Cars - Things that make the USA great

There is no other place on the planet that idolizes the automobile the way we do in the U.S. Yes, most of the world has cars, and yes, some of the best cars in the world are made by foreign nations, but at the end of the day, cars are a fundamental part of American culture. Cars are status symbols, primary and essential modes of transportation, sex symbols, entertainment, subjects for art and trash, they're idols, they're sources of frustration, they're money pits, and they're a part of everything that makes us who we are.

Trouble in the U.S. auto industry sounds to many Americans like the end of the fucking world. And for a good number of hardworking good people, trouble in the industry IS the end of the world.

We've pretty much unequivocally decided as a planet that things like car emissions are ultimately going to doom the world, but for every owner of a hybrid there are about 100,000 people who don't give a shit. To make matters even worse, hybrids aren't even much of anything! A 10mpg or so average increase over a decently tuned full-on gas-burner is like pissing on the Triangle Factory Fire. You tried, but in the end not only did your dick burn off, but you're dead and so are thousands of child laborers. Plus, you look like an asshole in your Prius anyway.

OK, that was a little harsh, but still.

But god damn, do we love the shit out of our cars. There's a whole industry devoted to car porn, and I'll be the first to admit I love to get my greedy mitts on a nice, glossy auto mag. Sometimes, there's even tits to go along with the cars, and that makes things like ultra-American!

Seriously, though, there are few things we like more than a good car. Take a look at Hollywood: any high-grossing film that isn't Titanic oAddr featuring Hugh Grant or something stars an automobile or several. The cars might be a sexy mode of transit, they might be a source of conflict or turmoil, sometimes they're blowing up spectacularly, sometimes Michael Bay is turning them into giant robots and THEN blowing them up spectacularly.... Yeah, more on Michael Bay another time.

Love it or hate it, gasoline flows through our blood. The quickest way to get Americans to adopt electric cars? Make them GIANT AS HELL and/or FAST AS SHIT. But guess what - turns out huge or fast vehicles just aren't efficient, and it takes a really huge amount of easily harnessed fuel to make these things run. It's not gas's fault it's killing everything around us, it's our fault that we're too lazy to figure out how to make other stuff just as ready to give off energy. Because that's hard, and if there's one thing our culture hates, it's dropping something easy to tackle something more challenging - unless it takes money away from us or makes our lives more miserable.

Cars are filthy, dangerous things. The licensing process in any given state is a joke  - even though lots of people fail their first test or two, it takes a whole lot to ultimately not get to be allowed to drive. Thing is, cars are massive, two-ton killing machines. You don't even need to be driving one at 70mph highway speeds - or even in the car at all, for that matter - to do some damage. Crack someone at 15mph at a stoplight or forget your e-brake while in neutral and watch the carnage unfold. But we're happy to let people we wouldn't trust alone for 30 seconds in our houses or would be aghast at finding out they own a weapon drive around in all sorts of scary jalopies. You know that guy who drives the truck with the black cloud billowing out from underneath? Or maybe he's blasting downtown in a hot Porsche on his cell phone? Either way, I have a feeling he's probably not giving too much of a shit about what he might run into, MOST especially if it's you.

So add me to the ranks of people complaining about how we're killing the planet and each other with cars, but also add me to the much shorter list of people who are aware of it. I love cars. I love big ones, fast ones, ones blowing up, ones I'm driving, and ones I'm ogling in car porno mags and auto shows. I'll happily drive one of those big and/or fast electric cars that really make a difference in expelled pollutants, but I'm certainly not going to drive something that's a terrible ride and really doesn't do that much good other than to the wallets of happy Japanese automakers (sure, call me out on name-dropping the Japanese, but for fuck's sake Ford's hybrid SUV does NOT count, and try to name me another automaker who's got well-selling hybrids in their stable).

We literally live and die by cars, and as much as I'd love a train to Philly and NYC and wherever else, and as badly as this whole nation needs better public transit, I think I'd die before I'd give up driving. It' s a refuge from the real world for me, somewhere I can be truly alone and contemplative, somewhere I can really listen to music, somewhere I can be goofy or angry or serious or sad. Driving is part of what makes us American - and as much as I love cities and Europe and all these other places with great public transit - the American tradition of gas-fired, manual transmission, REAL fucking CARS packed onto long stretches of highways and spewing pollution into the air while waiting at the drive-thru (without the o, g, or h) is just something that defines us. You'll have to pry that steering wheel from my cold, dead, fingers.

