The movie tells you right off the bat that Something Else Is Going On: it opens in a scientific facility somewhere, where three white-collar types have the world’s most boring and most content-free conversation in the history of cinema, signaling that they’re talking about Something Else, something that will be made clear later on. The conversation is so ridiculously non-specific that I can’t, in fact, even remember what it is they talked about. 

Cabin in the Woods has some very funny things in it, and some very clever things in it, and it has one thing in it that bugs the ever-loving crap out of me, to the point where I think I’m more irritated by this movie than I am amused by it. All Sunday night and early Monday morning I happened to spend sick as a dog, and the whole time I spent vomiting or laying awake waiting for the next time I was going to start vomiting the single biggest annoying thing in this movie kept repeating on me, much like the previous night’s dinner.

Since I can’t talk say anything about this movie without using a gigantic SPOILER ALERT consider yourself warned: here there be major freaking spoilers. 

SPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILER

The main thing that bugs me about this movie is the use of the word “whore.” 

The setup of Cabin in the Woods is very clever: yes, this is your typical summer horror movie, except the entire thing is set up by a gigantic scientific facility with unlimited funding who are watching every single move the kids make at their cabin. This scientific facility is connected to other scientific facilities in Tokyo and Stockholm and Madrid. Each facility, though, while monitoring the ensuing carnage, isn’t in fact responsible for it: no, the kids have to bring the carnage on themselves, because it’s part of an ancient rite. The Ancient Ones below must be appeased, and they must be appeased in ways special to that culture. The Tokyo feed, for instance, shows a bunch of Japanese schoolgirls being terrified by a ghost in their midst (thereby referencing up all Japanese horror movies with one hilarious shot).

The American one, however, is different. In the US (as we discover much later on in the movie), there are five sacrifices:

• The Whore
• The Athlete
• The Scholar
• The Fool
• The Virgin, who may or may not live at the end; her death isn’t necessary.

There are 5 people who go up to the cabin. Any takers on which sacrifices the two women are? That’s right: the women are defined by terms defining their sexual worth to men.

There is no word more guaranteed to set my teeth on edge than “whore,” because the connotation of the word is “worthless woman who’ll abase herself to anyone.” The word is completely superfluous in meaning to other words. 

• “sex worker” –> prostitute
• “sex worker in a high income bracket” –> call girl
• “woman who’s slept with one more guy than I have” –> slut

Yes, I guess I’ve heard guys called whores, but it’s always in terms of selling their business services to any bidder. Not their bodies. Not their lives Just what they do for a living. It’s not the same, and you’re not going to convince me it’s the same as calling a woman a whore, thanks.

The movie has a little fun with the term “virgin” — when the Virgin sacrifice tries to object to being called that, the Director of the scientific facility says, “We work with what we’ve got.” 

(And, in fact, I expected the movie to have a little more fun at the end — since two of the sacrifices actually make it to the very end, I expected them to reveal that the other one was actually a virgin. But alas: no dice.)

Okay, so the Virgin isn’t actually a virgin and that seems to work okay for the purposes of this sacrifice… Why on Earth is the Whore being called a whore? What has she done that merits her being called, essentially, trashy and worthless?

I know that the “sexually active girl dies first” is a trope of horror movies. I still don’t understand why they’re calling her a whore. It’s a loaded word. It’s a word that grabs you and forces you to look down on this girl. The movie explains its use of Virgin. They couldn’t have taken one goddamn line of dialogue to explain why they were using the term Whore? 

Whereas the guys are, y’know, an Athlete, a Scholar, a Fool. 

For all of its “reinventing” of the various tropes of the horror movie and all of its hilarious and clever dialogue and setups, Cabin in the Woods is exactly what it appears to be: another goddamn Hollywood movie in which the women are defined solely by their relationships to men, and the men are the only ones who ever do anything. 

Jiro Dreams Of Sushi is about Jiro Ono, a master sushi chef who runs a 10-seat sushi bar in the Ginza subway stop in Tokyo and whose dedication to his art has paid off handsomely with rewards such a three-star Michelin rating. He works with his son, Yoshikazu, every day in the cramped little restaurant — his younger son, Takashi, runs the restaurant’s second location at Roppongi Hills. He is 85 and keeps going, and you can see the determination in his desire to get every aspect of making a piece of sushi right. He is so dedicated to his art he even dreams of new creations. 

(Spoiler alert: if you see Jiro Dreams Of Sushi, the last food on Earth you will want to eat afterward is sushi. Because what would be the point? Wherever you go, no matter how good, the food is going to be crap compared to what you’ve just seen in the movie.)

