See this area here? that's the part of your brain in charge of systemizing. arranging football scores, mechanical stuff, sports, anything that's not human. This part here, is in charge of empathyzing--showing emotion, talking about emotion, relationships, etc. See the size of that part of your brain? Now look at this brain. Similar size. That is an autistic male.Yours is smaller than a raisin. Apes shopw more emotion that you do"
http://www.menshealth.com/men/best-life/family-guy/men-and-their-emotions/article/981dd269188ad010VgnVCM10000013281eac/3
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Thursday, December 24, 2009
West Coast Customs
By Chris Woodyard, USA TODAY
CORONA, Calif. — Spend a little time around West Coast Customs and you'll learn the price of fame.
Insane deadlines. Routine 60-hour workweeks. A demanding, want-it-now celebrity clientele. And a self-described micromanager CEO who doesn't mince words — including expletives.
"It's a lot of pressure," says Ishmael Jimenez, 36, an upholstery expert and one of the handful of managers who work for CEO Ryan Friedlinghaus. "I can make no excuses, because West Coast Customs has a worldwide reputation."
That reputation is borne of an automotive customization business that gained national fame thanks to its outrageous hip-hop designs and appearance on the MTV show Pimp My Ride.
For four seasons of that show, West Coast Customs transformed broken-down jalopies into outrageous, urban-oriented rides with wild paint jobs, humongous chrome wheels and ground-pounding stereos.
Friedlinghaus, probably the most heavily tattooed CEO in America, says he yanked the shop's participation because he thought Pimp was too gimmicky with its ugly duckling-to-swan format. Nowadays, he's more stoked about his latest ventures and another TV series that the staff did for cable channel TLC. He says that show Street Customs, now out of production, was a more realistic portrayal of how a custom car shop really operates.
The crew does things that would make most car owners wince. Like sawing the roof off a Land Rover to install smoked glass or turning the off-road luxury vehicle into a two-door, instead of four-door model. Those tasks, along with fancy paint, wheels and all the glitz, were accomplished in about a month.
At any given moment, the shop is working on about 20 vehicles. Recent jobs have included cutting the roof off NBA star Shaquille O'Neal's $145,000 Mercedes-Benz S600 to make it a convertible. The artists and technicians also are adding speakers, paint and goodies to skier Bodie Miller's 1992 GMC Typhoon SUV. These vehicles share garage space with a Dodge Nitro SUV, Ford F-250 pickup and a vintage 1950 Mercury, among others. Each is getting its own unique makeover.
Creativity on the clock
It's not all about the flash. Digital clocks hanging above the garage floor tick off the seconds until each project is due to be turned back to its owner as a sparkling show car. The business makes deadlines.
"I just get it done. My word is everything," Friedlinghaus says.
The busy garage is only the most visible element of Friedlinghaus' burgeoning automotive business that now includes:
•International. The first franchised West Coast Customs shop opened six months ago in Dubai. The deal came after West Coast received a commission to convert a Hummer as a birthday gift for a sheik's 14-year-old daughter, he says. Now similar arrangements are in the works in Russia, Japan, Germany and Malaysia. The shop has gained worldwide exposure from syndicated episodes of the original Pimp shows.
•Merchandise. West Coast has its own co-branded stereo systems, wheels, paint and leather kits. It already has an extensive line of T-shirts and other apparel with its distinctive graffiti-like designs. Next will be its own shop-inspired clothing line called Wrench, due to go on sale later this year.
The company also is developing a line of automotive graphics that can be wrapped onto any car.
•Live shows. Friedlinghaus is trying to develop a newfangled community car show near his factory in Corona, east of Los Angeles, later this year. It would include car-themed family entertainment, not just rows of tricked-out cars on display, he says. Among other things, his crew would rebuild a car on stage — then give it away. West Coast Custom's crew already gives demonstrations of their customizing techniques at industry trade shows.
"We have grown up," Friedlinghaus says. "We're doing real stuff."
West Coast employs 35 at a $4 million plant decorated with graffiti art and at a design shop nearby across the train tracks in Corona.
Most of West Coast Customs' jobs are $25,000 to $50,000 conversions, though some are far more complicated, and costly.
Lately, the company has specialized in building entirely new chassis for vintage muscle cars. For instance, West Coast attached the body of a 1968 Chevrolet Chevelle sedan to the guts of a 2007 Chevrolet Corvette, creating the "Corvelle." The goal is a vintage look with modern-day reliability and performance.
