It's good to know that while the rest of my peers were learning multiplication or the value of farm work, I was embedded by a Hollywood producer's castoff idea, namely "What if we made a terrible cop show out of 'Tron'?" That show: Automan, which went on to puzzle millions of Americans in 1980 with its cut-rate special effects and Lamborghini Countach that could make 90-degree turns, throwing Desi Arnaz Jr.'s mug all over the window. This toadstool of entertainment has weathered in my head for decades, much as a more famous movie scene provided inspiration to Vizzini's comment on Tom Cruise's toying with an F1 car:
Cruise: David Coultard, did you order the Red Bull?
Christian Horner: You *don't* have to answer that question!
D. Coultard: I'll answer the question!
[to Cruise]
D. Coultard: You want answers?
Cruise: I think I'm entitled to.
D. Coultard: *You want answers?*
Cruise: *I want the car!*
D. Coultard: *You can't handle the car!*
[pauses]
D. Coultard: Son, we live in a world that has races, and those races have to be run by men with amazingly geometric jawlines. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Mr. Seinfeld? I have a greater awesomeness than you could possibly fathom. You weep for Danica Patrick, and you curse open wheel racing. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That Patrick's move to NASCAR, while tragic, probably saved the integrity of the sport. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves the integrity of the sport. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me in that car, you need me in that car. We use words like pace, guts, balls. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent proving something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and drapes himself with the blanket of the very awesomeness that I live, and then trashes the car in which I live it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you get your own car, and take a driving lesson or two. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to.
Cruise: Did you order the Red Bull?
D. Coultard: I did the job I...
Cruise: *Did you order the Red Bull?*
D. Coultard: *You're Goddamn right I did!*