TWM CLASSICS


volume one?

I have long resisted the temptation to reuse old posts from the (ever-growing) TWM archives, but this evening, after the boys and I came within a few precious feet of being broadsided by a big dumb Hummer -- driven, as if I had to tell you, by a guy blathering into a cell phone -- the first thing I thought of, at least once my heart began to beat again, was an old post from the first two weeks of TWM's humble existence. Since a whole lot of you reading now weren't reading back then, and since the sentiment is exactly the same even if the circumstances are somewhat different, this seems like a fine time to turn back the blog, dip into the archives, and re-release an old TWM classic.

So here, from the hazy, crazy fall of 2004, from the days before Site Meters and Official Muses and even regular readers, is a little number I like to call...


BIG. BAD. DUMB.
or, too much is never enough.

While we're on the subject none-too-subtle silly products, crass materialism, and their perverse relationship to issues of self-esteem and sexual potency...

...let me tell you about how, walking across the CFA parking lot on our way to lunch this afternoon, Adam and I -- and at least four other people -- were nearly run down by a slow-lurching, sunflower-yellow HUMMER.

Now, I've seen these things plenty of times before -- usually on the narrow side streets of the East End, or trying vainly to swing into a parking space off Walnut Street, threatening to take out wide swaths of parked cars and small shrubs -- and often right up-close, so this one should not have come as a shock to me. But there was something about this one -- maybe the color, which made me fear instantly for the safety of my retinas; or the way something so big appeared out of nowhere, gliding from right to left beside us like the shark from JAWS -- that made it seem positively gargantuan. Like some big, lemony elephant. Either way, I felt, at that moment, the way people must have felt when they first stood beside the Titanic, thinking, hoo boy, is that thing big!, and, where's an iceberg when you need one?

And then, still thinking, I thought the thought I always think when I see someone driving one of those monstrosities:

What an idiot.

Now, just as a reminder, I am not one of those anti-SUV zealots. I love SUVS -- hell, I even own one -- and will happily defend (most of) them in the face of those predictable, irrational green/hybrid/enviro/psycho rants.

But I'm sorry.

In cars, as in economics, there's a law of diminishing returns. There comes a point -- and the HUMMER is way past that point -- at which a vehicle ceases to become an SUV and instead becomes a tank. There comes a time -- and the HUMMER arrives way past that time -- at which, unless your family is as large (and as well-armed) as a small infantry division, you just don't need a vehicle as big and broad (and ugly) as a small tugboat. Well beyond the intersection of that point and that time lies a land of sad, strange little people who must be hopelessly preoccupied with status, addicted to ostentation, and obsessed with dick size.

(I mean, there's a reason it's called a HUMMER.)

And this guy -- who, despite having George Costanza's hair and Cosmo Kramer's fashion sense, exuded an undeniable aura of vehicularly inflated testosterone when he descended from the beast -- even took it to the next loony level of vanity, joining the ranks of people (usually populated by BMW and Jaguar owners) who feel that, just in case we missed what they're driving, their vanity plate should remind us. His read: LC HUMMR.

I've always thought their plates should read something like: DCK HED. Or: GROSS XS.

Or, perhaps most fittingly: CMPNS8T.

Posted: Sat - September 15, 2007 at 06:53 PM          

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