It's New New. Nu?

Don't be fooled by what they tell you-- this isn't The New Beetle.

THIS is the New Beetle:


Or, rather, it was.

That's the ding-darn trouble with calling things "New." Invariably, they aren't. At least, they aren't just about a second after you've called them "New." Especially today, when "new" is just a word you throw around unwittingly and carelessly until the next "Newer" thing comes out to replace the formerly new thing. This BlackBerry sitting on the desk in front of me: already out-moded when I purchased it.

New? Please. That's why I buy most of my clothes at thrift shops.

I strongly dislike the New (New) Beetle, unveiled Tuesday in America on "The Today Show," and in Shanghai and Belgium on whatever their versions of "The Today Show" are.

Can you, for a moment, imagine a black, Belgian Al Roker? Or a Shanghainian one?

(W. h. o. a.)

Anyway, yeah. I don't like it. They're, apparently, marketing the 2012 New Beetle at men, and they've succeeded in making it more masculine-looking. Lower. Wider. Flatter. More aggressive. Less bubble-shaped and less, well, bubbly. But, is that what the Beetle is supposed to be?

Aggressive? Manly? Even a little bit... mean?

I mean-- let's look at the original:


Look at that kisser. Don't you just wanna pinch that little punim? That baby is about as aggressive as a little girl's tea party. As mean as a sleeping Havanese. As aggressive as Joe Besser. In short: it's a well-loved velveteen rabbit: ripe for the hugging.

I suppose it's possible that the 2012 New (New) Beetle will grow on me. I can remember reading about the (first) New Beetle when it came out in 1998, and I loathed it. Capable of speeds exceeding 60mph? Engine in the front? Leather seats?

Safety?!

This, my friends, is no Beetle, I declared, new or otherwise.

But I grew to like, even love the New Beetle. In fact, in 2002, I bought myself one. And it was one of the best decisions I ever made in my life.

Even if, though, I do end up liking the 2012 New Beetle when I see one in the "flesh" at a dealership in the fall (???) I'm still not crazy about the name.

New Beetle.

We did that, Ferdinand Piech.

If VW is so obsessed, as they apparently are, with marketing this car at men, why don't they call it the "Testebeetle?"

You like that? I've got more where that came from (and, yeah, that's what she said):

Scrotengnugen

Balltle

Beertle

The Roid-Beetle (you know, 'cuz guys like steroids)

The Masturwagon (you know, 'cuz guys like to beat off)

I mean, really? Anything's better than The New Beetle. Because, let's face it, kids: it was only "new" once, and, when it was new, it looked like this:


And maybe that's why them VW folks are so image conscious.

Around the Block

World: meet my mistress.

She's not what most men would choose. She's kind of homely-looking, maybe some might say dowdy. One thing you can definitely say about her that I couldn't argue with: she's slow.

Very slow.

She's not sophisticated or refined and, at forty-seven years of age, she's kind of a strange choice for a thirty-year-old man already married to a twenty-eight-year-old. You could say that she's "been around the block" more than a few times. I mean, you could say that-- and I'd punch you in the face. Stop insulting my mistress, you jealous prickball.

Being in love isn't easy, and it's far more complicated when you're already married. Fortunately, my wife knows about my long, lusty, torrid and tempestuous infatuation with the Volkswagen Beetle. It began way, way, way before I ever met Mrs. Apron and, even though she knew my heart belonged to another, she married me anyway. So obsessed was I that I even tried to allow a 1966 Volkswagen Beetle to insinuate itself into our very marriage ceremony. But it broke down on the way to our rehearsal dinner.

Twice.

At fourteen, I had successfully convinced my father that purchasing me a 1966 Volkswagen Beetle was a wise idea. This is no easy feat for a fourteen-year-old boy to pull off and, even today, I am stunned that it worked. It was Bahama Blue, with a slight dent on the driver's side front fender. No surface rust. 1300cc engine. Black vinyl interior. And, God, when you opened the door and took a whiff, oh-- how you were instantly teleported back in time. It was, simply, amazing.

