Picture Perfect

My little brother is working on a blog for next week that will continue the journey we are collectively taking into society’s most pressing ills. I believe it will be the boldest and most thoroughly thought-provoking indictment thus far.

For this week I thought a little frivolity was in order...

I love new cars. I love the smell of the fresh upholstery and the thunk of the precision-fitted door. I love that no one has eaten McDonalds in it or gotten uncomfortably hot after a long journey. It is a blank canvas awaiting our unique butt grooves.

No offence to the classic car guys who painstakingly restore those ’67 Corvettes and Mustangs or the big black Lincoln convertible with the suicide doors driven during the opening credits of Entourage.

However in fairness...those cars handle like a dinner tray on roller skates and have the modern convenience of a dugout canoe.

In a new car you get greater horsepower as well as enormously better handling and comfort. Integrated cell phones and iPods with Satellite Navigation kick the holy hell out of air conditioning vents that are as powerful as an asthmatic wheezing on you.

I’ll take the pinnacle of the craft over parking at Burger King with the hood up to showing off a shiny motor every time.

As far as the aesthetics argument...well I would argue that new cars trounce them there as well.

Here is my personal list of the sexiest rides of today.

Aston Martin DB9- “Rembrandt"

There is something about this car that gives all men the same involuntary twitch in their loins. It is achingly beautiful. When a cars proportions are this right viscerally we react in much the same way as seeing Bar Refaeli (guys feel free to cut and paste that name into your Google field now and click Images)
Sexy Scale: 98.

Celebrity Equivalence: Leonardo DiCaprio and Angelina Jolie

Ferrari 430-“Michelangelo”

It’s a Ferrari. That should be enough of an explanation however when Italians make a great looking sports car that handles as good as it looks then you’ve elevated the endeavour to an absolute art form. Bellissima!

Sexy Scale: 95.

Celebrity Equivalence: Johnny Depp and Megan Fox

Audi R8- “Dali”

This car looks fast standing still. Bold and powerful, it is sure to turn heads and it has usurped the Porsche as the affordable Super Car.

Sexy Scale: 90.

Celebrity Equivalence: Bradley Cooper and Scarlett Johansson

Bentley Continental GT-“da Vinci”

With the right color combo, perhaps a black on saddle, this strikes an operatic chord. Copious amounts of dead cow and rainforest wood in the interior let everyone know who the top of the food chain is.

Sexy Scale: 88.

Celebrity Equivalence: George Clooney and Charlize Theron

In the "Just Missed Category"

Lamborghini Gallardo

Nowhere near as shouty as past models and that is what Lamborghinis are supposed to do. They are teenage fantasy cars that announce the arrival of the over-privileged and crass, in wincingly awful colors. And like the fat girl with the real pretty face that you think would be gorgeous if she just lost weight...stripped down...it’s a letdown.

Sexy Scale: 78.

Celebrity Equivalence: Jaime Foxx and Cameron Diaz

On the other end of the spectrum here are some cars that I hope were gifts or you stole them if you are unfortunate enough to own one.

BMW’s 5 and 7 Series

These cars look grief-strickenly awful. It’s a tragedy given the German’s mastery of “the driver’s car”. Seriously, for them to skin a beautiful piece of machinery so poorly, makes you want to stuff the designers inside a seal that you then dangle off the coast of South Africa to be a Great White’s dinner.

Sexy Scale: 20.

Celebrity Equivalence: Steve Buscemi and Joan Cusack

Honda Element

A hideous embodiment of all that is wrong with having Star Trek conventions. Clearly these people grew up and designed a car that exudes “my mom hugged me a little too much”. Nobody wants to see this abomination driving around. Save it for the couch and get it off our roads.

Sexy Scale: 0.

Celebrity Equivalence: Bill Gates and Rosie O’Donnell

Chrysler PT Cruiser

The PT combines the likability of a Hearse with the sex appeal of 30’s ambulance...this is a ghastly little piece of engineering.

Sexy Scale: -5.

