trinacriabob

Look at this car. Malaise era Mopar. And all those GMs seen in the vid. And in yesteryear's Los Angeles! The world we know/knew has steadily been losing its personality.

That's way lower than I would have guessed. It looked to me like it might be higher. Maybe because the automakers are publicizing EVs disproportionately the cars with ICEs. I used to get a kick and also get annoyed by how Italians, and many Europeans in general, seem to rag on cars with automatic transmissions. All the EVs being sold over there are indeed automatic. They will be going electric. And automatic! I'm going to stay with a conventional car a little longer. When the calculation pencils out or is moot, I wouldn't mind have an EV.

I was going to go to the auto show this year and then didn't. The industry is in such a state of flux. And I'm not an early adopter, if that hasn't been obvious on this forum for a long time ... lol. So, I'll put forth a simple question: With just the domestic automakers, what percentage of their offerings at this very time is "EV : ICE?" 30 : 70, 40 : 60, 50 : 50, something else? Just an approximation, and not in numbers of units sold, but just by models/trims available to consumers.

I always assumed China and its cities were crowded and compact (with sprawl) and that that would not incentivize owning large cars. I guess I'm wrong.

What is this? It's not badged. It has some reference to the "Police Caprice." Is that a tri-shield logo I see in the center caps? Mostly, I like it. It's the sort of sled I could see myself driving. - - - - - As for the new Encore, there is styling improvement both inside and out. I don't know how much I like it. Wow ... 1.2 liters? That's 72 c.i., more or less. And that's all the MPG it gets? I like the way Buick is inscribed on the rear, below the new tri-shield logo. It doesn't look bad. They photographed it in some sunny location. I still don't know if it's for us, the Chinese, others, or some combo of the above.

Yes, interesting. Thanks. The Lincoln Versailles piggy-backed onto the Ford Granada while the Cadillac Seville was designed from scratch and had a much better standard engine upon being released. Then: - 38 minute video - typical - that's longer than an episode of "The Brady Bunch" or "Bewitched" - the initial sequence where he pans around it at night when it's illuminated is sort of cool ... sort of ... and, best of all, he's NOT talking - he admits that he had his "covid whiskey" ... why am I not surprised? - it takes 22 minutes to learn that it has a FoMoCo 302 c.i. V8 under the hood, though it was probably a coin flip between a 302 and a 351 ... but we did learn that the trans was a 3 speed automatic and one that probably lacked the lock-up feature - the dashboard and instrumentation are hideous - he definitely seems to be biased toward GM, given that he gushes over the colonnades and such ... which is fine with me. That said, he doesn't seem to like this car very much. - whose house is that that he's always doing these YouTube vids from?

Funny! Yes to all that Greek grilling. Portuguese food is simple and delicious, but I don't like the chicken piri piri you might be referring to and which seems to have become trendy in short order. I don't think it's authentically Portuguese, but might have come into their cuisine by way of Brazil, Angola, and/or Cape Verde. If you like chicken piri piri, it will be easy to find on the Plateau Mont-Royal, a neighborhood I struggle with (cough) ... haha.

Yes to a select few of those (chicken paprikash, chicken lo mein, sesame chicken) since I will not go near anything spicy. Ever. My nose runs the entire time and that's not fun. Adding chicken teriyaki, lemon chicken, chicken fricasse (Cuban), chicken enchiladas and burritos, chicken souvlaki, etc., etc.

All I can say is bring it on: chicken parmigiana, chicken piccata, chicken cordon bleu, cashew chicken, chicken tetrazzini, etc., etc.

Rattlesnake? "It tastes like chicken." Alligator? "It tastes like chicken." - - - - - Hard pass on both.

He wouldn't be the true-to-form @oldshurst442 we know if there weren't those occasional rants.

NIFTY !

Let me be the first to wish one of our more unique and active members @oldshurst442 greetings on his special day, per the site's daily "news feed." Happy birthday - Charoumena genethlia - Bon anniversaire And many more ... enjoy your day!

