[Leica] car painting fiasco

[lists at paulhardycarter.com (PHC)]

I remember I met a Polynesian photographer in a nameless bar in Venice 
who had a brother who worked for the Phily plod and had shown him 
pictures of the famous case of the dead hookers. The killer's trademark 
was the wet towel over the face of his victims. No-one had ever caught 
sight of the culprit, but legend had it he was a tall dude, red hair, 
always protected by an unlikely looking group of heavily armed 
characters, some of whom carried pizza boxes as some form of fetish. 
I'll report your story on the Fed's www.fingerafelon.org site and we'll 
see if they confirm my suspicions.

P.

*******
Paul Hardy Carter
www.paulhardycarter.com
+44 (0)20 7871 7553
*******

On 2 May 2006, at 00:30, Kyle Cassidy wrote:

> sweet barking cheese --
>   i recently found myself in posession of a cute little '64 corvette 
> with the factory paint job and largely origional interior (though for 
> some reason, someone had installed a holly hobbie tape player and 
> bubble horn where the tachometer should be). i decided that it would 
> be nice to have it spruced up a bit but i nearly fell off my chair 
> when i found out how much ye local highway robbers wanted to repaint 
> it. while chatting this out at the pub one night over noctilux's and 
> stouts with a few P-LUGgers, one mentioned that he had a friend who 
> refinished leica cameras and, well, cars and cameras both being made 
> mostly of metal with a few leather bits, he could probably paint my 
> car for me.
>   i called him up and a bit of back and forth and a few masonic 
> handshakes later (the son from the north had to eventually ask for the 
> brother from the east to make a three fingered elkshorn for the great 
> and silent moon river, but it got settled, so i'm happy), he agreed to 
> do it.
>   i dropped my car off on friday and was pleased to hear him say it 
> would be done by the following monday. much to my dismay, when i 
> arrived to pick it up, it had been transformed into a fake gold and 
> black luftwaffle volkswagen, complete with garish eagles and a 
> swastica it's going to take me a month to get off with a belt sander.
>   i was dejectedly sitting at a traffic light considering just driving 
> the whole thing into the schulkill when a man riding past on a 
> vintage1947 Triumph Bombast skidded to a stop, spilling his latte on 
> my right front fender, and remarked "great jangling bells of hades! is 
> that a luftwaffle volkswagen?" -- i made a hasty judgement based 
> solely on the look of utter amazement covering his face like a wet 
> towel over a dead hooker and assured him that it was.
>   he was a software engineer recently made millionare by some dot com 
> or other escaping chapter 11 and dumping their shares on the market at 
> tragic prices while the execs puffed up their earnings by simply 
> adding a bunch of zeroes before the decimal place. he offered me four 
> times what i'd paid for it, including the crappy paint job, and i 
> handed him the pink slip on the spot.
>   on the whole, it wasn't a bad experience but it's learned me to be 
> wary of what luggers say after a few warm beers.
>
> kc
>
> i'm finding it absolutely impossible to get the exchange web client to 
> send an email in freaking ascii. i apologise for the html. i'll send 
> bill gates hate mail when i get home.
>
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