Purdue University is a feather in the cap for Mitch Daniels and his “Economic Growth Crusader” public image, which has a good possibility of sending him to the Republican National Convention in 2012. The state beams so often of our entrepreneurial spirit, and proven leadership in aerospace, engineering, and biotechnological industries. These aren’t bad things by any means, they’re actually pretty wonderful attributes of an institute of higher learning. However, these wonderful attributes for graduate and post-graduate students don’t trickle down to the bread and butter of the undergraduate student body. The donation machine President Jischke helped create has been pouring money off campus, into sweetheart deals for industries like Purdue Research Park, and the construction of new buildings for the colleges of Engineering and Science. The result of this long-standing focus has been the stagnation of Purdue’s humanities department.

An impressive humanities department is an essential part of a world-class university. The purpose of the university (small u) is to educate its students in both practical and classical matters, so that they possess a complete understanding of the world in which we live and work, and whose judgement can be trusted to come from a wellspring of wisdom and education, thereby improving their contribution to our society at large. A college education, in the medieval and pre-industrial days something exclusively for the aristocratic class, was an indicator of cultivation, wisdom, and experience. The changes brought on by industrialization helped open these institutions to more people, giving the burgeoning middle class the same wisdom, education, and cultivation once reserved for the nobility. For the first time in human history, the powers of rhetoric, philosophy, logic, mathematics, and natural sciences were available to a great number of people, and these educations helped create the truly great American middle class, one of the biggest sculptors of the modern world we live in today.

In response to these shifting classes, the US Government passed the Morrill Acts of 1862, creating our nation’s land-grant universities, of which Purdue is a prominent member. Land grant universities under the Morrill Act were designed to be agricultural colleges, places where the rural, uneducated populations could come to learn the new mechanical and technological innovations in the field of agriculture. The Morrill Act describes its mission thusly:

without excluding other scientific and classical studies and including military tactic, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such manner as the legislatures of the States may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life.

This was one of the greatest investments the US government ever made in education. American agriculture quickly became the envy of the world, and grew in lockstep to our burgeoning population, and this continued well into the modern age, especially during World War II. Purdue has a proud legacy as part of this transformation and the rise of the US as a global power.

Even with these beginnings, an explicit purpose of technical education, and an important part in serious practical accomplishments, the Morrill Act stated that this would not be to the detriment of scientific and classical studies. The goal of the Morrill Act colleges was not to create technical vocational schools distinct from classical education, but to combine both of them to create a “practical and liberal education of the industrial classes.”

It might sound like it would be difficult to gather young farmers and introduce them to the wonders of tractors and Socrates simultaneously, but we have to remember that the widespread anti-intellectualism and antipathy towards liberal education present in our provincial populations today wasn’t as much of a factor. It was certainly present, but the rural students of yesteryear were just as aspirational to the upper classes as we are today, and in the 19th century, a classical education was the mark of an upper-class individual that, with enough Protestant hard work, anyone could attain thanks to this new and glorious Union. The rise of conspicuous consumption in the late 19th century started a shift away from an education as a badge of honor, and the post-war Boom and consumer culture of the 1950′s created all kinds of new, easier methods of displaying your wealth and accomplishments.

Combine the Cold War directive to focus on science and mathematics, and the popular sentiment against the student movements of the 1960s and 70s, and you have a recipe to cement the status of the liberal arts education as a punch line in the eyes of the middle class American. Modern aspirational people, by and large, pine for expensive cars and vacations in the Caribbean, not the antiquated, aristocratic (even Un-American) ideals of education, cultivation, and sophistication.

We’ll explore the attitudes of youth towards sophistication, the effects of mass media and the internet, and good old-fashioned American Puritanism in our next installment.

Mentioning Purdue in the same sentence as Arizona State is a
serious shot across the bow. However, university administrators must admit
that Peter Schrag has a point worth contemplating, and not just spout ad
hominems about how he “didn’t do his research.”

I do feel insulted as well, being compared to a student of the notorious
Arizona State, but the charge of Purdue being “prosaic” carries some
weight with me. Purdue always struck me as less an academic powerhouse and
more an upper-middle-class vocational school. During my admission period,
I heard a lot about how much money people made after they graduated
Purdue, but not about what people learned, and the kind of smart people
there. Which, don’t get me wrong, we have loads of smart professors,
students and TA’s. But the fact remains that our strongest areas aren’t
frontiers of knowledge, but rather specialized vocational skillsets.
Management, Engineering, and Agriculture are Purdue’s strong suits, with
our Liberal Arts department sitting in the shadow of IU. Our science
department is the exception, but even there a lot of emphasis is placed on
industrial, commercial, and enterprise interests. These are admirable
skills, yes, but they lack that certain romance one thinks of!
when they bring to mind other top-tier schools. It isn’t just the
different focus of our students that earns us scorn, though.

Think of another “upper-middle-class vocational” school, Northwestern.
This school is similar to Purdue in that the U of Chicago overshadows its
Liberal Arts department, but has very good management, law, and science
programs. It still enjoys a much better reputation than Purdue. I
attribute this to the fact that Evanston is a much nicer place to be than
West Lafayette, and the Purdue campus’s grubby feel. Purdue’s campus lacks
a consistent architectural direction besides “everything has red bricks,”
and most of the buildings built here after World War II and before the
turn of the millennium are undistinguished, and in the case of Beering,
Math, and CL50, rather ugly. The campus is also a very congested,
car-centric area, with a busy state highway bisecting the academic campus.
You don’t get the romantic, academic, ivory tower feel here.

