The official sister of Muddled Ramblings has on occasion told me about a show called “Pimp My Ride.” In this show, photogenic people turn their old, crappy vehicles over to a bunch of talented and resourceful people who “pimp it out”, as the kids say. In this case “pimp” does not mean to use the car to promote prostitution, rather it means convert the vehicle into one a pimp might drive. This means it must have “bling”: conspicuous and profligate disregard for cost, a desire to attract attention at the sacrifice of taste. Money for money’s sake.

Today for the first time I saw (but did not hear) the show. It opened with many scenes of a frighteningly cute young woman driving an old, beat-up Land Cruiser. The vehicle had no doors. I *heart* explosives, a sticker on the front bumper proclaimed. On the left front fender a short-handled shovel was anchored. When you’re in deep sand, a thousand miles from home, a shovel can save your life. Various people in hip-hop attire were shown posing next to the sticker and the shovel. The seats had four-point harnesses and the speakers were in black-spraypainted wooden boxes rattling around in back.

The bubbly young lady was shooed away and the pimping began. In my head, I was imagining how I would trick out this particular ride. They gave the thing new paint (yellow!) and front ironwork with lights. Nice. That eliminated the bumper sticker that everyone had made such a big deal of, but I was sure that the ‘explosives’ motif would be honored some other way. I mean, shit. Explosives.

I was wrong. The pixie came back, jumped up and down with terrific excitement, and fawned over her transformed vehicle. My thought: where’s the shovel? Apparently all that time spent posing next to the shovel was to bury it, not praise it. These urban ride-pimpers had no respect for the rural, self-sufficient, working-man characteristics of the vehicle. What I thought had been a great chance to build up and enhance an iconic vehicle was just another makeover, like taking a great singer and cramming her into the conformity-box of American Idol. A wilderness hero goes Hollywood.

Apparently Little Miss Sunshine, whom, based on her vehicle, I had judged to be an independent desert rat, a rambler, in fact was just in the wrong car to start with. That, or she was good at pretending to be happy.

And you know what? Even in Hollywood, that shovel should have stayed. The businesslike seats should have stayed. The ride would have benefitted from a little bit of badass (big tires on shiny wheels are often mistaken for badass, as they were in this case, but you know the real thing when you see it). All the time the people spent posing next to the shovel is proof that it made an impression.

There were lots of cool things the ride-pimpers added to the vehicle, and I have to admit that if I’d not seen the original I would have just written the result off as another toy truck that some rich kid bought. Knowing its history, though, I know that truck could have been so much more.

Whatever you’re doing out there, make sure you keep the shovel. The shovel is where the soul is.

Last week the Blockbuster Video store in out neighborhood closed forever. On the last day of operation my sweetie and I took a walk over to see what gems they had on their shelves that we couldn’t possibly live without. At three bucks a pop it seemed like a good chance to grab up a few good flicks.

The most exciting acquisition from my point of view is Black Sheep, a light horror film from New Zealand that features… yes, it’s New Zealand so it has to have… zombie sheep. I saw this flick at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival (The Cannes of the East!) with Fuego, at a midnight showing with a thousand other heavy drinkers. Fun was had by all. That disk is scratched up pretty badly and our DVD player is persnickety, so I won’t be able to inflict it on my sweetie until I burn a fresh copy.

Meanwhile, we’ve had some fun with some of the other movies. One night we watched Due Date with Iron Man and Zach Gallafanagashammalammadingdong, followed by Dinner for Schmucks with Steve Carrell and other people I’m told I’ve seen before. The two flicks are pretty much the same story (wacky interloper exposes then heals the vulnerabilities in the other guy’s relationship), but they’re told very differently and are both good date night options. Dinner for Schmucks I especially enjoyed, as Steve Carrell masters a moment of seeming contradiction and makes us believe it.

We also hauled in The Crazies (I think that was the title). Back in the day I’d seen previews for the film and I thought it looked promising. Still, those preview-makers are good at making shit look like caviar. Turns out in this case, while there were a fair number of WTF moments (Why aren’t they staying together?!) the film worked pretty well. The ending was… perfect.

That same night we watched a movie with John Travolta as a shaved-head kinda-wacko secret operative out to whack a bunch of bad guys in Paris. It’s a partner movie, and it’s the other character (played by what’s-his-name) who really grows. It was a fun movie, if you’re able to ignore: a) roughly 5,000 bullets are launched in the direction of the good guys, and only one hits flesh; and b) the writers had no clue at all about electronic countermeasures and routine security procedures. Near the beginning what’s-his-name does something that would be sure to cause a major international incident, but somehow it comes off as success.

