What an Escalade Hybrid is Like

Your Unhumble Car Czar is traveling this week on a peacekeeping mission to Syracuse, where the denizens are up-in-arms over which is greener: hybrids, diesels, or just staying home to argue about it on the internet. I took Amtrak over, since the boss's right-hand guy likes it so much, and because I'm a kiss-up. I jotted down some observations on the Cadillac Escalade Hybrid along the way because I just couldn't stop thinking about this vehicle. Each thought begins with "A" and ends in a period for consistency's sake:

A Cadillac Escalade Hybrid is like Diet Decaf Mountain Dew.

A Cadillac Escalade Hybrid is like a Super Value Menu at Masa.

A Cadillac Escalade Hybrid is like Howard Stern saying "What the eff?" instead of "What the bleep?"

A Cadillac Escalade Hybrid is like The Decider-in-Chief saying "Whoops ... my bad," and leaving Iraq.

A Cadillac Escalade Hybrid is like a necrotized hard-line GOPer admitting President O. is doing something ... anything ... right.

A Cadillac Escalade Hybrid is like Michael Jackson turning himself white.

A Cadillac Escalade Hybrid is like a Seinfeld episode that doesn't invent a new term like "Mangina."

A Cadillac Escalade Hybrid is like, come to think of it, a 6,000-pound mangina.

A Cadillac Escalade Hybrid is, like, a giant SUV with "H Y B R I D" stenciled on the sides. Kinda like that bombed-out Iraqi weapons factory relabeled "Baby Food Factory" in time for the news cameras to arrive.

A Cadillac Escalade Hybrid is, like, a hybrid SUV that still only gets 21 mpg on the highway. What the eff?

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NOTE: This blog will go dark between the hours of 8 and 9 p.m. Eastern tonight in honor of Blah Blah Blahg Hour, an hour without any blog blah blah blah.

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I'm not done yet. Next week: Notes on Obama Derangement.

GAME OVER for Late Freeway Mergers

Introduction to the Interstate DUH

Road construction season is upon us, and President O's massive public works program is in gear.

That means more orange barrels than ever as we repair and augment the infrastructure of this great nation.

It also means "Lane Closed Ahead" signs on our interstate highways, and it means society's lowest form of usually-sober motorized humanity, the late merger, will soon come flying out of hibernation passing everyone else on the berm.

I'd like to emphasize that not all late mergers are low-lifes. Let's define the variations to avoid misunderstanding, and for the purposes of these definitions let's give all species two miles of lane closure warning so that we can accurately sum them up:

Least dangerous are the innocents, trapped out in the doomed lane by faster traffic in the open lane. They'll fall in line at the first opportunity, God bless 'em.

Really annoying are the clueless "Wow – this lane doesn't have any traffic" people. Some of them will figure everything out after a mile or so. Their through-lane slowdown bungee effect signature won't harm traffic flow much.

But by one-point-five miles and three flashing advisory signs past the first warning in our two-mile example, the worst of the worst jerks will pass through motoring society's sieve of decorum ... and straight into this all-powerful unappointed Car Czar's cross-hairs.

Here the really, really clueless, the recent graduates of Corporate Pinhead I-wanna-move-out-of-my-cubicle Assertiveness Training, the guys who can't get it up anymore and now ram their cars through traffic instead, and the just hopelessly self-centered are all that remain flying by you, me, and thee as we impatiently wait in the giant traffic jam that's taken shape entirely thanks to these living, breathing piles of societal (Microsoft Word's latest Thesaurus does not have an alternate for "poop" – in fact all derogatory words are marked "offensive" with no help whatsoever even for alternates to "idiot," "moron," or "cabbage head" ... so please stand by while my office researches the subject, and thanks a lot, Microsoft, you bunch of ... never mind ... your most unhelpful Thesaurus has no alternates for that word, either).

In the past this great country's motorists have dealt with the problem of brazen late freeway construction zone mergers with fingers, fists, horns, curses, and silly red-faced gap-closing gas-and-brake standoffs.

Under the luckiest circumstances a highway patrolman might be found lying in wait for these traffic-disrupting clowns, or a trucker might pull out and block the cretins, forcing traffic to jam up behind, but at least denying the (thanks again, Microsoft, you ... never mind) the chance to cut-in further up the line.

