EM CARTAZ

Espetáculo: ADVOCACIA SEGUNDO OS IRMÃOS MARX

Uma advogada corrupta e seus preguiçosos assistentes tentam dar golpes nos clientes que os procuram.

Texto: Bernado Jablonski. Direção: Fabiano Valor. Com Heloísa Perissé, Marcelo Adnet, Fernando Caruso.

Dias/Horários/Preços: R$40. Terças e Quartas às 21h.

Local: Teatro das Artes (Rua Marquês de São Vicente, 52, Shopping da Gávea)

Contato: (21) 2540-6004

**

Espetáculo: AMIGO É PRA ESSAS COISAS

A comédia do estreante Vitor Hugo Marques trata do universo masculino representado por Amadeu, um quarentão com cinco filhos de cinco ex-casamentos.

Direção: Daniel Dias da Silva. Com Gláucio Gomes, Dig Dutra, Paulo Giardini.

Horários/Preços: R$40 (Qua) e R$50 (Qui). Quartas e Quintas às 21h.

Local: Teatro dos Grandes Atores (Av. das Américas, 3.555, Shopping Barra Square. Barra da Tijuca)

Contato: (21) 3325-1645

**

Espetáculo: ÀS FAVAS COM OS ESCRÚPULOS

Bibi Ferreira estrela a comédia de Juca de Oliveira fazendo o papel da mulher de um senador de República que descobre que o marido tem uma amante.

Direção: Jô Soares. Com Gracindo Júnior, Bárbara Paz, Daniel Warren.

Dias/Horários/Preços: R$80 (QUI/SEX/DOM) e R$ 100 (SÁB). Quinta a Sábado às 21h.

Local: Teatro Clara Nunes (Rua Marquês de São Vicente, 52, Shopping da Gávea)

Contato: (21) 2274-9696

**

Espetáculo: ATOS SEM PALAVRAS I

A Última Gravação de Krapp. Sérgio Britto apresenta duas peças curtas de Samuel Beckett, que tratam do arrependimento de um homem pelas escolhas de sua vida e a luta de uma pessoa para sobreviver em uma situação desesperadora.

Adaptação e direção Isabel Cavalcanti.

Dias/Horários/Preços: R$15. Sexta a Domingo às 19h30.

Local: Espaço Oi Futuro (Rua Dois de Dezembro, 63, Flamengo)

Contato: (21) 3131-3060

**

Espetáculo: AO MEU RIO

Declarações de Amor: uma exaltação musical. Bossa-nova, samba e até discoteca são alguns dos gêneros musicais utilizados para falar do Rio de Janeiro.

Musical escrito e dirigido por Antônio De Bonis. Com Andréia Veiga, Stella Maria Rodrigues e Renato Rabelo.

Dias/Horários/Preços: R$30 (QUI)/R$40 (SEX a DOM). Quinta a Sábado às 21h e Domingo às 20h.

Local: Teatro Café Pequeno (Av. Ataulfo de Paiva, 269, Leblon)

Contato: (21) 2294-44809

**

As the five pieces included in this slim compilation of Samuel Beckett's shorter works all share a common overall tone and theme, I am electing to review them as one cohesive unit rather than offering separate reviews for each. I also felt that each work presented was too short to necessitate any real substantial review on its own. The stage play Krapp's Last Tape opens and establishes the running mood of the volume, and is followed by two radio plays, All That Fall and Embers, and two outlines for mime performances, Acts Without Words I & Acts Without Words II.

Though the works embrace a different method of performance art, they all reflect each character's attempts to eke out some semblance of meaning in an increasingly absurd, confusing existance. From Krapp, reliving birthdays past through a series of monologues taped decades before, to the struggling couples of the radio plays and on through the silent figures in the Acts Without Words series - all actively yearn to piece together answers from what fragments remain of their respective environments. Though Krapp's Last Tape is the intended focal point, I actually thought Acts Without Words I best reflects the rivulets of desperation and mounting frustration flowing through the other pieces presented. Its simplistic presentation of satisfaction pursued and denied almost perfectly summarizes everything that lays inside the core of Krapp, the Rooneys, and Henry and Ada from earlier in the volume.

This being Beckett, of course, even the 5 pages of Acts Without Words II begs for multiple readings in order to fully grasp every nuance and allusion. I've only read this mini-anthology once, so I'm not going to make any claims of catching all the minutiae included, but I do plan on reading and hopefully dissecting it further in the future. Beckett is a consummate, eloquent dramatist, and the five scripts and outlines that have been pieced together here are all valuable examples from his body of work.

Bibliographical Information

Beckett, Samuel. Krapp's Last Tape and Other Dramatic Pieces. New York: Grove Press, 1960.

Further Reading

Samuel Beckett's own Waiting for Godot could have been seamlessly integrated into this volume. Like Krapp's Last Tape itself and the four other performances alongside it, Waiting for Godot explores its main characters' dire pining for something - anything - that makes sense as the world around them dissolves into a cacaphony of absurdity and illogic. The classic Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Thomas Stoppard also explores the same themes in a manner almost identical to Beckett. Both of the aforementioned dramas, however, incorporate considerably more dark humor into the storyline than those included in Krapp's Last Tape.

~Riot

*********************************

CULTURA ETÉREA SEPTIEMBRE

"Las cosas que los malos hacen mal", Zeithgeist.
"Luna y páramo", LMC.
"Carta de Marte a Gertrudis", Nuna Sunz.
"La gente cambió la palabra terror por Stephen King", Zeithgeist.
"Después del diagnostico", Nuna Sunz.

Música: Dos lanzamientos rosarinos
- Matilda "Para ser movimiento"
- The Broken Toys "Del lado equivocado"

Además:
EL ARCÓN GRÁFICO Nº 1 - ENTREVISTAS A EMIL CIORAN

CONOCE LA NUEVA EDICIÓN EN NUESTRO SITIO:
http://www.culturaeterea.com.ar/

http://www.culturaeterea.com.ar/

http://www.culturaeterea.com.ar/

*********************************

Samuel Beckett

{Source: Londonshots}

Also found on Xu Xanov (http://yasharasaremi.blogspot.com/ and Big Art Mob

hep denedin
hep yenildin
tekrar dene
tekrar yenil
daha iyi yenil...

("ever tried, ever failed. try again, fail again. fail better")

"yeryüzünün gözyaşları sonsuzdur. biri ağlamaya başladığında, bir başka yerde, bir başkasının gözyaşı diner..."

"musteri: tanri dunyayi alti gunde yaratti ama siz alti ayda bana bir pantolon dikmeyi beceremediniz.

terzi: ama bayim, bir su dunyanin haline bakin, bir de pantolonunuza."

Hier gemacht. War ja irgendwie klar, dass ich den einzigen Iren in der Auswahl erwische :roll:

Bloom's book on reading consists of a short introduction, which sets the stage for the kind of reading he prefers, followed by sections devoted to short stories, poems, novels, plays, more novels, and an epilogue.

Bloom's favorite writers are Shakespeare and Samuel Johnson. But it's Francis Bacon who provides the prose equivalent for Stevens's poem: "Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider."

Bloom augments Bacon: "I urge you to find what truly comes near to you, that can be used for weighing and for considering. Read deeply, not to believe, not to accept, not to contradict, but to learn to share in that one nature that writes and reads."

Bloom hopes to inspire an "authentic reader." Yet, "It is not the function of reading to cheer us up, or to console us prematurely." 

"You are more than an ideology," Bloom says.

"Chekhov and Beckett were the kindest human beings," Bloom says. Reading Bloom, here and elsewhere, one wants to add his name to the list of the kindest readers, writers, and teachers.

Bloom, H. (2000). How to read and why. New York: Scribner.

Part one of the film adaptation of one of Beckett's plays, "Play". Again, pay attention to the auditory devices and its effect on tone and the overall message conveyed. It's pretty fun to listen to over and over again. Try reciting the lines to really feel the punch!

