The Soapbox Derby

“Think good thoughts,” said the bumper sticker. Unfortunately, my mind was too busy designing a sticker for the minivan that had rolled a stop sign and almost given me a front-end misalignment a few miles back. Like this: “My kid is an honor student. Obviously, we adopted.”

But in the spirit of good thoughts and the thinking of them, let’s try to focus on things that inspire rather than annoy. Tomorrow is Veterans Day, for example. And not too long ago, I spotted a bumper sticker that reminded me what it’s like for all the people waiting and praying through stateside vigils: “Half of my heart is in Iraq.”

If at all possible, let’s try to do something for that driver and everyone else in a similar situation: Think good thoughts.

That’s all the time we have for this installment of Bumper Crop. But if you spot a blogworthy piece of bumper flair, feel free to get in on the tomfoolery. Post it on this here blog or e-mail us a photo (bbridges@gastongazette.com).

Join us next time when we’ll investigate reports of a new sticker spotted on a congressional SUV at Charlotte-Douglas International Airport: “My other car is parked legally.”

Everybody has a favorite old song, but sometimes I wonder what happened after the music stopped.

Did the man really find a simpler place in time when that midnight train arrived in Georgia? Did them good old boys actually die on the day they were drinking whiskey and rye?

Well, maybe the following item from a 1973 police blotter will answer one of these burning questions:

Chicago Police Department Incident Report

COMPLAINANT: Leroy Brown
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: Stands about 6-foot-four
NICKNAMES/ALIASES: Bad, Bad Leroy Brown, Treetop Lover, Sir
OCCUPATION: Gambler
REGISTERED VEHICLE(S): Lincoln Continental (customized), Cadillac Eldorado
DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTICS: Fancy clothes and diamond rings; Complainant reportedly enjoys waving the latter in front of people’s noses

LOCATION OF OFFENSE: South Side (described by local residents as the “baddest” part of town)
DATE OF OFFENSE: Friday about a week ago

NARRATIVE:
Complainant was shooting dice when, at the edge of the bar, he cast his eyes upon a female customer named Doris (described as a nice-looking girl). Her jealous husband noticed the Complainant allegedly messing with Doris and decided to teach him a lesson. The trouble soon began.

Husband and Complainant took to fighting. Husband prevailed in the altercation, despite Complainant’s possession of .32-caliber handgun concealed in his pocket (allegedly “for fun”) and razor concealed in his shoe. After the two men were pulled from the floor, one eyewitness described Complainant as looking like a jigsaw puzzle missing a number of pieces, possibly a couple.

FINAL NOTES:
Doris’ husband remains at large. South Side residents continue using superlatives to describe Complainant’s badness and meanness (i.e. King Kong and junkyard dog). Any officer venturing down there had better just beware.

… Well, that’s all the time we have for The Soapbox Derby. Tune in next week to find out if Rikki ever lost that number.

An economy still trying to stagger upright … overseas military engagements … renegade kid balloonists taking to the skies at will. But it turns out the government did not have enough on its plate after all, because now the Federal Trade Commission wants to regulate bloggers, tweeters and Facebookers.

The FTC actually voted 4-0 to establish rules that require these online magpies to disclose any financial relationships with products or companies mentioned in their posts. I wish I were making this up, because if I had an imagination that fertile I could make a bundle selling ideas to The Onion. (But I couldn’t blog about it without the requisite disclaimer, of course).

When I heard about this, it got me thinking: Shouldn’t I get ahead of this wave and go all full disclosure while the disclosin’s good? So I backtracked through my previous posts and came up with the following action items:

Arrogant Bastard Ale In the blog post recapping last year’s Idiot Convention with my college buddies, I mentioned the fact that we treated ourselves to a few pints of this potent beverage on a dare. And since we did actually purchase the stuff (Brandon the CPA still has a spreadsheet with the receipts, I’m sure of it), wouldn’t that technically constitute a financial relationship? Or at least a financial fling? These are G-Men we’re talking about here, so I’m not taking any chances.

Alt-Country and Lo-Fi Rock Numerous Soapbox Derby posts have made reference to the author’s Uncle Tupelo and Black Keys addictions. Ergo, I am prepared to release copies of all credit card statements denoting Rhapsody music downloads. (Right Said Fred? Heh-heh. How did that get on there?)