These considerations are absolutely immaterial to the education I am
receiving here, and I doubt that more than a few students honestly care
one whit about architecture and the feel of the campus. Furthermore, the
amelioration of these “problems” would cost a lot more money than Purdue
has or cares to spend. However, these admittedly very subjective points go
a long way to explaining the “prosaic” moniker hurled at us by a
journalist half a country away.

Imagine this scenario: You’re in a packed lecture, being bored as usual, staring off at that cute girl 3 rows down. All of a sudden a dark figure appears in the doorway.

It’s an “active shooter,” with an arsenal rivaling that of an infantryman. Probably some liberal against freedom or something. He forgot something, though. That bulge in your pants isn’t from staring at the cute girl 3 rows down, it’s from your fully loaded .357 Colt Anaconda. “Text messages don’t stop bullets, I DO!” you yell, as you brandish your sizable firearm.

Just as he takes aim at that cute girl 3 rows down, you point your body towards him, your arms staying perfectly pointed at him despite the powerful recoil of your virile firearm. You have just given him a third eye socket in between his two pre-existing ones. You’re a media darling, and that cute girl is no longer 3 rows down but at your side.
Now stop daydreaming. This kind of thing doesn’t happen in real life. Real life is a lot uglier. Allowing everyone and their mothers to carry loaded firearms on a college campus just so they have one ready in case their “Defender of Justice” fantasy comes true isn’t a good idea. You aren’t Batman. You’re a human with the same amount of judgment as anyone else. If you want to play the hero, there are several video games available for all three major consoles and the PC which will cater to this. Keep your guns at home, please.

Avatar has been called (mostly by press releases, ad campaigns, and the bloggers that parrot them) a ‘groundbreaking … transcendental film experience.” It is none of these things. It is in fact, a very long amusement park attraction. When judged by the standards of a typical IMAX movie that played at Navy Pier in the 90′s, it beats the pants of off those. As a film it is a resounding thud on the ground it is proclaiming to break.

I saw Avatar in 3D in IMAX. This is the way J.C. Intended you to view it. The 3D experience was certainly miles ahead of any other 3D movie I have seen. This, I would argue, is the first film that uses 3D in a non-gimmicky, ‘look at this thing flying at you’ way, and this is the film’s strongest point. The first 10 minutes of the film when you are first getting acquainted with this strange feeling is quite cool. The world of Pandora is quite well imagined, colorful, beautiful. I wasn’t bored with this film until after the 9/11 holocaust at the Bigtree, almost entirely thanks to the visuals. The 3D CGI used in this film is an immersive visual language the likes of which we haven’t seen before. Unfortunately, what is being conveyed with this language is not a good film by any stretch of the imagination.

Lincoln Michel of The Millions wrote a review which articulates the numerous plot and character failings of Avatar. Here’s a ctrl-c ctrl-v of the bits I thought most salient:

“I could not help wondering where the James Cameron of the first two Terminators had gone, the man who could meld effects with imaginative storytelling and characters you could care about. Is there anything in Avatar that feels as fresh as the T2 liquid nitrogen scene? Any characters as kickass as Sarah Connor? Any one-liners that could hold up to “Hast la vista, baby”? For all of Avatar’s visual wonder, the film feels dreadfully lazy.”

“I don’t think anyone expects a popcorn blockbuster geared towards younger audiences to have the wit of a David Mamet script or the imaginative directing of a Fellini film. But when you are announcing yourself as the future of filmmaking, you should be able to stand tall against the great blockbusters of the past or at the very least of the present. Compared to the well-conceived, engaging and imaginative action and kids films of even the past two years (The Dark Knight, Up, Fantastic Mr. Fox, District 9, Iron Man, etc.) Avatar feels like a colossal underachievement in filmmaking as much as a colossal success in visual effects. When those visual effects become commonplace, what are we left with?”

A fair number of Avatar’s devotees have taken to the task of defending against these claims, and while I will not tell you that you are wrong for thinking differently than I (a claim I cannot make of many ‘Avatar-defense’ blog posts) , I believe them to be misguided, in that they have been seduced by the potential of this new, exciting 3D filmmaking process, so much so that they ignored Avatar’s merits as a film.

Shauvon McGill’s post, for example, spends 2000 words defending Avatar while using only 400 of those talking about the film itself, and not the amount of effort it took, how much money it cost, etc. But all of this imaginative hard work, and petabytes of visual data might as well not exist if it’s not in the service of a competent film. Plenty of movies that totally blow cost a lot of money, took a lot of work, were kicking around in the head of a director, etc. All that stuff doesn’t matter, the movie still blows. McGill tells us:

“Discrediting a film because its plot is cliche (sic) is like discrediting Picasso for using paint brushes. There are only so many ways you can tell a story. That’s just the truth.”

