TEAM LAST CALL

Our faithful readers are sending in letters by the truckload asking questions on a variety of summer-related topics, such as “What’s the best way to keep cool this summer?” and “What’s this year’s hottest trend in beachwear?” and “How would you like it if I tore your arms off and stuffed you into a mailbox?”

Yes, I’m afraid that Team Last Call has also been the recipient of some good, old-fashioned hate mail. At first, Team Last Call was very upset. For the life of Team Last Call, we just couldn’t figure out what we were doing wrong. But eventually, we realized that virtually all of the hostile letters were coming from a single source, a small constituency of readers known as “Hummer owners.”

This neat group of people has been writing little love notes to Team Last Call ever since we published our annual column on Hummers last March. We’re not sure if it was because we called them bed-wetters or compared their vehicles to a four-ton Viagra pill on wheels, but something definitely seems to have struck a nerve.

We at Team Last Call are taken aback by the Hummer owners’ angry response. We certainly meant no offense in our columns. Team Last Call would never deliberately ridicule Hummer drivers or the various insecurities that compel them to drive a truck the size of a river barge. Like tiny genitalia, for example. We would never make fun of that. Or impotence. Again, not funny.

The last thing we want to do is make the area’s Hummer drivers feel bad about themselves or their ethically retarded vehicles. Yet, despite our best efforts at remaining neutral, Hummer drivers all across the midstate have made Team Last Call the focus of their unstable rage. Regardless of the fact that we had literally nothing to do with their being born with only one testicle.

It’s like you can’t even characterize a group of people as greedy, wasteful, obnoxious, environment-hating pig-dogs without them getting all huffy.

Actually, huffy would have been OK. We could have lived with huffy. Huffy would have been a vacation compared to the reaction we’ve been getting, which falls somewhere between “totally freaking crazy” and “Courtney Love.”

One Hummer driver called us Nazis. Another compared our persecution of Hummer drivers to the persecution of black slaves by white slave owners. Others psychoanalyzed our columns and determined that we are all, in fact, a bunch of raging homosexuals, which is going to break my wife’s heart. One particularly upset Hummer driver said that we were hate incarnate, which up until that point we had always assumed was Bill O’Reilly.

But what’s really been creeping us out are the threatening letters. Some of them talk about what the Hummer owners would do to us if they ever caught us walking alone in an alley on a dark night. Others list various things they would like us to do to ourselves, most of which would require us to be double-jointed. Almost all of them end with some variation of, “Your a awful riter.”

Many of the threats have come from a certain Harrisburg-area bar where evidently a lot of Hummer owners congregate. I guess it’s like a Hummer club. They probably sit around all day just talking about Hummers, washing and waxing their Hummers – maybe even trading Hummers. Yep, they probably sit around all day just swapping Hummers back and forth. First one guy will give the guy beside him a Hummer, and then that guy will give a Hummer to the guy beside him. It’s a very tightly knit community.

We admit that all of the attention we’ve been getting lately is flattering, even if it is in the form of grammatically questionable threats. But it’s not really the kind of recognition Team Last Call was hoping for when we started our column. We were imagining something more along the lines of internet fan sites and television interviews, as opposed to e-mails telling us to “take a long walk off a short pier,” which is only a clever threat if you’re trying to make us die of boredom.

Despite their lack of creativity, the threats have actually been kind of scary. In the words of Toby Keith, it seems that we’ve “rattled the big dog’s cage,” and now the Hummer drivers want to “put their boot up our ass,” because “it’s the American way.” Of all the ways a person could die, we never thought ours would involve getting run over by a four-ton automobile with Yosemite Sam mudflaps and a sticker in the back window that says “Kill ’em all and let God sort ’em out.” If the actual vehicle doesn’t kill us, its tackiness surely will.

And so, in an effort to not be murdered, we at Team Last Call are ready to call a truce. We solemnly swear to do our best not to talk about your comically small genitalia, as long as you do your best not to overcompensate for it by driving a vehicle with the gas mileage of Mount Rushmore.

Obviously, we can’t promise that the occasional joke won’t slip through the cracks. Like, “How many Hummer owners does it take to screw in a lightbulb? None: they’re too busy ‘off-roading’ their way to a gas station to fill up their 8-mile-per-gallon tanks.” For example.

But seriously, Hummer drivers, as far as Team Last Call is concerned, this is the last column we will ever write about you and your turd-mobiles. We’ve said what we needed to say, and the ball is in your morally bankrupt court. If you choose to continue driving your Hummers around, therefore condemning yourselves to purgatory where you will spend the rest of eternity questioning what it was that made you want to drive a vehicle so obnoxious and mind-bogglingly illogical that it made everybody on heaven and earth hate you, then that’s your decision, and we respect it. We’re not here to judge.

