Tom Wolfe would have said so. But I will, for once, let the pictures do the talking. Ah, happiness equals a red sportster…
PS: Winter tyres have been ordered. But could not wait. Impossible. I-m-p-o-s-s-i-b-l-e. Took it out on the road today. Wooohooo. W-o-o-o-h-o-o-o. Times two. Times three. Times trillion. Thing flies like the bat out of hell!!!
I had had eyes on a new car for very long, but not until a few days before xmas had I found what I was looking for. My two options were: a reasonable and reliable Mercedes-Benz C220, or the adorable classic called Porsche 944. Of course, as so often is the case with me, heart prevailed over head, and I fell for the Porsche like it was a hot naked girl. This is how it went down…
It was always going to be the Merc. Practical, rear-wheel drive, and money-looking on 18 inch wheels, what more could one want? My great German connection was scoping out the scene down there, digging up suitable candidates for import.
Somewhere along the line of nettiauto.com I stumbled upon a gorgeous Porsche 944, whose price tag even matched my numbers. Would I dare buy into the legend? I wasn’t sure what to do, and tried to look the other way. I spent a few days surfing the vast German supply of Porsches. It quickly became clear that this holy and hallow brand is what God himself drives when he travels in Germany, and they are thus priced accordingly.
So I looked back. The Porsche 944 is so underrated here in Finland, that it would be criminal not to take advantage of the situation. Soon I was deep in negotiation. I managed to get the price down a bit, and when I learned that the car had been religiously maintained by furious pedants, green lights were flashing all around. It had a full service history, guaranteed miles, and an amazing excel table pointing out every single thing that had been done to this car - down to the littlest wax jobs. Even more so, every single receipt had been saved!
All said and done, it was easy to make up my mind. There was only one snafu - the car was in Kuopio, and since it has not been used in winter before, it was sitting on summer tires. Heck, I’ll drive it back anyways, I told myself, and set a date with the owner to come and check it out. However, Father Frost was not co-operating, much as usual, and left me with little choice but to borrow my uncle’s big Mazda pick-up truck, to which I hooked a huge car trailer I rented for the day.
Now, I like to be on the road, but this was easily the worst road trip I ever did. During the darkest day of the year. Along these elk-infested roads that cut through the blackest forests. In slippery conditions, half-wet, half-iced, fully fucked. Oh, I kept waiting for the trailer to overtake me. There was the absolute bare minimum of visibility the whole way halfway to the North Pole, and I was all alone, if not for the the company of Bruce Springsteen’s every single studio album.
I got up at 2:45 AM to be in Kuopio at ten in the morning. By the time I got there, I had experienced near-death at least half a dozen times. The snow, the darkness, a jumping trailer and wandering lorries conspired to drive me to the brink of insanity. This had better be worth it…
As the friendly owner pulled the covers off the Porsche, I instantly knew that it had, indeed, been worth it. I knew that I was buying it. This was my new car. It was just so low, so fat, so full of attitude, resembling a horny toad, or Gordon Gekko ready for another hostile takeover.
Sure, I went through the motions of disinterest, kicking tires and pointing out tiny flaws in the paintwork in hope of getting the price down further, but eventually I just said “I’ll take it“.
I had bought a Porsche without even getting out of second gear! Yeah, we took a spin around Kuopio town centre, with me at the helm, but we were more sideways than straight. Wide and worn-out Pirelli P-Zeros offer little grip in snow…
Little boys pointed and stared. I was them some twenty years ago.
Papers were signed, a pile of money was counted and recounted, then we sealed our separate destinies with the sacred handshake.
One dream delivered. Check that box.
Reality came far too quick when it was time to get the car up on the trailer. I had just bought a shiny red Porsche, but it was so wide there was not a hair more than two centimeters of room on each side to park it on the trailer. I despaired! Was I going to scratch it already?!
Well, here goes everything. And the rear wheels just spun on the snow. It very rapidly became apparent that I had to reverse it up the trailer. Great - like that was going to make it any easier…
Instead of breaking down and weeping like I wanted, I grabbed the car by its neck, did a donut on the snow, backed it right up the fucking trailer like I was going down the empty autobahn on an early Sunday morning. Woooohoooo!
How hard can a heart pound before it explodes?
The former owner, a terrific guy on his own, helped me tie down the car, and I promised him once again to take care of it like it was my first-born. He had just bought an old 911, which had forced him to sell this 944, but I felt sorry for him when we bid our farewells and took to leave. I watched as he walked away. He turned to look back several times… god bless.
The first part of the road trip done with, the second commenced. There was still a few hours of daylight left, and I wanted to make hay. The Porsche key was bulging in my pocket, but I had to patiently steer this diesel-draining Mazda train all the way back to Karis. Darkness came uninvited, and all too soon. The Christmas traffic was in my headlights. The bastard child of snow and rain was dropping from the skies. Vision? What vision? And the wet roads started to freeze over again. O-h n-o. Not again.
