I’m still in the hospital, where I got a CT scan at about 1:30 am. Have you ever had one of those? They pump you full of this “contrast” fluid via IV that flows through your veins and feels strangely warm, like you can feel the path of liquid through your vascular system and when it reaches your groin it feels exactly like you peed your pants. So much so they warn you beforehand and remind you that you (probably) didn’t. I don’t think I did but I haven’t really checked. Anyway, I’m waiting for results so I know what kind of surgery they’ll need to do, but in the meantime I was reminded by an old ad for a Bond car – Bond as in the company, not the character – about a gag I had for a Bond car in a Bond movie, this time, both the character, not the company. I’ll explain.
Bond was an interesting carmaker; based in Lancashire, the company primarily built three-wheeled minicars, very cheap, somewhat unstable but usable little machines, and were later bought by the other big British three-wheeler, Reliant. They also made the Bond Bug, upon which Luke Skywalker’s landspeeder was built.
You knew that, right? It’s a fun little detail, the way they turned
But, I’m here to talk about their first four-wheeled car, the Bond Equipe. The Equipe was a Bond, but it was based on a Triumph chassis and drivetrain, and made from mostly Triumph parts.
Bond built Equipes from 1963 to 1970; in 1967 they switched to the Triumph Vitesse chassis with its 2-liter in-line six, just featuring Bond’s sleek fiberglass fastback body. These were handsome, quick cars, and in a way they feel like they fit in the Bond lineup in the same incongruous way the sleek and fast Scimitar fit into the Reliant range of three-wheelers.
The conceit of this brochure seems to be playing on the association of “Bond” with, of course, James Bond, Ian Fleming’s famous spy, known for having Aston Martins crammed full of gadgets, among the most famous of which was the Ejector Seat, which does this:
Handy, right? So, here’s my idea for a Bond parody movie scene involving ejector seats: the basic premise is Bond working for some much lower-budget spy agency, the Wish.com version of MI5 or whatever, and they get him a proper Spy Car with all the gadgets, but they’re sorta half-assed. In the case of the ejector seat, they did manage to develop the seat, but they neglected to develop the other, less appreciated part of the ejector seat equation: the opening roof.
So, I’m imagining a scene where Bond needs to use the ejector seat, so he flips open that gearshift knob, pushes the red button, and we hear the boom and woosh of the seat activating, and then a pause, and then we hear a muffled “OW” from off camera.
The camera turns to show the passenger side of the car, and we see the extended seat, squashing the poor bastard in the passenger seat up against the car’s roof which didn’t pop open, because it was never designed to. They forgot. Or didn’t care.
Maybe the guy’s hand is peeking out between the seat cushion and the headliner, or his squished face, now angrier, yelling at Bond and calling him creatively foul names, like you filthy British slimy bowl of monkey testicles and baked beans, you get me out of here this instant or something like that.
Anyway, that’s what I was thinking about before the doctors came in and told me they may need to take a vein from my leg to fix the one in my shoulder? Are they allowed to do that? Can’t we just source some fuel line? Oy.
Good thing we all carry our own spare parts! You have got a great group of folks here wishing you well.
Torch, you sure are seeing the mechanic a lot for this issue. Have you considered an aftermarket replacement for the problem part?
Sorry, Torch, but I’m going to disagree with you. This would clearly be the work of Q’s bumbling successor, R. (Played by John Cleese).
Look at you, working from the hospital! My recent medical scare turned out to be a big nothing…I hope some of that luck can get passed along to you. Feel better soon!!
Dear Jason, Just want to wish you the very best on what is not sounding like a trivial surgery. It makes sense that a further repair might have become necessary after a humongous emergency operation, but it’s still hard to hear about.
I definitely remember that warm feeling from when I had my CT, and the warning about not *actually* peeing myself. I was fairly loopy on morphine at the time, so the warmth felt nice. It’s nice that you can be your own parts Jason though!
Glad to hear they warned you beforehand; when I had one, no one did, so I only learned this was common after confessing my believed incontinence to the tech, who seemed mildly annoyed she had to expend the energy to explain this to me!
know the feeling all too well – did I or didn’t I?
The warm groin is definitely the highlight of the show, but you also get the warm nose and funny metallic smell.
Shades of the chase in Spectre, with Bond trying to find which of the gadgets on the DB10 he’d borrowed from Q Labs were actually set up and functional.
The way I read it, they’re taking a brake line to replace a fuel line. The new you will be unstoppable!