A year ago I wrote a column about Hummers and the people who drive them – a group that scientific studies have shown is comprised of irritable, rich white men who are about as blessed below the belt as Kermit the Frog.

Over time, I’ve realized that the article didn’t quite have the global impact I was hoping for. It seems like more and more of these weenie-mobiles are popping up each week, clogging up our streets, polluting our environment and otherwise serving as a constant reminder of why the rest of the world thinks that America is the devil.

In fact, the Hummer company is currently gearing up for the debut of the H3 this spring, meaning that Hummer lovers the world over will soon have yet another vehicle in which to boldly display their giant protruding brows.

Apparently, my primary message – that Hummers are obnoxious and dangerous and make much more of a statement about what’s in your pants than what’s in your wallet – didn’t really sink in.

But maybe the fault is mine. Maybe I should have taken a more diplomatic approach to my first Hummer article. Perhaps I should have spent a little more time on the bigger issues and less time making references to Hummer owners’ teensy little genitalia. Because it’s not their fault that they’re like a Ken Doll from the waist down.

So I’m giving it another shot, but this time around I’m going to be much more open-minded about it. This time, I’ll try putting myself into the Hummer owners’ shoes. I mean, if I were rich and unfulfilled and self-obsessed and very, very impotent, I’d probably want to buy a Hummer too, and I’m sure I wouldn’t appreciate it when some snot-nosed journalist tried to make suggestions about how I could have put that $120,000 to better use. It’s my money, and I can spend it any way I choose. If the tsunami victims need money so badly, let them go out and do an honest day’s work for once and stop waiting around for handouts from hard-working Americans like me.

Yep, this time around I’m determined to take a much more balanced approach. You won’t see me making any rash statements like, “Nine out of 10 Hummer owners are bed-wetters,” no matter how true they may be. Nope, this time I’m going to keep it clean. I’m calling it quits on the silly generalizations, like, “All Hummer drivers are addicted to Viagra.” So just know that you’re not going to be seeing any more immature commentary from this writer. Like, “Statistics show that Hummer drivers like to prance around in their wives’ underwear when no one’s around” -– that’s another example of something you won’t see here.

In the spirit of fairness, we’re going to weigh the arguments for and against Hummers with complete objectivity, so that you, the reader, can judge for yourself who is right and who is a selfish, stupid Hummer driver.

Let’s begin with a look at the top reasons why someone should go out and buy a Hummer.

1. Because you never know when the local supermarket might decide to replace its speed bumps with six-foot dirt piles

2. Because your “What Would Satan Do?” bracelet tells you to

3. Because you’ll be in the company of several top celebrities who endorse Hummers, including Mike Tyson and MC Hammer!

4. Because under Bush’s Economic Stimulus Plan, business owners who purchase vehicles weighing over 6,000 pounds receive a $100,000 tax break. No Hummer left behind!

5. Because you’re a rugged individualist who will use your Hummer to navigate lots of challenging off-road courses just as soon as you drop the kids off at soccer practice, diversify your stock portfolio, get porcelain veneers and play a quick nine at the country club

6. Because if there’s one thing you hate, it’s the environment

7. Because you’re helping to teach poor people everywhere a valuable lesson about how good life can be if you’re hard-working and ambitious and white and have rich parents

8. Because they make you terrorism-proof!

9. Because you always survive car crashes, and the people in the other car were going to die someday anyway

10. Because you are the freaking devil

Now, let’s examine some of the reasons why someone might not want to drive a Hummer.

1. Because everyone hates people who drive Hummers

2. Because it’s a lot easier to just tape a sign on your back that says, “My winkie is very, very small.”

3. Because of that whole “war in Iraq” thing

4. Because of their massive size, Hummers are exempt from meeting any emission standards, and consequently emit over three times more carbon dioxide than the average car. Oops!

5. Because it’s a lot cheaper to just stuff some socks down your pants

6. Because you could take the $120,000 you spent on your Hummer – plus all of the money you dump into your 8-mile-per-gallon tank – and give it to an orphanage. Unless you hate orphans or something.

7. Because we’re all laughing at you, and our stomachs hurt

8. Because one day we might run out of wildlife reserves to plunder for oil

9. Because I’ll never stop carving “butthead” into your paint

10. Because people who drive Hummers can’t get into heaven

Thus concludes our objective study on the pros and cons of purchasing a Hummer. I’d like to take this time to thank the many research assistants, fact-checkers and proofreaders on “Team Last Call,” without whom I never would have been able to produce an article of such integrity, uncompromised vision and absolute factual accuracy.

As for you, the reader, the gauntlet has been thrown. You have been equipped with the facts, and now you must decide for yourself which path you will walk – the way of truth and light, or the way that leads to me lighting a bag of dog poop on fire on your front porch. Good luck.

