Maybe it's Finals, maybe it's the Warriors poised on the brink of elimination from the NBA Playoffs, maybe it's just the change in the weather. Whatever it is, there is a weird feeling in the air today. The loud, obnoxious middle-schoolers on BART were louder, the homeless people talking to themselves are angrier, the drivers are more aggressive, and I feel my own hackles up higher than usual, my defenses thinner, my frustrations closer to the surface. It's been cloudy and windy all day, a gray formless layer of uncertain height and a cool wet wind off the Bay. I biked to the Downtown branch of the Berkeley Library and had to BART home after checking out too many books. Okay, time to face up to my last obligation to Hungarian: the dreaded final exam. Then I'll take my five academic credits and skedaddle, thank you very much.
No time to waste, let's hit those Three Good Things: 1. "Fifteen bucks for the whole seat but you'll only need the edge, Edge, EDGE!" An impossibly red, impossibly cute 1997 Suzuki X-90. It looks like a real-life Barbie car, a mini two-seater pickup, minus the bed and with a little spoiler on the back. Also it has a T-top. In college some buddies and I drove up to Cleveland one weekend to see the monster truck rally at the Gund Arena. Were we genuinely interested in it? Was it an act of willful irony? We were the last gasp of Generation X, so there is truly no way to know. What I remember most aside from the noise and fumes was that the promotion ran a contest in between "acts" where local schmoes could try their personal vehicles on the motocross track they'd constructed on the arena floor, with the fastest time taking home a cash prize. One of the first contestants roared out of the gate in a huge, very obviously brand new, very obviously expensively ...
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