Of all the writers whose styles I've ripped off been influenced by over the years, none— not even James Ellroy— has had as much influence on the Murilee Martin Lifestyle Brand™ as Kevin Hoover of the Arcata Eye.
So, when Mr. Hoover (whose Police Log reports for Humboldt County's best newspaper have given him legendary status among journalists around the world) chronicled this classic hoonage-gone-pathetically-wrong tale from his hometown, I had no choice but to share it with you:
Thursday, April 15 9:21 a.m. A TransAm's inherent awesomeness was kicked up a significant notch with an impressive burnout demonstration (a symbolic representation of the young buffoon's ever-so-agile sperm motility, though he likely wasn't thinking about that, or much else) at Sunset and Western avenues. But the display of reproductive prowess took a humiliating plummet when the mouth-breathermobile slammed into a fire hydrant, unleashing a prematurely orgasmic fountain of wa-wa. As the dethroned cock-o'-the-block scurried away like a scared kitten in his crumpled chariot, an angered neighbor phoned police with a profanity-peppered report of the incident. As emergency forces sped to the scene, police handily located the slammed TransAm going nowhere fast on Boyd Road. Burnout Boy was returned to the scene to face the music, which took the form of police radios and a witness saying something along the lines of, "Yeah, that's him." The on-call Public Works tech responded and turned off the water.
[Arcata Eye, and we recommend that you get the book as well]