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Author
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Topic: Boyd Cottington's "American Hotrod" A True Embarrassment!
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Will Kutler
Phenomenal Film Handler
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Posts: 1506
From: Tucson, AZ, USA
Registered: Feb 2001
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posted 03-13-2004 01:31 AM
Some time ago Boyd Cottington had a one-off show called "American Hotrod" on the Discovery Channel, which coincided with other popular shows like "Monster Garage" and "American Chopper".
For anyone who does not know, Boyd Cottington is one of America's priemere "rod" designers, who has been around for many decades and whose reputation is right up there with George Barris. Barris designed and built many a well known "Hollywood" car, like the Munster coaches, Beverly Hillbillys wagon, the origonal Batmobile, etc.
Now, the Discovery Channel hosts some very popular interactive web-sites dedicated to these shows...in a format simialr to our beloved F.T.
One of the threads was about the origonal Boyd Cottington show, "American Hotrod" or "The Fibreglass Kit-Car Fiasco!" Yes, this show got a lot of negative feedback, mostly due to the apparent stupidy of some of Boyd's employees!
During the first show, the screw-ups were the ultimate fodder for ball-bustin laughter. Not being able tostart the car 'cause the forgot to install the distributor rotor; some engine overheating 'cause they could'nt evacuate the air out of the engine when pourin in the coolant, and on an on. To make matters worse, they were makin big deals out of these bullshit problems!
A real embarrassment is in the form of this young punk that Cottington employees as his "master" CNC programmer and "machinist". During this initial show, the punk was incapable of producing a rather simple part using a CAM system, and was doing some pretty stupid horse-play stunts in the shop. Boyd cought the kid in the act and was PISSED. All for the prosterity of the camera?
Yours truly did e-mail Cottington's shop commenting about this dumbass kid, and never did get a response.
Anyhow, I guess they are continuing the series, as another Cottington show premeired tonight on The Discovery Channel.
Once again,this dumbass punk was the focus of attention. Once again, he made Mike from "American Chopper" look like a genius rocket scientist!
For those of you who are machinists, it was funny to see the punk crash the CNC milling center by not retracting the cutting tool before rapid transversing to the home-tool change position! And the punk even had full preview capabilities on the CAM program. Then the punk blames his screw-upon the CNC operator!
Then the punk was involved in the fabrication of another part.He was unable to tackle this simple task, and another employee took over the task and completed it in no time!
WTF does Cottington doin with an IDIOT like this in his shop? I wonder?
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Randy Stankey
Film God
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Posts: 6539
From: Erie, Pennsylvania
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 03-13-2004 10:04 AM
I don't have cable TV anymore, basically, because I don't think it's worth the money. I used to like the Discovery Channel but, lately, the quality of the programming has gone down hill.
Not only have they degraded their programs to the level of spiritual hocus-pocus, "proof" of the existence of space aliens and the telling of ghost stories but anything that has to do with technology is nothing but fluff... Lots of flash & bang but no substance.
It sounds like the show you are talking about is on about the same level. I would even go so far as to say that the punk they have in charge of machining was placed there, precicely because of his inability to to the job and because he provides comic relief.
We watch shows like "Crocodile Hunter" because we want to see what crazy stunt Steve Irwin is going to pull off next. Is he going to try to grab a king cobra by the tail? Or, is he going to wrestle a 10 foot crocodile in a mud pit? I suspect people who don't know about machine work will watch because they want to see what the idiot in charge will fuck up next.
Again, it's low intelligence fluff like this that has made me start turning off the television. Judging by what you say, I don't think I'm missing anything by not having cable TV.
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Will Kutler
Phenomenal Film Handler
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Posts: 1506
From: Tucson, AZ, USA
Registered: Feb 2001
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posted 03-21-2004 05:02 PM
Mark
There is no such thing as never making a mistake. Part of being a responsible adult is taking responsibility for one's actions.
However, there is a difference between making an honest mistake, correcting it, then pressing on ,and screwing up on a regular basis because of horse-play, carelessness, ego-trips, and incompetency. The last 4 things seem to be what is happening at Cottington's shop.
As for Abram's never making a mistake...he does...the show is just edited. In fact, I distinctly remember some years ago that Abrams addressed the issue with his viewers and came clean.
I do think that Abrams is an excellent craftsman, but his show is also dedicated to showing off all the latesst gadgets and tools. And there are some projects that he has made were I think the construction could have been better. But in all probability, adjustments are probably made to the project designs to allow for the shows time constraint.
The counterpart to Abrams on PBS is that hyper-nut who accomplishes some pretty amazing things with simple 100 year-old tools and ideas...while sitting at the messiest and simpleist of work-benches.
It would be nice if American Chopper, American Hotrod, etc would get away from the bullshit and concentrate more on an educational format like Abrams. I could give a less about the bullshit family squables, and am really interested in seeing how these projects come-together.
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