Blogsumer Confidence

Citizen's Bank wants you to know that there's still loans and credit available for your small business.

Toyota wants you to know that their engineers are hard at work, toiling around the clock to figure out ways to prevent your Camry from becoming the Herbie Antichrist.

When consumer confidence gets shaken, companies with a lot to lose often spend some serious advertising dollars on feel-good, security-blanket-covered ads that are supposed to let us know that, yeah, they know they've fucked up-- but they're working on it. With these commercials in mind, I thought I'd send a little message out there to my readers because, really, we're not immune from feeling insecure or fearful of the future. Right?

Dear "My Masonic Apron" Readers:

These are troubling times.

The blogosphere is awash in a sea of witticisms, snarkitude, YouTube clips, "Lost" commentary, and banal stories about how so-and-so blogger encountered thus-and-such homeless guy and had an inspirational experience, only to realize later that her wallet and iPhone were missing and she was now peeing seafoam green, with a red shank around her anus.

We cannot spend ten minutes in the blogosphere without reading the word "random" or the paraword "WTF," and we hunger for a blog post from a 20something blogger that does not include a quoted drunk text, a reference to Lady Gaga, or a bright pink background. Indeed, surfing the blogosphere is a dangerous and often thankless endeavor, and that is why I created "My Masonic Apron," as a place where we can all go for ribald rants and unfettered unction, and inquisitive individualism, unmarred by pictures of clowns or intoxicated chicks showing their left nipple or song clips from "The Black Eyed Peas."

But, lately, this blog has been failing you.

The posts have gotten shorter and perhaps more obtuse. My attention often wanders while I blog, and, while I would never disgrace you by blogging completely in the nude, I have found myself so absent-minded of late that, at times, I have observed that my fly is down mid-blog. And, while you couldn't possibly have known that, I feel that you are so observant, so tuned-in that you can't help but notice that something's up, even if you can't put your finger on it. You may not know exactly what the problem is, but you've got a hunch, and sometimes that's all Columbo, T. J. Hooker, and Mr. Tibbs had to go on.

Let's level with each other. You know one thing and one thing only: your blogsumer confidence has been shaken. And I know that you know, and now you know that I know. So, now: we know.

I want you to have my assurance, as the Chief Executive-Officer, Founder, Creator, and Almighty Exalted Uberominlordio Christifferous Leader of "My Masonic Apron," that underpaid East Indian technicians with unpronouncable names, outdated eyeglasses, and patchy facial hair are hard at work on this problem. They are working around the clock in their chambray shirts with visible wife-beaters and ambiguous gold chains embedded in countless layers of thick, black chest hair and will not stop working until this problem is solved. Our commitment to excellence has faltered, and, at times, cracked-- but we at "My Masonic Apron" have never promised perfection, and is not the Liberty Bell more beautiful for its cracks?

We think so.

Because, in these uncertain times, you deserve a better "My Masonic Apron."

A "My Masonic Apron" that consistently delivers-- on time, undamaged by sun, heat, or rain-- a "My Masonic Apron" that works for you, that's there when you want it, when you need it.

A "My Masonic Apron" that you can can be proud to tell your friends about, to speak about with your head held high in the confessional, to gleefully hyperlink to in your own blog, to admit that you read on your Blackberry under the tablecloth at banal family dinners and insuferable faculty meetings.

A "My Masonic Apron" you can follow with apron-waving pride.

You haven't gotten that "My Masonic Apron" lately, and we at team apron know that, and we're hard at work on a solution.

Trust us.

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.