How To Drive Your Porsche

As Peter Parker's uncle put it "With great power comes great responsibility." Upon first glance it might be difficult to see the correlation between Spiderman and a Porsche driver yet, they are in their essence the same thing. Peter Parker was an every man who was transformed by a spider bite into a heroic protector of the weak and innocent.  A Porsche owner by virtue of a key is elevated to a level of prestige and envy untouched by most. The problem that arises with many Porsche drivers however is that they are oblivious to the unstated duties of driving a German crafted sports car. Besides having the funds to pay the astronomical price tag, a Porsche owner is obligated to uphold an image of class and unobtainable superiority. People who see a Porsche drive by shouldn't feel jealous, instead they should look upon it with reverence and eagerly get out of the passing lane.

Sadly, inside North America and I imagine many countries all over the world Porches are being passed over with cursory glances that were once reserved for Fords Buicks and Dodges. This loss of image is directly related to a deflated sense of mystique which is directly related to a dwindling adherence to the rules of driving a Porsche. Should you ever find yourself among the 1% and you stumble across this blog please read the following detailed instructions to insure that you are driving your Porsche correctly.


1) Cleanliness: A Porsche must always be clean. Correction, a Porsche must always be spotless. With a cost of 80,000 dollars and up a Porsche is a jewel to behold. You wouldn't wear a scuffed, dinged and dirty watch or necklace so why should you expect anything less for your car? A Porsche is intended for good weather only, not because it can't handle a little bit of rain or snow but because it should be regarded as a toy of excess. Let your four door Mercedes or BMW do the grunt work on the sleet filled salty streets. When the weather is cool and clear, then and only then is it time to let the turbo's rip. If you can't afford to store your Porsche in inclement weather you can't afford to have a Porsche. Also, if you can afford to foot the bill for high octane fuel then you can spare the cost for a monthly detailing.

2) Manner of Dress: You are not a hobo/hobette who stumbled out from your crack den and into the alley where your Porsche was parked. Absolutely no sweat pants. I don't care if you just came from the gym, that is what changing rooms were invented for. The optimal dress is probably business casual, something with movement but enough style to still look important. If you must wear anything else first insure that it is properly tailored or that it is an article of clothing that isn't prominent within the general public. Remember, a t-shirt isn't just a t-shirt if it costs 100 dollars.


3) A Porsche Boxster isn't a Porsche: If you are rich and you have accidentally purchased one of these cars for yourself please immediately throw it in the garbage. If you own a Porsche Boxster thinking that you had finally "made it" sorry, you are still not part of the club. No member of the upper class strives for the bare minimum. The Porsche Boxster is merely a Pyramid scheme that keeps Porsche in business long enough to sell real Porsches to real Porsche owners.

4) Attitude: You are the 1%, the working world aspires to be you. You are not just a king/queen among men, you symbolically represent the dreams of millions of people. Because of this you are not allowed to be in a bad mood when you are driving your Porsche. The desire for many to go on with their lives is fueled by the vain hope that one day they will become someone like you.  Do not crush their lives by getting angry at the barista who forgot your non fat whipped topping. Your tiny burst of road rage or sad frown at the sight of a traffic jam is enough to crack the facade that is holding up the world. Remember, even if nothing is going right in your life, you've still got a Porsche and that ain't so bad.

5) Driving Habits: A Porsche is a high performance machine that has been tested on the Nurburgring in order to tweak it for maximum response in braking, turning and acceleration. A Porsche was not built and was never intended to be a boulevard cruiser. Under no circumstances should you drive the car 15 miles per hour...anywhere. A Porsche should always be driven fast. Speed limits should be regarded as a suggestion rather than an instruction. Because of the unstated requirement to drive fast it is also your duty to pay a small duty fee in the form of speeding tickets. A couple hundred dollars is a pittance to pay in order to tell the rest of the world "I can drive as fast as I want."