Celebrity Equivalence: Moe Sizlack and Samantha Ronson

-Sexiest Car in a TV show

Ferrari 308 GTS

Knight Rider was toys for tots. Magnum PI was the real bomb and Tom Selleck was rocking the shit in the car everyone wanted...so much so we even wore the short shorts like him. *Gulp*

-Sexiest Car in a Movie

Aston Martin DB5

Bond, James Bond. This car was suave, sophisticated and sexy as all get out. This was a match made in heaven like bangers and mash...or butter and lollipops. Ok that was a Boogie Nights reference but there was no way I was making a “shaken martini” one.

I am of course mindful that we are in tough economic times and cars like the DB9 are beyond our collective reach. I am also acutely aware that even if they are within the grasp...given my “Benjamin Button” blog, they should not be our focus.

I test drove my dream car, the DB9, last year and I chose to walk away. I figure some things are simply better admired from afar. In my mind it is still near perfection and there it remains.

See you next week Top of the Food Chain!

-Life is complicated and far from perfect but it is still great.

Through the American Looking Glass

An Economic collapse has occurred because Politicians weren’t up to the task of mitigating it. We have failed in electing serious individuals that can make the hard choices when they need to be made and it has become clear that both the economic and political systems are mortally flawed.

As we live our lives and pay our taxes, we assumed our elected shopkeepers are at least competent enough to mind the store as we toil, yet we return to find the cupboards bare. It turns out that competency behind the counter wasn't the nature of the beast. Minding us was.

Citizens who lived through the Great Depression warned us that rose-colored glass is dangerous. They tried to instill the wisdom that each of us needs to be responsible, practical and prepared. In their day, a penny saved really was a penny earned and savings and work were the only true attributes of wealth and capital.

They didn't trust the government to be good stewards so coffee cans and mattresses would again be necessary when the rainy day returns.

Along came the Boom Generation and they spent everything they had and then some. The Boomers had no such qualms with the hand at the till as the Depressers did and the mantra of “can we” won out over “should we”.

By the turn of the new Millennium the debt was so cumbersome it could not conceivably be repaid by the original borrowers. Instead it would need to be passed to their children and grandchildren. Unimaginably in the U.S. over the last nine years that debt has tripled and if the U.S. sneezes...

I'm not sure what generation of grandchildren's grandchildren must now pay off this enormous debt but assuredly the idiom has reached absurdity.

We are now consumers more than producers and the politicians became cheerleaders to the indulgence. The more we spent the better the markets reacted. Spend! Spend! Spend! How the hell did spending by the over-leveraged masses, not saving, become the answer to financial hardship?

They cheered us on knowing the system fails when consumption is halted and it’s hard to get re-elected when the economy is in the crapper. So while we the people were too busy personalizing our iPods, our great leaders were only busy taking our temperature and playing mood ring. Not being the leaders they needed to be.

It’s reprehensible that politicians failed to focus our malaise, however it’s inexcusable that they did nothing to fix the real problems despite it.

A politician’s job has become all about winning elections by pandering to our whims, fears, and imagination. Their job has morphed into the perception of their accomplishments and our tolerance for reality.

Politicians today lack fortitude and conviction as these are counterproductive to electability.

Instead they are glorified vacuum salesman more interested in fundraising and networking than actually solving problems. Not that they have the skill set to even solve problems.

Robert Redford’s famous role in The Candidate had become reality. "What do we do now"...indeed.

I have absolutely no faith in the partisan politician as our savior. Partisan is another way of saying you love Tie Domi if he is a Maple Leaf but hate him if he’s a Hab. He is a laudable or contemptible hockey player based on a logo! This is ridiculous.

Partisanship and pandering to an ideological niche demographic has nothing to do with good governance by intelligent people. There are only good ideas and bad ideas regardless of jersey color.

The candidates themselves are nominated by bag men and the politically obsessed. We should not have the elitist Country clubber nor the nosey neighbors playing kingmakers in deciding who will eventually be making the direst decisions for us all.

These people are not our best and brightest. They are the insincere, ground up and extruded from a flawed system, then molded to appeal to the masses. They are partisan hacks who are merely poll chasers and sycophants to the powerful and myopically motivated. They lack true intelligence and character. They are not leaders.

Democracy itself has let us down for it dictates the populist decision is always right. Remember such a notion encouraged such gems as the sun travels around the earth, the earth is flat, slavery is acceptable, segregation is the right approach and homosexuality is immoral. I don’t want the mass opinion to dictate what is right at all times.