My mother was not amazed. Or amused. I am more than a little surprised that divorce proceedings were not initiated. There were bigger fuck-ups in store and still, she stayed put. Gotta love inertia, or lack thereof. We owned that car for a year-and-a-half but, as the day for my driver's license test got closer and closer, I got more and more scared of the prospect of being behind the wheel of this car, facing modern, heavy, threatening machines. The idea of tooling around in a car that would most definitely crumple up like a boil-in-a-bag in the event of an accident held little thrill for me, even as a moronic 15-and-a-half-year-old. We sold it. In the height of all coincidences, it went to the daughter of a Philadelphia police detective, who had been shot and killed in a narcotics raid. Throughout the entire transaction, she spoke not one single word-- her mother and uncle handled the transaction. She stared at the pavement. I hoped the car would bring her some happiness, if that were possible. If ever there was a car made on this earth capable of making that girl smile, I thought, this is it.

Ever since we sold that car, I've wanted another one. I guess I faced my fears about the unsafe nature of the antique Beetle when I borrowed the 1966 Bug from a local dealership for use as the "getaway" car for our wedding. Before it broke down (twice) I was speeding along a 3-lane freeway inside of it. No seatbelts. No working odometer. No working speedometer. No working gas gauge. Just the seat, the wheel, the tires, and me.

And, as the impossibly loud racket of the engine behind me clattering and burbling away, I thought to myself, "Oh my God-- I am in love."

Like Buddy Hackett's character in the original "Love Bug" says, grinning from ear-to-ear while listening to Herbie's engine humming away, "Like the song of a blue-boid."

The song of a blue-boid indeed.

At a car show and classic car museum this weekend in Hershey, my wife and I encountered many classic car owners and aficionados with their Studebakers and their Crosleys and their Packards, and the thing that unified most of these people was not just their eccentric facial hair and beer guts, but their *ahem* advanced age. And I looked at them, doddering around, futzing under the hoods of their V-8s and such, sipping water from 1970s-era coolers and vinyl-covered, obscene-colored Thermos products. And I looked inside the cars they brought to display, and I saw old-man back-support seat products and Doo-Wop tapes spread across the bench seats.

And I thought to myself, "This is all wrong."

Why is owning a collector's car an old fart's game? You spend your whole young and middle-aged life working, no-- slaving away. You put money aside and, finally, when you're 70, you buy a classic car that you can no longer sit in comfortably or spend any time driving. Take it out for twenty minutes and you're practically incapacitated by sciatica, lumbago, shingles or whatever other ailment that old crusties get. Stamp-collecting, I get that. That should be what old men do. The classic car thing should be for the young, too. While we can still enjoy it. While we can do more than drag it to a car show, let it sit there in the sun for 6 hours, answer the same six or seven stupid questions about it all day, eat some chicken wings and hamburgers slathered in Whiz, and leave-- covering it with a tarp for nine months out of the year.

I mean, really-- is that any way to treat a respectable little mistress?

In the Fog of My Dreams

I have many dreams-- you know some of them by now.

My dream of becoming a police officer-- saving my own little corner of the world-- and revitalizing the image of "the cop" by wearing my uniform pressed and proud and being a gentle intermediary in peoples' disputes.

My dream of becoming a professional writer-- being compensated for my thoughts and opinions, musings and rantings, ravings and cravings.

My dream of becoming a father, of raising children who will suffer terribly through many an operetta featuring their pattering dad and will no doubt be allergic to everything, including the dog that we'll own anyway.

My dream of owning a vintage Volkswagen Beetle, not a beautifully-restored showpiece to shut away in a temperature-controlled garage, to obsessively molest with a diaper, and take out for a 1/2-hour spin three bone-dry Sundays a year when my knuckles are gnarled and my hair is as white as freshly fallen snow-- but a handsomely imperfect daily driver to, well, daily drive.

While driving to rehearsal on Wednesday night, I spotted a silver 1971, idling at a stop sign. It was no showpiece.

"When am I going to own my own Bug?" I said aloud, not even really to my wife, though she did happen to be sitting in the passenger seat.

"I don't know, Buddy."

"When I'm old and wrinkly and won't be able to enjoy it?" I asked, definitely to her this time, "and when there'll be practically none left?"

"I don't know," she said.

