For Iram Parveen Bilal, a USC grad student and self-professed Bollywood nut, this was the last chance to join the school’s Anjaane Hindi film dance team before receiving her degree. The lone Islamic member of the team — she’s from Islamabad, Pakistan — Iram took full advantage…with a couple of costume alterations.

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Participants in Bollywood film dance troupe competitions are nothing if not serious about winning… Didrik and I studied the oeuvre extensively and came up with this plan for world domination. Watch and learn.

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Bollywood film dance troupe competitions have been popular at certain American universities since the turn of the century (the current one). Campus Indian-American clubs are the instigators and their members, the primary participants. For most of these very American kids, Bollywood films are their main connection to their parents’ heritage: Buy-in from notoriously no-nonsense folks is therefore easier. Meanwhile, what college kid doesn’t want to dress in provocative costumes and undulate with beaming members of the opposite sex? Arranged marriages can wait. Check this vid if you think I’m fooling.

My friend and accomplished songwriter Dan MacKenzie had produced some tracks for an upcoming Bollywood-inspired indie film. He gave me one, which I dismantled and reformed to serve as the bed for this little paean to Puna and the gang.

BOLLYWOOD BERKELEY
© 2007 Miskell/MacKenzie

Straight outta Punjab
A new tradition
Bollywood film
Dance troupe competition
I saw my first
Up in the East Bay
A fierce competition
Bollywood Berkeley

Shalins and Priyas
Had their hands full
With mudras and costumes
Pizza and Red Bull
Last minute changes
To scenery
Rehearsing in parking lots
Bollywood Berkeley

They brought the bhangra
They brought the funk
The “bullet time” moves
The bona fide hunks
The pretty girls
Each one a gem
How can the boys think
It’s all about them?

They did their
Movie musical dances
Right down to the
Sappy romances
The Bruins tap-danced
To victory
They heart New York but they luv
Bollywood Berkeley

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I only wrote one piece on Art Cars. Underground’s publishing schedule was catching up with us and most of my time was taken creating videos, which were what my superiors at Yahoo were most focused on for commercial reasons.

To those who proudly roll in flashy or expensive cars, a suggestion: Glue polyurethaned breakfast burritos, blowup dolls and slinky toys all over those precious rides; action-paint them as homages to Jackson Pollock; modify their bodies to resemble giant slabs of sashimi and then shadow Kikkoman delivery trucks around town.

In other words, turn them into art cars. People will not only notice you more in an art car than in any midlife-crisis ride you’ve tried, they might just respect you.

You may wind up feeling like Brangelina exiting an African orphanage, though.

Never have I seen more cameras spontaneously appear than while tailing Rebecca Caldwell’s Carthedral east out of Tucson on I-10. It was like a Busby Berkeley, showgirl-laden musical: The Carthedral passed and a cascading wave of photo-taking gadgets shot from every car window in its wake.

We were rolling with an art car caravan on the last leg of its run from California’s Bay Area to the Arizona/Mexico border town of Douglas. One reason for the road trip was the fun of catching up with fellow art car artists like Rick McKinney and strange roadside attractions like the Integratron.

Mainly, though, we were escorting the venerable Carthedral and Emily Duffy’s Mondrianmobile to their new home, the future Art Car World.

Art car impresario Harrod Blank’s labor of love, Art Car World is under construction in an old glass shop in Douglas. It will one day house a museum featuring art cars in quasi-diorama settings made by the artists.

At this point you may be saying to yourself, “Back up, dude. What’s an art car?”

Well, an art car is vehicle for self-expression — literally.

Art car artists turn their rides into street-legal, rolling canvases… or collages… or sculpture. The Mondrianmobile is predominantly painted. Ernie Steingold’s California Fantasy Van (part of Art Car World’s collection) is essentially a collage. And the Carthedral is a sculpture.

Art cars turn up almost everywhere, though there are art car hotbeds. Houston recently hosted its 20th annual art car parade. Blank and Northrup are behind the Bay Area’s yearly ArtCar Fest.

