Driving with Yahoos

As you may have seen before, Michigan drivers are crazy. They make Quebec drivers look like model citizens!!! On Tuesday I was hit by one of these Crazy Michigan Drivers (here by known as the CMDs). Actually let me start that the beginning- Detroiters can be very rude and crazy.

I left my office at the Renaissance Centre on Tuesday by car and as I was coming out of the parking lot and preparing to turn left at the green light, Pedestrian Yahoo stepped out in front on me on his cell phone and looking the other way. I slammed on the brakes and honked my horn. What do I get from this young dude in a suit for not wilfully crippling his sorry ass for being a dumb one? "I'm still a pedestrian, bitch!" Yup, that's what I get for not permanently disabling this dumbass. And you know that PY was on his way to his car so that he could then translate this aggressive Pedestrian Attitude into the Crazy Michigan Driver. Here's the guy who sees no irony in his transition from the Aggressive Pedestrian who feels it's his right who walk where and when he pleases to the CMD who feels that it is his right to drive where and when he pleases.

Less than four minutes later I'm in the right-hand lane of the highway on a curve under an overpass. This dude in a Gold SUV with the Michigan Licence Plate ASZ87 comes outta nowhere on my left-hand side and decides that he needs to be in my lane where my car is. No signal and no warning, he is in my lane and scrapping the paint off my side of my car. He realizes what he's done and goes back into his lane and speeds off. I pick up my speed, get his licence plate number, pull up next to him, roll down my window and ask him to pull over. This CMD almost kills me (between him and the concrete wall 4 feet to my right) and all I get from him is a shrug and a sheepish Sorry. Not very satisfactory!!!

So then I've missed my turnoff for the 96, construction is happening on the highway I'm on and I miss the turnoff for the 94 and I'm stuck on the M-10 on a slow trip to nowhere. Finally pull off, survey the damage, pull myself together and head out to try and find home. I discovered that this is easier said than done during construction time in Detroit. I discovered the Hood... and the wannabe gangstas...and the unpaidfor Escalades...and the burnt out and boarded up buildings...and the Male Exotic dance bar with a couple of people who had undistiguishable genders hanging out in front...After 15 minutes in the hood praying that if anyone is going to be shot at or taken it'll be the dude in the Escalade, I found my highway and headed home. Not the best drive ever!

Canadian Music

Something has really surprised me over the past two weeks- the amount of Canadian music being played in the US is pervasive. I mean really really pervasive. It's one thing to be cruising down the aisle of our local Canadian grocery chain and hearing muzaked versions of "My heart will go on." You expect that with all our Cancon rules. What you don't expect is to go into three stores in a row and hear kd lang, Gordon Lightfoot and Sarah McLaughlin at least once in each store. This has happened to me now in two different cities- suburbs of Detroit and downtown Buffalo. Now, having spent sometime in Buffalo, I understand that it is pretty much Canada with a NYer drawl, but Detroit is not/not Windsor, my friends. Detroit has created it's own musical sound more than once (Motown and the Eminem, 50 cent vibe). Why am I consistently hearing Canada's openly lesbian country/pop crooner in almost every store I enter into in Conservative America? Why is it that every time I'm in the US and A turns on the radio for the past four years I'm being assaulted by the likes of the boys from Hanna (Nickelback) and the dudes from Default? (there's a story in there about potentially insulting Mohammed Ali's daughter five years ago but we'll save that one for another day.)