As you may have already surmised, gasoline costs a lot of money. In fact, it costs so much money, I've been forced to resort to Extreme Measures in order to fill up the 100-gallon tank on my 5,000-pound 1969 Buick Electra. Extreme Measure #1: Cut back on child support payments. Extreme Measure #2: Stop paying for garbage service; throw garbage in neighbor's can. Extreme Measure #3: Borrow friend's bicycle; sell friend's bicycle. (Extremely earth friendly! Not only will a new cyclist start riding, your friend will have to buy another bike to put on the road!) Extreme Measure #4: Siphon fuel from ocean gas tanker. (Nobody's guarding those things. I think.)
Oh sure, I could start "driving less"—but that would severely cut into my "blowing the doors off of punk-ass bitches, and cutting cookies in the grocery store parking lot" time. Thankfully, there's one TV show that doesn't give two poots about spiraling gas prices: the British import Top Gear (BBC America, Mondays, 8 pm).
Though relatively unknown in the states, Top Gear is wildly popular globally—garnering a whopping 385 million viewers—and I can see why: The show is highly entertaining, whether you're a Maserati-driving prick or a schlub sitting next to a sleeping drug addict on the bus.
In Top Gear, limey personalities Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May spend an entire hour every week fetishizing the crap out of automobiles. Filmed like a Playboy photo spread, the cameras erotically glide over high-priced cars, as the hosts enthusiastically describe every sexy curve and feature—and then demonstrate the auto's power by burning rubber around the track. Car porn? You bet your ass... but like normal guys in a pub, they're just as willing to hilariously and honestly insult a car's less attractive features.
But my favorite part of Top Gear involves the unusual way they road test cars. For example, to test the handling of a Lotus Exige, Clarkson frantically tried to avoid being targeted by an Apache attack helicopter. To test toughness and maneuverability, the hosts put together a team of Toyota Aygos to play soccer with a giant ball (which turned out to be more of a demolition derby). Their competitiveness even extends to buying old junkers, and vying to see which crap car is "the best": by applying the emergency brake on a very tall hill to see if the car would stay (it didn't), racing on a cobblestone road to test if the doors would stay on (they didn't), and donning scuba outfits and filling the inside of the cars up with water to see if they'd still be drivable (they weren't). Plus there was an episode where they strapped a dead cow to the roof of a Camaro—but I'm not too sure what they were testing. (Maybe the pine tree deodorizer hanging from the rearview mirror?)
So do yourself a favor and check out Top Gear—as far as having fun with cars goes, it's certainly cheaper than stealing gas from an oil tanker and being beaten to death by dock workers. I think.