And then there’s Burning Man, where the only non-emergency gas-guzzlers allowed on the playa are mutant vehicles (a slightly larger designation than art cars in that they needn’t be street legal). Over-the-top mutants (like Tom Kennedy’s Super Silky Mobile) are a constant source of amusement at Burning Man.

Wherever they are, and whatever the medium, art cars have maximum effect. Time and again, as our caravan rolled south, people in passing cars would forget themselves — forget that they were driving, even — as they hung out windows and whooped at the rolling art exhibition. Many simply stared in awe (Carthedral is pretty darkly awesome).

Art cars “storm the reality studio,” in William Burroughs’ words. In the early ’90s, Rick Macnamara regularly stormed commuters’ reality with his Rocket Bike, a motorcycle done up as a ballistic missile (plus western saddle and steer horns), as a protest against the Gulf war.

Art cars get you thinking differently: Why would someone drive a car covered in horse figurines? Or painted like a Mondrian? Why do you drive what you drive? Why were you born? (Thinking differently is a slippery slope.)

Art cars get you acting differently, too. Unlike sound-proof, climate-controlled vehicles straight off the assembly line, art cars encourage interaction. People roll down their windows and talk to art car drivers. And they use words other than “#$%@ you!”

“People get so excited,” says Philo Northrup, an art car community stalwart. Northrup made the trip south in his latest creation, a zinc and horn festooned Honda Element named Daisy Singer. “They weave out of traffic to honk their horns and wave at me — and this happens every day!”

In Tucson, the driver of a red pick-up was so amused by our art car caravan that he joined it and for a good five minutes made the sign of the devil at us.

Art cars simply attract attention. It’s up to you to figure out what to do with it.

Photo and footage credits:

Photos of Tom Kennedy courtesy of Tom Kennedy. Photo of Topsy Turvey bus beneath San Francisco City Hall courtesy of Gary Wilson. Dinosaur Demolition Derby footage courtesy of Joe Mangrum.

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Tom Kennedy makes art car mash-ups the way Ben Cohen remixes ice cream: deliriously. Here, they combine their mix-and-mash-up magic to create their very own political machine–the Topsy-turvy Bus. Didrik and I caught up with them in Oakland a couple times during the course of the bus’ building.

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The pure spectacle of art cars generally overshadows consideration of what’s behind them: Who turned the Olds into a giant piece of sushi? And why? This vid explores the art car maker’s mind, while providing insight to Didrik’s (he was largely responsible for the clip).

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Didrik and I saw off this art caravan in San Francisco’s East Bay then caught up again with them in Arizona for the last leg of their drive to the border town of Douglas, AZ and the future site of Harrod Blank’s Art Car World. The art cars all attracted all kinds of attention on the road, none more so than Rebecca Caldwell’s Carthedral, which nearly sent several passing motorists motoring off the road.

THEY WERE IN ART CARS
© 2007 Miskell/Ward

Automobiles got up in memorabilia
Rollin’ with the gothest Carthedral on four wheels, yeah
Ran into The Duke of the road
A whole lotta Hunter, a touch of Tom Joad

Art cars…

Takin’ the art Carthedral to Art Car World
Rebecca was a highway star
So were all of her friends
‘Cause they were in art cars

Art cars…
They were in art cars…

Back in the East Bay Tom’s buildin’ a magic bus
To carry Ben’s topsy-turvy tales to all of us
Emily still drives her Vain Van
But I think she left a piece of her heart with her Mondrian

Art cars…

Takin’ the art Carthedral to Art Car World
Rebecca was a highway star
So were all of her friends
‘Cause they were in art cars

Art cars
They were in art cars…

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Some of the rocketry guys–the brass in the organizations and venders–expressed concern about being represented as too extreme. This had everything to do with a pending court decision on whether a key ingredient of the powerful rocket motors they prefer was going to continue to be clumped in with dangerous (as in useful for terrorists) explosives on a federal list. That’s why I love the ballsy name of one of the most popular annual rocketry confab: LDRS (Large Dangerous Rocket Ships). Of course, BALLS is a close contender as ballsy names go.

