Gays and Gas Guzzlers

Can a man be identified as a homosexual if he:

a) drives a Mazda Miata

b) has a license plate that reads, “CREBRAL”

c) gestures wildly while giggling into his blue tooth as Coldplay’s, “Fix You” blares from his car stereo

d) all of the above

This is the question my fiance and I were debating after driving next to a man fitting this description a few nights ago. Just because a man drives a (cough, cough, sissy) Mazda Miata…does that make him gay? Just because a man chooses to advertise the size of his large brain (cough, cough, small penis) by sporting a CREBRAL license plate…does that make him gay?

In an article published today, The New York Times attempts to answer those questions while investigating whether certain attributes of a car make it more appealing to homosexuals. According to Ramone Johnson, a gay journalist and former Saturn engineer, “soft lines” and a “vibrant personality” (AKA: the VW Beetle) are components gay men are most attracted to in a car.

After reading the article, I was intrigued. To better understand the preferences of a homosexual man in the market for a new automobile, I decided to go straight to a trusted source: my phenomenally fantastic gay friend, “Don,” who works in my office. (Yes, I’m changing his name for privacy sake. Let’s just say “Don” drives a Ford Explorer and doesn’t want all of his gay friends to know. “It’s too frat boy,” he tells me.) Anyhoo, here’s a snippet from our talk:

[Begin Interview]

Me: So what kind of cars do you like, my fine gay friend?

Don: Ummm, I like cars that say, “sassy!”

Me: That makes sense. Would you say a Mazda Miata is “sassy”?

Don: In a princess sort of way, I guess. Personally, I think Miatas are for sissy’s.

Me: Agreed. High five on that. (At this point, we give each other high five. I don’t know why – we just do.)

Don: I’m tired – want to go get a coffee?

Me: Focus, Don, focus. Isn’t there anything else you want to say about cars and gays for my blog?

Don: Cars are boring. You should write a blog post about homos and shoes!

[Aaaand that's as far as we got.]

Which brings me to the moral of the story: buy whatever car you want regardless of which team you play for, just refrain from personalizing your license plate with crap like CREBRAL.

Because let’s be serious… gay or straight: that’s just plain lame.

The Graduates Blog: Just Plain Weird

It’s Tuesday “Like” or “Loathe” time. And I’m going to have to go with “Loathe” this fine, April afternoon. Thanks to Gawker, I found a new blog series on the “Times Select” portion of NYTimes.com called “The Graduates.” It’s a cool idea in theory: the blog authors are college seniors who currently write for or edit their school’s newspapers. It’s a chance of a lifetime for these aspiring journalists: contribute to the New York Times. The idea here is that they’re supposed to be the upper echelon of college writers, the cream of the crop, the Ivies of the blogosphere. The problem? They sound like jackasses:

“When we were kids, my friends and I played a game called MASH. This game forecast whether we would grow up to live in Mansions, Apartments, Shacks, or Houses, what our jobs would be, where in the world we would live, which of our celebrity crushes we would marry, and most importantly, what kind of pet we would have… Back in our MASH days, our dream jobs were firefighting, I-banking, sales and trading, consulting, wealth management, mergers and acquisitions, and real estate finance. We wanted to live in the Upper East Side, the Upper West Side, Greenwich or Great Neck.”

Ummm, STOP. REWIND. Dear student from Dartmouth College, did you really just write, “Our dream jobs were…I-banking, sales and trading, consulting, wealth management, mergers and acquisitions and real estate finance????” Jenni – back me up on this one. This is NOT how one plays MASH. MASH dream jobs should be more along the lines of a teacher, a moviestar, a veterinarian, and a professional football player…NOT someone in wealth management. I guess things were different in the ‘80 and ’90s.

Not to worry…this author doesn’t just focus on childhood fantasies. She later gets into some pretty deep philosophical ruminations when she writes:

“My class is graduating into a world that is changing faster than ever before. We’re living in a weird society today that will most assuredly be weirder tomorrow.”

“Weirder tomorrow.” That’s good stuff. I’m bookmarking that as we speak.

My point here is not to completely make fun of these graduates or the way the Times has executed on this idea (yes it is, no it’s not). Because, in fact, the other Graduate writers have some very astute comments on a variety of interesting topics. My point is to rebut the fact that all kids play MASH with the intention of living on the Upper East Side while making big bucks in Mergers & Acquisitions. Personally, I wanted to be a writer when my friends and I played MASH on the school bus. That or an astronaut (thanks to that tremendous movie, “Space Camp.”)

I’m not saying that, at the tender age of 8, dreaming of a job in wealth management, complete with eggshell-colored business cards on stock paper, is bad. I’m just saying it’s, I don’t know, weird.

The Wheels on The Google Bus Go, “Aren’t you Jealous?”

I know I’ve written about this before…and maybe I’m a little bit obsessed…but I just can’t help it. Just in time for St. Patrick’s Day, let’s all get a little green with envy hearing about the continued perks of being a Google employee.

The New York Times ran yet another article this past weekend about the pure awesomeness of this employer…this time describing the free shuttle service the company offers to its employees who live in communities surrounding the main Google office in Mountain View, California. The Times writes:

“The company now ferries about 1,200 employees to and from Google daily — nearly one-fourth of its local work force — aboard 32 shuttle buses equipped with comfortable leather seats and wireless Internet access. Bicycles are allowed on exterior racks, and dogs on forward seats, or on their owners’ laps if the buses run full.”

Hot damn, that’s cool. Reading Perez Hilton on your commute while your tired tushy rests on a luxurious leather seat? I bet these shuttles even have that new car smell.

And while riding on this joyous Google bus, there’s no stress about getting stuck, after a hard day’s work, next to that annoying coworker who’s shouting loudly into her cell phone about her last Pap Smear. Why? Becuase there’s actually RULES on this bus:

“Inside, most riders appeared to abide by the shuttle’s etiquette rules. Cellphone conversations are allowed if they are work-related and sotto voce. But loud personal calls are definitely out. In fact, except for a couple snuggled together, no one sat on adjacent seats. Many took out iPods or laptops and worked, surfed the Web or watched videos.”

Meanwhile, I think I know that girl in the front row with the Burberry scarf on. She looks awfully similar to an old college classmate of mine. I’m looking up her alumni email address now… “Dear Fellow Alum, I think you used to sit next to me in Pych 102. I hear you work for Google now. Hook that shit up, yo. Resume attached.”