My car is finally back on the road, after being in the shop twice in the past few months, following not one, but two, rear-end collisions.

"Dude, your car is so gay..."

I took note (see previous post) that when the insurance company temporarily provided me with a Hummer as a replacement vehicle, other motorists kept well away. My poor Saab, on the other hand, seems to be a proven magnet for the driver approaching in my rear-view mirror. Not knowing how to account for that, I drove my colleague Markowitz (pictured at right) a short distance in the car, and described the situation.

He went away and thought about it. Later that same day, he outed my vehicle, breaking it to me without fanfare.

Here’s the e-mail he sent:

• According to Gaywheels.com – a US website that bills itself as “sole source of information specifically targeted to and about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender car-shoppers”  – the Saab 9-3 is on their Top 10 list of vehicle favorites (Volkswagen rabbit was number one.)

As a non-member of the LGBT demographic, once I’d processed the information (Gaywheels.com?), I quickly came to terms with the fact of my car’s possible inclinations. Didn’t bother me in the slightest. Actually, it gave me hope that perhaps there’s a future for the Saab marque, now that General Motors intends to abandon the line, and gays may be potentially prepared to adopt it. Straights are said to follow the gay lead in trends, so perhaps by the time my lease expires, the car may have retained some small trade-in value.

I mentioned this in an e-mail to Linda Dahl, who replied that her daughter “told me that my Subaru Outback is a ‘lesbian’ car. That must be why I am getting so many flirtatious glances from women in supermarket parking lots.”

Must be.

Fred: Not suitable for the UK

I momentarily thought of the recent news that the UK has banned Rev. Fred Phelps, the nutbar US Baptist cleric, from entering Britain. Pastor Phelps is the disagreeable lout who makes a pest of himself protesting gays during occasions such as funerals. I had a vision of Minister Phelps, on his way to a protest demonstration, being struck at a Topeka crosswalk by a succession of Volkswagen Golfs, Saab 9-3s, Subaru Outbacks, and whatever else may be on that Top 10 list Markowitz was talking about.

I agree with the decision by the UK’s Labour government to keep this ecclesiastical loon out of the country. Please don’t take that to infer, however, that in the future I won’t be keeping a significant distance between my rear bumper and yours.

* * *

Sofitel Montreal: Petit Dejeuner servi en Chambre (courtesy tripadvisor.com)

Just back from Montreal, where I had a productive meeting with an unreconstituted British Columbian, who, exercising a habit he’s maintained since the Roaring 1920s, called for his breakfast oatmeal — alas, in the dining room of the French-owned Hotel Sofitel. He reports that the waiter, possibly recently exiled over from the 5th Arrondissement where he couldn`t get the full hang of being rude, did not endorse his choice, and declined, when asked, to bring over the usual accompaniment of brown sugar.

I sympathized. Marlene eats the stuff every morning. I can take it or leave it. Last time we ate oatmeal together was at a Starbucks location somewhere, where the signage proclaimed it as the best danged oatmeal in the world. It was not, not by a long-shot. The Starbucks barista prepared a paper bowl of convenience-store grade instant oatmeal, and was insufficiently trained to determine the proper amount of hot water to apply. You’ve heard the joke about the newleywed bride who couldn’t boil water to prepare instant this-or-that? That was this hopeless shlemozzle of a barista.

Keep that @#%# Schultz away from me

We pitched the slop in the dustbin, and I later sent a note off to Howard Schultz of Starbucks, taking the time to explain why his stock price has tanked. In return for my sound business advice (“Please don’t sell obviously inferior products and lie to your customers that they’re great“), I got an automatically generated response urging me to get lost.

 
I note that Schultz’s competitor, Jamba Juice, is now proclaiming that they offer cooked oatmeal in the morning, unlike the instant swill Starbucks spoons out. Alas, I’m unaware of any Jamba Juice locations in Montreal to recommend to Mr. British Columbia, but that chain could have a brilliant future, whereas Schultz, the vendor of demonstrably inferior fare, seems destined to decline: any instant now.