Yes, strange, darkness best, and the darker the worse, then all well, for the time, but it will come, the time will come, the thing is there, you'll see it, get off me, keep off me, all dark, all still, all over, wiped out-- Yes, perhaps, a shade gone, I suppose, some might say, poor thing, a shade gone, just a shade, in the head--[Faint wild laugh.]--just a shade, but I doubt it, I doubt it, not really, I'm all right, still all right, do my best, all I can--

M:

Yes, peace, one assumed, all out, all the pain, all as if . . . never been, it will come--[Hiccup.]--pardon, no sense in this, oh I know . . . none the less, one assumed, peace . . . I mean . . . not merely all over, but as if . . . never been--

[Spots off. Blackout. Five seconds. Strong spots simultaneously on three faces. Three seconds. Voices normal strength.]

w1:

w2:

M :

[Together]

I said to him, Give her up--
One Morning as I was sitting--
We were not long together--

[Spots off. Blackout. Five seconds. Spot on w1.]
W1 : I said to him, Give her up. I swore by all I held most sacred--
[Spot from w1 to w2.]
W2 : One morning as I was sitting stitching by the open window she burst in and flew at me. Give me up, she screamed, he's mine. Her photographs were kind to her. Seeing her now for the first time full length in the flesh I understood why he preferred me.
[Spot from w2 to M.]
M : We were not long together when she smelled the rat. Give up that whore, she said, or I'll cut my throat--[Hiccup.]
pardon--so help me God. I knew she could have no proof. So I told her I did not know what she was talking about.
[Spot from M to W2.]
W2 : What are you talking about? I said, stitching away. Someone yours? Give up whom? I smell you off him, she screamed, he stinks of bitch.
[Spot from w2 to w1.]
W1 : Though I had him dogged for months by a first-rate man, no shadow of proof was forthcoming. And there was no denying that he continued as . . . assiduous as ever. This, and his horror of the merely Platonic thing, made me sometimes wonder if I were not accusing him unjustly. Yes.
[Spot from w1 to M.]
M : What have you to complain of ? I said. Have I been neglecting you? How could we be together in the way we are if there were someone else? Loving her as I did, with all my heart, I could not but feel sorry for her.
[Spot from M to W2.]
W2 : Fearing she was about to offer me violence I rang for Erskine and had her shown out. Her parting words, as he could testify, if he is still living, and has not forgotten, coming and going on the earth, letting people in, showing people out, were to the effect that she would settle my hash. I confess this did alarm me a little, at the time.
[Spot from W2 to M.]
M : She was not convinced. I might have known. I smell her off you, she kept saying. There was no answer to this. So I took her in my arms and swore I could not live without her. I meant it, what is more. Yes, I am sure I did. She did not repulse me.
[Spot from M to W 1.]
W1 : Judge then of my ashonishment when one fine morning, as I was sitting stricken in the morning room, he slunk in, fell on his knees before me, buried his face in my lap and . . . confessed.
[Spot from w1 to M.]
M : She put a bloodhound on me, but I had a little chat with him. He was glad of the extra money.
[Spot from M to W2.]
W2 : Why don't you get out, I said, when he started moaning about his home life, there is obviously nothing between you any more. Or is there?
[Spot from w2 to w1.]
W1 : I confess my first feeling was one of wonderment. What a male!
[Spot from w1 to M. He opens his mouth to speak. Spot from M to W2.]
W2 : Anything between us, he said, what do you take me for, a something machine? And of course with him no danger of the . . . spiritual thing. Then why don't you get out? I said. I sometimes wondered if he was not living with her for her money.
[Spot from w2 to M.]
M : The next thing was the scene between them. I can't have her crashing in here, she said, threatening to take my life. I must have looked incredulous. Ask Erskine, she said, if you don't believe me. But she threatens to take her own, I said. Not yours? she said. No, I said, hers. We had fun trying to work this out.
[Spot from M to W1.]
W1 : Then I forgave him. To what will love not stoop! I suggested a little jaunt to celebrate, to the Riviera or our darling Grand Canary. He was looking pale. Peaked. But this was not possible just then. Professional commitments.
[Spot from w1 to w2.]
W2 : She came again. Just strolled in. All honey. Licking her lips. Poor thing. I was doing my nails, by the open window. He has told me all about it, she said. Who he, I said filing away, and what it? I know what torture you must be going through, she said, and I have dropped in to say I bear you no ill-feeling. I rang for Erskine.
[Spot from w2 to M.]
M : Then I got frightened and made a clean breast of it. She was looking more and more desperate. She had a razor in her vanity-bag. Adulterers, take warning, never admit.
[Spot from M to w1.]
W1 : When I was satisfied it was all over I went to have a gloat. Just a common tart. What he could have found in her when he had me--
[Spot from w1 to w2.]
W2 : When he came again we had it out. I felt like death. He went on about why he had to tell her. Too risky and so on. That meant he had gone back to her. Back to that!
[Spot from w2 to w1.]
W1 : Pudding face, puffy, spots, blubber mouth, jowls, no neck, drugs you could--
[Spot from w1 to w2.]
W2 : He went on and on. I could hear a mower. An old hand mower. I stopped him and said that whatever I might feel I had no silly threats to offer--but not much stomach for her leavings either. He thought that over for a bit.
[Spot from w2 to w1.]
W1 : Calves like a flunkey--
[Spot from w1 to M.]
M : When I saw her again she knew. She was looking--[Hiccup.]--wretched. Pardon. Some fool was cutting grass. A little rush, then another. The problem was how to convince her that no . . . revival of intimacy was involved. I couldn't. I might have known. So I took her in my arms and said I could not go on living without her. I don't believe I could have.
[Spot from M to W2.]
W2 : The only solution was to go away together. He swore we should as soon as he had put his affairs in order. In the meantime we were to carry on as before. By that he meant as best we could.
[Spot from w2 to w1.]
W1 : So he was mine again. All mine. I was happy again. I went about singing. The world--
[Spot from w1 to M.]
M : At home all heart to heart, new leaf and bygones bygones. I ran into your ex-doxy, she said one night, on the pillow, you're well out of that. Rather uncalled for, I thought. I am indeed, sweetheart, I said, I am indeed. God what vermin women. Thanks to you, angel, I said.
[Spot from M to W1.]
W1 : Then I began to smell her off him again. Yes.
[Spot from w1 to w2.]
W2 : When he stopped coming I was prepared. More or less.
[Spot from w2 to M.]
M : Finally it was all too much. I simply could no longer--
[Spot from M to W1.]
W1 : Before I could do anything he disappeared. That meant she had won. That slut! I couldn't credit it. I lay stricken for weeks. Then I drove over to her place. It was all bolted and barred. All grey with frozen dew. On the way back by Ash and Snodland--
[Spot from w1 to M.]
M : I simply could no longer--
[Spot from M to W2.]
W2: I made a bundle of his things and burnt them. It was November and the bonfire was going. All night I smelt them smouldering.
[Spot off W 2. Blackout. Five seconds. Spots half previous strength simultaneously on three faces. Three seconds. Voices proportionately lower.]

I'll begin with Goal!

As a sport, filmed futbol and ice hockey don't differ too much visually. In terms of body movement, though, it is much more like tango. It's all in mastering balance and in the footwork, and interacting with more than one counterpart--be it ball or player--at a time. There is just...I derived very little joy or satisfaction from watching the ball move from the ground to the air, from foot to foot, from player to player. Goal! seemed like a film I would like, so I'm probably going to purchase it in the next few months. Before the year is over.

Click here for the trailer.

<~>

Now, for The Miracle Match aka The Game of Their Lives. David Anspaugh, the director, also made Rudy (1993) and Hoosiers (1986).

Before the DVD started skipping, one of the characters remarks that futbol is "the world's greatest sport because all you need is a ball and some space." It's the "most democratic" because one needn't be super-human or obtain any additional equipment.

You can see the lines spoken in this trailer.

Assuming that brain-feet-ball coordination is a given, or easily acquired and mastered purely on the motor skill level, then it's certainly a physical activity that can be performed without much more than a bare minimum of staging area and a ball. Even if one had no opponent, manipulating the ball on a flat surface and designating some other object as the goal net would suffice. Without an opponent, the likelihood that one could get injured goes down.

Perhaps a basketball hoop is harder to fashion out of random objects, but couldn't one play basketball in the same way one can play futbol? It can't be done with football or baseball. With just a body, some space, though, futbol and basketball are just games--they're examples of play (as in "play time"....recess). Without an opponent, a human opponent, the dribbling, kicking, and shooting are essentially just drills. N'est-ce pas? There is no external source of competition. Would internal competition be enough? I don't think so. Not literally, textually. It would only carry more meaning or count for more as a mechanism within a larger scheme.

<~>

I've started reading Alain De Botton's novel Kiss & Tell.

There's a great reference to futbol and sports in general. It appears not long after the narrator meets the subject of the story:

'Do you know something odd?' she asked. 'Both Camus and Beckett really loved sport. Camus was a goalkeeper for the Algerian football team and Beckett was in Wisden for having done something great in cricket.'

'So?'

"Well, it's funny how they always went on that everything was meaningless, but then they took sport very seriously, which I think is pretty meaningless. Maybe you need to find life meaningless before you can find sport meaningful' (39).

More on Albert Camus and Samuel Beckett. The Wisden.

A month ago, I had to go a week without Starbux to neutralize a Nike purchase. I'll have to do it again because of a hoodie.

<~>

Not to add shakin to this bacon, but this song called "Two of Us" by Kpop singer Chae Yeon is really, really catchy. Be prepared to suspend your disbelief. There are gravity-defying feats.

