Well: I guess I’m going to Los Angeles this weekend for all of 24 hours. I am buying a car. I applied for a loan and everything. It’s a small loan because the car is to be got dirt cheap . . . stupidly cheap, even, when you really get down to it.

Initially I had been wanting to get another police car, because I once again lusted for a big stupid utilitarian cartoon car with a weird personality. Over in Sacramento a guy was (and still is!) selling a 2006 Dodge Charger Police Interceptor. It looks like this:

I love that bullbar. The Doomsmobile, my cursed 2007 P71 Crown Victoria Police Interceptor, did not have one, though I always wanted one. And I thought, hell, why not just get a cop car that already does have one? That Charger is sweet ride, man, no doubt about. It goes zero to 60 in something like five seconds. Now imagine that with a god damn battering ram on the front of the thing, and now you’re really playing with power. Though I thought: What the hell am I going to do with this thing, really? It scares everyone when you drive an old cop car, everyone gives you mean looks when they realize you’re just some kid, and all of your neighbors hate you when you turn onto the block. I don’t really want to live that life again, not those particular aspects of it (thought I), and so I scrapped the idea and got the hell on with it. I couldn’t recreate The Old Ways even if I’d wanted to. Those blue remembered hills, as it were:

. . . are just that: REMEMBERED. For now I see through a glass, darkly. There’s no going back, baby. Not in this life, anyway. And think, Ryan! It all came crashing down when you were alone, and after years of neglect and sadness under the sun, you and the car had come to look the same:

Good-bye to all that! But now what??

When I first moved to California, I remember seeing Datsun 240z’s / 280z’s / 280zx’s everywhere. I mean I still do! They’re all over the place. When I was a kid, my dad would say that if you’re gonna buy an older car, you’d best do it in California or Arizona or New Mexico . . . no rust! And so walking around Oakland and seeing these rust-free cars everywhere, I thought they were real pretty. They’re like little baby James Bond cars. I don’t even find them to be flashy, or whatever. They’re just cool ok!

So yes: I have found one that is cheap. It has only had one owner and all of 85k original miles on it that this lone weekend warrior accumulated all by himself over the last 36 years. That and this Datsun 280zx seems to have been stored in a climate-controlled barn beneath a mountain of soft quilted blankets:

It is, yes, a 1980s Disco Dad Car, and it has a sort of vampiric hearse-like interior, and T-tops that hopefully don’t leak and a louver on the back window and power steering and a whole lot of other dumb / cool shit I like a whole lot. Plus, man, it’s got a quote-unquote Turbo engine, so when the time comes, I’m out of here, and I’m going there real fast. Finally: I am alone now. My friends have more or less left for colder shores and so I don’t need a backseat any longer . . . just a passenger seat for Laura and / or Dante. In the back, as homage to the Doomsmobile to preserve its sacred idiotic legacy, I will store a blanket and some night vision goggles and a hazmat suit and a traffic cone. Mmhmmmm.

Does anyone in LA want to come with me to get this thing? So I don’t get stabbed in the neck with a screwdriver? The guy I’ve been talking to is a nice guy. I don’t think he’s going to hurt me. But then in these dark times, what does a fine American like myself really know about anything or anyone? I’m questioning the whole thing, these days.

Amissa? Danielle? Please?? I doubt either of you read this and I’m too lazy to text you about it. Oh well!

It almost seems like a done deal, but nothing is a done deal until you’re in the driver’s seat of a 1982 Datsun 280zx Turbo with a cold beverage between your thighs headed 375 miles north to beautiful Oakland, California at 90 mph. Please Lord, deliver unto me this gorgeous child of Japanese engineering. Amen.