Apex Adjacent

Episode 71-The part when Nico starts touching the other baby's head...

We're discussing some emergency situations this time on the TeamClearCoat podcast. Dave has a Code Brown while driving home for the holidays, Ian has a parental emergency, and what did we do with those stupid paper tickets?

Slightly less urgent are discussions about how difficult the last few tenths of a lap are, the role of masculinity in car culture, and, uh, TSA Short Hair Check.

Also, a programming note: we will be on break for the next few weeks, but will be back with some new features and new content. Have a good January, everyone!

Episode 70-Bah Whatever

We're imagining the future in this episode - the realities of the coming year in automotive news, the dystopian possibilities of a world filled with dealership parts counter employees, and the utopian vision of a world with fewer Hawaiian shirts and more cardigans.

Right now, though, we need to deal with a stripped out Volkswagen and Dave has a present to open.

Episode 69a-This doesn't sound good...

Hey: TeamClearCoat! Step into my office, it's time for your annual performance review.

Now, don't get me wrong: you did some great stuff this year. "Big strong man?" Classic! Your interviews? Surprisingly not terrible! Dave ahem...relieving himself in a fie... well, HR will talk to you about that one later.

What I want to discuss today are some areas where, let's say, you need improvement. The TCC Book Club? What happened there? And your in-car audio quality during your "very special episodes" could use some attention in the coming year.

So, overall, not bad enough for you to be fired from the Internet, but, you know, stop slacking. Now, get out of here. You're almost late for your appointment with HR.

Episode 69-Zeees hair, iz all yours? Is nice!

Ian has an uncomfortable interaction; well…all of his interactions are uncomfortable so this was par for the course. Anyway, moving from discomfort to our happy places, SNOW HAS FALLEN AND WE CAN HAZ ALL THE DRIFTING!!! Dave and Ian discuss the differences between their two cars' handling in snow and we uncover an odd surprise about Ian. To that end, we discuss the ideal ballast for Dave's trunk and how having a V8 means that Dave doesn't need a handbrake lever to have fun. The flip side to our happy coin is that carcake season has returned. Sigh…

While we're going down our sad carcake rabbit hole, we discuss the awful trend of people throwing non-OEM badges on their cars and how upset this makes Dave. That's how you make a ginger divide by zero folks, it's his kryptonite.

Somehow, and we have no idea how, but we managed to correlate Wynona Ryder's shoplifting incident from waaaaay back to a Chevy Malibu. Go ahead and read that again, I had to just to make sure it was real. While we're getting weird, we recast Marvel's Avengers and make them even more awesome.

We at TeamClearCoat hope you have a great time over the holidays. Eat some gravy, don't ask why the table cloths are hard to clean, and remember that we love you.

Episode 68a-The stuff that happens in Sodor man...it's heavy.

The after show is short and sweet - we're enamored with this week's main show, and we talk about our favorite stuff from the year.

Also, we talk about the dystopian hellscape that is Thomas The Tank Engine.

Episode 68-Yeah, this is a good one.

You guys, we don't want to toot our own horn or anything, but the pithy one-liners out of the blanket fort are pretty spectacular this week.

The highlight is Dave's distillation of a Toyota hybrid badge on a Honda Fit (it's just too brilliant for the iTunes profanity filter). But there are other gems like "Michiganders have 700 words for 'pothole,'" "It made the worst thunk," and something about an "Allroad milk silence."

We also discuss how Dave ruins things with his pretty mouth, extend an olive branch to the people who don't want to be listening to us, and mention Harambe for some reason. Did we mention we recorded this very late at night?

Episode 67a-Well duh.

It's short and literally sweet in the blanket fort for today's after show.

We talk about candy and whether attempts to display it in a dignified way work. And just so you aren't overwhelmed with sugary sweet content, we chase it with some bitter civil liberties realism.

Episode 67

It's back to normal programming this week in the blanket fort. Except that it's anything but normal.

Ian gets to talk about F1, Dave attempts a burnout, and all the cars are now in - ugh - winter mode. But don't worry: we'll still drone on for far too long about autonomy and infrastructure.

Episode 66a-RIP Sharon Jones

If you haven't listened to Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, stop what you're doing, give up on this dumb podcast and go listen to her now. Now.

Back? Good right?!? Fantastic. Good to have you back. We talk about the year and how it went... Not good Bob! Anyway, give our goofy little aftershow a listen, send us an email, send us an FMKCars, and Happy Thanksgiving everybody.

Episode 66-Sounds super delicious, right?

We kick this ambitious episode talking about our ambitious ambitions (Drivetribe), and ambitious cars. We weave over to how Dave wants to turn a Toyota Supra into the ultimate touring car, and how Ian wants Dave to stop drawing him like one of his French girls.

We also talk about our ambitious urges to punch Chris Bangle in the nose. Twice. Speaking of personal restraint, we talk about the holidays and how we have to re-nice our profanity prevention daemons to keep the family visits from exploding into turkey, political slams, repressed memories explosively getting remembered, and being "that" person in your family.

What a wonderful, well...wonderful-ish, time of year.