A Chevy Model Is Named the Avalanche; Can the Mazda Mudslide Be Next?
I’m honored to report that a columnist in the Motor City has reprinted my recent list of the 10 worst car names of all time (Ford Probe, Plymouth Prowler, GMC Jimmy, etc.).
Of course, Neal Rubin of the Detroit News added some choices of his own. “I always thought Yugo was a terrible name since often as not Yu didn’t,” he wrote. “I also wonder about the Ford Focus ZTS: Why market a sporty model to young drivers and give it a name that sounds like pimples?”
(Gorden Carlson of Torrance made the same point about the ZTS car in a note to me.)
Rubin continued: “I also dislike names that borrow a definition but won’t commit to using the word: Achieva, Impreza, Altima.”
Taste-maker that I am, I singled out the Chevy Avalanche, which Rubin notes is a strong seller. But he adds: “I’m not expecting the natural disaster angle to catch on. Ford Famine and Mazda Mudslide are alliterative, but probably a bit dreary.”
You never can tell, though. I’ve imbibed a few Kahlua Mudslides and they cheered me up on some otherwise dreary days.
Food for thought: Michael Graybill of Whittier found a restaurant that offers discounts to middle-aged and elderly chickens (see accompanying) while Gary Null of Valencia came upon an eatery in Utah that offers a unique dining area for children (see photo).
Rainy day item: Although I poked fun at the 1968 song “MacArthur Park” the other day, John Hendry of Van Nuys asserts that it is timely. Especially these lyrics:
MacArthur Park is melting in the
dark,
All the sweet green icing flowing
down.
Someone left the cake out in the
rain.
I don’t think that I can take it. . . .
Hendry said the lines make him think not of MacArthur Park but of Frank Gehry’s design for the Disney Concert Hall (see photo).
I disagree. To me, Gehry’s model more closely resembles a shoe box left out in the rain.
Short and (sometimes) sweet: I mentioned the local pastor whose entire Easter Day sermon consisted of these words: “Merry Christmas--because that’s the next time I’ll see most of you.”
The more I think about it, we should honor brief orations. To show future speakers it can be done, I offer complete transcripts of some notables’ talks that lasted just a few seconds:
* “Gentlemen, it’s past my bedtime.”--Caltech physicist Robert Andrews Millikan, after he was finally called to the podium to speak at a service club dinner that had dragged on for hours.
* “Feelings. Adventures. Ideas.”--Richard Moore, then the president of Santa Monica College, delivering a three-word commencement address to a high school after sitting through more than a dozen speeches.
* “There it is--take it.”--William Mulholland, the head of L.A.’s water department and a man who knew the drama of understatement, moments after the Owens Valley Aqueduct was opened in 1913.
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miscelLAny: The long arc of a baseball career: I still take my ball glove to Little League games, as I did 45 years ago. Back then, I used my mitt to (try to) catch fly balls in the outfield. And now? I’ve found it’s an invaluable aid on the trash detail at my 8-year-old son’s games. Feelings. Adventures. Hot-dog wrappers.
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Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LA-TIMES, ext. 77083, or by fax at (213) 237-4712.