Under the unluckiest of circumstances previously-innocent motorists knuckle-under to this guy's treatise glorifying late merging and add to the stupidity, bringing our freeways to a standstill (say, Tom, you're a ... never mind [my trusty old Word 6.0 Thesaurus wouldn't be sitting on its hands here] ... despite your extensive studies of the chariot wheel ruts in Pompeii ).

I'm happy to say that my office will be rolling out an extensive late merging deterrent system across this nation's interstate highway system this summer.

Beginning in June, motorists who just "Don't Understand" this whole "Right Lane Closed, 2 Miles" business after 1.5 miles will be swallowed up by a network of ingenious Interstate Don't Understand Holes, which will be placed just beyond state-of-the-art Acme artificial horizons.

These DUHs will efficiently swallow the world's self-important motorists without the pinch-point traffic jams created by last-moment lateral moves. Swallowed cars will travel directly through the earth's super-heated core, becoming molten blobs of steel and spent flesh before exiting into a cooling river running through the earth's surface mantle and tumbling out as finished, one-of-a-kind climb-on play sets for underprivileged Chinese children.*

The U.S. Army Corp. of Engineers is hard at work on these subinterstate tunnels as we speak thanks to funding from the president's progressive public works stimulus package. When this project is complete, Acme Horizon-covered interstate DUH entry points can be created and closed on any roadway in under an hour by any commercial paving contractor, placed at random distances from pre-announced merges of two miles or more where there are no interceding freeway entry points without any fear of the nation's rolling self-interested panic-merging just prior to the DUH ... because these people are really, really just not paying attention. They probably even got lost in that last sentence.

Gas is cheap until further notice. While your Unhumble Car Czar sweats the details on building a better transportation infrastructure to pass on to our children and more play sets for Chinese children, please feel free to move about the country more freely.

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*The president, without his knowledge, proposed a kinder, gentler solution to freeway late mergers wherein offenders are simply shuffled into road-side gutters by outsized Acme horizon-disguised bowling alley bumper guards. It's a mixed-up, mixed-metaphor version of the president's favorite White House basement past-time.

"Make nice with the Iranians," I told President O., remembering that he relishes the intellectually-stimulating atmosphere created by dissent within his own administration, even in the case of made-up members. "Make nice with the Ku Klux Klan and even reach out to the cast of High School Musical while you're being Mr. Magnanimous, sir.

"But trust me, Mr. President, this country cannot afford to appease late mergers for another summer. "

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I'm not done yet. Next week: The Curious Case of the Escalade Hybrid.

Obama , Dems to Double the Size of Limbaugh by 2010?

OK, what is the circus sideshow with the Obama Administration mentioning Rush Limbaugh in every 64^th breath?

So he's a celebrity, larger than life, and larger than most pants. Do we really need to run him up the national flag pole ... to feed him so full of himself that he grows, possibly, to twice his unnatural size after digestion? (Until Myth Busters tests this, don't be sure it can't happen).

Sure, I get the stunt: Tell those poor, beleaguered Republicans, who recently found out that even the fairytale marriage of Bristol & Levi is a GOP feel-good delusion, that the pill-popping, button-popping poster boy for everything that's gone foul in the grand old party has stolen the show. That he is the show.

One of two things can happen after that.

1. You successfully brand the Republican Party with a fellow that only a small, mouthy percentage of the base thinks isn't a buffoon. Your starry-eyed, Volvo-driving disciples high-five one another, smug in Bush-era self deception over the effectiveness of the maneuver. (But America, it turns out, is too smart to believe this hyperbole ... just as it was too smart to believe all that GOP hoo-hah during the election. History judges the whole exercise a frat boy prank).
   

or:

1. You egg-on the head of the Republican National Committee, whoever that is, and he dances to your maliciously manipulative tune more enthusiastically than ever in your wildest dreams. He says, "Limbaugh? Not that clown. It's just a radio show. He's just an entertainer" and then a day later, "So sorry Mr. Clown. What I said wasn't what I was thinking." (The world laughs. Whoa ... the dude walks right into it! History still judges the whole exercise a frat boy prank).
   

Your Unhumble Car Czar, being a still-unauthorized cabinet pick for President O's American Makeover Machine, kind of feels like the kid in the back seat on a joyride that no one invited him on protesting, "Gee, fellas. I don't think this is such is such a hot idea."

We've got two wars and a recession nobody wants to call a depression tailing us. Should we really be knocking over this mailbox?