Via bright stupid confetti, første scenen av Samuel Becketts Endgame (1957), i animasjonsversjon for LEGO.

Jag har (redan) träningsverk i benen. Trots att jag går till skolan varje dag … Nåja, jag kanske borde passa på att springa en omväg på ett par mil också för att vänja mig.
Keith stampar rytmiskt ned sustainpedalen med foten. Am – G.

PULP FICTION (1996)

"The writing's on the wall: The day of the backyard mechanic is over." - overheard in Bruno's Coffee Shop, September 1997.

"I just got this nutty fax from Jocko." On my phone machine is a message from the editor of HOT ROD Magazine. Jocko's fax said the magazine did not have his permission to run the feature on him, which he likened to "pulp fiction." If it ran, he would sue Petersen Publishing.

One of Jocko's many complaints was that I had referenced one of his neighbors in the story, an outside thinker and engineer named George Van Tassel, who had built a time machine known as the Integratron at a place he called Spaceport Earth. "Everyone knows Van Tassel is a kook," Jocko said.

They run the story anyway.

THE PHONE CALL (1997)

The phone call comes from Shell Oil's media power center in West Los Angeles. It is the day after Labor Day, 1997. The voice on the other end, an oil company's flak who apparently had drawn Craig Breedlove as his assignment, is clueing me in as to how, beginning tomorrow and after a year long hiatus following the 675 mph mishap, the speed trials are back on for the Spirit of America at the parched alkali of Black Rock, Nevada. It is official, the first proper supersonic Land Speed Record attempts are a green light. I am to get credentialed tomorrow at a hotel in Reno, NV, whereupon Craig Breedlove will rendezvous with the press and lead a caravan out to the desert like some latter-day man-machine Mohammed. At the press conference he will explain the modifications and improvements administered to a land speed machine that had become unstable and crashed at transonic speeds.

In the days following Breedlove's 1996 near-calamitous daredevil act - near the speed clocks, Breedlove got out of the groove and began bicycling his sleek J79 jet engine-powered manned missile like a circus act, the 5-wheeled vehicle riding on the front tire and one rear wheel rolling and yawing off course until it made an abrupt right hand turn and was aimed at some Snowbird-types in an RV (by the grace of the All-Knowing, by a whisker had Breedlove missed torpedoing these senior citizen motorheads who had hoped to witness history, not aware that unwittingly they had almost become new members of the Good Sam's Club in the Sky) - the more dubious members of the motorsports press had surmised that Breedlove's speed was closer to 475 mph.

"Performance incentive clauses" was the phrase bandied about by these cynics, in reference to the reality that Craig would need beaucoup greenbacks from his sponsors to repair his exotic race car. The only confirmation of the actual speed of the vehicle as it became unstable came from the Spirit of America itself. (Breedlove showed data from the run which corroborated his speed, apparently.)

Whether the streamliner was traveling at 475 mph or 675 mph was rather moot; the Spirit of America had failed to reach its objective of reclaiming the Land Speed Record from the clutches of the British in general and Richard Noble, Order of the British Empire in specific. The recent improvements to the race car's contour promised to render ‘er even sleeker than last year's model, a design which already resembled an arrow from the quill of the Pauites.

There were also conflicting reports about whether Craig intends to crack the sound barrier or if his intent is to get the car up to trans- and sub-sonic speeds, and then remove himself out of the hot seat, install a remote controlled drone system and then go supersonic.

In other words, there was a chance that when the Spirit of America went Mach 1, it may not have a driver.

To get the skinny, the publicist tells me, I have to be at the Reno press conference by noon tomorrow. The flak kindly asks me to be sure to include references to Shell Oil in the article on Breedlove I was to pen for HOT ROD Magazine. I assume he means in relation to its continued patronage of Breedlove's increasingly-streamlined fuselage, a relation that dated back to 1962, and not its recent alleged complicity in the political assassination of Ken Saro Wiwa and genocide in Nigeria, when some of the locals were less than happy with what they considered exploitation... Ultimately, notions of tyranny and subterfuge in the Third World are now dormant in my mind. The important thing is that the Grunions are Go! The Land Speed Record is about to be raised...

The hour is late... I have just enough time for loading a camera bag with lenses and a half dozen plastic canisters of Ilford, cramming some clothing and toiletries into a shoulder bag, brewing up a thermos of Cafe Bustello, jumping in the Batmobile so's to make time to the Burbank Airport, throw a credit card down on an airline counter and catch a plane to Reno.

Because of the haste and my appearance, I would fit the profile of a terrorist: unshaven, jittery, amped on caffeine, paying with a credit card and demanding to be put on an airplane that was just about to taxi... but that routine would be repeated often during the next six weeks or so and was part and parcel of chasing the Land Speed Record, I would find out that Richard Noble's adage about "Going fast is slow business," is not accurate: it is slow business with a co-efficient of chasing airplanes.

My journey would only take a few hours. In Newtonian terms, the Land Speed bunch had taken an eternity to arrive at this moment; in four-dimensional respects, an infinity.

BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK (1997)

On the eve of the press conferences in Reno heralding the Mach 1 attempts, I arrive at the Reno Airport after spending the flight engaging in heavy and heated discourse with a geeky film buff about the aforementioned Spencer Tracy movie. I am heavily mythologizing not only the flick, but the actual location of Black Rock itself. He's not buying it.

"Yeah," I said with authority, "there is a coffee shop called ‘Bruno's' that is right across the street from the train station used in Bad Day at Black Rock. It has to be the same diner coffee shop where Spencer Tracy - with his only good arm - karate chopped Ernest Borgnine in the throat."

"Well that can't be," the geek in the seat next to me sniffs, as he ramps his bifocals up the bridge of his nose. "I have the laserdisc in my library and on one of the Second Audio Programs the director, John Sturges, explains at length how they used these abandoned railroad tracks they found in Bishop, California for the train scenes. That fictitious coffee shop was actually a set on a back lot in Burbank."

"I'm telling you they shot this film in Gerlach, Nevada. I've been there AND I've seen the movie. Spencer Tracy gets off the friggin' train in Gerlach."

"That sir is empirically impossible," the geek bleats. "The production never set foot in Nevada. Rent the laserdisc."

"Laserdiscs are Satanic."

When the plane lands, en route to scoring a rent-a-car I go to the Information Booth in hopes of procuring a map of the Gerlach area - I've been there before, but this is the kind of terrain where you just don't want to get lost. There is a kindly, slightly senilitic Chamber of Commerce croater behind the counter who asks me where I am headed. I tell him, "Black Rock," so he says, "Lovelock, it's right here, " and he points to the town of Lovelock on the map.

"No," I say, "ummm, Black Rock, out by Gerlach."

"Ohhh; Tomahawk, it's right here, just take I-80 east past..."

"No, no, no," I interrupt and point to my destination on his map, crinkling it a little bit. "Black Rock, out by Gerlach."

"O-h-h-h, Black Rock. That's easy: Just take I-80 east to Fernley and take 447 north to Gerlach. It'll take you right to the station where Spencer Tracy got off the train."

"Actually," I pipe up, "that movie was shot in Bishop, California and on a back lot in Burbank."
"You have a nice drive, sir."

THE CAB RIDE (1997)

The press conference isn't scheduled until noon. I sleep kinda' late, saunter downstairs in the casino for a leisurely breakfast and grabbed a copy of the Reno Gazette.

I drop my fork.

The bottom left quadrant of the front page has a small feature about the arrival of the Brits and their Thrust SSC jet car that notates - in so many words - that after seven years of research and development as well as "dancing-as-fast-as-I-can" cajoling of corporations, the joust is finally on: A quintessential California hot rodder (Breedlove and Spirit of America) arm wrestling a permutation of the British military industrial complex (Noble and Thrust SSC).

And although the match is on, there are still many obstacles in the path of both teams, not the least of which is negative cash flow. To facilitate the arrival of the Brits from Farnborough into Reno Int'l Airport - keep in mind it required 250,00 gallons of jet fuel to top off an Antonov AN-124 Russian cargo plane (the only vehicle in existence with enough trunk space to transport the Thrust's 80-ton portable skunk works) - Noble appealed for alms via the London Daily Telegraph and the internet. The vox populi responded with a vengeance, mailing checks and forking over credit card numbers in a frenzy worthy of St. Vitus. Thrust SSC gets its jet fuel all of which is documented in the Reno Gazette I continue to peruse while hailing a cab outside the casino. (Ultimately, 20 percent of the funding for the Thrust effort came from Noble shaking the virtual bushes of cyberspace and the print world. Amazing.)

