From Tom Sawyer.

My parents had come to town for a visit and we were driving to breakfast. My dad was driving (an SUV, I should note) on a two-lane one-way road with parallel parking spaces on both sides. Being a Sunday morning in the city's Primary Breakfast Restaurant Zone ("PBRZ"), most of the spaces were occupied. My dad saw an available parking space, and nose-dived for it across the other lane of traffic, interestingly enough cutting off another SUV in the process. The other vehicle was in fact the same model as his.

Someone (possibly me) made a joke about aggressive SUV drivers (he he), which my dad heard. He laughed, not too enthusiastically, and proceeded to explain something:

"Jas, have you ever noticed that Baby Boomers are really fast and aggressive drivers?" Actually, I had always thought that it was just SUV drivers who were like this, but now that he mentioned it, yes, maybe I had noticed that.

He went on to explain that his generation grew up driving muscle cars, and as they got older, they never really lost their desire for fast driving and road power. Which explains why so many SUVs are owned by Baby Boomers. In their minds, they're still behind the wheel of a '67 Chevelle. Interesting, eh?

A couple of nights ago, Rose and I watched Roman Polanski's "Chinatown." Jack Nicholson was at the top of his form--in fact, one is reminded what a truly great actor he is (was?). All throughout this amazing film, I couldn't help but think of the pathetic "A Few Good Men," in which Nicholson also starred. It seems that he and Tom Cruise were cast in that film with the intention of conveying the message, "here's a great actor from yesterday (Nicholson), and a great actor from today (Cruise)." But putting Tom Cruise next to Nicholson on the screen is like putting White Zinfandel next to Grand Cru Bordeaux--a laughable contrast that only makes sense to the simplest of minds. A film like Chinatown (produced by a Hollywood studio, it should be noted) literally makes me want to cry when I think about the wretched debris being turned out by the mainstream studios today. But, as people are fond of telling me, they're just giving the public what they want. And to that I say: my disgust with mainstream American taste is not misplaced. So there.