A few years ago, we bought some Auto Bingo cards at Restoration Hardware. (Yes, a supremely yuppie-scummy sort of thing to do. I tell you in my defense: Every time two kids are in my car, they’re playing Auto Bingo. To this day.)
Anyway, one of the squares is for a Corvette. In Fort Wayne, we never saw them. I started making Corvettes a free spot. And then we moved here.
On today’s bike ride, in the first block:
In the second block:
(This would have been a much better picture if my finger hadn’t been over the lens, don’t you think?)
And they were the same model — the supercharged Z6. Another one passed me on the road.
brian stouder said on August 28, 2008 at 6:02 pm
I lust after Mini Coopers. My goal is to own one by the time I’m 50 – so I have until 2011.
They used to be rare, but now I see them all over the place – which is re-assuring
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alex said on August 28, 2008 at 7:39 pm
I’m finding the Solstice still relatively scarce, and there’s certainly no shortage of people asking me what kind of car it is. When I tell them it’s a Pontiac, they’re amazed. “Not a [Porsche/Bimmer/some other exotic foreign thing]?”
This car is turning out to be a little more interesting than the usual GM piece of crap—obviously it was designed and engineered by a marketing department. (My last GM car, I’m convinced, was designed and engineered by accounting.) What’s also very different this time is that the car’s still in development.
Just got a new convertible top—gratis—because the original one was disintegrating. The dealer convinced us to wait for the third-generation replacement top to come out because the second was proving to be no better than the first and customers were getting really livid. Everyone’s getting them free because everyone’s car is sucking an egg and GM is trying to avoid a public relations nightmare. (It appears GM is turning this model into a T-top next model year.)
Otherwise I must say it’s a very fun little car. It borrows some retro cues from the ’70s Vette and is the small sports car that the Vette used to be before it became an overstuffed luxo-boat for Viagra-popping old farts.
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MRMARK said on August 28, 2008 at 8:17 pm
That would be Z06, not Z6. Very new and rare, obviously except in Motor City.
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Jolene said on August 28, 2008 at 8:21 pm
A short article here re how Kwame Kilpatrick’s problems are complicating Obama’s efforts in Michigan.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on August 28, 2008 at 10:36 pm
Hey Brian, today i rolled 47 over the odometer — looks like you’re also born in the double palindromial year of 1961 (which may mean that one of us is the AntiChrist, according to some morbidly amusing websites).
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brian stouder said on August 28, 2008 at 11:14 pm
March 19, 1961, for me. It was always a good birthday, but now it is the anniversary for the 2002 kickoff of the war in Iraq!
Oh well….Barack Obama’s speech in the stadium was certainly marvelous stuff….and I enjoyed Al Gore’s spot-on invocation of Abraham Lincoln, in his remarks.
Now my big decision is whether to get one of those happenin’ Obama ball caps from their official website, or that extra-cool tee that Spike Lee was wearing yesterday.
I suppose I’ll have to get both! (and a wndow cling for the car, too)
We’re in it now, full-blast, to the end
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nancy said on August 28, 2008 at 11:23 pm
Yep, it’s the Z06. Sorry ’bout that.
Brian, if I get a chance, I’ll take some pix of the unofficial Obama shirts selling all over Detroit these days. You might find a nice one-off. They run along the lines of this: Martin Luther King Jr. looks down from heaven on Obama, “the dreamer and the dream” emblazoned below them in florid script. You might say it’s a big deal around here.
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brian stouder said on August 28, 2008 at 11:38 pm
Martin Luther King Jr. looks down from heaven on Obama, “the dreamer and the dream”
You know, there’s a bit of an echo there, too; you’ve seen those hagiographical images of George Washington in heaven, looking upon President Lincoln.
Well, it is indeed the 45th anniversary of the great ‘I have a dream’ speech at Lincoln’s memorial; and who can watch that speech and not get a lump in their throat?
And, by God – it doesn’t have to be just an old speech, on grainy film, about an ethereal dream…maybe we really CAN move beyond judging people based on the color of their skin, but, instead, the content of their character.
Yes – maybe we can, indeed.
As for that MLK/Obama tee, snap me up one (XL!), Nance, and we’ll square accounts! (still, I have the urge to also patronize the campaign store, and therefore have a little more ownership. I’m a cheapskate, and have never given much to political campaigns….but we sent $40 to Obama for America….and it felt goooooood!!)
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Terry WAlter said on August 29, 2008 at 6:46 am
Just wondering if, while he was gazing down, MLK happened to notice the ABC reporter being cuffed and hauled away. His crime- being on the scene when the big dollar lobbyists and the Dems’ bigwigs were having their get togethers. It’s all about change; change with a lot of numbers before the dot.
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Cathy D. said on August 29, 2008 at 8:30 am
No ‘Vettes in Ft. Wayne? You lived in the wrong part of town, then.
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brian stouder said on August 29, 2008 at 8:55 am
The (female) governor of Alaska?
This would be the one thing that McCain could do that would scare me a little (a woman for his vice presidential pick).
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alex said on August 29, 2008 at 9:09 am
“Eight is enough!”
Obama sure used that line to much greater effect than Mitch Albom.
My bleeding heart goes out to the Republicans, as I’m sure there won’t be that same groundswell of enthusiasm and optimism at their event. I doubt they’ll be able to trot out a bunch of disaffected Dems who find McCain the most inspiring candidate they’ve ever seen in their lives. If anything, the event will be remarkable for the GOP’s characteristic negativity.
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brian stouder said on August 29, 2008 at 9:23 am
That “Eight is enough” line made me laugh out loud! Good ol’ NN.c, as ahead of the curve as ever!
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caliban said on August 29, 2008 at 9:59 am
Corvettes didn’t ever live in the same universe as Z-Cars. And I despsise Chevys in general. . The Stingray is an abomination. Actually, there are Corvettes and there are Stingrays. Tod and Buz drove a Corvette, but a Shelby ustang would have been better.
Comparisons with Jack are wonderful because they remind Americans that excellence might defeat stupidity. I think, Bobby’s the touchstone. Republicans will claim that piss won’t trickle down, but if American voters are so stupid they can’t see wealth being consolidated in the few, so much for American democracy.
There’s something seriously to be said for the idea that patriotism means concern for the commonweal. You know, McCains embrace of Rove’s and the little pisant’s politics ought to stick in people’s craw. We get battered with what Hillary said about Barack, in the heat of a campaign that excluded Michigan and Florida. In 2000, the Bush campaign said John McCain was nucking futs. What sort of blind ambition causes you to embrace inept policies cobbled together by total wack-jobs from the New American Century and Kommissar Karl, after they came up with that push-phone crap om South Carolina about you’r black love-child? Have you no shame?
People are so stupid, they buy Jerome Corsi. Facts are, W was a coke-snorting weasel and Kerry was an actual hero. That’s whar happened. It’s also a sure thing that Kenneth Blackwell and his pals at Dibeold stole Cuyahoga County, same as Republicans jobbed Volusia in 2000.
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