Right now, we need actual leaders not buffoons craning their necks for the cameras, looking to score political points and touting nonsensical answers meant only to ingratiate.

This economic tsunami is happening and we are in that little dory from Robin Williams’ painting in Good Will Hunting with the waves crashing down upon us and there is no land in sight.

The housing market has merely begun its decent into the abyss. Spurred on by the intoxicating interest rates and tax deductible mortgages stateside, this incentivized real estate Ponzi scheme is going to fall like Niagara and the US needs to recover before we can. Unfortunately, all we have is disingenuous and ill-equipped politicians between us and the rocks below.

The U.S., according to Bloomberg has committed $12.8 trillion dollars on their “recovery” so far. That is almost equivalent to their entire GDP and is 14 times the actual tangible currency in circulation. Their national debt has risen from $4 trillion to $12 trillion in nine years with another $1.7 trillion forecasted in the next federal budget.

Now, these are barely comprehensible numbers to we non-shopkeepers and I'm fearful that they mean no more to politicians. It is time to take back the shop and kick out the useless mimes behind the counter. It’s time to realize that their act is about self preservation and that does not include our own.

-as appears in PIE Magazine. Written by Kevin Bubel.

See you next week Top of the Food Chain!

-Life is complicated and far from perfect but it is still great.

Size Matters

A few friends were over the other night and prior to us delving into our delicious Cuban Cigars, we discussed the role government should play in people’s lives. The two opposing views were: (i) the government should ban behaviour detrimental to society; and (ii) the government should delineate given the severity of the detriment.

For example, casinos are a form of gambling, like bingos, so should they be lumped together as detrimental or delineated by some measure. We came up with “Social Impact Circles” coupled with “Enjoyment Circles” which led to circlepolooza.

You see by drawing circles on a blank piece of paper we could depict the relationship between the “Social Impact” on society to the “Enjoyment”of the individual. The larger the “Impact” the larger the circle and likewise for the “Enjoyment”. The larger the disparity, the larger the level of offense or inoffensiveness in reverse.

A casino circle was much larger on the “Impact” side than a bingo, as locales where they pop up suffer bankruptcies and thefts to a much larger degree than bingo locales. This would be a direct relationship to the ability to lose $1000’s in mere seconds at a casino, but physically impossible to lose that kind of money in a bingo.

Both are gambling and both give you the “high” but one is more in line with its enjoyment circle while the other is far more unbalanced and therefore egregious and dangerous. Conclusion: casinos-banned, bingos-on the fence.

Ok so moving on, what about smoking? The health impact is huge, so that gets a huge circle and the enjoyment would be comparatively small. I say this because first-time smokers look like the fireman that wasn’t wearing his mask and hacking up a lung. While long-term smokers look like they have an annoyingly hard to reach itch they need scratched with a nicotine fix, but how good is the delivery device when it only lasts 15 minutes?

Now Heroine is an itch scratcher people! Those people could wallow in their own excrement all day after that puppy. I mean how good is a drug when you don’t care if you are rolling around in shit?! Therefore, this is a big circle coupled with a big circle because excrement surfing is not good for productivity. Smoking-banned. Heroine-banned (only because the “impact” circle approaches extinctions levels haha).

Which reminds me, we should all be allowed a doomsday stash of Heroine. If that meteor from Armageddon is en route then I don’t want to spend 3 weeks thinking about impending doom. Let’s get some of that “1000 times an orgasm” thing going that Ewan McGregor talks about in Trainspotting....but I digress.

There are circles for simple pleasures like going for hikes, playing sports and watching TV where the enjoyment is comparatively very large to the impact, so those things are all good. I mean there are people who slip and fall and hurt themselves or die in a freak occurrence, but nothing is guaranteed safe and we need to live life.

Some of the more interesting ones were alcohol, for example, versus pot. Now I addressed this a few blogs ago, but drawing a few circles seals the deal. Booze has a larger impact circle than pot, while the enjoyment is on par for both. However, let’s not ban liquid courage just yet because it is still a pretty big enjoyment circle and for some of us, it leads to the biggest disparity in circles...sex.

