Some people might allege I am in the grips of a mid-life crisis -- but hey, if this is the middle of my life there's a decent chance Phoebe Cates will hop into a Way Back Machine and appear here in here former 18 year old glory and we will spend the night with her screaming "Fuck me harder Bao Dai you stud."

No, unless she finds a Way Back Machine in the alley near the dumpster where she goes to smoke crack and contemplate the meaning of life and how in the box office flop/ plagiarized version of Blue Lagoon a/k/a Paradise she refused to let Willie Aames massage her then luscious melons for oh five minutes (her contract only required three minutes) requiring them to bring in a body double (at exactly three minutes into the scene -- the one in which tits and two hands with stubby fingers fill the entire screen -- you can see the tits being rubbed morph from a C to a Double C) who allowed our man Willie to feel her up good, and didn't give a shit that Scott Baio was giving him a blow job while he kneaded her knobs -- with the unfortunate result being that Phoebe got a rep of being "uncooperative," which led, directly or indirectly, to the series of loveless marriages, rumored child abuse, black eyes and prostitution during a "vacation" to Nigeria -- anyway, it's very unlikely any one will be yelling anything -- at least of a sexual nature, her at the millennial Condo.

So why the articles in and The Globe and the New York Times about me and a mid-life crisis you ask?

Because on Saturday, April 7, 2001 I acquired what arguably is the most bitchin' fucking automobile I will ever own, and I've owned some fine fucking cars in my time -- there was the old Malibu 396, or "the Purple Bomb as Mom called it; there was the 1984 Camaro Z28 which, at the end of it's three year run had been driven so freaking hard and fast that the front bolts on the driver's seat had been shorn off by G Forces and on its final ride home I had to prop a titanium brief case behind the seat so my married blonde and beautiful "friend" wouldn't kill herself if she tried to find out what the "muscle" in muscle car meant; then there was the Dodge Stealth that I drove into an apartment building at four in the morning ....

But that was last century. And so was the Pope Mobile.

That's right, fans... Saturday around noonish the Pope Mobile made its final trip on the 101/170/134 into Glendale (where the jail has only one book, and that's the Bible -- the separation of Church and State be damned, or at least well darned) to Pacific BMW.

Some of you -- and you know who you are (while others are just realizing they weren't quite as intimate as they thought) -- how I came to have the Pope Mobile:

See, at the time I was working for Chuckles Lynberg and the dumbly named newspaper Brief 'n' Counters which this chick who had enormous -- I mean HUGE breasts which, one night, after I had her buy me dinner and drinks and back here at the Millennial Condo (then the Condo of the Eighties or Nineties) we had been looking at the ultimate aphrodisiac -- Avedon's In the American West -- I discovered did her giant flesh puppies not need a bra to appear firm and upright, but...

... well, I guess I could discuss the edible body paint, but Bao Dai of Hollywood does not kiss and tell... well, he might kiss and tell, but there are lines which if drawn in the sand must be kept until the day Global Warming causes the oceans to rise and we are all hysterically fleeing for our lives to Bum Fuck, Arizona -- because on that day all such lines will have been erased and we shall curse George W. "Just One More Line with a Jack 'n' Beer Back" Bush in much the manner Christine Todd Whitman (or Whitman Todd -- you know who I mean) has been doing since she found out that when he appointed her Secretary of the Interior he had rewritten the job description to require the secretary to type 90 wpm and get Dick Cheney's shirts -- and the shirts of the CEOs of BP and Texaco -- from the laundry plus doing odd filing...

... anyway, this chick with the big bosoms was briefly editor and she and her big hooters tried to give the paper an even lamer name.

As for the Pope Mobile, it was around that time I was pumping out what was then my Review of the Month and the Pope was coming to Los Angeles and the offices of what became Lynbo.com or something was on the motorcade route and we all had to get to work at like 5 a.m. so they could make sure no one had put a bomb in sewer system and Chuckles said, as the Pope passed, "Bao Dai of Hollywood should drive a Pope Mobile" and so he bought me one because in the day what Chuckles said should happen happened and ... well, that's how I got the Pope Mobile....

[BTW, if either the babe with the really enormous hoots is reading this, or the chick who had, a few years earlier, bought me that Testarosa, I would really like to see you again -- and I don't mean together... Bao Dai of Hollywood is a monogamist these days heart...]

Not that I'll have much trouble -- in theory -- getting babes now that the Pope Mobile is headed for the junk heap of history and I have a brand new BMW Z8...