So I grab a cab, a two-toned yellow and black beater that pings and knocks, and is driven by a guy who has the look of a fallen factory worker from Oakland who has decided to culminate his working days here, shuttling tourists who can't quite raise the capital to gamble in Vegas to various casinos and cathouses just beyond the city limits. He asks me if I want to go to the Mustang Ranch and I tell him no so then he asks where I am going and I tell him I'm in a hurry to get to the Peppermill Casino for a press conference that will announce an attempt to capture the Land Speed Record.

"The press conference for the Land Speed Record is at the hotel you just left," he says.

"No, that's the venue for Craig Breedlove and the Spirit of America's announcement," I tell him.

"You mean there are two guys trying to get the Record?" he asks.

"Oh yeah," I say, "there is a British team that arrived last night in a massive cargo plane big enough to transport their crew and their race car."

"You mean that' s why that Russian plane is parked at the airport?"

To a paranoid survivalist like this cab driver, whose sense of history ended with the Fall of Saigon, the Brits represent the unholy union of NATO, the United Nations and the Beatles. As we pull into the parking lot, the SSC rests on an open trailer, raked at a 45 degree angle, pointed towards the sky. Milling about is a local Betacam crew with a blond news correspondent, flanked by a camera operator and a soundman umbilically tangled in their cables. This is the only electronic media I can see, although a couple of reporters are scribbling notes while chatting up the British team, who are resplendent in a sort of Royal Air Force green. The cab driver gives me his card for a ride back to my hotel once the SSC conference is done and I pay the fare. All the while though, the cabbie keeps a distracted eye fixed on the dual jet engined monstrosity resting placidly like a black widow in a tennis shoe.

To my cab driver, this wicked land speed streamliner may as well have been a black helicopter.

THE KEY THING IN THIS IS STABILITY

In 1983 Richard Noble turned 633 mph at Black Rock and reclaimed the LSR for Great Britain in his Thrust 2 jet car, taking it away from the late Gary Gabelich, who clocked a 2-way speed average of 622 mph in a hydrogen-peroxide powered rocket in 1970. Noble's conquest struck a raw nerve in Craig Breedlove's craw - and in his sense of patriotism. As Noble had tea and crumpets with the Queen, Breedlove immediately began drawing eyelid diagrams of a third-generation Spirit of America he felt was sleek enough to not only enable him to procure the LSR but also slip through the last great barrier: Mach 1.

But to sell his dream to America and to his sponsors, Craig needed an adversary like Ike needed Khrushchev. So he approached the then-LSR record holder, Noble, and confided in him his aspirations towards conquering the Sound Barrier. Noble took the bait. Immediately both men jettisoned their relatively prosaic lives - Breedlove was now a realtor, Noble was now marketing recreational aircraft - and focused all of their energies towards their new goal.

A funny thing happened en route to the epochal "Duel In the Desert ‘97" in the Great American Southwest, however...

You see, both Breedlove and Noble had ambition but were lacking three other elements critical to his success: 1)Venture capital; 2) A crew; 3) A design for a vehicle that would somehow subvert the laws of physics and aerodynamics as applied to the turbulence inherent in supersonic travel - forces which would most likely launch and/or shred the vehicle and its driver. For in a steed traveling at that speed some of the pressure and shock waves which would envelop the vehicle would have no way to diffuse themselves as they hit the floor and then reverberated UNDER the vehicle, acting like a 750 mph catapult. As Noble himself described it, "At Mach 1, you're either on the ground or you're ten miles in the air at a force of 40 g's." Blimey.

So, yeah, Noble sets off to meet the esteemed Ken Norris, co-designer of Donald Campbell's revolutionary Bluebird CN7 LSR machine, to explain his plight, i.e. that he had the "want to's" real bad but no design team nor plan. And in a crucial and profound stroke of luck, Norris' earlier appointment, Ron Ayers (a retired guided missile designer from the Brit military-industrial complex who is as renowned in his field as Noble and Norris are in theirs), is caught in crosstown traffic and arrives at Norris' digs the same moment as Noble.

Before the chance encounter with Noble, Ayers had no desire to design a Mach 1 motorcar (and very little interest in motorsports in general). "My immediate reaction was to distance myself from the project," is how the elderly, erudite, avuncular aerodynamicist recalls the moment that Noble pitched him the project. "To drive at supersonic speeds would clearly be extremely dangerous, and indeed, it could well be impossible. I pointed out to Richard that even keeping the car on the ground would be extraordinarily difficult." But Noble knew fresh meat when he saw it, and commenced dog-and-pony-showing his way into Ayers' id and sense of purpose. Suffice it to say, Ayers became the Thrust SuperSonic Car's first conscript - and its prime architect.

Indeed, the next day Ayers went to his garden, got out a pad and pencil and began free associating... "How can we keep a motorcar stable as it passes from the transonic to supersonic speeds..." Ayers continued to sketch and Thrust began to take shape. "... it will need two jet engines, not for thrust but for weight, drag and downforce... they will have to live on either side of the cockpit..." His approach to cannonballing through the turbulence of Mach 1 was an aerodynamic application tantamount to the bigger hammer method. "... we will not finesse this per se, but punch through the sonic barrier... the center of gravity must be forward, but no so fore that it actually burrows into the desert floor and resurfaces in Eurasia..." "Everything that isn't lift is downforce..." The only logical shape this beast could assume was the bastard, mutant spawn of the Batmobile and Lockheed's SR-71 Blackbird spyplane - i.e., the gnarliest, baddest contraption to attack the jet stream since the Cold War ended. It was gorgeous.

And for all its designed inefficiency, it was practical. Richard Noble concurred emphatically with Ayers' take on attacking Mach 1. "The key thing in this is stability," he told me out on the playa. "Anybody can stick a jet engine on a chassis and light the fuse. Ron and I sketched out something and we thought, ‘My God, this is really rather good. This could work very well. Right: twins engines, aluminum wheels' and then Ken (Norris) says, ‘There is no room for steering' - and it started to build from there."

(You can imagine the conversation amongst SSC's design team: "Yeah, Ron it's bitchin' - but where do we put the torsion bars?" In an epiphany, SSC Chief Mechanical Designer Glynne Bowsher - one of a succession of aerospace hitters hornswoggled by Noble and intrigued by the notion of breaking the sound barrier on land - concludes that in order to shoehorn a steering system between the framerails, SSC must turn by the two in-line rear wheels. Talk about form follows function...)

Thrust SSC was housed in a spare hangar in Farnborough, UK, the locale of the what, in essence, is the British Skunk Works (in other words, the hangars for her Royal Majesty's stealth and supersonic aerospace programs). Suffice it to say, the bulk of the SSC engineers who became intoxicated with Noble's dream already knew where Farnborough's commissary was well before Noble approached them for help...

As the design came to life at Farnborough Airfield, Noble canvassed the breadth of the Jolly ‘Ol, banging on boardroom doors for financial support and hosting seminars at campuses and air shows in order to recruit a pit crew. Interestingly, his stirring pitches appealed to the hoi polloi more so than the suits in the corridors of power. The hoi polloi formed the Mach 1 club - "give us a few quid, drop what you're doing and come with us to America to break the sound barrier" - and was another indispensable element to the Thrust SSC's eventual success.

And finally, another crucial element was in place. That is, Noble's choice for a shoe: A softspoken-yet-buff, dashing, Royal Air Force pilot named Andy Green whose physique, psyche, and demeanor were ideal for the project. Indeed, Andy Green could have been culled straight outta' Central Casting. The team was in place.

And after some Computational Fluid Dynamics and rocket-sled testing "confirmed" (at least in the virtual sense) Ayers' theories on supersonic travel, the vehicle was completed. But before the conquering of Mach 1 in America was to commence, the team trudged off to an RAF air base in the Al Jafr desert in Jordan during November of '96 for some shakedown runs, with the blessing of ol' King Hussein. Testing the synergy of all systems on this technological marvel commenced: Computerized suspension, telemetry, satellite uplinks, communications, aluminum wheels, rear wheel steer, twin Spey 202 turbofan engines, support vehicles, etc.

(The active suspension was perhaps the most crucial piece of software and hardware. Calculations by some of SSC's engineers warned that if the vehicle's angle of attack relative to the earth's surface varied by even one quarter of a degree, driver Andy Green would have been launched upwards of 1000 feet... a potential altitude that would have dwarfed Paula "Miss STP" Murphy's mimicking of a moon shot in 1972.)

All that was left was empiricism.

All systems seemed to be speaking to each other, but a full dress rehearsal for the upcoming mission in the Black Rock desert would have to wait for then came the prerequisite trial, error, and anguish that, if you study your motorsports history, seems to accompany all LSR efforts. In a Middle Eastern desert that is dryer than microwaved kitty litter, it rained. And rained. And flooded.