This isn’t the truth. Discrediting Picasso for using paintbrushes would be like dismissing Stanley Kubrick for using a camera. Discrediting a film for a clichéd plot is much more akin to discrediting Thomas Kinkade for painting trite bullshit like pastoral barn scenes. Let’s pretend, for example, the Dances With Wolves/The Last Samurai/Pocahontas “White Guy Defends Noble Savages” plot doesn’t suck and isn’t patronizing and has the potential to be told well. Even if that were true, Avatar did not tell it well. McGill tells us that Avatar‘s Sam Worthington character explores duality and internal conflict and moral choice. To cater to the broadest possible audience, to make the most money, to get the most return on the insane investment, Avatar does not deliver to us an ambiguous moral landscape in which to ponder the duality of man. The moral landscape of Avatar is not complex at all. Anyone who ponders ethical questions for even one second will come to the same conclusion Sam Worthington does in Avatar. The direction of the movie makes the choice not a choice at all, and therefore, a rather poor discussion of duality and moral choice. The Na’vi are so obviously good, they have a tangible version of a Gaia/Mother Earth, and the corporate villains are obviously horrible, greedy, baby-killers. JC does all the thinking for us, and tells us the choice with his direction. This is what the vast majority of suburban megaplex customers prefer. The American cinema landscape is so averse to subtext that we get this spoon-fed anti-corporate message that resonates pretty sourly with the fact that this movie itself is a product of corporate greed and the bulldozing of smaller, much more competent film directors that just so happen can’t cough up 300 million bucks on bespoke 3D cameras.

McGill would tell me that this analysis of the plot is missing the point. Missing the point of gushing over the effects, perhaps. Both Michel and McGill tell us that we didn’t go to Avatar expecting high art. McGill and Michel also both invoke the Terminator films. McGill asks us if we “hate on Terminator because the Terminator’s character wasn’t developed that well?” Of course we don’t because the Terminator’s character was developed well! Sarah Connor and John Connor and the Terminator had interactions which were memorable, relationships we felt for. John Connor’s father void being filled by a robot, come on, these are cool relationships! Terminator was not high art, but it was good filmmaking. Avatar is neither.

The final paragraph of McGill’s analysis tells us that whether or not Avatar was good is irrelevant, and that the new 3D cinema that Avatar is ushering us to makes this film akin to Beethoven’s 9^th and Michaelangelo’s David. He then goes on to put Avatar in the ‘create’ side of a ‘make money/create’ dichotomy. I find Shauvon McGill to be one of the smartest people I know and a good friend, but these ideas are rather absurd to me. While I too eagerly anticipate when a film director who isn’t aiming to put the most fat suburban asses into the seats as possible to create a complex, worthy film with this technology, I also fear that movies will become even more inaccessible for aspiring directors to make movies independent of the mainstream Hollywood mentality. It remains to be seen whether or not Avatar will be the beginning of a wonderful, immersive 3D film landscape or the end of the artfully directed Hollywood film as we know it.

Powell Motors was once Detroit’s darling, the upstart with the perfect Alger-ian story: From a cast-off orphan to auto tycoon. The whole narrative, however, reached a nadir in 1991 with the unveiling of the Homer, the car built and designed from star-crossed destiny. This week, the story of Herbert Powell and his eponymous car company, Powell Motors.

Bastard in a Basket

Adopted in 1948 from the Shelbyville Orphanage, Herbert Powell exemplified the classic rags-to-riches story. Orphaned at an early age by his biological parents, Abe Simpson and a comely carnival worker, Herb was adopted by the Powells of Shelbyville, who, after repeated attempts, couldn’t concieve a male child. Herb excelled at school, with an aggressive attitude, he secured admission to Harvard. His parents, however, weren’t equipped to pay for it, and he mustered up the considerable tuition fee working odd jobs around the campus.

After Harvard, he got together with some enterprising and well-heeled classmates and founded Powell Motors in Detroit, MI. The boardroom took a very cerebral approach to auto making, and utilizing keen marketing research, fashioned a lineup of cars to compete with the Big 3.

Cheap and Cheerful

Compete they did. In the malaise days of the early eighties, the Powell model lineup sold very well. The compact Cheetah, thanks to its frugality, sold over 100,000 units from 1980-1985. Although front-wheel drive and unibody, the Cheetah was not very modern. To inflate profit margins, the unit body used a very small amount of steel (“about 40 bucks worth,” Powell himself is alleged to have said). It used a rear live axle with leaf springs and a trailing arm up front. Not yet mature enough to develop their own engines, Powell used the ancient Chevrolet 153 engine, under license from GM, (for a cursory amount of $15.00) a 4-cylinder version of Chevrolet’s third generation inline 6 from 1962, itself an update of an engine dating back to 1927. The engine, displacing 2.5L, was detuned to meet emissions standards, producing all of 65 SAE hp, keeping any promise of “sporting” off of the sales brochure. Gas mileage, however, was a perfectly acceptable 28 combined EPA MPG, thanks to the light weight of the paper-thin body.

Despite a generic, boxy appearance and some strange color options, the Cheetah turned Powell Motors into an overnight success. Leveraging this success, Powell took on some serious loans, and developed station wagon, hatchback, sedan, even SUV versions of the Cheetah platform. Herbert Powell was considerably enriched thanks to his generous stock options.

However, the late 1980s saw considerable erosion of Powell’s business model. The Cheetah platform was getting long in the tooth in the marketplace (if it wasn’t already when it debuted), and Powell’s working class sensibilities clashed with the calculating, effete boardroom in the development of the Cheetah’s successor, the Persephone (“People don’t want cars named after hungry old Greek broads!”) . With no new cars coming down the pike, frustration in the boardroom, and mounting debt, Powell Motors was a car company looking for direction. Where they found that direction almost certainly precipitated their fall.

