Vehiculous Undecidas

There's a brief scene in "Amadeus" where Tom Hulce, playing Wolfgang Mozart is in a wig shop being fawned over by multiple shop attendants. They try this outlandish wig on him, and that pink, bizarre wig on him, and then a final one-- purple, I think. Hulce grins in his chromosomally-challenged way at the mirror before him and shrieks,

"OOohh! I love them all! What if I had three heads?"

The sales associates look at each other in a moment of painful awkwardness until Hulce himself bursts into his personification of Mozart's high-pitched hysterics. Once they know it's a joke, the wig salesmen erupt in effete titters and applaud Mozart roundly for his "funny."

The way Mozart feels about wigs is the way I feel about cars.

I want them all.

What if I had three seat-asses, or three accelerator feet, or six steering wheel hands?

And three car payments.

My vehicle-acquisition whims seem to change with the passing of the hour, and it requires very, very little for me to get a hard-on for even the most unlikely vehicle. It's a good thing I'm not like this about women, or my marriage to Mrs. Apron would have ended before the ink on our ketubah was dry.

For a while, I was on about a 2003-2005 Volkswagen New Beetle, white, done up as Herbie the Love Bug. When I get through with it, it would look something like this:

I know for a fact that this is what it would look like because this is, in fact, a picture of my former car, a 2001 Volkwsagen New Beetle, done up to look like Herbie the Love Bug. Some schmuck took a picture of my car when it was parked in Brooklyn while I was on a visit to see my best friend who no longer speaks to me. I found the picture on the internet a year later. I don't know who the hell the dog is, or why he has lips that resemble hotdogs.

I don't really need to explain why I want to own a Herbie replica again, but I'll do it anyway because that's what blogs are basically about, aren't they-- explaining the irrational. Every day was special for me while driving this car-- every day, something happened. Someone said something to me, or snapped a picture of it, complimented me, smiled at me, waved at me-- well, at the car, really. Only once did somebody give me the finger while I was driving my Herbie-- and it wasn't because of some rule-of-the-road violation I had committed. I know that because it was a carload of high school boys. And they shouted, "FUCK YOU, HERBIE!" out the window of their Mercedes.

Of course, there are days where I don't exactly want attention-- just as there days where I don't want to deal with the eccentricities of a Volkswagen New Beetle's finnicky and unpredictable electrical system, once having lit up almost every single idiot light on my dashboard and making me fear the whole fucking car would explode. It's on days like these where I think I want a Subaru.

I've never driven a car with all-wheel-drive before, and the thought of driving in the snow without a steady stream of urine soaking through my corduroys is an appealing thing as one approaches thirty years of age. Plus, because my wife is a member of the American Speech Hearing Association, she gets (and I could get) between $1,500-$3,300 off the MSRP of a new Subaru. Apparently, ASHA and Subaru are making sexy nipple-twisty times with each other, and that's all kinds of hot. AWD and power seats beats a fucking mug or a tote bag any day. Plus, NIIHS crash tests just gave Subaru a big boner for strengthing its rooves to protect against potentially head-crushing rollover accidents. And I'm all about saving the brain, y'alls.

Plus, I kind of think the Outback is, um, sexy. Which means that I have some sort of ravenous brain cancer that will probably result in death and/or E.D. in a few short months.

Of course, nobody, however disturbed or dysfunctional could ever possibly think the 2002-2006 Toyota Camry is sexy, and yet, there I was making eyes at one, this very night, in fact. Not only was I lustily ogling a Toyota Camry, but I was doing it at a goddamn MINI dealership! There it was, a beige-on-beige 2003 Toyota Camry LE... surrounded by all of these sprightly, charming, primary-colored punchy little buggers. And the car I was looking at? The car I actually got out of my car to look at, looks kind of like this insipid motherfucker:

Some hump having a serious case of mid-life baldness obviously traded it in for a John Cooper S Edition mini, probably one with the Union Jack painted all over the goddamn roof and the side-mirrors. It bore an inglorious window sticker "AS-IS: NO WARRANTY." No price even. They probably pay you to take it. And there I was, staring at it like it was a porno.

I'm usually okay with who I am. Really, I am.

But, tonight, I was not. I'm scared.

Help me.

And stop looking at me like I have three heads.

P.T. Loser

This is a picture of a broken tie-rod that Soly & Jack, the Israeli and Chinese mechanics with whom I trust my car and my life, removed from my 2001 PT Cruiser yesterday morning. Jack realized I needed a new tie-rod when he was in the process of putting two brand-new tires on the car, replacing two old, bald ones. When he put the new tire on the front passenger side and tightened the lugs, he put his hand on the tire and it wobbled around like a wagon wheel from Oregon Trail.

