The Rake Magazine

Author: Chris Birt

  • Topless. Chicks. With Sticks.

    Like summer is upon us and will be gone faster than Flo Rida will be hot. With this in mind, I have to make a confession. I love women in convertibles (primarily) who shift their own cars. I want the summer streets filled with them.

    So.

    Here are my top three picks for the best mix of chicks and sticks forever.

    1) Porsche Cayman (not a drop top but hotter than milk chocolate on assphalt). I think this may be the hottest chick car of all time. Calling it Caychick might move even more of them (not that they need it).

    2) Alfa Spider. I dedicate this pick to Janet Car Chick Maximums Grangaard. You go girl.

    3) Porsche Turbo 1987 convertible. The first generation Turbos are some of the wildest, most unpredictable cars of all time. Reminds me of my girlfriend the first year out of college. She could drive cars. She could drive this Porsche. She drove men crazy (primarily) because they could not negotiate its manic, mephistophelean turbo lag.

    The woman was a devil.

    On that note, I generally feel that a chick with a stick will kick a "bad" (superaccentuated air parenthesis) boy with a toy any day of summer.

    Oi.

     

  • and then I left

    when you reach

    somewhere

    that is nowhere

    and you talk

    with sadness

    to someone

    younger, beautiful, longing

    with peace in her eyes

    you feel calm

    and your worries vanish

    like water

    through the fingers 

    of a fist gripping fear 

     

     

  • Don't Mess With The Lohan. (As If.)

    I am sitting here late in the evening babysitting. Perhaps it is because I feel so esconced here in a secure state of suburban responsibility that I can safely venture into a topic I should know little about. Then, of course, it could be because I work with a lot of "young" people. 

    By "young" I mean "millenials"—which loosely describes anyone entering the workforce since the turn of the century—or adults in their mid-twenties. I am a "first x" who came of age under Ronald Reagan but frankly since I partied away most of my mid-20s I feel much closer to millenials than garden variety gen-xers. 

    Speaking of whom (gen-xers) you might want to listen up, because the millenials I favor are literate adults, not Lohans. In fact, the only reason I place the risqué picture of Lindsay atop this post is because she apparently has a new book of her doing bad things. I just learned this tonight when I went looking for a picture online (for this post).

    Fortunately, the millenials I know would never mess with poster trash like Lindsay Lohan. While they are so much more than her, they also might not be that into you.

    They are not, for example, interested in your music. By "your music" I mean primarily the stuff they play on Cities 97 that is composed and performed primarily by white people. Forget Phish. Forget Radiohead. And please forget R.E.M. or Coldplay for that matter.

    They like hip-hop. Hip-hop is their cosmos. It is very explicit, and it can sound like scratches on a trash can to untrained ears.

    So train your ears.

    Because hip-hop and rap (same thing, essentially) is the first entirely new musical art form of the millenium (although it was born in the Bronx in the mid-’70s). It has its own critical cannon, including "flow," which when delivered by a master like the non-retired Jay-Z can be as mellifluous as Mozart.

    The reason you need to know this music is because music defines young people far more than older ones. Movies, books, those kinds of things matter far less than getting into their musical groove (books are not off-limits, just not the lead topic.)

    Young people are also not adept with their phones, except for texting. Older people might look down on this until they realize that younger people text because a) it is cheaper, b) they can do it in class, and c) it’s less intimate (and stressful) than talking to someone.

    Which leads me to my third point: young people prefer to keep their distance. They will not fully engaged with you until you get on their wavelength.

    I may have more insights soon, but that is it for now.

    Do I sound like an expert?

    Maybe I should ask a movie starlet.

    Know any?

     

  • Perverts Park Here

    What’s in a word?

    More specifically what word makes a post zoom up the popular pole faster than others? Of course, there are the easy words like "porn" and "sex." Then there are the more inventive words (for professional writers) and happy accidents (for plebians like me).

    I have come across one recently. I won’t name the golden word, or perhaps the platinum-status proximity of two words. I have become superstitious about this discovery and don’t want to jinx it before I figure out how to hold Tom Bartel over a bigger barrel.