Thankfully, the weight of the car calmed the trailer down, and only a few almost-fatal incidents occurred. Can you imagine the relief when I drove the Porsche off the trailer in Karis, unscathed?
Just the mere sight of this car on my driveway was worth the undisclosed sum. But right now I’m waiting harder than anyone to drive it in sweet anger.
Pearly pictures will follow soon.
My favorite Santa Claus - he has the same name as I do - bought me a very nice present this year. In fact, it just may be one of the nicest things this guy ever got for me. It is certainly one of the coolest. [Or should I say küühlest?]
It was delivered yesterday, but since Christmas is not until Sunday, I can’t unveil the splendid indisch rot surface yet - but I will go so far as to offer you a taste of the sheetmetal in form of clues. If you can unwrap this mystery, you will know what it is.
[Oh, it hurts, the restraint I must muster! Oh! Ah!]
It is most absolutely negatively positively not a soft package. It is also too big to wrap in gift paper, so this magnificent beast is sleeping on the driveway as I write. This contemporary classic was built in Zuffenhausen, Germany, in 1985.
By now, some of you - most likely anoraks of the male persuasion - may be more hot than cold. But let’s throw in some more coal and bring the rest of yous into the warmth; the holy brand name starts with a P.
And if you add the three numerical letters of the model moniker, they amount to 17…
Cleaning toilets, mopping floors, dusting and busting, all in the name of baby Jesus. At least there is the Christmas dinner to look forward to - which I is why I just spent hours pulling the skin of hundreds of tiny filets of Baltic herring. Yes, a big bowl of garlic Baltic herring will be fiercely attacked, elbows out, come Sunday dinner time.
And have I ever done so much gravlax - salmon, trout and whitefish - like this year? I think not - to think that raw spiced fish can be this good! Oh, I will cram until I resemble the shape of something round.
I even ventured out into the frosty forest for the first time in two years to find the perfect Christmas tree. It’s not easy to walk in the forest with these chronically aching ankles of mine, but it was well worth it, as me and lil bro proudly returned with a mean green sprouting thing.
Well, I’m probably not even halfway yet, so I better stop writing and get going again. Just remember, soft Christmas packages can be good too… [not!]
I was talking, praying and hoping about this some months ago. My polished crystal ball head has once again shone bright…
- Subaru Rally Team USA press release -
“(December 13, 2006) - Subaru Rally Team USA (SRT-USA) announced today that it will enter its 23 year-old star rally driver, Travis Pastrana, in select World Rally Championship events in 2007, 2008 and 2009. Pastrana, in only his second season of rallying won the 2006 Rally America National Championship, becoming the youngest ever American champion. In addition to defending his Rally America title in 2007, Pastrana will drive a Subaru Impreza WRX STI–based rally car in three World Rally Championship (WRC) events in the Group N class. Then in 2008 and 2009 SRT-USA will officially enter Pastrana in the Production World Rally Championship (P-WRC), a support series that runs concurrent with the top tier World Rally Championship.“
Yes, everybody’s favorite motocrosser, the Wonder Boy, is coming along to singlehandedly save WRC. Gosh golly, I have a feeling rallying will never be the same - and for the way better. Now, all I need is a little bit - a few years - of patience to watch him crash, crash, crash… and crash, and then finally bloom. Although I shamefully doubt he will ever have the speed of monsieur Loeb or one of them incredible Flying Finns, I know that he will, symbolically, die trying. Believe me, this is one buddy who is not afraid to go über-fast in a car…
Hello, I’m Andy, and I am addicted to all things estethical. I believe surface is everything. Attention to detail is my religion. I may walk with my feet, but I veto and vote the direction with my eyes. My whole function is based on parametres established by an amassed archive of design associations.
Beauty is not only skin-deep. Beauty is skin-deep. I have to assume you pronounced that sentence like it was a bad thing, but THINK: could the thickness of beauty matter any less?! As long as what’s underneath is even half-ignorable, I do. And in the name of beauty, I forgive, too.
I realized all of this as I was buying soy sauce. It had to be Kikkoman - I mean, it just had to be! There was no way I was buying the other brands! And do you know why? Because the etiquette on the Kikkoman bottle is very stylish. Soon I was wondering whether I was buying red onions because they look better than the yellow, or just because they taste better in a salad. And I couldn’t quite give an honest answer to that question…
Do you know, that every time I drive past ugly buildings in my hometown, I wish I had the financial power to tear them down and replace them with something by Frank Lloyd Wright. When I see a garden in disgrace, I want to knock on the door, and demand action. Or call the fashion police. Special edition DVDs in original language? Don’t get me started. I’ve bought books judged by covers, several times.
