Dear Ice Milk

Dear Ice Milk

Allow me to present another installment in the never-ending saga of my ability to be stymied by the unusual vanity plate choices of my fellow Angelenos. Spied on a Mustang by the Hollywood Bowl:

Are you the heir to a vast ice milk fortune? Is it an ironic Top Gun Val Kilmer reference? Or is it a sort of fratty nickname thing? "Hey, it's Ice Milk!" "Ice Milk IN DA HOUUUUSE!" If that's the case, what what a stupid fucking nickname. Do you really want to advertise that someone saw fit to bestow you with the sobriquet of a frozen dessert with less than 10 percent milkfat and the same sweetener content as ice cream, although priced lower and typically sold as a generic product?

Let's take a look at some vanity plates that are acceptable:

Civic pride. Can't beat it.

Vulgar, but amusing. You know those Minnesotans.

This is funny, although a strange predilection to share so openly, and presumably awkward at times. Do you drive your grandmother to dinner in that car?

Self-deprecation. I like it. This of course wins the trifecta, as this person has chosen an amusing, coherent message to display AND gone out of the way to explain it for all the stupids on the road. Plus it's a Volvo.

So, Ice Milk, as I told this person and this person, you should take the advice of a good citizen of Washington State, and do this:

Best Regards,
Dear Crabby

Dear Gay Mini

Dear Driver of Gay Mini:

I encountered you last night at the intersection of Fairfax and Sunset:



Inanimate objects, as the saying goes, do not have a sexual orientation. (At least, this is what what you're supposed to say to idiots spouting ignorant vitriol in a high school-tastic "That's GAY" situation.) But let's proceed with the assumption that in this case the license plate is a reflection of the you, the driver rather than your car's predilection to have the tow hitch of a burly Ford F-350 inserted into its tailpipe.

First off, do we, your fellow drivers, need to contemplate who you might be boinking while we're driving behind you? Is that an interruption in our collective traffic-induced reverie that you've earned the right to mandate? Part of me thinks not. And second, I have mixed feelings about this level of self-promotion, indeed, self-proclamation. For isn't that what this is? This feather boa of license plates, this last Sunday in June celebrated at intersections across the city all year long? At best, Gay Mini Driver, your license plate is a dash of whimsy that might make a few people chuckle. At worst, a wanton bellow of unsolicited in-your-face sexual hubris rearing its head.

And, Gay Mini, haven't we moved beyond this era of assertive self-expression, at least on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood? Is this still a battle for exposure and acceptance we're fighting? And if that's not your goal, why EVER get a license plate that expressly identifies your gayness?

Maybe if you were a sassy, Broadway-bound 16-year old in Dubuque, emboldened by the It Gets Better campaign, phlying your phreak phlag saddling your grandmother's inherited LeSabre with "GAYBUIK" hammered out in GSA-tastic splendor courtesy of one of Iowa's citizens doing hard time, I could understand. But, Driver of the Gay Mini, you're not that. You're a middle-aged man - evidenced by the gray in your temples I can see reflected in your rearview mirror. And presumably this isn't a holdover from a more youthful era, as they haven't made Mini Coopers for that long.

Here in Los Angeles, that hearts and minds battle for gay acceptance has been won. Indeed, won long ago. So what's left to be found in this gesture? One last gasping "hey HEY hey" of attempted relevance as you fade into leather-skinned middle age? Or merely tasteless attention-mongering?

An HRC sticker implies a civic march forward, a rainbow sticker is quaint. GAY MINI is just too much.

And besides... a Mini, when driven by a man with buzzed hair in a tank top... we pretty much already get the idea.

Sincerely,
Dear Crabby

PS. Happy Gay Pride month.

Dear Cal State Northridge Student

Oh, I'm sorry, where did you go to school?



Again, I'm sorry. It's just unclear to me where you went to school.



Oh. That's where you went to school.



Thanks for clearing that up.

While I appreciate your pride in having attended the 81st-best "Regional University - West" according to U.S. News & World Report (tied with the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond, OK), one rear-window decal would have sufficed.

Sincerely,
Dear Crabby

Dear High-Handed License Plate Owner

Dear License Plate Owner:

You're playing a dangerous game when you get preachy:



What are your fellow drivers supposed to infer from this high-handed directive? You, as the owner of a roughly 15-year old Subaru Forester, have not settled? You're urging your fellow motorists not to settle? Or some unknown third option? Your intent is, to say the least, unclear.

It's easy, especially on the dystopic roads of Los Angeles, choked as they are with dippy, new-age Californians deeply in touch with their chakras, to serve as a sign. Indeed, we Angelenos traverse our daily lives searching for them; some staunch applicable force of portent in a sea of medical marijuana dispensaries and Carl's Jr. hamburgeries sufficiently universal and bland to apply to our own unique tsuris. Do you, High-Handed License Plate Owner, want to shoulder this fate-altering responsibility? Do you want to own your role as sayer of sooth, determiner of actions, unintentionally calling people to quit their jobs, end their relationships, buy things they can't afford? All because they saw a license plate on a car most likely driven by a heavy-set librarian from Mar Vista? (Look elsewhere for lesbians in Subarus jokes, folks... fish in a barrel.)

I caution, no! No indeed That's a burden you don't want to shoulder, as you have no idea how wide your ripple can be. Leave the advice giving to mothers and therapists, and take your $75 a year charge for a vanity plate and use it to save the whales. Let the sheep wander, let us find our signs elsewhere - and take your self-righteousness and shove it up your tailpipe. Leave the poor inmate that had to hammer that out that custom of metal alone.

Or, at least, put that license plate on a car that doesn't invalidate its potency quite so thoroughly. It really is kind of a crappy car.

Sincerely,
Dear Crabby