Things I was wrong about: GPS in cars

Beginning with butt heaters and remote controls, my wildly popular “Things I was wrong about series” continues.

You’re welcome.

Here’s a little number you may not have heard before: $965 million. That’s how much is being requested in the 2016 federal budget for the Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) Program. It covers both military and civilian positioning satellites.

So you say “what does that have to do with me?” Well, you know that navigation touch screen in your car, the eight-inch color one that gives you the shortest route to Whole Foods and the Prius dealer, plus real time traffic reports so you know when to start swearing on the 405? It gets all that information from those GPS satellites orbiting over your pretty, lost little head.

There was a time, a primitive time, a bygone time, when I didn’t have a car with a nav screen. My feeling was exactly how freakin’ lost do you have to be that you need a bazillion dollar satellite network, in medium earth orbit 12,500 miles overhead, to get you where you’re going.

Like I said, this was before I had a nav screen. Now, I like to file it under how did I ever live without it.

Sure, I used to be one of those drivers who relied on my common sense, finely honed sense of direction, knowledge of roadside landmarks and social skills (I asked) to figure out how to get where I was going if I didn’t know. But seriously, all that thinking and resourcefulness just made my head hurt.

Now I can just punch in an address, and one of two voices – a woman’s voice I’ve named Priscilla, or a man’s voice I haven’t named – will guide me turn by turn, offramp by offramp, street by street to within about 200 feet of my destination. I think if I’d ponied up for the more expensive Mark Levinson sound system it would’ve guided me to the front door. Whatever. I see it as a chance to use those rusty common sense skills.

Private roads, dirt roads, toll roads, I drive with the confidence of knowing Priscilla will get me where I need to be.

So here it is, the part you've been waiting for. Yes, I was wrong about navigation in cars.

As much as it hurts to admit it, and it doesn't hurt that much, I'd be lost without it.

Oooowwwwdi

Every once in a while, a commercial comes along that restores my faith in advertising. Well, faith is a strong word. Let’s just say occasionally a spot grabs hold of me and won’t let go.

The Audi Super Bowl spot called Prom is one of them.

I love this commercial. Everything about it is perfect. The casting, the writing, the performances, the cinematography, all of it.

The fact that it’s for a car I love – yes I still miss my A6 – doesn’t hurt either.

Occasionally a director is able to catch lightning in the lens. I think he/she did it here with the shot of the prom queen opening her eyes, just after the shot of him behind the wheel with his black eye. It’s a reaction shot of her, but you feel as spellbound as she does.

So many car spots make the mistake of trying to communicate what it feels like to drive their vehicle. Where this spot succeeds brilliantly – from taking the principal’s parking spot to the beeline he makes towards the prom queen – is conveying how driving the Audi makes you feel inside. Everyone knows that feeling. Everyone wants it. What's engaging about this spot is that it’s about so much more than the car.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know I don’t lavish commercials or the business with praise very often. But to me, the simplicity, the universal truth of it, the underdog winning consequences be damned, is all done so well I wanted to make sure people are aware of it.

You know, besides the billion people who saw it on the Super Bowl.

Baby you can't drive my car

There are a whole trunkful of copywriters and art directors who, at any given hour of any given day, are working on car accounts. It's their job to put into words and pictures the experience of driving whichever car model their client makes. If your client makes a fun, sporty performance car, it makes your job easier. If they make a minivan, well, it makes your job a paycheck.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

But minivan or sports car, the point is it's meant to be driven.

I'm talking about the thrill of driving. Where you feel the feedback from the road through your hands on the wheel. Where your tires stick like Krazy Glue while you’re taking a curved on-ramp at 70mph. And ride like you’re on rails in the straightaways. That never-get-tired-of-it feeling of being slammed back in your seat as you hit the gas and accelerate past some rustbucket doing nothing but standing between you and where you want to go.

You know, the experience of driving. You know that experience? Well forget it.

From Google to Mercedes to GM, everyone is jumping on the new automotive fad of a car that drives itself bandwagon.

To which I say, what’s the point? (I say that to a lot of things, but this – really?)

Isn’t the definition of driving to drive? Not to wax too poetic, but no one wants to be the ballerina that never dances. The thoroughbred that never races. The swimmer that’s never sliced through the water. Alright, so analogies aren't my strong suit. But you see where I'm going.

