Average Jane Talks Cars & Movies

I’ll start by saying that I know the average woman isn’t really into cars. I was never really into cars myself until recently, except as a means to get from Point A to Point B, preferably very, very quickly. However, I absolutely love my current car even though it’s old, things are constantly breaking on it, and it has the potential to be a bottomless money pit.

To establish some kind of limit to the money pit, I’ve been trying to learn how to do minor repairs and maintenance on the car. Yesterday I got together with my wrenching club (all guys so far, although I’m trying to rope in one more girl), and replaced my shifter. I’d had the new shifter for about a month, but I hadn’t gotten around to installing it. As it turned out, the repair took LITERALLY five minutes (sorry, I’ve been watching MadTV a lot), plus a trip to Advance Auto to get a 41-cent clip I needed to hold the parts together. All those weeks that I’d been driving around with the shifter all loosey-goosey and wrapped in duct tape seemed especially ridiculous once I had the nice, new shifter in place. I did need help from one the guys to pull the old shifter out of its cradle. It was one of those brute force, “can you open this jar for me” things that sometimes we gals just can’t do by ourselves. It was still satisfying to do the rest of the job myself, though.

Yesterday night, the car-a-palooza continued with a trip to the theater to see a preview showing of Starsky and Hutch, starring Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson. (What does that have to do with cars? Their distinctive Ford Gran Torino, of course.)

I thought the movie was everything you could ask for in a throwaway comedy. In addition to Stiller and Wilson, it featured Vince Vaughan, Will Ferrell and Snoop Dogg, all of whom were hilariously perfect in their roles. The movie is set in the 1970s (no specific year, just “the seventies”), and the one detail I kept noticing in various scenes was the seemingly unending selection of 70s-era coffee cups. From the shiny, bumpy pottery kind, to the plastic-footed type, to the ever-popular “happy face” cup, every 70s coffee cup I remembered from childhood appeared at one time or another.

Granted, the movie is pretty lightweight, but I found myself laughing throughout. It wasn’t quite the triumph of the first Charlie’s Angels movie, but then again it was way better than the second Charlie’s Angels movie (which is pretty safe to say in that the latter was one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. Except Batman and Robin – now that was two hours of my life that I wish I could get back). Just for the casting alone, I’ll want the Starsky and Hutch DVD when it comes out.

Have you seen any good movies lately? Have any thoughts to share about your car? I’ve been doing this blog for more than a week now and nobody has left a single comment. Feel free to participate!