Friedlinghaus says revenue at the privately held company now exceeds $10 million a year.
Not bad considering that the company started only 11 years ago with a $5,000 loan from Friedlinghaus' grandfather.
A false start in 'the OC'
Friedlinghaus, 32, grew up in Las Vegas, as the family renegade who developed an early appreciation for baggy low-riding pants, hip-hop music and tinkering with cars. He says his straight-laced father used to tell him, "You're never going to get anywhere wearing your pants like that, listening to that kind of music and driving those stupid cars."
When the family moved to the affluent south Orange County, Calif., enclave of Laguna Niguel, Friedlinghaus opened West Coast Customs as his first car business in 1997. But it didn't click. His clientele was "a bunch of spoiled rotten kids who didn't know what they wanted," he says.
Then, he says, they would send their raving parents to the shop to protest how much they had spent on their cars.
Instead, Friedlinghaus followed the advice of a friend. He moved the business to Compton, a hardscrabble, inner-city community. Though Compton isn't many miles from Laguna Niguel, culturally and economically it is a world apart.
Big break from a big client
It's there, Friedlinghaus says, that he got his first big break. O'Neal, then the star center of the Los Angeles Lakers, heard about his ability to soup up cars. Shaq handed over his Lincoln Navigator to Friedlinghaus to install a new suspension.
Now, "I've built him 38 cars," says Friedlinghaus, including the latest Mercedes and an International truck that he's converting into the "Dunktruck," a promotion vehicle for O'Neal's sneaker line.
O'Neal, in comments relayed by spokesman Todd Brooks, says he's not sure how many vehicles that West Coast Customs has done for him, but it's "probably enough that we should be partners."
Friedlinghaus is someone who "understands what I like, and he always delivers on what he says. He has earned my trust," O'Neal says. "Ryan always outdoes himself. That's why I had him do my Dunktruck. … There's more pressure for Ryan on this one."
West Coast has done promotional vehicles for other businesses. One was for Rockstar Energy Drink, which commissioned a truck and recreational vehicle. "It was a natural fit," says Mike Kelso, Rockstar's marketing director. "They get where Rockstar is coming from."
After a succession of moves around urban L.A., Friedlinghaus brought West Coast back out to the suburbs, moving the company nearly two years ago to its factory a few minutes' drive from his house. His Pimp My Ride days, which ended in 2004, brought him enough fame that he says he is still recognized in public. Thanks to worldwide syndication, he says he was once chased by fans through an airport in Germany.
The Pimp show continued after West Coast Customs ended its involvement, utilizing a new shop in L.A.'s San Fernando Valley.
West Coast soldiered on, business as tough as ever.
"It's stressful," says Sean Mahaney, the metal fabrication chief, because of the compressed schedule for finishing vehicles. The hip clientele "want what's cool right now." Then there is Friedlinghaus, who lords over every project.
"He's his own worst critic, and he's your critic, too," says Scott Voinovich, 35, the general manager.
The stressful milieu made for "good TV," says Street Customs executive producer, Craig Piligian.
"Ryan has his own special brand of building cars. He's the best at it."
CORONA, Calif. — Spend a little time around West Coast Customs and you'll learn the price of fame.
Insane deadlines. Routine 60-hour workweeks. A demanding, want-it-now celebrity clientele. And a self-described micromanager CEO who doesn't mince words — including expletives.
"It's a lot of pressure," says Ishmael Jimenez, 36, an upholstery expert and one of the handful of managers who work for CEO Ryan Friedlinghaus. "I can make no excuses, because West Coast Customs has a worldwide reputation."
That reputation is borne of an automotive customization business that gained national fame thanks to its outrageous hip-hop designs and appearance on the MTV show Pimp My Ride.
For four seasons of that show, West Coast Customs transformed broken-down jalopies into outrageous, urban-oriented rides with wild paint jobs, humongous chrome wheels and ground-pounding stereos.
Friedlinghaus, probably the most heavily tattooed CEO in America, says he yanked the shop's participation because he thought Pimp was too gimmicky with its ugly duckling-to-swan format. Nowadays, he's more stoked about his latest ventures and another TV series that the staff did for cable channel TLC. He says that show Street Customs, now out of production, was a more realistic portrayal of how a custom car shop really operates.
The crew does things that would make most car owners wince. Like sawing the roof off a Land Rover to install smoked glass or turning the off-road luxury vehicle into a two-door, instead of four-door model. Those tasks, along with fancy paint, wheels and all the glitz, were accomplished in about a month.
