Just another eggplant

I have never been able to cook eggplant. My mother knew. She fried it, in the way people fried things then, in a lot of hot bubbling Crisco, and she fried it very slowly. The breading would become very dense and crisp from concentrated juices, and the middle was almost like a custard, smooth and jelly-like, with that salty-sweet punky eggplant taste and the slippery texture of the seeds.

Nor can I find it duplicated in a restaurant, though the occasional Greek place has a nice moussaka with a creamy, almost gelatinous texture. But enough.

I've posted before about how I have a thing for cars. Well, no. I hate them. I don't even drive, which is yet more evidence of my freakishness. I hate what cars have done to the environment and believe they are probably about 75% responsible for the planet's impending doom. Nobody thinks about this, but I do.

And yet.

It was years ago, a some-enchanted-evening moment when I saw this car, not exactly the one pictured but of similar shape and vintage. It was eggplant-and-cream, two-toned, with a lot of chrome in between.  It swooshed along elegantly as if driven along by some liveried chauffeur in the 1940s. And something happened to me then: I was transfixed. It was erotic, nothing more or less. I was electrified. Had that car been anywhere near me, I would have attached myself to the roof and held on for dear life while it accelerated madly and blew through red lights. I would have slid down that hunched, crouched back, the back with no wheels, tensed and animal-like. I would have wrapped myself around those balloon-like fenders, so blown-up that they're ready to explode like in that obscene Popeye cartoon where the tire blows up. 

The creature swanned around, did one more turn around the strip mall (for my benefit, no doubt), then disappeared. It was likely going to be displayed in a car show somewhere. I was not yet going to car shows - I didn't "know", not the way I know now. Now I go, and I look for that car, which according to Google is a 1940 Mercury Westergard custom. I may never find it, but I keep on looking. In spite of what everybody seems to think about me, I have always been the most wretched kind of optimist.

My strange obsession: the auto-erotic car

Behold, the only car I've ever been truly obsessed with: the 1940 Mercury Westergard convertible. I thought I saw one of these driving around town years ago, before a local car show, but I may have been wrong. It was painted maroon and cream, with a lot of chrome trim. But it was basically the same enormous, bulbous shape, with rear wheels completely obscured (so how did they ever change a tire?).

It was only by digging around that I found out anything about this. There's nothing at all in Wikipedia except some sort of vague reference to the Ford Mercury line, started in 1937 by Edsel Ford (and we all know who HE was!). This wet dream of a car came later, when an auto-erotic genius named Harry Westergard  revamped the whole design.

In showrooms, they almost look pornographic. The universal gleaming cherry color, like a red lollipop that has been sucked and licked and set out in the sun, makes it look as if it would be hot to the touch. The car is both male and female, with a great thrusting phallus at the front (not to mention round, staring eyes and a bow-shaped, frowning mouth) and a big round ass in back, crouched almost as if in submission, waiting to be fucked (or for that tire to finally be changed).

When you think about it, it's downright obscene.

I want to slide down that fender-thingie (and I'm not even sure I should call it a fender, it's so odd-looking, like some sort of elevated running-board), curl up in the curvature of that massive trunk. I can only imagine what the interior looked like.

 Whew.

But that's not why we're here today, boys and girls. I am about to show you some truly-over-the-top Popeye porn.

It's from a cartoon called (strangely) Service with a Guile, and it's about an "admiral" (this must've been a wartime cartoon) who drives up in the car pictured above, wanting "just some air in the tires". Popeye, Bluto and Olive Oyl manage to  make a hash of the whole thing.

You know things are getting a little symbolic here: Olive rubs and rubs and rubs the fender, while the tire swells and swells.

Popeye goes into crisis mode. The fender suddenly bends up, looking alarmingly erectile. This car seems impossibly aroused!

But it just goes on and on. Though Bluto thinks he has solved the problem by shutting off the air, the tire just begins to "pock", burgeoning with straining balls of air like so many swelling breasts or engorged testicles. There is definitely something disturbing about this!

And I can't find the fifth one. Perhaps I saved it somewhere else? It pictures Popeye, Olive and Bluto being blown back through several walls, leaving them-shaped holes, before falling into a clothesline and into various outfits (Bluto is in some kind of corset) and taking off back to the ill-fated car.

Which, except for the color, looks exactly like the 1940 Mercury Westergard.

(Found it!)

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm