From Sunday's Times and News-Star
Matthew
McConaughey unbuttons his shirt, cranks up his ride and cruises the highways
and byways of our country, contemplating the ins and outs of the cosmos, checking
for loose gravel and wayward steers, stopping at drive-thrus and Stuckey’s just
long enough to hit the bathroom and grab more pork rinds.
He’s
got our back. No days off when you’re Matthew Mac.
McConaughey
is an Oscar winner, much deserved for “Dallas Buyers Club.” He is an East Texas
homeboy. He is as likeable a guy as has ever sneaked up on us from left field.
But
most of all he is something I never saw coming. He is the Thinking Man’s
automobile owner.
He
is Matthew McConaughey, The Car Whisperer.
As
you know if you have a working television set, he is in a series of car
commercials impossible to escape. I can appreciate that because if I am asked
to do a car commercial, I am going to show up with my driver’s license and a
full gas can. We all need a car.
The
issue here is that while I know Matthew is trying to tell me something in these
commercials, I am not a good enough mechanic or television viewer – or driver
-- to figure out what it is.
I
have been a Matthew fan since long ago when my son Casey told me to become one.
If I was drowning and so was Matthew, and my son could save only one, we’re
talking jump ball. Probably me. But maybe Matthew. Especially if he’s holding
car keys.
I
can respect that. While I don’t watch a lot of non-sports TV, “True Detective,”
in which Matthew starred, is the best television I’ve seen since “Band of
Brothers.” Respeck!
But
while in “True Detective” I “got” McConaughey’s deep-thinking, out-in-the-hinterlands
Rust Cohle, I am missing ground zero in these commercials by a country mile.
Not psychic enough?
Actor
Rob Lowe is also on commercials a lot, for television service. I know what he
and Creepy Rob Lowe and Wildly Insecure Rob Lowe and Loser Rob Lowe are trying
to tell me: ditch this one service and get this other service. They actually
say that and it’s in written words too. Like taking a remote control from a
baby.
But
with Matthew, I’m not so sure. He’s deeper. He’s talking in mysterious,
IQ-challenging code. And he’s talking low, and not Rob Lowe. But as much as I lean
forward and get quiet and try to focus…lost. I cannot interpret.
Is
he telling me to get this car? Surely he is. But what if he’s telling me,
secretly, that I can go back in time if I get this car, that the LS version is
a time machine. Does that cost extra?
Is
he telling me he knows who shot Kennedy? That all the world’s a stage and we
each must drive a leg, or walk? That once I get into the car I can never
get out?
I
know a couple of things. The Matthew Way is better than a car man hollering at
me on TV. Don’t like a hollering man. And on the cover of GQ this month,
Matthew is telling me in plain photographs how to “rock the tweed.” So maybe
come car time, all he’s asking is for me to work a bit too, to bring something
to the table. I can respect that.
When
he’s in his ride and staring down the literal bull, he wants me to know that
sometimes I’ll need a pickup, with a trailer hitch. Sometimes I’ll want a
hamburger. Sometimes I’ll talk to myself. And sometimes, no matter what I do or
what I drive, I won’t be able, on that particular day, to navigate around the
bull before me – but I can still turn around and get to “The Butcher Shop” in
Longview, if I really want to.
I
can respect that, too.
But
most of all, through the whispers and the mumbles and the finger twirls, I
think he’s telling me what he told me in “Dazed and Confused,” what he’s been
telling me all along: “Drive on, drive on, drive on.”
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