So, the flick wasn’t perfect. It was still a fun ride. Audi might be the big winner here, as the car chase figured their logo prominently. My sweetie might have spoken their brand name out loud for the first time in several years.

We still have a big pile of movies to go, from that ridiculous movie with that chick in it to the one where all the people do intense stuff. I can’t wait!

10:01 – Hip-hop! inner city. In eight hours a gun will be fired.
10:02 – Hoop-playing cops grab their guns and join a car chase on foot! Crime Scene Investigating cops, no less.
10:03 – Crime Scene Investigation is there for a routine stop in progress. Caruso in sunglasses! Happened to be in the neighborhood.
10:04 – Sunglasses off!
10:04 – Sunglasses back on! Oh, and a body in the trunk. Good thing DC was there.

During the credits, here, I’ll explain. We sometimes watch CSI: Miami. I enjoy mocking it, my sweetie enjoys mocking it and watching David Caruso. Tonight, with my sweetie as my spotter, I will bring you a blow-by-blow of tonight’s gripping episode.

It might be necessary to come up with some shorthand. DCSoff means David Caruso sunglasses off, DCSon means, obviously, on.

10:05 – according to Crestor’s animators, arterial plaque looks like bacon.

10:08 – DCoff tells the tech to document everything. Good advice, since that’s his job.
10:10 – first esophagus shot of the night!
10:11 – Matching humvees! Two people in two huge cars.
10:12 – Mrs. Olsen does not like the police. A suspect who insists on due process? On this show? Must be a fluke.
10:14 – Kicking the fuckin’ door open to take fiberglass samples!
10:15 – Crime scene investigators pawing everything! Even the bad guys’ gloves! (Thought that might give one of them an idea.) Touch each item once and throw it back down. Standard procedure.
10:16 – Talk about timing. The meth lab explodes!

Another commercial break as flames sweep over the heads of our really awful crime scene investigators.
10:18 – my sweetie drinks wine from the bottle for the first time!
I think we will need a shorthand for when DC takes his shades off on camera.

10:20 – house is trashed, so no one will know what bad investigators they were
10:20 – DCoff saves the day! Lifts the beam. Good thing he was in the neighborhood. Again. (Sweetie says they had already called him, so I guess the writers get a pass on this one.)
10:21 – DC without sunglasses – in the day, outdoors!
10:23 – I say Mrs. Olsen is running the meth lab!
10:24 – Hm. might be wrong already.
10:25 – Crime Scene Investigators go on a drug raid! ‘Cause, you know, that’s what they do.
10:26 – Time bombs! It’s a trap!!!!!! – Because they happen to know when the police will be there. Oooohh – elaborate triggered timers that couldn’t possibly go wrong.
10:27 – Nice shootin’ Tex!
10:28 – In the luxury interrogation suite – Crime Scene Investigators grilling a suspect! Because that’s what they do.
10:29 – DCoff emotes!
10:30 – Super-glamorous crime lab scene! Nice that the doc had a full-color printout handy.
10:31 – Second esophagus shot!

Going into the break without anything on fire.
Ah, Local news, how I love you.

10:36 – out of the break with slow motiong explosions, then a lab tech listening to music. Wait – wasn’t that lab tech canvassing a neighborhood earlier?
10:37 – Lab tech in denial after being in a blast. Side drama!
10:38 – “I heard you wanted evidence about the blast in the meth house.” No shit, Sherlock – THAT’S MY JOB!
10:38 – Sure, put the evidence in the clean room – AFTER I tear open the bag and take out the most important item.
10:38 – Back in the luxury crime scene offices.
10:41 – super slo-mo of the maid being beaten for reading her bible. No ambiguity of good and evil there!
10:42 – Crime Scene Investigators (and a helicopter!) going to make an arrest! Because that’s what they do. Oh, yeah, send the coroner, too.
10:43 – DCon->off! “That’s not the whole truth, my friend.”
10:43 – Montage! Work that pipette, baby!
10:44 – A machine beeps. We have an answer.
10:45 – DCoff takes us to commercial: “Natalia, Nothing is impossible.”

CSI: Miami – new night, same shades! (Those are the promo’s words, not mine.)

