It’s funny who you see when you visit a small town in Southern Ohio. Jules and I went down to Yellow Springs Ohio on Friday for a yoga workshop that she wanted to attend.  Jules has been there four or five times before and never seen one of the most famous residents of this small town.  It was my first visit.  Jules went to a morning class on her own while I sat in a coffee shop writing.  After about  45 minutes I looked up and noticed this gentleman standing there.  I grabbed my camera and snapped a few pics but decided not to bother him further.  You may recall seeing him previously on his former show on Comedy Central.  Dave’s father was a professor at Antioch College in Yellow Springs.

As we roll in 2008, and I finish clearing my driveway sufficiently that we can get in and out, I’m just glad I didn’t have to drive anywhere last night. I also wish it was just a few degrees colder so the snow was so wet and heavy. As I continue to plow my way through a pile of articles that will appear over the next couple weeks as embargoes expire, I’m looking forward to busy and exciting year kicking off next week with the Consumer Electronics Show, followed by the Detroit Auto show the following week and on through the calendar. Now if we can just get past all the wing-nuts like Mike and Rudy and phonies like Mitt and Hillary and find decent candidate to lead us back to the path of what America is supposed to represent we’ll be all set. Happy today everyone!

On the way home today from my last day at the old job, as I was passing the Hyundai Tech Center I noticed a red-tailed hawk having lunch so I pulled into the driveway and grabbed my camera. I approached raptor slowly, snapping pics as I went. Eventually, the hawk decided I was close enough and headed off for the nearby trees.

Not with a gun or a bow, with my camera. I was out in my latest test car, a Dodge Caliber SRT-4 near Matthaei Botanical Garden yesterday when a doe came up to the edge of the road. I stopped to let it decide when to do when I glanced over and saw several more nearby. I managed to snap off a few shots before the doe by the road moved off and I moved on.

As we were leaving the media center the other day, I had the opportunity to finally meet the legendary Brenda Priddy in person.  For those unfamiliar with her work, many of the photographs that appear in automotive magazines and newspapers of cars where bizzaro tape jobs or big clumps of black camouflage are the work of Brenda and her colleagues at KGP photography.  They have an uncanny knack for being in places where engineers are testing future cars.  These days in the business of automotive journalism Brenda is held in the same high regard as Jim Dunne and Hans Lehman.

At any rate Brenda made a remark in jest that after all her years in the business, she had come to the conclusion that all automotive journalists were either Jewish, gay or both.  Unfortunately my mental energy level at that point was at  low ebb at that moment and I found myself unable to respond with the same degree of eloquence and wit that I am told I exhibited during a verbal joust with our colleague Ray the preceding day.  For the record Ray (even though I doubt you will ever read this) Nothing personal, I’ve been stuck at the corner table many times myself over the years.  It just wasn’t your turn.

Anyway, back to my belated response to Brenda.  Keep in mind that printed word lacks much of the nuance of the spoken word, especially in person and none of the following is meant to offend, insult or denigrate anyone (except perhaps hypocrites like Larry Craig).  I have friends and colleagues are fall into either or both categories and many others and I appreciate and respect all of them.  Disclaimers aside, henceforth is what I might said to Brenda (who herself is Jewish, although I cannot attest to her other preferences) had I been more quick witted during our encounter.

Being at least partially of Middle Eastern descent, I’m certain that following my lineage back far enough would yield ancestors who were members of the tribes of Israel.  However, in recent decades, to my knowledge none of the members of my family have partaken in Yom Kippur, Passover or hanukkah as an active member of the faith.  I myself having been raised Catholic and becoming persuaded early on as to the futility of all religion am an unrepentant athiest.  As to the other half of the generalization, I am not nor have I ever been gay, although I’m sure when it comes time choose what color to paint the walls my wife would likely appreciate me a little more if I did have some tendencies in that general direction.

Alas these words did not emerge from my sometimes scattered mind until some hours after the fact.  Fortunately I have this little corner in which to record them anyway and perhaps she will someday see them.  Pleasure to finally meet you Brenda!

Has it really been a month since I wrote anything here? I’ve got to do better

What the hell is wrong with people?  With all the problems in the world why are so many people obsessed with seeing how stupid rich, famous people can be?  Yesterday over on ABG one of the guys wrote a post about a certain idiot who happens to be heiress to a hotel fortune.  I will neither mention her name or link directly to the post but she is hardly the only one of her kind.  The reason I bring all this up is because that post happened to be the most viewed post of the last thirty days on the site after the AOL home page linked to it.  What did she do that was so noteworthy?  She traded in her Range Rover for a Ford Escape Hybrid.  Who cares what celebrities drive? especially the likes of her.  We all need to make a pledge that whenever anyone mentions Paris, Britney, Lindsay, Russell, Robert, Mel or any of the other idiots who drink too much or use too many drugs or whatever, that we will immediately change the channel, leave the site and generally ignore their foibles.  Stop watching the slow moving train wreck that is celebrity life.   We need to stop enabling these morons.

This morning Max and I drove down to the Transportation Research Center in East Liberty Ohio to cover a story I’m working on for AutoblogGreen. About twenty miles from our destination we spotted this group of vultures having breakfast by the side of the road and stopped to grab some shots.

My kids are of an age where they will very likely never get to experience going to a drive-in theater to watch a movie or whatever it is people used to do at drive-ins. However, today I received a Saturn Outlook that I’m driving for a week for a review. As soon as Max got in and saw the rear seat entertainment system he immediately wanted to watch a movie. So he’s been sitting in back row of the Outlook for the past hour and a half watching Little Miss Sunshine on the seven inch screen, complete with a big bowl of popcorn and a drink.

Why is it that some people just have no sense of humor and insist on flauting that fact? Tesla Motors has a blog on their corporate site where staff put up posts talking about what’s going on at the EV manufacturer. A lot of the posts are about some the design decisions they’ve made and why they made them. The most recent post was written by one of their software engineers about his main side pursuit. Greg Solberg has been building electrically driven furniture for over a decade and most recently he and his girlfriend built a pair of 7 1/2 foot long fuzzy pink slippers. I wrote a post the other night on ABG linking to Greg’s post and the first commenter on the post wrote this:

I don’t know what Tesla Motors was thinking when they allowed such a post on their blog.

To this all I can say is LIGHTEN UP! Some environmentalists are just far to earnest for their own good. Sometimes you just need to relax and smile a bit.