Monday, October 10, 2011

Rave reviews

I spent most of the weekend reading. The golden haired beauty was spending a couple days with her sister and some friends, so I had the place to myself. Hours of uninterrupted solitude to indulge my pleasures of reading, football, and cooking for myself. Pretty boring that.

I read two books and started a third. Jeremy Clarkson, James May, Richard Hammond. Interesting, witty, painful, pompous, and quite brilliantly written. For those not in the know, these three are the presenters (hosts in America) of a BBC television programme called Top Gear. It is the best thing on TV for anyone that enjoys cars and a masculine sense of humor.

Turns out that these three motor heads, whose job is to create havoc and have fun at the expense of Ferrari, Porsche, and Kia, also write regular columns for well known British newspapers and car magazines. Hammond wrote a book about crashing a jet powered dragster at 240 mph, and his subsequent recovery. May wrote about cars he had loved and hated over the years, and why cars matter. Clarkson wrote a book about how much smarter he is than you.

I drove down our own interstate highway last week. And I must admit that there are bad drivers everywhere. And a few good drivers as well. Likewise there are bad and good cars. And there are the multiple configurations of good, bad and average cars and drivers teamed up at random. With my newly found driver's insight from the UK, and the Prius driving 63 in the left lane, and the scalding hot coffee I spilled, it was a miserable trip.

It is a wonder that anyone gets anywhere without a crash.