What else is new?

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

When I used to go on long trips, I would rent a car rather than drive the car I already have. I don't have a really good reason for this, except that rental cars are shiny and smell new, and my car is dingy and smells like the nightmares of a thousand cheeseburgers. Now that I am in the new country, that feeling was reinforced by my experience on driving from Scotland to London.Rental cars also have better tech. For instance, my car has one bar to move the seat back and forth, and one to move the seat up and down. But they don't really move the seat, they just loosen it so that I can jerk around like three go-go dancers roped together, trying to get it into place. By comparison, my rental has an ingenious little knob that gently tucks my body into perfect ergonomic balance. It's like a womb with new-car smell. Actually, for all I know, wombs do have new-car smell. Maybe that's why we like new-car smell so much. But I digress.My car has a radio that picks up normal free stations, which is fine for the city but if you travel for an hour or so you're going to be stuck with three flavors of station: country, mariachi and preacher.My car also has a CD player that works with any CD that has not been marred by scratches, fingerprints, dust, sunlight or sexy thoughts -- in other words, none that I own. The rental, on the other hand, has satellite radio, which has infinity channels. NASA has a probe sitting in a rental car even as we speak, exploring the far, uncharted reaches of satellite radio stations. All they've been able to determine so far is that every station eventually plays at least one cover of "Time After Time."Satellite radio is very dangerous, because I'm really not qualified to make aesthetic decisions at 70 mph. It generally takes me three near misses to give up and go with the station that most resembles my own record collection. It's nice to know that at least one other person, or perhaps algorithm, out there likes "One Night in Bangkok."Rental cars these days also have buttons all over the steering wheel, which makes me very happy. This is because like all rational, mature adults, I want to be Speed Racer. All I need is a child and his chimp in the trunk and I'm ready to rock. It's not precisely totally 100 percent the same, though, because Speed's buttons transformed the car into a boat and launched a robot homing pigeon, while my buttons engage cruise control. In all honesty, I'm about 400 times more likely to use cruise control as I am to need a robot pigeon, but it would be nice to have both.I think the point of having the buttons on the steering wheel is that it's supposed to be safer, but it's actually more dangerous for the first 15 minutes, because that's when I'm experimenting. I'm pressing all the buttons to see what they do. I'd make a terrible James Bond. Two minutes after I pulled into traffic the streets would be covered in oil slicks and smoke screens, and I'd be trailing a grappling hook.My most recent rental had "parking assistance," which is not as nice as it sounds. I was hoping for that thing where you press a button and the car slides into a parking space for you, but instead parking assistance just mimics the presence of a high-strung passenger. When you start to get too close to another car, or the curb or an invisible elf, it beeps at you. A startled, accusatory beep. If you ignore it, it beeps again. The first time I tried to use parking assistance, I may as well have taken the handicapped space because anyone seeing the angle I ended up at would have assumed I was half-blind, suffered from vertigo and had an intense fear of curbs. So I just ignored it for the rest of the trip and I'm proud to say I didn't run over anything that has a lawyer.I guess I am getting too old for even stuff as basic as a car. What else is new...