Who doesn’t find the idea of an event named Large, Dangerous Rocket Ships (LDRS) intoxicating? The moment I heard it, I was sold. I wouldn’t have cared if the next thing I heard was that LDRS were held on a barren wasteland in the middle of nowhere. Which is a good thing, because that’s the next thing I heard.

Turns out most big rocket events happen far from civilization (and when you think about it…). Imaginative event names are therefore essential for wooing attendees. Fortunately, rocketeers have exceptional imaginations. Should you want your next event to really take off, consider having a rocketeer name it.

ROCstock. If organizers don’t open these bi-annual rocketry blasts with Jimi Hendrix’s Woodstock rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner, they ought to have their heads examined (which might not be a bad idea, regardless). The Mojave Desert’s lifeless Lucerne Dry Lake, with its punishing temperature swings, is a rather hostile environment for a festival advertised as family-friendly. Yet, hundreds of rocketry nuts and the people who love them show up to ROCstocks each June and November. Appearances notwithstanding, organizers must not be completely crazy.

Dairy Aire. I thought people were speaking French when referring to this springtime, Central Valley, big rocket event. It wasn’t ’till I attended a launch put on by Dairy Aire’s sponsors at Maddox Dairy near Riverdale, Calif., that I realized their penchant for cornball puns. It’s right up there with their predilection for big ass rockets. I was treated to the launch of a 12-foot-tall rocket equipped with the most powerful engine allowed in the state. It was glorious, as was the dairy air that day. Though I’m afraid my journey to the event scarred me for life: passing downwind of stockyards for mile after harrowing mile, I was nearly sent into a fugue state by the smell of, well, derriere.

BALLS. What more, really, is there to say? Except that, your event better damn well deliver if you’re going to invoke testicular fortitude with its name. You will not be forgiven such cocksureness. By all accounts, this annual experimental launch does live up to its name: last September, rocketeer Wedge Oldham launched a DIY (that’s Do-It-Yourself) rocket the size of the Oscar Meyer Weiner Wagon. BALLS goes off each fall in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, familiar to many as the site of Burning Man festivals. Burning Man may claim to be about radical self-expression, but sending untested projectiles 100,000 feet straight up sounds pretty frickin’ radical to me.

And then there’s LDRS — Large, Dangerous Rocket Ships. How are you going to argue with a name like that? The fact that it’s a “non-professional” event only makes it that much more delirious. Though, the name does seem a tad provocative for organizers skittish about raising red flags with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Maybe honesty is the best policy. Things can be dangerous without being threats to homeland security. These rockets don’t carry warheads. And guidance systems are verboten, which is probably why LDRS generally goes off in the middle of nowhere.

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The first of my two articles for Underground on model rocket enthusiasts.

Amateur rocketeers are n-n-n-nut-jobs.

That was my impression of the handful of Rocketry Organization of California (ROC) members with whom I stood shivering in the 3° F-F-F-Fahrenheit February dawn on a vast, windswept expanse of scorched earth in the Mojave Desert, known as Lucerne Dry Lake.

Granted, it was a first impression, based solely on the fact that they’d all left warm beds in the middle of the night in order to shamble about that godforsaken landscape at sunrise.

All the same, I prepared myself for a cold day in Hell.

Then the doors swung open on a trailer laden with rebar rods, spools of cable and pennant rope… and Hell began a-poppin’.

Men and boys soon had a far-flung public address system in place on the ancient lakebed. Tiered firing lines were laid out with maybe 20 launch pads spaced along them. Tables for rocketeer check-in and rocket launch control were set up. Individual pads were linked to a central control console.

A flagged line was stretched hundreds of yards in either direction across the flat marking a safe boundary between the launch zone and observation area. A steady flow of incoming cars and trucks pulled up to it and parked, and a host of mini skunk works began coalescing around tailgates and card tables up and down the line.

Before long, the Launch Control Officer was counting down over the PA and — PPSSHHOOOO! PPSSHHOOOO! PPSSHHOOOO! — a fusillade of model rockets shot from the first tier of launch pads into a cloudless sky. It was nice but not especially spectacular; the rockets were modest, their flights lowish and slowish.