But no skin off my teeth. President O. dearly wants an Administration of diverse opinions and checks and balances: a united front of dissention, if you will. Even self-appointed cabinet members are invited to the party, I'm almost positive.

Here's my contribution to the Office Dissention Fund: I don't think this is such a great idea, this elevating America's Great Angry White Male Loser Enabler to the figurehead opposition to President O. and his Change locomotive. It's going to be viewed as sophomoric, silly, and frivolous down the road.

*** DISSENTION ENDS ***

So anyway, that whole Disagree with the Boss exercise was a blast.

It's a neat perk, but being a self-appointed cabinet member it seems to me you still have to be generally aligned with the head guy to the point of being a feckless yes-man at-heart, so it's time for me to get back on the Change Train and explain why anointing Rush Limbaugh the leader of the Republican Party is such a brilliant idea. Call it spin if you want. I call it job security. (Even with a made-up job, you can't be too sure about anything nowadays).

Let's lay the foundation for the Brilliant Idea argument by answering two important questions :

1. Who is Rush Limbaugh?
   

He's the number one syndicated talk show host on the planet. (Howard Stern is no longer on this planet, and may never have been, come to think of it).

1. Why is Rush important?
   

Well, first off, he's got one of those cool first names that the upper crust gives its kids to make them feel significant right off the bat ... just like that "Major" guy on FOX News who isn't and never was a "Major" in any military establishment, but who is understood to be a highly-decorated officer from The War on Terror by fully 33-percent of that network's in-and-out-of-really-focusing-on-what-they're-saying-on-the-TV-but-now-they're-saying-Obama's-ACORN-Group-caused-this-whole-stock-market-crash-and-look-Britany-is-skinny-again audience.

How might history have been writ had Rush been named "Dawdle" and Major named "Minor?"

Second, Rush Limbaugh is practically the only human being you can tune in on A.M. radio today. All those fun stations from the 70s – you know ... the radio stations that gave away Shawn Cassidy singles to the 10^th caller and hosted Friday Giggly Teenage Girl Call-in Nights are long gone, swallowed-without-chewing by the cigar-sucking, Oxycontin gulping pork hole of the King of Talk Radio. Check-out the YouTube video of Mr. Limbaugh's last colonoscopy, once it's posted. Someone screeching, "We've got Katie from Crestline partying with her friends on the line. Hey Katie, what's up?" can clearly be heard trapped somewhere in Mr. Limbaugh's large intestine.

Rush is so important that there are even Rush protégés to fill-in the dead zones of this now otherwise barren radio band, like the guy whose call-in fans greet him with "You're a Great American" (since the audio avenue precludes the visual of a snappy New Order hand salute) and the guy with the severely deviated septum whom you have to spend an hour listening to before you're convinced he's not some DJ's prank caricature of someone's grown special-needs son broadcasting on a crystal radio transmitter from a dank, lead-paint-painted basement in Queens. (In which case you should have remembered, silly, that all the DJs have been swallowed. They're in Rush Limbaugh's tummy now).

Don't underestimate the importance of the medium here in estimating Mr. Limbaugh's importance, either. Amplified Modulation radio waves are earthbound by day, reaching only a few hundred miles via the most powerful transmitters. But by night, reflective changes in the earth's ionosphere allow A.M. radio waves to travel freely to places that don't get cable or even good analog TV reception, and whose metropolitan newspaper is more likely to cover which neighbor's deceased cat was found under which neighbor's porch than a G7 conference.

In other words, populations who potentially get the least news during the day now have the opportunity to flip a switch and be bathed in news of the world courtesy of Rush Limbaugh's well-funded, on-message professional race- and class-baiting booster signals in the drunkest, most sleep-deprived, most paranoid darkest hours of the day.

***IMPORTANCE OF RUSH LIMBAUGH ENDS***

I know. The last two paragraphs up there are pure liberal flyover state snootiness. But I like indulging in stuff like that as much as Mr. Limbaugh enjoys a good farmer's breakfast before breakfast.

So here's the theory underpinning the brilliance of the Big O's public attack on the Fat L.

I'm calling the concept "The Audacity of Hope," because I think it's catchy:

President O. & Co. have, in their recreational off-hour breaks from cleaning up the biggest mess the United States of America has seen since the botched ending of The Sopranos, come to terms with the fact that a significant portion of this great country loves Hate Radio, and that the resulting endemic mass reciprocal perpetually regenerative ignorance is holding our nation back.

