Black and Yellow -- Cars and Song

1956 Ford -- my kind of Black and Yellow car!

Hi folks -- every week when I help my son-in-law Tony work on his car we hear his music playing. One song keeps coming back, whether I like it or not, "Balck and Yellow." I never listen carefully to the lyrics, as the song simply hurts my brain ( I am 62 years sold, after all!), and for a long time wondered what this song as all about -- is it about a half African-American and half Asian person? No, I found out yesterday it is about a car!

A song by Wiz Khalafia.

Yeah, uh huh, you know what it is

Black and yellow, black and yellow

Black and yellow, black and yellow

Yeah, uh huh, you know what it is

Black and yellow, black and yellow

Black and yellow, black and yellow

Yeah, uh huh, you know what it is

Everything I do, I do it bigYeah,

uh huh, screamin' that's nothin'

When I pulled off the lot,

that's stuntin'Reppin' my town

when you see meYou know

everythingBlack and yellow,

black and yellowBlack and yellow,

black and yellowI put it down

from the whip To my diamonds

I'm inBlack and yellow, black and yellow

Black and yellow, black and yellow

Black stripe, yellow paint

Them niggas scared of it, but them ho's ain't

Soon as I hit the club look at them ho's face

Hit the pedal once, make the floor shake

Suede insides, my engine roarin'

It's the big boy, you know what I paid for it

And I got the petal to the metal

Got you niggas checkin' game, I'm ballin out on every level

Hear them haters talk

But there's nothing you can tell 'em

Just made a million

Got another million on my schedule

No love for a nigga breakin' hearts

No keys, push to start

Yeah, uh huh, you know what it is

Everything I do, I do it big

Yeah, uh huh, screamin' that's nothin'

When I pulled off the lot, that's stuntin'

Reppin' my town when you see me

You know everything

Black and yellow, black and yellow

Black and yellow, black and yellow

I put it down from the whip

To my diamonds I'm inBlack and yellow, black and yellow

Black and yellow, black and yellow

Got a call from my jeweler, this just in

Bitches love me 'cause I'm fuckin' with their best friends

Not a lesbian, but she a freak though

This ain't for one night, I'm shinin' all week, ho

I'm sippin' Cliquot and rockin' yellow diamonds

So many rocks up in my watch I can't tell what the time is

Got a pocketful of big faces

Throw it up 'cause every nigga that I'm with tailored

Yeah, uh huh, you know what it is

Everything I do, I do it big

Yeah, uh huh, screamin' that's nothin'

When I pulled off the lot, that's stuntin'

Reppin' my town when you see me

You know everythingBlack and yellow, black and yellow

Black and yellow, black and yellow

I put it down from the whip

To my diamonds I'm in

Black and yellow, black and yellow

Black and yellow, black and yellow

Stay high like how I'm supposed to do

That crown underneath them clouds can't get close to you

And my car look unapproachable

Super clean but it's super mean

She wanna fuck with them cats, smoke weed, count stacks

Get fly, take trips and that's that, real rap

I let her get high, she want and she feel that

Convertible drop fill, '87 and the top peel back

Yeah, uh huh, you know what it is

Yeah, yeah, uh huh, you know what it is

You already know what it is, man

And if you don't, you should by now

Reppin' my town when you see me

You know everything

Black and yellow, black and yellow

Black and yellow, black and yellow

I put it down from the whip

To my diamonds I'm in

Black and yellow, black and yellow

Black and yellow, black and yellow

Yeah, uh huh, you know what it is

Everything I do, I do it big

Yeah, uh huh, screamin' that's nothin'

When I pulled off the lot, that's stuntin'

Reppin' my town when you see me

You know everything

Black and yellow, black and yellow

Black and yellow, black and yellow

I put it down from the whip

To my diamonds I'm in

Black and yellow, black and yellow

Black and yellow, black and yellow

Advertising the Automobile in Pre-WWII America: The Jordan and Advertising the Dream

Taken from my book, The Automobile and American Life. Check it out at Amazon.Com!