Indeed, as Ron Ayers related in retrospect: "According to the weather statistics, November should have the ideal combination of moderate temperature, low wind, low precipitation, and few dust storms." It was, in fact, quite the antithesis. The Thrust SSCer's arrival at this arid Middle Eastern desert was akin to fording a river: At the air base where Thrust was stationed the flooding was moving so fast that it appeared to be pushing stones ahead of it. Finally, Glynne Bowsher pointed out that the stones were actually floating camel droppings...

HOORAY FOR HOLLYWOOD

"For most of its runs, the SMI Motivator/Budweiser Rocket car ran on a hydrogen peroxide monopropellant motor developing 5,000 to 6,000 pounds thrust. At Edwards, this motor was replaced with a peroxide/polybutydiene (synthetic rubber) hybrid motor developing roughly 9,000 pounds of thrust (maybe at the most 11,000 pounds). The best electric eye clock speed run using only the hybrid motor was 677 mph. When the hybrid motor proved insufficient, it was supplemented with a sparrow air-to-air solid fuel missile motor developing an average thrust of about 5,000 pounds for 5 seconds. The best electric eye clock speed ran using the hybrid motor/sparrow combination was 692 mph." - Franklin Ratliff, previously unpublished.

The most abject comment and manipulation on the American Dream of going Mach 1 comes not from the military-industrial complex, but from Hollywood... One of Tinseltown's movers and shakers, Hal Needham, a stuntman-cum-producer/director (and whose greatest claim to fame was gracing the world with Burt Reynold's cornpone movies), purchases the SMI Motivator rocket dragster, retrofits ‘er with a hybrid liquid/solid-fuel rocket engine, hires Courage of Australia mastermind Bill Fredrick to turn the wrenches, re-badges the machine Speed of Sound (nee Budweiser Rocket) and hauls the operation out to Edwards AFB...

"The thing about the car you have to realize is that it did not have enough fuel on board to make a full land speed record run," Breedlove states. "They applied to have the rules changed so they could make one run (timed) over 1/100th of mile - instead of a mile." With clocks installed by a drag racing organization over a timing trap of 52 feet - instead of the traditional measured mile - Needham points driver (and fellow stuntman) Stan Barrett at the timing cones and lights the fuse.

Needham proffers as evidence of a Mach 1 clocking the data from a handheld radar gun. Why radar instead of the drag strip clocks? The rocket car ran out of fuel before it reached the timing traps!

The whole misadventure is documented by CBS Sports Spectacular and is passed off as authentic, with additional corroboration by Chuck Yeager who writes in a letter that, "Having been involved in supersonic research since the days of the XS -1 rocket plane, which I flew on the first supersonic flight on October 14, 1947, there is no doubt in my mind that the rocket car exceeded the speed of sound on its run on December 17, 1979."

The jet set sees this as poppycock - Chuck Yeager or no Chuck Yeager. "It degraded the whole Land Speed Record business. It took a wrong turn," says Richard Noble. "The most outrageous thing about that whole project was that they wasted the time giving Chuck Yeager a ride in it the next day when they could have done it again (properly)."

Breedlove debunks the Needham claim this way: "There was a water truck that was driving in the background," he said in reference to the corruption in the radar gun's data. "On this specific run, when the operator was hand-tracking the car, the range finder targeted the water truck because it was a bigger target. They had no actual third data point," Breedlove postulates in reference to co-ordinates of speed, range and angle needed to gather data via radar. "The following day, they had the car drive down the course and then took the data from the range of the other vehicle and substituted that into the calculations and then extrapolated data in that manner. It is just so unbelievably flawed; the manufacturer of the radar says it's not even calibrated to do that. You've got an uncalibrated radar - hand operated - with the third leg of the data being substituted. Can you imagine a guy trying to claim a drag racing record that way?"

Indeed, this, umm, whole stunt attempt is fraught with arrogance, ambiguity and unresolved issues. Hooray for Hollywood.

HAVE YOU SEEN THE NEW TRADE-A-PLANE?

I get an audience with Breedlove in his trailer at Black Rock. I ask a couple of simple questions. He responds with some most elaborate and thorough answers.

∞

Why a jet instead of a rocket?

CRAIG BREEDLOVE: The primary reason is because of the unavailability of fuel at the present time. Along about 1974 the government restricted the availability of certain fuels based on their toxicity and - in their judgment - hazardous materials. So we built the English Leather Rocket car as a prototype for a hypergolic rocket system for a land speed car. That engine was designed by Jerry Elverum at TRW and Jerry did the Apollo lunar descent engine among other things. That's probably the most remarkable thing he's done because that was the first throttleable rocket engine that the astronauts could fly to the surface of the moon - it was like a jet engine with a throttle. And that's what allowed America to make a soft landing on the moon.

We ran that engine on unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine and nitrogen tetraoxide as an oxidizer. It was a hypergolic engine which means that as soon as the two chemicals come together in the chamber they ignite instantly.

It is a very reliable system. It is also a very powerful system. Those chemicals... we bought the nitrogen tetraoxide oxidizer from Hercules, a powder corporation. We bought the unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine from FMC, Food Machinery Corporation. The oxidizers came from Northern California and the hydrazine came from Wilmington, Delaware. We were able to formerly order it at will. The companies did request that they be apprised on how we were using it and that we were not just a bunch of dingbats out there. TRW did that for us; they were able to vouch for us. They did their own policing and then they just sold it to us because there were no restrictions against selling it to us. In 1974 basically that was outlawed. Now there were restrictions. Also TRW is a US fuel depot; we had hoped we could get the fuel shipped to TRW and have it stored there. But the problem was we can't transport it by rail; they even had a difficult time getting it into Vandenburg AFB to make launches.

Then we changed the design of the car to four peroxide thrusters because they had not yet restricted hydrogen peroxide in any way. It was shortly after we got the car changed over to peroxide that they restricted peroxide.

You could not manufacture or distribute peroxide in higher concentrations than 70 percent. 70 percent is a lousy rocket fuel. You need 98 percent. At that point in time the entire Land Speed vehicle was trashed at great personal financial cost to myself. Frankly, I just completely backed off.

The jet idea came back... of course Richard Noble had run the jet engine. The J79s are not easy to get and they are not necessarily cheap, either.

I took a sabbatical and we took the rocket car mock up to a car show in the San Francisco Bay area and some guys approached me - they were from a surplus aircraft and electric parts company called Radcom - and they had a particular deal going with a French company where they had purchased the F-104 contingency from the NATO Belgian Air Force. They had forty-three 104s and spare engines and wings. They offered to give me two F-104s to do an air speed record with and also to supply me with engines for both Land Speed and Water Speed Records. That deal fell apart because the French company cut them out of their stock and they actually ended up with nothing. They ended up not getting the engines and got cut out of the deal completely.

During that period of time I re-designed the car around the engine. The only problem was I had a car design, but not an engine. We began looking for an engine and Mike McCluskey called me up and said, "Hey, have you seen the new Trade-A-Plane? There is an ad where the government is selling sixty-seven J79s out of North Island Naval Station." Ed Ballinger went in, inspected those engines and we put a bid on three lots of three. We were unsuccessful. The entire sale was sold to International Engine Parts in Chatsworth. I called them right afterwards and much to my surprise International Engine Parts was owned and operated by Elmo Idavia who supplied me with my afterburner in 1965. El said, "Sure Craig, we'll sell you a couple of engines and you can have the pick of the lot."

Later El gave me another engine.

HOORAY FOR HOLLYWOOD (REDUX)

But conversely somebody did run a solid fuel engine and that was Needham?

CRAIG BREEDLOVE: No, that was a peroxide car. The thing about that car that you have to understand is it did not have enough fuel on board to make a full Land Speed Run. They applied to have the rules changed with FIA and FIM - it was a three-wheeled vehicle - to make a one-way run over 1/100th of a mile and that was denied by FIM.

It made a run at Edwards and was clocked at 666 mph on Earl Flanders clocks - a 52 foot trap.

I spoke with Earl in 1983 and I asked him what was the circumstance around the supersonic claim that was made by the Budweiser effort. And he said, "All I can tell you is that the car went 666." And I said, "You mean you clocked the car on the run," and he said, "Yes I did." He said he was under strict contract to Hal Needham and the Speed of Sound group not to divulge anything. I said what was the deal with this 739 and he just rolled his eyes and said, "It didn't happen."

