If There's A Theme Here, It's Vehicles

As I've said before, my mother is a huge TCM movie buff, particularly films from the '40s.  Since many of these films don't end right on the end of the hour or half-hour, they often put on some informational tidbits, old news reels, or short films to fill up the extra time.  This was on the tail end of some movie or other, and I absolutely loved it.  I wasn't the only one, either, since all the YouTube comments on the first page say something to that effect.
My mother and I were particularly excited to see this because it reminded us something we'd seen Big Chuck and Lil' John do on one of their shows.  They never said this earlier short was a reference, but I don't see how it couldn't be.  Of course, the original is supposed to be about road safety, whereas the Big Chuck and Lil' John version was purely for humor's sake.


If you're not from the Cleveland area, you probably have no idea who Big Chuck and Lil' John are, or Hoolihan, or Ghoulardi.  Do other cities have local shows like these?  Does everyone have access to the mocking and butchering of B movies and Saturday morning skit shows?  I hope so.  Even though Big Chuck and Lil' John called it quits in 2007, they've started reshowing some of their best stuff on Saturday mornings again, which I would love to watch but working night shifts pretty much means I never get up before noon.  If I am, it's because my car is broken down and I'm pissed.

Yeah, that new car I got?  Stopped working.  I would be driving along and the engine would suddenly cut out for a second, which was, to put it lightly, exciting.  Something was wrong with the electronics in the engine.  So I took it to be repaired, and they said they could either replace the malfunctioning bit for $600, or try to recalibrate it for about $180.  I went with the latter.  Two days later I went to pick it up, only to discover they'd left the keys inside the car, presumably for my convenience since they knew I was coming and this way I could just get in it and go.  Unfortunately for them my car automatically locks if no one touches it for about thirty seconds, so my keys were locked inside my car.  Since it's a Volkswagen it's harder to break into than other cars, so no one could open it.  I had to go all the way back home, get another set of keys, and come all the way back only to find on my way to work that the problem wasn't fixed.  The engine gave out on a busy highway on-ramp, so me and a bunch of other people almost died.
I took it back to the repair shop again.  Turns out the computer they used to fix my car's computer was broken.  The mechanics seemed to think this was kind of funny, like "Oh, silly us!", but I just thought I wanted to punch them all in the face.  Everything's working fine now, though, so I suppose they can be forgiven.  It was kind of awkward for me to depend on other people to take me to the library, work, and the post office for these past few days.  Now that my car's back I feel like I've regained my independence.  This must be the feeling the people behind all those power wheelchairs are playing off of.

Ah, freedom.