Are you guys familiar with the Popemobile that my counterpart in Rome, the other guy, rides around in? Have you seen this thing? It looks like a bad copy of the Batmobile with a huge, Lucite-looking block sitting on top that the Pope (the other Pope) stands in and from which he waves at the crowds. The Lucite or Plexiglass or Lexan or whatever the hell it's made of cube is bulletproof; this security precaution was undertaken by the Vatican staff in response to the actions of a serious nutcase who tried to off the Pope a few years ago with a pistol from fairly close range, and, no, I'm not going to make any jokes here because this kind of response to people whose opinion someone doesn't agree with is sad beyond description.
As Pope of the All John All The Time World Church, I understand how difficult it is to combine safety and personal security with a cool ride. I know my staff has spent countless hours examining this problem, to no avail. Any vehicle that could save my fat butt from being brought down by some half-wit with a Glock 9 (which he purchased ten minutes previously at a gun show around the corner, just after the 25 second security check was completed; Vendor: "Okay, are you crazy?" "Okay, no, good answer. Next question, ever shot anybody and gotten caught?" "No, okay, another good answer, that'll be $525.60, will that be cash or plastic?) is typically as ugly as a bucket of assholes. So despite the objections of my consigliore, the Right Reverend Monsignor Michael Jordan, (no, not the one with the all the shoes), I went ahead and ordered my very own Popemobile; a 2011 Porsche 918 Spyder. Hey, would you want your spiritual leader to ride around in anything less than a Porsche? I mean, anybody can have a Rolls or a Bentley, shit, they're a dime a dozen out here in LA (pronounced LAH), but a 918 Spyder, hey, that's a real car.
I thought about buying that new Bugatti, the one with the V12 engine that produces about 8 gajillion horsepower and does 0 to 60 in 3 nanoseconds, but you know what, it was just too Italian, and I'm just not that kind of Pope. (Actually, it really hard to say what kind of Pope I am, but I'm having fun, so who cares?)
(John Wayne doing the opening soliloquy in Act 3, Scene 1 of Shakespeare's Hamlet: "Ahh, tubby or not tubby..." Okay, I thought it was funny. Jerks.)
But the one thing I do know is that I live, and do my Pope thing, in a city where appearances are everything, and perception is reality. So I didn't want to settle for some fuddy-duddy, old guy's Ford Crown Victoria-looking monstrosity, and went the LA way and considered perception first, and safety second. (Did you ever notice that any time you see a Crown Vic on the road, no matter what model year it is, when you get up close, there's always some guy driving that's, minimum, 75 years old, with his wife, who's just barely tall enough to see over the dashboard, sitting across from him in the passenger's seat, looking vaguely perplexed.)
Yeah, no old man's car for me, I'm getting a Porsche. A Spyder. A 918 Spyder. A 2011 Porsche 918 Spyder.
Except that Porsche hasn't started producing them yet.
(Big sigh of resignation.) Oh well, there's a Ford dealership just down the road.
Love and carburetors,
PJTT
copyright 2011 Krissongs, Inc.
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