The Jordan and Advertising the Dream
The Jordan automobile presents a different story but with a similar ending. The Jordon was the result of the vision and energy of Edward S. “Ned” Jordan. Born in 1881 and educated at the University of Wisconsin, Jordan’s career included a stint in advertising at the National Cash Register Company in Dayton and in a similar position with the Jeffery Automobile Company, located in Kenosha, Wisconsin. In 1916, Jordan organized his own automobile company, located in Cleveland, Ohio, with the idea that the firm’s vehicles would manufacture cars that cost not quite as much as a Cadillac but more than a Buick. Always relatively expensive and assembled from parts, engines, and bodies made elsewhere, about 80,000 units were sold between 1916 and 1931. Normally priced over $2,000, the Jordan was marketed at the well-to-do.
The Jordon was noteworthy for several reasons. Ned Jordan had an uncanny understanding of well-to-do American consumers from the point of view of color, and from the firm’s origins, his cars could be ordered in a number of unusual shades, long before the color revolution of the late 1920s. Thus, as early as 1917 Jordan cars could be purchased in colors such as Liberty Blue, Pershing Gray, Italian Tan, Jordan Maroon, Mercedes Red, and Venetian Green. And when the “True Blue” Oakland was introduced in 1923, Jordan quickly followed with its 1923 Blue Boy model. Secondly, Jordan understood the post-WWI youth market and responded with the marque’s most famous model, the Playboy. Supposedly, the Playboy idea was the result of Ned’s dance with a 19-year old Philadelphia socialite, who quipped, “Mr. Jordan, why don’t you build a car for the girl who loves to swim, paddle and shoot and for the boy who loves the roar of a cut out?”44 Ned would later refer to this as a million dollar idea, and the Playboy was born. Finally, Jordan was a flamboyant advertising copywriter, and it would be in his Playboy ad copy written in 1923, “Somewhere West of Laramie,” that American automobile advertising would be transformed.
While there is little doubt that twentieth century advertisements serve as important cultural documents, there is considerable debate as to their meaning.45 In his Understanding Media (1964), Marshall McLuhan asserted that “historians . . . will one day discover that the ads of our times are the richest and most faithful daily reflections that any society ever made of its entire range of activities.” This is especially true in a capitalist economy, where consumption and persuasion are so important. Raymond Williams insightfully labeled advertising as capitalism’s “official art.” With regard to advertising, the work of Judith Williamson, Roland Marchand and William O’Barr all significantly contribute to an understanding of its meaning. Williamson’s Decoding Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning in Advertising provides the reader with a step-by-step guide in the dissection of an advertisement. Marchand’s Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity is a powerful example of how a cultural historian can employ advertising to reconstruct the past. And O’ Barr’s work, while primarily aimed at using advertising to illuminate discursive themes in social history that include hierarchy, power, relationships, and dominance, has an excellent synthetic theoretical introduction. O’Barr follows along the lines of Marchand in arguing that social and cultural values appearing in advertisements are more a refraction than a representation. The two scholars also agree that audience response, while important to copywriters, is beyond the scope of the historian, and at any rate problematic. Past audience responses are simply impossible to accurately reconstruct. In the present, there is no simple way to ascertain meaning, for meaning involves the interplay of the naive with the critical, and thus there is an ultimate variance among interpreters. The problems associated with the use of advertising, however, can be extended to many, if not all of the various manuscript, textual, visual, and oral sources used by the historian.
In the early days of automobile advertising, the features of an automobile were often emphasized. For example an ad for the new 1917 seven passenger Oldsmobile claimed that
This light weight, eight cylinder car combines power, acceleration, speed, economy, comfort, beauty, and luxury in a measure hitherto undreamed of in alight car. The eight-cylinder motor, developing 58 horsepower at 2,6000 r.p.m., with the light weight of the car – 3,000 pounds – presents a proportion of power to total car weight of approximately one horsepower to every 51 pounds – an unusually favorable ratio. The comfort of the car is beyond description. Long, flat, flexible springs and perfect balance of chassis insure easy riding under any kind of going. The seats, upholstered with fine, long grain French leather stuffed with pliant springs encased in linen sacks, increase comfort to the point of luxury.
This style of advertising was swept aside by the mid-1920s. In 1923, Edward S. Jordan created the most famous auto ad of all time to move his colorful Playboy Roadsters.46 Jordan had a gift for writing advertising copy; in 1920 a Playboy ad suggested a visit to a local bordello:
Somewhere far beyond the place where man and motors race through canyons of the town – there lies the Port of Missing Men.
It may be in the valley of our dreams of youth, or the heights of future happy days.
Go there in November when logs are blazing in the grate. Go there in a Jordan Playboy if you love the spirit of youth.
Escape the drab of dull winter’s coming – leave the roar of city streets and spend an hour in Eldorado.47
While traveling on a train across the flat and monotonous Wyoming plains, a tall, tan, and athletic horsewoman suddenly appeared, racing her horse toward Jordan’s window. For a brief moment the two were rather close as the woman smiled at him; then she turned and was gone. Jordan asked a fellow traveler where they were: “Oh, somewhere west of Laramie,” was the desultory reply. Within minutes he composed an immortal ad that later appeared in the Saturday Evening Post. Beneath an illustration of a cowgirl racing a sporty Jordan roadster against a cowboy straining to push his fleet-looking steed to catch up with her, there appeared these words:
Somewhere west of Laramie there’s a bronco-busting, steer roping girl who knows what I am talking about. She can tell what a sassy pony, that’s a cross between greased lightning and the place where it hits, can do with eleven hundred pounds of steel and action when he’s going high, wide and handsome.
The truth is the Playboy was built for her.
Built for the lass whose face is brown with the sun when the day is done of revel and romp and race.
Step into the Playboy when the hour grows dull with things gone dead and stale.
Then start for the land of real living with the spirit of the lass who rides, lean and rangy, into the red horizon of a Wyoming twilight.
The Playboy sold like hot cakes, and this ad galvanized the auto industry. Soon Chevrolet and Rickenbacker responded with ad lines “All outdoors can be yours,” and “The American Beauty,” respectively.48
Previously ads mentioned the features of the car, but with the Jordan ad new parameters came into play – freedom, speed, and romance. Emblematic was the fact that the practical Model T's life had come to an end. Now it would be art and color that was the key to auto sales.
The prosperity decade of the 1920s resulted in a remarkable restructuring of the American automobile industry and a drive towards consolidation as numerous small manufacturers dropped out of the marketplace. Given the drive towards efficiencies in production and distribution, intense pressures were placed not only on the workmen who assembled the cars, but also the consumers who bought them, increasingly on credit and after being exposed to more subtle and suggestive advertising. With more wealth and disposable income, consumers wanted more – more horsepower, more size, more colors and style, and more conveniences. The automobile was now an object of desire among all classes of Americans, and as such it transformed our personal and social habits, as well as the road and roadside.