Well yeah, he’ll be unstoppable because he won’t have any brake lines left!
Thanks for explaining the joke for me, it went over my head. And no, I’m not being sarcastic.
Thanks for the 007 rabbit hole!
Going in Monday for knee replacement. My plan is..as I’m lying there and they’re all buzzing about and one of the doctors comes over and asks how I’m doing..as they do..I’m going to look over and say “Well, the last thing I remember, Doc, I started to swerve, then I saw the Jag slide into the curve…”
Pretty good right? Except I tried it out on a couple of 40 somethings at work and got..nothing. They’ve never heard Dead Man’s Curve. One went so far as to look for it but couldn’t find anything by Janet Dean.
I’m old.
You won’t come back from that.
Janet Dean? Is she the one in that duet with Edmund Fitzgerald?
I have no idea what you’re referring to, and I’m no babe in arms.
“Dead Man’s Curve” is a 1964 hit song by Jan and Dean whose lyrics detail a teen street race gone awry. It reached number eight on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and number 39 in Canada.[3] The song was written and composed by Brian Wilson, Artie Kornfeld, Roger Christian, and Jan Berry at Wilson’s mother’s house in Santa Monica. It was part of the teenage tragedy song phenomenon of that period, and one of the most popular such selections of all time. “Dead Man’s Curve” was added to the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2008.[4]
The song ends with the singer relating his last memories of the ill-fated race to a doctor. Sound effects of screeching tires and crashing are also heard in the song. Deadman’s Curve was used as the title for the 1978 biographical nationally televised movie about Jan and Dean,[8] starring Richard Hatch and Bruce Davison respectively portraying Berry and Torrence.
“Dead Man’s Curve” is a song done in 1964 by Jan and Dean, a popular duo in the Beach Boys vein, in fact Brian Wilson was a co-writer on it. It’s about a late night street race in L.A. between a Sting Ray and an XKE.
“According to the song, the race starts at Sunset and Vine, traveling westbound on West Sunset Blvd., passing North La Brea Ave., North Crescent Heights Blvd., and North Doheny Dr. The North Whittier Drive curve, a nearly 90° right turn traveling west on Sunset Boulevard just past North Whittier Drive, may have been the “dead man’s curve” in the song but there is debate on the actual location of the curve.
The song ends with the singer relating his last memories of the ill-fated race to a doctor. Sound effects of screeching tires and crashing are also heard in the song.”
we also once covered some interesting taillight weirdness in that song! https://www.theautopian.com/why-the-1960s-hit-dead-mans-curve-says-the-corvette-has-six-taillights-instead-of-four/
Yes..mild custom of the era
You need to make up a lyric about Car Play not connecting. That’ll make them cry.
I had never heard of these little weirdos before. I love it. It looks like a 3/4 scale Bristol and I want one
When I had my CT scan, I drank 3 bottles of water and the fluid pumped into my body. I had to use the restroom a few times.
You forget just how low tech the original James Bond books were. Casino Royal, I think it is featured a torture scene for James, involving a wicker chair with the seat cut out, and a tennis racquet.
As they say, if you want to play tennis you need hairy balls….
So nothing fancy — probably script it with James pointing out the passenger window, saying “look at that”, and then opening the door and pushing the baddy out.
There is a reason why you should wear your seatbelts and bad people do not.
And not that I want to make you squeamish or anything, but do you know that many of the surgical tools used in vein surgery look and act remarkably like fish-hooks…
IIRC, in the book’s “do you expect me to talk, Goldfinger?” scene, it was either an industrial band or circular saw instead of a laser
Pretty damn funny. Since the Bond’s body was made of fiberglass the victims of the ejector seat wouldn’t be able to curse you out because they’d be screaming in agony from being stuck halfway through the splintered fiberglass roof. There’s a reason why skateboards made out of fiberglass in the 1970s quickly fell out of favor; it hurt like hell to pick up a skateboard after it’d been roughed up while doing tricks and end up with a handful of splintered fiberglass.
In the 1960s Archie Comics produced a series called Archie’s Mad House (notable for introducing Sabrina the Teen-Age Witch and a Monkeesque band named the Madhouse Glads) which featured parody stories, not unlike Mad Magazine but in color and less acerbic though still quite entertaining. They occasionally parodied James Bond; alas, I do not remember what the parody spy’s name was though I do recall that his code name was something like Agent 007/10 and that the tagline was “that wry spy guy.”
