Top Picks

Consumer Reports top picks for autos have finally been released. There were some big upsets this year with Hyundai taking two of the top spots, a first for the Korean auto maker. Chevrolet also broke into the ranks and was the first American vehicle to do so in five years.

The problem with these reports, however, is that they do not accurately represent the of the people, the zeitgeist has been ignored too many times. After intensive and exhaustive testing in the Northfield, MN area, I have come up with the top regional picks:

Top Green Car:
1998 Chevy Cavalier. This vehicle boasts a four cylinder engine that usually blows up at about 40,000 miles, saving the environment from many extra years of pollution. The semi-functional air-conditioning also does its part in the fight against global warming. Many Cavaliers are then recycled as lawn ornaments, making them the most versatile green car on the market.

Top Small Sedan:
1992 Honda Civic. You may be noticing that these cars are not actually from 'this year', but then again, neither are the cars you see on the street. This little beauty of a go-cart will get you from point A to point B for years to come, bumping your way down the street on the decrepit shock and strut system. A charming feature allows rust to instantly appear above the wheel well, and quickly spread to the door jams. (NOTE: this car also features a replaceable 'different color' hood that can be found at any junk or scrap yard!)

Family Sedan:
1999 Ford F150. Nothing says family hunting trip like five human beings piled in a vehicle built for three! What's the extra bench seat in the back for? My beer goddamnit! Now shut up and stop bothering your mother! Haha, oh the memories! The gun-rack equipped truck can carry as many beers as you can drink and as many does as you have tags for, so happy shooting. This rugged do-it-all is our perennial favorite only because our favorite NASCAR driver is a Ford man, so we need to be to.

Upscale Sedan:
2006 Ford Mustang. Lexus and Mercedes were snubbed this year inasmuch as they were not built in the U-S-of-A. This prowler of the streets comes equipped with a powerful engine, sleek body design, and a douchebag behind the wheel. Keep an eye out for this one by the side of the road, because it also was touted as 'most pulled over for drug possession'!

Fun to Drive:
Mazda MX-5 Miata. Seriously, I think Consumer Reports got it right on this one. The handling and acceleration were sublime, and the sound system was loud enough to drown out the people yelling 'homo!' on the side of the street.

Small SUV:
2005 Ford Escape. The auto best built to shuttle those aging trophy wives around, to do their nails or to give Fufu a pedicure, or whatever else the hell they do to keep themselves occupied. Large truck room is a great hiding place for your younger man when the husband gets suspicious.

Pickup Truck:
(See family sedan)

Congratulations to this years crop who made the list! Honorable mentions go to the Pontiac Grand Am for 'Most Common Girl Car' and to Toyota Prius with a Ralph Nader bumper sticker as 'Most Hated in A Small Farm Town.'

The Purchase, Part III

Hovering on my back ala Han Solo frozen in carbonite, I neared the tiny village. The clocks moved underneath me with metronomic frequency, walking by means of a teetering shuffle. Their beeps and buzzes grew synchronized, matching their flopping tempo of miniature steps. And then, all at once, they were quiet.

The cords unraveled around me, leaving me lying in a stupefied funk. I sat up to witness the crowd of electronics line up in silence, cords retracted, in seeming anticipation. Out of a small hut, a larger Alarm clock tottered out. It had AM/FM, snooze features, and an input for an auxiliary device. It was clearly the leader of the clan.

The great clock reached it's power cord solomly over to it's tuning knob, and switched on it's stereo feature. All I heard was static. The LED diodes of the other villagers hung low in embarrassment and sorrow. Their leader had no reception. I now knew why I was here. I was brought here for a reason; to help the lost village of alarm clock radios find their antennas. Maybe then, would I earn the right of passage back to that electronics isle in Target that felt like so far away.

Out of a cloudless sky I heard a crack and a bang as an electrified Delorean skidded next to me. The suicide door swung open and a frazzled Doc Brown jumped out, wearing a neon pink jumpsuit and silver opaque glasses.
"Great Scott!" He yelled. "Ollie, we've got to go right away!"
"What is it Doc?" I said.
"It's Marty, he's in trouble!"
"Damn that Biff." I turned to my new friends apologetically. "I'm sorry guys, but I need to take this one." Doc was already back in the car as I slid over the hood to open the passenger door. "I'll be back someday to find your reception!" Before I could close the door, a power cord slid in. I paused. A lone alarm clock stood there.
"Can I take him with me?" I asked Doc.
"Absolutely not!" exclaimed Doc, "the consequences could be catastrophic!" But the clock wouldn't budge. "Close the door!" He yelled, as the tires started to roll.

