Fender Bender Render
Category: Just Plain Silly...
Posted Monday, June 18, 2007 at 02:10 PM [GMT-6]

Last week, I wrote about the experience of witnessing a car crash in the parking lot of a local coffee shop, and not having the presence of mind (aka, "journalistic instincts") to take any photos. Someone left a comment lamenting the lack of visuals, and I promised to provide a separate but equal answer.

I secured the services of a professional crime scene sketch artist named Julio, who is living in our country under the auspices of a secret government program. I can't tell you how I came to know Julio; you're better off not knowing – plausible deniability and all that. Anyway, I spent some time describing the horrific scenes from that fateful evening when our friend – let's call him "Jeff" – had his very existence shaken to the core in front of the south-side Starbucks.

What I'm about to show you is an artistic re-creation of the events leading up to the event in question, as well as the event itself, and its frightful aftermath. After experiencing this re-creation, I suspect that you'll feel as though you were an active participant. I can provide you with the name of a competent trauma counselor if you so desire (and your insurance will accommodate the visits).

In the first scene, it should be obvious that the setting was custom made for a disaster. It's also obvious that "Jeff" parked his car in the worst possible place, and while I'm sorry to have to shine the light on his culpability, it's just my journalistic instincts finally kicking in. Note, too, how blithely unaware we all are of the horror that's about to unfold before us. Such was our blissful innocence about the cruelty of the world we inhabit that we were focused more on the unusual smelling cigarette smoke coming from the table next to us than on the murderous tableau mere feet away.

In Scene 2, we find that the assailant has launched her rocket disguised as a beater Cougar (not to be confused with a "cougar beater," which is illegal in all 47 contiguous states and Arkansas) toward the unsuspecting Pontiac, the latter having no more acumen about its fate than a three ball sitting on the felt before the cue ball explodes into it.

A fraction of an instant later – as quickly as a gnat's wing beats, oh, say two or three times...four, tops – the damage is done. Note the extreme surprise of "Jeff" and his companions. However, the four people sitting at the next table stayed calm and cool, carefully shepherding their unusual cigarette. Note also how the concussion of the impact seems to have transported the witnesses, along with their tables and chairs, off the patio and into the interior of the store itself. (Frankly, I don't remember this happening, so I suspect it's the result of some artistic license on Julio's part.)

Scene 4 has the potential to be somewhat incriminating, as it shows "Jeff" and his companions exulting over the inert body of the unfortunate driver who caused the wreck, after they bludgeoned her with the Pontiac's rear bumper. Here again, I don't really remember this; all I remember was how strong that dang cigarette smelled. In any event, Julio was pretty insistent that since all of his past sketches had involved chalk outlines, he wanted to make sure one got included here, too.

It's worth noting that the teleportation effect first documented in Scene 3 is still in effect.

I hope this has been helpful to you in visualizing what happened that night. If you really want to get the full effect – and I'm not suggesting that you should do this, mind you – you can print this post, cut out the four scenes, and make a flip-movie out of them. I'm pretty sure that's the way Pixar does their stuff.