 Whether it is a briefcase, a basket of wine and cheeses from the Napa valley or a lady of the evening the passenger seat should always be occupied.  Onlookers don't want to believe that sad, old, lonely men putter around nightclubs in search of gold digging strays. Rather, people want to believe that a Porsche driver has already got it all and if he doesn't have it yet, he is on the short, exclusive waiting list.

Finally, music. If the sound of a high revving engine and turbo whoosh isn't enough for you then please be sure to choose your music wisely. Save the 80's hair bands for your cousin's Camaro. Anything too loud or ostentatious takes away from the importance of the car. Loud noises are devices used by children and people of low intelligence. Like a drunk heckler at a comedy club an overly loud display of music will get people looking at you for all of the wrong reasons.

If you work these five steps into your Porsche driving regimen the world will be a better place for it. Good luck and God bless.

The Old Generation

If you've read this blog with any regularity it appears as though I have a form of mental Progeria. My mind is constantly looking forward in an attempt to explain and understand aging. Thankfully, I balance out my forward thinking mind by being completely irresponsible and immature with my life. I suspect the only reason I am obsessed with understanding how my actions today will affect my future is so that I do not live typically and end up with a generic, repetitive, boring, dull, pedestrian, common life. Well, there's that and the whole being deathly afraid of death thing which kind of motivates my urgency toward understanding the here and now.


On with the point already...Recently I realized the era that I was born into just got old. I'm sure that some of you  have already encountered and surpassed the age that I am talking about while others won't know what I'm talking about (in their minds and hearts) for at least a decade. As a little bit of a back story allow me to say the following:

I was born in the 80's, 1981 to be exact. As a child I grew up listening to Rap music or as parents refer to it Crap music. Every kid my age for a time listened to Rap because is was new and so so fresh. During that time  however I don't think anyone in my age group thought that Rap had staying power or that it would evolve and become a huge part of shaping our culture 20 years later. In the same way I remember the Internet, it was this brand new thing. It had email and pictures and message boards and voice chat, the only problem was that it was really slow and you had to disconnect your home phone to use it. For those of you who don't know a home phone was a cell phone that was permanently attached to your house via a cord. The Net could have evolved into something cool or it could have went the way of the pogo stick, Delorean  and laser discs. The point is that I think the majority of us who grew up through the 90's as well as many adults didn't fully realize the impact that the Internet would have on our lives until it was ubiquitous.

In this same way, I don't think that the children and adults of yesteryear were aware of how the things that were introduced in their lives would grow to influence the future culture. When you're in it you don't really see that far beyond it. Certainly radio and then television were cool new things but I doubt that people sat around the television and generally thought "Geez, this is going to change the entire way we operate and interact as a species." Certainly there is a level of projection  but if you watch movies that supposedly take place in the future you will note that outside of flying cars "their future" is not vastly different than the current time they were living. 

I realize now that I have reached the age of the Old generation. When I was a kid I remember watching infomercials about music from the 50's. I remember going to 50's inspired diners, I remember going to car shows with cars made in the 50's. I remember how cool, interesting and nostalgic it felt even though I was born 30 years after the 50's. To me it was a far off distant era that I could never quite grasp but I could appreciate nonetheless.


So now I'm at that age and looking back on it prematurely it seems kinda funny and kinda strange. I'm trying to imagine a collection of old people 20 years from now sitting in a parking lot with their import tuner cars. All of their engines have been converted to electric/solar power. One of their teenage kids has a throwback hairstyle called "The Rachel" another kid has bleach blonde hair, another one with frosted tips.  A few car stereos are strategically placed. One is playing Ace of Bass, another Prodigy, another Tupac and Biggie and so on.  

In this parking lot, this vacant lot a collection of fogies and their kids are remembering a time when people used to hang out together. Long before the apathy and the anxiety of the human experience kicked in. Somewhere in the background there is a faded broken sign that says: Appl__ees a homage to the chain restaurant craze that existed before the great bubble burst. On the drive home my son or daughter hears a Creed song on the radio and turns it up exclaiming "I like this song." I take a glance to my left and right, roll up my window to hide my shame and embarrassment and we both happily listen to Creed blast through the chorus of My Own Prison.