Rant #2,817: Paradise By the Dashboard Light

Bear with me for the segueway I am going to use today …
 
Here is part one:
 
Well, we lost another famous person yesterday.
 
Meat Loaf passed away yesterday at the age of 74.
 
No cause has been given for his death, but he has suffered from various ailments and illnesses over the past several years.
 
Marvin Lee Aday was his real name, but to everyone else other than his mother and his lawyers, he was just Meat Loaf.
 
He had the look--very burly and scraggly  with sweaty, long hair--had the pipes, and after a number of years of little to no success, his appearance in the cult film “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” at least opened the door for him a bit … and then he met producer/writer/legend creator Jim Steinman, and the rest is truly history.
 
“Bat Out of Hell” became one of the biggest selling albums of all time, and there was a period during the late 1970s where you really could not turn on the radio and not hear one of his songs bursting out of the it, on both AM and FM.
 
“Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad,” “They Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth,” and my personal favorite, “Paradise By the Dashboard Light” were so theatrical—like mini-operas taking just a few minutes apiece—that you just had to love his music, his appearance, and his grandeur in those early videos, all created by Steinman, who used Meat Loaf as his muse.
 
“Paradise By the Dashboard Light” was case in point, a musical tale about a sexual rendezvous that was carried out in the guise of a baseball player running the bases.
 
Yankees Hall of Fame shortstop Phil Rizzuto—who had become even more famous as an announcer to the Baby Boomers like me who never saw him play—provided the voice of the baseball announcer telling us about the action on the field, which must have been a dream come true for Meat Loaf, who was a diehard Yankees fan.
 
The trouble was that Rizzuto—a devout Catholic—had no idea that his description of what was going on on the base paths was really a metaphor for what was going on between a young man and a woman in a car under the moonlight, and he was not amused—but he accepted his Gold Record from Meat Loaf with sort of a perturbed look on his face.
 
Anyway, R.I.P. to Meat Loaf.
 
Now to part two:
That leads me to my own personal latest foray in an automobile, and it had nothing to do with what Meat Loaf sang about in “Paradise By the Dashboard Light.”

 
On the morning of December 22, as I drove my son to work right before Christmas Day, I received a holiday present that I did not know I was getting when some idiot cut me off as I was braking for a red light, hitting my car on the front passenger side.
 
His car suffered some damage, and when we both pulled over, got out of our cars, and made sure we were both OK, this fellow—with cigarette in hand, blowing smoke in my face, not a good thing when I am highly allergic to such smoke—tried to hit me up for money to repair his car, which was damaged on the driver’s side.
 
“OK, how much are you going to pay me to fix my car—you were totally in the wrong here,” as he spouted out the words in between puffs.
 
“You are an idiot if you think I am going to pay for your damage when you were the one who clearly cut me off,” I replied, and I had some other choice words for him that I won’t repeat here … but it was so obvious that he was the one that caused the accident.
 
In the meantime, my son was the smartest one of all of us, calling the police, who quickly came to the scene, took down all of the information, and told us that our insurance companies would handle it.
 
The damage to my car was little more than a scrape, so I went home, called my insurance company, and figured that this fender bender caused by total negligence of the other party would be taken care of in a matter of weeks.
 
I spoke to someone from the other party’s insurance company that evening, went over the entire scenario again—I was in the left lane of a two lane road, a light turned red, I put on my brake and the other party moved from the right lane to the left lane and hit me.
 
Period, There was nothing more to say, and I figured that this whole mess would be taken care of by February or maybe even March.
 
But just a few days later, right around Christmas, I received a call from my insurance company, telling me I had been found not liable at all for the accident. My monthly insurance payment would not go up, and that I was totally in the clear.
 
He told me that I would hear from the other side soon, and lo and behold, I did—and they could not wait to settle with me!
 
I had to send them some pictures and video of my car and its damage, but I was told by the other side that there was a major discrepancy in the story of myself and the guy who hit me—he claimed that this car's damage was on the right passenger side, which is completely impossible due to the scenario that I told you.
 
Evidently, he lied to his own insurance company, trying to get some damage on the right side of the car linked to this accident, and having my company pay for it.
 
His ruse was immediately determined by his own company, and when they saw that he lied about the entire accident, they could not wait to end it, and I received my payment for the damage he caused last week, or roughly three weeks after the accident occurred!
 
I have never heard about an accident being closed out so quickly, but again, this guy even lied to his own insurance company … betcha it is not the first time he has done this, and they couldn’t wait to pay me and close the books on his escapade.
 
I did ask my son if, perhaps, they gave the guy a breathalyzer at the scene, perhaps after I left, but my son said that his car actually left the area first, so it had nothing to do with that possibility.
 
So, in conclusion, don’t lie about an accident that you caused to the other driver you just hit, and don’t lie about the accident to your own insurance company.
 
Neither one is as stupid as you think they are, and with me, this imbecile was dealing with the wrong person to begin with.

Remember, nearly eight years ago, my family and I almost lost our lives in an accident that was caused by the total negligence of another driver, so I have been around the block, so to speak.
 
So on my end, absolutely no liability, no nothing.
 
And now … did my segueway work?
 
Speak to you again on Monday. Have a great weekend.