    Yet I must admit it feels delicious to be popular. Or at least it felt that way until my fragile literary ego was popped by a bigger man (in so many ways) and better writer than me.

    "Your post is doing well because of the perverts out there. Why else does it score so high every morning?"

    He is right.

    Get the headlines just right and you’ll increase traffic to your site. With an automotive blog, however, it seems that getting the traffic is far more contigent upon the headline than the vehicles it recommends for venturing into that real everyday madness you find on the street.

    Then again I guess even perverts need a place to park online. Speaking of which, I think its only fair that I credit my good friend Tom for the teaser line on this post (so good I almost can’t ask for money.)

    In fact, I was going to make this the headline for this post unitl my other editor informed me that Prom is now past–and the event is no longer "sticky."

    That was hardly my experience in high school.

    Then again my world, and my words, have long since changed.

     

     

  • Rum, Sodomy, & No Cash

    (This the car from its most umistakable angle. It looks even more like a nameless Japanese car from the rear and side.)

    The Pax Britannica that led to a relatively peaceful 1800s (unless you were Irish) was imposed primarily by the glorious Royal Navy.

    While it is politic to assert this prestige came from good government, passive politicians and the daring of former pirates made good, realists claim it was built on rum, sodomy and the lash.

    Which immediately brings the new Jaguar XF to mind.

    I drove this smallish land-yatch yesterday and I came away sore as hell. Because Jaguar has pretty much sunk its last hope for reiventing its once sexy (if unreliable) brand. (Think neutered–like this Lexus.)

    So how bad are things? Let me count the ways:

    a) While more trees were harmed in the manufacture of its exquisite interior this side of a Daimler, it still has too much Ford switchgear and soon-to-fail gizmodics.

    Pictured: This gives you some feeling for the amount of wood lavished upon the new Jag interior. Real stuff. Rich. And far more modern that this picture.

    b) The exterior.

    c) The exterior.

    d) The exterior.

    e) The ext…what? I almost missed it because it looked like the Lexus E350 which is itself modeled on the Camry, for chrissake…erior. The most important new car in Jaguar’s history (apart from the XJ) must be the new paradigm for sex on wheels, not a paen to sonambulism.

    f) The performance is "comfortably numb" compared to its peers. Another dumb move from a brand once vaunted for pace and grace.

    The buzz in the business is that Ford put all the money into the interior, then ran out of funds to adapt the hot XF show concept to production.

    Poor Jag. While they are no longer drunk on their past elegance, someone still has this brand over a barrel, and this time I think it’s finally going to sink.

  • Topless Nymph. Not For You.

    With all the focus on small footprint cars these days, you’d think smart brands like Nissan would send us all their candy.

    The
    "us" I am referring to would be, of course, the middle-aged lotharios
    that long for their youth. And few cars say "younger than
    you should be" than the Nissan Micra—arguably the cutest little button
    of a car ever made.

    But we’ll never see it here. Too small. Too
    tiny. Too darn cute — unlike the Germanic grocery cart called the Smart
    (which I hear is not selling well).

    Having lived for a spell in
    Japan myself, however, I think there is something else at play. Older Japanese men (in particular) are obssesed with youth — more in a pulpish than a
    papal sense, but an obsession nonethelss.

    In fact, the line
    between the automotive and the anthropological in Japan is frequently blurred. Salarymen read catalog-sized comics filled
    with pictures of doe-eyed characters that are overly-defined. Pop "artists" like Takashi Murakami craft nyphmetic sculptures nasty
    enough to make Jeff Koons blush.

    And such is life.

    Which
    is why Nissan can introduce a new, topless
    version of the Micra this year without furthering the fantasies
    of people who really don’t belong in its seats. The
    effect might be totally different if rides like this were released into the puritanical yet
    pornographic pop culure we endure over here.

    They may not be selling us
    this car to save us from ourselves.

    Now go have a sucker.

     

  • Chicks Live on Farms

    It occured to me this morning that I must update my post "Bimbos,
    Himbos and Harleys" with new content and here is why:

    While
    it is true that the DelSol, the VW rabbit convertible and the Corvette
    are charter members of the Bimbo & Himbo Hall of Fame, not many of
    you drive these things.

    Unlike the Mini-Cooper.