Whenever I’m about to purchase anything, even the most mundane of things, I spend hours weighing design values, and imagining how it will look in relevant context. Frustrated service-providers will hear a lot of “Does this also come in…?”
Just look around: there is the slinky Pioneer playa in satellite silver, there is the shiny black Pixma printer, the wafer-thin titanium Sony Vaio, the funky Tivoli Audio iPal, the blood-red LaCie Brick… what’s worse, I don’t care so much if these things are any good, cheap or expensive, as long as they please my eye.
When a layout is just right, my eyes channel the perfect surface to my brain, in turn responding with warm euphoria, and spreading it throughout my entire shivering corpus.
These are the confessions of a sensitive aesthete addict. Forms and shapes and colors and shiny reflections keep me locked in a cage. I’m a slave, reduced to a gimp. Worse yet, it’s getting harder and harder to tolerate the halfbaked, the bland, and the messy.
Unfortunately, there is not enough money in the world to feed my habit, and it’s near-impossible to break free, so I must deal with it. And I do, every day, everywhere I go… beholding, beholding.
I know I’m not the only one. Come out, come out, in whichever closet you are.
Backer than the backest back, blacker than the blackest black, my bestest imaginary friend in the whole wide world, how I missed you! Oh how I missed you! Can you, from that sentence, tell that I’m on the verge of fucking fainting from the giddiest druggiest diggiest most devilish dr. feelgood feeling I’ve ever experienced since I saw Bond on the big screen for the first time as a young kid and said to myself, assuredly, now there is possibly the only guy I’d ever switch lives with…
And he is yet again, and more importantly, still, the only guy I’d want to switch lives with. It’s been a long time coming, but as I’ve suffered from a ten-year black-out that started from Goldeneye’s Irish prick and ended today 22.22, I can just say that, hello. Hello. Hello! We are returning to the surface! We see light, we feel breath, we taste life. And hey, peach, cherry, and applepie, whoever cooked this one up is a general, because that’s how many stars I see.
As from now, I strike ten years from my life, and start afresh. I’m twentytwo, how about you?
And there I was, afraid that they had turned Bond into an action hero without class, afraid that he was the new GI Joe gung fucking ho. I feared for my life, thought the final nail to the coffin had been shot, package sealed and caterpillared deep underground. And there I was again, rising from the rubble through the Venetian window to the sky, whooping hard enough to break blood vessels.
Daniel Craig is the new Sean Connery. Wreak havoc, baby, wreak havoc on everything and everyone!
One should not allow me to write posts in this feverish frame of mind and heartpumping celebration. But one is never there to shackle me and my bleeding fingertips. They just keep on running like I’ve got ten, eleven counting the brain, twelve counting the cock, minds of my own, and everyone wants to find space for punch, punch, punch. My whole body is a platform for pukingly pugilistic extensions. Watch my shadow on the white wonder wall, unh unh unh!
Right now, nothing else matters than these four words that came right at the end of the credits to Casino Royale…
James Bond will return.
Sheriff J.W. Pepper from Louisiana said it best, while spitting tobacco. Therein lies Bond’s biggest problem, of course - he’s the least secret agent of them all. He is in fact so well known, that we know ALL about him.
I was never a proponent of ‘familiarity breeds contempt’ - while the rest of the world kept on changing in radical fashion, I found it strangely alluring that Bond was always Bond, the materialist boozer, womanizer and killer.
Never you mind that women all over the world burned their bras and then turned feminist, Bond bedded them with a twist of the eyebrow. Never you mind that men turned into metrosexual sissies with feelings, Bond was still the ultimate playboy who killed and - hell yeah! - enjoyed it. Oh, if he’d only smoke a white-filtered afterwards…
The tallest hurdle the Bond-series faced was the end of the Cold War. For a short period of time, about 1990, it looked as though we had seen the end of history, and with it, the closing to the story of the secret agent. But niet. Real-politik kicked into action, and the profession is once again blossoming. These days they probably have to speak arabic, thou, and that’s not nearly as glamouros as the vodka and mink fur of the evil Russians. Well, that’s another story for another day, and for another movie. I’m sure Bond speaks Arabic, anyway, seeing as he was always a ‘cunning linguist.’
As far as double entendres and innuendos go, that one is wonderfully brave - perhaps even braver than Pussy Galore.
Not that Bond was ever staid, no, on the contrary. While the character was stuck to his character, so to say, the movies always tried to incorporate the burning issues of the day. Remember Moonraker - responding to Star Wars! And wasn’t Bond snowboarding in A View To Kill, a whole decade before I bought my first snowboard? Cutting edge. Just ask Q.
Eventually Bond had to change - but the first attempt went pear-shaped. Am I the only one who thinks that M should be a man, and not a bloody Judy? At least Bond had some difficulty in taking orders from a woman on top… which was a saving grace, but really, I miss the old M dearly. For the sake of stereotypical film - because Bond is above all a stereotype - men are the ones plotting the destructions and resurrections of worlds, dammit!
