Skip to main content

Replies sorted oldest to newest

 

Sounds like creeping eyeballism to me.

There used to be a guy on the radio named Jean Shepherd who invented, or maybe discovered, something called creeping meatballism. It was the tendency to just accept as okay something that is thrust upon us by forces that are bigger than us and that we can't do much to fight anyway.

Shepherd argued that the more crap we accepted, the more crap that was likely to be headed our way, since the crap makers had proven that they could get away with pretty much whatever they wanted to.

So it is that the GTI, which used to be a hot hatch, maybe the original hot hatch, can't even be had as a real (three-door) hatch anymore because the bean counters decided they'd make more beans by making fewer models and that most creeping meatballs wouldn't care enough to go off in a huff and buy something else.

The bean counters and Jean Shepherd were right.

And now the creeping eyeball. It used to be they made cars you could see out of. But then crumple zones just sort of happened. And B-pillars the size of tree trunks. And rear sills as high as your nose. So now we have to look at a little screen hooked up to a TV camera to bring us a little picture of what the world behind our car looks like. And this adds more complexity and more power drain and more weight and more things to burn out and fail and require re-programming. And they've got most of us convinced that this is actually a good thing and somehow more 'modern' and something we should want. And pay for.

Wherever he is today, I think old Shep is looking down at all of this and laughing his ass off that a crazy bunch of us are driving around in cars that, despite all their warts, are doing their best to stick it to the creeping meatball.

 

 

 

 

I learned to parallel park, back up without running into things, use a stick shift, brake when required and stay in my own lane without the artificial assustance from my car. Frankly, I think we're developing a whole new generation of drivers who can't drive .... convenience becomes laziness.

But all the better to give more time to text and watch movies while we're "driving" 

Image result for large car gps

 

Bob, I was one of his radio minions, too.

Since WOR was one of the 'clear-channel' AM stations, it carried pretty well up and down the east coast at night, and clear as a bell to my home town of Philly, about 90 miles from New York.

For those who didn't follow him, all of the characters in Christmas Story had been developed on his nightly radio shows over the years. He was a gifted story teller, able to spin unscripted 45-minute narratives based upon recollections of his youth in the steel mill town of Hammond, Indiana.

He also did a series for PBS ( Jean Shepherd's America ) - something like the On The Road pieces of Charles Kurault.

Imagine a modern high school kid sitting down and focusing on some guy talking on the radio for 45 minutes uninterrupted.

 

 

Post Content
×
×
×
×
Link copied to your clipboard.
×
×