Kickin' Rocks

by Don Pennington

Bitchin' and Pitchin'...It's What We Do

The Oakland Roadster Show, oops I mean the San Mateo Roadster Show, oops... the Pomona Roadster Show... well actually the Grand National Roadster Show has found a new home... again. I know it's confusing, but imagine how the poor guy feels that has been "away" for a while due to one of those unfortunate vehicle ownership disputes accompanied by several charges of something about a high speed pursuit and making personal comments about the Sheriff's mother. Well you can look at the GNRS Road Show two ways, those changes were necessitated by business decisions to make the show profitable and thereby continue to survive, or on the other side of the table...ours...it's damn confusing and real weird. Off hand the move to San Mateo was curious, which is actually south of South San Francisco, which is south of where the Oakland Roadster Show started. The move to L.A. seemed like one of those "what took them so damn long" deals, what better place to have the GNRS than in the heart of roadster country, where it all began, Los Angeles!  Except....it's not in the L.A. it's almost forty miles from L.A., which may not be all that bad since L.A. is a million miles across. Of course it is on the L.A. County Fairgrounds, location of the L.A. Roadsters annual soiree, the NHRA Museum and the Winternationals, hot rodders have been dragging there wives and kids there for years. The GNRS has such a giant history that if you are within a hunert miles of the thing you should go, with or without the rug rats. Hopefully this latest move will put new juice in the show so it can continue for another fifty years. Some people say that they don't like the name of the show or where it is or the color of the walls or that it is only for roadsters... whether the info is right or not it seems you just can't satisfy some people. Hot rodding is a great pastime but how much fun would this car thing be if we couldn't bitch a little?

As kids and long before you or I had our first car, we were drooling over the hot rods and customs in magazines and wishin' we had one of those cool rides that was puttin' around town, we were so busy cutting up those magazines and sticking pictures to the walls we apparently didn't have enough time to change our underwear (maybe that's where the "skid mark" analogy came from...ya think?).  Almost immediately we became experts, we knew it all, we knew what we would build and what it would look like and everybody else's opinions were junk. This was fine, but lacking the key ingredient of cash, the only thing we could afford to do was dream, cut up magazines and of course pitch on the cars that didn't meet our standards. Decades later, after all those years of playing with real cars one thing seems to have stayed unchanged,  the "power of the bitch" remains high on our list of things to do, it has officially become our primary pastime! Many deny there participation in the dark corner of our foolishness but we all know it's so, and we all do it. The sooner everyone recognizes their flaws and "come out" (I understand this is very therapeutic with "those" people) the sooner we all can openly play the game.

Another thing we did as kids was throwing dirt clods, that was a bunch of fun (the earliest form of hit and run, dine and dash, etc.), mud pies were even better, they kinda splattered when they hit and if your were lucky you'd get your target and some collateral damage on a couple of others. Pitchin' and Bitchin' is kinda that way too, the juicier the pitch the bigger splatter. This is kind of an art form though you will need some skill so the splatter won't kick back and get you. It has entered my mind that those doing the bitchin' may have some sort of psych problem (the lady on the corner said she could fix any problem I had for twenty bucks). I'm not saying we're nuts if we pitch a little, but I think the louder the Pitchin' and Bitchin' the closer you are to the funny farm.  High quality P&B is measured by the number of people it pisses off, the more dramatic and the louder the put-down the better. Lightweights only pitch those puny girly chops (in the day, we called put-downs "chops"), it's like... I have an opinion but I'm not sure I want you to hear it.  For this game to be big fun you need two or three players, better with only you and one other so you can have total deniability. The best targets are those people that dare to be different, the guys that stretch the envelope and do things that will be cool in a year or so, but for now... thy are fresh meat!  These were the guys that had flames and ran Buick Skylark wires decades before it was cool with the masses (come to think of it they still are running the Skylarks). Starting the game is easy, after inhaling the better part of a six pack (rule Number 1, always visit the hoppmeister before starting the game),  walk around the fairgrounds, as your fuzzy eyes begin to focus you see a target rich environment,  endless things that you could do better... color, wheels, body changes... antenna ball choice. When you see a juicy target, before engaging mouth... take a quick look around, pitchin' on a guys car can get a bit dicey if the owner is within ear shot (Rule number 2). There are a million things you could pick on, but if you want to graduate to the big time, go find the magazine cars, the cars that were the world's best this and that. Look for a group standing by the car with expensive silk shirts, light colored hair follicles, and bulges in their pants (not the Mae West kind, the money kind; the bulges are different but the feeling is about the same), slither up next to them, just out of fist reach, and start listing the six or eight features you like best and what you would have done better. Make sure that your tirade is continuous, any break in your momentum may give the opposition a chance to move in and kick the bee-geezus out of you. When you are done immediately excuse yourself and move briskly to the nearest exit. If one of those guys does catch you, the cool part of the deal is that you will have a story to tell people, you can emphasize that your ideas were so much better than his, and he was so humiliated that he just lost it and smacked you, and you are definitely going to file suit and get his car in the settlement.

Whatever leaks out of your brain, make it good, if your buddy wants to turn you in for making fun of a fellow rodder (and he will), you've got to make your disgrace worthwhile. You may get kicked off the fairgrounds, so while you are being thrown into the street by a couple of big guys you have pitched on, you need something you can yell for the world to hear... something that will make you immortal, make them remember you, something highlighting intimate social encounters with certain distaff members of a national political candidate (that might get you in the newspapers too)... or things that you and the buddy (the one that turned you in)... enjoyed together, not that there's anything wrong with that.  

Kick a Rock

DP