Without Doc noticing, I grabbed the cord and pulled in the clock, closing the door. We were off.
"Sir." Said Doc. "Sir."
"What?"
Doc looked at me with wide eyes, "Are you OK?"

I opened my eyes only to be blinded by the tungsten ceiling lights of the target store. Two store assistants and the large lady with her five kids were surrounding me on the floor. "Are you ok sir?" the assistant said.

"Yeah", I said, looking at the broken display case next to me. I raised my hand, still grasping the power cord. "I'll take this one."

The Purchase, Part II

A deep ravine ran down from the grassy knoll into the woods, cutting into the forest and down the valley where a river must have once flowed. After a few hours hike, the going started to get slower as the ground beneath me grew softer. Weeds and roots snarled the surface and each step I took started to sink deeper down, making impressions that filled with water. Where was I?

I took out my cell phone again to check the time. 27:98. Of Course.
WAIT! I get a bar of service!!. I scrambled up the side of the ravine, clawing away at the muddy plants with one arm, my other held the phone up like holy grail itself. Two bars.....three... and then...

BOOOOMMM.

An earth-shuddering thunderclap tore across the jungle. And at once, it started to rain, but not like any rain I had ever seen before. The raindrops came down in behemoth size, some as large as Buicks, crashing down and punching craters in their wake with a heavy thunkkk. Panic struck as a rain'drop' pummeled down the branches of a nearby tree, taking the leaves and smaller limbs with it. I was frozen in place, there was nowhere to hide. Putting a newspaper over my head wasn't going to cut it here.

BOOOOMMM.


Another round of thunder made me jump and run towards a thicker grove of trees, when thunkkk, I was swatted to the ground. A giant bathtub of cold water crashed me back down the ravine, sliding woozily down the the muddy bottom. There was now a slight current running by my wrists and ankles as I tried to prop myself up for a breath. The rain was crashing down all around me. Where was my.... THUNKKK.

I felt weightless as I drifted in and out of consciousness. Where was this river taking me? And more importantly, did I leave my lights on in the parking lot? I did, didn't I. Damnit.

Opening my eyes in a groggy haze some hours later, I sat up on a sandy bald spot on a river bend. The rain had stopped and the water was already receding from the ravine. BEEP BEEP! I heard a strangely familiar noise by my side. I looked down, and saw an alarm clock on the beach. It had a large face, with the numbers 88:88 blinking at me in irregular intervals. It beeped once again, and then shuffled forward and poked me with its power cord tail. Beep? I jumped. It scooted back, pulling in it's 120V tail. After a moment's standoff, the Timex creature turned and faced the underbrush, beeping incessantly.

The lower leaves scuffled around me, and other nightstand timepieces waddled out cautiously, beeping and buzzing curiously. Before I knew what to do, I had been circled, and in once swift and uniform movement, the clocks wrapped me up with their cords. The clock then, somehow, lifted me off the ground. Like Gulliver himself, I was prisoner to a Lilliputian army that never slept in.

As I was carried at a painstakingly slow pace down a narrow ingrown path through the jungle, I saw the plume of smoke ahead of me. We are going to a village! Maybe this wasn't that bad after all. I could catch some Z's while bumming a free ride there. Well, maybe I could if those clocks would just be quiet for a second.

Final chapter tomorrow...

The Purchase, Part I

Have you ever bought something despite every single cell of your brain screaming at you saying this is a mistake! Of course you have. I can just picture them right now, like little tiny Pac Men, hollering don't do it (I'm still talking about the brain cells here)! And you know why? Because you wanted it.

I just wanted my way out of $100 (pre-tax) last week. And being someone who is usually very good at buying items on sale, I must say, I stepped outside my circle for this one. I paid $100 for something I could get for...$10. It's a. Uhh.. It's an.... an.... alarm clock/radio.

Let me explain!
When I was roaming the electronics isles at Target, because there is nothing else to do in my town at 8:00PM, I noticed a new Boston Acoustics on the white grated shelf. Recently I have been stricken with a rare and terminal case of audiophilia, and to me, testing out speakers at Target, Best Buy and other locations is like wandering through a pharmacy, only I get to test the drugs before I buy them.

As I reached out to touch the volume knob on the sleek looking sound machine, something unbelievable happened. Just as my finger touched the radio, a huge woman came careening around the corner, corralling her three kids behind her, pushing a cart brimming with groceries and home supplies, and BAAMM! She crashed right into me.