Of course, we both know. And knowing hurts, because we also know what happens to a dream deferred, thanks to Langston Hughes. She was against the Beetle-- and she pushed all the right buttons. We are planning on having a child, and there is no way I would put a child of mine in a 40-year-old car like that, would I? No, of course not. She can drive a stickshift car, but flatly refuses to because of the anxiety it causes her. "What if my car needs to go into the shop and I have to go to work? I won't drive a manual Beetle." She pointed out that a 40-year-old car just isn't reliable or sensible to drive every day, in all seasons. I countered with my deeply-entrenched, almost Aspergian knowledge of the Beetle's excellent reputation in the snow, due to its rear-mounted engine, its simplicity to maintain, and the fact that, while the car might be 40 years old, most Bugs that have survived this long have scads of redone parts, including engines and transmissions.

But I was fighting a losing battle, and I was barely even fighting.

We had a long talk about it in bed together on Saturday morning, and it changed and diverged and morphed into a talk about my job and my employment aspirations and just what the hell I want to do with my life. See, my wife has a career. I, as I've always had since college, have a job. And I've had many several of them, and none of them have ever really had the potential to turn into careers. Partly because I've never wanted to do any job I've ever held for longer than a year, even though I have.

I don't remember how we got to talking about my job when we started talking about a vintage Bug to replace the P.T. Cruiser, but sometimes talks go in different directions. I think it had to do with dreams-- the unfinished, unrealized kind. Around the time we moved back to the suburbs, I read that my town was hiring police officers. It's a lovely little suburb-- not very dangerous (the last officer killed here was in 1989) and the pay is pretty excellent and the benefits are far better. More importantly, I said, when I came home and talked to my wife about it, I would be able to police the community in which I was born and raised and live. My wife was very upset.

"I thought we went through this already," she said to me, "I thought we were finished with this."

But, with me, things aren't ever really finished. Remember, I owned a 1966 VW Beetle from the time I was fourteen to the time I was fifteen-and-a-half.

"Part of me wants to just say, 'Sure-- go for it-- what the hell? Let's see what happens...' but I don't want to. I don't want to live like that, in fear that you could get hurt, or that I'll never see you because you'll be working weird hours."

With a measured amount of frustration, and sadness, I let the application date pass without another word about the subject.

Yesterday morning, in bed, my wife looked into my eyes and the lower left corner of her mouth turned down, as it does whenever she's about to cry, as it's done ever since 2004, when she had her brain surgery.

"Sometimes I feel like I'm always stepping on your dreams-- and I don't want that. I don't ever want to kill a dream you have."

I told her that she, the affirming, respectful, loving life I have with her, is my biggest dream of all-- one that, when I was a younger man I never thought would ever materialize. And I told her that, because it was true.

She apologized for "forcing" me to go to grad school, and that broke my heart-- maybe because it was true. I told her that I don't even remember anymore, because I don't. Who knows how things happen anyway, they're all a mess of circumstances and words and best intentions. On paper, it looks like I'm not using my graduate school education, only paying for it, but I am using it. In every interaction with a young person, I use the techniques and tactics I learned there, and I know that. "Just because I don't work in a school with cafeteria trays and lunch bells and shitty ditto sheets doesn't mean that I'm not a teacher."

"I know," she said, between sniffles.

She then told me that, if I wanted to try to become a writer, she'd support me, and that was hard to hear. I do want that, but I lead a life littered with enough rejection letters to wallpaper every house on my street-- so is that really a worthwhile risk? I think I'd be more successful at owning and operating a vintage Beetle.

In my life, the Beetle is rather like a pimple that recurs in a tell-tale spot on your cheek, by your nose every now and then-- you forget that it comes there until it arrives, all round and red. So is being a police officer, or a writer, or an actor-- these things come up and up and up and they only go down below the surface after a good astringent and squeeze session, and maybe that's what Saturday morning was, or maybe it was something larger. Maybe I've finally understood what is important in life, and what is less so. Dreams are good, and they keep us moving forward, but it's what we've got in life that keeps us alive. And I don't ever want to forget that.

