william gulledge

I enjoy this show. Danny is an enthusiastic guy and very talented. End results are not quite in the class of Texas Metal but they’re not trying to be. CK does a fine fine job with resto mods. Edit (6-4-23). My comment about “end results”, above is not accurate. Counts Kustoms does work and produces results that are absolutely top tier. His vehicles are drop dead gorgeous and hold their own with Texas Metal and Dave Kindig. His work on a ‘67 Pontiac GTO (S9 / E9) absolutely took my breath away. Shout out to Ghetto Bob too. Danny has a spectacular team. Superb attention to detail. (End edit) TM is pure custom, awesome design and superlative metal fabrication and paint. Executed flawlessly. The custom air rides and custom hand-made frame design and fabrication is to die for. John in the interior design and fab shop might be a genius. TM doesn’t do resto mod. CK is more resto mod, often with some special custom touches. Executed exceptionally well. Ryan may well be the the best painter in the game. And that’s saying a lot. Shannon is a genius with the motorcycle side. Overall, the finished vehicles are exceptionally beautiful and desirable. I don’t enjoy trash talking anyone but Horney Mike could be eliminated from the show and they wouldn’t miss a beat. Granted he appears to have good airbrush skills but I find him to be a whiner, self centered, and obnoxious to boot. Why Danny keeps him in the show I haven't a clue. Maybe he wanted an irritating cartoon character. Thanks to “record” I always fast forward when he appears. One of the most interesting top vehicle resto/custom shows out there IMHO.

After Searching for Italy, which is a wonderful show, I looked forward to Searching for Mexico. I was disappointed. The different locales are very interesting, the people are very sincere and likable, and the food is exciting. For me the host is the weakness. Her thing overall seems to boil down to looking fabulous and gushing about how good the food tastes. That’s it. She’s no Stanley Tucci. She constantly seems to question, 2nd guess, and micromanage the people who are cooking. Another annoying trait is constantly inserting herself into what is going on so she is participating in the scenario from within. Tucci knows enough to let his encounters play out on their own while he plays more of a facilitator role. Longoria constantly tries to fabricate drama. After inserting herself into one episode where hand cranking was required we get, “I think I pulled a muscle.” And often when eating a dish with sauces we get, “I spilled some on my blouse (or dress).” We are rewarded with this valuable tidbit more than a couple of times. It’s no pleasure trash talking someone but a personal review should be honest. I still watch it for the locales, people and food but it’s not the same vibe as Searching for Italy.

I like this show. Especially the beautiful different lake, river and coastal locales in Maine. Relatively small scale builds but well done considering budgets are usually in the $30,000-$60,000 range. The team consists of some superb carpenters. More complex builds seem to include such things as raising up the camp, leveling it snd posting it firmly, installing a new roof (steeper metal roofs seem appropriate), landscaping, dock upgrades, and installing plumbing and electric. It’s amazing the crew can complete these more complex builds so well with such modest budgets. Personable cast. In these kinds of shows I can usually find at least one person who annoys me. Not so with this show. Everyone is personable and can explain things well. Good chemistry. Ryan tends to go off the rails often but it’s not a deal breaker. He gets overexcited about finding animal waste and ant nests and pontificates endlessly about construction flaws they find. Right, that’s why they are there. Chase is a fantastic problem solver, carpenter, and redesigner of old camps. Ashly does very well with the final design, various paint applications, and fitting out the finished camp. Something not so great, the Magnolia network must have the highest ratio of commercials. Frequent and long. A real buzz kill. The only solution is to record these shows and fast forward through the frequent junk. Overall though, a very good show. Maine and “cabin culture” is special and intriguing. Living in Hawaii for the last 70 years has spoiled me as far as climate and weather. I’m impressed with how tolerant and accepting Mainers are with regard to their four robust seasons. I know budget is a personal thing but if I lived in Maine and was fortunate enough to own a lake camp I would be sure to build, insulate and equip it for winter weather. A 3-season camp would not interest me. Imagine being able to live comfortably in the camp during the dead of winter. Heavy winter can be beautiful. That way it could be enjoyed year round. And I believe the insulation would be helpful to make the camp cooler during hot summer weather. Finally, loft access. Often space to create stairs is limited. So they resort to “ship’s ladders” as access to the loft. I absolutely would not tolerate them trying to give me a ladder. These things are bummers in the beautiful cabins they create. I feel they are not safe and problematic to use. But maybe that’s just because I’m older and don’t do well with ladders. Find some way to create stairs so easy and safe access is available to the loft. If you have to sacrifice a few square feet, so be it. Who wants to be dealing with a ladder in the dark middle of the night when the bathroom calls? Not me. A spiral staircase might be an option although they might be more expensive than stairs or a ships ladder.

Much of the show’s content is interesting and apparently unexplainable. Megalithic structures that seem way beyond the capabilities of humans living in the time period at their time of construction. I’m open-minded and am intrigued by the countless mysteries from our past. The regular cast of the show does a good job highlighting all of these unexplained mysteries. One thing that’s always bothered me about the show is the purported crash sites all over the globe attributed to likely alien craft. Many, many of these in many countries. Here’s my problem: we are led to believe that these “crash sites”, some with unexplainable exotic materials, are scattered all over the globe. So we must believe that superior, advanced alien civilizations, so far advanced as to be totally unfathomable, are capable of traveling millions of miles and light years to reach earth. Then once they get here they apparently have a major problem staying in the air which results in bumping into the planet on a regular basis. It just doesn’t compute.