My body was thrown forward as if I had been struck by a vindictive school bus driver, and I crashed unabatedly into the shelving. I heard steel crunch and break in my wake as I destroyed my way though layers of metal and concrete. I stopped when I hit the ground, accompanied by the powder of dry wall and misplaced chips and chunks of the wall. The cloud was thick at first, and I struggled to see as I sat up. But, when the dry wall veil sifted to the floor, I realized I was not in Kansas anymore. And by Kansas, I mean Target.

I stood up slowly, a little tender from the fall, and absently fanned at a mosquito that was buzzing around my ear. I was standing on a narrow path. In the middle of a jungle.

Now, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, Ollie, you are crazy. But let me tell you something, the same thing was running through my head. But the broad fan blade leaves brushing past my face, the sun poking through the canopy, scattering light across the fern-covered floor, and the wet, thick air, all led me to believe that this was very real.

I pushed the leaves and vines aside as I cautiously made my way down the path towards a clearing up ahead. I needed to get a look around, gather my bearings. Maybe I was in some sort of promotional isle in the back of the store... selling tiki torches? I didn't see any tiki torches though. I did, however, see a centipede maneuver its way up the tree right by my head. It was the largest insect I had ever seen, each leg moving with eerie speed and silence, as it creeped and snaked its way to the top, no doubt with intention to swallow some birds nest in one gulp. I shuddered and forged on ahead to the clearing.

As I walked out into the sun, a cooler breeze came across my face, and I wiped a musty patina of sweat off my forehead with my sleeve. I was standing on a grassy knoll, a site that mush have been cultivated for farmland in the past, but now was unkempt, and filled with tall, soft grass and scattered with young trees only waist high. The great forest that I emerged from surrounded me on all sides, dipping from my vantage point into a great valley, rolling and expansive. On all sides, save one, the trees merged into mountains, only crawling halfway up to be taken over by barren rock and the craggy edges that made the dramatic outline of the range itself. The chain only broke on the south side to give way to a slim view of the clear blue ocean.

I lone wisp of smoke rose from the trees, about halfway between myself and the mountains. If I was going to get any answers, I knew that I would need to head in the direction of that smoke, and hope that whoever was making it was friendly. Wallet? Check. Car Keys? Check. Cell phone? No signal, but check.

It looked like a days walk. I popped my collar to protect my neck from the bugs and headed down the slope towards the woods. The warm, moist air swallowed me up, but was silent as I trod through, as if the woods themselves were watching me...

To be continued tomorrow...

Under The Influence

I am, regrettably, on my second cup of coffee right now. I am also, regrettably, reduced to writing about coffee again. It seems as though creative inspiration is lacking on this Monday morning at the bank. My view consists of the back of a church, another bank, and a grain elevator in the background. An awe-inspiring vista that ranks up there with Machu Pichu and the Himalayan mountains.

I had proudly abstained from coffee my entire life until this year. Each morning in college, my roommate would brew a pot, start on his homework, and then ask me if I wanted some when I woke up.
"No thanks"
"I'll get you hooked one of these days." He would say, and then go back to his religion paper, fueled by his early morning energy. I always preferred to wake up naturally based on some strange self-reliant complex I must possess.

I have found that I can get up, scramble to work in the nick of time, and be fully awake. I don't need the coffee to wake up. But because of the excitement level my job entails, I do need the coffee to stay awake.

And I have found that, by drinking coffee, I have reached a new level of 'alertness'. Sure, my hands might get a little fidgety, and sure, I might knock things off my desk spastically when someone walks in, but damn, my hand can swoop down and catch that pen (mid-air) faster than you can blink an eye. Conversely, when I focus myself on a random task, it suddenly engulfs 100% of my attention. Jesse James could have a revolver to the back of my head, but damn it, I need to finish this spreadsheet! It would take no les than a bludgeon to the head, which would only make me swivel around in my chair. Scratching my neck nervously, with a crazed look in my eyes, I would hiss at him "Hey man, you got any beans? Fresh Guatemalan beans? Huh, huh?" Then I take a big pull from my thermos, and with my figure vibrating at 'jackhammer frequency', would challenge Mr. James. "You can't shoot what you can't see can ya! Can ya!" I would most likely then grab his gun with the speed of a thousand twitchy squirrels, jump on his back and search his satchel for a tin of Folgers Crystals, focused %100.

