So right now--I mean this very minute!--I should be out at my home racetrack of Blackhawk Farms tooling around (at speed, and maybe even slightly sideways!) in some gullible enthusiast's beloved GTV, Spider Guilia or Giulietta. With him or her next to me and foolishly egging me on. After which I would sell an embarrassingly large number of my books at Lunchtime and then, at end of day, scoot over to friend John Saccameno's nearby resto shop, Sport and Specialty cars, for a bit of an Alfa-centric barbeque.

Did I mention that it's a gorgeous fall day outside?

Just perfect, in fact.

See the Alfa Romeo Owners Club Chicago Region (the very first in this country, I believe) is hosting the AROC's NATIONAL CONVENTION this week (I've been guest speaker several times in the past in Seattle, here in Chicago and out in San Diego) and it's all happening--social events, autocross, track event, concours d'elegance, banquet, etc.) just a few quarts of gasoline from where I'm sitting and pounding this out.

Only REAL LIFE reared its ugly head (as it is more and more wont to do as we get older and accumulate more rings inside our trunks) and my beloved and long-suffering wife Carol had a wee medical procedure on her thyroid gland on Monday (spoiler alert: it was a great success, the surgeon removed the right half--as planned--everything looked good and her prognosis is excellent) but it did kinda knock her on her lovely bottom and she's still recovering her awesome normal strength and sweet-but-smartass attitude. Those who know it both love and fear it!

But the point is that we're both kinda whipped as we spent Monday Night in her hospital room following her surgery and it was, at best, a fitful and uncomfortable experience. The nursing staff were wonderful, and they even got me a so-called "reclining lounge chair" so I could sleep there. It looked comfy enough, but in fact I think it was originally designed for The Spanish Inquisition (see image below).

As everyone who has ever fallen within earshot of me (especially at a bar!) knows, I've had a lot of history racing Alfas (see images above) and I love them dearly. If you noticed, I have my narrator hero Buddy Palumbo finally getting to go through racing school on his own (at the end of novel number four, TOLY'S GHOST) at the wheel of a Giulietta Normale at Lime Rock Park. BTW, just for fun I recently re-read TOLY'S GHOST, and it's a bewildering combination of things I'm proud of and really love and places where I should have taken a pickaxe or a chainsaw and a belt-sander to some of the prose and paragraphs. Then again, hindsight is really only good for the folks who make and sell antacids...

But "needs must," as the Brits always say, and you've got to take care of things on the home front first, n'est ce pas? Carol should be back to yelling at me for spilling things and leaving cookie crumbs on the floor and counter in a week or so (she's working her vocal cords up to it right now, I believe) and, in the meantime, I'm going to try to make it out to the Awards Brunch on Sunday to give out one of our semi-famous "Buddy Palumbo Awards" to some deserving Conventioneer. My Alfa friend, neighbor, club motivator and SPAMFEST promoter/proprietor Steve Crowley is helping to pick the winner, so if anybody doesn't like the selection...blame HIM!

In other news, I'm back to flogging away on the new book (I'm so used to biting off more than I can chew that I hardly even gag on it anymore) and so I'll keep this short. But I do owe y'all some fresh trivia. And these here are the rules:

1) You must answer FROM MEMORY. No hand-held googling allowed!

2) In my pre-youth and youth (the few years bracketing puberty in either direction), I was a big fan of horror/monster/outer space movies (can you say "geek?") and there was a whole phylum of them about giant insects out to devour the world. Interestingly, some of the featured stars in those movies became (or previously had become) justly famous for other roles on the big or little screens.

3) there were also, often, certain automobiles or bits of hardware associated with those stars. So here's a list.

All you have to do, dear reader, is name the movie and link the star, the insect, the offshoot trivia bits and/or the man-made metallic object(s) involved. And trhere's at least one purposely-wrong "clinker" involved...

Leo G. Carroll

Matt Dillon

Matt Dillon's younger brother

Giant Ants

Six-shooter

Craig Stevens

Hairy arachnid

David Carradine TV familiar

Deadly Mantis

MOTHER'S

1959 Plymouth Sport Fury convertible

Henry Mancini

Abraham Lincoln Jones

Vegetable man from outer space

Mercedes-Benz 540K

Flame Throwers

The Palmolive Building

Lola Albright

Okay, you can use your phone...

LAST THINGS LAST DEPARTMENT:

Turns out this new "coffee table" book is going to be a pretty pricey proposition to print (you can start counting at around $35,000 and proceed from there) and so, in an effort to beat the bushes for additional nickels, dimes and quarters to help defray the up-front costs, we're going to have a "gallery section" with pictures of favorite & beloved cars. Yours or your friend's (like as a gift, get it?). See flyer below. Cost is $500 and it includes the usual crapola you get with sponsorship in one of my books (your name in the book, a sponsor/advertiser special edition and a very smart-looking "Sponsor/Sucker" motoring cap. Details will be up on the website next week, but, in the meantime: