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We live in the age of your-way-right-away. People expect individualistic whims and demands to be fulfilled immediately. More often then not, that potential problem is solved by giving people everything they could possibly want — and much more — up front as part of the deal. More »
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One of the great successes of the Web is the unstoppable propagation of ludicrous conspiracy theories. Used to be that in-jokes like the Church of the SubGenius and the tales cooked up by bored John Birch Society types and the TimeCube had to pass by word of mouth, but now every twelve-year-old knows about all the ways in which that was NOT Osama bin Laden that got killed. More »
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Fifty years ago next Monday, John Glenn became an all-time American hero when his small chunky single-seat spacecraft did three laps of Earth. The flight was a huge morale boost for a beleaguered US space program that had suffered numerous setbacks. More »
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Before racing season gets underway, many drivers have a common ritual: they go back and reread Piero Taruffi's "The Technique Of Motor Racing." This elegantly slim volume first appeared in the late 1950s but has lost exactly none of its relevance. More »
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It's Friday. Glorious, blissful, yes-I-can-relax-a-bit Friday. Thank you, passage of time. Thank you, Emperor Constantine who invented weekends past the Sabbath day. Time to just let it all drop for a while. More »
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Ever wanted to be in a play? Great, we all have at some point. Ever wanted to have the lame loser role in a play? Different story. All roles are important; not all roles are enjoyable or fun. Still, the story's the important thing. More »
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We all talk about how we would design a car given the chance. We all prattle on about all-wheel-drive diesel station wagons with manual transmissions, or try to figure out just the right blend of Miata and Corvette, or whatever. It goes with being an enthusiast. More »
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The ancient Greeks had their rules about drama. One of the big ones was founded on the very core of human reality: Nobody's perfect. Every hero had a weakness, a flaw, a means for the storyteller to bring about an end. More »
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Eating alone is not a penalty. Yes, company can be wonderful; for many, dining isn't so much about the food as it is the conversation. But sometimes the chance to be alone and contemplative and reflective is something to be savored like a good glass of wine or a dessert. More »
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Sometimes relationships are wonderful, enduring, life-sustaining things. Sometimes they aren't. Eventually you get to the point where you just know: it's not working, it's not happening, you're happier spending time away from someone than with them. More »
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I am waiting for the day when someone passionate and knowledgeable completely gets on my case about my occasional offhand use of the word "barbecue." I want someone to do this. I want to be interrogated about whether I'm talking specifically about dry rub or Carolina vinegar-based or Kansas City or whatever. More »
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If you truly care about American music, this will be happy news: The epic archives of musical folklorist Alan Lomax, including around 5000 hours of recordings, will be put online — making them universally accessible, like Lomax always wanted them to be. More »
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I like reading repair manuals, even if it's for something I don't own. I have a copy of "How To Keep Your Volkswagen Alive" even though I've never owned a Beetle. During my temp stints at publishing houses I've loaded up on books about turbocharging, metalworking, all kinds of stuff I'll never do in this apartment — but maybe someday.... More »
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As those of us between the ages of about 30 and 45 are awash in nostalgia over the fleeting, compromised return of a cultural touchstone, our brains crank up the random associations and buried memories. And we realize how scarily old we're getting. More »
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Some things are best at their cleanest and most straightforward. Purity and simplicity are universally valued traits. But the world is a complex place, and combinations and permutations are normal. So are cases with near-random things that somehow get weirdly whirled together. More »
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The adult world gets to be a tiresome place sometimes. Yes, there's definitely the upsides (a driver's license is but one) but for the most part the responsibilities and cynicism and existential grinding can make life feel like a burden. More »
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I moved to New York City back in 2002 hoping to find my place in the cultural core of America. Turns out I was a few decades late. Dylan and Warhol and Jeff Buckley all left town a while ago, and what's left is...not the same. More »
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Collaboration is a wonderful thing. Consider baseball defense: Alan Trammell and Lou Whitaker were both individually great ball players, but together they were the best double-play combo of all time. Each was terrific, but the two together defined the idea of teamwork. More »
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When was the last time you sat down and willfully read a work of classic literature? Not however long ago in some classroom someplace, but on your own and just because a book was interesting and worth a bit of time and concentration? More »
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We lost a good one today. R&B legend Etta James died in Los Angeles from leukemia. She had a long and immensely influential musical career, but will be best remembered for one song that fuses carnal and emotional fulfillment into something almost divine. More »