"Oh, shit," Jack said.

"Please don't say that," I said, knowing I was already looking at around a $200 service bill for the oil change and the two tires.

But it was definitely an "Oh, shit," and my total for the day ended up being $395.38.

As Click & Clack would say, "Looks like Soly's going to make this month's boat payment."

Frankly, I have difficulty picturing 61-year-old grizzled and gnarled Soly piloting a boat. At least, not any boat that doesn't have an Israeli flag on its side and an anti-aircraft gun on the stern.

I know, also, that Soly and Jack don't tell me something's wrong when it isn't. When they removed the bum tie-rod, they showed it to me. "You needed a new one of those more than you needed two new fucking tires," said Soly, "if that snapped, and it was close to snapping, you'd be dead."

I was going to ask him to take the tires back then, but they were already on the car.

Going to Soly & Jack's always fills me with a mixture of emotions. On the one hand, I really enjoy being there. I like the way their garage smells, I like the sound the heater makes when it turns itself on, I like Soly & Jack's uniforms-- and not in that annoying hipster way, either-- and, of course, I just like Soly & Jack. I like talking to them about Sarah Palin (Soly: "She would have made a good prostitute.") and I like talking to them about where they came from (Jack: "I came here from China in 1991, January 1st. My sister and I slept for 24 hours our first day here. Heard fireworks. I was so fucking bored for two years.")

What I don't like is giving them lots of money. This tends to happen, though, when I bring around the PT Cruiser. Bushings, ball-joints, broken rims, haywire electrical system, a sunroof that closes sometimes, oxygen sensors, tie-rods, dog-bones (yes, apparently there's a rear component of my car's suspension called a "dog bone." It's got three holes. Jack showed it to me.) All things break. I understand that. When they break, you need to fix them. I just wish things wouldn't break so often and that, when they did, they were cheaper to replace.

For a car built on the cheap, it's not very cheap to fix.

"This thing is a fucking joke!" Soly yelled at me today, in between sips of his coffee, which he drinks from a miraculously pristine white ceramic mug, "It gets, what, 20 miles-a-gallon, barely, it accelerates like a fucking old dog, and it looks like a cow that's bending over!" He energetically gulps some more coffee and then he rages, his forsaken, broken teeth jutting out like icicles, "That's why they only made this piece of shit for one year!"

I stared at him. I was shocked. I thought Soly knew everything about cars.

"Soly, they're still making them today."

"WHAT?!" he bellowed furiously at me, spitting coffee onto my cardigan, "Then how come every goddamn customer I have who drives one of these things drives a 2001?!"

Using my internet-ready smartphone, I Googled "PT Cruiser" and showed him that Chrysler began production in 2000 and it's scheduled to continue until 2010.

"What is that," asked Soly, peering at my phone under his bifocals, "a Blueberry?"

"Yeah," I said, "with cream on top."

"What probably happened was," Soly reasoned, "they sold the PT Cruisers everywhere in 2001, and, when smart people realized they were pieces of shit, they sold the rest of them down South, where the retards live." In spite of his insinuation that I am equivalent to a Kentucky-fried, sister-fucking retard, I laughed.

When Jack tells me that the tie-rods are "always going bad on these cars," I complain that this is what he says whenever I bring the car in for something.

"What doesn't 'always go bad on these cars'?" I asked. Jack smiled at me.

"The seats."

Soly refers to my car as the "P.T. Loser."

I told him that my wife really loves the car and has a great desire to only have one car payment, which I respect and understand. The Cruiser is paid off and is titled under my name. She has a 2009 Honda Fit which she loves more than Jesus loves his Birkenstocks.

"My wife loves this car and she thinks it's indestructable," I told Soly, "her mother has one that has over 200,000 miles on it."

"Well, she's crazy-- she's probably had every fucking thing rebuilt on it besides the radio antenna! It's not even the same car it was in 2001 anymore."

I told him that I wanted to sell it and get a 1968 Beetle. He laughed.

"See? You're fucking crazy, too! You are perfect for each other."

We both cracked up at that. In the midst of our laughter, Jack came up and informed me that the motor mounts were starting to go. He motioned for me to come over so I could see for myself.

"No," I said. "I believe you."

The Automotive Vagina

When you're a teenage boy and, consequently, at least mildly socially retarded, at some point in your high school years you invariably fantasize about what it would be like to be a gynecologist.

