Free Republic

If you find yourself driving along the scenic New York State Thruway near Lake George, you might get a sudden urge to sing the song “Holiday Road.” The popular Northeast vacation destination is home to a small fleet of cars associated with another very popular vacation: the fictional Griswold family’s trek to Walley World in the 1983 classic National Lampoon’s Vacation. The accidentally-purchased 1987 Ford Country Squire owned by Tom and Chrissey Dittus of Lake George. Over the past several years, he’s made the car look like the cross-country driving station wagon from the film. It’s has garnered thousands of...

Transience is the very essence of the entertainment business, unpredictability its warp and weft. Early this month, the market research and data analytics firm YouGov published the results of a startling poll. According to interviews with 1,254 adult Americans, 30 percent of millennials have no best friends, 27 percent have no close friends and 22 percent have no friends at all. Not surprisingly, the report named them “the loneliest generation.” But loneliness is all around and perhaps nowhere more profoundly than in Hollywood. Here’s what surprised me: that the statistics weren’t worse, for older people as well as millennials. Look...

James Bond fans should prepare to be shaken and stirred. The normally suave secret agent, with a passion for Aston Martins and martini, seems to have developed some distinctly middleclass tastes. In the forthcoming 007 movie Casino Royale, actor Daniel Craig temporarily abandons his £200,000 supercar for the new £20,000 Ford Mondeo - reports ThisIsLondon. The original Mondeo had its first facelift in 1996, with a new version in 2000 and the fourth generation is due to hit showrooms in 2007. The latest edition has been given a new styling and a high quality interior - but sadly for 007...

'What would Jesus drive?' gas-guzzling Americans are asked Oliver Burkeman in New York Thursday November 14, 2002 The Guardian The midwestern United States, equally devout in its worship of God as in its worship of gas-guzzling four-wheel-drive vehicles, is about to be asked to choose between the two. "What Would Jesus Drive?" is the slogan dominating a television advertising campaign about to blanket cities in Iowa, Indiana and Missouri, along with the southern state of North Carolina. The question presumably did not arise in first-century Galilee, but the Christian group behind the ads believes the answer would not include...

"What would Jesus drive?" asks the new religious campaign against SUVs. Naturally, everyone has been eager to supply a punch line. My initial thought was a donkey, which has considerably less passenger and cargo space than an SUV, along with emissions problems of its own. Then a colleague pointed out that Jesus was a carpenter, so he'd probably want a pickup truck, which falls into the same mileage and emissions category as an SUV, to haul his lumber. On CNN's "Talk Back Live," a guest suggested that Jesus might very well drive a big SUV, especially if he was...