My Rust Bucket List

So, there's this blog I don't read called "The Polish Magician". My wife has a Wordpress blog, (it's called SLiPs of the Tongue and you should go there) and, last night she was doing some edits to her blog, and, on the Wordpress website, "The Polish Magician" was one of the featured blogs or something, and the title of the author's most recent post caught my eye:

"My Rust Bucket List"

"Click on that," I blurted out to my wife, who, in turn, gave me a look-of-death. But, she dutifully clicked on the link.

See, I got all excited because, underneath the clever title I saw a picture of a 1971 Plymouth Valiant and that sort of turned me on. Pickle-tickled, if you will.

However, I was soon flaccillated.

The post was just about cars he's owned since his first car, the 1971 Valiant. And, frankly, none of the cars are anywhere near as interesting as the Valiant, and I think the Polish Magician would be inclined to agree with me. He's owned a

1971 Plymouth Valiant
1972 Datsun 240Z
2002 Toyota 4-Runner (way to rapidly enter the 21st century, pal)
1992 BMW 316 (who the fuck came up with the numbering system for BMW? 316? What the fuck does that even mean?)
And a 2004 Mazda 6 wagon. In foamy mint green. It looks like a Tic-Tac with wheels.

Now, no offense, Mr. Polish Magician, but my list of cars that I've owned in my relatively young life kicks your list in the crazy-go-nads.

1966 Volkswagen Beetle
1990 Ford Crown Victoria, LTD - retired Delaware State Police car
1989 Volvo 240 DL
1994 Ford Taurus
1997 Ford Crown Victoria LX
2001 Chevrolet Impala
2001 Volkswagen New Beetle (done up as Herbie the Love Bug)
2005 Ford Focus SE
2001 Chrysler PT Cruiser, Limited Edition
2002 Volvo S-40, 1.9 Turbo

So, yeah, my list can beat up your list-- but we're not even going to go there. Even though we should.

(COOL CAR LIST THROW DOWN TIME!!!)

What I really wanted to say was that the reason I got all funny in the trousers about the Polish Magician's blog was because I thought it was going to be something that it was not. I thought, as the title, frankly, implied, that it was going to be a list of all of the fucking awesome-tots cars this guy wanted to drive before he died.

Drive... or own.

Can you imagine? Having a list of rust-bucket shitheaps that you want to have for your own, for a time-- maybe a month, then sell, scrap, auction, or donate to public radio before then moving on to the next cum-wagon? How amazing would that be? I mean, sure, you'd have to be reasonably comfortably well-off to pull off a stunt like that, and you'd have to be basically single, because what normal wife would put up with a 1976 Checker Marathon parked out front in October, only to have it replaced with a 1981 Dodge St. Regis in November.

I mean, my wife would cut off my balls and insert them, forcibly, into each of my eye-sockets. And that would appreciably interfere with my ability to pilot either a Checker Marathon or a Dodge St. Regis.

But what a wonderful idea for a blog. To drive an shitty, antique (or at least vintage) car for a month, form an attachment, get frustrated, go broke, patch it together, have a road-trip or two with a friend or a lover or a dog, and then get rid of it and move on to the next one. You could do it for a year, and write about it, and score one whore-fuck of a book deal-- no doubt. It sounds like it would be the perfect project for someone crazy about cars, and writing.

Someone who's, well, crazy. I don't have to say that I think there'd be little competition against me for the honor of Most Worthy of the Rust Bucket List.

I thought, though, that I would put the Rust Bucket List idea out there for a man more adventuresome, more worldly, more money-laden than myself. You don't have to pay me a finder's fee, or royalties-- just take my idea and run-- no, no-- drive with it. Just promise me you'll appreciate the butter-smooth click of the column shift lever as you put it into D. Just promise me you'll lovingly inhale the glorious odors emanating from the sun-dappled vinyl bench seat. Just promise me you'll diligently put in that lead additive when fueling up. Just promise me you'll include at least one antique Beetle in your Rust Bucket List.

And promise that you'll swing by, just once, to take me for a joyride.

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?

The Lap of Luxury

I've recently written a couple posts where I reference the fact that I look at internet porn. Obviously, if I were Mark McGwire, this would be something worth holding a press conference about.

Fortunately, I'm not Mark McGwire, and, in seven months, my testicles won't resemble a pair of Grape Nuts.

I don't want to give you the idea that I'm constantly seated at my computer with my trousers keeping my ankles warm as I troll mercilessly through the seedy underworld of the internet, replete with its endless supply of pearl necklaces, money shots and weird shit involving frozen marmalade, a yardstick, and feet pajamas that I won't go into here without an attorney present. I think I have a relatively healthy libido for a 29-year-old male, and I won't say much more than that without my wife present.

(Hi, Bobber!)

So, while it might seem like all I do with the assistance of a computer blog or something less socially appropriate, that's just not true.

I spend way, way too much time fantasizing on http://www.ebaymotors.com/.

Some of you have heard about this somewhat irregular and possibly disturbing aspect of my personality, and you stick with me anyway-- and maybe that says more about you than it does about me, but we won't go there. For your sake.

Most people who visit http://www.ebaymotors.com/ have, I suspect, at least some intention, however passing, to actually purchase a motor vehicle at some point in the forseeable future. I am not one of those people. While I oftentimes wish it weren't the case, I am here strictly for the carnography.