Being Elmo is the story of Kevin Clash, the voice behind Elmo, the most wildly successful Muppet since Kermit and Miss Piggy. Clash, a tall and imposing black man (not your typical puppeteer) discovered his love of puppetry early on and threw himself into it so completely that when he graduated high school he went directly to New York City to work professionally, eventually getting to work for his mentor and idol, Jim Henson, and creating one of the most famous characters ever. 

Both movies are, in their own unique ways, both inspirational. And both are as depressing as hell. 

Here is the story of both movies: a young guy, for whatever reason, discovers his art at a fairly young age. He pursues this, no matter what the consequences. He would rather do this art than just about anything else, and he devotes hours and hours (and days and years) to it. He becomes an expert, worthy of teaching others, none of whom will probably ever reach his level. And no matter how good he gets at his art, he works at it just as hard every day, trying to get that much better at it. First one to the playing field, last one off. Jiro still crisps the nori on the brazier outside of his restaurant, Clash still puts together his Muppets by hand, trying to find new characters to work with.

Both stories are very inspirational. If you follow your dream and if you pursue your art and if you put in the hours to become great and if you keep working at it just as hard on Day 5000 as you did on Day 1, you will become a Master. All that spiritual, self-actualization bullshit we’ve always heard? It’s all right here. Like, neither one of these guys started out with any of the variables rolling their way, and neither let their circumstances stand in their way.

Jiro’s father abandoned the family, he started work at age 9, and, you know, World War II and all. (Spoiler: doesn’t turn out well for the Japanese.) But still he kept at his passion: getting better at his craft, showing up every day, creating his own restaurant, and eventually creating what most critics agree is the best sushi restaurant in the world. 

Clash grew up in a poor family in Baltimore in the 1960s, with few resources at his disposal. He created his first puppet by ripping up the lining of his Dad’s raincoat. In high school the other kids teased him for playing with dolls. And yet he kept putting on shows for kids, eventually getting hired at a local TV station to work on a kid’s show. He sought out the mentorship of Kermit Love, Muppet-builder to Jim Henson, and after high school went to work on Captain Kangaroo and The Great Space Coaster. He moved on to working for Jim Henson, and for Sesame Street. And there, after a master puppeteer named Richard Hunt threw the puppet at Clash and said, “What can you do with this?” Clash created Elmo. He’s now an executive producer at Sesame Street, in addition to a performer and teacher and international celebrity. For working with, you know, dolls. 

The dedication and artistry shown are both breathtaking. I mean, like, how hard is it to put a piece of fish on a block of rice, right? But then you see how they check the temperature of the rice until it is perfect. How they stir the egg to make tamago. How Jiro created the masterful sushi dinner he serves to customers, with different movements like a symphony. The meal’s expensive, but Jiro’s clearly not in it for the money: the restaurant’s the size of a closet and he has three MIchelin stars, he could quadruple the size of the place if he wanted to and sell out every night, no problem. But he stays with what works for him. 

Here’s the downside of mastery shown by both movies: they show us that our worst fears about pursuing our dreams, about giving 100% to our art and craft can be just as damaging personally as we’ve always suspected it would be. According to both movies, you cannot, in fact, have it all. 

Jiro comes off as something of a complete asshole. He’s 85 and he’s crotchety as hell. We know this isn’t because of his success — there’s a segment in which he meets up with school chums from 75 years ago in which they all reminisce about how Jiro was a bully back then, too. He talks about how his sons didn’t see him while they were growing up, because he left first thing in the morning and returned after they were asleep at night. (Mrs. Ono is never referred to — let alone seen — in this movie.) Instead of sending them to college he had his sons come apprentice for him at his restaurant, where of course he was harder on them than he was on the others because they were his sons and he couldn’t be lenient. His son Yoshikazu, who will take over the famed three-star restaurant, has been working for his father for almost 40 years and even though he reportedly is as good a sushi chef as his father (there’s an anecdote about Yoshikazu being the chef for the Michelin committee), everyone expects him to fail after Jiro leaves.

Kevin Clash is much different: he seems to be a genuinely nice guy, and he seems to have always been that way. Like Jiro Ono, Clash’s personal life isn’t dealt with much in the movie either, other than that he’s divorced and he has a daughter. A couple of times, while doing promotions around the world for rooms full of screaming, enthusiastic children he would realize that his own daughter was the age of these kids and he was with them, not her. There’s a small segment with his daughter’s 16th birthday that makes you realize that Clash isn’t like other fathers: he brings in his daughter’s 16th birthday cake…and there’s a small Elmo on it.

