Category: What the…?

Ernest Borgnine, interviewed about his new autobiography:

Q. What is your current hobby?

A. My wife bought me a Smart Car. It’s the passion of my life right now and I’m having a ball with it. I’ve had it up to 85 miles per hour just to see how fast it would go and it wound up pretty good. They’ve got plenty of room inside, but they’re for two people.
I went to Italy to make a picture and I saw this little car and said I just gotta have one. Man, they’re just the loveliest things you’ve ever seen and they run on three and a half cylinders and eight gallons of gasoline and they go! They take off and get you where you want to go very easily and very quickly and as nicely as any big car would do.

What we need is a Borgnine/Redman mashup.

What is Redman doing with my smart car?

Warning: hip-hop videos may contain some foul language. Via ProHipHop

A 74-year-old nude sunbather from Vancouver attacks a guy and his dogs rafting down the Columbia with his kids.

A navigation error by a Southeast Portland man on a rafting trip with four children and two dogs led to an altercation at a Columbia River nudist beach, police said.

The 45-year-old man thought he was several hundred feet from the clothing-optional area of Sand Island at Rooster Rock State Park when he brought his inflatable raft ashore Thursday.

A startled man sunbathing in the buff let him know otherwise, allegedly attacking the man and his Chihuahuas with a police baton, said Lt. Gregg Hastings, an Oregon State Police spokesman.

…

The man told police he realized his mistake when his dogs ran toward the sunbather, who hit them. The sunbather then walked up to the man and the children, holding up a can of pepper spray and striking the man.

…

Friday, state police returned to the park and arrested the sunbather, identified as Donald Joseph Kenney, 74, of Vancouver.

He faces accusations of menacing and assault, which can carry a maximum of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

You sort of have to wonder why the guy had the baton.

Back before The Future™ (and a certain amount of cocaine) car designer John DeLorean came up with the idea for the Pontiac Fiero, an inexpensive two-seater that got the green light despite initial misgivings by executives because a market opened up for a car with good fuel economy during the late ’70s fuel crisis.

My father admired them at the time, and he got a silver one from mom as a silver anniversary present a few years after they hit the market. I think it’s the only new car they’ve ever bought. I guess I come by my taste for oddball cars naturally; about the time he got the Fiero, I got Dad’s AMC Pacer. (Despite what it may look like from the photo, the Fiero’s five feet longer than the smart, with 20 more inches in the wheelbase, although it’s about 15 inches shorter, vertically.)

Here are a couple of other small vehicles Dad and I spotted in Congledon, Cheshire, England last fall. The Ford StreetKa (no longer in production):

And a Daihatsu Copen. Oooh! 87hp!

Why the hell aren’t people bringing these things into the States?

From today’s cookie; a triple prediction:

You will be singled out for a special promotion within the month.

That seems unlikely. Not the “singled out” thing so much (I do work for myself) but unless I’m promoting myself…well, we’ll see.

An enjoyable vacation is awaiting you very soon.

Hmmm. Not if we’re going to get the kitchen remodel finished. And, not unless one of my clients pays me the money they’ve owed me for four months.

Remember three months from this date, Good things are in store for you.

OK. October 28. Too early for Adobe MAX.

The cookie itself was a little hard. A tough cookie.

Barbara got home from work an hour early on Friday, then we headed out to dinner at six. The restaurant wasn’t high on our list of preferred dining spots, but since they’d sent us a card good for $15 off, we figured we could get away fairly inexpensively. I had fish, shrimp, and chips; Barbara had calimari and chips, and we each had a nice G&T. Plus, the weather was perfect for eating outside on the patio.

Then it was off to the Crystal Ballroom for the Ray Davies acoustical set. Our seats were in the fifth row; Davies was thirty-odd feet away, and we were right next to the divider he walked behind on his way to the stage. A great mix of old Kinks tunes and material off his “Working Man’s Cafe” album, with lots of encouraged sing-along.

There was an added bonus, too. When I shouted out “Cowboys in Vietnam” mid-show, Davies launched smoothly into the intro to “Vietnam Cowboys” from “Working Man’s Cafe.” So apparently, I can control his mind, at least in close proximity.

I idly ran across the fact that I share a date of birth with former Pixies drummer Dave Lovering, who I saw opening as The Scientific Phenomenalist for Frank Black a few years back at Berbati’s Pan. Then I saw from his biography that we also shared some educational (electrical engineering) and employment (Radio Shack) experiences.

One really big difference: I have absolutely no sense of rhythm.

I’m beginning to see more smart cars out and about. The other day as I was driving back to the house in the morning, I saw a yellow and black hardtop waiting at a light, just a couple of blocks from my house.

Then, this afternoon, I walked out of the barbershop on Hawthorne to discover that while I’d been in there, another (or the same) yellow and black smart was parked right in front of the door (I’m betting that the owners were in the newly-reopened Nick’s Coney Island, next door). Then I saw that the number on the license plate was just off in the last digit from ours — which we got from the dealer — so it was probably the next car sold at smart Center Portland.

I would have left a note, but I didn’t have a pen on me.

Another weekend, another trip to the Grocery Outlet, and another smallish car photo opportunity.

I was kind of admiring of the BMW Z3 convertibles, and if I’d had the scratch, I would have bought one long before the smart became available, but the 2001 Z3 (which now sells used for less than the smart cost) is only rated for 20mpg in the city (probably because it has two-and-a-half times the horsepower of my cabrio).

I’ll just think of all the gas I’ve saved.

Going shopping for lighting fixtures isn’t exactly like getting poked with needles, but it’s hardly my idea of fun.

Then again, if every time I went I saw something as cool as this fan from Minka Aire, I’d look forward to it. Now I just have to figure out why I need one.