Category: Hot Gear Friday

If you show this image around the world… …of the “Avtomat Kalashnikov” model 1947 assault rifle, people think “marxism”, “revolution”… …or “gangs of teenage thug “militiamen” here for your stuff”. The AK47 is one of the iconic images of the past 100 years. More than 100 million AK-series rifles have been built – the vast…

Car and Driver tests several Bond cars and is left underwhelmed. It turns out they may have actually used special effects in the production of these films!  There are two ways James Bond’s cars are portrayed in film: seductively sitting still (often draped with beautiful women) or blazing across the screen in some of the most exciting…

Financial system events of late provide only a glimpse of the worldwide economic collapse that will be brought on by a capitulation of global equity markets if Barack Obama realizes a successful Presidential bid and unleashes the full faith and credit of the Socialist Party. In anticipation, American automotive enthusiasts are encouraged to recalibrate their choice of daily conveyance. Ladies and…

In the Flesh…  Dodge Challenger 6.1 Liter Hemi V8 425HP …this one’s for you Kermit.

Honda’s version of Toyota’s Prius (Obama Bumper Sticker also Standard?)

The first were built in 1907. The last were manufactured in the late thirties. They were among the British Commonwealth’s standard rifles until the late fifties, In the hands of the “Old Contemptibles” – Britain’s tiny force of regulars in 1914 – they held off massed waves of Germans during the original blitz through Belgium.…

In the world of gear, there are toys – things that’ll give you that little burst of pleasure instantly – and then there’s machinery, the things you have to work to get what you want with. A fuzz box?  It’s a toy. I don’t mean, by the way, to disparage toys.  Toys have their place,…

It’s Memorial Day Weekend – so today, I’m highlighting the “hot gear” most familiar to “the greatest generation”. It’s the M1 Garand, America’s standard infantry rifle from the mid-thirties until the late fifties. A rugged, solid, deceptively compact rifle in .30-06, with a simple gas action, it was the rifle the US military carried in…

Today’s gear isn’t “hot” in the sense of “really really great”.  Indeed, in the great continuum of electronics, especially electronics available today, it’s a comical throwback. But 20-odd years ago, it was the stuff of dreams. Not long after I started playing guitar, I started having delusions of grandeur.  The delusions were not unlike the…

What was that term we used to use to refer to nebbishy guys who’d suddenly get all ten-foot-tall-and-armor-plated when they’d get a couple of Sex On The Beaches down the hatch? Oh, yeah – “Liquid Courage”; the phenomenon whereby someone with no aptitude at something becomes an expert, maven or badass after marinading their brain…