The Mullet Last October I blogged about a potential comeback for the infamous hairdo also known as Ape Drape, Hockey Head and Frankenstyle’s Monster. Turns out that my one of my musician buddies used to rock the mullet back in the day, and on one occasion I wired him some money when he encountered car trouble during an out-of-state gig. So from a legal standpoint, I subsidized the lifestyle that spawned his Mississippi Mudflap in the first place.

So there you have it. Confessed, disclosed and — fingers crossed — absolved. However, I must point out that when our government forces its citizens to divulge such personal details under threat of sanction, we’re coming dangerously close to living in a police state … just like the fine folks at Arrogant Bastard Breweries have warned us about.

I hope you’re happy, Uncle Sam.

* A recent road trip took me through a fairly rural corner of Tennessee. During one five-mile stretch, I passed an Antioch Baptist Church and a roadside bar called The Do Drop Inn. Because of my familiarity with the Charlie Daniels Band, I started getting real nervous about flat tires.

* Some days you just want to stay holed up in your Batcave, watching “Mad Men” and eating smoked almonds. When the Batcave days start to outnumber the non-Batcave days, you might have a problem.

* This morning I saw one of the groundskeepers at a local cemetery on a tractor hauling flowers from one part of the facility to the other. He had to wait for a break in traffic on a very busy road, then gun it across four lanes with a trailerful of mums rattling behind him. I decided that every time my job seems difficult, I would think about that guy on the tractor.

* The Food Network is missing out on a huge demographic opportunity - a cooking show for men specializing in chili and nachos recipes. They could call it “Cooking with Gas.”

* Madonna is dating a guy named Jesus. I think we all saw that one coming.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke says the recession is probably over, but a bumper sticker spotted in Gastonia reads: “On my way to work. Please kill me.” Sorry, chief. Looks like we still have some productivity issues.

And so begins another puckish installment of Bumper Crop, the feature wherein we chronicle the good, the bad and the weird that people are sporting on their chrome.

Retired. Don’t ask me to do a damn thing
Would that include turning off your left blinker?

I fish, therefore I lie
Ironically, the most honest bumper sticker I’ve seen in a while.

God must be a Broncos fan. He made the sunset orange
Yeah, right. And Jay Cutler is the prodigal son …

If you see a noteworthy piece of bumper flair, by all means share it. Post a comment on this here blog or e-mail a JPEG pitcher to bbridges@gastongazette.com.

Until next time … don’t ask me to do a damn thing.

Although not a fan of hockey, there is one aspect of the sport I can really get behind: the penalty box. Break the rules, spend a few minutes cooling your heels and pondering your misdeeds … brilliance.

In fact, life would be a lot better if we could adapt this form of sanction to everyday situations:

* Choose a ringtone so annoying that it causes the ears of innocent bystanders to hemorrhage - five minutes in the penalty box (with no phone privileges).

* Use the “Shave and a Haircut” riff when you knock on someone’s door - one minute in the penalty box.

* Say “knock-knock” when you knock on someone’s door - one hour in the penalty box.

* Ride two inches from someone’s rear bumper when neither of you is named Tony Stewart or Kevin Harvick - ten minutes parked in the penalty box.

* Use a non-word such as “expecially” or “irregardless” - three minutes in the penalty box with a dictionary and “The Elements of Style” by Strunk and White.

If I were running things, there’d be so many people in the box that life would seem like an endless screening of “Cool Hand Luke.”

So what everyday offenses would you like to see punished with a trip to the penalty box? Contemplate, discuss and share.

Before Pops joined the Marines, he drove a humble Studebaker. It was his first car. The Corps apparently paid its jet jarheads decent money, so he soon graduated to something a little sportier: a Galaxie 500 convertible with a 390-cubic inch V-8 and a handful of four-barrel carbs.

He would later sell the Galaxie to my mom’s younger brothers, who used it to outrun half the South Carolina Highway Patrol.

Of course, had he kept the Studebaker, he could’ve held onto it long enough to see it become a collector’s item and then decorate the bumper as seen at left.

