AN INTERVIEW WITH A YOUNG MANHATTANITE WHO JUST PURCHASED A 1975 DODGE DART TO FULFILL AN OLD DREAM

Q: So you bought a car this weekend. Tell me about it.
A: It was a wonderful experience. The car is a classic Detroit machine - '75 Dodge Dart, with the fabled slant 6 engine. I feel like a real man now. The car's name is Goldie.

Q: That sounds like a powerful machine. Why is the slant 6 fabled? Is it because it's powerful?
A: The fable for me begins in the summer of 1992 when an all-girl power trio emerged on the Washington DC punk scene. Their name was Slant 6. The story continues with noted DC documentarian Cynthia Connolly who took photographs of local rockers and their automobiles and sold them as black and white postcards.pre-1976 Mopars were popular with the kids.

Q: Well said. As a car buyer living in Manhattan, do you find yourself feeling especially well-off and important now that you have the luxury of wheels?
A: I haven't had time to think of that since I've been consumed with paralyzing anxiety from the moment I handed over the check. I wonder if I made the right choice. Parking is a bitch here and it has ruined many marriages. Maintenance, repairs, restoration - I am too busy assessing how far I've fallen into a money pit.

Q: Be that as it may, you still think you're better than me just because you have a car, don't you?
A: Excellent question, I'm ready to dig into this one. Yes.

Goods
Because we are interested in all the things that make you tick (or is that "tic"), and cool stuff is one of those things, LF.com is proud to highlight these fine goods. Goods are, well, good. They sometimes are shiny and often have buttons or knobs, which we all like to fiddle with. Often, they are dull in finish, yet speak to us in a manner even more personal than Bill Cosby. Most of us really like goods, though sometimes their purpose seems to belie the whole idea of purposeness, like Jello. Other times, goods rise straight up to the highest hights of purpose, like pooper scoopers. All of the following goods have a purpose: That is, for you to buy them. We picked them out because they tickle our goods-loving body parts. And what's gooder than that?

Leica D-Lux Digital Camera
Large Elephant Puppet
DeWalt Heavy Duty Random Orbit Sander
Prouve Potence Lamp
Union Jack Martini Car

Lizzie's Smoking
Loyal readers of LF.com will recognize the Park Avenue (ok, ok South) location referred to in in this Ordo Magazine (beats me) piece "My smoke breaks with Lizzie Grubman" as home to the farm's midtown bureau. In fact, many of the farm's editorial staff and associates have shared similar experiences to that the author describes. One of the LF associates (the one whose first name starts with a W and his last has 367 consonants and one vowel), even lit a smoke for her. Often, Lizzie and I ride the elevator together. One day, I remarked to her, "Um, excuse me." She was blocking the doors.

A Tale of Another Haircut
If you know me, you know my love of money. Mainly that I like to keep it. Horde it, stash it away like a hippie saving up kind bud for a The Dead show in Saugerties, NY. And unlike the poster of the previous post, I am not separated easily from my dough. Like Babs Streisand’s refusal to go gently into that good night of retirement and abusing the help from the perch of an electronic wheelchair, I refuse to pay a lot for this haircut, which is specifically designed to look like I didn’t get a haircut (or fashion, I am a slave to you!). So, Memorial Day weekend (when I was trying to remember whether to salute all warriors of past wars or if it was just the fallen ones we were homaging), I bought an electric head shaver. I know look like Matt Lauer without the brown nose.

Dig my Haircut
Anyone who knows me knows I am nothing if not entrenched in 1990 like a dandelion growing out of a pavement crack. Barring the years between 1999 and 2002, my longish locks have been my currency and muse since the Falafel Mafia last rocked the Academy; tucking them gingerly behind my ears is the flannel rope I hang myself with daily. (Thanks for the metaphor, Krucoff. Awkward construction, mine). Lately, owing to the Noah-class rain and humidity, I'd been planning to scale back the scope of my coif. As usual, I opted for "Russian Roulette" at Astor Place rather than returning to the same haircutter time and again. Going in blind, I find, adds some excitement and uncertainty to an otherwise rote chore. Hardly anyone there speaks English anyway, and most have at least a few yellowed pictures from People or Barber's World of hairstyles to choose from, which, one would assume, they could at least approximate. It goes like this: I enter, I sit, I point, I sit, I tilt, I sit, I rise, I tip, I pay, I leave. I now look like a cross between John Milton and Pepe the Prawn from Sesame Street. My hair looks good too.

Posting for Dilettantes
I have a long way to go to be a good blogger. Aaron from 601am.com has given away my "secret" (as if you three readers didn't already know). Now, to save my blogging cred, I will have to read entire articles penned by our fourth estate, ponder the topics objectively, vet my conclusions internally, and form the resulting opinions into coherent, witty, missives. Only then will I post them under my banner, which is my brand. Ah, who the hell am i kidding. Just read this.

LF.com, the 80s Have Landed
Sometimes I wonder things. Alone in my room, drinking, smoking, hurting on the inside... I wonder things. For instance, the other night I had just finished my late-afternoon constitutional when I thought to myself, Whatever happened to 80s art band Sigue Sigue Sputnik. This weighed on me with the heaviness of Capt. Lou Albano. Then I was enlightened.