Homer Simpson, Automotive Designer

After an argument with a movie theater manager, Powell’s biological father Abe Simpson suffered a heart attack. Reminded of his mortality, Abe told his son Homer about his long-lost half brother. Filled with a sense of filial duty, Homer tracked down and met Herb. Herb took Homer into his lavish estate, and became quite close with the Simpson family, realizing that though he was quite monetarily enriched, he lacked the satisfaction of family life.

Powell wanted to repay Homer for this gift of family, and led him into the lavish Powell atrium and offered him a free Powell model of his choice. When Simpson asked for “a big car… with lots of ‘pep,’” the Powell Motors lineup offered none of these things. Herb Powell had an epiphany. While the Cheetah-based models performed well in the malaise of the early eighties, American tastes had shifted. (One could make the argument that Simpson’s never moved from the concept cars of the 1950s.) Thanks to Homer’s insight, Herb Powell put Simpson in charge of the development of the new Powell Motors auto platform, now called the “Homer.”

Simpson, totally clueless in automotive design, was relegated to being a gopher on his first day in the design studio. He watched as the “eggheads” cooked up a large, powerful car with items he understood little about, like an on-board computer and rack and pinion steering. When he returned to the Powell estate, Herb saw his despondent state, and, when he realized Homer was being pushed around by the engineers, motivated him to confidently order everything he wanted on this car.

Simpson’s ideas were off the wall, to say the least. The first item on the agenda was a very large beverage holder, large enough to accommodate “those super-slurpers at the Kwik-E-Mart.” He also directed the styling, bringing back the “snazz” that had been missing from automotive design for 20 years, such as tailfins, bubble domes, and shag carpeting. With family road trips in mind, he decreed a separate, soundproof bubble dome for the back seat, with optional muzzles and restraints. The engineers, clearly frightened that they would have to build a car bespoke to such silly whims, called Powell directly and appealed to reason. Powell would have none of it, he was convinced that Homer’s “Average Schlub” approach would be the saving grace of the company.

Features such as three different horns, all playing “La Cucaracha,” and a loud exhaust, were combined, ever so reluctantly by the project engineers, into a design sketch, which was outre, to say the least, but also reaching a kind of modern harmony with the odd styling cues, much like J Mays would do with the Beetle and the Thunderbird a decade later. Simpson was totally displeased with this sketch, ripped it up, and scrawled a design of his own, hardly distinguishable from a child’s drawing of a “cool car,” complete with an almost spherical front dome, and tailfins the size of which would make even Harley Earl’s 1959 Cadillacs blush. Chrome was everywhere, the bumpers, the ersatz Rolls-Royce grill topped by a hood ornament of a bowling man, and the step ladder for the driver and passenger. Behind the 2 foot tailfins, bridged by an aerodynamic wing, was an odd bustleback with a spare tire mounted on it. The whole design was kept under wraps from Powell until the gala unveiling, in the fall of 1990.

Unpleasant Surprises

The Homer was an unquantifiable flop. The total hodge-podge design and the stratospheric $82,000 sticker price shocked the stockholders. They sold off Powell Motors stock in droves. Forced into receivership, Powell took a low-ball offer from the Komatsu Motor Corporation, which took over the factories and offices immediately, where they manufactured Powell cars for the next model year as Komatsus, then retooled the factory for domestic production of their own platforms.

Family Ties

Herbert Powell was completely bankrupted by his faith in his long-lost half-brother. He declared to Homer that he “had no brother,” and went off aboard a bus. A year later, however, he reconciled with him after Homer lent him $2,000 for his next start-up, manufacturing a device used to translate baby sounds into speech, which became quite a lucrative invention.

The Powell story illustrates that in fact, designing cars is something left to the professionals. We don’t doubt that a car we design would become a similar marketplace flop. (Although our bespoke car would probably be a lot like the body of a Lancia Fulvia coupe with the drivetrain of a 1980s Honda CRX, designed with an eye towards weight saving) Powell Motors was headed for bankruptcy before Homer Simpson appeared, with the mounting debt and eroding market, but his design certainly hastened their demise. Herbert Powell, too, met a decidedly un-Alger-ian ending, for a time. As Lisa Simpson said: “His life was an unbridled success, until he found out that he was a Simpson.”

I don’t know why, but I have a serious soft spot for Europe in the 80′s and 90′s. European cars looked so cool back then, Fiats, Renaults, and Volkswagens. I also love language-learning video. I had a Japanese language video series, produced in the early 1990s, which was seriously cool. Japanese women with frizzy permed hair discussing how skilled they are at using this gigantic computer.

Language videos are fun for me, because they emphasize the early stages of language learning, and you get to watch videos of people having seriously ordinary conversations you would never see on a TV show or movie. French In Action is great

Also, Mireille is a stone cold babe. The narration starts with: “The question: How to teach French more effectively?” as Mireille is introducing her parents. I think this question is rhetorical, since Mireille is on screen at the time. She’s all the motivation any male needs to learn some serious French.

(note: the woman in the video preview is not Mireille.)

also viddy those old WGBH and Annenberg title cards. Great sounds!