Intro - Things that make the USA great

Well well well, looks like we're a scant five days away from the birth of a nation. Just shy of 233 years ago, a few politics nerds were blowing the ink-setting powder off the 'well, it's good enough now' draft of the Declaration of Independence from Britain document. Less than three centuries is nothing in civilization's terms, but in modern history it's an enormous chunk of time.

Yes, 233 years is a gnat's fart on the timeline of the history of man, but when you consider full-fledged members of the European Union such as Poland the Czech Republic have only been part of the 'new' Europe for five years, 233 seems like a hell of a long time. Also consider that Poland has only been an independent democracy since 1989 and the Czech Republic since 1993 (OK, you want to get serious on me and argue that the combined 'czech-and-slovak-republics' - aka Czech Republic and Slovakia - existed at the same time as Poland's 1989 split from the USSR, all well and good - but I'll Velvet Revolution your ass and reference those nations' true birth at the 1993 summit.)

Eastern European political histories aside, I really do believe the nation we call the United States of America is one of the best places on the planet to be an intelligent human being. Tonight is the eve of July, and starting the first of July through at least American Independence Day, I will be writing blog posts about the things I believe make this a great nation. Please note as a caution to your sensibilities that I will be brutally honest in the things that I believe make this a *great nation*. Whether or not I agree with the ultimate outcome of these 'things that make the USA great', I will do my best to list my opinions only in conjunction to facts. I can only comment on things that we know to be the generally accepted reality of our world, and I can guarantee that only a few of us will agree.

So it's with this that I introduce my first independent series: Things that make the USA great.

nin

OK, so first of all, in the wake of my mom joining Facebook, she's gotten really into it. And as a result, I told her I should set her up with a blog - so now I've got a couple of pending blog posts in my inbox, and that means soon I have to make good. Nothing like incurring another project!

It's all good, but: I told my mom she should blog, which is like the most hypocritical possible statement possible considering the state of my own blog. Gah. Well, I've been Twittering appropriately, which is fine, and soon I should use their API to wire all that up here so it doesn't look like I immediately abandon every personal project I undertake.

So, the point of the post. I was re-arranging my living room to facilitate the opening of the side door for seasonal purposes, came across the NIN Beside You In Time HD-DVD (hey, anyone remember that format that existed for a year or two?), and I got to thinking about Trent and the whole NIN thing.

Yeah, holy shit. Rewind the clock to 1999 - 10 years ago. I was 17, I was a huge NIN fan, The Fragile came out, I saw the most incredible show of my life(floor tix at MSG, then-unreleased A Perfect Circle opening, Manson guest appearance during Starfuckers, Beautiful People cover... gah, amazing).

Now it's 10 years later,and following the epic six-year NIN hiatus and Trent clean-ifying himself, we've gotten the following:

• Amazing tours. Simply amazing tours. I've seen NIN perform at least seven? times since the return in '05.
• With Teeth
• Year Zero
• Ghosts
• The Slip
• Redefining the music industry and fan interaction:
  • remix.nin.com
  • free music
  • pay-what-you-want
  • free music
  • free video
  • open camera policy
  • iphone app
  • TRENT SINGLEHANDEDLY RESURRECTING JANE'S ADDICTION
• all sorts of other stuff I can't even remember because it breaks my awesome-meter

I mean there are so many defining moments of my life in even that short period - I can literally draw a line in my experience between pre-hiatus NIN and post-hiatus NIN, and it's been a hell of a ride - a good ride.

I guess I'm getting all sentimental because Trent's announced in advance the same sort of hiatus. Maybe even a longer, or - gasp - permanent one. This is the last tour. Jane's Addiction is on it - incredibly. Street Sweeper Social Club, a very RATM-sounding collaboration featuring Tom Morrello is on it. How in the hell can I miss this?

Fingers crossed, I won't. I can't. Can barely afford it - sacrificing a DMB show for it, hopefully work will be forgiving enough to grant the gift of time... I mean, what if it's the last NIN show I ever see?

As amazing as the House of Blues club show was last fall, I still regret not seeing the supposed amazingness of the Lights in the Sky tour - the club show was true fan show, but it didn't have the grandeur and I hate that I missed that. There's something to be said about feeling like your favorite band is playing in your living room - but god that stage show was supposed to be amazing. I haven't even seen anything from the hundreds of gigabytes of video because it's such a sore spot.

So imagine what life would be like if I missed seeing Trent's last tour for god knows how long. I'd never forgive myself. Lord, let's pray I can get to that Holmdel show.

Twitter

As promised, I now Twitter.

Yes, I'm a crappy blogger

I know, I don't need to hear it. But if I'm a shitty blogger, there's something I know I'll be even shittier at: Twitter.

