Tag Archives: Anam

Y Is For Yaris

23 May

May 23, 2012

I know what you guys are thinking. “I wonder what Mr. Blog is driving lately.” Well, Mr. Blog is driving a rented Toyota Yaris and I’m as embarrassed to write that as you are to read it.

Awhile back I lost my car in an accident that I still swear WAS NOT MY FAULT but for some reason the insurance companies figured I was half at fault and paid me nothing. So what happened? A car was speeding down the street towards me and not only did he blow through the solid red stop light but he never swerved or even hit the brakes, clipping me and plowing into a parked car, which plowed into another parked car, which plowed into yet another parked car. That was his half of the accident. My half? I was stopped in the intersection right where I should have been in preparation to make a left turn, for which I had the light. So you can see how I was half to blame. Thanks a lot Geico. I was a total menace.

So I lost the car but my job was downtown and it made a ton more sense anyway to take the train. A- No parking. B- Lots of traffic. C- I love the bums on the N line. And trust me, there are more and more of them lately. Feeling sick and tired of anything sanitary? The N train is for you.

Well since then I’ve gotten a huge promotion (I totally deserved it but if she is reading this, Saarah gets all the credit for pushing me into it.) and I now work pretty far away on Long Island. So I have to buy a car but money is, ya know, tight, so I’ve been renting one.

I once again know what you guys are thinking. “If money is so tight why is he wasting it on renting a car when he could be putting that money toward buying or leasing one of his own?” For your information, nosey, I am about to do just that.

Anyway, I love driving. It takes me the same time to drive to work on Long Island as it did to take the train downtown but now I can curse at the other drivers all I want. People on the train tended to not like that.

Which brings me to my car. A Yaris. A compact Yaris, in fact. What is a “Yaris”? What does it mean? I have no idea but I think the Y stands for yucky. (Give me a break; there are not a lot of insults that begin with Y. I considered Yutz but that would leave half the American South saying “huh?” and I was reeeaaaaly tempted to go with Yuranus but someone with no sense of humor would point out the obvious.) I will admit that the car drives well and it seems to be well made. But other than that it totally sucks. I only rented it because the Chrysler I wanted broke down as they drove it about 100 feet from the other end of the lot.

What is wrong with the Yaris? For one thing the rear view mirror hangs too low. It is right in my field of vision and I constantly have to peek around it to see what is right in front of me. So when I run down a deer or something it will be because it was in the blind spot which is conveniently right in front of my eyes. But the mirror has to hang low because the window is sloped oddly steeply forward.

In fact, the whole interior has the dimensions of one of those mini-school buses, only scaled down. The front is stubby and between the odd sloped window and the stubby front I have no idea where the car ends. That is a little bit of a problem. On most other cars I drove I could see the end of the hood as a guide. This car feels like it is chopped off right past the other side of the brake pedal.

Being a compact Yaris, which really isn’t small compared to most cars, it has a compact steering wheel too. It is about three inches smaller than it should be and the difference is palpable. Imagine trying to turn a steamship with a kitchen faucet. Plus, the horn takes up nearly the entire interior of the wheel. I can’t tell you how many times I scared some poor pedestrian to death while I accidentally honked the horn during a left turn.

The seats, front and rear, have very high seat rests. VERY high. So high they block most of the rear window so when I look in the low-hanging rearview mirror I have a very narrow view of the road as seen through the slice of clear space between the headrests. And worse, for some reason the headrests don’t stay down, they are always creeping up. If I didn’t know better I’d swear they ere trying to kill me. If I owned this car (god forbid) I’d rip them right out. Sure, it would ruin some of the value, but I am not going to buy this car anyway so let me rant.

The hatch for the gas tank can only be opened with the switch in the interior. So if I get out of the car, walk to the gas tank, and try to open it from the outside I can’t. Why? Security? I have never had a problem with someone putting gas in my car without my permission. And if someone is determined to fool with my tank, all it will take is a screwdriver and 2.3 seconds to pop the hatch. And speaking of gas, the gas gauge is electronic so I have no idea how much gas I may or may not have. Instead of a needle this has a series of bars stacked on top of each other. And there is an odd number of them so you can’t figure out how many are half a tank, how many are a quarter, etc. And the bottom bar blinks or does not blink based on I don’t know what. Yes, I know it means I need gas, but I have no idea if I have an inch left in the tank and I can get to gas station of if I have fumes and I can get into a dangerous intersection before I stall.

The controls for the windshield wipers are counter-intuitive, and if I were to replace the wipers I’d have to waste money on two pairs as they are designed so oddly that one blade is normal size and the other is about the size of a small banana.

