fine whine

You know, the Honda Ridgeline is really, really ugly. It looks like somebody grafted the midsection of an old Chevy Caprice onto the front end of a mid 80s Ford pickup with the rear end of a Subaru Brat scaled up to match them. Then throw in a bit of the Tonka-esque influence of the Avalanche, and you've got one of the ugliest trucks on the road.

Well, to me, at least. Fortunately I haven't seen a single one yet outside of television commercials and billboards. Perhaps I'm not the only one thinking they're an eyesore.

As the months go by and the leaves start to turn here in Ohio, my mind turns to thoughts of ... expiring license plate tags. As 2004 winds down fewer and fewer cars here in Columbus have stickers expiring this year, and lately I've taken to spotting them. I've even seen a couple with expired tags, and last I heard that was primary offense around here, tsk tsk.

So to explain the system to those who don't live in Ohio: License plate tags are little stickers that every car registered in Ohio must have renewed every year. These stickers expire on the birthday of the registration holder, so mine, for example, needed to be renewed before 9/23 of this year. So does my license, for that matter, but I can't do that online and must subject myself to BMV purgatory soon. But the stickers come in different colors for each year, and I only need to pay attention to the white ones this year. A lot of 9s, 10s, 11s and surprisingly few 12s are still rolling around.

Anyway, I was thinking about this, and realized that the driver's birth month is basically out in the open. As such, it wouldn't be too difficult to extrapolate potential horoscopic signs, and from there figure out what sort of drivers are sharing our roads. You know, if Tauruses or Cancers are road hogs or Scorpios are bad at switching lanes.

I think this could perhaps be useful knowledge.

Just when I thought I was so cool for posting a couple days in advance, something timely happens. Thursday night, sometime after seven o'clock Jessica and I were walking down Northtowne toward Tamarack Circle when we heard a loud crashing noise. I looked forward and saw a black (or really dark blue) Toyota Camry smashing into the first car in a line of four or five, stopping briefly and then continuing on slowly down Northtowne. I made sure to look at the plates as the battered V6 (it was the model after the squarish one but before the most recent tank-styled one) lumbered past. The plates were   DR70BK, but it took me too long to make sure what they were so I didn't get a great look at the people in the car. Jessica says there were three white guys in it but I couldn't tell if there were three or five. I got a minor glance at the front passenger, a white guy with short light colored hair, and a goofy fratboy look on his face. He could be anywhere between twenty two and thirty two, but I have to admit I'm not a good witness.

I recognize my limitations. I realize that I didn't see the Camry actually hit the first car, the older woman's light blue 2001-2002 Ford Focus station wagon. That impact, with her driver-side tail light, I only heard and did not see. The second one, head on with the younger woman's black Honda Civic, I saw. None of this happened at too high of speed (nor do I recall hearing any skidding, despite the dampened street) but by the time the Toyota left there was at least two car lengths between the Focus sitting partway into the Circle and the Honda with the now-bashed-in bumper and grille "H" logo resting on the windshield. Not that that part mattered, as since nobody was hurt the crime scene was not scrutinized, well, at all.

The Camry drove away. Jessica and I stuck around since most of the other cars left, though two of them returned (a guy in another, older Camry and a woman in a white Eclipse convertible) having looked for the perpetrators, but alas, no dice. The squad car eventually arrived (#181, a newer Interceptor) and the policeman (sorry, didn't get his badge number) told us we could get going. I only hope that the guilty are caught, but can't imagine how they wouldn't be, as at least five witnesses got the plates. Then again, there's always the chance that the kids were joyriding (the Camry's the most stolen car, after all) but for that matter I didn't recall see them riding around with surgical gloves.

So, if there's a lesson to be learned there, you're going to need to figure it out yourself. I'll still probably post into the future, but I might start lying about the days when something supposedly happens.

So as I was driving back from my parents' place in Cuyahoga Falls, and keeping an eye on the young woman driving the Volvo in front of me at eighty miles per hour with her left foot out the window, and listening to some Dave Barry on tape and glancing sidelong to the teeming fog beside the road and the occasional firework above, whereupon my mind began to drift, to the movie we watched last night.

It was Welcome to Collinwood, starring a whole bunch of recognizable people including William H. Macy, Luis Guzman, Sam Rockwell and George Clooney in a cameo role. It took me much longer than it should've to register that this was a somewhat remake (i.e. they took the plot but not the title) of I soliti ignoti, or as the Criterion DVD calls it Big deal on Madonna street. I should've recognized it from the beginning's car theft but it took me a while to realize that this was an updating of the classic Italian heist farce. It's pretty good on its own merits, and shows the brothers Russo to be potential decent filmmakers.

It's not by far a perfect movie, and goes a little overboard here and there, but it was definitely enjoyable.

Whereas the car ride home today was pretty lame, save for the occasional firework or errant foot sticking out a window.

Oh yeah, happy birthday, freedom.

When I drive I have a tendency to stick my arm out the window and play with the rushing air. It's such a schoolkid thing to do, but it still amuses me.

I've decided that I like drivers who do this. I realize it means that said driver has only one hand at most on the wheel, but it seems to me that such a person would be less likely to be on the phone at the same time.

Of course in this day and age of the hands-free technology I can't make that assumption so easily, but it's the thought that counts.

So tomorrow's supposed to be some sort of gas boycott. I guess I'll participate, but I generally don't fill up on Wednesdays anyway. As such I can't imagine I'll have much effect on anything by doing so, nor any of the other millions of people would wouldn't be filling up tomorrow anyway. To me this smacks of a meaningless stunt, the sort of thing that people like to forward and feel good about doing so; even those without cars like to join in on the fun.

For that matter, I won't use any natural gas tomorrow, nor hydrogen, solar power or used restaurant cooking oil in a specially converted diesel engine.

And it won't make a difference at all.

Want to make a difference? Go without buying gasoline for a whole week. Hell, go without driving so much. Walk for those one or two mile trips. And stop forwarding this kind of stuff to me, dammit.