It started with the Honda Insight.  No, not the Prius wannabe of late, the tiny little spacepod two-seater from 1999.  It was the first hybrid available to the American public.  It was a tiny subcompact hatchback with dorky looks that managed about 70mpg.

Toyota followed on Honda’s heels with the Prius, an equally dorky-looking hybrid with the added advantage of a back seat and two extra doors, making it a more practical choice for everyday family use.  Everyday use by a family that didn’t mind driving a small, sparsely-equipped dorkmobile, that is.

The answer to the dork factor?  Honda had it, or so they thought.  In order to match the Toyota sedan’s practicality with a car that might be more socially appealing in the mainstream, Honda created a hybrid version of its already very popular Civic sedan.  Mission accomplished: Apart from the horrible wheels slightly-different front fascia, the public would hardly know you paid an extra eight grand for an 10mpg increase.  At the gas prices of 2003, the price difference was justified when the odometer showed about 108,000 miles.

Toyota’s answer to this?  “Dork chic.”  In the US’s second version of the Prius, Toyota took the car upscale and made it a “halo car.”  The public bought it hook, line, and sinker too.  With the help of increasing gas prices, people who once stood in line to purchase overpowered and bloated station wagons (there’s nothing sporty about a sport ute, BTW) were putting their names on waiting lists to purchase an underpowered and goofy looking automobile.  Once again, people were willing to pay thousands over sticker price to make a statement (not realizing the statement was “me too”).  The Prius sold like bubblegum (where’d that “hotcakes” saying come from, anyway?).

The follow up to this was the Honda Prius… er… Honda Insight… Yeah, after dropping the original dorkmobile from its lineup 2006, Honda brought the name back for their own version of the distinctively shaped hybrid sedan the public was clamoring for.  The reason to buy a Honda?  Well, you can get practically the same car for thousands less in price.  Meh.

Toyota returned fire with a refreshed Prius and a price decrease.  Even bogus claims of unintended acceleration and a bad couldn’t kill the dorkmobile’s draw.  While new car sales are down and other companies have started taking their shares of the hybrid market (Ford makes some nice choices and even Hummer was working on a hybrid, ironically, before the company was killed by GM), Toyota remained on top with their instantly-recognizable icon of fuel efficiency, the dorky Prius.

Honda’s latest attack in the battle is the Honda CR-Z.  Borrowing styling cues from the once very popular CR-X, the CR-Z is a sporty-looking two-seat hatchback, but with an option for a “fuel saving mode.”  Honda is marketing it as a “sport hybrid.”  The car is, indeed, quite sharp looking.  I first spotted one early this summer being tested in Marin County, California.  I was instantly excited by the looks of this new car.  With it’s crisp, racy lines and bright red paint, the little hatchback made a huge impression on me in just the few seconds I saw it. Recognizing only the Honda badge and the fact that it was not a currently marketed car at the time, I rushed home to search for it on the internet (I wish I was able to take a picture, but I was on my road bike headed in the opposite direction on a very curvy road).

Honda’s new CR-Z is a looker, but from the reviews, however, it’s no sports car.  107 horsepower can only do so much for a 2700lb car.  With a zero-to-sixty time of just over ten seconds and a quarter mile time of 17.6 seconds, this “sport hybrid” would be absolutely spanked in a drag race vs. such venerable competitors as the Toyota Yaris, the Smart Fortwo, or the Kia Rio.

My prediction is that Toyota will come to the game with a real hybrid sports car. After all, Toyota has been in bed lately with the likes of rally favorite Subaru and electric car pioneer Tesla Motors.  With Toyota’s engineering for reliability, Subaru’s race knowledge, and Tesla’s electrical knowhow, they have to be working on an awesome hybrid (or “extended range electric”) sports car, yes?  If they’re not, they should be!

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All photos sourced from Wikipedia as public domain except Honda Insight Photo via Wikipedia Creative Commons and Honda CR-Z photo sourced from Honda promotional photos at Honda.com

There’s a really irreverent joke about Mark David Chapman being a hero for securing the Beatles’ immortal fame. Many irreverent jokes, like stereotypes and prejudices, are based on perceptions the observable reality (no, I don’t smoke pot, that sentence just came out that way).  Kudos to Paul for not having to call himself “The Beatles” or “Paul McCartney of The Beatles.” Bands like The Who, Led Zeppelin, Queen, Styx, INXS, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Boston have continued touring after the deaths of core band members, and some of them are quite good as a band (and some quite sad indeed), but none really have the same magic as before. OK, OK… Dennis DeYoung isn’t dead… but Broadway? Really?

My fiancee’s cousin recently scored a great opportunity to go to a private concert party hosted by Oracle.  When he told me, he said “I’m going to see a Black Eyed Peas concert.”  When I asked if it was just the Black Eyed Peas or if there were other acts (I was thinking opening acts), he said there were a couple of other acts but “nobody big.”  The acts that were “nobody big” in fact turned out to be the likes of Don Henley, The Steve Miller Band, Berlin, The English Beat, and Montgomery Gentry.  Kids.  Pfft.

