Wherein we drag ourselves out of bed to face the horror of another week… wait a minute, it’s Martin Luther King Day!!! (a.k.a the holiday celebrated by many, while others go “Who?”)
Now on to the serious funnies [sic]…
And to celebrate MLK Day properly, what better than a quickie with some vintage Pam Grier?
Would. And so would anyone. Now get off that lounger and celebrate the day.
When Mazda reintroduced the concept of “sports car” to the automotive world, a whole bunch of other automakers, who had doubtless been told by Marketing that nobody wanted sports cars anymore, suddenly rediscovered the joys of a small, inexpensive, modestly-powered open-top car.
Of course, people had always wanted sports cars — what they wanted was a reliable sports car, which the Euros and Brits seemed to be incapable of producing (Alfa Romeo Spider, Triumph anything, MG anything, Fiat anything, and so on), while the US had never produced a sports car. (Corvettes, Thunderbirds etc. aren’t sports cars. The closest one we’ve ever had was the Saturn Sky/Pontiac Solstice, which was really the German-designed Opel GT anyway —
— and we were late to the party. By the time these came onto the market in the mid-2000s, Mazda had gobbled up the market already.)
Anyway, Mazda ended all that, or to be more correct, they started it up again. Now, all of a sudden, everyone else had to get back to the drawing board and play in this pool.
Enter Fiat’s little derivative of the older 124 Spider: the Barchetta.
If it looks like the Mazda Miata, it’s probably not coincidental:
…because there are only so many ways you can design a sports car, after all.
Another sports car of the late 1970s was the Lotus Elan (which predated the Miata, and in fact was probably the car that Mazda used as their model):
Even Alfa Romeo replaced their old Spider (which was gorgeous) with a 90s lookalike (which wasn’t). Here’s the 1980’s Spider:
Compare to the 2000 model:
‘Nuff said.
The only thing which set the Alfa apart from the rest was terminal unreliability a snarling 3.0-liter V6 which made the Spider so much quicker than the rather lackluster Mazda- and Fiat roadsters. (Then of course there came new environmental restrictions [sigh] and the V6 was replaced by a 2.0-liter turbo version.)
As Longtime Readers of this here website are know well, I love little two-seater sports cars, whether the 1930s MG TA, the Austin Healey MkIII or indeed, the modern Fiat 124 (a.k.a. the “Fiata” because in the Great Circle of Automotive Life, the 124 shares a chassis with the Miata. Confused, yet?).
I don’t really care for the 1990s/2000s models, though, because that “bar-of-soap” shape was fashionable at the time but really, it’s dead boring.
However, all was not a complete waste of time. Enter those maniacs at Abarth and a design firm named Stola,who took the staid little Fiat Barchetta and turned it into this:
Ooooh, baby… and that’s the “cute lil’ Italian thang” in the title.
I have long lusted after owning a Maserati Quattroporte, which to me seemed to be the last (non-Bentley) word in luxury touring cars:
It combines everything I like about cars: exquisite styling, a sumptuous interior and, lest we forget, a Ferrari-derived 3.8-liter V8 engine.
This morning, however, I took an Uber passenger to the airport, and in chatting about cars, I mentioned my yearning for the above Mazza.
“Nah,” was his comment.
“Why not?”
“Quality isn’t that good.”
“It’ll break down every week?” I said in jest.
“Not every week…”
I should point out that said passenger was once a senior exec at Maserati USA.
So much for that dream.
Okay, that does it: I am officially jealous of the younger generation, if this kind of thing is going to become commonplace:
An Oklahoma high school teacher was arrested for allegedly having a threesome with a student and another woman inside her home.
Joyce Churchwell, who worked as a volleyball coach at Berryhill High School in Tulsa, first connected with the student over Snapchat and began seeing him at her home last year, News on 6 reported.
The student “admitted that this encounter had taken place at the teacher’s home along with another adult female — a former teacher at the district.”
I mean, a high school kid bonking a nubile young teacher is one thing — but a threesome with another older woman?
Just… damn.
Is there any possible part of our daily life that isn’t going to be measured by this bullshit metric?
Fish sticks may seem harmless, but the tiny food is creating a huge carbon footprint.
A new study has found that transforming Alaskan Pollock into fish sticks, imitation crab and fish fillets generates nearly twice the greenhouse gas emissions produced by fishing itself.
I’m getting to the point where the more I’m scolded for behavior which (allegedly) harms the planet or in some way offends people of a certain type, the more I’m likely to increase said behavior.
I’ve never been that keen on fish sticks — I think I grew out of the taste at age 8 — but I think I’ll pick up a pack or two of Gorton’s the next time I’m at the supermarket, just for spite.
And then there’s this, from the same article:
Families that often dine out and consume large quantities of sweets and alcohol are likely to have a higher carbon footprint than meat eaters, a study claims.
Researchers came to this conclusion after studying the food habits and carbon footprints of around 60,000 households across Japan.
They found that meat consumption typically only accounts for only 10 per cent of the different in environmental impact between low and high carbon households.
In contrast, households with high carbon footprints typically consumed around two to three times more sweets and alcohol than those with low footprints
Eating out, for example, was found to contribute 175 per cent more carbon emissions for the average household than eating meats.
In fact, dining in restaurants was seen to contribute an annual average of 770 kilograms (121 stone) of greenhouse gases towards the environmental impact of those households with a high carbon footprint.
That does it. Tonight is Pizza Night chez Du Toit (which is an immutable institution), but tomorrow night I think I’ll take New Wife to Hard Eight BBQ, which boasts a meat smoker that puts out more smoke than a fucking 19th-century steamship.
Chide me, I dare ya.
The rest of the article, sadly, is quite serious. Read it anyway.
It wouldn’t surprise me if at his next speaking engagement, the Ginger Duke wears a pussy hat.