I found ROC’s VP, Wedge Oldham, a rocketry vet known for launching experimental craft, at his truck phoning the FAA to say the launch was getting under way, in compliance with the waiver granting them permission. The waiver covers flights up to 6,300 feet in altitude. From what I’d seen, that was overkill by orders of magnitude.

KKKKWWWRRRRROOAARRRRR! A rocket roared off a launch pad behind us. I looked up from my duck-and-cover crouch in time to see the ship disappear into the heavens… along with any lingering doubts I had about attending the launch. “YOU PEOPLE ARE AWESOME!” I may have screamed at Wedge, though I don’t think I actually hugged him…

Tens of thousands of awesome people across America and around the world regularly attend regional rocket club launches like that one sponsored by SoCal’s ROC. ROC holds launches on the dry lake once a month, year round. Their frigid, February ‘07 launch was attended by close to 100 obviously terminal rocketry fans and family members.

“Because of the time of year, this won’t be a really big launch,” ROC’s president, Dok “Final Jeopardy” Hanson, had told me days before that wintry launch. “But we’ll have kids. ROC is very family oriented.”

He wasn’t lying. There were fathers and sons in attendance — a preponderance of them. But there were kid sisters and moms, too, and grandfathers and granddaughters. There were teachers with students, and students sans teachers. Some were ROC’ers, some weren’t (non-ROC members pay a $10 launch fee).

Those intrepid rocketeers came from all over SoCal — from the Valley, from the OC. A Boy Scout troop from Lake Elsinore was there for their rocketry merit badges (though I have to believe sending projectiles shrieking into the sky was the bigger draw for the boys).

The projectiles amateur rocketeers send shrieking into the sky tend to be of two categories: model rockets made from kits, and experimental craft made from whatever the hell else someone thinks might be amusing to blast off.

Most kits contain everything you need to make a model rocket except the engine (which is generally purchased separately). But the word “kits” is misleading. Yes, there are kits for 16-inch models like the Estes rockets readers may remember from childhood. But there are much larger kit rockets available now. Much.

At a launch put on by Tripoli Rocketry Association’s Central Cal chapter, I watched Cliff Sojourner and son Aidan send an 11-foot Nike Smoke (a popular Polecat Aerospace kit rocket) 8,000 feet into the wild blue yonder. The M-class motor Team Sojourner used that day is the most powerful allowed in California. It was most impressive.

Experimental rockets, too, can be impressive. I saw several cable spools sent aloft simply because they were spools. Repeated attempts were made to launch a rubber chicken and even a teriyaki rice bowl at the Tripoli event (neither went well or I’d have tried to pass off photos of them as UFOs).

Pushing the experimental-craft-envelope is hardly confined to low-power pranks. Wedge Oldham and Andy Woerner, owner of Polecat Aerospace, teamed up at the dry lake to see how large an engine they could stuff in a Kelly green Polecat Goblin rocket before it CATO’d (rocketeer for catastrophic failure).

“We are now going to find out what the structural integrity of epoxy is at high speeds,” their fellow ROC’er, John Van Norman, informed me seconds before the goblin left the premises.

That “motor wearing a rocket”, as the launch control officer described the over-powered goblin, shot from the launch pad like a bullet and it returned to Earth intact.

The terminal speed of epoxy was eventually found: Goblin brothers Wedge and Andy upped the ante and engine size of the rocket for a second launch. That time around, the goblin hit the wall (it CATO’d), but not before hitting what Woerner figured was Mach 3 (or 2284 mph). As the kit-maker, he could fairly claim their antics were a “stress test” for the rocket. I thought they were a kick in the ass.

Warmer weather brings larger crowds to rocket launches. It also brings big and extreme rocket events with delirious names like “Large, Dangerous Rocket Ships” and “Balls.” These events, held on remote Nevada dry lakes, feature extreme and experimental craft that soar as high as 100,000 feet.

Read on, to find out more about some of the different rocketry events.

Onboard rocketry video courtesy of Eric Gates and Gates Brothers Rocketry

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