Driving Myself Crazy

I have problems. This is not news to me or anyone else who knows me.

One of the biggest challenges I deal with on a daily basis is the nearly chronic tension of some of my contradictions.

I have a PhD and used to teach university classes about cinema, but I can’t stand Ingmar Bergman, Truffaut, or Wong Kar Wai. I much prefer Wong Jing.

I have a remarkably broad and well-versed vocabulary and yet still find myself speaking in language that has brought reproach from convicted felons. While they were incarcerated.

My doctorate is in intercultural communication, yet I would hardly ever call myself (much less want to be) a citizen of the world. There are places I want to visit, and a lot more that I don’t.

And won’t. Deal with it.

I have problems with, uh, impulse control. By the age of 19, I was often drinking quarts of liquor. From the bottle. And why not? I refuse to believe anyone would drink Jack Daniels Love Potion No. 7 for the taste.

I thought of fifths as single serving containers, and the first thing I did when I opened the bottle was to toss the cap aside, proclaiming “We won’t be needing this!” because I had no intention of leaving any for the next day.

There are other, uh, proclivitiesI could speak of, but statutes of limitation being as they are, I’ll just let your imaginations run away with you like wisps of smoke from an opium pipe.

That’s a euphemism. My lawyer says so.

So its odd to me, an admitted compulsive, addictive, excessive person, that gambling holds absolutely no attraction whatsoever. I really don’t get it.

I don’t know why not. It’s a potentially life-destroying activity that can provide you with an adrenaline rush as well as the potentially fatal attentions of manner of unseemly characters.

If you do it enough.

And that, for a long time, was a recipe for success for someone who was once quoted as saying “Fun starts at the felonies.”

And yet… nothing. I can’t seem to be bothered with gambling.

It seems… tedious.

True story: I once went to Macau, and mademyself gamble. Went to the roulette wheel. Wanted to bet the number zero (0) just on principle. Told myself to stop being an@sshole and bet on another number.

Guess which number came up?

I’ll give you zero guesses.

Somehow it proved to me that I had no business gambling.

I much prefer to watchpeople gamble. I find it eminently more entertaining.

I know that I could ruin my life with gambling just as easily as with booze, dope, and bad relationships, but miraculously I don’t want to.

Luckily for me, many of my contradictions are much more harmless.

For instance, I really love looking at watches. I admire them and I’m impressed by them and I appreciate them.

But I wouldn’t buy one.

First, I don’t need the ‘face’ of a Rolex. I have a PhD. That’s enough for me.

Second, I’m dumb, but not so dumb as to wear HK$40,000 on my wrist where I can lose it a lot easier than if its sitting in a bank.

Third, anyone who’s impressed by the watch is exactly the kind of person I don’t want to associate with.

I do have a watch, and I wear it. It was a birthday gift from two of my very good friends. I am the godfather to their children. That watch is much more meaningful (and valuable) to me than any other watch ever could or would be.

Oh, and speaking of my contradictions, I have something called ambiguous dexterity. For no discernible reason, there are some things I instinctively do left-handed, like shoot pool or (long ago) ride a skateboard.

And wear a watch.

But when you wear a watch on your right wrist, it tends to chew on your guitars. So maybe one reason I got out of the habit of wearing it was because I was always taking it off and losing it.

So to speak.

That’s why my new watch lives on my left wrist.

Unless I’m going to the gym, because I have to wear gloves with wrist straps, so if I know I’ll go to the gym I don’t wear the watch since I’d have to take it off and risk losing it…

See what I mean? Why is my life so f@#$ing complicated???

I swear I had a point to make here…

Ahh, now I remember. Contradictions.

I don’t like driving. I can do it, but I don’t much care for it.

Digression: One reason I love my mother is because whenever I go home, she’ll pick me up at the airport, take me home, feed me and put me to bed, and the next morning say “Drop me off at work and take the car, I don’t care.”

I remind her that I have neither license nor insurance to drive in America any more and she’ll say “Well, then don’t get caught, dumb@ss…”

Gotta love Mom. It’s the law in Florida.

Driving in south Florida is easy. The streets are all grids, so you can only go in one of the four basic directions.

Which helps when you’re so jet-lagged that you spend the first two days speaking Cantonese to people in stores out of habit and brain failure.

I never invested much of myself in cars. They are tools.

My dream car is a limousine. Let someone elsedrive.

That said, I appreciate people who invest themselves into their cars.

It’s probably related to my own predilection (!) for hot-rodding my guitars; you start with something factory stock and start improving, customizing, individualizing and perfecting it.

I definitelyunderstand and appreciate that.

I am also old enough to remember (vaguely) the end of the era of the Muscle Car.

Gigantic, heavy American monstrosities (like me!) that would, as someone eloquently put it, “pass everything on the road except a gas station.”

There’s nothing like the feeling of a V-8, rear-wheel drive when you hit the gas.

I hope they have 1971 Plymouth Roadrunners in heaven.

Or a 1996 Chevy Impala SS.

So, like gambling (and AV), I don’t much care for the activity, but I’m interested in the people who are interested and/or involved.

A lot of times, I see things that are interesting to me about a car or cars, but I don’t really have a chance to ask about it.

That’s why I am very excited to attend the Conemansters/Mean Machines Gymkhana Challenge 2011 in Penang next weekend:

“Mean Machines is the BIGGEST car modification lifestyle show in Malaysia and last year more than 100,000 people turned up at Auto City to check out everything from heavily modified domestic vehicles to rare and exotic supercars.This year, Mean Machines is taking their show to the next level, with the addition of the Conemasters Arena.”

So I get to look at cars, both parked and moving. I am somehow quite excited to watch this sort of event while being in proximity to it.

Here’s video from the June Conemasters that amply illustrates my point:

It will be nice for me to finally visit Malaysia too. I’ve always wanted to visit (even after watching I Love Wing Chun), and I haven’t had a chance to hang out with Bad Boy Ben Lo in a long time.

I’ve never met Alvin Lee either, but I am really looking forward to asking them a whole bunch of questions about cars, engines, modifications, and other things.

For example, how do you do this?:

It’s called negative camber, which seems like a fancy word for total disregard for safety.

I’m looking forward to getting out of the smog for a week too.

Stay tuned, because in less than 24 hours, I’ll be in Penang.