But I can relate, because really, although I give him great respect as an artist, a Don Henley show wouldn’t excite me much.  I’m no Lebowski (“I hate the fucking Eagles, man!”), but I’d probably be “done” in about fifteen minutes.  As for Montgomery Gentry?  Heard of ‘em (or him?)… Don’t care.  I can name about five Steve Miller songs I’d really rock out to, but after that I’d probably wander the island a bit.  So…

I’m a music snob.  My fiancee listens to the local “top 40″ stations, which drives me crazy because they just rotate the same damned forty songs over and over and over, and most of them are complete crap! No, really, complete crap. Have you listened to Lady Gaga’s lyrics?  “Just Dance” gives the exact opposite advice I would give a young girl who’s really drunk, lost her keys and phone, and doesn’t know where she is!  Don’t “just dance,” tell the bartender your situation and get him to put your ass in a cab home.  Maybe have him call one of your girl friends or your brother to meet you there too.  The only bright spot is at least you’ve lost your damned phone so you won’t booty-call your ex boyfriend like Lady Antebellum!

On the other hand, I can’t tolerate much of the stuff out of the hippie movements (Age of Aquarius, Woodstock, Grateful Dead, that kind of thing) and I really have a low threshold of tolerance for 50s music.  Really low.  I mean, really, how many times can you hear twelve bar blues?

Jerry Lee Lewis has a new album.  My take?  I like the songs “Mean Old Man” and “Sunday Morning Coming Down,” but I like the way Kris Kristofferson, who wrote them, did them better (yes, “Sunday Morning Coming Down” is Kristofferson’s song, not Johnny Cash’s… and it has a better “desperately hung over” feeling the way Kristofferson sings it).

Man, I’m all about digressions, huh?  Anyway, so I found myself listening to an interview of Jerry Lee Lewis on NPR.  He’s apparently turning 75 soon… good job for not dying, Jerry.  Really, though, what’s with all the marriages?  That third one?  Wow.  I guess I can forgive the cousin thing, being you’re a true Southerner.  I understand liking a younger girl, too, but you might have wanted to wait until she was out of training bras before you declared your love to the world!

The whole interview, Jerry talked as if it were still 1957.  All of his adjectives, slang, etc… his persona… 1957.  I could picture his wrinkled face and his probably very grey curly hair pulled back at the forehead as it was fifty-three years ago.  I give him credit for being a great pianist (but again with that damned twelve bar blues), and for being a legend, blahdy-blahdy-blah, but I just couldn’t escape this feeling that the lady interviewing him felt like she was talking to some sad old man in a nursing home.

Yikes.

But hey, given the choice of having to watch a Jerry Lee Lewis concert vs. Lady Gaga, I guess I’d go with Jerry.

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Photo by Fiona / Bluecherry74 on Flikr via Creative Commons 2.0

See, I’m the guy who explains the funny, obscure bit of trivia that most of my generation were too young to get, like that David Bowie’s line “modern love gets me to the church on time” is a reference to “My Fair Lady” only to then have to deal with the reality that the person I’m explaining this to is too young to remember David Bowie!

Everything hurts today. Everything. My back, my shoulders, my neck, my eyes, my ass… everything. OK… well, not everything, but dammit it feels like that! I’m grumping and feeling hindered by the fact that today I’ve only had two cups of coffee so far. The first one just to wash down my gram of ibuprofen. Bitching about how everything hurts is really all I’ve accomplished today (that and letting the dog out to take a dump).

It’s not that I’m running behind on chores or anything. In fact, I’d planned for this weekend to be a lazy one, but it’s a beautiful day outside and I’ve not gone out to enjoy it. In years past, there’s no way I’d be sitting here typing on a computer at three in the afternoon on a day like this. To be fair, I did manage to sit and play guitar for three hours, which is something I’ve not done in a very long time. So long, in fact, that I’ve lost my chops a bit and was bitching about my arthritic fingers botching my barre chords. Oh well…

Maybe I should hook up that BluRay player I bought a couple weeks ago that’s still in the box. Bah. I can’t be bothered to go get discs right now. Funny, ten years ago I’d not have come home from the trip to purchase said machine without having loaded up on a good starter collection of discs. Really, I shouldn’t spend the rest of the day sitting in front of a TV anyway. I should get outside!

I know! I’ll give myself a mission! A task! I’ll go outside with a purpose!

…To get coffee!

Then maybe home to relax :)

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Photo by Petras Gagilas via Flikr by Creative Commons Attribution 2.0

Yeah, I see ya there, blog. I see how you’ve been neglected for weeks on end. I see the sidebars with the old posts from Twitter, the null links from Digg, the old Dailybooth update from a while back. Whatever.

I’ve been busy.

Yes, I know everyone who has a blog says that when the blog goes ignored for a long time. Whatever. That’s real life for ya. I’ll try getting back here, OK? I’m here, yes? I didn’t wait to make it a New Year’s resolution. Anyway, you think you’ve been ignored? Pfft! You should see my YouTube page!