Pimpin'your ride (kind of)
A Poor Man's Guide to Sexifying His Wheels
Photo illustration by Joshua Kendell
By Brian Wacker, Jayplaywriter
You've finally mustered up the courage to ask out your dream girl. You know, the one you spend hours staring at in class. She's even said yes, agreeing to dinner and a movie on Saturday night. It's time to go ali out. You break out the nice, button-up shirt that's been hibernating in your closet since Christmas. Nice shoes; check. Cologne; check. Wallet full of $20 bills; check.
Butthen you walk outside and you come to the sobering realization that most self-sufficient college guys have to cope with: Your car is a certified pile of crap. The paint's chipping away, your front headlight stopped working for its first owner right after Reagan took office and it smells like a dog has been defacating in the back seat for the past week.
There is hope. Granted, Xzibit from MTV's Pimp My Ride probably isn't going to knock on your door any time soon. These tips may be the next best idea. At the least, you can make your car respectable, and even sexified, by week's end.
Shower
Take some pride in your car. You may not be rolling around in an Escalade, but at least your Geo Tracker can shine just as bright. Cleaning your car requires more than just buying the $3 base wash at the gas station. Vacuum it. Wipe the year's worth of dust off the dashboard. Tell the
hobo living in the back seat to find a motel for the night.
A great value for cleaning your car in Lawrence is Auto Plaza Car Wash, 2828 Four Wheel Drive in West Lawrence. For $10.99, you can buy a full-service wash, which includes a tunnel-wash, vacuuming, seat treatment, interior window-cleaning and drying, all in 10 minutes.
Deodorize
If deodorant and cologne commercials on television have taught us anything, it's that smell is the strongest sense tied to memory. You don't want to be remembered by the stink of discarded quarter-pounder wrapper?
You want your car to smell good, but make it look like you didn't try. That means restraining from hanging the vanilla-fla-
vored, pine-tree shaped, New York-cabbie air freshener from your rear-view mirror. Not only are they tackier than lawn gnomes, but they don't work. "I hate air fresheners, they usually smell bad, and it tells you he is just to covering up the already bad smell," says Jessie Landers, Lawrence junior. She says a car without a distinctive smell is much more attractive.
Here's how you do it. Clear out anything and everything that emits stinky odor and roll down your windows. Air it out for an entire day. Glade, famous for its plug-in odor neutralizing system, makes similar products for cars. Buy the unscented version for $5. Be sure to discreetly place it somewhere in the car where no one can see it. You 1, smell 0.
Polish
There's nothing wrong with adding panache to your ride. Any bona fide rapper will tell you that panache starts and stops at the wheels of your 'tight whip" (an homage to luxury cars performed by the 504 Boyz, featuring Lil' Romeo).
You probably don't have Volante Apollo 22" rims to go on your Pirelli Scorpion Zero tires. But for $2600 less (around$ 5), you can bling-bling like you do. Armor All Tire Foam, which can be purchased at most auto part stores, is a quick and effortless way to make your wheels shine as if you rapped about it for a living. This is the lazy man's way to shine his ride. You don't even need to bend over because wiping is unnecessary. All you do is spray. When it's done, your date will be able to check out her heel straps in the reflection.
Act Cool
When you pick up your date in your newly-pimped ride, play it cool. Act as if your car is always clean. Don't mention that you spent a lot of time and money fixing it up. You want to leave the impression that your car is always this clean and that you always care about its appearance. Telling her how hard you worked to get it clean may be flattering, but it also tells her you're normally a slob. If you want to be big-pimpin', there is no room for sloppiness.
You're out at dinner with your partner and both of you have discussed how your day has gone. It's time for something deeper. You look into your partner's eyes and wonder about who they really are. What are their beliefs? What are their goals? It's time to pull out the quizzes you printed out at lovingyou.com. This is a love source that provides quizzes specially made for
those in relationships. There are random quizzes posted on topics covering issues like religion, beliefs, and sex. The quizzes are randomly updated to help keep those in relationships going strong and understanding one another. So if you are tired of talking about the whether and who is dating whom, there is a place to go to get the conversation rolling.
Jayme Wiley
6
Granted, it's not quite a marriage proposal, but it could still mean the end of your no-strings-attached love fest. Adrienne Colcher, Garden City
freshman, says girls are more likely to pop this question than guys, because girls feel stronger about defining the nature of their relationships. But guys, don't look at the question necessarily as a commit-or-get-out ultimatum. Some ladies are into the free love thing. They just want to know what the relationship is, whether it's friends with benefits or love at first sight. "It's better to know exactly what's on going," Colcher says. Of
course, guys have also been known to seek out relationship status — sometimes for the same reasons as girls — but more often because they want to know what the girl is thinking, says Adam Powell, Colcher's boyfriend and Garden City freshman. Guys don't necessarily want definition, they just want to make sure the girl they're seeing isn't already designing wedding invitations.
— Joe Bant
Jayplay 12.02.04