the ALLDERBLOB

We like those little boxes people are driving around, the ones with the modified peace signs on the grill. Like, Peas, man. But when we pass them on our bicycle where they’re caught in gridlock just like their bigger cousins, we shake our heads with rue.

The simple fact is, there are too many cars. And that’s not smart.

Pong of a Smart Car

Life’s not a highway
It’s a parkway
Where the cars are stuck in tar.

Ah, the lonely Pong. How long has it been since we cast ourselves adrift on your stinking shores.

Rhetoric aside, we note that the Toronto Polite Force [that’s not polite–ed] has taken to wearing ball caps in protest against the city’s negotiating stance that’s asking them to, what, only accept 3% a month salary increase? Not idle their cars in the bikelane? Leave Critical Mass alone? Start taking the crime of advertising cars seriously?

Whatever it is, they don’t like it, and they’re wearing ball caps. Gable, the Toronto Gob and Male cartoonist whose work we find at once austere and bold, held that next they’ll be wearing tutus as the protest deepens.

In fact it’s not been anything like that–they say they’ll be no longer policing “pro-actively” [ticker-tape update: Tim Hortons stock falls–ed.] but only responding to 9/11 calls [shurely you mean “911”–ed.].

What this means in the scary new world of Toronto remains to be seen. The cops have been so effective against teenager gang members killing each other with guns and otherwise these past few months (not) that their absence in a “proactive” way must be putting the fear of dog into the good burgers of Toronto. All over the city law-abiding folks must be defecating in their pants and running for cover.

However rest assured people, the cops are still on the scene.

Why just today, as we struggled with two partial sheets of nail-ridden old plywood, balancing them on our bicycle from where we found them by a demolition project at Gerrard and Dundas and walking them, with much effort, up the lonely hill to chez Allderblob for our shed project, a bored cop trolled past in his patrol car not once but twice, looking, as they say, for trouble.

1st Cop: There’s a guy with a couple sheets of wrecky old plywood, struggling up the hill with his bicycle. Better keep an eye on him in case he’s packing.

2nd Cop: (munch munch gulp swallow) He’s prolly packing all right. He’s prolly moving. He’s prolly got a box or sommat.

1st Cop: No, you dolt, I mean packing, as in, carrying.

2nd Cop: Garsh! He’s sure carrying all right. Lookit them sheets o’ plywood. They got nails and everything!

1st Cop: Let’s drive by real slow and see if he does anything.

2nd Cop: Oh, he’s doing something all right, he’s walking his bike. Lookit, he’s halfway up the hill already.

1st Cop: Jeesus Cheech, you’re really as dumb as they say you are, aren’t you?

2nd Cop: (munch munch).

In honour of the Toronto Police force, who so well “Serve and Protect” (themselves at least), we deliver the following:

Pong of a Cop

You drive a cop car
You want to stop crimes
You gotta start by stopping cars

Cause every car you
Let them sell you
Pass a crime against our time.

Thank you . Thank you. We owe everything to Kelly Joe Phelps and Danielle Miraglia, each of whom in their own way caused swooning as they performed last night at Hugh’s Room on Dundas West. Without them we’d be nothing.

Sometimes it isn’t enough to be all nice and friendly. Sometimes you have to name names and point fingers. Even if someone’s feelings get hurt.

Fact is, as David Engwicht put it so clearly, people have split personalities about cars. He theorizes that it’s an evolutionary trait, bred in by our conflicting ancestry as nomadic vs. farming peoples. The Nomad in us wants to roam the land, hunting and gathering (and pillaging and spoiling). The Farmer in us wants to protect and nurture where we live. The Nomad crosses the Farmer and there’s trouble.

It makes for a bad pong indeed.

The ALLDERBLOB presents its first in a series of PONGs. What is a Pong? Some know it as an early video game. Others cite its early meaning of “stink” or “very bad smell.” Here we mean it in a new way: a “poem/song” of unconstructive criticism: for delivery, think John Lydon, vintage P.i.L. Oh, and watch out for the tricky change-up in the third part:

THE PONG OF A CAR

You say you drive a car
You don’t know who you are

But from my bicycle
I say your name in full

You’re an asshole,
You drive a Volvo.
You make me scream,
You drive a GM.

You think you have it made
But you just make me sad

If you don’t change your ways
It’s not just you who pays

You are a fraud!
You drive a Ford!
You really suck!
You drive a truck

[here’s the tricky part–ed.]:

I don’t know how you live with yourself
If I were like you I would change
You have to see what I say is the truth
We can’t keep on with this binge

You are a fraud!
You drive a Ford!
You really suck!
You drive a truck

You’re an asshole,
You drive a Volvo.
You make me scream,
You drive a GM.

[repeat and fade out]