I Fought the Law

God Damn It

This afternoon I had an interview in Irvine. As I was pulling into the parking garage for the handsome office building wherein the interview was to go down, I was beset by an unfortunate happenstance. See the thing is, when you pull up to the ticket machine, see, there's this monitor, and it's showing you a real-time full color image of your very face, as if to say, "Listen, bitch, our surveillance is so thorough that we can show YOU a picture of YOUR DAMN SELF, so just watch your back. JACK."

The upshot of this system for megalomaniacs like me is that you get distracted checking yourself out in the monitor. So that's what I did. Got distracted. Accordingly, as I was pulling away from the ticket machine I heard a the crash and snap of a soul being crushed, and angled my head slightly to see my left mirror dangling limply from the side of the car. I still don't know exactly what I hit. It may have been the gate thingy not getting itself up fast enough, but whatever it was, it relieved me of the full use of the side mirror.

So I went ahead and parked, and tested the switch that makes the mirror move, and that still worked, so all hope was not lost. I left the mirror to dangle for two and a half hours while I learned all I could about the Practice of Law in beautiful South County, and returned to the car. Fortunately I had some rope left in the trunk from John's bachelor party, and i managed to secure the mirror back in place by opening the window and tying the damned thing around the door frame. Satisfied with my handywork, I got in the car, started the Mattmobile up, and proceeded to absent-mindedly close the power window, until I heard another soul-crushing snapping sound and, angling my head more severely this time, observed my window having been driven out of its groove by the rope.

Undaunted, I rolled the window back down and drove down to San Juan Capistrano with only a little wind and rain in the face. When I arrived at my Capo destination I undid the rope and tried to roll the window up again, and imagine my glee when the window decided the bypass the frame entirely and come to rest about an inch and a half above the door.

Still resisting any sort of daunt, I lowered the window yet again, and this time it bitched and grunted its way back into its proper place before being once again raised and nestled into the frame, this time with a delightful array of grease streaks from the inside of the door.

I then had a very lovely dinner.

Then I secured the mirror in place yet again, this time using precious, precious duct tape, which while ineffective against biological terrorist attacks is A-1 for ghettoizing your car. And now, on account of the duct tape and all, I won't be opening the window for a while, which means that if I get pulled over guns will be drawn.

So, to summarize the last year of the Mattmobile:

April, 2002: Car accident, not my fault, ~$8,000
May, 2002: Break-in, $200 to replace the window and $100 to replace the jackets stolen from the back seat.
February, 2003: Fucked up side mirror and window, a few cents worth of duct tape and I'll be God-damned if I'm sinking another dime into any more bodywork for a long, long while.

Posted by hb at February 13, 2003 12:05 AM