Short answer: Not really. There is, for example, a method by which nerds establish a pecking order, and while not the physical brutality of the less-brained castes, it can be just as vicious. We will often value our nerdiness by how much we pay attention to the X-per-Y values of our nerd stuff, gigabytes per disk, lumens per watt, gallons per flush. Consider, for example, the manner in which I described a recent car trip to my associate A. Zaglaras: “I had an average speed of 64 miles per hour, and thanks to some aerodynamic assistance from our nation’s tractor trailer fleet, made over 34 miles per gallon.” Never mind that this drive was along I-65 from Merrillville to West Lafayette, quite possibly the most boring hour and a half you could spend driving.

When you get into the world of computers, though, is when the nerds start to resemble an antisocial Darwinist landscape. Take for example, the discussion of computer operating systems. The 3 camps are rife for conflict. Windows users are games-addicted dorks, Mac users are rich, snob dorks, and Linux users are simply mega-dorks of the highest dorkitude. A cursory glance at slashdot discussions will show the ruthlessness these OS camps show as they battle for dork supremacy. However, the broad strokes of OS choice are simply not the end of this divisive tribalism.

Witness, for example, the GNOME vs. KDE rivalry. For the initiate, GNOME and KDE are graphical frontends for the Linux operating system, the programs responsible for things like windows, taskbars, the desktop, and a whole host of other graphical things. The main differences: GNOME is all about simplicity, and KDE delivers a more modern, polished environment. Each has a separate suite of default applications, as well. To the casual observer, they are different operating systems. This rivalry really only gets bitter between those mega-nerds, and especially those under the age of 18. I must admit though, any 16-year-old who uses Linux seems pretty cool in my book. So what if he calls my KDE desktop “a bloated, shiny, slow, pale imitation of Aqua for morons, with a shitty web browser (Konqueror)” at least he knows his business. The rivalry also produces this, the number one Google hit for “GNOME vs. KDE,” a nigh-unreadable feature in the style of a boxing match or Slow-Mo Sports. As a Linux  user myself, I will weigh in with this point: I think the Penguin mascot is pretty lame.

So  you see then, nerds are just as nasty as everyone else. We’re just smarter and have bad luck with the girls.

tmarksthespot entered the room.
Athanasios entered the room.
john entered the room.
john: woo!
tmarksthespot: haha~!
tmarksthespot: Tom!
tmarksthespot: Chatroom!
tmarksthespot: Woooooo!
Athanasios: wooooo!
john: limgong a/s/l
tmarksthespot: Trillian is not cooperating with my secondary taskbar
Athanasios: 19/f/miami
tmarksthespot: I wonder if windows sidebar has a twitter app
john: oooh pix please
john: totally
john: if linux has a twitter app, a real os certainly has one
tmarksthespot: But the sidebar!
Athanasios: sidbars are silly
john: yeah, i bet it does
tmarksthespot: you are silly
Athanasios: thats beside the point
tmarksthespot: I want to tweeeet constantly!
john: because the linux one is on the linux version of sidebar
Athanasios: turn into a kettle
tmarksthespot: now I need to refigure out how to get sidebar back
Athanasios: turn the monitor sideways
tmarksthespot: wahoo
tmarksthespot: oh a gadget
texas0212: what is going on
texas0212 entered the room.
Athanasios: whaaat!
texas0212: what is going on
john: ELI!
tmarksthespot: taxas! a/s/l!
Athanasios: hi eli!
tmarksthespot: Is that Elias??
texas0212: what
texas0212: john who are these people
Athanasios: i is tooom
john: Tim is tmarks
tmarksthespot: bobobobobobobob
EduardoLaSombra entered the room.
Athanasios: yaaay
john: bobobobo
tmarksthespot: Eduardo!
Athanasios: maaattt!
john: me too
tmarksthespot: a/s/l!!
EduardoLaSombra: omg lol….
EduardoLaSombra: *blushes*
EduardoLaSombra: hey room.
tmarksthespot: rolfmeeee
texas0212: which one is matt
john: o/ everyone
tmarksthespot: o emm zygoo
john: eduardolasombra = mvn
EduardoLaSombra: who is texas?!
texas0212: is everyone in here a boy?
john: Eli is texas
tmarksthespot: how are some of these gadgets moneycost?
EduardoLaSombra: eli!
Athanasios: i dont know i put nicknames over these so i can tell who is who
john: limgong said 19/f/miami
tmarksthespot: hawtt
texas0212: woah
tmarksthespot: I’m totally getting it
john: ok we need to get some more hott ladies
texas0212: second
tmarksthespot: base
john: oooh!
tmarksthespot: handy
EduardoLaSombra: lets cyber FUCK limgong! i love me some 19 year old f from miami!
john: whoawhao
tmarksthespot: ew bad word
EduardoLaSombra: … reeejected.
john: watch the language
Athanasios: come aside a moment
EduardoLaSombra: oh, i’m sorry. I wasn’t aware we were all going to be twatburglars
tmarksthespot: twatttttttt
tmarksthespot: come inside a moment
john: tweeet
Athanasios: twatty twat twat
john: twitter twitter twitter taint
texas0212: twat burger? I am hungry
Athanasios: same here
texas0212: but not that hungry
john: Tom you’re always hungry!
Athanasios: i could go for one
Athanasios: yes i am
tmarksthespot: what a firm handshake!
john: hungry for a win!
john: handjobs? What?
Athanasios: o god what is going on here
tmarksthespot: wat.
Athanasios: awyoowooyoowoowoo
EduardoLaSombra: what a… FRIM handshake. EMIRITE?
john: That was from a village show from 2007 i think
tmarksthespot: EMIRITEE
john: or early 2008
Athanasios: emigrate
john: The Emirates of Hacan are born traders and don’t have to spend a triangle to do trade
texas0212: peanuts
john: mmmmmm where?
Athanasios: honeyroasted?
john: unsalted?
texas0212: jingle jangled
tmarksthespot: P NOOTS
john: me jinglie jinglies!
Athanasios: i dont have my keys right now
john: TOM IS NEKKED
Athanasios: yes and?
tmarksthespot: nekd
texas0212: is tom limgong?
john: yes
john: waffirmative
Athanasios: yes sir yes sir two bags full
texas0212: oh i thought we were really talking to a random girl
john: i didnt know they stacked shit that high
john: oh man
john: i wish
Athanasios: would a girl have the name limgong?
EduardoLaSombra: that would have been suuuper awkward had tom been a girl when i said the word “FUCK”
EduardoLaSombra: not cyber though..
tmarksthespot: siberia
john: HOO-LEE SHIT
Athanasios: ?
EduardoLaSombra: this is not word association!
tmarksthespot: limgong sounds like balls
texas0212: bells
Athanasios: wisconson dells
tmarksthespot: oregon trail!
Athanasios left the room.
john: limgong died of typhoid fever and a gunshot wound
texas0212: intense
EduardoLaSombra: and rattlesnake bites
EduardoLaSombra: those scared me so much when playing oregon trail
tmarksthespot: oh man
tmarksthespot: cholera
tmarksthespot: BEARZS!
john: Shoot em!
tmarksthespot: who kicked tom?
john: you did, right??
texas0212: 8-bit!
john: he can’t rejoin
tmarksthespot: I don’t even know how to kick people
john: hmm
tmarksthespot: new room!
john: what?
john: where?
tmarksthespot: sum1makeone
Athanasios entered the room.
john: yeah!
Athanasios: wat
Athanasios: the
john: hax!
Athanasios: fak
Athanasios: power hacks
tmarksthespot: haxxxxxxx0000rs
tmarksthespot: Oh man
tmarksthespot: Alter Bridge came on shuffle
EduardoLaSombra: aol chatrooms are like, SO 90′s man
tmarksthespot: they want to be creed so bad
Athanasios: thats awful
tmarksthespot: Yeah but trillian chatrooms are so 01-02
john: yeah man, matt let’s go on usenet alt.sex.eroticstories
Athanasios: wat
tmarksthespot: wat
john: wok
EduardoLaSombra: okay! i’ll follow your ip address there!
john: 192.168.1.1!
Athanasios: lol
john:

