I would be remiss if I did not give Manly a shoutout on his editing of the Please Hold videos, which have improved by leaps and bounds since the early days -- and are a genuine pleasure to digest during my weekly drives from NYC to Philadelphia and back. I mean, when I'm stuck at a light. Not whilst I'm flying down the New Jersey Turnpike at 105 MPH. Nope, not this gal!
2) Fourteen comments from last week's post! Of course sixth revolved around Damian T. Lloyd, Esq. and his mansion and a yacht. I keed! I keed! But...
Anonymous said...
Jen,
That's some good drivin'!
Cheers,
A Fake Name
And Tony said..
By the way Jen - Feel free to post more stunt driving vids here! Looks like fun!
Sure thing! Remember that Cannonball Dash I mentioned? Well, I completed my first solo Cannonball Challenge in April 2021 in 35 hours and 56 minutes. A very condensed video from my front-facing camera can be found below! Top speed in my 2016 Mustang was 148 MPH (149 MPH if my radar detector was accurate).
@typingmonkette #cannonball #cannonballrun #cannonballchallenge #mustang #2016mustang #nyc #la #timelapse #drive #driving #takefive #davebrubeck ♬ Take Five - Dave Brubeck Quartet
w00t!
3) Back to the topic from last week wherein...
Dave Kopperman said...
Dave can be sphinx-like in his responses sometimes [unless they're on Please Hold <yawn> --Jen], and ... if he's analyzed a thing to his satisfaction and drawn a conclusion, no force on Earth can move him off of that. Interestingly, his (to me) flawed analysis of that aspect of the crash actually doesn't detract from his overarching theory that Raymond harbored professional jealousy towards Drake and was likely - perhaps subconsciously - suicidal (and perhaps steered by a kind of 4D synchronicity into the crash as an inevitability).
I'd weighed saving the question for an Ask Dave session but suspect it would be politely and obliquely dismissed - and it's really kind of a red herring anyhow, as the book gets so far away from the accident that it's not even really engaged with it as anything more than window dressing.
What a timely moment to share the Corvette Forum and the Mystery of Stan Drake's '56 Corvette ??? Who is that Johnny Cigarette guy and how does he know Dave?!?
Oh wait, could it also be Anonymous below?
Anonymous said...
“…Stan was absolutely convinced Alex was trying to take him with him, to make it look like an accident so his widow would get the insurance, an incredibly tortured man. Even more, Westport was definitely a hotbed of strange-ass stuff Artist-wise then; like Woodstock with Lockjaw. And when I would drive the length of road where the accident occurred, it's pretty revealing. The road is tailor made for insane acceleration.” (Bill Sienkiewicz 2015)
- Eddie
Eddie, you ruin the entire aura of being so mysteriously Anonymous if you sign your name at the end. <sigh>
Dave Kopperman said...
"I think (Stan) felt the guilt of losing Alex Raymond being part of it [...] It started to rain and they were going on this curve and he knew that Alex was going a little bit too fast, but he didn't say anything" - Tom Palmer
Not that these quotes are mutually exclusive, but it sounds like Drake was all over the place AND these are second-hand reporting on conversations that had likely happened years before - I suspect the reportage says more about Palmer and Sienkiewicz than it does about Raymond (or Drake, for that matter)
Let's just hope no one else from the brain trust chimes in...
Mouse Skull Entertainment said...
I suspect Drake suffered head trauma/PTSD from the crash, and subsequently didn't really remember what happened and spent the rest of his life trying to fill in the blanks.
So, I don't trust his narrative.
Manly Matt Dow
D'oh!
Anonymous said...
Leonard Starr interview: Alter Ego 113:
JA: Before we change subjects, I’d like to know what Stan Drake told you about the automobile accident that took Alex Raymond’s life and nearly his own.
STARR: We were both car enthusiasts, and Alex had been taking speed-driving lessons. I guess he got good at it, but not good enough, because he kept wrecking cars on the Merritt Parkway at night. Alex drove expensive cars like Mercedes, which he drew in Rip Kirby. When Alex’s body was brought to the hospital, his regular doctor was there and said, “That stupid bastard finally did it.”
Stan had just bought a new Corvette. Alex dropped by and wanted to try it out. At one point, they were driving uphill very fast as they were coming to a crossroad. Being unfamiliar with the car, Alex hit the accelerator instead of the brake, and they went up into air, off the road, and hit a tree in mid-air. Stan was thrown clear; his ear was almost torn off and his shoulder was dislocated. They managed to sew the ear back on and put his arm in a sling. He would never wear a seat beat after that. If he had been wearing one, it would’ve been all over for him. The driving shaft of the steering wheel went right through Alex.
Alex was having an affair with a certain Mrs. White. None of us met her, but he was madly in love with her, and she with him. His wife wouldn’t give him a divorce because she was devoutly Catholic, as Alex was. They had five kids, who were mostly grown by the time of the accident. Some time after the accident, a couple of insurance investigators showed up, thinking Alex deliberately crashed the car because he had a million-dollar insurance policy that would have been voided if this was suicide. Stan got furious and said, “Do you think he would have done that with me in the car? My best friend?” Stan threw them out of his house. That was the end of that.
Years later, Stan and I were sharing a studio, and were talking about it, and he started thinking about it, and says, “You know....” Well, they said Alex was an experienced driver and wouldn’t have made a mistake like that. Thinking about it, well, they have a point. Would you make that mistake?
JA: No.
STARR: It doesn’t take more than five minutes to get familiar with a new car, and then it’s like you’ve been driving it forever.
-Eddie
This is becoming one helluva post!
Dave Kopperman said...
Eddie - it's a little difficult to know what you're trying to convey with these interview clips, but this Leonard Starr interview may be the most opaque as yet. It actually lends credence to Matt's point that Drake's PTSD led to him changing key points of his narrative over the years. It also references so many things that it's highly unlikely that Starr was privy to in a first or even second-hand fashion (such as the quote from the doctor). It's ultimately nothing but somewhat informed gossip and supposition.
None of which actually gets back to my original question, which has been somewhat obscured in all of this: where Dave is making the claim that "there's no way to confuse brake and accelerator". I thought it might have something to do with manual vs. automatic, Tony said it's definitely a mistake even experienced drivers make even on manual, and Jen says (and Starr supports) that Raymond wasn't nearly as good a driver as he thought he was. All three are reasonable assumptive possibilities, but impossible to know for certain - which is why creating a narrative around it is a brilliant artistic choice.
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(cue Keanu Reeves "Bill and Ted" voice) Whoooooah...Koyaanisqatsi, dude....
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