I never got the whole Twitter thing, nor did I have a desire to get involved with it whatsoever. However, today while at the bar, Eric and I were professing our distaste for the concept and drew the ire of a few of our friends. Apparently people don't like it when you make fun of something that they do and you have no interest in. So Eric and I made a pact to at the bare minimum sign up and use Twitter for two weeks before being allowed to make fun of it.

Fair enough, so soon we will both be joining the Twitterati (is that even one of those gay-sounding terms they have for Twitter people? I don't even know - it's one of our fundimental problems with the service: how stupid all the terms sound) shortly. I will re-post with links when that happens. Til then, that's about it.

Starting up the garden

So if you look at the photos I posted last year of the process of building and planting a vegetable garden (www.franksandbeanz.com), two things should be clear:
1. It was a learning experience and a work-in-progress all spring and summer
2. It worked pretty damn well. I had more produce than I could handle

I'm doing it again this year, except obviously I won't have to build the garden since it already exists. I learned a lot thhrough the process, in terms of straight-up gardening and also some logistics. For instance, I'll be planning out the lattice for the tomatoes before I even plant them, rather than spend most of the summer fighting with them and rigging something after the fact. I'm also stepping up the actual seedling-starting phase with a better kit and better seed-starting technique.

I'll try to be more diligent in updating about it than I was last year; at least now I have a site that will work better to showcase my various photos and lengthy explanations. Stay tuned.

Iron Maiden

OK, here's a post dedicated to a most horrible oversight. In my wrapup of the 25 things that make me awesome, I listed some of my top concerts of all time. For some reason, and I have no excuse whatsoever, I omitted Iron Maiden. It didn't become fully clear to me that this had happened until Bruce Dickinson visited me in a dream and said "OI! WHAT THE FUCK, MATE, DON'T MAKE ME RIP YOUR BLOODY BOLLOCKS OFF!"

Well, that was enough to scare some sense into me, and forced me to watch Live After Death and write this post. Here's the deal with me and Iron Maiden... At some point during the end of my high school career, I was driving my own ass around and had installed the badass sound system that is still in the Jeep Cherokee that my Mom still has as a secondary vehicle. I may one day regain that Jeep, and if that happened I would be happy. Anyway, shortly after installing said badass sound system, I was in a period of musical expansion. On a whim during a trip to Costco, I purchased a copy of The Number Of The Beast. Iron Maiden had just begun re-issuing their catalog and since I'd heard the name of the band and the album cover looked cool, I bought it.

Without really knowing much about the band at the time, I listened to Number of the Beast and loved the shit out of it. I later learned just how important Iron Maiden is to ALL music... They're fucking gods, and I am proud to be a fan. I had the pleasure of seeing Iron Maiden in 2007 during the tour supporting the A Matter of Life and Death album. It was amazing. My man Big Dave and I rocked out.

Sadly, this past year, Iron Maiden embarked on the Somewhere Back in Time tour. The purpose was to tour and play music from the heydey and the tours of the Powerslave era... which would have been amazing. I missed the shows, and I kick myself ever since. Perhaps this painful situation is what caused me to be completely remiss and exclude Maiden from my list of concerts. I can only hope the band tours again under such a theme. For now, rumors have it they have a new album in the works and will tour to support it - awesome, but man, I would have loved to have seen a show focusing on 'classic' material.

Ah, well, that's the way the metal crumbles. For now, enjoy this video:

Final things

Alright, people, here it is... the post you've all been waiting for. The final seven in my master list of 25 things that make me awesome.  In case you're late to the party, here are a couple links:

25 things that make me awesome - #1-9
25 things that make me awesome - #10-18

Now that I assume you're all caught up and you know all the narrative involved with this project, I'll direct you to one more link if you haven't read it.. It will serve as a de-facto introduction to this site. Other than that, let's get on with it:

19. A bunch of my extended family migrated from Bergen County, NJ to St. Simon's Island - part of the Golden Isles on the Southern coast of Georgia. It's really nice down there. Incidentally, two summers in a row (2002 and 2003) I lived on SSI interning for Sea Island in the IT department. It was great times, and I love the area - it's just weird to work at a resort during the summer. Everyone is there vacationing, and you're there working, wishing you could be on vacation. Now, it'd be great to live the life down there and have an unrelated job, which makes me secretly envious of the family.


20. For a very, very long time I was admittedly OBSESSED with Star Wars. I can't even tell you how many times I've seen the 'original' films. As a matter of fact, (and somehow I'm not quite as embarassed as I should be to admit this...) I have a large number of mint-in-package action figures from the 'new' era of interest in the films from the late '90s. They are displayed on the walls of my old room at my mom's house. ...on second thought, maybe that should be more embarassing than I thought.