I like the photo on the right and its caption. It's both easy and difficult to explain, with the latter applying to someone not familiar with the state's educational landscape. In addition to the good private schools like Stanford, Cal Tech, and USC, there are 2 state university systems. There is the UC system (more prestigious and geared to research and preparation for graduate studies) and the CSU system (less prestigious, with a few exceptions, and more applied and vocational). When I finished high school, they flat out told you that a certain GPA and SAT score would get you into the UC system, and that formula included Berkeley (the mother campus) and UCLA (sort of the co-flagship). Move forward 2 or 3 decades and the landscape is very, very different. Now, Berkeley and UCLA admit less than 15% of the freshman applicant pool. Some of the other good UCs admit about 25% to 35% of their applicants. That's less than Montreal's McGill, which I think is a better school. Except for the 2 polytechnic universities within the CSU system (San Luis Obispo and Pomona), the others admit fairly liberally, with some as high as 85% to 90%. SLO and Pomona are good at engineering and architecture, which may not be found at the other CSUs, so the admit rate is lower. Now, if we're talking the Bakersfield, Fresno, San Bernardino, and Chico campuses, just show up with a pulse and, at Chico, a strong penchant for partying. I knew this chick who looked like Rachel Ward's lost twin sister and who graduated from CSU Sacramento. She said, "If a resume from Chico State lands on your desk, just put it in the trash can." That's a stretch, but I laughed. I'm sure a few capable scholars end up at CSU Chico, but not many. Sorry for being slightly pedantic, but I keep tabs on this sort of stuff. California is a weird but interesting place. It has about the same population as Argentina. Within the last few years, less people are making it a destination. But when my parents got to this country, they bolted from the greater New York area when the opportunity to live in Southern California presented itself.

I get a kick out of reading reviews of hotels overseas on venues like Tripadvisor where people from many countries sound off on their experiences. I seem to run into one common ESL-ism, whereby reviewers comment that "the stuff" was usually really good, or sometimes not so good. In context, it's obvious this implies it's "the staff." However, they're going off of how they would pronounce it phonetically. These reviewers will often be from Eastern Europe and the Middle East, most of the time. I love stuff like this ... in our world that is so far from being remotely monolingual.

I love this lady. She is Lashonda Lester, a Detroit native who moved to Austin and wound up doing stand-up. She is no longer with us, passing at about 41 from cancer. This is what I'm listening to and sometimes do so when I need a good laugh. Her delivery (voice modulation, etc.) are perfect for this sort of gig. (She also has another good YouTube about Russians and religious types coming to the door.) May she RIP.

I didn't know he was a comedian until a friend of mine told me it's the same guy who was in "Green Book," cast as one of the brothers-in-law, I believe. I don't find him as funny as some of the others who did this Italian-American spin on awkward situations because I think he's working off of an already established comedic platform ... and it's not as convincing because he's actually from Chicago and not the NYC area, where they do talk like that.

They did a good job with RTD in Denver, from what I could tell. There are TWO ways out of the airport ... one that goes downtown and one that goes south, pretty much to the Tech Center and passes near some huge lake or reservoir in doing so. There is even a commuter rail interface that takes you up to some northern bedroom communities, probably from Union Station, but it's not RTD per se'. It's all light rail in the RTD part, so that's all faster to put together. I had planned to go but then the pandemic hit. I had planned on getting in and out of DIA using RTD and then picking up a rental car at a suburban location down in the Tech Center. I've probably said this before - broken record: there was a trailer set up as an info booth on the Boulder Turnpike on approach to Boulder coming up from Denver. This was about 25 years ago. This earthy-crunchy chick who was presentable enough (and not the kind who could braid her armpits) was working in it. She was smug and not that friendly - she shouldn't have had a public contact job helping tourists. As soon as a hippiesh compatriot dude she knew walked in, and not even for touristic purposes, she lit up. Ah, yes, she was with tribe! You then wonder what people like this might be like in the present day after some initial slight hitting of the wall. Did she join the establishment, move to the nicer and newer suburbs, and find a husband who would keep her in bon bons ... or is she working at a candle shop in Boulder or Capitol Hill and driving a beat up Subaru wagon? Yes, I do tend to overanalyze things.

This is interesting - to me, at least. Today was the grand opening of the new Metro line from Istanbul's new airport (about 30 miles out, and practically on the Black Sea) into the city center. They opened the new airport - Europe's busiest - in 2019 and fully relied on big coach type buses. The old airport was connected to the city by Metro, and now the old airport has been put to some alternate use. This new high-speed line takes less than 1/2 and hour. It does not yet go into the skyscraper part of the city, but that's on tap and just a few planned stations away. It takes one more Metro train to go into the historical center ... and this high-speed Metro is not intended to ever go there, which is a good thing. This whole situation is analogous to Denver Stapleton flipping over to DIA, which is way the hell out of town. Denverites joke that it's in Kansas. https://www.dailysabah.com/business/transportation/erdogan-inaugurates-high-speed-metro-line-to-europes-busiest-airport Personally, I enjoy riding on different subway systems.