My tastes in motor vehicles runs from the adorable to the absurd. Most of you know that my undying passion begins and ends with the antique Volkswagen Beetle, somewhere in the 1963-1967 area.

But my tastes vary widely. Here's a brief, partial list of the vehicles I have considered purchasing at some point in the last calendar year (again, not that I'm actually considering it, but, you know, considering it):

2003-2005 Subaru Forester
1999-2002 Subaru Legacy Outback
2002-2006 Toyota Camry
2006-2009 Chevrolet Impala
1995-2009 Ford Crown Victoria
1998-2003 Honda CR-V
2008 Nissan Versa
2003-2006 Volkswagen New Beetle
2003-2009 Volkswagen Golf/Rabbit
2009 Toyota Yaris 5-Door
2005-2007 Honda Accord
1996-1999 Honda Odyssey
1988-1989 Dodge Diplomat/Plymouth Gran Fury
1994 Saab 900-S
2009 Scion XB

Remember-- that's a partial list. I'll think of others as this post goes along, but I'll spare you.

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about luxury cars because, in this affluent area in which I am fortunate to live, I am bombarded not only with commercials for BMW, Mercedes, Lexus, Audi, Acura and such, but I see their hood ornaments, their sculpted lines, their ceramic brakes and their supple moo-leather everywhere I turn-- in supermarket parking lots, on the streets, in driveways and in the "Car & Driver" that I read religiously-- and this time I actually am reading a glossy magazine for the quality of the articles, Mother.

Seriously-- if it's cheap thrills you want, Motor Trend is happy to take your money.

Car commercials love to present you with the oxymoronous dichotomy "affordable luxury." They present you with this finely-executed machine, expertly-tuned and methodically crafted, they work very hard to create this mystique and air of exclusivity surrounding the sleek, usually black four-door sedan whose slightly bulbous hood encases the mammoth, sophisticated engine that, thirty years ago, NASA scientists would have struggled to understand.... and then they tell you that you can afford it.

A few years ago, some fucking genius who has probably by now drunk himself to death inside a locked motel closet coined the phrase "Certified Pre-Owned Vehicle" and the used car was reborn. The notion of the Certified Pre-Owned Vehicle was created to further the notion that luxury is somehow affordable to shitheads like you and me, when we know perfectly well that it isn't. However, sifting listlessly through the vastness of http://www.ebaymotors.com/, I have found a more viable way to attain status, image, prestige, and ample amounts of cowhide fanny.

Behold, my bloggerboos; the 1973 Mercedes Benz 220.

Wouldn't you just shit yourself if this cutie-poot were in your driveway every morning?

Squee, right?

Now, I don't think Mercedes would certify this car, but the owner says that it's only got 14,296 miles on the odometer! Now, granted, it's only a 5-digit odometer and, at thirty-six years of age, this car is officially seven years older than yours truly, but why should that stop you? So, it's 140,000 miles. Or 240,000-- who cares? It's a Merc, right? It'll be around after your grandchildren are dead.

It's funny, though, as I looked at this car, pined for it, actually (Buy It Now - $2,995!) I thought long and hard about what the word "luxury" meant in 1973 and what it means today. Today, so-called "luxury" cars do everything for you but wipe your ass, and, as an apology for that unfortunate inability, most of them warm it for you, and a select few massage it.

This Mercedes has roll-up windows, for Christ's sake.

Cars today are 100% plastic-- sleek and smooth-- the dashboard of a modern luxury car looks no different from the fascia of a modern high-end oven or refrigerator. Here's a good example of what you'd see if you entered the cabin of a modern Mercedes:

I mean, really-- there's a Goddamn TV in there. Or maybe it's the internet. I don't know. And I don't want to know-- because the internet, and/or TV, has nothing at all to do with driving a fucking car.

Maybe I'm a dust-covered relic from another era, but I would probably cry if someone handed me the keys to that crackled, ancient Mercedes 220 and this is what I saw upon opening the door:


Because this doesn't look like a refrigerator. This looks like a car. A beautiful, graceful, sensitive, well-made, tailored, thought-out, serious car.

Can you say "car," Modern, Brushed-Aluminum-Hoarding, Avatar-Loving World?

CaaAAAaaAAaAAAAr.

Very good. I knew you could.

I feel like today's automotive consumer is getting the leatherette pulled over his eyes. There isn't anything on the road that is well-made and truly "luxurious" today, not anything that the average num-num who isn't Shaquille O'Neal or Ben Bernanke can afford, anyway. There is just this endless parade of the same old fucking desperately boring sheet-metal over plastic contrivances plopped over a never-ending sea of soft-touch plastic interior components and enough buttons to control Robocop's orgasmatronics. The gadgets are mindblowing and redundant and unnecessary in an object that's intended purpose is to transport human beings from one place to another in comfort and safety.

A 1973 Mercedes 220 didn't need a fucking TV inside it to prove to you that it was a luxury car. Hell, it didn't even need power windows. You knew it was a luxury car by the way the button on the door handle felt against your thumb as you gently depressed it, and it sank down as if you were pushing down on warm butter. You knew it was a luxury car by the way the door gave that satisfying, hearty, soulful *THUNK* when you shut it. You knew it was a luxury car from the way the immensely circumferenced and yet thinly elegant steering wheel felt against the curl of your fingers. You knew it was a luxury car from the way the controls slid and clicked into place with definitive, expert confidence.

You knew.

Now, you need to be told.