July 23, 2010
headline of the day
Giant sinkhole swallows Escalade in Wisconsin
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comments:
- Deron Bauman: It’s a start.
- Joel Bernstein: The first of many things, no doubt.
- Deron Bauman: I’ll pick him up at eight. He may not like the way I smell.
- Michael Smith: Joel’s Dream Date: Phantom Menace; Cat urine cologne; Deron.
- Joel Bernstein: For the record, if you pay to see this, you are no longer my friend.
- Deron Bauman: Meow.
- Joel Bernstein: This must be why I fuck so many cats.
- Michael Smith: Seems to me the experiment almost does itself.
- Casey Cichowicz: No. It is not possible. I can assure you.
- Joel Bernstein: Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes?
- LaurenH: I’m with those who say get that girl out of that household. The father has now very effectively...
- Rick Neece: Holee sh..!
- Rick Neece: Asian calligraphy, ‘cept instead of a brush, hot glass. The image of her controlling the glass and...
- Rick Neece: For the gull-wing, I’m sure it would knock me in the chin every time I opened it.
- Marco: Oh god yes.
The Earth fights back.
While we’re on the subject of Big Honkin’ Guzzlers, I passed by a GMC Yukon Hybrid the other day on the 401.
I shook my head at the sheer incongruity of it all. I had never heard of such a thing until then. And look! You get 21 mpg city, 22 on the highway. Why, gosh, I only have my plain old fossil fuel small foreign compact. Uh, wait. It gets 26 and 35, and has a sticker price of less than a third of the Yukon Hybrid.
Car manufacturers are fucking insane. But not as insane as the asshat on the 401 actually driving a Yukon Hybrid.
walt, in defense of the asshat on the 401 I will say this. I have always been against the purchase of even the Smallest SUV but when we were shopping for cars earlier this month we settled on a Honda CRV (and yes it gets 28 mpg on the highway and something like 23 or 24 city – which, I keep telling myself, isn’t that bad, really) because all the small cars that would fit two carseats, one rear facing, were not that small and out of our price range. So it could be that the asshat needed a bigger car (I stretch my imagination and find no reason a person really NEEDS a Yukon, but that’s a different point) and wanted to mitigate at least some of the negative impact he was having.
That said, the most likely reason he was driving a Yukon Hybrid is that he’s an asshat.
Believe me, I’ve been there in exactly the same situation. I drove a Saturn Vue when the kids were smaller because at the time I couldn’t afford any station wagon (I like station wagons) on the market that was a suitable size either.
I have no problem with Escapes, RAV4′s CRV’s, and similar. They’re just station wagons in a different shape. It’s the Humongous Motherfuckering Vee-hickles that get me.
Oh – didja look at any of the newer “crossover” stuff like the Toyota Venza? Were they out of the price range too? I like the Venza, but I have no idea what it’s worth.
We didn’t look at Toyotas because we’ve had bad experiences at both the local dealers and I don’t give my money to people I don’t like*.
I’m with you on the station wagon thing, but station wagons don’t even really exist anymore. We looked at Subaru and didn’t really find anything we loved and in general, we were surprised at how small the backseats were on most of the small sized SUVs (we brought the infant seat with us and threw it in the back of every car we looked at to ensure my long legs would still fit in the passenger seat). We loved our Civic and I think it was somewhat preordained that we’d end up in a Honda.
*Well, I try not to anyway.
Michael, we have had exactly the same experience with Toyota dealers in Dallas. And we share your view–if the people are bad, we won’t buy.
Also, some of y’all may recall that in a long-ago post by Daryl that I’m too lazy to look up, I re-named the Escalade the Expletive. It helps to think of this when you’re on the 401.
Giant hybrids piss me off too; I read the hybridization as merely a marketing ploy. At the Whole Foods grocery store nearby they have several parking spaces marked off close to the entry that are just for hybrid vehicles, and I always cringe when I see a big hybrid SUV parked there. My little Honda Fit (not a hybrid) uses half as much gas as the monster hybrids.
My main problem with those big cars-that-are-really-trucks is that I’m afraid I’ll get mowed down. I was crossing the street in the West Village last year and there was an Escalade stopped at a stop sign. As I passed in front of it, it occurred to me that the driver might not be able to see me from his 80 foot perch because the grill was almost even with my head. (I’m not the tallest girl in the world.) And if he wasn’t paying particularly close attention – you know, updating his Facebook status, tweeting about how he’s sitting at a stop sign or some such asinine behavior I would associate with someone who would drive one of these behemoths – he could easily run me down.
So I hopped a little as I crossed in front. I’m sure I looked all kinds of ridiculous, taking these little hopping steps across the street but I was equally sure I wouldn’t like the look of my forehead with that Cadillac symbol pressed into it.
The driver probably missed his chance to pull out onto Bleeker Street because he had to update his status again with “You would not believe what I just saw crossing in front of my totally awesome ride.”
I’ve been hit by two cars while crossing a street*. One was a small VW sedan (I’m not sure what it was called) and one was a Ford Explorer and I’ll say this, at least the woman in the Explorer stopped.
*I was not injured in either case.
Kate, as one who actually has been mowed down by a big-car-that-was-really-a-truck, I can tell you that looking ridiculous while hopping in front of it is a fair trade for actually being mowed down. That shit hurts.
Kate, I love the idea of you (whoever you are!) hopping across the street. Bravo!
And Flannery got mowed down in a Kroger parking lot! By a crazy Republican woman with big hair!
OK, I’ll tell mine: I got run over on purpose by a drunk lady in the Kroger parking lot on a Sunday afternoon who thought I was trying to steal her parking space. She looked like Sarah Palin and was charged with three (3) felonies.
(3)
As always, your telling is better. Thanks Mummy.
I remember getting hit by a car, but my mother says it never happened.
Amanda!
I sort of believe her. I also remember flying, and that seems equally improbable.
I remember running out of a grocery store chasing a bouncing ball and an old blue car hitting me, squealing to a stop as the ball bounced away.
But it seems, as an adult, to be far more likely that this is what I was told WOULD happen if I kept bouncing that ball towards the doorway.
stomped the windshield out of a car once that tried to run me over
Cindy, I am Kate – a short, pudgy Irish woman who lives in NYC and thinks Escalades are the most ridiculous vehicles she’s ever seen. Actually, I think the only vehicles that should be allowed in Manhattan are cabs and the delivery trucks that bring Stoli to the stores. But I’m having some trouble convincing the City Council on that one.
Flannery, why am I not surprised that she was a Republican? But I will take your advice to heart and continue to hop to avoid the run down.
We are legion!
Welcome, lovely Kate!
Daryl, I thought you walked across the hood. Was that a different time?
Different; this one was a friend and part of a series of drunk accidents converging in the midst of laughter that wasn’t so funny the next day. It was during one of my philosophical phases.
Ah.
Oh, man, I hate those kind of revelations to my wife, Daryl.
She’d never heard about the night I spent in a drunk tank until one day when a friend was laughing about the time he had to come pick me up when I was sober in the morning.
Oh, I know all of this stuff, walt. There’s just too much to keep straight.
Do you know about the time he was charged with egg assault or what his previous name was?
wait
Okay, that was a close one. He’d never call a library.