the mansions of glory have been condemned...

...and the suicide machines have been sold as scrap metal to China.

Driving used to be fun. I'm not misremembering that, am I?

Today I had to drive my wife and her elderly rabbit Jack to the vet's office in Wellesley. It's not that great a distance as the crow flies, but the route there is circuitous and ends up being a fifty mile round trip through some of most aggravating stretches in the MetroWest/Northwest area. Vet trips aren't meant to be of the same character as leisurely Sunday drives, but the experience really brought home how my love of behing behind the wheel has soured in the past couple of years.

There are many reasons for this shift in attitude:

- The mass migration of aspiring homebuyers looking for better deals beyond the 495 Curtain has led to massive rush hour traffic jams stretching fifteen miles north and south of Boston, especially since the announcement that the Big Dig was officially finished caused a large number of public transportation riders to start commuting by car again.

- The overdevelopment of inner ring suburbs, where massive condo complexes and retail centers have been plunked down on postage stamp-sized lots off back roads, has dumped massive levels of traffic on roads not designed to handle it.

- The rise of "bigger is better" vehicle culture has led to an escalating arms race mentality on the roads, even for drivers who don't opt for a Escalade or Hummer. Even the armchair liberal Prius driving set will more often than not switch into full offensive mode as they pull out of their driveways.

- MOTHER. FUCKING. ASSHOLES. WHO. USE. CELL. PHONES. OR. TEXT. MESSAGE. WHILE. DRIVING. I don't care if it's hands-free or Bluetoothed up the wazoo, using that shit while driving needs to be a heavy finable offense. (Or violators could be lined up against against a wall and summarily executed. I'm okay with either course of action.)

- The inevitable jadedness that comes with commuting to work every day by car. It doesn't take long for the luster to flake and peel off when the material embodiment of your freedom and mobility pulls double duty as the thing that bears you into the drudgery of work every morning.

The love hasn't left me entirely, though, just gone dormant like a desert flower awaiting the rain. Times like a few weeks ago, when I went to pick up Maura at the subway station late on a Sunday night, it all comes flowing back to me...

The tree-lined darkness of South Border Road on the warm summer evening, feeling the hum of Super Lumina's V6 coming up through the steering wheel and accelerator pedal, a hand picked selection of favorite songs blaring from her CD player...

If only heaven was half as nice.

Amen Corner - Expressway to Your Heart (from The Collection, 2001) - This British (Welsh, to be more specific) Invasion act's definitive moment of glory was "Scream and Scream Again" the theme song to the not-so-great horror film of the same name, but their other stuff isn't half bad, either. No one will ever touch the magificence of The Soul Survivors' orginal version of this song, although I enjoy the slightly "off" vibe that radiates from the Amen Corner's 1968 cover.

Republica - From Rush Hour with Love (from Speed Ballads, 1998) - It's odd to listen to Republica now and think back to a time where the band was tagged with the "electronica" label. Some of the elements are there, but their overall sound is pretty decisively pop-slash-rock, and doesn't bleed across genre boundaries as much as either, say, Carter USM or Helen Love did.

The Modern Lovers - Roadrunner (from The Modern Lovers, 1976) - Yeah, I posted this track way back in the early days of this blog, but given today's topic, I couldn't not include it. The only serious choice for the official pop song of the Bay State; no dissenting opinions will be tolerated.

My current driving experiences would be more properly represented by Johnny Rotten's rendition/mutilation of the song, but that is what's great about a good piece of music -- it can enable one to transcend vile reality.

I went looking for the spirit of 1956 today while I was on Route 128. It was buried under a pile of abandoned CRT monitors some cheap shitheel left abandoned by the side of the highway.