At least, I did.

Pussy is on the menu, no matter what the time of day. You think about the mounds of slippery slivers you'd get to prod, sniff, investigate and otherwise infiltrate with a variety of ghoulish looking extensions and implements. You think about what it would be like to be a gynecologist in L.A., where you might get to come face-to-bush with the lauded labias of Hollywood's elite and beautiful. Perhaps a chic office on 5th Avenue for all of the rail-thin, chiseled blonde socialites strutting their stuff down the streets of Manhattan in impossible heels and clenched butt-cheeks.

One day, back when I rode around in an ambulance and called myself a "healthcare professional" I was part of a four-man crew assigned to take a 450-pound black woman home. She lived in a typical Philly rowhome with a set of stairs being the greeting once you got through the front door. We placed the woman in a stair-chair and the four of us lifted her up the stairs-- a painstaking job on a hot, August day that took nearly a forty-five minutes. During this time, I was positioned at the bottom of the chair, and I was at a location that afforded me an unobstructed view of her copious, walrus-like vagina for the entire ordeal.

It was at this moment that I recalled my fleeting adolescent fantasy of what gynecology was like-- an endless stream of well-constructed hot chicks, aged 18-26, walking into a room alone with you and taking off their clothes, spreading themselves before you on an exam table like warm butter on toast.

Ah, boys... Amazing that some of us grow up to become almost human.

Today, while I was reading the New York Times, I came across an article that again reminded me of transporting the fat, black lady home from the hospital, and about gynecology. Strangely enough, it was a car review that brought all this back into my mind.

It was a review for the 2010 Buick LaCrosse.

While the article was positively overflowing with praise (which leads me to believe that the author wrote the review whilst relaxing in a new pair of "Depends") it made me deeply appreciate the peaks and valleys that are inherent in any job, in this case, reviewing cars. I tend to think of reviewing cars for a living as the ideal job for a writer and a car nut, both of which are groups I consider myself a member. Who wouldn't want to take brand-new cars, drive them before anybody else gets a chance to do so, thrash them around racetracks and put them through the paces in heavy metropolitan traffic, spin them around autumnal backroads, and then sit at your desk with your dog snoozing beneath you and a cup of coffee at the ready and clack out a few paragraphs for a handsome fee?

Doesn't that sound like the life to you?

And then I finally understood today, reading the review of what may very well be G.M.'s final, sacrificial offering to the angry Gods of Automobilia, the M.P.G. Wizards of the Underworld, that, for every Audi R-8 and Bentley Convertible and even every Honda Fit and Mazdaspeed 3 or Mini Clubman-- you've got to stick your face right inside the putrid, flabby and, yes, elderly snatch of a Buick.

But that, friends, is just one aspect of occupational life. It's also a solid, timely reminder that no matter how shitty your job is, there's always a fresh, pink, delightfully prim & trimmed vagina lurking somewhere around the corner, if you look for it.

Just Another Family Car

My parents have very strange relationships with cars.

I suppose it's no accident that I do, too.

My father learned to drive, he says, in a beat up Citroen in the deserts of Israel. If you've ever been in a car with him, or, far worse, if you've ever tried to follow him somewhere, you'd believe it for sure. I like to close my eyes and picture this mustachioed, swarthy man behind the hard, gleaming steering wheel of a DS, his Jewfro scraping against the perforated headliner as my young father bounded merrily up and down over sand dunes in an untamed land, in a long forgotten fairytale time-- a shiteating grin plastered across his face.

Road signs mean absolutely nothing to him, they might as well be in Japanese, or great, big lollipops-- it wouldn't matter. What he doesn't want to hear or see, he ignores. Like people honking at him. Or stop signs. He speeds through life, no matter where he's going. Whether he's late for something (wait-- he's never late for things) or whether he's going to The Camera Store on some secret Israeli mission, or whether he's going to pick up red grapes for $0.63 a pound at the Shop Rite on 63rd Street. Speed is of the essence. I guess he learned this way of operating from his youth in Israel where, if you didn't book it, a sniper's bullet or a rocket could take your fucking head off.

He's been pulled over more times than I have fingers, toes, and capillaries. My phone rang a week or so ago.

"Mummy, leeesten, I have a qvestion," he began in earnest in his slightly accented English. "I was driving in Allentown, to pick up fabric from Naajib, and I was going down this small alley..."

"Were you pulled over?" I interrupted.

"Wait-- no. Leeesten-- so, I'm going down there, and I had my blinker on" (Sidebar: this was a complete lie. He has never used a turn signal in his life) "and I'm turning and the cop pulls me over. I mean, I turned, with my blinker-- I did not know where I was..."