And so begins a long-overdue installment of Bumper Crop, wherein I share the good, the bad and the weird that people are sporting on their chrome. Here are just a few I’ve run across in my recent travels:

* If You Don’t Vote, Don’t Whine

* Don’t Let Your Kid Be the One That Got Away

* I Miss Click

* It’s My Job to Comfort the Uncomfortable and Discomfort the Comfortable

If you see a quality piece of bumper flair, by all means share. Post it on this here blog or e-mail me a JPEG pitcher: bbridges@gastongazette.com

Until next time, keep at least one eye on the road. The Soapbox Derby does not pay your insurance premiums.

1. My quest to avoid getting soft in the head in my dotage continues, most recently by playing online Scrabble. Since this is the Internet we’re talking about, I have to wonder how many millions of players get frustrated when the software refuses to recognize the words “nakid” or “pwn.”

Also, I’ve come up with a name for those times when your tile rack is filled with those useless y’s and w’s: Irritable Vowel Syndrome.

2. Compare, contrast and discuss:

* Elvis Presley - King of Rock ‘n’ Roll. Michael Jackson - King of Pop.

* Elvis Presley - daughter Lisa Marie. Michael Jackson - wife Lisa Marie.

* Elvis Presley - Dr. Nick. Michael Jackson - Dr. Murray.

3. Speaking of online games, last night a certain fast-food chain awarded me 6,000 tokens as a promotion for its gourmet coffees. Don’t know if I’ll take them up on it, but the offer did inspire me to nail “jittery” on a triple-word score. McAwesome!

I never met Robert S. McNamara, of course. But had our paths crossed, I would’ve resisted the impulse to tell him something I’ve come to believe:

Numbers are useful, sir, but you cannot quantify everything.

Robert McNamara used numbers at every stop of his career: planning bombing campaigns for the Air Corps in World War II, running Ford Motor Company, and of course, as JFK’s secretary of defense. There’s nothing wrong with being cerebral (not that you’d expect to hear such words from a thinker of my 22-caliber). Still, I believe it’s ridiculous to think that you can achieve control by assigning numerical values to factors that often prove resistant to tables and charts.

Factors like human beings, for instance. The human beings of Southeast Asia didn’t exactly cooperate with the precise calculations churned out by the Kennedy administration (or Johnson, or Nixon 1 and 1.5, for that matter).

We see this happen in other settings, albeit on a much less sweeping scale. And when people’s actions don’t correspond to mathematical expectations, too often the leadership concludes that the problem must lie in the people — but good gravy, not in the precious numbers.

How many places do we see our friends, neighbors and relatives running headlong into some unyielding bureaucratic formula? At school? At work? Dealing with the government that their tax dollars support?

Robert McNamara passed away recently at age 93. We should respect the service that he rendered to this country’s private and public sectors and acknowledge his value as a human being. If you watch the Errol Morris documentary on McNamara (”The Fog of War”) as I did, you’ll be reminded that public figures have as many dimensions as the rest of us.

And if a person of Robert McNamara’s intelligence, education and ambition — such an apparent lock to succeed at everything he tried — can in fact come up short, it should also remind us of how fundamentally fallible we (and our theories about controlling the world) really are.

* The other day I heard a radio ad for a dinner special at one of Charlotte’s many “men’s clubs.” No offense to their 12-ounce ribeye, but wouldn’t the more appropriate cut of beef for this type of establishment be New York strip?

* Cadillac makes pickup trucks now. So does Lincoln. They have butt-warming leather seats and Versace floormats. Now, the men on my mother’s side of the family did a bit of farming, and on that farm they drove pickups. These vehicles were used primarily for trucking stuff from one place to another (hence the name). The aforementioned stuff included tractor tires and hunting dogs and a bull mastiff named Buck. Luxury was a radio that received both AM and FM signals.

My question: If the only thing it’s ever hauled is a box of wine, can it truly be called a truck?

* Recently, Sean Hannity offered to let himself be waterboarded to raise money for charity. Mr. Hannity concluded that this form of “enhanced interrogation” did not constitute torture, based on his extensive knowledge of … television.

But actually, I think the true definition of torture for any TV host is finding oneself locked in a room with no mirrors.