What. The. Hell.

He is never without Elmo. 

It’s clear in the doc that he’s brought as much to Elmo and puppetry as they’ve brought to him, and it’s wonderful to see. On the other hand, his personal life is crap. 

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When thinking about these movies I was reminded of a quote I read from Steve Jobs as to why he wanted to do a biography: “I wanted my kids to know me.”

Dude, I can think of a much better way to accomplish that than a book created by someone else. 

But maybe that’s the lesson. If you want to pursue something single-mindedly, everything else falls away. And are you willing to do this anyhow? 

(I won’t even get into “If a woman behaves like that, her partner won’t put up with it and it makes her a bad mommy.” But now that I’ve said that, I’ll let you go there.)

Highlights of theme park visits:

• We rode the new Star Tours 6 times in order to experience all of the possible sections. (The first two times we got two completely new rides, which led us to think there were hundreds of combinations. But no. Just 54.) This is a great ride. They will probably add new sections to it over time. I don’t need to go on it for quite a while, however.
• Our visit to Knott’s Berry Farm was overall not great (I think it’s designed more for teenagers wanting to go on big crazy roller-coasters), but it ended with a bang: the stunt show was hilarious. Definitely see it if you’re there. (Also: the chicken dinner. But this is a given.)
• The World of Color at California Adventure is amazing. Pro-tip: DON’T bother with the fast passes. We had tickets in the Blue section and Simon couldn’t see a damned thing. Actually, I couldn’t see half of it myself, so I could see his point of view. You can get reserved seating if you eat at the Trattoria (no idea if these seats are any good). The second time we went we stood in front of the Ariel’s Underwater Adventure ride, in the corded off section. We could see and hear everything, and we arrived about 5 minutes before the show started. This time we could all see the entire thing, easily.

But one of the great things about our trips is the fabulous eating we get to do in other places.

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Our favorite restaurant to stop at between here and Anaheim is Artisan in Paso Robles.

Who knew Paso Robles was so cute? Who knew it was such an epicenter of foodie-ism? There are apparently several fabulous restaurants there, but the one we stopped at last year on the way to San Diego (and talked about so much that we knew we had to go on this trip) is Artisan. It’s a cross between a French bistro and California cuisine. Everything we’ve had there was fantastic. Whenever we decide to go on a car trip, we will probably try to stop here.

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In Santa Barbara, we always stop at McConnell’s Ice Cream for, well, ice cream.

I used to go to McConnell’s with my sister when I visited her at college. And they’re still there, and they still have one million flavors, and they’re all insanely tasty. They had orange chocolate when we went! Does Swensen’s still have Swiss orange chip ice cream? Man, that brings back memories.

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Since we were staying at the Grand Californian, we of course went to the Napa Rose.

I think our memories of the Napa Rose outstripped the reality this time around: it was good, but not break-the-bank good (which it ought to be for those prices). Still, of all the high-end meals we’ve had on the Disney property (Steakhouse 55 last year, an unbelievably AWFUL Japanese restaurant that I am pretty sure is out of business and deserves to be), this is by far and away the best. We didn’t even bother going to other places this time.

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On our way to Knott’s Berry Farm, I looked up places to have breakfast and I said, “Oh hey, there’s an Original Pancake House. We should go there.”

Good call on my part.

This is one of the best entrants in the Original Pancake House chain that either Darin or I have ever been to. He goes to the one in Cupertino a lot, and the 49er Flapjacks at this place in Anaheim were perfect. Simon’s omelet: awesome. My Dutch baby pancake: very yummy. Sophia ordered a bowl of strawberries and got an overflowing bowl of fresh, perfectly sweet berries.

If we could have gone to this place again, we totally would have. We just couldn’t fit it into the trip.

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Honorable mention (mostly because I didn’t take a photo):

Los Agaves, in Santa Barbara: down the street from La Super-rica. Much more comfortable seating than La Super-rica. Delicious food. Definitely recommended.

Blue Bayou, New Orleans Square: we went here two years ago and were deeply underwhelmed for the price. This year, we wondered what to do for lunch, decided to risk it again (especially after doing a web search on “best lunch at Disneyland”). This time, I guess we ordered better because everything was awesome. Downside: their vegetarian lunch item is kind of stupid (it was the same thing as two years ago, so I didn’t order it again). Pro-tip: go early to make reservations, and say that you really want to sit by the edge of the water this time. (If you sit near the door, the light streaming in makes sure that you can’t see anything. Very unpleasant.) You will have to arrive at 11:15 for an 11:30 seating, but it’s totally worth it. Much better to sit and watch the Pirates riders go by.