Test Drive: Ferarri California!

Hi folks -- Ed Garten, I wish you were here!

Thanks to friend, collaborator, and former San Diego Automotive Museum Curator Rebecca Morales, I had a special treat on the beautiful North San Diego County afternoon today. Perhaps because Rebecca had at one time organized a Ferrari exhibit a the museum, or who knows what else, she was invited to a special Ferrari test drive at a resort (Rancho Valencia) north of San Diego. I went along, and though a bit of luck, also got a test drive of the Ferrari California. It was a special event that featured champagne and appetizers, and a only a few people were invited. Peasants rarely get in the door here, but somehow I managed without pretending that I was a member of the custodial or service staff.

After signing a release and having my license checked, I was on my way with co-driver and professional driver Nicholas Kunewalder. While waiting my turn I had the most delightful conversation with Nick's mother, who really is a fascinating and lively individual. While Rebecca drove a red Ferrari (what else?), I drove a gray model with a tan stitched leather interior. Nick let me drive the car as I liked, up and down shifting with paddle shifters that were a blast to use once I got accustomed to them. There is no clutch pedal on this car. It has a top speed of 193 mph, and as Nick said, the car costs $1000 per mph, or $193k. Actually, with a few options it normally comes out to $204k, but if you ask maybe that is a tip off that you really can't afford this car.

The ride was terrific, extremely tight, and of course downshifting while passing was remarkable. The beauty of this car is how easy it is to drive and how comfortable it is. I could easily see one driving this car cross-country (back to Ohio, Kaye?), and you could not do that with ease in any previous Ferrari model without feeling it a bit.