At any given moment, the shop is working on about 20 vehicles. Recent jobs have included cutting the roof off NBA star Shaquille O'Neal's $145,000 Mercedes-Benz S600 to make it a convertible. The artists and technicians also are adding speakers, paint and goodies to skier Bodie Miller's 1992 GMC Typhoon SUV. These vehicles share garage space with a Dodge Nitro SUV, Ford F-250 pickup and a vintage 1950 Mercury, among others. Each is getting its own unique makeover.
Creativity on the clock
It's not all about the flash. Digital clocks hanging above the garage floor tick off the seconds until each project is due to be turned back to its owner as a sparkling show car. The business makes deadlines.
"I just get it done. My word is everything," Friedlinghaus says.
The busy garage is only the most visible element of Friedlinghaus' burgeoning automotive business that now includes:
•International. The first franchised West Coast Customs shop opened six months ago in Dubai. The deal came after West Coast received a commission to convert a Hummer as a birthday gift for a sheik's 14-year-old daughter, he says. Now similar arrangements are in the works in Russia, Japan, Germany and Malaysia. The shop has gained worldwide exposure from syndicated episodes of the original Pimp shows.
•Merchandise. West Coast has its own co-branded stereo systems, wheels, paint and leather kits. It already has an extensive line of T-shirts and other apparel with its distinctive graffiti-like designs. Next will be its own shop-inspired clothing line called Wrench, due to go on sale later this year.
The company also is developing a line of automotive graphics that can be wrapped onto any car.
•Live shows. Friedlinghaus is trying to develop a newfangled community car show near his factory in Corona, east of Los Angeles, later this year. It would include car-themed family entertainment, not just rows of tricked-out cars on display, he says. Among other things, his crew would rebuild a car on stage — then give it away. West Coast Custom's crew already gives demonstrations of their customizing techniques at industry trade shows.
"We have grown up," Friedlinghaus says. "We're doing real stuff."
West Coast employs 35 at a $4 million plant decorated with graffiti art and at a design shop nearby across the train tracks in Corona.
Most of West Coast Customs' jobs are $25,000 to $50,000 conversions, though some are far more complicated, and costly.
Lately, the company has specialized in building entirely new chassis for vintage muscle cars. For instance, West Coast attached the body of a 1968 Chevrolet Chevelle sedan to the guts of a 2007 Chevrolet Corvette, creating the "Corvelle." The goal is a vintage look with modern-day reliability and performance.
Friedlinghaus says revenue at the privately held company now exceeds $10 million a year.
Not bad considering that the company started only 11 years ago with a $5,000 loan from Friedlinghaus' grandfather.
A false start in 'the OC'
Friedlinghaus, 32, grew up in Las Vegas, as the family renegade who developed an early appreciation for baggy low-riding pants, hip-hop music and tinkering with cars. He says his straight-laced father used to tell him, "You're never going to get anywhere wearing your pants like that, listening to that kind of music and driving those stupid cars."
When the family moved to the affluent south Orange County, Calif., enclave of Laguna Niguel, Friedlinghaus opened West Coast Customs as his first car business in 1997. But it didn't click. His clientele was "a bunch of spoiled rotten kids who didn't know what they wanted," he says.
Then, he says, they would send their raving parents to the shop to protest how much they had spent on their cars.
Instead, Friedlinghaus followed the advice of a friend. He moved the business to Compton, a hardscrabble, inner-city community. Though Compton isn't many miles from Laguna Niguel, culturally and economically it is a world apart.
Big break from a big client
It's there, Friedlinghaus says, that he got his first big break. O'Neal, then the star center of the Los Angeles Lakers, heard about his ability to soup up cars. Shaq handed over his Lincoln Navigator to Friedlinghaus to install a new suspension.
Now, "I've built him 38 cars," says Friedlinghaus, including the latest Mercedes and an International truck that he's converting into the "Dunktruck," a promotion vehicle for O'Neal's sneaker line.
O'Neal, in comments relayed by spokesman Todd Brooks, says he's not sure how many vehicles that West Coast Customs has done for him, but it's "probably enough that we should be partners."
Friedlinghaus is someone who "understands what I like, and he always delivers on what he says. He has earned my trust," O'Neal says. "Ryan always outdoes himself. That's why I had him do my Dunktruck. … There's more pressure for Ryan on this one."