Trattoria Something Something, California Adventure: Forgettable. I think I had a salad. While better than many places to eat, it wasn’t that great.

So here we have Live Action Snow White #1. (#2, Snow White and the Huntsman, is coming this summer.) Mirror, Mirror starts with the conceit that this is the story of the Evil Stepmother, since she’s played by the biggest star in the movie, Julia Roberts. The Queen is evil, a handsome Prince comes to the kingdom, Snow White runs away to avoid Evil Stepmother Queen’s clutches, she gets rescued by seven dwarves, she fights the Prince, she defeats the Evil Stepmother, she rescues the Prince, the kingdom is saved.

If this is the Evil Stepmother’s story, you may have noticed a problem midway through my recounting this movie.

The movie’s kind of a mess. It doesn’t know who the main character is either.

It’s directed by Tarsem Singh, whose main notable attribute is his gift for visuals. Big splashes of colors! Fantastic scenery! If Tarsem Singh and Zach Snyder could just learn what a story was, they would really have something going. A problem both directors suffer from, however, is that they are more interested in the visual on-screen than in what the hell is going on in the story.

The movie is definitely geared toward kids most of the time — the Prince gets affected by a magical spell that makes him act very silly indeed — although there were a couple of moments for adults that made me say, “Really? Did you have to put that in there?” The seven dwarves are very amusing — I liked them most of the time they were on screen, and they had the best dialogue. My kids mainly talked about the dwarves after the movie was over, so I’m thinking that was their favorite part too. Lily Collins is Snow White, and she’s very sweet and demure, and Julia Roberts eats as much scenery as she dares. Armie Hammer seems to have a pretty good time, despite spending a third of the movie half-naked. (And as I tweeted yesterday: Seriously, what must it be like to look like that? Does he spend most of his waking hours staring at himself in a mirror? Because if I were a guy and I looked like that, I sure would. I don’t even find that type of guy attractive and I would lose my ability to speak around him.)

There’s nothing stunningly original or even funny about this movie though. Maybe if they’d stuck with the Evil-Queen-as-heroine story, or had some other twist in there that would make this original. But mostly it’s a matinee-with-the-kids-’cause-we’ve-seen-everything-else type of movie.

We’re all kind of wondering how Snow White and the Huntsman is going to be.

His brother, Pat (Ed Helms), is a paint salesman whose marriage isn’t going so well and who isn’t helping himself out by taking 5 beer lunches at Hooters. He’s also bought a Porsche not only without the approval of his wife…but he might have killed his marriage by doing so. Their mother, Sharon (Susan Sarandon), is unhappy because she hates her kids and there’s no spark left in her life.

Movies are always about people being in the right place at the right time and benefiting from crazy, impossible coincidences. Jeff, Who Lives At Home out-and-out embraces this conceit. Jeff follows the signs, sometimes with great consequences, sometimes with terrible consequences. Pat doesn’t listen to the signs at all — and comes to believe that maybe Jeff is on to something. And their mom realizes that maybe everyone and everything is exactly where they’re supposed to be in this life.

In addition to being philosophical, believe it or not…this movie is very, very funny.

Okay, not in the rip-roaring “Did I just laugh at that?” way 21 Jump Street was last week. But it’s a comedy of a couple of very strange, and yet very ordinary, people getting through their day in the way that they’ve become accustomed to, and how in one day everything gets wildly shaken up. When Darin looked up the directors on IMDb and saw that they were the ones who did Cyrus, we both said, “Of course.” Those two movies fit together perfectly.

It’s crazy how movies we go to see in the theater really come down to money or art. That’s it. That’s the choice we make every week when we go to see a movie these days. Do yourself a favor and see one that isn’t just about getting the sequel green lighted.

It is, however, freakin’ hilarious.

I was in a terrible mood yesterday when we went to the movies — to the point where Darin wasn’t even trying to make conversation with me, I was so monosyllabic — and by the end of 21 Jump Street I was wiping tears from my eyes. (During the previews, I chuckled once, softly, during Men In Black 3 when Josh Brolin evoked Tommy Lee Jones perfectly, and the rest of the time I was like: Wow, what is a bigger waste of time — me trying to cheer up, or these awful, awful, awful looking movies?) I couldn’t believe the good reviews this movie got before I saw it, and now I’m like, Yeah, okay.

