The Murder of the Lexus / American Chronicles: Auto Obsession

So far, September of 2022 is turning into one of the worst months your humble blogger has had since 2018. Coming home to Denver from a road trip to the northeastern plains of Colorado after a pleasant weekend with friends, I was 2 blocks away from home when a moron in an F-150 did this to me:

And so now I’m forced to say goodbye to my “commuter car”, my 2006 Lexus IS 250 which has served me so well for 5.5 years. Though certainly not “my kind of car” (several of my friends expressed some misgivings over their greaser hot-rodder buddy buying a Japanese sports sedan!), it was in fact a terrific car: fast, safe, and efficient, it was well made, extremely comfortable, and always did what was demanded of it without complaint. That’s a worth a lot; for a daily driver to shoot over a mountain to the office and back, you couldn’t really ask for anything more.

It’s ironic, then, that only a couple of weeks ago I wrote: “I pity anyone who is looking to buy an affordable used car for reliable transportation right now, as you’ll find the supply rapidly drying up.” So I guess I get to have a little pity party for myself now.

Not that I’m one for Pity Parties…but combine this with the package thefts, the recent Nazi-esque speech from the White House puppet, the death of Queen Elizabeth II, and numerous other disasters both societal and personal over the last several weeks, and I have to wonder if it isn’t time to take all my vacation in a lump sum and spend the next several weeks just hiding in my basement waiting for this storm to pass. So tonight, after the warmth of a double-nightcap courtesy of Jameson had gone to my head, a latent memory from 32 years ago came to the fore, perching on my shoulder like Poe’s proverbial Raven and whispered this line in my ear:

“Americans and their cars: they do more than drive them. They dream about them. They slave over them. They love them.”

That line was the opening of an episode of a short-lived TV series from 1990 called “American Chronicles.” Created by Mark Frost, who-along with one my favorite film makers of all time, David Lynch-also created the ground-breaking series “Twin Peaks” (a show which, I am convinced, changed American television forever), American Chronicles featured many of the same quirky camera angles, unusual music, and a focus on violence and sexuality that were hallmarks of Twin Peaks. Narrated by Richard Dreyfuss (unforgettable in his role as Curt Henderson from American Graffiti), the half-hour weekly program was a very philosophical, often very dramatic, look at some aspects of American society.

I hadn’t thought about this show in decades, but parts of some of the episodes are burned into my mind because of the creative way they were filmed, and the 4^th installment, aired on September 29 of 1990, was called “Auto Obsession.” It was an interesting look at the American cultural obsession with the car from people who, perhaps, did not completely share the obsession.

Unfortunately the only evidence of this 32 year old memory I’ve been able to find is a VHS rip whose quality leaves much to be desired, but its interesting to watch it now, both to look at which of its predictions have come true and which have not. Though it certainly pays homage to the positive aspects of a life devoted to the car, it seems to lean heavily on the negative side, and shows some of the first signs of the climate alarmism driving the insanity we are suffering through today. To give them the benefit of the doubt, though, it was impossible for them to know in 1990 that radical technological advances in geology and drilling technology would render such dramatic claims as “by the year 2033 the earth will be out of gasoline” a moot point.

In spite of the enviro-hysteria, there’s no denying it is a beautifully filmed and well-conceived look at a now endangered aspect of life in the 20^th century and it makes this point crystal clear: the American identity is so indelibly connected to the car, that to imagine a life without cars is to imagine a life without the American identity! And that’s a world that I, for one, do not want to participate in.

I can’t say I “loved” my 2006 Lexus; a Lexus just isn’t the type of car that inspires that degree of attachment. Even so, I did drive it for over five years: I cared for it and maintained it, kept it waxed and polished and protected from the weather; I took numerous road trips in it, and my ownership of it straddled the life and the passing of my father, amongst other watershed events in my life. Having it taken from me by some moron who couldn’t properly handle his own vehicle feels like more than just the loss of an appliance: it feels like the loss of a friend. And maybe that’s the point of this installment of “American Chronicles.”

As a cool bonus, here’s an even older flashback: this was country artist Ronnie Milsap’s attempt at a “crossover hit” in 1984 which, though lost in the sands of time just like “American Chronicles”, is still a fun look back at life in the land where the Cult of the Car was once elevated to religious status. This is a mess of shameless 1980s cheese, slathered in dated pop culture references: the crowds of pouty-faced models in stiletto hills, the robotic bow-tied professor, the break dancer, even a cameo appearance by Hervé Villechaize of “De plane, de plane!” fame: its like they were challenging themselves to see how many tropes they could squeeze into the running time! This song was played to a pulp on LA Top 40 station KIIS FM, and the video features a gorgeous 1956 Corvette in the starring role in amongst numerous other classics and references to the freeways I spent my formative years navigating:

American car culture isn’t “dying,” so much as its being strangled to death by globalist billionaires and their corrupt government lackys atttempting to force us out of our cars to “save the planet,” but some of us aren’t going to give it up without a fight! So now, my search begins for a new “gas burner” to commute to the office in. It sucks that a car with probably a decade of life left in it was snuffed out so unceremoniously, but maybe there will be some excitement in seeing what I wind up replacing my daily driver with!