This is a minor detail, really, in comparison with the direction Bond was taken - straight to Hollywood, in other words, competing with fucking Bruckenheimers and Woos. I can only weep and ignore.
The second attempt at changing Bond seems to bear better fruit. I’m talking Casino Royale 2006, with hardman Daniel Craig in the black tux by the chemin de fer, and I’m also talking the ‘shaken, not stirred‘-line, once the very epitome of a man who knows what he wants, and gets it.
Now, I intend to watch the new movie later tonight, but I read and hear, so: When the bartender in in the neo-Casino Royale asks neo-Bond if he wants his vodka martini shaken or stirred, he replies - gasp! - “Do I look like I give a damn?”
Ruthless. I wasn’t sure if I liked it at first, having always enjoyed Bond’s fancy-pants approach to all things decadent, but the more I think about it, the more genius it strikes me. This must be Timothy Dalton times ten, people!
There were times when Bond went overboard with enthusiasm. Think about the amazing amazon Grace Jones coupling with a very old and frail-looking Roger Moore, and you see what I mean. Casting has been questionable at times, acting was rarely incredible, and once in a while it was too funny, too sloppy.
But it was always enjoyable, always accompanied by fantastic soundbites, always stirred my pants. The everyday-escape these movies provide is unequalled. The shot of male chauvinism - a rare vaccin against political correctness - is priceless, buzzing you with vitality. Bond movies scream “Let me entertain you!” I holler right back, “Go for it!”
Thanks for reading about my personal relationship with James Bond. I’m about to find out if it will continue.
Once again, I find myself staring down the barrel of the gun, into the curtain of blood.
Bond, James Bond. Every man wants to be Bond, and every woman wants to be with Bond. Or has time finally caught up with dear ol’ double-OH?
After appointment with M, it will be my secret mission for the next week or so to find out whether Bond is still relevant. The climax will be a movie analysis of Casino Royale, the latest addition to the Bond agent tree.
Already, this much is clear: Daniel Craig has broad shoulders - but are they broad enough to carry my hopes?
In the meanwhile, I want and need and beg and plead for some answers to the most critical questions in the world. These questions, none of which concern the cure for cancer or the third world famine, go as follows:
007. WHO IS YOUR FAVORITE BOND-ACTOR?
002. WHO IS YOUR FAVORITE BOND-BABE?
003. WHO IS YOUR FAVORITE BOND BADDIE?
004. WHICH IS YOUR FAVORITE BOND MOVIE?
005. WHICH IS YOUR FAVORITE BOND QUOTE?
Motivations will be allowed, appreciated, adored, even. Lemon Prizes are bonus. If for some reason you don’t speak Bond as fluently as I do, and thus have problems with, say, agent-question 005, cheat by using the internet. Oh, and if you find it difficult to get started, just imagine the Cold War is still going on… that always gets me into suitable nostalgia.
This is my personal model solution to what’s wrong with the world today:
007: Sean Connery, licensed to kill, the baddest man with the hairiest chest and the sexiest accent. No one else comes close. [Lemon prize: Pierce Brosnan, the stumpy Irishman who nearly obliterated my passionate Bond-fascination.]
002: Daniela Bianchi, as Daniela Romanova in From Russia With Love. Strange choice, I’ve heard, but she’s cute and I want to marry her and that’s all I can say about that. I also have a thing for Jane Seymour, as Solitaire in Live And Let Die. And frankly, I also have a thing for just about every other Bond Babe - [except for Lemon Prize loser Izabella Scorupco. Ridiculous screaming. Bläh.]
003: Telly Savalas as Ernst Stavro Blofeld. I think I relate to his wonderfully bold head. Oddjob and Blofeld’s angora cat get honorary awards. [Lemon Prize goes to that lousy nobody Jonathan Pryce in the totally forgettable Tomorrow Never Dies.]
004: It’s a tie at the top - From Russia With Love and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service are explosion-free, gadget-less, plotdriven, wonderful stories. And play with this thought: Imagine if Sean Connery had done On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.. ho snap!
Anyhoo, I love all Bond movies with a passion, apart from the last three: [Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough, Die Another Day... damn, I wanted to die the same day. A trio of Lemon Prizes, s'il vous plaît.]
005: Connery pats Shirley Eaton on her bottom, and says “Run along dear, man talk.” I wish I had the guts to do that someday… harharhar! Silver award to this one: The girl with big, hrm, lungs [Lana Wood] says “Hi, I’m Plenty.”
“Of course you are” Connery replies.
“Plenty O’Toole.”
“Named after your father, perhaps?”
No Lemon Prizes in this category - I’m too busy falling off my chair…
