Florida Man Changes Name To Kraftwerk

Choose one: a soul crushing morning at the DMV waiting to renew your driver’s license amid a sea of crying infants or a visit to the ham-fisted death dentist your insurance plan forced on you? Everyone rich or poor inevitably has to do these things, and unless you’re Charles Nelson Reilly there’s no preferential treatment.

As my fiancée Jennifer and I had just moved to Florida, we had to visit the grey bureaucrats at the DMV within 30 days or risk the ire of the state apparatus.

Kraftwerk is an organ donor.

My better half went first. Ordinarily you get an embarrassing, scowling photo you’re legally obligated to carry for the next decade like a tiny Scarlet Letter. I challenged her to make the most of it as others have done. After some cosplay preparation, she went as her polar opposite: a platinum blonde, ’50s-era starlet in a cocktail dress with ruby-red lipstick. She nailed it. Nobody who’s seen her remarkable license fails to comment. This also meant she’d thrown down the gauntlet and it was my turn; I had to bring my A game. Little did I know I was about to be a Florida Man meme.

Who doesn’t love a good Florida Man meme? Endless prose has been written in honor of his creative stupidity a magnitude beyond the ‘hold my beer and watch this’ standard. A quick check for recent examples yields “Florida Man Arrested for Uttering the Words ‘Erect Penis’ at School Board Meeting” and “Florida Man Caught Trying to Smuggle Dead Alligator in Car” shows it’s not a meme in decline. A recent Florida transplant myself, I laugh it off when frenemies rag me about it — but society has always needed a group to lightheartedly defame, with French surrender monkey and Polack jokes as good examples.

Kraftwerk gets meta.

Despite this, it came as a complete surprise to see my face splashed across hallowed journalistic institutions under the headline “Florida Man Changes Name To Kraftwerk”. Reality set in while sitting with my morning cuppa joe, wiping sleep from my eyes while noting an absurd number of Faceballs Facebook notifications: I’d somehow become a Florida Man too.

Kraftwerk fahr'n fahr'n fahr'n a truck.

Here’s a sampling: legendary British music journal New Musical Express. The EDM friendly MixMag. Orlando’s own Weekly. Canada’s Exclaim. Something in regards to Magnetism. The best beats are usually Electronic Beats. Stoney and His Beats. Our favorite city where women stand under red lights and beckon you into questionable situations, Amsterdam. Deutschland’s Shortnews …

I’ve been a Kraftwerk super-fan since childhood. In the 70s, they beamed down from planet Germany and served up an electronic music genre not heard before. Kraftwerk were perhaps the least German musical group ever (despite the Sprockets cliche of “und now ve dance”) and shunned at home by their lederhosen-attired German comrades with a strong bias for schlager, oompah tuba music and David Hasselhoff. Despite this, Kraftwerk arguably became more influential than The Beatles and were associated with driving on the Autobahn.

They’re also a legendarily secretive band, a musical Thomas Pynchon that never grants interviews, doesn’t sign autographs backstage, doesn’t let the world know they’re mortals who put their pants on one leg at a time. It’s maddening. They want us to think they’d been plucked from the wreckage of a UFO and I’m not buying it. I wanted the world to see their mundane side — and there’s no place on planet Earth more mundane than the DMV.

I hatched a plan.

The woman at the DMV was remarkably accommodating for my license photo, ensuring the red shirt and tie would fully appear. I’d jettisoned my beard that morning, a companion of the past few years that had to go. Jennifer applied masking tape around my face and shot black hair dye onto my salt and pepper hair, a bit of pale makeup base and a touch of rouge on the lips. I was a good facsimile of The Man-Machine. Only a few people at the DMV openly stared. I bid them auf wiedersehen.

Kraftwerk fahr'n a Subaru.

Kraftwerk spent the rest of the day in Tampa being mundane and human, shopping at Microgroove Records, eating lunch, making an unpublished homage to Frank Zappa, driving a truck, gassing a Subaru and feeding ducks before a solid eight hours of rest. I scanned and edited the license to obscure or confuse all identifying information and replaced my own real name with “KRAFTWERK” and uploaded everything to Flickr. The general reaction from my friends (most of whom are happy to listen to the radio) was that I was a “dork.” I promptly forgot about it. But the internet never forgets and loves to remix. I should not have been surprised that agent provocateurs would run with the name change angle. For the record, I didn’t change my name. I’m still the same smooth jazz, Tampa-based David Sanborn I’ve always been.

These ducks are very teutonic.

I’ll pass the DMV soul-sucking challenge along to you: make your photos noteworthy, live a little. You’re going to be stuck with it for a long, long time. Faith No More can explain the moral (if any) to this story with their evergreen I Started a Joke.