tmarksthespot:

The retro craze has finally hit cars I have fuzzy memories of. Today at the Tokyo Motor Show Honda announced production plans for the CR-Z, a 2-seat hatchback with ever-so-many styling cues from the beloved, dearly departed CR-X. Then Toyota unveiled the new FT-86, which is a rear wheel drive sports hatchback-coupe a la the old AE-86, better known as Tak Fujiwara’s sweet drift machine from Initial D. Factory Fujiwara Tofu decals are yet to be announced.

I ordinarily hate retro revivals like the PT Cruiser, the Mustang, or the new Thunderbird because they’re a stylistic dead end. However, these cars are pretty cool because they have modern design that has been paying attention to the past 20 years. The FT-86, without the name, wouldn’t really evoke the look of the old Hachi-Roku, and they’d only share the casual association of being RWD hatchback sports cars from Toyota. These “retro revivals,” then, share little with the PT Cruiser or Chevrolet SSR, since the nostalgic part of them isn’t ancient styling cues, but the vehicle platforms themselves. Toyota hasn’t made a sports car since the old MR-2 Spyder, and Honda hasn’t had an affordable economy 2-seater since the (Car of the Millennium Winner, P.H. Cordner Auto Society) Del Sol. Whatever they look like or whatever their names, they remind me of the great cars of old.

Photos:

Honda CR-Z

http://jalopnik.com/5370911/2009-honda-cr+z-concept-press-photos/gallery/

Toyota FT-86

http://jalopnik.com/5375217/toyota-ft+86-concept/gallery?selectedImage=1

A certain unnamed Tippecanoe County Councilman At-Large is also one of the proprietors of the fine dwellings in which I currently reside. He’s got a bunch of sweet rides. His normal, tool-around, go-to, turn-key, jalop is a nice S-class W140 Merco-benz, painted in champagne and still looking good despite being over 15 years old. When he’s got some work to put in, he opts for a dark red, 2000-2005ish Ford Super Duty F-350 with the almighty Triton V-10. Torque baby! It’s got a full-size 8-foot bed, crew cab, and a vinyl rear window sticker of one of Snow White’s seven dwarfs emblazoned with “I’m GRUMPY” underneath it. The piece-de-resistance of the fleet, however, is a cherry red, late model C6 Corvette Convertible. There’s nothing quite like the gleam of a chrome-dome peeking out of a Corvette convertible, it’s about as American as a bald eagle chowing down on some apple pie in the upper deck of Yankee Stadium next to Ben Franklin.

