I'd forgotten about that dude...

Jay J. Armes has left the building.

I remember seeing this dude on daytime talk shows in the early Seventies. One of the kids in my neighborhood had the J.J. Armes action figure, even, and we all thought he was cool. Supposedly J.J. even knew kung fu and had a pistol built into one of his hands.

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That's good news!

Better check and see if Costco will let you return those three cases of toilet paper you bought on speculation, hoping to sell it to your less-foresighted neighbors in a couple weeks, because the longshoremen's strike is off (at least for the next several months.)

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Meme Dump...

Automotif DLIII...

Chevrolet's fourth generation of Corvette debuted in January of 1983 as an '84 model, replacing the C3 'Vette, a.k.a. the Stingray, which had enjoyed an uninterrupted fifteen model year run.

With the introduction of the Tuned-Port Injection L98 350 Small Block V-8 in 1985, it brought performance back to the model line, after the dismal 200hp "Cross-Fire" dual throttle body injected 350 of the '82-'84 models. In '89 the clunky Doug Nash "4+3" transmission, needed because the Borg Warner T5 of the era wasn't up to the torque of the L98, was replaced with a proper ZF 6-speed manual.

Finally for the 1990 model year came the ultimate factory C4 Corvette option, the ZR-1.

GM had acquired Lotus in '86, and they proceeded to design a new 5.7L V-8 that shared nothing but its displacement and the spacing of its bore centers with the existing Chevy Small Block. An all-alloy DOHC 32V motor, it was largely built by Mercury Marine before final assembly and installation at the Corvette plant in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Known as the LT5, it was rated at 375 SAE net horsepower and 370 lb-ft of torque.

Car and Driver's test ZR-1 bolted to sixty in only 4.5 seconds, which was legit supercar territory in 1990 and still not too shabby today. It dispatched the quarter in 12.8 seconds at 111 miles per hour and topped out at a buck seventy-five. These wwer Ferrari and Lamborghini performance numbers, but with a GM warranty and a $51,500 price tag, roughly $124k in today's coin. Only 3,049 ZR-1s were produced that first model year, one of which is this Bright Red example.

They were subtle, too. The only external cues that this wasn't a regular 'Vette were those super meaty 17" rear skins (315/35-ZR17s mounted on 11"-wide rims) and a convex, rather than concave, rear end that had four squarish tail lamps rather than the traditional round 'Vette units. Of course, since most other cars would only be viewing it from the rear, maybe it wasn't that hard to spot...

(For 1991, all Corvettes got the convex rear, but the nose and fender vents mark this as a 1990 car, so it's a ZR-1.)

It was photographed in March of 2023 using a Canon EOS-1D Mark IV and an EF 70-200mm f/4L IS zoom lens.

Speaking of which...

I just linked to a piece about Diego Garcia the other day, and now comes the news that the United Kingdom has agreed to hand the Chagos Islands (of which the Diego Garcia atoll is a part) over to Mauritius.

That was the last British colonial possession east of Suez, so this is kinda historic.

As part of the conditions of the treaty, which is still being finalized, the UK/US base on Diego Garcia will be permitted to remain. That's a good thing because it's of enormous, and growing, strategic importance.

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Tab Clearing...

• The only skyscraper designed by Frank Lloyd Wright is up for sale. Opening bid is only six hundred grand! It has a really baller penthouse apartment with built-in furnishings designed by Wright, too. I dunno what the nightlife is like in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, but I bet you can see clear to the horizon.


• How do you say "Join the army or go to jail" in Russian?


• Try something new. You might have a good time!

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Meme Dump...

Great Moments in Bad Ideas

On this day in 1995, Robert Overacker rode a jet ski off the brink of Niagara Falls and into history...and eternity.

Currently off the shelf...

Well, it's not really off the shelf since I'm reading it on my iPad via the Kindle app, but at any rate, I'm reading Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter after seeing several good reviews complimenting the writing style.

They were not wrong! This is well-written and hard to put down. I started yesterday afternoon and I'm about a third of the way in. (It's early 2020 and Elliott Management has just tried a boardroom coup to oust Jack Dorsey... again ...from the CEO's chair.)

I imagine I'll be done by this evening so I can write a proper book review.

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Charlie Hustle has left the building.

Pete Rose was controversial for a whole bunch of reasons, but there's also no denying he was one of the greatest to ever play the game.

After stints with the Cincinnati Reds, Philadelphia Phillies and Montreal Expos, Mr. Rose retired as a player in 1986 with 4,256 hits and a career batting average of .303, hitting above .300 for a season 15 times. Most baseball historians and stat aficionados presume that the combination of Mr. Rose’s skill and longevity — the average MLB career is about six years — will make his hits record impossible to beat.

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Tab Clearing...

Today in headlines:

• Fidelity has cut its estimate of X’s value by 79% since Musk’s purchase


• China, at UN, warns against ‘expansion of the battlefield’ in the Ukraine war


• Switzerland and Italy redraw border due to melting glaciers

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Spiking the punch...