Also, if you’re dumb enough to ride motorcycles, you should consider being an organ donor, too.

Kraftwerk dreams of electric sheep.

Legal Disclaimer: this story originally appeared on July 26, 2016 on the automotive industry site The Truth About Cars.

The Infinite Subaru Wagons of Jackson Hole WY

(Many thanks to Jack Baruth at Road & Track Magazine for giving this piece a shout-out!)

We visited Jackson Hole WY in August 2016 and avoided the soul-crushing swelter of Tampa's summer for one week. The place is devastatingly beautiful, the mountains, the moose, the alpine lakes, yada yada, go look at a tourist pamphlet, etc.

But the Subaru wagons ... EPIC! They're more common than gnats on a summer picnic, more prevalent than long-lost relations when you've won the Lotto. You can't swing a dead cat without hitting four or five.

Initially upon arrival, I didn't really notice them,  I own one so I'm used to seeing them. But in Florida where I live they're a tiny minority. Nobody really digs their Swiss Army knife utility, their jack-of-all-trades capabilities. People in the Sunshine State tend towards bro-dozers, Ford F-150's, Silverados and Ram this or that. A Subaru doesn't prop up a tiny, damaged ego nearly as well. But in Jackson Hole where the men and/or women with mullets apparently don't need to prove anything the Subaru wagon reigns supreme.

I didn't start taking photos until our last two days there and even then didn't try that hard. Had I been diligent from the outset I can assure you there'd be 10x as many. I'll bet Marty from Mighty Car Mods would've been Johnny-on-the-spot about documenting them. Even then, I quickly decided to only photograph older generation Subaru wagons, so the more modern ones are the first few I shot. If one takes into account late model Subaru wagons, there might be more Subarus in that town than human inhabitants.

My takeaway is that there can't possibly be that many lesbians there. In fact, I suspect that's an overblown bit of marketing hyperbole. I think the denizens of Jackson Hole rock Subaru wagons because they're the perfect intersection of right tool for the job. If any other automaker can crack that code then good luck. It's going to take time, engineering prowess and some remarkable marketing. Even the unbelievably unkillable Honda CRV is a rarity there.

Now, in no particular order, I present to you ... The Subarus Of Jackson Hole!

Things have changed in Jackson Hole since the 1950's. I wonder how they got around without AWD and Thule bike racks? You'll be happy to know that the downtown district has hardly changed since the photo, below was taken.

Jackson Hole circa 1950's a.k.a. before Subaru

Since you scrolled down this far, here's the Craigslist posting that lured me into Subaru wagon ownership. 73,000 miles (not 78,000 as the ad stated), grandmother owned and garage kept are qualities I can't pass up. I negotiated the price to $3500 and drove an essentially new but classic car home. I'm not just a fan of boring cars as I also own a K20 engine swapped Honda Insight and a Triumph TR6, but we needed a four seater to schlepp people and dogs around and a Subaru wagon was the perfect tool.

This is the screen capture I posted on Faceballs. Exactly one person was perceptive enough to catch the easter eggs I hid in plain sight. Way to go Julian!

Where's the Milo Yiannopoulos link?

In Defense of the Name Blaine

Blaine was the name of my childhood neighbor, a WWII vet with the best stories and all of them earned, not overheard. At nearly 80 he still lit his smokes with a Zippo and rolled his packs of unfiltered Camels into his t-shirt sleeve. He was dying of congestive heart failure but wouldn’t admit it, his conversations interrupted by long hacking coughs that drained his color. I’d see him walking on the side of the road in Florida’s 95 degree summer heat because his unloving wife drove their only car to Sears where she managed the shoe department. I’d stop and motion him in – he’d resist, complain that I had more important things to do. If I had more important things to do that merited letting him die in the summer heat, I don’t know what they could be.

Blaine deserved better. His children up north never called, forgot his birthday but used his place as a rest stop on the rare occasion they visited Disney. I really loved the guy, he was an appreciated substitute for my own deadbeat dad when I was in high school. Before he passed away in my sophomore year of college I’d sent him a new Zippo, monogrammed with my appreciation for my stand-in dad and a pack of Camels with a stern Sharpie’d note on them that they were NOT to be smoked. I was too broke to come home for the funeral but my mom said that Zippo was in his box of greatest treasures, next to the medals and Purple Heart and other sparse jewelry that a man acquires who’s too practical for such vane things. I've missed him ever since, not a week goes by that I don't think about him or ruminate on his battlefield stories of boredom and terror. I hope you've had a Blaine in your life too.

"Blaine? His name is Blaine? That's not a name it's a major appliance!"