dirty.

We match when she’s a little Mad Max on the outside(growling on the inside) anyway – we are both low maintenance girls. I’ve owned this classic for 2.5 years and between you and I, I’ve washed her 3 whole times, including today. That does not mean she’s neglected – oh, no! I keep her engine strong and consistently healthy – I just don’t have the same interest in the cosmetic preening side of things … for either of us.

Uncharacteristically for me, today I pampered her with a scrub and facial for our upcoming spot on a television pilot. We aren’t some background actors – we are the plot! So I gathered my team (whom included my mother – she’s badass!) and got down to the nitty gritty of a fine tuned visual detailing session. Chrome polish, 800 CCA battery, engine block toothbrushed and interior soaped – she’s a LOOKER! She’s like a new car and I, an impressed owner. Thank goodness for a strong man and an electric buffer – another 10% of my previous purple paint came off on that buff pad (I don’t have a clear coat), but what is left just glows like the South Hollywood Samsung sign. I hope this 5 hour detailing session makes her feel like a star for those scrutinizing high def cameras.

I hope my personal scrub and facial tomorrow do the same for Blade Runner me.

The previous owner, Chris Dursa, of this gorgeous 1965 Buick Riviera Coupe sent me these videos to get me amped about my new ride. And wow … did it!

He did the frame off restoration himself, making it easy on me. I get to finish her off, apply my taste and fill her with wild life. Don’t hurt your neck crankin it to get a view!

“Super sex pistols,” was all he said.

Pretending I knew what it was he was talking about, I replied cooly, “Oh, yea?” … As I slipped a cowgirl boot on the pedal, smooth as mama’s avocados, and glided off elegantly on my hot pink flamed bicycle, pretty much assuring that whatever was meant by “super sex pistols”, it was accurate.

Super sex pistols, la la la.

Super sex pistols, lalala.

I ride my bike all over this town because me and glitter sidewalks – that’s my Hollywood. Me and the Angelene billboard – that’s my Hollywood. Me and Charlie Chaplin, me and Jewish mansions, me and date palms, me in cut-off shorts powering up the hills, toward the stars, in cowgirl boots on a hot pink flamed bicycle – that’s my Hollywood.

That’s your Hollywood.

I’ve decided to retire my waste vegetable oil Jetta and purchase a new, lostafun car for those rare times when I have to go to another country, like Sherman Oaks, for an audition. I’m hoping a 1965 PURPLE Buick Riviera Coupe will evoke as much positivity as this white-walled pink cruiser does. Sometimes I feel like it’s my duty to wear sunshine yellow dresses, keep my dread locks untied, or cruise a purple hot rod – people invariably smile when they see me coming. I make people happy by just looking at me. I’m the cosmic muse.

And a stranger’s super sex pistols.

Smile – here I come!