The other day, as I tried to maneuver my little car through the snow in a relatively busy shopping area, I suddenly noticed in my rearview mirror what I could only assume was a battleship that was terribly, terribly lost. Noting that the battleship was about two inches from my bumper, I thought it best to switch lanes and allow it to pass.

As I swerved into the slow lane, the battleship rushed past me and blared its horn so loudly that I couldn’t help but pee a little. I peered up to where I imagined the cabin would be, but rather than finding a stately sea captain gazing off into the horizon, I saw a red-faced, bug-eyed businessman grinding his teeth and giving me the one-finger salute as he blew past me in his sparkling, new Hummer.

For anyone who isn’t familiar with Hummers, I’ll do my best to summarize them in the most fair and objective way possible.

A Hummer is like a four-ton Viagra pill on wheels, usually driven by a guy with a temper shorter than Justin Guarini’s singing career. They weigh 6,500-8,500 pounds each and are about as aerodynamic as Anna Nicole Smith, which is most of the reason why they average 8-12 miles per gallon. I’m also pretty sure that they promote back-hair growth and shrivel one’s sexual organs, although I can’t prove it.

After being popularized during the Gulf War, these enormous military vehicles are now being marketed for $106,185-$117,508 to ordinary civilians, by which I mean people who make more money than the New York Yankees. Now, I’m not trying to judge anyone for the kind of vehicle they drive. Our Constitution gives every American the right to destroy the environment to the degree that he or she sees fit. All I’m saying is that people who drive Hummers will never, ever get into Heaven.

Hummers aren’t all bad, of course. For example, because of their tremendous size, most people whose cars collide with a Hummer are killed instantly. Wait, that isn’t right. What I meant to say was, because of Hummers’ ridiculously bad visibility, statistics show that Hummer owners as a group have developed the regrettable habit of backing over their own children in the driveway. Boy, this just isn’t coming out right.

But you know what’s boring? Facts. Let’s leave the indisputable truth behind (you know, like how SUV drivers tend to be “insecure and vain” and are “apt to be self-centered and self-absorbed,” according to market research conducted by the automakers themselves*) and try to concentrate on more ambiguous matters, like what attracts people to Hummers in the first place.

As far as I’m concerned, driving a Hummer anywhere in Central Pennsylvania is like trying to pick a piece of broccoli from your teeth with Ruben Studdard – sometimes the situation just calls for something a little smaller. Like Clay Aiken. I mean, maybe, maybe if you’re living in the frozen tundra, then perhaps you need a vehicle with a little more oomph to it. Something with an engine the size of, say, an Alaskan oil drill. But otherwise, driving a Hummer down our Pennsylvania streets is like trying to remove a splinter from your thumb with a bazooka.

In theory, sure, Hummers make for a great off-roading experience. But the truth is, not many of the Hummer drivers you see hogging up both lanes of our city streets are en route to an off-roading adventure, unless you count the speedbumps in the grocery store parking lot. And I don’t blame them – if I spent $100,000 on a car, I’d be afraid to get it scratched, too. For similar reasons, I’ve been a little hesitant to wear my new cashmere gym shorts when I take my dog to the dog park. I usually leave them at home, safely folded beside my diamond-encrusted jock strap.

Now, I’d be lying if I said that Hummer commercials didn’t resonate with my inner-frat boy. What red-blooded man doesn’t want a vehicle that is both as large as a tank and nimble enough to drive over a mound of Green Party protesters, should such a mound happen to cross your path?

I mean, with their size and agility, Hummers are one pair of bikini briefs away from being a professional wrestler, give or take a few IQ points. It’s like strapping a saddle on Stone Cold Steve Austin and riding him around town like a big, bald bronco – but in a totally chummy, hetero kind of way. But as attractive as that image may be to Hummer owners, certainly there are other, less destructive avenues of expressing one’s manliness, like refusing to shut the bathroom door when you pee, or eating your weight in beef jerky.

Now, there are those who would argue that men who drive such enormous vehicles are trying to compensate for certain shortcomings in their lives, if you catch my drift. I, for one, am not going to stoop to that level, primarily because I don’t think that Hummer drivers’ teeny little bits and pieces have anything to do with it. Nope, I don’t think that their itty-bitty twigs and berries have any bearing on this situation at all. As far as I’m concerned, there’s really no need to even mention their wee little pigs in a blanket. Let’s be mature and not drag their baby peas and carrots into this.

I’m sure that once this article comes out I’ll be getting plenty of friendly fan mail from Hummer owners, mostly to the effect of, “I’m going to drive over you with my Hummer.”

To which I boldly reply, “Please don’t.”

* “High and Mighty,” Keith Bradsher