I have no doubt, in the time I have written this, about ten to twelve customers have come up to the window here, hoping to make a simple transaction, but found themselves screaming incredulously at a figure typing away at the computer... with a crazed look in his twitching eye.

Now, let's brew some more. It's... a long day, and... my energy source... is running... lowwww...

Curb My Enthusiasm

Until last night, I had not been to a play in a couple years. Plays, in general, are not my bag. But, after seeing a very funny youtube preview for the show, I decided to roll the dice and break my thespian fast.

The theatre itself is carved out of the remnants on a brick and concrete warehouse. The questionably intentional art moderne look was 'pretty cool' I thought, as I noticed the steel beams and trusses, elegant in their own way, holding up scaffolding and lighting equipment. The aesthetics ended there, however, when I saw the seating arrangement, which looked like a middle school band setup.

I sat down with an Amstel Light, my friend Larry, and no expectations (good or bad). I was just there to be entertained.

I'm not sure when it actually happened, or if there even was a defining moment, but at some point I vaguely realized that there was nothing happening in front of me. I don't mean nothing, as in a void of space and matter, but close to it. It reminded me of the Christopher Guest mocumentary For Your Consideration, where the (very talented) actors, pretend to be, well, very untalented.

I'm sure you are familiar with the awkward scenario of trying to walk past someone, only to have both of you step to the same side, suddenly engaged in a mental chess game of non-verbal clues and 'after you' gestures. This happened on stage, first being met with a few chuckles and smiles (even on my part), but as they continued to tango, neither passing the other, it started to get old. But they kept going. And going. And as they resulted to convulsing in front of each other like a fish in front the mirror (which, coincidently was done later by another character!), I covered my face with my hands, peeking through intermittently to see if they were done.

The four characters constantly engaged in meaningless banter, which I assume was intended to portray metaphors for metaphysical ideas, larger than life concepts , or hopefully, at best, some reincarnation of the dada movement. But as I watched a character flailing around on a newly polished floor like a poorly choreographed Charlie Chapman film, I realized that theses characters were actually trying to be funny.

Other things that might have 'meant something':

-Baby being a bowling ball
-Dancing flowers in a giant fishbowl
-Newspaper falling from the ceiling
-No plot
-A lot of sand
-A desert diorama with an errant jumbo jet in it. It gets flooded with water. Metaphorically.

Take Alice in Wonderland, just remove the engaging dialogue, any sense of direction, and Lewis Carroll's frontal lobe, and PRESTO, you have Fishbowl. I have another friend, very conservative on a lot of issues (mutters f-ing hippies angrily when encountering a liberal, or a liberal idea), who I am very glad did not accompany us to this show. It would have given him enough ammunition to last a lifetime.

As the audience applauded at the conclusion of the performance, I gave a few polite claps, but remained stone-faced and appreciative that the ordeal was over, and that my mind could try to unravel and focus on real things. Things that made sense.

Larry turned to me. So what did you think?

The Best Part Of Waking Up

The five most terrifying seconds of my day usually take place somewhere between 7-7:30AM. They supervene right after I finish my morning routine at work, settle myself in, and then stare at my mug of coffee with a look only matched by Rocky as he walked into the ring against Apollo Creed.

These five seconds are spent with the mug fearfully leaning, ever so slightly, up to my lips, waiting (oh the suspense!) for that coffee to touch the tip of my tongue. At this point, my hand, with the cautious motor governance of a cardiac surgeon, ever so slightly tips the cup higher and higher. With slight intakes of breath, I attempt to coax out the violently hot beverage - only needing a dollop to suffice. Any less would be a mist, and any more would be a mini pool of lava that would leave my taste buds incapacitated for a painfully long time. The window of accuracy is comparable to satellite re-entry patterns.

This morning, per usual, after a rediculous amount of tipping and not sipping, I grew impatient. Oh, the tribulations of the foolish and hasty! With my heart already palpitating in suspense, it was jacked into 'heart attack' mode when the fiery sea of Colombian bean rinds splashed onto my woefully dejected tongue. "Gjaahh!" was my reaction, untimely delayed by the necessity to swallow first.

Well, that was that. The Band-Aid was pulled, and my terror level now dropped back down to normal shades of green (or whatever the safe color is). I would argue that the coffee, itself, offers no invigorating properties, but stimulates enough via the anticipation of searing pain.

Now comes the time to ritualistically curse the Mr. Coffee hot plate settings, my impatience, and the surprisingly efficient thermal retention properties of my mug until the first customer arrives.