Subsequently, I looked for years to get a clocked speed of the car and finally somebody sent me a paper that was delivered to the AIAA convention (aerospace engineers) and on that paper it states very clearly that the electronic time of the Budweiser car was 666.234 mph. The claim that it had gone supersonic was made because of a radar tracking of the car when it was approaching. Now, typically you accelerate all the way to the traps. This is odd that the car would be going 740 and then go through the traps at 660. Then on further investigation, Dick Keller (of Blue Flame fame) contacted the radar company and the radar is not activated by the car. It is activated by an operator who tracks the car by hand. So the speed produced is not by the car, but by the operator. The operator then tracks the car on a television screen with crosshairs by swinging a tripod antenna or transmitter to track the car. Then when you look at the data, they simply average the three highest peaks in the data. Then they claimed that the Air Force sanctioned that. Dick Keller furnished me with a letter from the head of the Air Force stating they disavow any sanction whatsoever and they simply provided Speed of Sound with raw data and any interpretation of that data was purely Speed of Sound's interpretation and not that of the Air Force. The Air Force disavows any sanctioning or underwriting or statement as to how fast the car went. There were two guys there - Pete Knight - who said he felt the Speed of Sound had reached their objective and General Yeager who said that in his opinion the car reached their objective. But if you look at the data, it doesn't bear itself out. It is totally uncalibrated.

I'm told that the contract was written in such a way that they were to receive a million dollars upon a successful achievement of setting a new Land Speed Record and breaking the sound barrier. First of all, they could not qualify for the Land Speed Record because of the measured distance and the one-way run thing.

I understand that the (use of the) letters from Yeager and Pete Knight were trying to enhance the possibilities of getting the payment. I don't know if the payments were made or not. I was told that it was, but I don't have any way of knowing.

So, simply there are photographs of the car in the lights with the engine still on and the rear wheels off the ground. My question is if, in fact, the car is running out of fuel before it gets to lights, why don't you go out the next day and move it a little closer to the lights? And get your supersonic time through the lights? They said they couldn't afford to do it, yet they could afford to fuel the car up and have Chuck Yeager take a joy ride.

The point is the car has not set a World Land Speed Record. The car had no sanction and the Air Force has disavowed any underwriting or support of that data. In my judgment, a claim has been made, but no documentation has been furnished that makes me believe it went that fast. I have stated this before and every time I do Hal Needham threatens to sue me.

700 MPH IS OF NO INTEREST TO US (1997)

"Ladies, gentlemen, and members of the press, we are here to go Mach 1. Getting the record back does not interest us. Going 700 mph does not interest us. We are here to go Mach 1."

Thus sayeth Richard Noble himself from the podium at a press conference in a downtown Reno casino a couple of days after Labor Day, 1997. His audience is a motley mix of motorsports journalists, a couple of local betacam crews, some curious tourists who stroll away from the keno girls after gazing through the tinted casino windows at what looked to be a phallic-shaped 10-ton spaceship that had landed by the valet parking, and some local street people who are intrigued by the commotion and have sniffed out the prospect of free danishes and coffee.

Noble's "No Sleep 'till Supersonic" gauntlet is thrown down just hours after his exhausted troops had arrived in Nevada on blitzkrieg rock-and-roll-180 flight from the Farnborough hangar, jet lagged, sleep deprived and immaculately clad in matching green uniforms. They really don't seem chagrined at the nearly 1-to-1 ratio of street people to electronic journalists...

Indeed, the SSC cadre is in a rare mood, as blithe as they are determined. One team manager describes how the two LSR efforts will share time on the playa with one team securing the lake bed in the morning, the other to use the course in the afternoon, and with a coin toss to settle any disputes.

"Will that be an American or a British coin?" I ask.

WE'RE VERY HAPPY

"It doesn't have two engines for performance reasons," says Ron Ayers, aerodynamicist for Thrust SSC, at the press conference in Reno. "Two engines will give us a geometry which is much more stable. So two engines for stability, not for performance - although the extra engine does no harm for performance whatsoever. It enables us to get the weight well forward and the front wheels wide apart, so that means the weight is between widely spaced front wheels, stabilizing roll, pitch and yaw simultaneously." A-n-d he concluded, "We're very happy with a 15 mph crosswind."

I REALLY DON'T THINK YOU NEED TWO

Cut to: the SOA press conference at a casino across town. Craig Breedlove is nonplused by the SSC's arrival and is holding forth on the different approaches to reaching Mach 1. "I spoke to Richard early on in his design process and he'd said that he'd decided they needed a twin-engine design and that was where we differed.

"I said, ‘Well, I really don't think you need two,' and he said, ‘All land speed record cars have always underperformed.' I said, ‘I really haven't found that to be true - I had a J47 that I really think I could have reached 600 mph with. Maybe you experienced a lot higher drag numbers than I have.' In any case, that was their philosophy: Really screw the car down, just suck it down with a lot of ground effects. Just power it through - (and) it's a very stable way to do it." But not the SOA way.

"The problem I saw at Black Rock early on in this design concept was Richard was sinking in," Breedlove continues. "I went to Ken Norris and asked what their (Thrust 2's) ground loadings were and he told me they were at 13,000 lbs. (of downforce). I asked how they were distributed and he said, ‘No, that's on the front wheels.' I said, ‘Well, you're aware that you guys are going to have so much rolling drag that you guys are never going to get the record.' He said they've been discussing that and the only thing is that Richard is very reluctant to point the car up any because of the flying problem."

Conversely, for his Mach 1 endeavors, Breedlove in essence eyeball-aeroed a projectile in the shape of an arrow. Using a hot rodded J79 General Electric jet engine from a Navy F-4 Phantom fighter aircraft for motivation, Craig visualized a sleek, narrow dart that would partake of the J79's 22,650 pounds of thrust (45,000 horsepower) and finesse the shockwaves that emanate when a vehicle climbs through a transonic slipstream into - BOOM - a supersonic slipstream.

"When we ran Sonic 1 at 600 mph (1965) we had no weight on the front end. I'm not saying that's a prudent way to do it, but that's just the fact of the matter. Somewhere between 13,000 lbs. and zero is the speed record."

BRUNO'S (1997)

In May of ‘97 the Brits had made a return trip to Jordan for more shakedown runs - they managed to get the SSC up to 540 mph, which was apparently all that patchy surface could handle - and they were treated like royalty. Pomp and circumstance is not much in evidence in Gerlach, NV when the Thrust SSC mates first arrive. The Brits are homeless. Gerlach is a town of 300 - counting the scorpions - and lodging is sketchy. There is one motel, Bruno's, which is also the name of the bar and the coffee shop, all of which are tagged eponymously for the town czar, a lanky, bent elderly Italian with the kind of disposition only slightly surlier than that of Benito Mussolini's. Despite Thrust SSC's scout team undertaking a reconnaissance trip in April to secure the permits and lodging crucial to their mission, it has all turned to shit: Bruno double-booked all the available lodging and ultimately rented his rooms to the highest bidder: the SOA contingent.

THE PHONE BOOTH

I am waiting to make a phone call to the editor of HOT ROD Magazine. I wait outside the booth as Richard Noble is fumbling for the proper change to dial out, and I notice all he can summon is lint and some British coins.

Here he is, Richard Noble, the fastest man on the planet, desperately trying to make lodging arrangements in the middle of the American Outback, the weight of an entire LSR operation on his shoulders. The SSC'ers got no rooms and their leader can't even make a fucking phone call.

The Brits are boycotting that turncoat opportunist Bruno. They adjourn to the bar next door, "Bev's Miners' Club," and discuss Plan B. After enjoining Bev the barkeep to "Give us a fag, wouldya' love?" (Loosely translated, "I'd like to purchase a package of cigarettes"), the affable Brits begin making friends with the locals, particularly Bev.

So picture this: Richard Noble and his lads (twenty-odd clamoring Brits clad in matching RAF-khaki) are hoisting Coors in a dusty, desert Dew-Do-Drop-Inn (this about as bizarre as it gets, in my book) when one of Noble's crew members shushes the entire bar. The local teevee news is reporting on that morning's press conference ("Going 700 mph does not interest us. We are here to go Mach 1") at the casino in Reno. Suddenly the videotape cuts to the chipper studio humanoid broadcaster who closes the report with this coda, "Noble and his team are taking Saturday off in observance of Princess Di's funeral."

Simultaneously Richard Noble, OBE does a "say wot??" double take while his overworked and underpaid entourage cheer and Bev pours more drinks and opens more cans of beer.

They didn't get the day off. Nor did they care, really. All of which underscores this question: What is it about Noble that inspires his troops, his lads to persevere in high-desert heat to erect a portable self-contained military-industrial complex that meets the criteria for the digital era's standard for data gathering, all on a dry lake bed that time forgot?

(The massive amounts of hardware assembled by the SSC to facilitate the penetration of this phantom waveform amounted to nothing short of a hi-tech paramilitary invasion of a forgotten lake bed that - excepting for the war games and impromptu fighter plane dogfights staged sporadically by the military back in WW II and the alterno-tech paganism of the annual Burning Man Festival - had more or less been bypassed by the techno-industrial revolution of the 20th Century and had never seen electricity, much less microwave satellite uplinks, portable airsheltas, rescue vehicles, hundreds of channels of real time telemetry and supersonic motorcars.)