If you’ve ever wondered who all those half-wit groseros are, the galoots you see obliviously driving their Hummers past the Greenpeace protest demonstration on Earth Day, let me just raise my hand and say: c’est moi.

Just like the governor of California, and the trophy-wives of investment bankers, and a pack of other environmentally insensitive louts, there’s a mud-streaked Hummer parked in my driveway — or there would be if the thing would fit in the shared driveway of my inner-city shack. As it is, I leave it parked overnight on the street, and when I squeezed defiantly past a schoolteacher in a Smart car this morning I’d swear that she glowered at me. Probably a vegetarian, I’m guessing, skedaddling to work, where she’ll force her joyless students to watch that Al Gore movie one more time.

Listen to me, will you? Forty-eight hours driving a Hummer, and I’ve turned into Rush freaking Limbaugh.

You may ask, as my sainted mother did yesterday, what a fine and sensitive young fellow such as myself is doing behind the wheel of a totemic affront to all forms of decency. As I have remarked repeatedly since Saturday, “It’s an insurance rental. It’s mine for a week.”

Somewhere a dozen blog-posts back, I described for the amusement of those who seek skillful and inspiring tale-telling on the Internets, a yarn involving my discomfort at being driven around New Jersey by an infirm 83-year-old woman. As is the case with so many web-related developments, it took some time for the implications of this post to be felt.

Felt they were. Last week I was stopped in my Saab at an intersection a couple of blocks from my office, where I was rear-ended by an 81-year-old woman who was returning home from a doctor’s appointment. A different octogenarian, I hasten to add. This one drove (note use of past tense) a rather cherry ‘99 Mustang, which looked mighty sportin’ until the moment of impact, at which point the entire front end sang its closing roulade. Quite a wallop, as the body-shop dude described the collision, using a technical term. The other driver was shaken, but not hurt. I, however, was plenty freaked out, wondering if the occurrence was karmic payback for having so callously used a senior-citizen as a prop in my despicable act of electronic raconteurship.

But you get past these introspective moments. The insurance company claims-adjuster graciously waived my deductible, absolving me of blame or shame. The kid at the car rental place drove right to my door and delivered a Dodge Magnum, the worst vehicle I’ve ever encountered, and I’m someone who drove a lopsided Hillman Avenger from Dorking to Bognor Regis and back, in the ’80s. After one evening of spinning the Dodge’s tires through the deep snow on my neighborhood streets, I contacted the car-rental lad the moment he opened his shop.

Chrysler engineers the "numb" into every Dodge Magnum

“This Magnum,” I began.

“Yes?,” he said.

“I hate it.”

He likely figured, well, if Mr. Discerning Motorist can’t stand one ungainly North American slab o’ crud, perhaps he’d care for another. Out came the Hummer H3.

I began to protest, but quickly dropped my objections. Hummer? Hmm.

Here is my rationale for undertaking a week-long relationship with this petro-swilling memento of the Age of Dick Cheney: Who’s gonna stop me? You? How about you? Or maybe that pencil-neck over there?

Didn’t think so.

Georgie-boy, patron saint of Humvee owners

I’d vouch that either as a sophisticated driving experience, or as an automotive engineering marvel, the Hummer is neither, but it’s highly efficacious as a testosterone supplement. Other than which, it won’t fit down the ramp into the parking garage of my office building, and it requires some careful advance planning to maneuver through the Tim Horton’s drive-through. I can also report that decent people avoid me now, probably sensing that the Hummer is an accoutrement to some unexpected lifestyle-change that they’ll want no part of. They’re guessing that the severe new hair-do will follow, and then the new wardrobe designed around those khaki pants with the pockets on the sides. Cargo pants, I believe they’re called. The ensemble may be referred to as the Full George Peppard.

Right now I’d swear several oaths that these things will never happen. I’m still a Saab kind of guy trapped in the pressed-tin body of a Hummer H3. But we’ve seen how the unexpected can pop out of nowhere, and suddenly everything is different. That’s how the fist of fate seems to move, and it packs — what did the body-shop guy call it? — quite a wallop.

That’s enough talk. Now you can all get the hell out of my way.