The Clash of the Titans

One thing you can count on during football games is manly advertisements. And one commercial in particular that I've been seeing a lot of since the playoffs started is for the latest and greatest in road-ravaging-testosterone-fueled-testicle-steered Truckage: the Nissan Titan.

The commercials for this brobdingnagian vehicle have been running like Spanish bulls during the football games. Every time a team gets a first down, or doesn't, we get another thirty seconds of the Titan. One of my favorite moments in the commercial is when the truck demonstrates its power by lifting the cab of an 18-wheeler off the ground, via a pulley. Of course, pulleys increase the mechanical advantage, so it's really not that impressive at all. Given enough pulleys a Hyundai could do the same thing.

Of course, the other car companies won't rest on their laurels. Soon we'll be exposed to a mounting barrage of manly trucks: the Ford Colossus, the Chevy Juggernaut, the Dodge Brontasaurus. All driven by the people who need them the least. Honest to goodness working men will keep using their '88 pickups, while frat boys all over the country use the 305-hp engine and class leading 379 lb-ft of torque to haul up to 9,500 lbs of Miller High Life.

We already went through this whole testosterone war with SUVs. You'd go to the mall and the parking lot would be choked with vehicles like the Chevy Ground-Destroyer and the Ford Earth-Raper, all driven by soccer moms vying for the spot closest to Bath and Bodyworks so they can get more scented candles. I expect we'll undergo a similar ordeal with these trucks, though I don't imagine we'll see many suburban housewives behind the wheels. More likely ineffective, out-of-shape guys whose idea of a manly activity is taking a shot of whiskey without a chaser. But Nissan has come to his rescue. Now when he goes to the manly sports bar on a manly Monday night to watch some manly football, his truck can be just as manly as everything else that isn't him.

So I expect the Nissan Titan to be harnessed in a variety of inappropriate ways, and I expect the flatbeds never to see anything heavier than a keg of Natty Light. However, any misappropriation of the Nissan Titan pales in comparison to the tastelessness of Ashton Kutcher. I could talk about Ashton Kutcher's base vulgarity from now until the Sun becomes a cold lump of coal the size of your pancreas, but right now I'll just concentrate on his absolutely despicable vehicle.

That's it pictured to the right. His is a different color, but that monstrosity is in what he sees fit to cruise the streets of LA. It's twenty-one feet long and nine feet tall. Imagine trying to merge onto the 405 in that beast. Woeful overcompensation, of course, but he's so emasculated we should be glad he doesn't roll around in a forklift. Although I expect it won't be long before Ford ups the ante and comes out with the first civilian garbage truck: the Ford Wrath of God.

Guys and Dollies

Over the holidays, we had to move my grandfather. For the last two years he's been living in a retirement home near my family in Columbia, SC, and he wanted to move to a smaller apartment in the same home. To help with the move, I enlisted the aid of my friend Tyson. I've know Tyson since we were 3, and he is one of the most solid individuals in the world. Whatever it is, he gets it done. Together with my dad, we formed the Creative and Dangerous Moving Company.

Because the new apartments was smaller, we had to be selective with my grandfather's possesions, including his hundreds of books. My Grandfather is extremely well educated. He has five degrees, and a lot of them are from Harvard. He's quite the eastern religion scholar, and his bookshelves, which we had to go through, were filled with books on Buddhism and Taoism, all writted by people named "Tzu" (Wen Tzu, Lao Tzu, Huang Tzu, etc). His new apartment didn't have room for all of them, so I could take any books I liked.

I hit jackpot early, finding the book What is a Man? 3,000 Years of Wisdom on the Art of Manly Virtue. Now here was a book that spoke to me. Essays by dozens of famous writers and intellectualls from all over history on what it means to be a man. Aristotle on friendship, Chaucer on bravery, Tolstoy on obligation. And it's not all just thinkers. We also have James Dean on youth, Kurt Cobain on sacrifice, and the original Rough Rider himself, Theodore Roosevelt, on...tenderness?

On the second day of moving my mom was going through more books, and she called to me, "Kenny, I think I found a book you'll like!" I headed over. "Here you go," she said, and handed me a book entitled Secret Sexual Positions.
"Oh boy!" I said. This is awkward, I thought. It's my mother giving me a book of sexual positions she found on her father's shelf. It's three generations of awkwardness.
"And this one too," she added, handing me The Clitoral Truth. Clearly my grandfather had not read the essay in What is a Man? by Lord Chesterfield entitled "Do Not be a Rake." But then word on the street is that, just five years ago, when he was still living on his own, he had three girlfriends. Granted they were his own age, so it's not quite Hugh Hefner, but I think it's still fairly rakish. I guess he must have read Baldesar Castiglione's essay "Older Men Make Better Lovers."