Edward J. Pluchar - The Blogsplitter

You may not know that we had an accident in our Subaru a few weeks ago.

No one was hurt - Marcy and Amelia were in the car, turning left on a yellow light, when an oncoming driver sped up to make the light and t-boned the car.

Insurance determined the car is a total loss, and they’ve recruited a towing company to come pick it up.  We’ve been trying to put them off, because then we’ll be down to one car, which isn’t good news if I’m at work and Marcy needs to get somewhere (like her own job, possibly, in the coming weeks).

Thus, it was time to buy a car.

We started with the classic, growing family car - the minivan.  However, the gas mileage on virtually all of them was mediocre at best, and there are rumors of hybrid minivans hitting the market after a few more years.  So we’ll look to make that purchase at that time.

Alternative?  Let’s consider hybrids.

Truth be told, I’d love to get in a hydrogen car.  Since I learned (on a very, very rudimentary level) how they work, I’ve been fascinated by them.  In the suburbs of Chicago, however, I haven’t seen many hydrogen refill stations.

We did our online research.  After a few days we narrowed our choices to one make (Honda) and three models:  the Insight (hybrid), Civic (gas), and the Civic hybrid.

There happens to be a dealer 5 minutes from my parents’ house, so we went there to investigate our candidates.

On the second visit, when we arranged for a test drive, we had to buckle down for the haggling (pun not originally intended, but acknowledged on second reading).  Our guy, Larry, seemed decent enough, though his attempts at small talk were… predictable.

The haggling process was actually fairly dense, marked by Amelia having to eat dinner, Marcy going to pick my sister up from school while I held Amelia and haggled, the salesman leaving three different times and coming back with numbers that were not really what I asked for (of course) and Marcy making calls to another local dealer while picking my sister up while I stalled at the present dealer to see if we could get a better…deal.

In the end, the salesman followed the sales routine and brought out his sales manager.  The sales manager really blew the sale.  He was obviously trying to close, and even offered a slightly better APR, which would have saved us $4/mo, because of the “big ball of empathy” I had on my lap.

Yes.  This man’s heart was so big that he shaved $4/mo from the dealer’s coffers, leaving it in my pocket for, I don’t know, 1/4 of a Baby Einstein DVD each month.

When Marcy came back from the errand, we talked privately (though we had to ask the sales manager to give us that privacy, twice) and decided we wanted to think it over, overnight.  The salesman called the next day to apologize for his manager’s resulting behavior:  His increasingly aggressive and unresponsive style, and as we were leaving, his banging of an office door with his fist.

I said to Marcy, “Yeah, that’s impressive.  I think we should come back.”

We didn’t go back.  Instead we found Orenthal (another salesman), who was much more personable and about 80% less conniving with his tactics (mostly because he didn’t have to be conniving, I think).  He was Marcy’s phone call the night before, to compare prices and terms.

Now, to the point.  It’s pretty cool driving a hybrid.  The engine stopping when the car comes to a stop, the visual gauges showing the car’s electric engine charging when you brake.  The Civic hybrid also has a CTV, the first two letters standing for “continuous transmission,” and the whole thing meaning the vehicle does not hesitate when it changes gears, but rather transitions smoothly through acceleration from one gear to another.  (Maybe it IS a CTV:  v=vehicle).

So, perhaps there’ll be updates on gas savings, vehicle maintenance frequency and costs, and overall satisfaction.  If you want to give it a test drive, come on by!*

*Test drives offered at $99.  Tax, title, and fees not included.

I’ve been reffing flag football now that I’m back in the Chicago area, a Sunday past time I have had since high school.  The pay is pretty good, the coaches and fans are usually tolerable (the players are usually enjoyable), and you can’t beat running around outdoors on Sunday afternoons in the Fall.

This is the story of a Sunday when coaches and players were laudable.

The teams all play in black (home) and white (away) jerseys.  Thank you NFL licensing rules for protecting your brands from our youth.

The black jerseyed team took a large lead in the game, so the coach began to slow down his offense, keeping the game from being a total blowout.  Commendable, but also expected.

In the final minutes, the white team had the ball on their own 5 yard line, and still without any points.  On first down, the black team coach pulled over his three best players and said something, which I immediately understood to be “Make it look like you’re playing hard, but don’t pull their flags.”  In other words, let them score, but do it in such a way that they will feel they earned it.

Well, the whole black team was pretty good, and a player who was not in on the coach’s secret made the play.  The coach then called over a few more players and shared the same secret, and those players made sure the whole defense knew.

On second down, the white team ran the ball to the left side, which is where I was positioned.  Most of the black team either deliberately hesitated, or pretended to get stuck with a white blocker.

Still, the white running back came straight at the best black defensive player.  (You can see why the white team wasn’t scoring in the first place).

The white player ran just past the black defender, who would have made the play with ease exactly 100% of the time.  Nobly, the black player dove at the white player, just missing his flags, allowing the white player to continue running.  The black team kept up their mock pursuit of the running back, ultimately allowing him to score on the last play of the game.

The white team was elated!  They cheered on their running back and celebrated as if they had won the game.

This was almost too much for some of the black team players.  Almost, because a few of them complained to their own coach, “But we let them score!”  The coach quietly and quickly hushed them, and they listened.

It may be a little over-the-top to suggest that this was an inspiring play, but I was choked up.  It’s not often that such a lop-sided game produces two winning teams.

This is a bad show.

What one assumes the content to be is not bad.  The performances were pretty good - a contortionist dancer, an operatic singer, a grandma comedian.  The show was great while the performances lasted.

AGT is basically American Idol with a little more diversity.  You still have the judges, the process of elimination.

But why does a variety show exist that whittles away 60 minutes of air time by withholding the results of a 10-way vote?  In the second episode I saw, there wasn’t a single performance from any of the competitors.

No.  The only performer that night was David Hasselhoff, a judge, who was thoroughly underwhelming.  His best dance move was a sideways step, alternating one foot over the other.

I don’t understand.