This is one I really don’t get. I mean, I understand the appeal of driving my car into a parking garage, then getting out and letting it find it’s own parking space while I go off to Five Guys. I mean the gym. But then, I don’t get the full parking experience, an essential adjunct to the driving experience.

Taking refuge behind the cause of "safety," some cities are now installing roadside sensors for cars that drive themselves to follow. This is very reassuring. These cities can’t even repair potholes.

The picture above is a Mercedes prototype called the FO15. It drives itself, although there’s a steering wheel should you become overwhelmed with nostalgia or the urge to shut off the auto-pilot and drive yourself.

This other picture is the inside of the F015. Apparently carmakers believe if you don’t have to worry about driving, you’ll spend your commute time more productively by working on the way to and from the job.

I barely work at work. I don’t see it happening.

There’s a bigger story here about technology for its own sake, and questions that need to be asked. For example, just because we can do something, should we? Coincidentally the same question I asked about my high school girlfriend.

Because there’s a tangled web of liability questions, routes, judgment calls the car would have to make in a split second, I don’t see the self-driving car as a realistic option for decades, if ever.

But in the unlikely event self-driving cars hit the road sooner rather than later, I’d have to tell it the same thing I tell my kids.

If you can drive yourself, you can pay for your own gas and insurance.

Honey I love my kids

There's a very small club of actors I'm genuinely happy to see on screen, regardless of what movie they're in. But one who always brings, and brought, a smile to my face was Rick Moranis.

For decades, Moranis was the go to nerd, the nebbish with glasses who stole your heart and split your sides. His characters, cartoony sometimes, had depth. Not only did I feel for them, I rooted for them.

Which leads me to the question: where's he been the last twenty or so years? Come to find out he's been staying true to himself, and earning my respect in a way few people can.

In February 1991, Moranis lost his wife Ann Belsky to breast cancer. They had two small children, and Moranis made the unofficial decision to walk away from Hollywood and raise his kids. It became official in 1997. He was done.

In the few rare interviews he's given since, he says he doesn't miss it. He's always surprised when people are so shocked at what they think he gave up. But the truth was he had very little control over the material he was doing - especially the Honey I Shrunk The Kids franchise. For a comedy writer, it wasn't a good situation.

Here's what he had to say about it:

“Stuff happens to people everyday, and they make adjustments to their lives for all kinds of reasons. There was nothing unusual about what happened or what I did, I think the reason that people were intrigued by the decisions I was making and sometimes seem to have almost admiration for it had less to do with the fact that I was doing what I was doing and more to do with what they thought I was walking away from, as if what I was walking away from had far greater value than anything else that one might have. The decision in my case to become a stay-at-home-Dad, which people do all the time, I guess wouldn’t have meant as much to people if I had had a very simple kind of make-a-living existence and decided I needed to spend more time at home. Nobody would pay attention to it, but because I came from celebrity and fame and what was the peak of a career, that was intriguing to people. To me, it wasn’t that. I didn’t have anything to do with that. It was work, and it was just time to make an adjustment.”

In the past few years, since his kids are grown now, Moranis has gotten his feet wet again, doing a little voice over work in cartoons and recording a record album. It was all done close to home, and sadly doesn't signal a return to movie roles.

I won't run down his list of credits. You can see them all on his IMDB page. But I will say that when one of his films comes on TV, it does make me miss the Keymaster, Seymour Krelborn, Bob McKenzie and Dark Helmet.

But fortunately, they're all still alive and well and right where I last left them on Netflix, cable and DVD. They'll always be around whenever I want them.

Just like Rick Moranis was for his kids.

Your outside voice

I recently wrote a post that dealt with a kind of phone I thought had disappeared but hadn't. Today's post is about a phone I know has been vanishing for some time now.

That urban American cultural icon, and improvised Superman dressing room, the pay phone.

Not a surprise really. With the proliferation of cell phones, the pay phone and phone booth were on borrowed time.

I always felt there was a class system when it came to pay phones. There were the thick wooden phone booths, like the ones you can still find at Philippe's downtown, or Musso's in Hollywood. Then there were the metal ones, filled with graffiti and wreaking of urine, that you'd find on the corner of every gas station.