Channing Tatum is the good-looking, stupid cop who used to pick on nerdy, brainy Jonah Hill in high school. They both go to the Police Academy, where they help one another through. On their first assignment (as bike cops,in the park), they blow it so badly that Nick Offerman assigns them to undercover work at the high school. “You’re going to 37 Jump Street….Wait, that doesn’t sound right.”

They’re supposed to break up a drug ring at the high school, and they discover that high school has totally changed since they were there, 7 years ago: now everyone two-straps their backpacks, instead of only using one. The smart kids are now the cool kids! Our cops get assigned to the wrong classes! They throw wild parties! They blow up half the city with quite possibly the worst police work in history…but apparently no one notices!

Lots of drug humor. Unbelievably bad language — I think they went out of their way to see how much cursing they could get into this thing. Amazingly, no nudity. Every cliché about bad cop shows and cops working undercover and high school worked in, repeatedly. I had no idea who Channing Tatum was before this but I really liked him: he was hilarious.

We had a really good time at this.

The comedies they advertised before the movie though: ohmygod, they look awful. Why is anyone still hiring Adam Sandler?

Okay: it’s really good, it definitely evokes the spirit of the book, Jennifer Lawrence is clearly a little too old to play Katniss but she’s really good and there are few if any 16 year old actresses who could have done this role. All the movie forgot with the ending was the title card: “Coming next summer: Catching Fire.”

You know that movie execs have been prostrate in front of Suzanne Collins all weekend, begging her to add 5 or 15 more books to the Hunger Games trilogy.

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The previews before The Hunger Games were interesting for how the audience reacted:

• Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter made the audience laugh. The movie will have to be really good to overcome the audience’s reaction that this idea is too silly for words. The preview is expanded over the initial one, with more explanation of just what in the hell this movie is about.
• The new Spider-Man reminds us that it’s never too soon for a reboot! In fact, I think the reboot of The Hunger Games should be in theaters this fall. Andrew Garfield looks pretty good as Spidey. I have no idea of who the villains are or why they felt it necessary to bring Spidey back again, but I’ll probably be there.
• The Avengers preview I’ve just seen one too many times now. I don’t want to see this again before the movie comes out.
• Twilight: Breaking Dawn: Part II… I don’t even know how to gauge the audience reaction on this one. Embarrassed giggles? People talking right through it? Explosive laughter when Kristin Stewart is eyeing the deer as a tasty, tasty snack?

Welcome

Well, they do — it’s at Intel’s headquarters over in Santa Clara, at 2200 Mission Boulevard. It’s a couple of rooms of intro to microprocessors, how chips are made, how computers talk, the Intel story –

(Spoiler alert: they invented everything and are the most amazing so phbbbbtttt!!!!)

– and that sort of thing. Looking at the photos of Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore and Andy Grove I was suddenly reminded of the time I interviewed Andy Grove for the Stanford Daily, a million and a half years ago.

The kids were mostly interested and happy. How could they not be? The museum has some real dinosaurs on display!

A blast from the Mezozoic

That’s an IBM PC, kids. Scary, huh? Wait until your parents tell you how to operate that thing without a mouse. Wait until they describe the floppy disks. The tour guide did have a floppy disk as a visual aid…a three-and-a-half inch floppy disk. I called foul and insisted they bring out the five-and-a-quarter floppy floppy disks.

(My first job at Stanford was teaching students at the Graduate School of Business how to use IBM PCs. Good times. Man, seeing that little machine brought back some memories.)

Some of the exhibits were not very well focused (“Uh…which part of this is the transistor in relation to the size of a human hair?”), but they had plenty of interactive stuff for kids to play with. They had some exhibits that I liked.

Yes. I am a nerd.

And some that were just kind of silly.

One kid got to dress up in an actual bunny suit. She said it was “hot.”

During the part where the kids got to do some hands-on electronics, they built circuits from one of those kits you can buy at toy stores. Simon has a couple of these kits, so he’s really familiar with it. He did try to answer every single question the tour guide gave, but she was fair and made sure other kids got to answer questions too.

Well. Sometimes.

It’s a popular little museum with fourth graders in this area, because the fourth graders are studying magnetism and electrical conduction, and the museum is completely free, including the hands-on demo area.

And you know…this kind of thing is part of our cultural heritage around here.

A nice quote to end the day with.

On Van Ness Avenue, I said, “I think I’m having a midlife crisis.”

“You…wait, what?” Darin said.

