From Reader Sean F, his old car of choice, the Mercedes 770 / 770K of the late 1930s:
It’s a brute of a car (7.7-liter engine!), and heavy (especially when fitted with the armour plating and thick glass required by its most famous owner), but I’d take a slimmed-down non-Hitler version in a heartbeat.
And I’m just a sucker for those swoopy front wheel mudguards, in just about any car of that era.
Here’s another thing about this so-called “Modern Lifestyle” that is a stone in my soul’s shoe:
A SUPERYACHT owned by a Russian tycoon boasting an eye-watering £61million price tag is set to be auctioned off after being seized.
The stunning 240ft vessel – named The Axioma – has a catalogue of bougie features including six decks, a pool with a swim-up bar and even a cinema.
What is it with having an in-home movie room these days? You can’t open a real estate listing without seeing a windowless room with a giant screen and a few overstuffed easy chairs in it, and if I ever bought a house with such a “feature”, all that crap would be tossed out and replaced with something of redeeming social value — like a tasteful, fully-stocked bar — before the ink was dry on the closing documents.
Here is where I could hang out with a few friends, enjoy good fellowship, conversation and companionable drunkenness, all in a friendly setting. Maybe a TV screen in the corner so we could catch a decent game or a Grand Prix maybe, but live sporting events are different from movies, as a moment’s thought will prove: they are definitely group entertainment.
Movie houses are, almost by definition, not a place for gathering and social interaction. Oh sure, you enjoy the movie “experience” together (not that too many modern movies actually provide much of an experience, don’t get me started), but that’s it.
“Oh, but Kim,” I hear the cry, “it’s really a place for your teenage kids to hang out with their friends.”
Yeah, I really want my teenage daughter hanging out in a dark room with her testosterone-laden boyfriend, with the sound turned up loud lest parents actually hear what’s really going on in there. Or if there’s a whole group of them, to be greeted by a sea of thrusting pimply adolescent backsides when I walk in the room.
Okay, enough of that. 
Or if not a bar, then a gun room. Yeah, a wall full of cabinets such as below, inside a securely-locked door and suitably-impregnable walls:
Add a decent cleaning station / workbench, and I think you can all see where I’m going with this one.
Of course, someone might say that this would not be a place where I could entertain my friends — but clearly, you don’t know my friends.
Whatever alternative use you can dream up for that room, you can be sure that you’d get more enjoyment out of it than can be had from a screening of Fast & Furious 207 or whatever other childish comic-book action comes out of Hollyweird.
On the subject of great cars just needing a rebuild, Reader Gerald F suggests the 1972 Lotus Europa Special, which he describes as his “lottery” car:
Universally panned for its “truck” back, the Europa’s owners could be forgiven their secret little smile, because as ungainly as it looked, the Europa’s weight distribution was almost perfect and it could out-corner absolutely anything it raced against. Even by today’s lofty standards, the Europa was an outstanding example of the Colin Chapman era of performance — its dinky little Lotus-Ford 1600cc four-banger got it up to over 120mph quickly enough — and over a twisty road, it would leave everything else with only a view of its ugly backside.
And they came in a ton of spiffy colors…
Thank you, Reader Gerald, because now I want one too.
Frankly, upon looking at the women who seem to be all up in arms about this issue, I don’t think they realize the actual value of the goods they’re planning on withholding.
And:
West Virginia all by itself can only exert nominal influence on BlackRock and the big banks. But if you get a coalition of states – including Texas, Arizona, and Missouri – to threaten to cut off the mega-banks because of their anti-energy political activism, then there is a critical mass of influence.
And see where he goes from there. I like his thinking.
A couple of things occurred to me while reading this excellent report of some Midnight Rambler who got his body temperature lowered, but first, the facts:
A woman who lived next door to 26-year-old Justin William Wright woke up to find him standing in her bedroom after he broke in through a window. Then he attacked her.
Then she shot him, and then he died.
Now, if we were to give the Usual Suspects their moment in the sun, we would ordinarily be hearing wails of “Why didn’t she just shoot him in the leg?” and all that twaddle. But of course we won’t hear that because DoublePlusEvil Man was involved, and she only a Pore Helpless Victim.
And yes, as the article points out, this was another example of someone being killed by someone they knew. Well, yes. And I’m willing to bet that even outside gang shootings (where everyone knows everybody), this kind of thing is more prevalent than the bald stats show.
Finally, score one for those people like me (and all my Readers) who want women to be armed, precisely in case of this kind of neighborly activity.