Hummer Love

It’s is the classic expat cliché. Come to the Middle East and buy a Hummer. Hummer, famous for having the most expensive launch event ever. That would be Gulf War 1. The mother of all car launches. Anyway, 17 years on the hummer aint the new kid on the block anymore. It was cool to have a hummer here in the UAE a couple of years ago, but the cashed up car nuts who change their cars like their undies have moved on. The new Rover is the in thing this month.

What about our carbon footprint you ask? Well with a Hummer it is more of an army issue desert boot print, but my theory is, if all this fighting and stress over the price of oil wasn’t around, we would all be better off. How do we sort that out? Get rid of the oil. Use it up. Fast. And my friends, doing 160 k’s between Abu Dhabi and Dubai is a good way to use it up.

The Hummer is big. I’ve never had an SUV, never really wanted one, but now I have had a taste of it, it would be hard to go back. Before we got the Hummer we were renting a VW polo. I have filled that with pine scented dishwashing liquid and hung it form the hummers rear view mirror.
The Hummer is high off the ground.
It’s a climb to get in, but once you’re there it’s worth it. Kind of like getting to the top of Everest. The Hummer is so high off the ground that at Hummer dealerships, one of the optional extras is a midget lady who lives in the spare tyre compartment and comes round offering you a choice of chicken or fish on long trips.
Judder bars are a thing of the past. When you’re in a car that was designed to be able to drive over small desert villages without stopping, a judder bar is just a joke.

We got the H3. It’s totally different to the H1 and 2. Each model that comes out seems to have a little more of the sharp edges taken off. It’s sad how that happens. The Hummer caught the imagination of the nation because it looked different to all the pussy cars we were used to seeing. It wasn’t smooth and curvy, it was boxy with sharp corners and low to the ground. Arnie wanted one. And back in 91 he was still kind of cool, in a larger than life Hollywood way. But the H3 is a shadow of its early days. Looks to me like the result of endless focus groups and research meetings that have tried to pander to the soccer mum crowd. Bit of chrome here, smooth those front corners, put some pretty taillights on it. Any more tweaks and they might as well slap a Hyundai logo on its arse.
The H4 will probably suck and buy the time it comes out Arnie will be the only guy rich enough to fill it with gas, so we are living the dream now.
The wife likes to keep it clean, but I think a Hummer looks better dirty. It also makes it look like I have been off roading.
The pressure about getting a big 4x4 like a hummer is everyone says ‘have you taken it off road yet?’ and when you say no, they give you that slightly disappointed look. I parked outside a restaurant the other day and road works were going on out front so I had to drive up on the curb to park… does that count? … Not really eh.

The mother of all lines.

Saddam has gone now. But he lives on with one of histories great lines.
‘The Mother of all battles’
The battle – Gulf War1, never lived up to the hype. Kind of like a Don King fight. But the line lived on through the 90’s and into the 21st century. And I bet Saddam kicked himself or had some of his advisors shot for letting that opportunity slip away. He should have secured the rights to that little puppy. Then he wouldn’t have had to worry about the royalties from his romance novels to make him his millions. (I assume that is what paid for all his palaces and not using his position as leader of Iraq for his own personal financial gain).
Imagine the pressure Saddam was under in 2003. With the invasion of Iraq looming the world’s media waited eagerly for his new creation. But he couldn’t repeat the magic. Like Dirty Dancing 2 it just never managed to live up to the hype.

Mind you George W didn’t do so good either - Mission Accomplished? Not only was it bullshit it just didn’t have that extra zing that makes you want to adapt it for your own person use. Now Saddam’s line has turned up in all sorts of different places. We’ve had,
The Mother of all hurricanes, The Mother of all budgets, The Mother of all ride on lawn mower sales. And for the lucky few, the line can be made to work even harder.
The Mother of all Mothers day buffets
The mother of all Mother Fuckers (that could be the line for a Steven Segal film. One where he plays an ex special forces commando retired to a small town who has to use all his deadly skills to confront the rich baddie who runs the town using a bunch of check shirt, trucker cap wearing farmhands with m16’s. In other words the plot for every Segal movie)

Saddam is gone, but his line lives on. He set the standard. Not only for the amount of gold fixtures you should have in your bathroom, but also the kind of tag line you take into battle. Perhaps when the White House extracts itself from the mother of all foreign invasion fuck ups they will take the time to acknowledge that and ensure that never again do the American people have to settle for a ‘Mission Accomplished’.