Sure, there's still some tidying up to do and wee bits to re-do or re-mix and the usual, last-minute "OMIGOD, DID WE REMEMBER TO (fill in the blank)???" conundrums, problems & panics. Most recent was discovering that Sony has newly revamped their rights compensation pricing in regards to audiobook projects, and that one small piece of music we recorded to play a few seconds of in the background of a party scene in Elkhart Lake (played by our own blessed band, BTW*) has now become prohibitively expensive. So we'll have to either pay through the nose (or pick any other preferred bodily orifice) or find something else--like something more Public Domain, if you know what I mean--to use in its place. Aaarrrggghhh!

Who knew we'd have to deal with all this complexity, aggravation & consternation? Surely not me. I come from the all-American, Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Hey, let's get all the kids together and put on a musical show in the barn!  school of dramatic/musical production.

But, as has been my experience with every major project I've ever attempted (from building racecars & learning how to drive them to writing my first book), by the time you get to the end of the gauntlet run, you've learned most of the shit you really should have known before you started.

Such is life. If you're lucky.

Know I promised this before (been REALLY busy) but look for another e-blast next week covering my first track events of the new season, including hopping into a genuine ShitBox BMW in the rain at the Lemons race at Autobahn, instructing an eager MGB rookie at the VSCDA Drivers' School at Gingerman and a fine Morgan drive (including a nifty class win) at the HSR Walter Mitty Challenge at Road Atlanta, Lou & Abby's incredible Old Car Folk (you can read that as "old car" folk or "old" car folk...works either way) gearhead gathering open house, signing not very many books inside the huge but cozy Paddock Shop while fog, cold mist and drizzle ruled outside at SVRA Road America, flogging the crap out of some really nice cars at the big, midweek Midwest Automotive Media Association Spring Rallye in Elkhart Lake (including staying at The Osthoff, great meals, hot-lapping Road America, go-karting, off-roading, an autocross, all the latest poop on all the latest cars and an effing OPEN BAR at Siebkens!), SPAMSTOCK the following Saturday, honorary Grand Poohbah and guest speaker at the Champagne British Car Festival the following weekend, instructing at the Lotus Club Track Day at Blackhawk the very next day and signing a few books, seeing some really neat (and varied!) cars and and meeting some really special people raising money for a really good cause (the fund for families of officers killed in the line of duty) at Burt Richmond's "Cars and Cops" show at his highly impressive Classic Car Garage facility in Chicago. And that's along with all the audiobook re-recording, mixing and editing. I said, I been busy.

And then this coming weekend I'll hopefully be hawking books, sponsorships and audiobook pre-orders, doing a little color announcing on the P.A. and racing an Autodynamics Formula Vee with longtime pal/ride-mooch enabler Bill Griffith's "Bigger Hammer Racing" team out of Texas at this year's VSCDA Fathers Day race meeting at Blackhawk. At least if I can work the damn pedals after doing a clumsy, "WHOASHIT!!!" stumble going down the last of a steep set of basement stairs in my brother-in-law Vince's soon-to-open new restaurant (Mancini's on Lake Street in Oak Park...much-deserved plug) and banged the living shit out of my near-side Achilles tendon. You folks who have never owned a British car or read a British-car shop manual, go look it up! Getting better following lots of icing & elevating and skipping this morning's bike & yoga classes, so hopefully it'll come good for the weekend.

More anon...

O.k., the latest one also easy (so sending this while at work to try not to be beaten again!). Who? Porifiro Rubirosa. Car? That inspiration for Cliff Davis' JOY & LOY500s and thence the AC Ace prototype, the Ferrari 166 Barchetta. Where? Le Circuit de la Sarth (Le Mans). When? 24/25th June 1950.

So what did he get wrong? The effing SPELLING! It's PORFIRIO Rubirosa! NYAAAH! BTW, his story is covered at length in Toly's Ghost, but suffice to say that, even if he wasn't much of a racing driver, the fellow was quite the charmer, coxman, playboy and scoundrel. Not to mention the quintessential "Latin Lover."

Born in the Dominican Republic where his father was a well-connected general in the iron-fisted Trujillo regime, the young Rubirosa married Trujillo's daughter and became a globe-trotting Dominican diplomat who moves freely and easily among the rich, famous and powerful, She was the first of five wives, including a beautiful French actress followed, quite literally, by the two richest available females in the Western Hemisphere (and, quite possibly, the world?), tobacco heiress Doris Duke and Woolworths and E.F. Hutton heiress/"poor little rich girl" Barbara Hutton. During their marriage, Rubirosa infamously used Hutton's private plane to travel to New York, where he was carrying on a torrid, semi-clandestine affair with ZaZa Gabor. She reportedly once said that "a night with Rubi is the greatest gift that a woman can give to herself," and the waiters at the posh Stork Club and 21 in New York nicknamed the long, tall pepper grinders they use to put pepper on your salad as "Rubirosas."

But enough salacious commentary and on to our new, more typical and on-topic Motorhead Trivia: What the hell is this thing. And, while you're at it, where?