What Defines an American Car?
CNN’s “QuickVote” polls, which they offer on their website for the public to take, are often of questionable value, or at least questionable objectivity. In light of the “Will Renault/Nissan buy a minority stake in GM?” story flying around in the press today, CNN made tonight’s QuickVote poll: “What defines an American car?” The two choices are “Its style” and “Where it’s made.”
I picked choice number one, since that’s always, absolutely been what it’s about for me. Surprisingly, I noted that a vast majority of the poll participants voted “Where it’s made” instead. I guess this means we’ve all been conditioned to believe that a Toyota built in Tennessee is an American car? Same as a Camaro built in Canada is a Canadian car, and a Buick built in Mexico a Mexican car. (I wonder if these same folks would agree that a BMW built in South Carolina — and yes, they are built there — is not a German car but an American one? I bet BMW wouldn’t!)
To me, where a car is made is only a secondary part of the equation. What’s more important to me is who engineered it, who greenlighted it and where are the profits from its sale going? But above all of that, the number one most crucial issue, to me, is design. Style. The creative process that either results in an ugly pariah on wheels or a beautiful dream machine. And engineering aside, the style bestowed upon cars from the American Big Three has never required any special effort to win me over. It’s just my thing. The only other nation that’s captured this design spirit is Australia, and I’m not just saying that because I own a Holden Monaro — I found that out in 1998 when I visited Sydney, picked up some classic Aussie hot rod mags and realized, with a shock, that they were just like classic American hot rod mags.
Would you call the muscle car a style? In a sense, it is. And why do you think that the resurgence of the American muscle car — seen recently with the return of the GTO, the Shelby Mustang, the Camaro concept, the Charger, Challenger and all things Hemi — is garnering so much attention for the U.S. automakers? Because it’s something the Japanese car companies just can’t do, not because they’re incapable, but because no one would take them seriously if they did. It’s not their style, and it’s not part of their heritage — it’s part of ours.
And that, in my opinion, is what defines an American car — no matter where it’s built, it’s that inexorable spirit which must be present, that spirit of brash defiance, of freedom, of driving for driving’s sake. That spirit, which carries with it generations of gearheads, evening cruises and old, faded timeslips. Without those traits, it’s just another boring, too-perfect econobox, or a marvel of precision engineering with absolutely no soul. It’s not American, and it’s not something I care to drive. And for that I will make no apologies. Ever.
Weekend Vacation
Apple and I just returned from our weekend vacation, which we spent at Disney’s Vero Beach Resort in Vero Beach, FL. Actually, we’re still there as I write this — it’s Saturday night, our final evening here, and I felt like writing an update to post when I get home. It’s mostly been a pretty smooth trip, and we’ve done all the stuff we wanted to — gone shopping; seen a movie; walked on the beach; ate dinner at our favorite Thai restaurant here on the east coast.
We left home on Friday and stopped at the Sawgrass Mills Mall in Sunrise, FL. This is supposedly the biggest outlet mall in the state (and given the sprawling size of the place, I’m not going to argue), absolutely chock full of stores. In some cases, there are actually more than one of certain stores — FYE, for example. There’s a small FYE at one end of the mall, and at the other end, another, much bigger FYE. I don’t know why, exactly. Maybe because they figure the mall is so huge, some people aren’t going to make it from one end to the other. They might collapse somewhere in between like a dehydrated traveler lost in some desert.
Unfortunately, Apple wasn’t able to find anything she liked at the mall’s various stores. The fact that these were mainly all outlet stores probably contributed to the selection. I picked up the fourth season boxed set of Knight Rider DVDs as well as a book to read. I also spent a fair amount of time dodging really pushy folks who would chase after you with surveys or some such thing, trying to relieve you of your money, time or both.
We had dinner at the Grand Lux Café. The last time we were there, this restaurant had been a Cheesecake Factory. I’m not actually fond of the Cheesecake Factory…they built a new one in our hometown a year or so ago, and we’ve been there three or four times, but not once have we really enjoyed it. I doubt we’ll go back. The Grand Lux Café is owned by the same company, and its food, in my opinion, couldn’t be more dissimilar to the Cheesecake Factory. And I mean that in a good way. The meal was excellent. After dinner I ordered a piece of key lime pie for the road, and the thing was so huge I’m only just finishing it off tonight.
Roxio DVD Burning Software = Crap
I’m posting this as a reminder to myself in case I ever come across this problem again. And who knows, it might help some of you out there, too.
This evening I attempted to burn a backup image of my new notebook computer, so I could easily restore it to a “clean” state with essential software already installed. Unfortunately, the darn thing kept refusing to burn my DVDs. Error messages chided me that “This recorder does not support this type of disc! Type of media required: DVD-R.” I was using a DVD+R disc, which is usually more universally compatible than a -R. In fact, I didn’t even have any -R discs. I was almost resigned to calling Dell support and going through that hell, but decided to exhaust all of my own troubleshooting possibilities first.
The Nero InfoTool’s analysis confirmed that the drive was indeed capable of recording on +R formats. So what the bollocks was going on? Well, to make a long story short, the Dell-installed Roxio CD/DVD burning software was to blame. Particularly, I think the DLA program — Roxio’s packet writing software which lets you treat your blank DVD as a drive letter you can simply drag files onto — somehow corrupts the drive’s ability to burn on +R media. What a bunch of garbage!
I uninstalled all of the Roxio crap (of which there were an astounding six entries in my Add/Remove Programs list), and now all is well. Stupid sods.
Blown Away…or Just Out of Proportion?
Well, the first tropical depression of the season has formed just southwest of Florida, and of course the media has siezed upon this event as A) the first sign of the apocalypse, B) an excuse to once again bring up the global warming debate, C) the perfect reason to show us pictures of New Orleans being laid waste for the umpteenth time. And we Florida residents just roll our eyes at the gibbering of the uninformed masses at CNN and MSNBC who think they’re all regular Max Mayfields.
In reality, this TD is expected to become nothing more serious than a tropical storm, bringing moderate winds and heavy rains to an area of the country that is badly in need of the latter (if not the former). You’d never know that from listening to the weather wonks on your typical national news channel, though, whose every sentence roils with thick peals of “I told you so” and “Look, it’s happening again” as they try, in vain, to report the facts without spreading on thick gobs of their own uninformed taint. Seriously, have you ever seen Wolf Blitzer interview a National Hurricane Center spokesman? I think kindergarteners could come up with more informed questions just from reading the NHC’s website.
Frankly, the typical hooting and hollering of the know-nothing talking heads is the last thing I need in my life right now. With my typical day looking something like “work, eat, work, sleep, work” for the last several months and for the forseeable future, plus the usual chores and chasing people around on the phone to try to get things done, the absolute, proof-positive, totally last thing I want to hear is the media telling us all to run for the hills because there’s a storm cloud in the sky. I absolutely cannot take any more of the mainstream’s media’s rush to instill fear and loathing in all of us because they say that’s how we should feel.
Anyway, I shouldn’t even be here wasting the ten minutes it’s taken me to write this. I have two projects for two different clients to work on during my limited hours today. One of whom wants weekly updates from me, so I better have something done to tell the guy about come Monday, because I didn’t last weekend since my day job boss gave me an emergency project that filled up my Saturday. The other client is running short on his budget (thanks to his inability to give me complete instructions up front, I spent additional hours and am therefore charging him more than his original expectations, whatever those were because he didn’t communicate them, either) and wants me to implement revision #4 in as little time as possible, with a prototype available for review by Monday.
Have a great weekend, folks.