Being the radical centrists they are, O. & Co. wouldn't dream of doing anything underhanded to silence Fatty L. and his dittofolk.

Instead, they're stalking the ringleader on his home ground – the airwaves. They're shining a bright light on him in a venue that's visible to all (eschewing available dirty high-office proceedings like IRS audits or guys in black suits) and fattening him up for market day.

The back-story message goes like this:

Dear GOP: We can't help but notice that after you've trotted out three disastrously incompetent diversity candidates in a row as the new faces of the Republican party in just the past six months that you guys are just plain out of ammo. (We admit to having a similar incident with Howard Dean, but that was then and this is now).

You've lost your audience because you've lost your message.

One guy who hasn't lost either is Rush Limbaugh, who continues to make America's disenfranchised ticked-off white underclass feel good about themselves and their failings. (Crack hos are stealing your livelihood thanks to liberal enablers: queue The Pretenders).

The above malcontents identify most closely with you guys. They're the only right-wingers talking as the rest of you remain in shock over the shambles left by The Decider.

So you had your chance. Now Rush Limbaugh is the heart, soul, and spirit of your party.

We dare you to disagree or agree.

As enlightened instruments of change, we know we can't be in charge forever. America is about choices, and without a strong opposition party our own party will without doubt soon be infected with the conceit adopted by the GOP during the self-serving, insulated Bush years – an unhealthy circumstance for The United States of America regardless of which party you support.

We came to play.

We want competition.

There will be no byes.

Sincerely,
The New Messiah et al.

(I hear President O. similarly chastises sucky teams during his pick-up basketball games. Charles Barkley once dissed him on the court as being an "over-thinker").

So here's the ingenious, audacious hope ... an end game that is nothing short of a transformational, cataclysmic, seismic macroeconomic revolution that is even as we speak being exercised by one man with a microphone-to-the-world who doesn't otherwise exercise.

Rush Limbaugh has just received the largest federal credibility bailout in history, courtesy of the Big O. & Co.

This radio god is no longer stuck motor-mouthing in the shadows of Carolina paper mills, Appalachian foothills, and pickup truck cabs of under-employed white males who are certain that Affirmative Action squashed their careers. Mr. Limbaugh's big show has now gone to The Big Show. His listenership is up and his advertising rates are through the roof – all because Republicans, for the most part, don't really "get" sarcasm except in cases where they're calling President O. "The New Messiah" or "Obambi."

In case you haven't noticed Rush out on the town hob-knobbing with Marvin Shanken, the guy who publishes lifestyle magazines featuring himself photographed with celebrities, Mr. Limbaugh enjoys the finer things in life: cigars, yachts, babes, and doing any and every damned thing that the world's pale, retentive, liberal weenies despise. Before he ate it, Mr. Limbaugh actually daily-drove the first flavored vehicle capable of towing 10,000 pounds, a bacon & cheddar Suburban.

So this country's ad-rate-hiked, more robustly-capitalized Rush Limbaugh is going to go out there and buy more stuff.

Are you seeing the brilliance yet?

More cars. More boats. More hundred-dollar cigars.

Ka-ching. Ka-ching. Ka-ching.

The stuff of stimulus dreams.

But most importantly, the newly more-famous, more-rich Rush Limbaugh is without doubt going to buy more sausage and more bacon.

Tons of it.

Hectares.

More hogs than T. Boone Pickens has wind-farming leases.

Mr. Limbaugh will not be able to eat all of the sausage and bacon himself, but he'll buy it, I'm pretty sure, because he enjoys it and because he can.

Projections I've recently made up for The Office of Management and Budget suggest that this new injection of advertising-rate-hike capital into Rush Limbaugh will serve to quickly unfreeze the pork markets, which will lead to an uptick in hog futures. Durable goods, manufacturing, and new home sales will follow like a reverse house of cards actually building itself from a pile of strewn Jacks and Queens, and America will rise to greatness once again.

Is anybody excited now?

But what about Mr. Limbaugh's daily railing against pork on his radio program, even as he inhales plates of it off-mike while those hair growth pill ads air? Does that mean he's actually against pork?

Pure bluster.

He's also railed against drug abusers and people who twist the truth.

