When droves of pasty balding middle-managers and their upper-middle bosses descend upon the near cryogenic temperatures of Detroit for the annual auto show, one thing demands their attention above new cars, free booze, and smiling young women with short skirts - Jerry Seinfeld.
As one of Jalopnik's official photographers for the event, I regularly see the shady parts of the show no one wants to see. Things like the bent-over buttcracks of overweight autojournalists heartily climbing over railings to get the best iPhone pic ever, skeezy dudes trying their best to hide their comb-overs and use their pickup artist lines on the models at the Alfa booth, and the sheer insanity and pandemonium of when a celebrity suddenly appears.
As I covered Acura's NSX reveal, there were murmurs that Jerry Seinfeld, who has sponsorship from Acura for his web series Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee, was in the audience. Those rumors were confirmed when the spokesman, perspiring from the combination of hot studio lights and phantom terrors of people calling the NSX "vaporware," mentioned Jerry in a joke, with the cameras panning to the front row. The trap was set. God had arrived.
When the car was finally unveiled and the stage was opened to cameras, Jerry came to take a closer look and the horde of previous sales department supervisors rushed the former sitcom star like several hungry dogs on a dying cat. People called to him with jokes that garnered ignorant blank stares, asked to sign their foreheads, and probably offered their daughters' hand in marriage in return for tweetable selfies. To them, there wasn't a car on stage, but a shiny red obstacle between them and the Sein. They pushed each other, condensing the smell of halitosis and Hi Karate, leaving me no choice but to abandon shooting the car altogether, for the very real fear of what might happen if and when clothes voluntarily started coming off. This is your Detroit Auto Show, ladies and gentlemen. Take it all in.
Tavarish is the founder of APiDA Online and writes about buying and selling cool cars on the internet. He owns the world's cheapest Mercedes S-Class, a graffiti-bombed Lexus, and he's the only Jalopnik author that has never driven a Miata. He also has a real name that he didn't feel was journalist-y enough so he used a pen name and this was the best he could do.
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