Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Welcome MSNBC.com Readers

This just about paid for a round trip to the gas station.

Just. About.

Happy D-Day. Thank you, vets.

admit it, you've apologized to your car at least once at: mb@blondechampagne.com

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

Excellent piece. Made me nostalgic for Geri and George. My back to back white Ford Tempos. They knew how to represent.

Anonymous said...

My experience with talking to my car involes interchangeably swearing at it and then pleading for it to work. Usually, prayers to God and promises to attend mass are stuck in there for good measure as well.

Anonymous said...

Everyone knows that cars work better with names, and thank God mine have never responded to me in Cable Guy-esk language. There's nothing like the memory of urging my '85 Toyota Tercel hatchback ("The Box" to those that knew her) to eventually reach interstate speeds while trying to avoid things like semi grills. This was also the car that got over 400 miles on 12 gallons of gas, back when it was about $1 a gallon (my most fuel efficent vehile to date). Irony sucks (at least I think there's irony in there somewhere. MB, help a Computer Science major out).

Anonymous said...

Wonderfully amusing article, as always. I think I even snorted a couple times.

I do have a question, though - when you mentioned the "ALF" memorabilia museum, which ALF did you have in mind? Seeing as I had exactly zero ALF's in mind, I used Google to decode it, and came up with several different organizations.

Thus, did you mean the Animal Liberation Front? Or, perhaps, were you referring to the American Liver Foundation (which apparently is not as gross as it sounds, although I can't imagine a memorabilia museum for it) or the Association of Libertarian Feminists?

As you can tell, this question is going to bother me for eternity until I get it figured out.

Anyway, great article!

HelloBettyLou said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
HelloBettyLou said...

Great article MB. I am Mistress of the Mazda, affectionately nicknamed "The Egg." She tries to be tough, but she's not (semi-wagons cannot be tough).

Unknown said...

On today, her fifth birthday, I relish the fact that this month marks the final payment on "Baby" the 2001 Hyundai Santa Fe that I bought the summer before my sophomore year of college. Baby rarely, if ever, gets put in the corner, except in the parking garage at work, where we only seem to be able to find corner parking spaces with enormous concrete pillars behind them. God bless Hyundai and it's 10,000 mile warranty. It's because of this that Baby will be around for quite a while.
Maybe for her birthday I'll get her detailed...

Anonymous said...

Great article. My first car - an '88 Plymouth Reliant - was nicknamed Radar. I had an obbsession for all-things M*A*S*H when I was in high school and college.

But then I got into an accident. And Radar went to where cars go when they're smashed like crackers given to a four-year-old.

So now I have another car. A blue Kia Rio (that I've had to put new tires and breaks on. Already). It's okay, and I won't speak ill of it for fear I'll go to the parking lot and find a heap sitting where my car once stood, but I miss Radar.

We've named this one Frodo. I don't know why, really. Perhaps because it's designed for Hobbits to drive, rather than full-sized humans.

Anonymous said...

OK, if naming your car makes it run better, any suggestions for a Honda Accord?

My first car, another Honda, was only known as "you *!@#&$& piece of crap".

Ophelia said...

My second car was the first one I named. It was a 1986 4-door Grand Am. That year there was to be a problem with the paint and when she became mine in 1993, she had developed these ugly, rust-bubble lesions all over the body. We had some tense moments, but overall Rusty was a good girl.
I drove her for three years and then decided to upgrade. I heard that the gal I sold her to got another few good years out of Rusty.
Now, my car is named Silver and whenever we embark on a road trip it's always "Hi Ho Silver, away!!"

Anonymous said...

1. mb - what's the name of the new car? Shall we have another naming contest, like you had for Schnitzel?

2. hellobettylou - I think your Egg should meet my Egg (a white Ford Aspire). Maybe they could have little Egg-lets.

Anonymous said...

So, this has absolutley nothing to do with the MSNBC article, but I'm too lazy to go find "The Waltz" to post there...so here's a quote I read today that made me think of you, MB.
"I have CDO. It's like Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, only in
alphabetical order like it should be." - Spike Donner

Anonymous said...

When aliens finally arrive to this planet, they undoubtedly conclude that CARS are the dominant species of this planet, and we are merely their simbiotic slaves...

PS: Thank you so much savannah the college student for making me feel like an old-timer!! I loved Alf when I was in high-school, and after Alf I fell in love with the Simpsons.

Anonymous said...

My old boss had four wonderful children: Dodge, Daisy, Derby, and Dream. And one dog: Harley. Not kidding. (When your last name is Earnhardt, you can get away with moniker murder.)

My first car was a Mabel. My new one hasn't told me its name yet. (She's shy.)

Anonymous said...

My first car was an '84 Chevrolet Chevette that my grandparents traded to me for a week's worth of odd jobs. It had no muffler, no radio, no heat, no A/C, no door locks, and no driver's side window roller (I had a pair of Channel-Lock pliers for that). If you stood it up it could fit in my closet.

My friends and neighbors nicknamed it "da hoopty," so that's what I called it. I would occasionally get pranked when someone would unlock the doors, shift it into neutral, and roll it to a different parking space. I always saw through it, though: who on earth would want to steal it?

When I first got it, it topped out at a mighty 45 miles per hour until my dad and I souped it up a little; then I could get to 70. I discovered this late one night on the country road all the high schoolers used for drag-racing. Actually, it took two trips to discover that; among the list of non-features da hoopty boasted was a lack of interior lights, so I had to go back, grab a flashlight, and return to see how fast I could go.

It eventually bit the dust when I realized my fat ass was slowly breaking through the floorboard, which was evidently composed of cheap corrugated cardboard and Elmer's Glue. I was gliding over some railroad tracks when some piece of it caught in the gap between the road and the track and tore out some valuable part or other.

I cried when I had it hauled away for scrap.


While I'm here, why is it cars get female names? Maybe it's me; all my vehicles have definitely been male.

Josh The Pilot said...

Mike,
Notice it's mostly women who have been writing comments, and they give their cars girl names. However, the two vehicles I've named were boy names, but only because they fit, plus I didn't want MB to get jealous lol.
My first three cars didn't get names because they didn't last long enough for me to figure one out for them. My fourth car (actually it was a van) didn't get a name because it wasn't really mine, it was my parents and they were letting me use it after Car #3's transmission blew. Car Five (again a van, '90 Chevy Astro) was first named Astro because I simply am not very creative. The name never really stuck and I switched to Victor when I got a University of Airplanes tag with V as the last character on it. Victor is V in the radio phonetic alphabet. Again, I am not very creative. However, the name stuck, even after I switched to a personalized tag. The tag transferred when I traded the Chevy van for my current ride, an '01 Ford Escort ZX2, the car that MB has written a few epistles about, and in honor of the original vehicle the tag was on, the ZX2 is Victor Jr. Throw eggs now if you want to.

MB reading The Waltz director's commentary update: One of these days...

Anonymous said...

JTP, I can understand SOME cars having female names, not necessarily all the time, though. My best friend has a '93 Camaro Z28, and even though it doesn't really have a name per se (he mostly refers to it as "Baby," so maybe that's it) it is most definitely a "she."

I, on the other hand, have owned five cars:

'84 Chevrolet Chevette
'87 Toyota 4Runner
'87 Ford Ranger
'90 Honda Accord
'95 Eagle Vision

and I think the entire lot of them are males. They've all been lazy, stubborn, and seem to want a great deal of fluid intake. They've all been known to backfire a time or two as well. The only thing they don't do is scratch themselves and awkwardly hit on the more feminine cars.

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