“I want to buy a convertible.”

“Okay, for one thing, that is a not a midlife crisis, that is just…wanting a change of pace. For another thing, don’t call it a midlife crisis, that had me in another conversation entirely. And for another, convertibles are a pain in the ass. Why would you want a convertible?”

“Dunno,” I said. “I just suddenly do. I was looking at some cars going by recently and I thought, ‘I’d really like to drive around in a convertible.’”

“Well, you’ve had the Odyssey for several years now, maybe it’s time to think about getting a new car.”

“I don’t want a new car. The Odyssey is a great car. It’s just that I want a convertible. Everybody I know has had a convertible.”

“Yes, and then they all got rid of their convertibles and bought good cars.”

“You have a point there.”

“Do you know what kind of convertible you want?”

“Oh yes,” I said. “I want an SL 500.”

From the look on Darin’s face, I could tell he was rethinking the whole “midlife crisis” analysis.

“Are you sure about this?”

“I don’t want to get one right now. I’m just thinking about it.”

Which is part of the reason that after this conversation I didn’t push the issue. I often get weird obsessions about things, and over time they would fade. Probably, most likely, almost certainly, this would happen too.

Or, you know… maybe not…

§

Several months later I was talking to the interior designer we used on our remodel about cars. “I want a convertible,” I said.

“Oh, I had one of those,” she said. “It ruins your hair and you get a tan. Don’t get one.”

She was probably right.

Still…not enough to talk me out of the idea.

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In June 2010, our friend Andrew was in town for the Developers Conference and we invited him over for dinner. He arrived in his brother’s Audi convertible.

“What do you think of that car?” Darin asked.

“It looks nice.”

“But…”

“It’s still an Audi.”

“Why do you want an SL?”

“It looks better than the SLK,” I said. “I know that is a silly reason to buy a car.”

In fact, given what I know about the car industry, the civil engineering industry, and the coming oil shock, there is no good reason ever to buy a car. The US energy policy has been built around keeping gas cheap and plentiful, in the face of all rational metrics. I sometimes wonder if we’re going to get it triply bad when the hammer comes down.

On the other hand, Darin and I don’t buy cars all the time; we keep them until we drive them into the ground. And being a locavore vegan is way better for your carbon footprint than what car you drive. (Seriously, if you ever consume meat and you so much as breathe the words “carbon footprint” we need to have a serious talk.)

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Last year, once we’d finally moved back into the house, Darin said, “Are you still thinking about that car?”

“Yes.” I shrugged. “We need to get you a new car first.”

“I don’t need a new car.”

We bought Darin’s car new in January 1996. While we’ve taken good care of the insides of the mechanics, we’ve neglected the exterior. Two years ago I looked into getting his car a new paint job, and the investigation never went much beyond that. Several parts of the interior have started ripping or cracking. The interior of the console/armrest between the driver’s seat and the passenger seat is filled with an analog cell phone attached to the car, and that was some cool stuff when we bought this car, man.

He needs a new car.

Darin has a list of things he wants in a new car — he’d prefer electric, or at the very least a hybrid. And it must have keyless-go. “I don’t even know what car I’d get,” he said.

“That’s too bad. Because I totally know what car I’d get. And! I’ve been looking at used ones. Look, I know this isn’t rational. There’s nothing rational about getting this car. It’s completely wrong for our life. It’s completely wrong given that generally I have Click and Clack with me almost all the time. I don’t care, I still want one. I don’t want one so much that I need to have it today. We need to finish paying for the remodel first.”

The fact that I was still thinking about the car, though, was a Sign: since Darin and I take forever to move on big projects, we’re usually pretty set in our ways by the time we finally get going on them.

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Looking at Craigslist at the used cars was very daunting. I’ve never bought a used car. I’ve never sold any of my cars. Our main strategy is trade them in when we get a new one — yes, it’s not the most money you could possibly get for the car, but the buying and selling of cars is nerve-wracking. You know you’re getting taken.

A guy I know who buys expensive sports cars all the time told me, “Here’s what you do. You call up the local Mercedes dealer. You say, Here’s the car I want. Like, ‘I want a silver SL, three to four years old, with such-and-such options, and I’m willing to pay this much.’ The second they get that car in, they call you, you go in and buy it. That’s all you have to do. Do it at the dealer, though, so you get the extra warranty.”

After that conversation, I stopped looking at Craigslist and only looked at the list of cars the local Mercedes dealer had. I also checked out at their non-Mercedes cars, but not a lot. I was very set in my obsessions.

