Top Gear

I have been watching the British Top Gear--eight seasons of which are very helpfully on Netflix. I should point out that I have no actual interest in cars. I don't own one and haven't in a few years, both cars I owned were purchased from or by family, and I rather intensely dislike driving. In addition, I know only as much about them as I could glean from Car Talk, and it's a British show, so one out of four of their pop culture references go straight over my head. And, I've started at the beginning of what Netflix has, which is 2003.

So I am watching a show about eight-year-old foreign cars that I don't care about.

However, the presenters are terribly entertaining, and sometimes I just need to watch something that I have no emotional stake in and don't really need to pay attention to, and this has been fitting the bill, especially as a break from the horrid, horrid freelance gig I was working on this weekend.

As I've been watching, I've been paying attention to the differences between British and American television, though.

( stuff )

I think I'm picking up some knowledge about cars by osmosis listening to this, but since most of it is very specific to Britain, it's not very useful. I think the best comment I've heard so far on the show is when Patrick Stewart was on and Jeremy Clarkson asked him if the driving was at all enjoyable in America. Stewart said, well, if you like to practice defensive driving all the time.

Apparently, if I want to learn to enjoy driving, I need to move to the UK.