Kia Confessions

Hello my name is Jeff and I drive a Kia.

If you had told me 15 years ago that I'd be running a bar in Cambodia and driving a Kia I might have believed the former (I always knew I was crazy enough) but never the latter. Not a chance. I'm a car guy. A Kia?

Well sir I've had my UNTAC vintage '94 Sportage (5-sp, 4WD) for a few weeks now and I am digging it more than I would ever have thought. Ride, handling, visibility, really just about everything works (well the electric windows don't but hey it's old). The road in front of my daughter's school is filled with potholes that could (and may) hide small hippos in the rainy season but the Sportage manages it fine, much better than the Camry did in its day.

Being a irredeemable hacker and one committed to never leaving well enough alone, what I find particularly intriguing about this car is not what it is, but what it could be. What few people would know is that this car has a magical engine, from a tuner's perspective one of the best ever -- up there with the Studebaker V8. I'm not kidding. The Sportage -- a product of a Kia-Mazda/Ford collboration -- is the only vehicle imported to the US utilizing Mazda's 2.0L 16v DOHC FE3 engine which first appeared in the European 626GT. Although never offered commercially with a turbocharger it was in fact designed with turbocharging in mind, and a number of turbocharged rally cars were built by Mazda.

According to WikiWhichNeverLies "the FE-DOHC is already built for turbo with large forged connecting rods, large journal dimensions, oil cooler, piston oilers, web-stiffened block with main girdles (and braceplate where equipped). This robust engine design is a favourite of tuners who are aware of its capability because it already has a high-power capacity perfect for custom turbo jobs. As much as 600 whp (insert HOLY CRAP emoticon here) has been seen on a stock engine. The common FE-DOHC crankshaft is cast while the forged crankshaft is fitted to the aluminum sump engines with both the main bearing braces and the main bearing girdle plate".

Now of course there is nobody in Cambodia capable of doing a turbo retrofit, but if I were in Bangkok I'd do it in a heartbeat. The stuff of dreams. Meanwhile, having the little 140hp machine to fling around is a blast as is. Bring on the rainy season.

Happy 70 Bob

May 24. An evening of Dylan favorites, rarities, covers, videos. And Bob's Mint Julep. Happy 70 Bob

Welcome to the End of the World

If you think last year's low season was rough just wait.

Saturday the 21st is -- and you might have missed this amongst all the sex scandals -- Judgement Day. The Rapture. For the billions of us left behind, there will then be five months of serious torment, with 150 billion dead people quaked from their graves, snakes, scorpions, and, needless to say, some serious weeping and gnashing of teeth before the world is destroyed on October 21.

Seems like reason to celebrate, and so we will at Garage with some rapturous drink/food specials. And music from the Scorpions. Anyone expecting to be in the air with the Lord is requested to take care of your outstanding tab. And among the Saved who haven't figured out what to do with that plasma tv, Beatle's butcher cover or your other cool stuff, we may be able to work something out.

A Note From Bob

To my fans and followers

Allow me to clarify a couple of things about this so-called China controversy which has been going on for over a year. First of all, we were never denied permission to play in China. This was all drummed up by a Chinese promoter who was trying to get me to come there after playing Japan and Korea. My guess is that the guy printed up tickets and made promises to certain groups without any agreements being made. We had no intention of playing China at that time, and when it didn't happen most likely the promoter had to save face by issuing statements that the Chinese Ministry had refused permission for me to play there to get himself off the hook. If anybody had bothered to check with the Chinese authorities, it would have been clear that the Chinese authorities were unaware of the whole thing.

We did go there this year under a different promoter. According to Mojo magazine the concerts were attended mostly by ex-pats and there were a lot of empty seats. Not true. If anybody wants to check with any of the concert-goers they will see that it was mostly Chinese young people that came. Very few ex-pats if any. The ex-pats were mostly in Hong Kong not Beijing. Out of 13,000 seats we sold about 12,000 of them, and the rest of the tickets were given away to orphanages. The Chinese press did tout me as a sixties icon, however, and posted my picture all over the place with Joan Baez, Che Guevara, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. The concert attendees probably wouldn't have known about any of those people. Regardless, they responded enthusiastically to the songs on my last 4 or 5 records. Ask anyone who was there. They were young and my feeling was that they wouldn't have known my early songs anyway.

As far as censorship goes, the Chinese government had asked for the names of the songs that I would be playing. There's no logical answer to that, so we sent them the set lists from the previous 3 months. If there were any songs, verses or lines censored, nobody ever told me about it and we played all the songs that we intended to play.

Everybody knows by now that there's a gazillion books on me either out or coming out in the near future. So I'm encouraging anybody who's ever met me, heard me or even seen me, to get in on the action and scribble their own book. You never know, somebody might have a great book in them.

Posted at bobdylan.com yesterday.