The answer is not explainable by the notion of "technological enthusiasm," a phrase that has recently come to explain everything from hot rodding to the Apollo moonshot. The answer is deeper, more atavistic and completely primeval. The answer has roots which extend into the quintessence of matter: The universe is expanding. By extrapolation, consciousness is expanding, constantly encroaching into realms of the unknown. The technological enthusiast must go THERE, the technological enthusiast will devour and outmaneuver whatever is in his or her way: Pauites, the laws of aerodynamics, Newtonian physics, whatever.

Thus you have some of the finest minds of our lifetime sleeping on other people's couches, on their hands and knees picking up pebbles off the desert floor (to keep them from getting Hoover'd into the jet engines intake), all so they can have their moonshot.

PICKING YOUR BRAINS

What's your take on what Bill Fredrick did with the Courage of Australia and the Budweiser Rocket?

PETE FARNSWORTH: After we built the X-1 and I saw what the potential for the quarter mile rocket car was, I didn't want anything more to do with it (rockets on the drag strip). I figured it was just a matter of you know, how big the guy's balls were as to how fast you were gonna go and how quick you gonna go. I didn't want anything more to do with it. I could just see the next step was going lighter and lighter and more power and there was no limit to it really.

But when Fredrick and those guys did their deal at Edwards, did that torque you a little bit?

LEAH: (laughs)

PETE: More than a little. I admire the idea of them wanting to go fast. I had no problem with that. It's just the fact that the car was never built for a Land Speed Record, that all it was was a publicity stunt uh, to try and break the speed of sound. They had no idea of turning it around within one hour; it was never designed to do that. It wasn't an automobile in the first place, according to the records, it was a three wheeler and it was more the size of the vehicle that we had designed originally, but uh...

... but really, the fact that it wasn't a measured mile, it was like 52 feet that they finally shrunk it down to...

PETE: Yeah, motorcycle trap or whatever it was I mean we, we'd have gone 660 if we'd done it that way.

Well, also it was hand tracked radar, um, the radar run with some guy holding it in his hand...

LEAH: The Blue Flame could have set a record the first week if all we had to do is just put together.

PETE: We worked up in speed. We worked up in 50 mile an hour increments.

LEAH: But we had to do a whole mile and turn it around.

PETE: Ours was never, it wasn't a publicity stunt. It was designed to set the world's speed record.

Even though the fuel didn't allow the car to ever go through a whole mile, I give Barrett a heck of a lot of credit for the courage to ride that thing.

WHY WE BURN THE MAN (1997)

Later that first day out I go to a photo shoot for Breedlove out on the playa. He is like Captain America, Buzz Lightyear and Neil Armstrong. Short, stylish, blow-dried and futuristic. Betacam crews from Speedvision are rolling tape and zooming in and out and around Breedlove in an over, unders, sideways down manner, the desert wind acting as a prop man's fan, giving Breedlove's hair the illusion that even when he is standing still things are still in motion... News photographers and motorsport beat writers try to stay clear of the swooping camera crew and its gold reflector boards.

I wonder why the Speedvision crew wasn't at the Thrust SSC news conference and am informed by some of the press that Speedvision has signed an exclusive deal with Breedlove. I remark that this is kind of like reporting on Pearl Harbor and you can't mention the Japanese and people laugh. It is hard for me take Speedvision seriously as a news-gathering entity, but this bought-and-paid for journalism is increasingly the way of the world, isn't it?

The photo shoot wraps, I motor across the dry lake bed and chat up some members of the SSC team. After soaking up the sights and sounds of Gerlach, I spend the night in my car, parked next to the railroad tracks and Breedlove's media compound, which is Gerlach's vacant Chamber of Commerce building. As I struggle to sleep, I think about what is transpiring right in front of me and how Noble KNEW it would be more dramatic if he and Breedlove set up a drag race (of sorts). Indeed, this "duel" was supposed to happen LAST year, when Noble ran out of cash and Breedlove ran out of aerodynamic stability.

Ergo, this year both camps are completely winging it on some level and are following a letter-perfect game plan on another; what makes this fascinating is the differences in constructing the dueling massive porta-skunk works installed on this uninhabitable dry lake bed. The Brits are a completely disciplined hive of worker bees, who have summarily fhwwooped together an inflatable quonset hut, parked a coterie of tractor-trailers and space age support vehicles. It is lickety-split and it is focused. Breedlove's encampment is coming together in a much more lackadaisical manner, as if he falls short of the delegation abilities and the manpower to simultaneously star in a photo shoot and oversee a portable installation.

But "target dates" are really "moving target dates." There are just too many variables in pulling a run off; Breedlove is supposedly going for the record on Wednesday, but who knows? This may take six weeks to play itself out...

The locals are bemused and rather enthralled by the LSR war that has taken root in their county. It is certainly a kinder and gentler invasion than the Burning Man art festival that has just wrapped there.

This is the conversation over breakfast at Bruno's, as I am speaking to the Fly Ranch Hot Springs land owners (a scruffy, pot-bellied gent named Vann and his wife, Annie, who looks like Peggy Lipton after the gas has been shut off), who are telling me that before the festival they "had 120 head of cattle; this morning we counted 25." Vann pulls on his overall straps and reckons the animals were spooked by the festivities, and were not fodder for the festival goers' bbq's, as many of these folks were militant vegetarians anyhoo... In addendum, Vann and Annie don't expect to see any coin from the festival promoters - who apparently owed them five figures - because of the County's predilection for asset liquidation and financial opportunism.

(It seems The County hijacked the dosh and the gate receipts from the Burning Man promoters... the local government claims the organizers owe The County 40K for "services"; the promoters liken it to "protection money" (I'm paraphrasing), including fees for forty eight (!) fire trucks on standby.)

Annie says, "It makes me realize why we burn the Man in the first place."

HOT SPRINGS

There is no lodging. For anybody, except the SOA bunch. The Thrust SSCers are sleeping anywhere they can, including in the hallways of local residences.

That night I am to rendezvous with Vann and Annie at their place way out in the middle of nowhere. They are lending me the use of an abandoned trailer on Fly Ranch. I am to meet them at their Hot Spring and they would escort me to my lodging. I had made nice-nice with a couple of members of SSC and I suggested they follow me out to the Hot Spring and just bask in the infinite warmth of the geysers of hot water.

As we lie in the hot springs, we are talking about the road out to Gerlach. There is nothing this wide open in Britain they are saying. There is no way you are going to find 80 miles of open road, with the only opposing traffic being that of the ghosts of Indians who have died in battle on the mesa. To these two blokes, this transport from Reno to Gerlach was an even more fascinating journey than the Antonov flight across the Atlantic two nights before. They said that the "gee-zer" was so fantastic that had it been used as a set in a motion picture, the audience would have scoffed at its authenticity. As it gushes blue and green under the stars and a full moon, I couldn't argue.

As the night progresses, I marvel at the irony of the Brits tapping into the Spirit of America. They were soaking up and drinking in what many of us have taken for granted, ignored and attempted to bury: Americans are free-er than those who dwell both across either pond or north or south of any line of demarcation.

It is bliss. It is one big mind orgasm, as our brains explode like Chinese rockets of another millennia. The fireworks served to welcome the spirits, not chase them away. As we groove on a pict of infinity and isolation, there is nothing but scorpions, bighorn sheep and supersonic cars within a 50 mile radius of us. I doubt these gents have experienced anything even remotely similar since returning to Ol' Sod. Our bliss is a function of climate and geography, and underscored by the contemplation of the cosmos whilst naked in a natural free range hot spring in the Nevada desert.

Later, I try to sleep in the abandoned trailer. It is disturbingly peaceful. It is so quiet my mind begins filling in the blanks. It begins creating noise to emulate a night in civilization. The sounds that are spontaneously generated are a series of white noizes.

Danny Jo the Blind Hippie and His Woman the Earth Momma were squatting on the same property. I wouldn't meet them until later.

BEAT THE SYSTEM (1997)

"There is a kind of craziness to Britain and the British, you know, the ‘mad dogs and Englishmen' and all that. We go out and we do crazy things. We invented a lot of the great sports of the world, even bob-sledding. We haven't got any snow, but it took British people to go out to Switzerland to invent crazy things like bob-sledding. Speed records are all part of that same thing. We kind of built an empire on this pioneering spirit. I'm not saying everything we've done is right. A lot of it was wrong. But we do have this pioneering spirit, as you have in the States. Part of it seems to be record-breaking endeavor. We just have that tradition." - Nigel Macknight, British Water Speed Record contender.

"My best wishes to all involved in Thrust SSC's attempt to be the first through the sound barrier on land. This project is a graphic illustration of British enterprise and engineering at its best. Good luck. The whole country is behind you." - Tony Blair, British Prime Minister.