That sounds like more of a compactor seat than an ejection seat, but hey, whatever works.
Good luck with the surgery, but don’t let them take the one that gives us humor in this vein. Sorry, couldn’t resist.
“So, here’s my idea for a Bond parody movie scene involving ejector seats: the basic premise is Bond working for some much lower-budget spy agency, the Wish.com version of MI5 or whatever”
In related news seasons 10+ of Archer finally dropped on Netflix.
There goes my weekend
Hulu has all 14 seasons at the moment, Netflix tops out at 13 (in the US, at least).
The seat would use a big Warner Bros cartoon-style spring so the ejected would keep getting pounded against the roof to the sound of a deflating accordion.
And ask if they can take the vein from Otto’s leg. Explain to him that he’ll get out of school a few weeks early and he’s young enough to grow another one. Also, tell the doctor that Sally really has an issue with the shoulder swelling and will have a bigger one with the leg scar, and remind them that sexual alienation racks up the damage compensation in a malpractice suit. You’ll have enough cash to deer-proof the Pao in no time.
This is where you’d really wish for a deer collision on the way to the hospital. Enough tissue to rebuild Jason from scratch.
In that alternative timeline that our universe had lined up for us but couldn’t seem to piss out, James Bond was played by the same dude that voices Groundskeeper Willie, and his vehicles would only be heavily modified golf buggies.
Now that I’d pay to see!
Willie sees it. Willie don’t care.
Anyone else getting a popup video playing in the top left corner on every article? How do I close that annoyance?
Right click on the video, then:
Inspect Element -> Delete Element
That is how you close the annoyance.
Thanks! Delete didn’t work for me but hide did
Was hoping for something more streamlined but it did the trick. Also for others trying this, I had to go a few levels up (follow the indentation) from what ended up being the selected element to get it to go away fully.
become a member
This is only slightly more practical than ejector seats for a helicopter.
No matter, I’d watch it. Someone get Mel Brooks on the horn.
And slightly less practical than ejector seats on a submarine.
Might be easier to get ahold of John Landis.
(Not so) super spy Mr. James, driving a Bond. I’d watch it. Maybe he introduces himself, “The name’s James. James James. That’s my Bond parked over there.”
Also, the video in the middle of the article tells me I can watch Mercedes crash two electric vehicles, and I was a bit disappointed (though not surprised) that it was Benz, not Streeter. I don’t expect you to set up your own crash testing, but it could definitely be interesting if you did.
Sounds like something they should have done in Johnny English.
Did you know Rowan Atkinson was in Never Say Never Again?
”Fawcett, Nigel Small-Fawcett”
Actually LOLed. Godspeed, Torch!
I’d watch that. But to make it more contemporary, I think (fake) Bond would need to first navigate through 5 levels of menu on a touch screen to find the ejector function.
Home -> Driving -> Driving settings -> Customize -> Choose your gear ->
– Machine gun
– Caltrops
– Ejector seat
– PRNDL
I love the idea that shifting into drive would be right next to shifting into drive. I think you need to move machine gun to the bottom though so it’s right between the two dangerous options so if you’re trying to just shift manually to engine brake going down the hill you might accidentally send your significant other smashing into the roof, or eliminate traffic in front of you.
“Officer, I was just trying to engage the heat seeking missiles to shake off a persistent secret agent, when I accidentally shifted into Park. This moron started shouting to get moving, but it was taking a while to navigate back through the menus to release the parking brake so he rear-ended me. I had no choice but to release the swarm of killer bees from the tailpipe. That’ll teach him not to tell me to buzz off.”
Hit ejector seat
Screen freezes
Car reboots
Then he would hit one of the two buttons on the steering wheel, and it would just make a fart sound.
Then he would hit the other one for the ejector seat.
Now that you mention it… I’m actually a little surprised that that exciting Tesla yoke didn’t introduce a fart-noise button.
pretty sure it’s an option.
Not /s
Now it’s all touchscreen so it would be:
>interior
>>seats
>>>heat
>>>cool
>>>eject
haha, jokes on you. The touchscreen just lets you assign a function to the button on the steering wheel. Then you still have to hit the button.
This is next-level ridiculous. <que Bond style outro music>
And when selecting ejector seat, a popup would explain that the subscription to this feature has ended. Would you like to renew your subscription with a new bank card?
Love this….as he’s plunging into the canyon…or into a wall or something.