I agree about the color part. On a sportier vehicle, mixing it up with red accents on the dash or even in the seat stitching can be nice. I've seen this on older Camaros and in vehicles like GMC Acadias from the 2010s ... and it worked. It becomes a matter of how much, though. @David @Robert Hall As vehicle manufacturers move their line-ups to EV, one can see, at a quick glance from the home pages of their websites, what the manufacturers offer and where MSRP starts. For (almost) ALL of these EVs, the prices are a huge jump from the equivalent models powered by ICEs in the near past. The price jumps make for some serious heartburn.

Agreed. Spend prudently, save when you can, and invest* logically. * which is almost an "alternate universe" in terms of spending

I heard this in the car. I doubt that, in today's uptight times, a band would call themselves "Hot Chocolate," but that's what makes this era of music all that much quirkier and funnier. I could have sworn this was '80s, but it's earlier than that ... at the very peak of disco. Very spunky song. Also, per some text during the video, this appears to have been a performance in Koln (Cologne), Germany.

It takes money to make money.

Celebrating 15 YEARS of LaCrosse ownership ... not today, but just recently. With a break in the weather around the new year, slightly before the 15 years of ownership, I drove it to Toronto area (the GTA). It ran like a champ. On a full highway stretch outbound, I got 31 mpg. On a full highway stretch returning, I got 30 mpg and it was raining. It's getting the sticker EPA highway fuel mileage ... or better. That means its last tune-up is to spec, the new tires are doing their job, and its 3800 V6 is tight. On the day of it turning 15, the odometer was 120,401 miles that morning. To date, I have only had issues with the stuff other LaCrosse/Allure vehicles of 2005 to 2009 have seen: some suspension components, a few sensors (notably the ABS/traction control one), dashboard and accessory lighting, and the power door lock actuators. As far as bigger ticket items, which would actually be maintenance instead of repairs, I have put on: - 2 sets of tires - both times Michelin - 1 set of struts - Gabriel all-in-one assemblies, which are sort of hard to find considering Gabriel shock absorbers were ubiquitous when I had RWD GM products. - 2 batteries - both AC Delco Gold; the rest of the charging system is original - 1 set of brakes on both the front and rear; the rotors are original, having only been turned at that one brake job That has pretty much been it. It still has its original serpentine belt (looking good, but I will replace it in the spring) and its original cooling system apparatus (I will replace the radiator hoses in the spring, too). Here is the car at Bluffer's Beach and Park in the Scarborough section of Toronto. The locals told me that there should have been snow and ice at the beach, but, instead, people were strolling along Lake Ontario on the sand. Here is the car with another one identical to it (at the left) at the same place, and the driver of the other one was very cool about my taking this photo (I asked him to tilt slightly toward the A-pillar of his vehicle) ... I had to take this photo because this was too funny ... to me, anyway. These first-gen LaCrosses/Allures are all over the GTA, given that they were built out at Oshawa's GM plant, which is at the GTA's eastern edge. I didn't think I'd keep it this long and that it would reliably take me to the places it has been. I haven't a clue as to what I will drive next, so I keep driving it and try not to think about this. Oh yeah, they are much nicer to me at Eastern border crossings, and always have been, compared to Western border crossings (WA state to B.C.). I have wondered why that is. I'll chalk it up to ethnicity that is more in synch with the surroundings.

Talking about the movie "Body Heat" got me going. It's of my all time favorite films. I've seen it about 9 times. It never gets old. A few of my friends and I know some of its great lines. The theme music that they roll the credits to is outstanding. The name John Barry (RIP) might not ring a bell, but it should. He scored most of the James Bond 007 films. He was right up there with the likes of Michel Legrand and John Williams. This is in my music collection along with some other instrumentals to break up the classic rock, '80s and '90s pop, dance music, jazz, etc. This scene is one of the more interesting ones, getting way more R rated after what you see here. Yesteryear's Kathleen Turner worked this guy - played by William Hurt (RIP) - like nobody's business. I haven't seen too many William Hurt movies so, in my mind, he will always be Ned Racine.