There’s certainly nothing wrong with the Corvette. It’s a fine automobile for an accomplished landlord. That 6.2L V8 churning out 430 ponies sings quite the song as you rocket past a bunch of apartment buildings with your name on them along Chauncey Ave. “Winding it way up” along S. River Road in those rail viaducts must sound super cool, like you’re on Top Gear or something. But there’s something about the ‘Vette that just doesn’t jibe with our generation (the ones with the letters after them). Corvettes certainly have storied history, and as a model that strove for iconoclasm and unflinching dedication to sport, it certainly has stayed true to form, (something you can’t say about the Corvette’s Ford competitor, the original 2-seat Thunderbird, which by machinations of accountants and salesmen turned into a plush land-yacht “personal luxury” coupe, and died mostly forgotten in 1997, and again in 2005.) But it’s just not “sexy” to kids these days.

I turned to my roommate Eli, and asked him what he’d have for the same money. He quickly said “M3.” The BMW M3 is the car we’d rather have for 50 large. That’s not really a question we debate much. The M3 is mega-sweet. Although earlier incarnations were lighter and whatnot, the current E93 M3 is still the car to beat for 50 G’s. We reached the conclusion so quickly that I had to investigate this further. Also, I just downloaded Google Chrome’s Linux port, Chromium. If anything is good at crashing browsers, it’s those flash-heavy “build-your-own” sections on automaker websites. So I fired up my command line, ran Chromium, and opened up 6, count-em 6, tabs of those nefarious browser-crashers and did some research into what kind of sports cars 50 large can get you, which might appeal more to kids these days! A warning: The following will mention raw performance numbers, but my conclusions will not bear these out too much. It’s very subjective and your mileage may vary. In fact, I bet it will.

First off to Chevrolet for the reference. Chevy’s build-your-own page is all JavaScript, so it ran like a dream on Chrome’s V8 JS rendering engine. Smooth performance from the website, and a cool $56,260 for a sport-package equipped Corvette convertible. However, Maximum Bob’s provided $4,000 in instant dealer incentives for an effective MSRP of $52,260! What a deal!

BMW’s V8 powered M3 is also peddled by an all-JavaScript BYO page, perfectly suited to Chrome’s V8. Sweet performance all around for the website. It’s almost like I’m driving an M3! Spinning the M3 around on the webpage is super smooth. The M3, without a single option checked (not that you need any) comes down the pike at an eye watering $55,673 MSRP. Not exactly a stripped-down sports car, it comes with all kinds of creature comforts and 4, count-em 4, doors! Notwithstanding the excellent road manners and 414-horsepower V8, this is practically a mom’s car with all this heated seat nonsense! Let’s see what kind of real man’s car we can get for half a hundo.

On to Lotuscars.com, to build our own Lotus Elise, a no-holds-barred, lightweight, driver’s car. This is a driver’s driver’s car. Super-light curb weight, the engine is in the right place, mounted a midship ahead of the rear axle, and it rockets from 0-60 in a Lotus-claimed 4.8 seconds, despite having “only” 189 horses in the mill. The standard Elise MSRPs for around $47,000, so we get some optioning wiggle room. The on-screen image in the BYO page is in Flash, the controls are all JS. Not hinky or slow at all, very smooth. Back to the options list, I check off the Sport Pack, which adds all kinds of good stuff like grippy Yokohama Advans, a Lotus sport-tuned suspension, and also subtracts approximately 20 pounds of curb weight. Pay more to get less! I’m in love. Add a limited slip diff and a del Sol style targa roof to bring the MSRP of this driving machine to $53,117. Not a bad price, and I must admit a certain fondess for the light-weight approach, this is very high on my list.

However, that Elise is going to be way less comfortable than the M, not to mention the relative cushiness of the large, supportive Corvette seats designed to accommodate guys who own plumbing companies. Let’s get a small 2-seater with a bit more refinement, shall we? MBUSA.com, the US Mercedes-Benz portal, is a Flash-heavy site, and it’s going pretty slow. Maybe because it’s the fourth BYO open in tabs, but I suspect Adobe has a hand in this sluggish performance. The SLK 350 roadster fits nicely into our price point, so I launched the all-flash BYO to price it out. None of the options really add to the sportiness of the car, so I leave all the boxes unchecked, and the price comes to $52,775. Not bad, although this is a bit too refined, heavy, and not quite “sports” enough for our tastes. That damned retractable folding roof contributes to a rather portly weight of 3,300 lbs (compare with the 1,896 lbs of the standard Elise). All this gives you what may be the most refined 2-seater we’ve seen yet, but it lacks that sexy, sporting feeling, a sluggishness that matches the website. Can we combine the Merco’s refinement and Elise’s sheer speed?

We move on to Porsche, whose stable may just provide an answer to that question. The Porsche Cayman starts at around $50,300, and with the addition of a sport shifter (not necessary, but gives you that sporty feeling when you spend money) comes out to $51,065. The Cayman is essentially a hardtop version of the venerable Boxster roadster, with a mid-mounted 2.9 L flat 6 producing 265 horsepower. Combined with a curb weight of about 2,954 lbs, that sends it from 0-60 in 5.5 seconds. With classic Porsche looks (a bit odd, yeah, but unmistakable) and the engine mounted in the proper place for a change (Noticing a pattern?), this is one seriously cool car. This is, I believe, what I’d get for 50 K if I manned down and couldn’t get the Elise.