There are any number of movies where someone is on the pay phone, in a phone booth, at night, in the rain. The romance of those shots rarely matched the reality of trying to hold the receiver a few inches away from your face in case some of the nastier germs decided to make the leap.

Despite the inherent risk of using them, I miss pay phones. Not half-booth ones like above that got such a huge laugh in Superman II, but real ones.

When I'm at a place like the restaurants I named, I make it a point to call someone. I love the feeling of ducking into the booth, closing the door and shutting out the world.

Barring finding out I actually came from another planet, which many people I work with believe, the phone booth is probably as close to being Superman as I'm going to get.

The romance of the phone booth was also captured in the song Operator by Jim Croce. In it, he has a conversation with a pay phone operator, asking her to connect him to a lost love. It's a song I always loved, maybe because it reminds me of nights before cell phones, when I was on a pay phone trying to get back together with someone.

Or maybe I'm just a sap. It could be that too.

The golden rule

So this evening I was sitting in the porcelain chair in our reading room, perusing the pages of Fortune magazine. As one does. I found an article that talked about how much employees who work for the Four Seasons Hotels love their company.

Not their jobs, their company.

Sure there are the perks you'd expect. Ridiculous employee room rates at any hotel in the chain, anywhere in the world. The ability to transfer to hotels in other countries, and live out that adventure in style.

But the one reason they love the company so much, and, by extension, customers love the company so much, is the one main rule they have for their employees: treat others as you want to be treated. Simple recipe for success, right?

They're not the only company that shares that point of view.

There's a little shmata shop you may have heard of called Nordstrom which also operates under the same golden rule. It's the reason their sales people are more like helpful, leave-you-alone-until-you're-ready people.

The sad thing about good service is that it's as surprising as it is refreshing. As customers, we've reached a point where we're so used to bad service it's like being hit with cold water when you encounter someone who's genuinely there to make sure you're happy.

When was the last time you said, "That guy was so nice! I can't wait to visit the DMV again!"

It's ashame more people don't make it a personal philosophy no matter who they work for. I work at a lot of ad agencies where no one treats anyone the way they want to be treated. And if they do want to be treated that way, they have bigger issues to worry about. But most of the time the philosophy is "Do unto others before they do it unto you."

Yes, it is a glamour business.

Still, I'm nothing if not an optimist. I believe the glass is always half full. Sure it's with rusty, dirty, chemically polluted tap water from a municipal reservoir homeless people bathe and pee in, but still.

I remain filled with hope that one day we'll all treat each other just a little kinder, a little better and a lot more like the way we'd like people to treat us.

Now if this asshole in front of me would just make up his freakin' mind. I need an ice vanilla spice latte like you can't believe.

The daily grind

Like the ability to make change and cursive writing, the fine art of driving a stick shift is rapidly disappearing.

As I mentioned in this post, most people couldn't name three kids who can drive a manual transmission. The real shame is because of that, they'll never get to experience the thrill of what I like to call "real driving." The speed at your beck and call. The precise control and coordination between foot and hand. The shame of being with your high school friends and stalling out on La Cienega just before Sunset and rolling into the car behind you.

Of course I made up that last one. Yeah, that's it. Made it up.

My first few cars were manual transmission, and I used to look for any excuse just to drive. At every red light, I felt like Andretti waiting for the green, revving the engine, giving the nod to the car next to me, ready to leave him in my dust.

Of course, it was a '71 Super Beetle so there wasn't a lot of dust. But you see where I'm going here.

Eventually, time takes it's toll in the form of children, and as any parent knows you always want to have one hand free to reach in the backseat and remind them where they come from. So inevitably the day comes for all of us where we give up the thrill of a stick shift for the convenience of an automatic transmission. We convince ourselves it feels almost as fast off the light. That's it's not so bad, which it's not (I'm good at fooling myself). Automatic really is a lot better at rush hour on the freeway, and that becomes sort of a mantra.

But if I'm ever stuck at a Hertz counter at a regional airport in farm country somewhere in the midwest at midnight - and why wouldn't I be - and all they have left is a beat up Ford Focus with a manual transmission, I'll be able to drive it.

Sadly, the 2015 graduating class of Driver's Ed can't say the same.