I dislike cars. Which is odd, because I love Pimp My Ride. Where else can you watch a useful, albeit near-destroyed car carcass turned into a useless, yet attractive living room-on-wheels? Nowhere. Below is an image of a car that parks up near where I live. I see it most days. It’s an abomination, to be sure. Metallic sky blue with silver flames. The owner might as well write “mine’s tiny” on it. It’s got bird shit on it, if you look carefully. How bad is that? All that trouble making this hunk of junk look “attractive” and he leaves a great big birdy-turdy lying on the front of it.

I think the thing about Pimp My Ride that I enjoy the most is the expectant anticipation generated by the question “where will they put a useless monitor this week?”. I’ve seen one episode where they put tiny little monitors on the bumpers. On the bumpers! That’s incredible! I can watch TV as you run me over!
Better than that, there was an episode where the pimpee, also the owner of a small snake, had a vivarium built into her boot. I shit you not. Not only that, but the infinitely wise ride-pimps put a small, lifelike plastic rock in the vivarium, with a three inch monitor built into it. Because, as we all know, snakes love to watch TV. At this exact moment in time, I have a mental image of a corn snake, writhing around, watching Xzibit videos and thinking “Hey! All his songs sound the same!”. When not screwing a monitor to every available square inch of the car, the pimpers are seen mugging for the camera and performing in terrible filler clips where they embarass themselves in synchronicity with a camera man moving the camera at an odd angle. Why oh why do we need lopsided crash zooms in TV? We don’t. So stop it.
The first four seasons of the show were incredibly entertaining as the mugging crew were from West Coast Customs (now appearing in the intricately-worded-to-avoid-a-lawsuit show Custom My Ride). Genius work there, boys. The WCC crew were funny and charismatic and you always got a sense that most of them had actually stolen a car and pimped it at some point in their lives. However, from season 5, they were replaced by the foks at GAS, who look like a bunch of over privileged frat boys that went to college to learn their trade. Having failed at their respective trades, they went into ride pimping.
Making an already hideous car even more ridiculous by adding gaudy colouring, TVs and oversized chrome wheels can only serve one purpose: Instant sale. For the most part, the kids about to get their rides pimped are generally a little down on their luck, studying and holding down a menial job and being shunned by their shallow, so-called friends who spurn them for owning an old, shit car. I don’t even own a car, so I dread to think what my friends think of me. In some episodes, up to $30000 has been spent on cleaning up someone’s hunk of junk. In others, an entirely new car was purchased and then pimped, so the owner, himself an aspiring mechanic could have his old car back to work on himself. And in others, a young woman had to practically slam the door of her house to stop her blatantly crackhead mother from staring out of the door, wearing only a t-shirt and frizzy hair. They’ve enabled kids to look after their aging grandparents, by souping up a car, meaning Granny gets to ride to the mall in a turbo-charged muscle car with day-glo pink skulls daubed on the side. Won’t she look just amazing turning up to the bingo in her lime green pimp suit, with her diamond encrusted bitch-stick walking cane swishing through the air to clear the way? Best of all, an aspiring Ice Cream man (hey, we all have to have a dream) was given a robotic arm on the side of his new truck to dispense ice-cream safely whilst ducking bullets and handbrake turning in the ghetto.
So far, I’ve only heard of one sale after the pimping. One girl sold her land cruiser for over $18000. She got done. I’m sure the combined electronics in the car were worth more than that. What a fool. Does this mean that these people actually continue to drive these cars? How embarrassing. Is it not enough to have been seen on international television as someone that can’t even keep their car in shape? One pimpee crashed his car the day he received it. Yeah. I know. Clearly, the man should not be in charge of a car. Or a body. You’re bound to be recognised by someone and if your car isn’t gleaming and shaking their spine about because you’re playing the sound system at top volume, whilst using your gadgets, they’re going to question you.
Most of you will have seen Pimp My Ride, I’ll wager. I’m guessing less of you will have seen Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. The concept is the same, but with houses and incredibly needy people. I mean people in need. Not really clingy women that attempt to smother you with unwanted affection and who don’t understand you when you say “I no longer find you attractive and have found a younger, more attractive girl to be with”. I mean people in poverty. To give you an example, in one episode, a family was whisked away on holiday after a teary door-step surprise, only to return a month later to find that the ramshackle old tin shed they used to live in was gone. In its place there now stood a ten bedroom mansion with a swimming pool, games room and home cinema. The family ran into the house and wept loudly, while exclaiming over and over “Thank you Jesus!”. Now, don’t get me wrong, Jesus was probably a very good carpenter, but I don’t think his skills with a circular saw and faux-Edwardian architecture were ever brought up to par before his third and final death. Thank the producers for building you a massive house that you’re not going to be able to afford to heat. After all, you did only live in a shack a month ago. While you were sunning yourself by the hotel pool, were you offered your dream job by a rich man with a red suit and white beard? No.
Home Edition is too earnest a show and Pimp My Ride, too garish and cartoony. I feel the perfect way to rectify this is to combine the two. Instead of a bunch of happy-clapping do-gooders turning up with a film crew to fix your house, Xzibit shows up with a bunch of sledge-hammer wielding ex-cons to beat the shit out of your house. When you get back from a two month road-trip (available as a DVD extra) with a gang of bikers, your two-bed semi will have been replaced by a four floor minaret with a solid gold onion on top that also doubles up as a speaker. Every single wall in the house will be constructed from monitors so everywhere you go, the sound of fifteen thousand 32 inch TVs bark out at you in unison. In the bathroom, a robotic arm will lower down from the ceiling, clutching the finest luxury silk toilet sheets, which will automatically wipe your bottom for you, whilst comforting motivational quotes are piped in to remind you of how fresh and clean you feel.
In the bedroom, your bed will have been replaced with a pick up truck, which will have had its flatbed replaced with a bed that feels like clouds. The pick up still works and has been donated by a company that wanted to get their name aired on TV for free, whilst appearing to be upstanding charitable souls. A panel in the bedroom wall slides open at the push of a button, that reveals a ramp that heads straight into the fourty acres of land you now have in the fifteen square feet of yard you used to have. That’s reparations. You’ve got your own off road circuit! In the kitchen, a team of Mexicans awaits you, who you can shout at, aggravate and impregnate at your will. You never have to lift another finger. Unless it’s to go bowling in your very own bowling alley! Take a peek in the basement!
BYE.