Rent-a-wreck

Rented a wreck this weekend from the nice folks at "Rent-A-Wreck." Sweet people. Very helpful.

My 2000 Mazda Protege was on the fritz and for two days I got to coast around town in a lush, ocean-liner most know as a 1997 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. She may not be the prettiest ship in the fleet, but she made up for it with her pimp-like smooth ride. It was like gliding on air.

I spent the weekend in it, tooling it around town with my sister riding shotgun. Me slurping a large strawberry-banana smoothie, leaning to the right while  listening to 99.3 FM (because all the car had was a tape deck). And they were playing War, which you folks play a lot here in California. I mean, in St. Louis you will never hear a song by War, but here we were, cruising down Golden State Highway listening to "The World Is A Ghetto." (Which is actually my favorite War song. Very apt criticism of urban life and the depression that comes with it.)

I felt very much like a pimp, but not in the objectification/subjucation of women variety. More like that bland, all-encompassing hip hop version that took the once dirty word and sanitized it for mass consumption.

The Rent-A-Wreck mobile was so great, that I was actually sad to turn it in for my perpetually messy Mazda, which had the faint smell of cat pee. After all, the Cutlass, despite being a total grandma car, smelled lovely and was all clean and pleasant, not funky with the odor of living. So I spent an hour Monday afternoon at the "cop" car wash on 24th Street getting my car detailed.

My sister and I discussed the play she's working on (Spotlight's "Ziggurat"), real estate ads that feature cartoons of homes as opposed to pictures of the actual site and the large number of police officers, sheriff's deputies, CHP patrolmen and government officials were there getting their cars clean. Even district attorney Ed Jagels was there getting his car cleaned (and his shoes shined.) I don't really know the man. After all, we travel in entirely different circles -- me with my local bands and thespians and him prosecuting criminal suspects.

So now my car's undeniably shiny and clean and that's great. It smells all car shampoo fresh and it looks like they got up the remaining glass from that time my windows got broken out. It's all good I guess. But I still sort of, kind of, miss the Cutlass. You can't really be a pimp in a Protege, unless it's a tricked out Protege, which looks like a bastardized tricked out Honda Civic when you trick it out. I mean, if I'm going to be all chilly I can't do the thing wrong.

Oh well, guess I'm settling for being square.