Hey, you’re saying! “All your stupid posh German cars and that gay British one have less horsepower than the Corvette, so who gives a goddamn shit you faggot!” Well, my generation, take heed, because I am catering to you and your tastes with my next entry, the Ford Shelby Mustang GT-500 convertible! That’s right, the live-axled, 540 hp V8 monster now comes in a drop-top like the ‘Vette, and gives you 100 more horses, all for an easy-peasy $52,175! Never mind the Brobdingnagian 4,000lb curb weight! Ford’s BYO website is undoubtedly the worst of the bunch. Tacky Web 2.0 striped buttons and a hoary mix of Javascript and Flash that happened to crash all the other Flash applets in the other tabs made the BYO site incredibly slow to delete those stupid racing stripes. If you can’t tell already, I’m not a fan of Mustangs, to put it politely. The idea of dropping this kind of cash on one isn’t something I’d ever consider. However to those of you interested, this thing is incredibly fast in a straight line, quarter mile, 0-60, all of that. It can do sweet burnouts and you can fit a muffler that makes it really loud when you floor the slushbox equipped (the Shelby only comes with a real transmission, though, +1) beast 400 feet to the next traffic light. Yes, you might have to invest in some car wash equipment to keep the exterior clear of lipstick and sweat from babes rubbing their bodies all over it when you’re stopped and that engine is growling, but it’s a great investment to show that after your successful career selling ludes you can now afford the fastest version of the car that makes a 22-year old look silly, not to mention anyone old enough to afford it.

Right, so that one’s out, and I still have alienated most of my generation. Unless…

I point Chrome to Mitsubishi, and see what I can do with an Evo. However, there’s a problem. The Lancer Evolution GSR starts at $31,710 with dealer incentives, the MR (suspension kit, heavier, more creature comforts) starts at $37,010. Any possibility of reaching $50,000 would require all kinds of superfluous options, accessories, etc. Even with everything performance oriented I could muster, I couldn’t get the GSR past $37,000, or the MR past $46,000. Front lip spoilers, front and rear tower bars, intercooler pipes, rally-style mudflaps, side skirts, spoiler extension, satnav, super-powred stereo, MP3/iPod cable and the ever-essential cigar (not cigarette, cigar) lighter brings an MR to $43,937. A GSR, my preferred trim level, with the same set, minus the satnav and mega-stereo, runs only $36,066. For this money you get a turbocharged 2.0 L 4 with 291 advertised horsepower, assisted to the pavement by one of the most sophisticated four wheel drive systems this side of the Nissan GT-R, in a well-balanced, practical 4-door that still thrashes and is bonkers enough to scratch my sporting itch.

This, I’m afraid, is my choice for the $50,000 Landlord’s Car Challenge. I say afraid, because, if you haven’t noticed, my generation loves the Evo as much as I do. I would look just as much a toolbag driving an Evo than in that horrible Shelby Mustang. Short of driving an Audi S4, there’s nothing quite as obnoxious as someone spooling up their turbo at the stoplight. And yet, in the Evo, I have a litany of horribly-rationalized excuses. My mom has a regular Lancer. The Evo started life as a rough-n-ready rally homologation special. The Evo dominated WRC in the 90′s. It’s got pedigree, it’s got styling cues ripped off of the Alfa Romeo 159, it’s Japanese! These are all horrible excuses for rapid acceleration and the idea that it’s any different than doing the same stupid stuff in a Mustang or a Corvette is a delusion. However, it’s just more suited to my tastes, minus that spoiler it insists on wearing. It’s unassuming, and up until 5 years ago, nobody really heard of it. It was only the Rally fans or players of Gran Turismo who were in the know. So it has this aura that you have to be an “insider,” to be “in the know” to get that this kinda dowdy import sedan packs one serious performance punch. But the most important thing that separates the Evo from the Mustang is that the Evo is just a fast car. Not a statement of your irrepressible youthful renegade-ness. A Mustang is aspirational. It has pretensions of being upscale. Note that the Shelby, allegedly an unadulterated performance machine, comes with leather seats as the only option. The Evo is just an econobox with a great engine and drivetrain. Reviews of the Evo always malign its “cheap feeling” interior. However, I feel it’s a virtue, not in the Puritan kind of way, but in that you’re not trying to look like you’re rich, or are going to be “upperclass.” The Lancer Evolution is just a fast car, that doesn’t say anything about you until you put rims, decals, carbon fiber, and a bigger spoiler on it. Plus,  you can take that extra 13 grand and put it in the bank or the stock market or something else that won’t lose 20% of its value immediately. However, these “virtures” don’t appeal to our imaginary future landlord, who bought his first building after selling enough ludes to buy it. He’s into class connotations. Therefore, we must declare the Porsche Cayman as the Landlord’s Sports Car of the Future.

So to you 3 and 4 year old kids, when you go to college in 20 years and get an apartment from a big-time college town landowner, the first of every month, you’ll be depositing your rent check into that drop slot, and you’ll be saying “There you go, enjoy that next Porsche Cayman oil change.”