Fearless Fifty-Three

There's a very sweet song in the musical "Wicked," a show I really like in spite of not being a twelve-year-old girl, and it's not a popular song either, like "Defying Gravity" or, well, "Popular." It's a one-minute ballad that the Wizard sings called "I am a Sentimental Man." Though I come off a bit bold and brash, I am a sentimental man, and if there's a number in the world I get all soft and squishy about, it's the number "53." Here's the reason why:

My heart belongs to that car, and that number. Ever since I can remember, and I can remember pretty far back, 53 has been my favorite number. It hasn't been especially lucky, and maybe it would be if I ever played the lottery, but it's always been my favorite. Don't ask me how, but I hit 53 followers this weekend, and so I thought, in honor of this historic event, I'd spend a little time talking about my favorite number, my favorite car, and my favorite Disney live-action movie.

By the way, my favorite animated Disney movie is "Robin Hood," and if you've ever heard me lustily belting out "A Pox on the Phony King of England," well, you know not to expect too much from me. Mentally, at least.

My obsession with Herbie (the Love Bug) started many, many years ago, when I was around three years old. My father's sister was visiting from Israel and my parents took the extraordinarily rare opportunity to have an evening to themselves, leaving Rena in charge of the kids. My sisters were off doing whatever sisters did in the heady days of 1983-- probably decorating their bedroom walls with puff paint or whatever-- and Rena plopped me on the living room floor and slipped a film into the Betamax. From the opening title sequence featuring a good old-fashioned dirt-track demolition race, underscored with a sprightly, jaunty soundtrack, I was hooked. And, when the delicate, ovoid, off-white beauty, emblazoned with its patriotic stripes, red, white and royal blue, just off-set of center and its bold number square on the hood, engine cover and doors, I was in love.

"One day," I announced to my Mommy & Daddy, "I'm going to have a car, just like that."

And I've owned a Bahama Blue 1966 Volkswagen Beetle DeLuxe Sedan, and a white, 2001 New Beetle, which I painstakingly turned into Herbie with a custom vinyl graphics kit, ordered from California. One day, I know I'll put the two experiences together and create a precisely, pristinely accurate Herbie the Love Bug replica, and I hope to never part with it, as I regrettably and regretfully did with my other two friends.

I sometimes think about who I'd be if Rena had chosen a different movie to pacify me that night, so long ago. So much of my life is so intrinsically wrapped up in Herbiedom. When I get bored in front of the computer screen, I don't turn to porn (well, sometimes I do) but I turn to ebaymotors, where I stare longingly at vintage Beetles for sale, seeing each one of them as a blank canvas for my Herbie fetish. $3,200 barn find in Boise. $12,000 black plate original in Sacramento. $575 project car in Detroit. $2,700 daily driver in Englewood. They're all calling to me like a siren. Come save me. Paint me. Love me.

I'd take them all if I only could. I'm like a fucking cat lady. Left to my own devices, we'd have Beetles in the garage, on the street, on the lawn, in the basement. I'd be hoarding them in the attic. When I see one on the side of the road, its floorboards rusted and its front bumper hanging down in a palsied frown, I look at it like a child that has been slapped in the face by its mother and left outside the Pathmark. I want to sweep in like BPS (Beetle Protective Services) and take these cars away from those who would let the milkweed grow around them and swallow them whole. But I can't support the habit.

My aunt Rena killed herself six years ago, and I can't see a Beetle or watch "The Love Bug" without thinking about her, at least in passing. That time when I was three or so was probably the longest amount of time I'd ever spent with her. She moved from Israel to Australia to New York City as she moved in and out of sanity. An aunt who hears voices in her head and does battle with demons in the night wouldn't have been much good to me, even if she was around regularly, but I'll always be grateful to her for the German wheels she set in motion that babysitting night so long ago.

And so I'll close this little entry by thanking my 53 followers. And I'll thank Aunt Rena, too, for giving me my favorite number.

Bed, Perchance to Sleep...

I slept for shit last night.

I don't know why. My wife and I were at my mother and father's for dinner last night. The event commenced, as it is ordained so to do, at 5:30 and, by 7:20, we were both nodding off at the table.

"Jesus Christ," I hazily exclaimed after looking at my watch, "it's only 7:20?"

"So?" my mother dared me to proceed with further commentary.

