Grand Tour: Waiting For Friday

I’ve been busier than a one-armed paper hanger (hence the infrequent posts). However, I’ve blocked out a single hour in my overclocked insane unreasonable hectic schedule for my favorite show; Grand Tour. It starts again December 8th and I can’t wait:

I heartily recommend Grand Tour for the following reasons:

• Man did not invent the internal combustion engine simply to forget about it and navel gaze on Facebook.
• The “plot” of the show is to drive loud things fast. They do it for no reason other than joy; as God intended. I feel oppressed daily as nitwits tell me I should embrace the self driving car while paying for the latest light rail bond initiative and installing more speed bumps. I have to count to ten and remember that somewhere on earth the three fools from Grand Tour are happily blowing 30 liters of petrol just to start the engine of a wheeled creation that costs more than my house. Grand Tour is proof we’re not fully overrun by the humorless Borg-like hive mind of urbane human widgets that seem so numerous.
• So long as someone with a welder is doing something foolish, I’m not alone.
• They kill machinery in colorful ways that make the Dukes of Hazzard’s rein of terror on ’69 Dodge Chargers look like child’s play.
• None of them are idiots. Fine; they’re boyish, boorish, and bullshitters. But not idiots. They’re unlike the other 50 channels of room temperature IQ Ophrabots and Sportsballers.
• When Clarkson got fired from BBC for being an ass he, May, and Hammond promptly regrouped on Amazon. Thus, proving that private enterprise is awesome, the BBC are soulless harridans, and it’s fun to make bank.
• Clarkson is an ass. Not a whining little shithead who wants your vote or an apologetic wheedling little pansy, just an old fashioned ass. A loud one too. One with a budget. Who likes to blow shit up. It’s brilliant.
• May is proof that you can be a nerd yet still get to be famous and drive supercars. He also demonstrates the universal truth that “hold my beer” (or in Clarksonesque British-speak “how hard can it be”) will usually override a thoughtful discourse of weight, balance, and engineering principles.
• Hammond is proof that there are “Americans in spirit” that will inexplicably buy American muscle cars to drive around England.
• They go outlandish places in vehicles that are maladapted to the situation. They do this simply so I can enjoy the ensuing mess. They’re the reason I daydream of a motorcycle trip in Namibia. God bless em!
• The anti-binge-watch effect: Last year Amazon put out the show a week at a time (at least that’s how I remember it). Thus, I got to savor it a little at a time. Netflix’s method, delivery as if it were a load of gravel in a dump truck, turned the excellent Stranger Things into a headlong overdose that killed a weekend. I outgrew binge-watching shortly after wearing out a stack of VHS tapes when Twin Peaks went off the air in 1991. (Note: there’s no reason I can’t savor a “delivered en masse” Netflix product (as I do with BoJack Horseman which nobody in the house likes save me) but for Stranger Things it wasn’t my call.)
• Being Brits, they say things like “bloody hell” and “bollocks”. It pays to expand your vocabulary.

If you’re of a like mind, check it out. Think of it as an early Christmas moment for the “gearheads and fun” audience.