"It's all about beating the British system. If there were any British government involvement (in Thrust SSC) we would end up with somebody on our board, okay? And this has to be a little organization that is very flexible and can dance and weave. The last thing we want is that sort of person on the board." - Richard Noble.

THE SHOT GLASS

Nobody exemplifies "technological enthusiasm" more so than Ron Ayers. Although retired and in the twilight of his stay here on Planet Earth, Ayers was as active as any of the fresh-faced Mach 1 Clubbers on holiday from the university.

Nearly a month after the Thrusters had arrived and were continuing to creep into the transonic speed range, I eavesdropped on Ayers as he was explaining his theories on supersonic travel in a motorcar to a bewildered and besotted patron in the Miner's Club. Ayers uses a shot glass as a prop that represents the Thrust SSC and gingerly slides it along the surface of the bar to illustrate his theories about subsonic, trans-sonic, and supersonic pressure waves and how they would affect the handing of the Thrust SSC.

The guy at the bar asks Ayers why don't you Brits just put the hammer down and go Mach 1 and be done with it?

Ayers explains the SSC design teams rationale for chipping away at ever-increasing speeds: "The aerodynamic forces would be simply enormous, enough to lift the car and throw it around like an autumn leaf in a gale," he says. "The crux of the problem is knowing how the flow would behave underneath the car at sonic speeds and what would happen to shockwaves in that region."

The guy on the bar stool next nods as if he comprehends Ayers' riff.

"The most important thing," Ayers concludes as Bev the bartender repossessed the shot glass and put it to less theoretical use, "is that we don't obliterate Ann-dee."

BALL OF FLAME

A writer for RACER magazine sees me in Bruno's with a "Jocko's Porting Service" t-shirt on and comments on it.

I tell the guy from RACER that I had done a feature on Jocko for HOT ROD and was a big fan of his. I then add that Jocko had been nominated into the International Drag Racing Hall of Fame.

Jocko had called me and ran his acceptance speech by me. He says he was to take the podium dressed in a tearaway tuxedo. He would begin his speech with the words, "I'm really honored to be inducted into Don Garlits' ‘Mall of Blame'... I mean ‘Hall of Shame'... I mean ‘Ball of Flame'...." while he gradually tore away the tuxedo and stripped down to a "Jocko's Porting Service" t-shirt.

"Jocko's not going to be in the Drag Racing Hall of Fame."

"Sure, he is. He called me up and read me the first paragraph of his acceptance speech. Jocko's in the Hall of Fame."

"Not anymore. He changed his mind."

ART DAMAGE

"Thrust SSC, Thrust SSC... Hey Kids, you need to come to see Thrust SSC" - Danny Jo, the Blind Hippie, singing to the Thrust SSC team members.

"I'm a loo-ser, and I'm half the man I appear to be...I'm a lo-o-o-o-ser..." - Flash, the bartender at the Gerlach saloon, serenading from the street to anyone who will listen, but pointing his guitar in the specific direction of Craig Breedlove's ad hoc press center.

There is a heavy air of psychosis that envelops the playa, like an invisible asbestos cloud. Breedlove has fodded an engine. Foreign object damage. One unofficial report was that the fod was not a pebble on the desert floor, but a bolt absent-mindedly mislaid upon the fiberglass inlet of the jet engines, and sucked into the turbines when the engine was spooled up. Breedlove's prize jet engine is junk. Like many things, the days of scoring a J79 cheap has passed, as has the day of the backyard mechanic shoehorning a massive jet onto a piece of pipe, strapping himself in, lighting the candle and making the newsreels. Sheer bravura was once synonymous with the Spirit of America, but like Roy and I discovered when we drove through that massive passenger car pile-up and crash in West Los Angeles, the Spirit of America is now a ghost - and it ain't a friendly one.

"The day of the backyard mechanic is over..."

What has changed? Why is Breedlove lost? He seems confused. It had all been so straightforward before: design a car shaped like a dart or an arrow and make ‘er as light as possible, crank up the thrust, push the envelope and bask in the ensuing glory. Now he has augmented his approach with Dezso Molnar as his crew chief, a young pony-tailed post-modern boho from San Francisco, an artist whom some of his old gang of hot rodders labeled as "art damaged." Dezso was a tenant at the "art explosion laboratories," south of Market in San Francisco. Before his stint with Breedlove, he had been robotic/jet engine technician for the Survival Research Labs, a guerrilla art group notorious for blowing up sculptures under bridges and then running from the police.

(Molnar is no stranger to Black Rock. As early as 1995 at the first Burning Man Festival, he had attempted some performance art with a pulse-jet-powered go cart, which was carted out to the desert when strapped and mounted onto his roommate's Ford LTD. According to festival organizers, out at Black Rock, Molnar attempted to "cross the 8th dimension" with his go-kart. Uh huh. His techno band, "Rocket Science," also serenaded the post-industrial revelers...)

Go Karts and Techno Music. The old time land speed guys had no time for such pretense. This guy Dezso's background was in blowing up sculptures in the warehouse district and calling it art. An acetylene torch was his paintbrush and various pieces of surplus steel were his canvas. Now he has an opportunity to get involved with slightly higher stakes - Craig Breedlove's life - and the hot rodders in Craig's clique put up with his selection of crew chief, but it reeked of desperation, like a Dorian Gray-ish attempt to tap into the energy of youth. Had Craig forgotten his roots? Or were his roots showing? Doesn't Dezso have more business with the Burning Man than being the crew chief on the supersonic missile with one of America's greatest heroes strapped inside? If so, the folks who had supported Breedlove throughout his career began to feel betrayed. Even the Gerlach locals and the Land Speed loyals had turned against the Spirit of America. The queue of desert rats, speed freaks and survivalists who lined the circumference of the playa also are troubled by the dubious performances of the Spirit of America. The American flags that dot the impromptu trailer park seem to droop impotently, even when the winds kick in. When the local bartender grabs a guitar and starts serenading Breedlove's camp with "I'm A Loser," the bleakest existential ballad out of the Beatles' ouevre, Craig has to know it was time to regroup.

Breedlove had fodded an engine.

So now what? Come midnight, Breedlove loads up his tractor-trailer with his wounded racer and turns the rig around, and heads home. More trouble. It is so dark on the playa the truck driver cannot find the tire tracks that lead to the highway. Instead, he is transfixed by the lights of Gerlach, which act as a siren's song of sorts and summons the drivers into a muddy, terra-not-so-firma section of the lake bed, whereupon the rig promptly sinks to its axles...

The Thrust SSC team is called to the rescue, using Supacats to pull the truck out of the muck. The Brits more than magnanimously rescued the SOA, esprit de corps and all that British chivalry. It is like the Bridge on the River Kwai, when the British, interned as prisoners of war, built the bridge for the Japs ... and just like the William Holden movie, the Brits are so together, a veritable Swiss watch of organization, while the SOA camp come across as the Japanese, a slow exercise in chaos and self-destruction. (The only thing that runs on time is Craig's morning jogs with his personal trainer and his publicist.)

The SOA has degenerated into vaudeville and the butt of jokes.

Back at his shop in Rio Vista, the team performs an engine swap, installing a weaker J79, which Breedlove has kept in his inventory to scavenge for spare parts.

Yeah... it looks bleak for the SOA. But is this the darkness before the dawn?

THRUST SSC (THAT BRITISH INVASION)

The next morning is a wash... the weather is bad, the winds are in full song, Breedlove is on the road home, nothing is happening and the entire town is in the throes of maximum boredom.

Over coffee in Bruno's, I hammer on a laptop.

A waitress asks, "Are you looking at poor-nog-gra-fee on - what's that thing called?"

"The internet," her co-worker answers.

It is the usual gathering at Bruno's: land speed engineers, bighorn sheep hunters in fatigues, retired rocket drag racers and slumming physicists from Berkeley, all of whom are within earshot of the waitress's prurient queries and gathered at the counter or at tables, and none of whom put down their forks or the cups of coffee.

I assure the waitresses that no, I am merely working on an article about the Mach 1 attempts.

Later that morning I run into Vann and Annie and they introduce me to four hippies who are staying out at their ranch. Vann and Annie look a little frazzled, having had to throw a couple of trespassing journalists from People Magazine off of their hot springs. What's more, their other "tenants" are beginning to use up their welcome. The hippies had come out for the Burning Man and had just never gone home.

I start talking to one of them, Danny Jo, the Blind Hippie. He tells me he had written a song about the Thrust SSC. I asked him to sing it. So he does: a capella.

Now let me tell you about
The latest automotive sensation
With happiness, watch out
Here comes that British Invasion

Instead of one jet engine it's got two,
and rear wheel steering
To see it through