And I am a smart man, or so I am told, yet I still can’t figure out the radio. Too many buttons? No, not nearly enough.

Far be it from me to complain about cup holders, because I love them, but even they are badly designed. they pop out of the dash, which is convenient, but  they block the air conditioner vents, meaning that in the heat although I might be sweating my drink will be icy cold, since it is the only thing the cold air is hitting.

I could go on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on. But I won’t. Suffice it to say that I do not care for this car.

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The Man Who Could Not Make Pizza, AKA The Idiot

25 Apr

April 25, 2012

The last time I wrote about a bad experience at a restaurant I was contacted by an executive from their home office. Let’s hope the same happens here because someone needs to know.

There is a bar/restaurant named Luciano’s in the complex where my current office is located. Here is what they have to say about themselves from their website:

You haven’t tried pizza til you’ve tried Luciano’s! We offer top-notch pizza delivery in Brooklyn, with delightful concoctions like the Meatball Parmigiana Pizza and the Funghi Pizza adding a little pizzazz to our menu. If you like more low-key pies, we can toss you up a traditional Margherita or a Pepperoni. So for fast, free delivery, place an order online Monday through Friday.

For the record, it is a nice place and the food isn’t bad. Not nearly as good as they say it is, but not bad. Bear in mind that this is not as good as your local pizzeria. This place caters to the office workers that surround them. They are closed on the weekends and are open no later than 7:45. The bar there does much better than the food, as you’d expect. It is an office hangout located in the heart of a business complex so it can be forgiven if the food is not perfect, they have a captive audience. In fact, reread that description above. They brag more about their delivery than their food. Sure, they claim to have the best pizza in Brooklyn, but what pizza place does not? That’s just cliché.

I should also note that on Google, after 10 reviews, they have a 1.9 out of 5 stars, so while I say the food is not bad there are plenty of people who think it sucks.

Last week Saarah and I went into Luciano’s for lunch. Saarah had eaten their Primavera pizza before and wanted one for lunch. Worked for me. From their website, here is what they put on a Primavera pizza: Broccoli, zucchini, mushrooms, spinach, fresh mozzarella, basil, tomato sauce. They have all their pizzas listed on a giant menu above the register. Simple enough.

No it was not.

We walked to the pizza counter and the pizza guy took our order: One Primavera pizza. Typical looking pizza guy- white t-shirt, white apron, funny little white hat on his funny little head. He looked the look, he walked the walk, and he totally blew it on the talk.

“What?”
“Primavera Pizza,” Saarah repeated.
“I don’t know.”

We were in trouble. There was a giant menu board right above his head. Saarah pointed to it and said “Primavera pizza.” He turned and looked at it (note that I did not say he read it) and went straight over to the pizza-making station where he immediately began to absolutely not get to work on her pizza.

Oh sure, he picked up and dropped a couple of slices of pepperoni, which by the way do not go on a Primavera pizza, he wiped down the counter, he picked up a pair of tongs and futzed around in the oven, he even looked like he was thinking at one point. But he did not make a pizza.

A note on how Luciano’s makes a pizza. The pizza bases are all pre-made. In other words the dough has been cooked and the sauce has been spread atop it. All that needs to be done is to add the cheese and toppings and slide it into the oven for a couple of minutes. The rack of pizza bases was no more than and certainly much less than five feet from the guy but he did not make a move to get one. What he did was come back to us.

“What do you want?”

Saarah pointed to the sign. “Primavera pizza. It’s right there!” She was remarkably composed. Ever helpful, I jumped in. “It is the fourth one down, under the eggplant pizza.” At this point I honestly believed the man could not read since as much as he stared at the sign he showed no appearance of comprehending it. So I read it to him.

“It says broccoli. Zucchini. Mushrooms. Spinach. Fresh mozzarella. Basil. Tomato sauce.” I paused for emphasis after each ingredient. “Zucchini. (PAUSE) Mushrooms. (PAUSE) Spinach. (PAUSE)” etc. You can tell I am a former teacher, right? There’s a reason it says “former.”

So the guy looked at me and rather than calling me a jerk for treating him like an illiterate fifth-grader from Neptune, he said, very sincerely, “thank you.”

Then he walked away and stared at the floor.

By now the girl behind the register had come over and wrote down our order on her pad. Saarah asked her if the guy knew what he was doing and she sadly shook her head and, with a look on her face that said she’d been through it all before, without a word, walked away.

Saarah looked at me. At times like this she can read my mind, and when she said “want to get out of here?” I was already wondering what took her so long. Without a single backward glance we left. And it I bet the pizza guy had no clue we were gone. Or even that we were ever there.

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