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Last Halloween, we were over at our friend A’s house. He showed me his brand new SLK 350, which replaced his older SLK. It looked insanely cool. It also looked much sexier than I remembered.

“They completely redesigned it this year,” he said. “And it’s got a ton of wonderful new features.”

“You didn’t want an SL?” I asked.

“No, why? This car is great.”

Hm. A was familiar with two-seater convertibles. If he was good with the SLK, perhaps I should look at the SLK again.

§

About two months ago I went to the local Mercedes dealer. They had some used SLKs on the lot. I test-drove a 2009. Oh, that was nice. It had a few curious things, though, like no cup holders. (German engineers don’t understand the whole “cup holder” thing.) And the seat adjustment buttons were down near the floor on the side of the seat. And what the hell, they still have ashtrays?

“Germans smoke a lot,” said the salesman.

“So do the Japanese, and they’ve figured out no one wants these things.”

Seriously, Mercedes, hello: an ashtray is totally an add-on feature that should cost extra, perhaps in a “Smoker’s Package.” Feel free to charge smokers more; everyone else does. The vast majority of modern drivers would rather have a power outlet or a coin holder or something else entirely there. And no, I can’t just take out the cigarette lighter and stick a power cord in: the design of the cigarette lighter outlet is different such that normal lighter-outlet, so normal lighter-power-cords don’t work with them. Because Mercedes is filled with obnoxious, non-standards-loving engineers.

I asked about various features, and every time the salesman said, “That’s new to the 2012 model.”

After we finished playing around with the 2009, I said, “Okay, I’ll look at the 2012.”

Big mistake.

Huge.

The 2012 had a better shape! Its dashboard made more sense! The car adjustment buttons were where, you know, I could easily reach them! It had an attachment for my iPhone!

I took it for a test-drive. Oh no, I thought. It had better power, better handling, a better overall feel, and the dashboard was much, much better looking. Given how small the interior is, you’d better like your dashboard: you’re going to be looking at it a lot.

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I looked into getting a car loan. Rates are so cheap nowadays it barely makes sense to spend your own money. Hilariously, according to the bank, the SLK counts as a “green car” because of its MPG of 20/29. That is ridiculous. Man, do we have it easy in this country.

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A month ago went to the dealership to finally order a car, at least three years after the idea first hit me, so no one can accuse me of rushing into it. The salesman did several country-wide searches on various color combinations to see if there was anything available right away. “If not, it takes about four months to make one to order.”

“Four months is a long time.”

“So what color do you want?” Darin said.

“Um…Red.”

Darin wore his patented “You can’t tell what I’m thinking right now” look, which always tells me exactly what he’s thinking.The salesman finally found one that had the options we wanted, along with lots of options we didn’t want (Rear spoiler? Do I look like a 17-year-old boy?). We decided to go ahead and get it — more expensive than we had planned on, but isn’t that always the way. It took a few days to arrive from whichever dealer actually had it.

The car

Simon was dancing around with excitement.  The last time we bought a new car was two weeks before he was born. “Everyone in my class gets new cars all the time!” he said.

“You know, this is a two-seater,” I said. “This is Mommy’s car. You’re not going to ride in this a lot.”

Simon nodded. “I know. But in ten years it’s going to be my car and I’m going to drive it all the time!”

Darin looked at me.

“Trust me, I have not promised him that. He’ll be twenty years old. There is no way he’s driving this car when he’s twenty.”

“It’s going to be my car!” Simon sang.

Simon with the car he is never, ever going to drive.

As we walked out of the dealership, I saw a recently-arrived red 2009 SLK. “Oh, can you believe that?” I asked. “If they’d had that when I came in here, I would never have looked at the 2012 models.”

“Live in the now,” Darin said.

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When I went to pick the car up, the salesman spent about an hour going over all of the electronic features in the car.  He made me go through all of the menus, which confused the heck out of me after a while. On the way home, I discovered the Navigation system (with Voice Control…trust me, it’s no Siri) kept talking over the radio to give me driving instructions. I couldn’t figure out how to find places on the map. The radio had eleventy-hundred different bands.

There was only one thing to do: RTFM. Or manuals, as the case was.

Who knew there’d be studying?

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The worst feature of the car is clearly the element the German designers did not want to put into it: the cup holder. The 2009 model didn’t even have cup holders. This one has two cup holders built into the center console.

Well, kinda.

Sophia and I bought two tall hot chocolates at the Starbucks one day and I said, “You can’t drink this in my car.” She said, “Okay.”