"Well, come on," I slurred, "it's like a fucking opium den in here. Look at her," I said, gesturing lazily to my wife, "she can barely keep her head up."

My wife, almost cross-eyed, enthusiastically bobbed her head up and down, presumably in agreement.

I don't know what it is about my parent's house that is so soporific, but you can't be in there for longer than an hour and a half without your brain turning into a gray slushie. It's not like the conversation isn't lively-- it is-- last night we were conversing energetically about safety recalls of the pack-n-play my mother bought for my sister, my father was trying to harrass me into accepting a re-gift of a Continental Airlines credit-card holder ("The Israeli ambassador gave it to me! It's Italian leather, mummy-- beautiful!") while my eldest sister was giving my wife meticulous directions to the gynecologist's office in New Jersey. I mean, it's a pretty festive fucking environment.

I ended up not accepting the credit-card holder, regardless of its alleged quality and provenance. "How many credit cards do you think I have, for God's sake?" I asked. This thing was made for big boys. It even had a slot for a passport, with a piece of paper in it made to look like a passport, and a long, vertical slot for an airline ticket, with a fake airline ticket inside for "HAPPY AIRLINE." Can you just picture the flight attendants on Happy Airline?

My father is always trying to give me shit I don't want-- coupons to Ruby Tuesday ("Take your wife out for dinner, for God's sake-- it's beautiful!"), supermarket coupons, "Sveetie-- you won' believe this-- 2 liter bottles of Pepsi Diet for 89 cents each! I mean, fuck!") or random food products they have lying around the house that they can't wait to get rid of ("Mummy-- you like sunflower seeds, right?") but it's usually fruit.

Yesterday, we managed to escape with only half a watermelon, which we had to carry home in a bag as we walked to their house. It's a pleasant enough walk, though when encumbered with half a watermelon, it's decidedly less so. I don't know how serial killers or mafioso walk around with severed heads in bowling ball bags all the time.

I guess we should have gone to sleep immediately after arriving home from their house, but we stayed up for another three hours and while this should have only increased my thirst for sleep, I instead got totally wired. As I lay in bed, my wife instantly asleep after a back rub, my mind wandered to the following topics:

Everything I did wrong this weekend including, but not limited to,

# hitting my head a total of four (4) times

# breaking a shelf my father-in-law hand-made for us five years ago

# breaking a large lamp bulb in the kitchen (by hitting my head on it-- #2 out of 4)

* being unprepared for work today

* all the bills that have been paid/have to be paid

* obsessing about our mortgage and its seeming unendingness

* ditto on school loans

* the many ways someone could easily break into our house

* the fact that I sleep naked in the summer and how stupid I would look confronting a burglar in such aforementioned nudity and how my only shot at not getting killed would be that the burglar would probably laugh so hard at my emaciated form that he might drop his gun.

* thinking about death

* thinking about Michael Jackson's death

* considering a myriad of snappy combacks I'd love to say to people, especially my boss

* obsessing about why I can't fall asleep

I must have fallen asleep for at least a little bit, because I know I had a dream about my father promising to buy my a vintage Volkswagen Beetle (something he already did for me when I was fourteen-- and I ended up selling it at age 15-and-a-half because I was too scared to drive it due to its lack of safety features, like, um, shoulder belts). The dream, of course, didn't go well, and ended with me yelling at him because he didn't understand that Volkswagen stopped making the original Beetle in the year 1979 and that I was only interested in Beetles from 1962-1967, but that I wanted to test-drive "a later model just to be sure."

"You mean like 1995 or 1996?"

"NO, GODDAMNIT! THEY WEREN'T MAKING THEM THAT LATE!"

"You mean like 1991 or 1992?"

"AAAAAAAAH! NO! WHAT THE FUCK! I MEAN, LIKE, 1968 to 1971! JESUS!"

"Oh. So, like 1989 or something."

My poor father. We are destined to be unable to communicate, even in my dreams. My very brief, unsatisfied, unkind, unrequited dreams. Oh well. There's always tonight. Maybe, instead of our marital bed, I can try sleeping at my parent's dining room table. It's a good thing I don't see a therapist anymore, or he might call that a disturbing bit of regression.