It's just a radio show, for goodness sake, and Rush Limbaugh is just an entertainer.

Sit back and enjoy the ride, everybody.

It turns out the Big O. knows, as Rush grows, so grows the country, and Rush Limbaugh is too big to fail.

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I'm not done yet. Next week: Late Mergers on the Freeway.

GTbyCitroën Road Test

You would think that the keys to Citroen's world-beating new electric supercar, the GT, would be handed-out over brandy the night before its world-premier road test, and you would think that the setting for the night-before's brandy and keys would be a remote mountainside B&B overlooking the faraway twinkling lights of Strasbourg.

You would think the Citroen PR lady, Gigi (5'9" and so willowy you're apt to immediately forget she's just handed you the keys to a car that must coast on the straightaways to let Ferrari Enzos catch-up) might tell you to have fun the next day – not to worry whether you decide to go up the mountain or down the mountain, for your Graphite Gray GT is not normally aspirated or blown (here you may pause to drop your brandy, for Gigi just said, "blown") – that it's not aspirated at all.

You might also anticipate a somber, quell thrill vehicle orientation with a dour company driver on the cold, gray, Gigi-less morning after ... the giddiness of the sheer explosiveness of the machine tempered almost immediately with a close call with an Alpine guardrail, et cetera.

Well, no such French foo foo transpired when your Unhumble Car Czar had the pleasure of wringing out a Citroen GT for its first-ever civilian road test.

Instead of the Alps, brandy, and Gigi, Citroen GT Build #1 rolled off the line on a bright 12-degree day in the flatlands of Columbus, Ohio after a grand night-before's Maker's Mark on ice in the company of Stacy (5'9" and willowy. French accents are overrated, really).

The first thing you notice about Citroen's new electric wonder car is its roominess. My test example featured Italian leather seating for six (eight if two sit on the ottoman). Forget those cramped Ferrari Scaglietties and you-gotta-be-kidding-me-you-call-that-a-back-seat? Californias: the Citroen GT is truly a supercar for the whole family, and even some after-the-soccer-game tag-alongs if they can stand the thrills.

More very unsupercar amenities: a brick hearth with ample room for the Mountain Dew this kind of road test demands, and a full fireplace, replete with the roaring crackle of dried cherry wood. All of it makes Chrysler look awfully smug bragging about fitting that Spartan little card table in its minivans.

Enough with the creature comforts. This is a car about durm and strang, ripping and tearing.

It's 2009, so forget about ignition keys. Just press X to fire this Parisian bad boy up.

The second thing you'll notice about the Citroen's electric steed is no bellowing, hood-shaking explosion ... just ... maybe ... some hum. Maybe a little less disturbing-the-peace hum than firing up a Singer StitchRite. No need to finesse a clutch or select a gear from here on in: just select "D" and go.

IMPORTANT: Look out behind you from here on in, because what's in front of you is more or less irrelevant with 800 horsepower on hand. There will be more stuff behind you in no time, and anything behind you will only shortly be in front of you again on this round planet ... or semi-round oval, if you must play locally. With only 3,000 pounds (leather couch, brick hearth, and firewood included) to move through the infinite-ratio drivetrain, there's nothing to do but drive ... fast.

Mid-morning traffic is thin and confused here in Tressel Town: platinum-blonde women coming down off Starbucks rushes and blue-haired women not rushing anywhere. Every once in a while prepare to abandon the right lane for the stopped-by-a-cop beat-up pickup of a contractor who has rushed too quickly and dumbly into the polite northern burbs.

Thread gingerly through the post-rush hour surreality of this fair Midwest metropolis with more-surreal-than-yours confidence, for your transportation of choice is French, silent, and transporting a leather sectional and burning fireplace into triple-digit speeds by the time you pass Frank Road on I-71.

Just a few presses of the Citroen GT's magic X button find you way away from the south side landfills and rendering plants before the cabin air filter has intercepted so much as a whiff of foul atmosphere.

You're now – as in immediately – 900 miles away from the frozen stew of chemicals and fauna. It's a bright, sunny 75 degrees Fahrenheit at the Daytona International Speedway. Those two troopers sitting in the median near Mt. Sterling are still recalibrating their radar guns.

Did I say this thing was fast?

Well you ain't seen nothin' yet.

Wait 'til the plebian cars on the rolling starting grid here at the House that Petty Built – mere Corvettes, F430s, and GTRs – get a load of this machine.