10:49 – DCoff teaching the forensics lab guys how to do forensics lab work!
10:50 – Suspect slow-motion pacing in the crime lab chicken-wire holding pen.
10:51 – Still pacing. Machines beep and whir.
10:52 – grisly crime reenactment.
10:53 – Full confession! Once again the CSI boys, in their secondary role as interrogators, find a suspect who does not ask for due process of law.
10:54 – Oh, snap!
10:55 – hearing trouble in the super-high-tech designer CSI lab. Flashbacks! Fire! Never mind you look like Lindsey Lohan’s big sister, it’s ok.
10:56 – People go to jail. No lawyers anywhere. The courts are implied, I suppose, but not really.
10:57 – DCoff understands. He’s going to get the illegal immigrant into school. Like this: “You’re going to school.” He puts his sunglasses on. Fade to black.

Switch channel: ANOTHER CSI: Miami! A modest boat ran into a highway bridge and brought it down! Concrete crumbling! A couple (girlfriend: bitchy) plunges into the drink! Whoever built the damn bridge is the one who should be going to jail in this one.

OK, so I’m not going to be giving a blow-by-blow on this one, although it’s starting out to be quite a bit more mockworthy than the previous. I will point out the most ridiculous elements, however.

11:06 – The witnesses say the boat was aiming at the bridge! Oh, wait, the pilot was dead. But seriously – who the hell built that bridge?
11:12 – DCoff knows the wheel base of every car without looking it up!
11:14 – database (that chirps) knows where all recent carp releases have occurred.
11:16 – chemically sensitive evidence goes into a manila envelope. DC’s sunglasses around his neck! What the hell does that signify? We’re going into uncharted waters, here.

11:18 – More wine! On a side note, got some wine cheap at Big Lots called Earth Wise. I have to say, those hippies can make a nice vino!

11:20 – “I’ll process this at CSI and see if I can get any prints.” Translation: “I’m off to do my job, then.”
11:21 – “Murder trumps the bridge”
11:22 – “It looks like over three million in jewelry. I’m going to need two more officers.” Because the warranty for each officer is only good for one mil in stones.
11:24 – a totally needless montage about making diamonds.
11:25 – a laboratory emerald is apparently not as hard as a natural emerald. Huh.
11:25 – “I happen to have the appraisal of the gems sitting here on this table…”

A moment here, during this break after we watched a named character die, to reflect on what makes CSI: Miami so fun to mock. Now is the time because despite the inherent ballsiness of killing a named character, the humor comes from the fundamental laziness of the scripts. Let’s face it, a crime scene investigator was in a place where no CSI wonk would have been in the first place. Caruso is doing a pretty good job of it, not getting too histrionic, but they’re going to make a deal of Speed not being prepared for the situation which is my point exactly.

11:38 – TV computers never cease to amuse me.
11:39 – Will she ask for a lawyer? Will she? Will she? No.
11:40 – she must be innocent; the soulful music started after she spoke.

Another break, more about writer laziness. Suspects confessing to lesser crimes to move the plot along would never, ever happen in real life, but once a week multiple suspects send themselves to prison to make the writer’s life easier.

11:47- “It only happens in Hell’s Bay” – luckily they had a nice graphic in the computer ready to go (with chirping sounds). As usual.

11:50 – DCoff(outdoors) wades into shark-infested water to save a boy in no danger, just to finish as the squad cars arrive. Sharks don’t fuck with David Caruso. And David Caruso can’t wait five friggin’ minutes for support to rescue a boy from sharks who’s not in the water. Another form of laziness, false drama. Unnecessary heroism concluded just as the people who would make the act simple arrive.

The show ended with a police funeral. It was moving, and well done, and I came away feeling, well, manipulated. More lazy writing, filling up the last five minutes of the show with something that couldn’t miss.

How much of this show is filler? Coifed science babes in dramatically-lit labs (with science!) doing science stuff. Sunglasses going on and off. Whats-his-name delivering the big lines. No cleverness. No risk. I came to mock David Caruso but I have to admit that with the material he’s been given he does a pretty good job.

And so we have our unintentional comedy. Lazy writers creating ridiculous situations and then lazily getting out of them by making humans act unnaturally. Then cover it up with slick editing and glitzy montages, and you have yourself a show. Still, good fun.

It is clear to me now, in the middle years of my life, that I’ve been missing something. I’m not a big fan of musicals — no, let me just say I simply don’t like them, even when they’re disguised as popular entertainment — but there is this giant film factory out there, producing an amazing amount of work on a very low budget, and some of it is quite possibly good. Statistically, by now they must have produced a few I’d enjoy.

So how do I get to know Bollywood? Anyone know?