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I'm trying to decide where to go for spring break. I long to escape the cold and darkness and wind. Especially the wind: there's something about the winter wind in New York, how it slices through clothing and leaves you feeling drained. More »
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If you spent time around an engineer in the Eighties, you probably saw that person using a Hewlett-Packard scientific calculator. One of these sits next to a pad of graph paper and a few mechanical pencils in my eternal memory of Dad's briefcase. More »
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It's been said before, but it's still true: Books for little kids can be some seriously messed-up violent nasty pieces of writing. Alice is on drugs. Grandmother is now a wolf. Death lies around every corner. Think twice about gingerbread. More »
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We may or may not be living in the Age of Anxiety. (We may instead be living in the Age of Xanax.) But fears and neuroses and guilts are still too common a part of everyday life. More »
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It's been a warm January so far, but it's looking like that's changing in a serious hurry. Winds are picking up, temperatures are dropping, snow is imminent if it's not already pouring down. (Drive safe, Great Lakes folks.) More »
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I'm typing this at 4:55, trying to get this done before five. It's a push. Producing a high-quality product (or a website for a bunch of gearheads) seems to suck up every available scrap of time before — and sometimes well past — any set deadline. (AOTD today? Yeah.) More »
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We want to be happy. We want life to go well. Even with reality's complexity and frustration and even real pain, we are programmed to think that things will get better. We want to see the bright side of our time on this Earth. More »
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The automotive industry is well over a century old. That's plenty of time for strains of business and culture and personality to splice and split and rejoin like so much hyperactive DNA. The last few years have only jumbled things further. More »
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Marketers the world over would have you believe otherwise, but life is about aging. We grow, we gain experience, we watch the world change and maybe change it ourselves. Time passes, and that realization sometimes liberates as it aches. More »
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I wanted to give today's COTD to this comment, wherein TheKlic nails the Australian accent at its parodic best, á la, Paul "Crocodile Dundee" Hogan on The Arsenio Hall Show. And it almost happened; except at the last minute, I stumbled on another comment. Sorry, Klic. More »
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It was a day of great, reasoned discussion on the Jalop. Just go back through the threads on Joel Johnson's bold electric-car jeremiad or Jason Torchinsky's madcap art-slam challenge. More »
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Mobbed-up Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa's final resting place has sparked cocktail-party conversation since 1975, when he "disappeared" from a Michigan restaurant. For most of the past 25 years, we assumed he was buried under the end zone at the old Giants Stadium in New Jersey. Now, maybe not. More »
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Whether you loved or hated Wes Anderson's movie "Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou," there's no doubt you left the theater humming Brazilian singer Seu Jorge's version of David Bowie's "Rebel Rebel." In today's COTD, we get a similar flavor from a longtime Jalopnik local. More »
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Slice-of-life articles were once a staple of newspaper journalism. Now, hardly anyone reads good stories about how other people live. We're much more likely to hear about how people from some other part of the country are destroying our "way of life." Rough beasts, we seem, slouching toward civil war. More »
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The year 2011 is quickly winding up. By next week, we'll be ankle deep in 2012, a year the Mayans say will end sometime in December when the earth shakes humankind off its fur like it was a wet Golden Retriever. More »
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However we feel about automobile emissions and fuel efficiency, mapping out a way forward hasn't been easy. That's largely because we can't agree on what about gasoline-powered cars we're willing to give up. Diesel? Hybrid? Hybrid diesel? French fries? Huh? More »
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Not all comments have to be Snark-O-Matic masterpieces. Sometimes, especially around the holidays, with 2,700 calories' worth of full-power eggnog down our gullets, we like to read personal car stories from the Jalops around us. This is one of those times. More »
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What did we do before the internetz? I remember something about Metallica and a short italian guy with a mustache that jumped on mushrooms. Right. My cousin Anthony. Nowadays, though, LOLs come like tommy-gun fire, and schadenfreude is tempered by being a quintillion bits removed from actual bad stuff happening. More »
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There's nothing worse for an educated consumer than to hear a company blame the end-user for a product malfunction. Yet, Ford's kind of done that with its Mustang transmission issues. How might such a scenario play out? Let's look and see. More »
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In addition to being a horrible thing to happen to someone in real life, being locked in a car trunk has been a movie device going back to the dawn of cinema. Well, maybe not the dawn, but — at the very latest — the 10:45 am of cinema. More »
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