Floor the X button and all the world's wannabe street racers now look like Shriner cars at a Fourth of July parade. With 800 right-here, right-now horsepower, all-wheel drive, and other-worldly aerodynamic and suspension tuning by Kazunori Yamauchi, the Citroen GT literally parts the curtains of reality to expose a brave new world where all other entities are in your rear view mirror.

By the end of Turn One that multi-million-dollar fleet of cars – some bought by actual federally-bailed-out bankers (not with federal bailout money, but with other money that was lying around before they got the bailout money and therefore OK to spend on high-end cars and junkets to Cancun with Las Vegas prostitutes) is two laps away from becoming lapped traffic.

The eerie, no-fuss hum of the go-go-no-dino motor is a slap in the face to the bellowing, struggling herd of internal combustion behind you. The leather sofa, roaring fire, and recently-added 13-year-old daughter who has plopped down on the sofa with chips, dip, and a Fresca, makes a mockery of the hard-charging career efforts of Zora Duntov, Enzo Ferrari, et al. This thrust is the same thrust produced by the Christmas morning slot cars of your childhood. You can almost smell the acrid, smoking copper wire brushes spooling everything up ... but this time, you're inside the silent screaming banshee.

Flying around Daytona's super speedway in a Citroen GT there is no push. There is no loose.

Enter the banking at speeds that would suck NASCAR's "Car of Tomorrow" straight into the wall, and this Franco-Japanese apparition dispassionately tells Physics it can take the rest of the day off, scrapping and crabbing through to daylight with all-wheel-drive and Yamauchi bits-and-bytes magic.

You can let-off the X button if you're a wuss.

With Daytona in the record books, Suzuka Circuit was next up for the Graphite Gray Electric Mare and its unhumble rider on this day. Just press the X button a few more times, use the in-car toggle, and forget about passports, the TSA, and timezones. Like that, you're just there in the Land of the Rising Sun and Falling Yen.

Suzuka is trickier than Turn-Left-Here Daytona. You've got to slow down right after you speed up practically all the time, and they want you to turn right just as much as they want you to turn left. I swear it's like they're trying to make you crash.

The GT is still too much for the world's finest here, and even though your faithful road tester ran off the track twice (once while scratching an itch on his nose and another time coming off "pause" at full speed after putting another log on the fire) the Vettes, Vipers, and Fioranos were pretty much well waxed.

Other nice things about the Citroen GT?

No transporters, stacks of tires, or expensive support crews required. This is truly a daily driver that's just as happy shrinking commuter traffic as making the grid at Monte Carlo disappear.

Your insurance agent will love this rig, for even after several brushes with the SAFER barrier at Daytona and a high-speed rear-ender with a Honda S2000, the test article was good as new at the end of the day.

Storage? A few gigs of hard drive space will suffice, and no need for a trickle charger over the winter.

Back at our modest split-level headquarters in modest Columbus after a day of hyper-zooming all over the planet, there is no sadness over not having a mountainside chalet to park by or a company PR lady named "Gigi" waiting at the bar to receive the keys to this magnificent machine .

The once-roaring fire that so tranquilly rode shotgun in the GT through the graceful esses at Suzuka and blowing Lays potato chip bags of Daytona is now a single glowing ember; the in-again, out-again daughter (casually, even, during a 180-to-40 no-clutch hairpin) is up in the kitchen heating up cheese sticks (note to self: take the money saved on a crew chief and hire a dietitian) ... and Stacy, a Stacy more fabulous than Gigi and all the more so for not wanting any supercar keys handed over at the end of the day, has appeared with fresh-from-the-oven chocolate chip cookies and a cold glass of milk.

You would think there would be downsides and tradeoffs to owning the world's most astounding supercar, but the torrent of torque, endless electric current, damage-free crashing, international joystick-toggled no-lost-luggage travel, and Physics? What's Physics? handling ... well, all of that says, "No."

The best thing about the Citroen GT is that no Wall Street derivatives crook can get one that's any better or real than the models those of us with only enough money for a PlayStation 3, Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, and a modest conventionally-mortgaged home in the modest Midwest U. S. of A. (plus a dietitian) can get by racing up a million credits over a few winter weekends.

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I'm not done yet. Next week: Thoughts on the Big O. playing around with the Fat L.