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[Bobby Isosceles]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYlSTvAW1Po

behold

[rowboat]

I feel a lot of emotions when I see that, but despair ain't one of 'em.

[Mr Trout]

I saw that driving down the street at artscape a few years ago and it was definitely the best car in the show.

[pmcd9]

Richard's a good friend of mine.  The Sashimi Tabernacle Choir is the antithesis of despair.  It brings joy to pretty much everyone that comes in contact with it.  And it always steals the show at any event it appears at.

I like it so much I had it painted on my van.

[greenkoolayd]

ooga chacka, indeed.

[wombat]

That photo is private!

[pmcd9]

That photo is private!

Try now.  Sorry!

[jaydub]

Awesome.  The lobsters are especially effective.  He really should do something about getting that Octopus conductor though.

[JorgeFabregas]

Paul, how did you ever get mixed up in the art car crowd? I bet that is a good story and that there may be pictures involved.

[TedStriker]

Hands down my favorite art car, and it isn't really even close.  I remember the old days before the conductor when it was just the giraffe.  Lil Volvo's all grown up.

Got to hang out with the owner at the 24 Hours of Lemons race south of Houston this spring.  Cool dude, of course.

[pmcd9]

Paul, how did you ever get mixed up in the art car crowd? I bet that is a good story and that there may be pictures involved.

That's kind of a deep question and I don't know if I am alert enough to answer it tonight, but I'll give it a shot.

The way it happened is I saw this movie.  It really changed my life.  I've always been pretty weird and when I saw this movie I realized immediately that these were my people, this was my family.

But even though it's mentioned in the movie I didn't pick up on the fact that this was particularly a Houston phenomenon.  And also, at that time hadn't tapped into the artist trapped inside myself.  So I approached this paradigm slowly.  One other thing, at the time I was living in the exurbs of Houston in an area devoid of any culture weird or otherwise.

At the time I saw the movie I had never before seen an artcar.  But then I started noticing them on my frequent visits to town.  I discovered there was an entire parking garage downtown that had been turned into an artcar park and once I took my entire family down there.  They had to indulge me because it was my birthday.

Several years passed and finally I got the opportunity to move to Houston in 2003 and that year I went to my first artcar event a symposium held at the Rice University Media Center.  I met so many awesome people that night my mind was exploding.  These people were alive.  I was overwhelmed by how open, warm and friendly they all were.  They took me in immediately and treated me like an old friend.  It was all over for me at that point.  I couldn't have turned my back on this crowd if I had tried.

At that time I had been writing these cheesy articles for my website and in the process of gathering information about what I had seen that night I got on the H.A.C.K. (Houston Art Car Klub) mailing list.  Now I was plugged in and I knew whenever anything was going to happen in the artcar community. 

The first H.A.C.K. event I attended was an artcar caravan to see the more unusual and over the top Christmas lights displays around town.

The next year I attended my first parade and all the weeks events.  I've been heavily immersed ever since.  Along the way I started to make some real deep friendships and in the process there's some peer pressure to join in so to speak.  So I decided I needed to make an artcar.  At the time I was still pretty starstruck so I decided to do a tribute artcar.  And working in the furnace industry for 15 years I knew something about flames.  Originally the flames were to be just a small part of the tribute, but eventually it took over the project and became a thing of it's own.  And so Dragonfire was born.  Later I actually did my tribute car called NIKONIC.

I don't know if that's very eloquent, but it's pretty much the basic facts of the matter.

Oh, by the way we had our first ever nighttime illuminated artcar parade in Houston last weekend.  Dragonfire was in it and got on the television.  You can see it here.  It's near the end of this section.

[JorgeFabregas]

Aw, man. Good story. Touching.

[Carlos del Vaca]

Now, when you're driving that thing in a parade, how often do you shoot off the flames?

[pmcd9]

I can shoot it at will.  Check out the video I linked.  It was a pretty short parade so I basically shot it the whole way.  I usually do about a 5-10 second blast.  Then wait a moment or so to build anticipation and shoot it again.

[Drygioni]

Paul, you continue to consistently fascinate me with a life very different to mine but in so many good and fantastic ways, always a pleasure to read your stories