Now you'd think that for writing this column and just being, you know, terminally hip -- like me -- I could just stroll into any auto show room and say "Give me a fucking $150,000 car and I don't want to hear any of your jive used car sales talk ... the Pope Mobile is worth at least twice what the Z8 is worth, so along with the keys, give me a cashier's check for $150,000. Come on, snap to it, chop chop."

You'd think ... but shit, they don't even have fucking cashier's checks any more....

Anyway, long story short, I was originally all hot to get a new Porsche... a Boxster S since my left knee is pretty well blown out and it has a transmission that's sort of like that on Indy cars and does not require pumping a clutch day and night with one's foot -- which I haven't done since driving this really drunk Valley Girl with big Gazungas (hmmmmm.... maybe I'm a breast man) home from Nicky Blairs where we had left her RX-7 because this guy who kept claiming to be the son of some Capo from Boston had his driver driving us everywhere after dinner in a limo which was filled with empty beer cans and after I convinced her that there really isn't all that much going on at the China Club on Thursday Nights at midnight -- he took us to her car in a garage on Sunset which was actually lucky since we got to Nicky's like 7 minutes before the garage closed.

So I'm looking at Boxsters on Friday Night -- ready to pick one up -- Pope Mobile right outside -- and not one Nazi salesman would even approach me -- and I was the only fucking person in the show room.

So dejected, I go to Ralph's and buy some Phish Food Frozen Yogurt and come back to the Condo, thoughts of bosoms and roadsters in my head, and go on line and decide to get my ass a Z8.

Well, they were much more interested in having me as a customer over at Pacific BMW in Glendale.

And aside from the little hoopla when they dissed the Pope Mobile, all went well.

The hoopla was just a five minute temper tantrum on my part about yadda yadda how dare they not give the Pope Mobile the respect due it by making me a shitty offer on it, which caused me to loudly and rather flamboyantly excommunicate the sales man, his manager, some Chinese customers and then....

They were laughing at me.

Laughing at MOI!

Well ain't nada on God's good -- green or red or yellow or brown -- earth that will make a blue balled Vietnamese Emperor in Exile more angry than having a bunch of worthless Chinkeneeze chuckling at his expense... colonize my country and exploit my people for half a fucking millennium -- why you stinking filthy motherfucking rice farmers! And a bunch of Nazis there laughing with them... as I said, "You fucking shits make the crank addicts at the Speedy Palms Trailer Park near Desert hot Springs look classy and they don't have running water!"

Finally, when I had every one's attention, my man Hee pointed out to me how, in the realistic context of things, I was making little or no sense -- first, I am not the Pope, or even a potential candidate. Secondly, if I was the Pope, all the people I was yelling at were not Catholics, although the largely Hispanic maintenance staff was cowering in fear and I wasn't even cheesed off at them...

So, with an "Ahem," a little smile and a quick glare at one of the zipper heads who deemed it appropriate to let out a little chuckle (you can always tell a Chinese chuckle by the stupidity of the sneering like sound and faint smell of garlic and lemon) I blessed the maintenance staff with the scepter I keep just for such occasions, turned to Rahm, my sales man and said "Sorry, I'm sure these fucking Nazis didn't hire you because you're a follower of Louis Farrakhan and are a secret proponent of the Final Solution, so just write me out a check for $76,000, give me the keys to that dark metallic gray Z8, toss in a sterling silver key chain and free maintenance for five, not three, years and I'll put the gun away...."

What's that? I didn't mention the gun? Well, I didn't mention lots of shit. I'm going for a ride now... see how the fucker really goes (I wasn't done dealing with the fucking cops until it was six yesterday... they are such sticklers for so called "rules" and just don't understand the concept of "diplomatic immunity."

I'll let you all know how it goes.

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DISCLAIMER: The foregoing is at least partially fictional and/or total bullshit. For instance, Phoebe Cates does not smoke crack in alleys or anywhere else (I hope) and Scott Baio did not give Willie Aames head during Paradise or at any other time (although Pam Anderson has pretty much stated he isn't hung like a base ball bat like her usual dates). Further, there are no pornographic cartoons involving Mickey and Minnie Mouse, the Pope does not beat off to movies like Paradise, the Mafia does not have a rule about staying away from Internet Fraud schemes and most valet parking attendants are not assholes who would be operating in the finer hospitals of their native countries (just to mention a few things).