Sex is one really crazy big circle (enjoyment) coupled with a comparatively small one (social impact). I know there is some stuff out there that might give you the pee stings and of course there is the odd trip-cancelling virus, but overall we seem to be growing mightily in the population department so let’s call sex a big win.

Now we have all seen the TV shows where someone is doing something that presses play on our internal soundtrack of “what is this idiot doing?” Like the Running of the Bulls in Spain, for example. 2000 lbs of hardened muscle and gouging horn in a constricted area with your 180 lbs of feeble monkey suit is just a bad idea. However, here the social impact is good. Darwin was right that we need a little survival of the fittest to thin out the herd a bit. Idiot dies = better society.

You see smokers cost the health care system a lot of money which translates into considerable pain spread to all of us. As for the skydiver that packs his chute badly? A small earthly dent and one less pollution machine in our closed system has negligible social impact.

Right now in the States there is a debate over Universal Health Care. The arguments boil down to costs...one side is saying the cost of such an endeavour is a job killer, while the other is saying the cost of doing nothing is a people killer. Sounds like simple circles to me.

See ya next week Top of the Food Chain!

-Life is complicated and far from perfect but it is still great

Hunting for a Good Will

I thought I’d go with some fluff this week, something light and airy... Summer Movies it is then.

We have just passed the halfway mark and this is what we’ve gotten so far:

Wolverine

Hugh Jackman, the shredded actor/producer on the film, underwhelms and leaves us mildly disappointed. Claws and bad hair worked in an ensemble but sag under the weight of a solo project. I give it a 6.25 for popcorn fare. Looks headed for a $180M domestic gross

Star Trek

The reboot stole the early cool mantle that Iron Man owned this time last year. All props here go to director JJ Abrams who mixed in time travel and alternate futures (uhemm LOST fans) with a slick look. 8.5 and headed for $260M

Angels and Demons

Zzzzzz. This was the let down of the summer thus far for me. Dan Brown had not yet reached his stride constructing labyrinths and we are unfortunately left with pointing statues. Seriously. Two hours of “It’s pointing that way”. Oh and add on a ridiculously implausible ending and a wasted Tom Hanks and you get a 5.75 and $135M.

Terminator Salvation

Loud and energetic but it was just a “meh” so my synopsis is a befitting meh. 6.0 and $125M

UP

Now the critics duped me into this one with the 98% on Rotten Tomatoes. I didn’t care about the old man or the annoying chubster kid and if it wasn’t for the best 5 mins in film so far this summer (montage of the couple growing old together), I’d be a lot harsher on this movie. 6.5 and headed for $330M

Year One

Haven’t seen it. Wouldn’t see it. Suggest you not see it.

The Hangover

Bradley Cooper was rocking the shit in this one...he is Ocean’s Eleven Clooney and Pitt, cool. Sure it wasn’t perfect but it was a strong raunch right up to the end credits that included an elevator blow job. The ubiquitous saying for the summer of ’09 is “I was so drunk last night that I expected to see a tiger in the bathroom.” 7.75 and $240M

Transformers

Really loud and really long. Now when people say a movie is too long it strikes me odd if it’s a good movie. I mean how can a flick that is good, be too long? Well this movie answers that question. It’s not great but it’s definitely entertaining in parts, however Bay (Director) blows it big time by dragging it waaaaaaaaay out. 6.25 and heading for a monstrous $400M. PS. Yes....Meghan Fox is hot.

Upcoming Movies:

Bruno

Critics are already saying it’s no Borat but it is a sequel so look for a stronger opening and a larger box office. Projection $150+

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

This series is pretty rock solid and you can count on this movie to be no different...just the same way JK is already counting her money. Projection $300+

G.I. Joe

This movie is not doing it for me. I suggest checking out the reviews because this could be one of the bombs of the season....“Land of the Lost” bad. Projection $50M+

Inglorious Bastards

Can Tarantino make a comeback with Brad Pitt? The answer is a yes and a no. This did not thrill them at Cannes and there are probably edits going on as we speak. Projection $85M+

See you next week Top of the Food Chain

-Life is complicated and far from perfect but it is still great