Nick has a passion for safety and driver education. He feels strongly that students should take a real driving course, not taught by a shop teacher but by someone who knows the art of driving. If this were to happen, fatalities among the young would decrease markedly. I agree wholeheartedly -- let's get real driver ed in the schools before another young person dies needlessly.

Jack Kerouac as a Prophet in On the Road: Arabs Coming to New York to Blow it up.

Hi folks -- my students are always teaching me something new, and that is clearly the case with this bunch at the University of San Diego this term. On Thursday a written review of On the Road was due in class and we had a discussion about that assignment. What surprised me was that a number of students had picked out of the book a sentence form page 117 of the Penguin edition:"Dean had a sweater wrapped around his ears to keep warm. He said we were a band of Arabs coming in to blow up New York." (p.117).

How in God's name did Kerouac have the foresight to use this kind of language and idea within the context of the early 1950s? Was it because of terrorism surrounding the founding of Israel? Any comments here would be appreciated!

Thanks to USD student Jennifer Chase for pointing this out in class and then following through by finding the passage.

Two Blue Supras -- a USD "auto" biography -- Jake Zawlacki

Hi folks -- as an aside -- some of the students I have in my current class at the University of San Diego are among the most interesting I have ever had -- and that certainly includes Jake. We share a common passion for going to Pick and Pull junk yards, and working on cars. The following is Jake's tale of two Toyota Supras.

Jake Zawlacki
Heitmann HIST
Feb 1, 2011

The Two Blue Supras

My Auto-Biography includes the tales of two cars, both 3rd generation Toyota Supras. My whole life I’ve been interested in cars. With the upbringing of grandpas who have old Willys and T-Birds, it’s not hard to see why. As a kid I would look at the gloss black Model A, the torn apart Model T, and the Hot Rodded 41 Willys all with the same eyes of awe. I couldn’t wait to buy my first car which ended up being a 72 Dodge Dart, but that’s a whole other story. After my adventure with the Dart, I (aka my mother) thought that it was time to get a car that would be reliable and more economical.
I must admit that I was lucky in that I was able to have a project car alongside a family truck that I could use when the car was apart. Once the Dart was gone, I bought a Dark Blue 87 Toyota Supra. It was pretty rough, and I really mean rough. The interior was shot. The previous owner thought that duct tape was aesthetically pleasing to the eye, so the steering wheel, center console, and door panels were covered in it. The paint was ok, except for the dents which were rusted and the broken plastic bumpers. The engine ran, which was all that I needed, so I bought it.
That was mistake number one. If the outside of a car looks rough, assume that the internals are rough as well. Within a month of owning the car it had a blown headgasket, a problem that has plagued third generation Supras since their creation. With the headgasket blown and being in undriveable condition, I had to see if it was worth fixing. In the end, my dad and I did replace the headgasket. This leads to mistake number two; not changing the oil after replacing the headgasket. I realize that this is a horribly novice mistake when working with engines but I’ll plead the fifth. My dad swears to me that he told me to do it, but like so many other things my parents say, I must have accidentally tuned them out.
If you know anything about engines, it’s that running an engine with low or bad oil ends in a truly catastrophic failure. And that’s exactly what happened. One night after a night with friends I decided it would be fun to try a burnout in the middle of the street. Mind you I was not under the influence of anything except the desire to burn some rubber. From a dead stop I mashed the pedal to the floor to hear a loud exhaust growl which ended in a consistent knocking sound… rod knock. I had never heard it before, but it’s hard to deny what is so distinct.
However, like the phoenix, the death of this Supra was resurrected through another. Luckily, I found a pretty cheap nonrunning Light Blue 88 Supra that wasn’t too far away from me. I went and looked at it, and picked it up for $600. This car was in surprisingly good shape with a nice interior and some good paint. This was a much better starting point than the first. That summer I managed to combine the good parts of the two cars and make one good looking Supra. I rebuilt the engine, new sound system, cleaned up and new interior pieces, painted body parts that where fading, and some new wheels and tires. Although everything I just mentioned fit into one sentence, it took about 3 months and is still an ongoing project.
I’ve learned more about cars from two Toyota Supras than I had from watching others work on them. To put your own time and energy into an automobile is something special because you are rewarded by it every time you turn the ignition. This Auto-Biography may not be as interesting as a road trip or something of the sort but it is the most memorable thing that I have about automobiles. My Supra has been running ever since with only one blown headgasket since the rebuild (one too many I might add), but I drive it every day to school and back. The story of The Two Blue Supras may be done but my Auto-Biography will be one that goes on as long as my own engine is still running.