We put the cups in the cup holders and…oh goodness. That was a tight fit. The cups were ever so slightly bent away from one another, the fit was so tight.

“You really cannot drink your hot chocolate in this car,” I said. “Because if you pull your cup out, we will have hot chocolate all over this car.”

I guess they designed this car for two cans of soda. Or something. I don’t drink soda.

My Nissan coffee thermos does not fit in one of these holders either. Sigh.

The cup holder with a single tall coffee in it. Not much space for cup #2.

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The best feature of the SLK is the AIRSCARF™. The AIRSCARF™ is a vent built into the back of the headrest that will blow warm air on you if you drive on a cold day with the top down. In fact, no matter what the temperature in the car is set to, the AIRSCARF™ blows warm air on you.

Somebody Darin works with recently bought a 1991 VW Cabriolet for $1000 and then put another $1500 into it to fix it up. A friend of mine bought a Cabriolet, possibly in 1991; I wondered if it could be the exact same car. Darin asked her how fixing up her car was coming along.

“Well, I really thought I was going to like my car,” she said, “but it doesn’t have an AIRSCARF™ so now I think it sucks.”

When Darin told me this story, I said, “Please tell me she was kidding.”

He waited a few seconds before saying, “Yes, she was kidding.”

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The first time I drove the car with the top down, I realized that anyone driving near me would be able to tell what seriously terrible taste in music I have. So I can only listen to NPR and “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” when I have the top down.

I’ll deal with the embarrassment.

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The lights are automatic. I know this is standard on most cars now. Surprisingly, the windshield wipers are also automatic. Is this a thing now? I couldn’t believe it when they just came on during a sudden burst of rain. It’s cool when the wipers suddenly speed up to match the flow of rain.

I drove to Oakland with my friend Rob, who spent much of the time figuring out the system that operates the radio, map system, etc. We agreed that the UI is terrible. “What, are there only three guys on the planet who can do electronic system UI and they’re already working in this area?” I said.

Rob figured out how to turn off the navigation voice that announces every upcoming turn (and announced it three times: once when you’re a mile off, once when you should prepare to do it, and once as you’re doing it. Turns out you have to hit “mute” while she’s talking. Every time you use the mapping system, you have to mute the voice. That’s just plain annoying, in case anyone in Stuttgart cares.

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So, it’s been a month with the new car. The first week I had the car it was bright and sunny out. It’s been cold and rainy ever since. As a result, I have used the AIRSCARF™ more frequently than I would have guessed at the outset.

It gets much better gas mileage than the Honda Odyssey and I drive it a lot more than the Odyssey, so I’m actually using less gas. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. (I’ve filled up the Odyssey only once in the past month, as a matter of fact.)

It’s fun being able to have a new car.

In another ten years, when it’s time to buy another new car, cars will either be unimaginably cool or completely nonexistent, so I’m having fun with this one now.

Forget the stupid financials. As many people pointed out, John Carter bombed because it had an amazingly sucky ad campaign. This is one of the few times that I think having the wrong ad campaign really strangled a movie in the cradle, because John Carter is a fun, goofy flick that you can take the whole family to. I’m actually really sorry that Darin and I saw it without the kids, because now one of us in two or three weeks is going to have to go see it again (if, of course, any theaters still have it).

John Carter is the story of a guy in the American Old West (whose name is…wait for it…John Carter) who finds a portal to Mars. There he discovers all manner of strange and crazy creatures, and he gets involved in the middle of a planet-wide civil war, where he promptly falls in love with Princess Dejah, who has to marry someone else. Huge epic battles! Crazy non-terrestrial machines! Mark Strong as the bad guy! (I know, right? Like that came as a huge surprise — I think he’s contractually obligated to be the bad guy in every picture these days.)

The movie isn’t deep. It’s not educational. It was a lot of fun, however. The movie rarely stops to explain anything, figuring the audience will just pick it up as we go along, and since it’s not especially layered or confusing, we do. I really liked Taylor Kitsch as John Carter — he seems like he’s having a great deal of fun, even if he does have to spend most of the movie half-undressed. (Ladies.) The female lead is nothing to write home about, but they so rarely are these days, and that’s a topic for a rant another time.

There is a lot of fighting, but all of the blood spilled is a turquoise blue, not red (which doesn’t explain why everyone is clearly red-tinted, not…oh forget about it), so I don’t think kids would be especially grossed out. There are cute alien babies and giant machines and people wearing crazy costumes. It’s a fun weekend serial.

I’m just sorry it had such a sucky trailer.