With Meta aggressively scraping your posts to train its large language models, feel free to drop some acid in the Facebook/Instagram punchbowl.

Fabingy!

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Automotif DLII..

By 1990 the life cycle of the Chevy Camaro's third generation was drawing to a close. Work was already underway on its replacement. Meanwhile, Chevrolet's sponsorship of the International Race Of Champions had ended, and so the sportiest Camaro reverted to the old Z28 moniker.

In order to juice sales for the final couple model years, Chevy released the 1991 Camaros early, only about halfway through the normal run of the '90 model year.

The 1991s featured some minor styling changes to spice them up, especially for the Z28 model. There was a new, more aggro ground effects package, with a bigger chin spoiler and cosmetic "scoops" on the side skirts. The Z28 added a big elevated rear wing and non-functional "power blisters" on the hood. Since there was no longer room in the spoiler for the third brake light, it was moved to the top of the rear window, on the inside.

The base motor on the Z28 was the LB9 tuned-port 305 small block, rated at 205 horsepower, with either a 5-speed manual or 4-speed automatic gearbox. Ticking the G92 Performance Enhancement Group option box got you a 5-speed manual with a 3.42 rear end and bumped the output of the LB9 TPI motor to 230hp.

The hot ticket for laying down the big numbers in the quarter with a '91 Z28 was selecting the L98 5.7L motor, which put out 245 horsepower, and getting the G92 3.42 rear end. This dropped quarter mile times to 14.3 seconds at 95 mph, according to Musclecar Review magazine, making it one of the few F-body configurations that could run with the 5.0L H.O. 'Stangs of the time at the drag strip.

This Ultra Blue Metallic '91 Z28, which would have had a base MSRP of $15,445 when new, was photographed using a Nikon D7000 and 16-80mm f/2.8-4E VR zoom lens in September of 2020.

Tab Clearing...

• Unless you're deployed there (or transiting through) this piece from the Beeb is about as close a look as you'll get at Diego Garcia.


• Helene set some storm surge records in Florida.


• More stuff on the sunk minisub.

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That came in handy...

Tucked into my tote bag is my handy ProStorm travel umbrella, which was robust enough to use yesterday, despite the heavy winds.

However the rain was almost horizontal at times, which made me glad for another piece of snivel gear I keep in there.

Not technically a rain poncho, it's windproof and wicks like nobody's business. Just don't go pedestrianing around in it after dark.

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Hammered by Helene

Not us here in Indy, mind you. We got a little wind and rain. Some branches were down here and there. Power flickered only long enough to set the microwave clock to blinking. Other than that, it was pretty much a wet firecracker here.

Asheville, North Carolina on the other hand... yikes.

I remember when a good-size rock closed I-40 west of Asheville, and also when the southbound lanes of I-75 slid off the mountaintop between Knoxville and the Kentucky border, and how much that snarled traffic. I can't imagine what it's going to do to a decent-sized city like Asheville to have all interstate access whatsoever temporarily cut off.

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Meme Dump...

Automotif DLI...

The fifth (and final) generation of Chevrolet's El Camino ute debuted in 1978 as a downsized version of its predecessors and received a fairly heavy mid-cycle styling refresh for 1982. It had been styled to resemble the Malibu midsize sedan, but after the refresh it took its cues from the G-body Monte Carlo personal luxury coupe.

Gone were the hairier engine options from yesteryear, as the more fuel-conscious "new size" truckette came with an assortment of V-6s, a tame 305 small block, or the execrable Oldsmobile 350 diesel.

Chevrolet did offer a factory SS option, RPO Z15, that came with some trim & paint detail differences and an air dam. It also came with big SS decals on the doors and tailgate up through '83, but that stopped because Chevrolet started contracting through Choo Choo Customs of Chattanooga, which had mostly been known for its luxo conversion vans, to do an SS appearance package for the El Camino.

Choo Choo customs essentially fitted a Monte Carlo Super Sport snout and ground effects to the El Camino. In addition to the nose job, various options were available, like a "cowl induction" style hood bulge and functional side pipes.

Unlike the Monte Carlo SS, though, the El Camino SS was all bark and no bite. Whereas the Monte could be had with the L69 305 H.O. small block, which came with better-flowing heads, low-restriction exhaust, flat top 9.5:1 pistons, and a 750cfm Quadrajet, all of which added up to 190 horsepower, the Choo Choo Customs El Caminos still had the basic LG4 4-barrel 305 taxi motor from the regular El Caminos. While the lower compression ratio meant it'd run happily on regular gas, it also meant it only put out 150 horsepower.

The top and bottom photos were shot with a Nikon D1X and Nikon's excellent 35mm f/1.8 DX prime lens in November of 2021, while the middle one was snapped in October of 2020 using a Nikon D7000 and a 16-80mm f/2.8-4E VR zoom lens.