Another Excellent USD "Auto" Biography -- Olivia Saladino & her Ford Explorer

Olivia Saladino
The Automobile & American Life
Dr. John Heitmann
February 1, 2011
“Auto”biography
Some of my most vivid childhood memories involve cars. When I was around five or six years old, I would anxiously wait for every evening when my Dad would let me “drive” the car into the garage. He would park his car in the driveway when he got home from work, and then come upstairs to get me so that I could drive the car into the garage. He would sit me on his lap as he sat in the driver's seat, and I would help steer the car and “drive” it into the garage. This became such an exciting nightly activity that my brother and I began to fight over who would get to “drive” the car into the garage every night. Sometimes my Dad would have to drive the car into the garage twice just so that my brother and I would both get a turn.
Another prominent memory I have involving a car is not so positive. I was about eight or nine years old and my Mom was driving my brother and I to ride the carousel at the mall, one of our favorite weekend activities. We were taking the scenic route to the mall, driving up Highway 1, or PCH as we call it. As we were driving through Laguna Beach in my Mom's mini-van, we hit the usual Saturday traffic. As my Mom was driving around a curve, the traffic suddenly stopped. She was able to stop without hitting the car in front of us, but the car behind us was not so lucky. I will never forget the sound of the mini-van being rear-ended. My younger brother, being only five or six years old at the time, was so startled by this noise that he began to cry. I had never been in any kind of car accident before, so I still had no idea what was going on.
“Mommy, what happened?” I asked.
“Oh my God, I can't believe this. Doesn't he know I have kids in the car?!?” My mom was angrily saying to herself.
“Mommy, what's going on?” I repeated. My Mom continued to angrily mutter to herself and did not respond. It was at this moment that it finally hit me that we had gotten into a car accident. I remember this moment very clearly because it was then that I got really scared and began to cry. The only thing I knew about car accidents was the few I had seen on T.V. when my parents were watching the news, and that they were scary. I also still remember the poor sixteen year old boy who hit us that day. He was a blonde surfer dude and I still remember how nervous he looked when he walked up to my Mom's window to apologize. My Mom was very upset that he had scared my brother and I so badly, so she really let him have it. I remember her yelling at him so loudly that it only made my brother and I cry harder. By the time they exchanged insurance information and filed a police report, my brother and I no longer felt like riding the carousel. Looking back on this memory now makes me laugh, but at the time it was very traumatizing. I was afraid to ride in a car for months after this incident, and it wasn't even a very bad accident.
Thankfully, my relationship with cars drastically changed when it came time for me to get my driver's license. When I was fifteen, I got my learner's permit. I was so excited to learn to drive, but a little concerned that it was going to have to be in my Mom's mini-van. My parents had been looking into getting a new car for the family, so I was able to talk them into letting me help pick it out so I could use it to learn to drive. I decided I wanted an SUV. My parents took me to test drive a Nissan Xterra, a Toyota Highlander, and a Honda C-RV, but none of them felt like the one. Finally we went to the Ford dealership and test drove an Explorer. I immediately fell in love with the car. I loved how high up I was and how smooth the ride was for an SUV. I really wanted a white one with tan interior, but my parents ended up choosing the more practical silver with dark grey interior. It has definitely grown on me. I was able to take my driving test in the Explorer, and I passed only missing three points. From there my real appreciation for my Explorer began. Having my own car gave me such a sense of freedom, and I loved it. The time alone listening to music in my car driving to and from school each day was an amazing new experience. I loved the freedom my car gave me to go places with my friends. However I did not experience true freedom with my Explorer until I took it to college with me. When I was still living at home, my parents would borrow my car whenever they wanted. Although I called the Explorer “my” car, it did not feel like mine with my parents using it whenever they wanted. When I got to drive my car from Dana Point to USD, the one hour trip was the longest I had ever driven alone. It was so liberating. It was from that point on that I truly felt that my Explorer was my own personal space that could take me wherever I wanted to go. I love my Explorer and I hope it stays with me for many more years.