2106 Car Norms

We assume a lot. Like I was driving recently and the car in front of me was driving erratically. Since it was the middle of the day, I assumed the driver was texting. Drunken driving and texting driving are about the same.

I could have been wrong though, because the vehicle I was driving behind was chopped. You know what I mean, very low to the ground, with fancy wheels, big tail pipes and additional aerodynamic fairings added to it. Which always seems funny because the aerodynamics are supposed to help you go faster, but the lowering means a bump at high speed will tear off your menacing low bumper. 

Anyhow, what got me about it was the chopped car wasn't the Honda you would assume. It was a chopped Subaru Forester. I know, that's about as surprising as a Prius with trucknuts, those faux gonads rednecks hang from their trailer hitch. 

A chopped Subaru Forester doesn't meet our expectations, right? Chopped Japanese cars are for "drifting," like they do in the Fast and Furious movies. Is an SUV-based stable platform 4-wheel-drive car set up for that? I don't know. The off-road stability may make it even better.

They violated another assumed car norm too. It was a complete waste of space on the back end. There wasn't one bumper sticker on it. A Subaru without a bumper sticker is lots of political opinion real estate going to waste. It's like a Volvo without a "Baby on Board" sign. Or a pickup truck without a window sticker of Calvin relieving himself on something. Or an Odyssey without a mommy van set of family stick figures demonstrating what sports they all do. 

Cars are who we are.

Or so I assume.

America, ya gotta love it. 

2105 Snoop Names

I was listening to the radio recently and there was a news story that mentioned Snoop Lion. You may remember him as Snoop Dogg, with two G's, the popularizer of the term "For Shizzle."

His mom calls him Calvin Cordozar Broadus. 

I guess that's one problem with made up names, you feel impelled to keep changing them. But really Calvin, you've established a brand as Snoop Dogg, why risk altering it? Don't you want it to multiply into new opportunities for income?

At least John Cougar, who became John Cougar Mellencamp and finally just John Mellencamp, had a reason. He never wanted to be John Cougar to start with. His record label forced the label on him because they thought Mellencamp was too German. Ironically, Mellencamp is a German word that means melting pot. 

You'd think Snoop would have learned from Prince, whose name shuffling has held him back; "Prince" to "The Artist Formerly Known as Prince" to the unpronounceable Ankh symbol. Call a reputable PR firm who can explain the power of consistent branding, dude. It's enough to make a dove cry.

You sure as heck didn't see that problem with Madonna. She did the reverse, took an established name brand and co-opted it for her purposes. I'm not saying Snoop or Prince should start calling themselves Messiah or something, but you see what I mean. A good religious icon could go a long way. 

Come to think of it, that may be why Snoop picked Lion. It's got some pretty big Rastafarian religious implications. He could use it to branch out into new products. Snoop Lion's Rasta Pasta. 

I just hope Lady Gaga keeps imitating Madonna. Keep her name the same. No other baby names. I'm not ready for Lady GooGoo. 

Or Lady Icky KahKah.

America, ya gotta love it. 

2104 PBJ Crunch

Back when I was growing up, we didn't get to eat in the school cafeteria. It was reserved for kids who could afford it. "Hot lunch" it was called. As in, "Make sure you get your tickets for hot lunch." The teacher would sell them in the morning or, later, kids would go to the office on their first recess to buy tickets or a monthly pass.

Kids in our economic spectrum had lunch boxes or, at my even lower end, brown bags. At least we had lunch. I was grateful I had something; even though youthfully resentful I had to pack it to school in a random grocery or product bag. It would have been nice to have one of those actually brown lunch-sized bags instead of an old bread or drugstore bag but, what the hey, at least I had food.

The food was problematic sometimes. I had two main meals: Boloney sandwich with ketchup on it or peanut butter and jelly. Both were always on brown-colored bread, what my dad called “wheat bread,” although it was really just cheap white bread dyed brownish.

Our sack lunches were stored at room temperature in the back of the classroom so baloney-and-ketchup got a little warm by the time lunchtime hit in the non-air-conditioned rooms. Did I mention we lived in a small desert town where the temps typically got up past 100 degrees?

That also made the ketchup soak through the top piece of bread. Ick. And jelly did the same thing. Peanut butter and jelly on soaked-through bread. Yum. We had a remedy. Lift up the soaked-through side and insert potato chips. Crunchy and delicious. Resourceful Poverty-Repaired PB&J. 

They now have them on Food.com and other epicurean websites.  

Gourmet, inspired by poor-met.

America, ya gotta love it.