Disco Mike

This is my friend Mike Parente from Studio City, CA. I met Mike in 1999 and ten years later I’m proud to be witnessing his 15 minutes of fame. Yeah, he’s a cutie pie but that doesn’t get you anywhere these days, UNLESS you put in a trillion hours, or so, gluing thousands and thousands of tiny mirrors to your 1971 Ford Pinto. Yeah, for real.

A photograph can’t do it justice but you can imagine how blinding it must be on a nice, sunny California day. You can probably see it from the moon. His 15 minutes has come via an article in today's New York Times about Mike, well, about Mike’s Pinto really, and the car show in which it was included, (quoting The Times) “the Concours d’LeMons, a wrong-side-of-the-tracks counterpoint to the upper-crust concours d’élégance” which took place at the Pebble Beach golf course last week.

I’m sure this work-of-auto-art raises a lot of questions like, “how much time did this take?” “how much did the mirrors cost?” and, I suppose, shamefully the ultimate question, “why?” But what the hell, who cares really; it is what it is and it got him into The New York Times! How much more recognition does one cute California bear need?