"How fast were you going?" I asked, nonplussed.

"Oh!" he laughs, "I don' know..."

Right. He and I discussed the finer points of negotiating your way out of points on your license in traffic court, how, if you plead guilty to a lesser charge, they will make you pay a fine but they take away the points. Which is good, because my father already has four points on his driver's license-- take two more away, and he won't be able to drive that brand new, black BMW 328xi that is sitting in my parent's driveway right now.

Which brings me to my original point about their strange relationship with cars. For decades, my parents drove shitbuckets. My mother, who was petrified of motor vehicles and didn't get her driver's license until she was thirty, began her motoring life behind the wheel of a two-door Chevy Nova. She then graduated to a Pontiac Sunbird, which was exactly the same thing as the Nova, just with a different name. My grandfather bought my mother this car, for $300 from a police auction-- a pretty lame gesture coming from a man who never drove anything that wasn't a Cadillac himself. The Sunbird didn't last long. One day my father was driving the car on the Atlantic City Expressway and it caught fire, thus ending its brief stay on this earth. We later theorized that my mother's father had rigged the car in an effort to kill my dad. This was a pretty unlikely theory since my maternal grandfather couldn't even put together a TV table or make a door stop squeaking.

When I was a boy, my parents graduated to a 1986 Toyota Camry. It was in this car that I asked my father if we were Jewish, prompting him to almost crash the car as he reached blindly and furiously behind his seat to try to grab any part of me to throttle. He didn't succeed in wrecking that car, but he did wreck the next one-- a 1987 Buick Century. We're still not sure who ran the stop sign, but it was either my father or the other guy. Either way, someone slammed into the driver's side of the Century sending it careening into the curb and flipping it over three times. Being Israeli, my father doesn't believe in seatbelts, in spite of our repeated efforts to get him to wear them. (As a child, I would scream and cry until he would put it on, which was reasonably effective, but only when I was in the car.) Miraculously, he came out without a scratch. The Century, however, came out with several scratches and a crushed roof.

We had a couple Centuries and a couple Oldsmobile Cutlass Cieras, which were the same exact things as the Centuries. Except for the Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera International Edition. This car was jet black with gray leather seats and a kickass V-6 that my father would punish mercilessly on his 81 mile to-and-from work every single day commute. When he was finished kicking the shit out that car, he gave it to my sister. Not being allowed to bring her car to college freshman year, she left it at our house. One morning, my father went outside to get the newspaper and, instead of the Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera International Edition, there was a small pile of broken glass. My father looked the pile of glass, took the newspaper, turned around and went inside. He finished his coffee, read the newspaper, and then called the police. Four months later, my father got a phone call. Officers in the 18th District had found the car.

"Is it okay?" my father asked.

"Um... Well, we need you to come identify it," they said, as if they had just found a decomposed corpse.

Turns out all that was left of the car was the chassis, some wires and the little "International Edition" emblem.

That car was the beginning of my father's affiliation with luxury and performance. Never again would he drive a car with cloth interior. The Volvo 740. The Taurus SHO. The Pontiac Bonneville. The Volvo 850. The Volvo S70. The Saab 9(3). And now, the BMW328xi.

This steadily rising trend of luxo-rockets is in pretty stark contradiction to my father's inherent belief in what an automobile is, and what it should do for its owner.

"A car is to get you from poin' A, to poin' B," he loves to say. Apparently, though, it must be capable of getting you from "poin' A to poin' B" with a leather-wrapped steering wheel and from 0-60 in 5.6 seconds. But then, that's my father. He's an enigma. Or "exioma," as he says.

As for my mother, well, she gets whatever he and my oldest sister bring home for her. It's a luxury car, too, which says more about the equality of their marriage than it does about her need for speed, or luxury. Christ, she works 0.02 miles away from her house and doesn't go anywhere else. She could drive a golf cart or a Smurf-trike for all that it would matter. But, whenever it's time to get a new car for the triumverate that is my oldest sister, my father and my mother, she goes straight to the Consumer Reports Battlestation and researches the shit out of every single car out on the market, all the safety statistics. A car that is suitable for them must have at least thirty-seven airbags and a safety-cage made of reinforced titanium and kryptonite alloys. It is her self-appointed duty to pick the safest car for her mommy, her daddy, and, of course, herself. And, of course, it can't just be the safest car-- it must be the safest luxury/performance car.

After all, my family's days of careening through the desert or dickering around the police impound lot are long, long gone.