pet connection

When I’m on book deadline, I tend to obsesss about things that are unrelated to the book I am writing. Things like, oh, cleaning out the hall closet, or planting flowers in the hanging baskets on the patio. Things, in other words, that can perfectly well wait for another week or two, but when I’m on book deadline become really, really important to me.

This book deadline, I seem to be obsessed with catching up on all my DogCars.com vehicle reviews. I’m only a dozen or so behind, after all, and it’s not as if I have Something More Pressing To Do. Like finish the book that’s due Monday.

Anyway, in wastingspending time thinking about DogCars.com, which I have been, lots, I realized that we have been horribly, horribly dissed. It’s true: The L.A. Times’ great Pulitzer Prize-winning auto-writer Dan Neil got to drive the new Mini Cooper Clubman before I did. As I write over on the DogCars.com blog:

I may have mentioned a couple thousand times before that I (heart) the L.A. Times autowriter, Dan Neil. I (heart)  him because he writes about cars in a way that has never before been done, a way a non-gearhead can get into, funny, witty and relevant to the lives of people who don’t go to car shows, as in, um, women. I (heart) Dan Neil because he got a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, previously given only to guys who write about Serious Stuff like Architecture, Ballet and Art, not whether there’s a difference between a “guy car” and a “chick car.”  (Yes, and duh, of course there is. Guy car: Mustang. Chick car: VW Beetle.)

Honestly, having Dan Neil win a Pulitzer gives me hope — dim, dim hope — that someday a syndicated pet-care columnist will win one, too. And that that syndicated pet-care columnist will be me.

That’s why I (heart) Dan Neil.

But right now, I hate Dan Neil, because as the God of All That Is Good About Auto Writing, he got to drive the Mini Cooper Clubman before I have even cast eyes on one in person.

I ask you: Is that right? Is that fair?

Of course not. Because the Mini Cooper Clubman has the look of a serious city DogCar, and I can barely live with my desire to drive one very, very soon. Because a lot of really practical DogCars are — how shall I say this nicely? — dull, and I know that is not the case with the Clubman. I know this, because driving the regular Mini Cooper (along with the Mazda Speed3) last year was just about the most fun I’ve had in a car since I was 17, and Michael Vianni and and I took his Dodge Charger to Folsom Lake and … uh … well now, you just never mind.

Read the rest.