West Coast has done promotional vehicles for other businesses. One was for Rockstar Energy Drink, which commissioned a truck and recreational vehicle. "It was a natural fit," says Mike Kelso, Rockstar's marketing director. "They get where Rockstar is coming from."
After a succession of moves around urban L.A., Friedlinghaus brought West Coast back out to the suburbs, moving the company nearly two years ago to its factory a few minutes' drive from his house. His Pimp My Ride days, which ended in 2004, brought him enough fame that he says he is still recognized in public. Thanks to worldwide syndication, he says he was once chased by fans through an airport in Germany.
The Pimp show continued after West Coast Customs ended its involvement, utilizing a new shop in L.A.'s San Fernando Valley.
West Coast soldiered on, business as tough as ever.
"It's stressful," says Sean Mahaney, the metal fabrication chief, because of the compressed schedule for finishing vehicles. The hip clientele "want what's cool right now." Then there is Friedlinghaus, who lords over every project.
"He's his own worst critic, and he's your critic, too," says Scott Voinovich, 35, the general manager.
The stressful milieu made for "good TV," says Street Customs executive producer, Craig Piligian.
"Ryan has his own special brand of building cars. He's the best at it."
The mechanic
http://articles.smashits.com/articles/health-medical/80472/the-mechanic.html
The Mechanic
Author:
Roy E. Klienwachter
Roy… What value comes of a mechanic that fills his tool box with all the latest tools and never uses them?
What value comes from a mechanic that fills his tool box with tools and does not know how to use them?
If one has a box full of tools and has never used them, can he/she be called a mechanic and if one has the knowledge of a mechanic but has never used his tools to repair anything is he a mechanic?
He is a mechanic in name only! A mechanic uses tools to create a desired result, the repair of a machine. By using his tools he goes through the motions of being a mechanic, he defines himself physically through the use of his tools and his skills, to aspire to what he already knows himself to be.
How does a mechanic develop his skills other than by using his tools? Through experience and trial and error he develops into the best mechanic that he can be through practical application and experience.
A skilled person has wisdom developed from experience. He has tried all his tools and applied the experience appropriately to create a desired result. A wise mechanic does not use a tool that does not bring the immediate result that he wants, that would be insanity, and a waist of time. A good mechanic moves with the new technology or he becomes as obsolete as his machines.
A lifetime of experience creates a master mechanic that is highly valued for his skills and is emulated by other mechanics for his wisdom. A mechanic is self actualized through being what he thinks he is, by experience.
But what of the teacher of mechanics who has never repaired a machine in his life. Such a teacher can teach mechanics and pass along the information, but he does not have the benefit of experienced mechanics, experience can not be taught, it can only be practised. Knowledge is just knowledge, a few words in a book or in the memory of an individual and it is not expressed or actuated.
Roy… In the same way, life can not be taught it can only be experienced. I can not tell you how to experience your life. I can bring you knowledge or awareness through my teachers but not my experience, because I have none. God does not experience, you do. I can tell you the end result and the beginning, but in between it is you that experiences. Experience is what you are. You are not the mechanic, "I AM." You are the physical experience of being a mechanic, you are the process.
For the same reason you can not be a writer, a plumber, a fireman, a gardener or anything else. Being anyone of these things is a finished experience, it is just a thought, my thought that has no beginning and no end. The very act of being something creates motion it is not static. The idea is static but not the being. Life is just a thought, a static thought. Living is being alive. Living requires that you use your tools and skills to be alive, to demonstrate life.
Mechanics go through endless motion to experience being a mechanic. Human beings go through endless motion to experience being alive. Life cannot experience being life, it can only experience being alive.
Fill your tool box with tools that is why it is called a tool box. Fill your life with living, that is why it is called life! You are life expressing living, as a mechanic expresses him or herself during the process of repairing or being
About The Author
Roy E. Klienwachter is a resident of British Columbia, Canada. A student of NLP, ordained minister, New Age Light Worker and Teacher. Roy has written and published five books on New Age wisdom. Roy's books are thought provoking and designed to empower you to take responsibility for your life and what you create. His books and articles are written in the simplicity and eloquence of Zen wisdom.
You may not always agree with what he has to say. You will always come away with a new perspective and your thinking will never be the same.
Roy's style is honest and comes straight from the heart without all the metaphorical mumble jumble and BS.
Visit Roy at: http://www.klienwachter.com
roy@klienwachter.com
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