    Which raises the question: is this a car for bimbos and/or himbos? My answer is emphatically, unfortunately, yes. But only for the second-gen "new mini" model, not the first.

    BMW has detuned the second generation Cooper to fit a
    demographic that is overwhelmignly female. These German Dunderheads
    equate this with the "more forgiving" characteristics of a "chick car."

    I for one, have always believed that chicks live on farms and
    not the front seat of a Mini Cooper. That is why the women I know have
    shunned the second generation model.

    Come to think of it, the
    only person I know who has purchased one is my Dad’s loudmouth,
    Crocs-wearing and frequently swearing neighbor who seems to be going
    through some kind of mid-life crisis.

    In other words, a himbo.

    Of the very highest order.

  • Kevin Spacey. Naked.

    I usually take my coffee black. I prefer the same color in comedies, and particularly in that rare dark comedy that can be called a film.  

    As you raid your video store or netflix account this weekend, finding a good dark film can be difficult–particularly when they are packaged as standard-blend comedies of the Carey/Farley/Sandler variety. 

    Swimming With Sharks,* produced in 1994 is that rare film in the wrong wrapper. It is a comedy of the darkest shade–with stellar, emotionally raw performances from Kevin Spacey, Frank Whaley and Michelle Forbes.

    The film was written and directed by George Huang, who, along with Richard Rodriguez were two "hot young director" names to drop at Chateau Marmont in the mid-90s.

    RR hit payday later but I am not quite sure what happened to GH. All I do know is that he directs Kevin Spacey in a role that strips comedy to the bone. It’s not very funny. And that’s just the point.  

     (* If you want the story line and reviews you can read the link.)

     

     

  • Legal Lolitas

    I have always wondered why certain cars remain off limits to men of a particular age.

    What makes a Red Corvette more age-appropriate than a Mini Cooper? (Forgetting the conventional wisdom that posits the Corvette as "gold chain"—a sentiment unmasked as a simple prejudice with the Z06, a true American Beauty in red.)

    Or, for that matter a Mazdaspeed 3? Or the brand-new Mercedes SLK?

    While I am barely beyond a sophomoric mindset (seething, Kersten-kudoing hatred of video games notwithstanding including filthy games like Donkey Kong) I can appreciate certain rides for what they are. That is why I am currently fixated on a turbo VW bug in black.

    This car has a lot of issues.

    It is not the fastest 180 HP turbo on the market, its handling is a little spongy and it will choke and die on the dust of a Mazdaspeed 3.

    It does pack one little asset however–the simple to chip 1.8 liter turbo. I have seen this chipped to a cool 250+HP without extensive modifications to the drivetrain or suspension. You can also take full advantage of the superb after-market upgrades that exist for VW/Audi and even Porsche vehicles.

    Not that you, given your age and gender, would take advantage of a situation like this. Not with your misplaced longing for a Jag (not.) Not with this black bug possessing an equally black rag top (yes, its a convertible.)

    What would this do to your rug?

     

     

  • momoughttamobiles

    (pictured: the AMG R-class Mercedes. 502HP, 0-60, 4.7 seconds. Meet the Mom who owns one–lives in Excelsior.)

    Mother’s Day manipulative?

    Not for Road Rakes.

    I have always found, for example, that Mimosas pair nicely with a late model Mercedes and/or Maserati. For this reason, you ought consider taking your mom car shopping. Women buy more cars than men anyway (a fact that seems lost on most dealers.)

    May I suggest you sprint over to Sears in that Mercury you only think Mom likes and replace it with something a little more "Momma." The Maserati dealer is just down the street, and if you Mom is a real Foxy Brown then window shop the F-150 Crew Cab Harleys on the Ford lot close by. (Frontage road across the highway from Ridgedale.) 

    I’ve
    clipped some pics of what the most important woman in your life really
    should be driving. She’s probably already flagged these cars, so I’ll
    help you avoid embarassment. Take a peek.

    This is the new Benz on tap for 2010. If your Mother is German (as many Minnesota Moms may be), she’ll love this little coupe.

    This is post is to be continued…just saw my own Mom pull up in the Viggen (two new hips and she still drives a stick.)

    These flowers look puny.