21. Speaking of which, my Mom and I are very close. She left my father when I was too young to know anything was going on - and I'd say it was a good decision. Anyway, I don't really talk about it much because there really isn't anything to talk about. I was raised well and I'm awesome enough to have to struggle to fill 25 bullet points. I'd say everything worked out great.


22. I have a pet parrot - a Maroon Bellied Conure. His "real" name is Houdini - named for his true mastery of the art of escape. When I got him as a young bird, I was told to beware the penchant for finding his way out of cages, but I learned the hard way a few times how true the given name is. Though he's officially "Houdini" and I will refer to him as such, most often I just call him "The Bird Man." It makes sense, and his attitude reflects it. Conures aren't known for their talking abilities, but he's able to say some garbled phrases such as "ooo-dee-ni" and "da-burd-man." Shockingly, he doesn't say anything like "asshole" or "shit."


23. I'm a music fiend. I hate listing bands or genres, because I love a billion bands from a billion genres and hate just as many bands and just as many genres. One of the best things in life is seeing a concert from a favorite band/musician, so here's a list of shows I've seen in no particular order:
    -NIN (at least 7 times without thinking too hard)
    -Dave Matthews Band (6+ times easy)
    -Tool (5+ times?)
    -Radiohead (first show in North America just before In Rainbows was released)
    -Aerosmith (my first show ever!)
    -Weird Al (sweet.)
    -Dream Theater (saw them in London)
    -Puddle of Mudd (laugh all you want, but free tickets at a sweet club in Jacksonville, FL is way awesome)
    -Lynyrd Skynyrd and ZZ Top dual bill (first concert I ever drove to!)
    -Smashing Pumpkins (reunion tour at Tower Theater in Philly... never thought I'd see them, so a major high point)
    -Other amazing shows: Steve Miller, George Thorogood, Rush, Styx, Night Ranger, Kanye West, A Perfect Circle (opening for NIN), Mindless Self-Indulgence (several shows), Cake, OK Go, Trans-Siberian Orchestra, The Killers, Iggy Pop, Ghostland Observatory, Man Man, Mutemath, Sonic Youth, The Flaming Lips, Ween.... Good lord, I'm going to kick myself when I remember everyone I'm forgetting. Like I said, nothing like live music from a good band.


24. I've got lots of scars - the biggest is a 15-inch scar on my back from the removal of a ginormous weird birthmark when I was like 11. The docs didn't like it, and thus it was gone. Genetics dictate that my body makes serious looking scars, so it kind of looks like I got stabbed. Other scars include one on my middle finger from a botched hard drive installation (nerdiest wound ever), one on my forefinger from being dumb in high school, another on my palm from slipping and falling on a knife while camping, one on my elbow from ditching on a mountain bike, and among many others, my most visible: a five-incher below my left elbow from a freak fourth-of-July accident that occured during one of those previously mentioned summers in Georgia.


25. Most likely one of the coolest things about me would be my SCUBA training. My diving experiences are some of the best times in my life. I wish I had the time and money to get more certifications (like night diving, wreck diving, drysuit diving, deep diving, etc). I spent a week in the British Virgin Islands on a catamaran my family chartered, and my uncle and I would just pick a spot, anchor the dhingy and dive. It was amazing.

Time for some sleeping, but maybe if I get a chance during the weekend I'll add some links and/or photos to make this slightly less boring than it already is.

Windowlicker

I'm thinking about finally finishing that whole "25 things that make me awesome" thing, but first I'm going to watch Hell's Kitchen. In the meantime, if you don't have 10 minutes for Aphex Twin's Windowlicker, then you don't have 10 minutes worth living.

New site

Well, as prompted by my ongoing "25 things that make me awesome" series of columns in ec/dc, I decided to finally re-launch hottes.com. Check here soon for the final set.

Now that I spent the better part of my Saturday doing the hardcore coding and debugging and CSS-ing and ASP-ing, I'm going to see if I can get a little content up. Still a few annoying bugs hanging around out there, hopefully I'll get them squashed soon. I've decided to 100% ignore IE6, so I also need to write some code to give folks a friendly reminder to upgrade their browsers. Finally, I have to still make some adjustments and a template for the "full" blog. Gah, I still hate that word.

Time to throw on one of my favorite 'concert' films of all time: Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii. I've got about an hour before it's time to head out and see Jason do some killing in the new Friday the 13th remake.

Oh, and happy Valentine's Day or something.