Joetopia

I’m a card-carrying Toyota owner.

I’ve had three Toyotas in my life, in fact: a Tercel, a Camry and now a Sienna.

For the most part, all have been reliable, comfortable, well-designed cars, and if you take care of them, they will go for miles and miles.

For years, I have never had a complaint with Toyota products or service, never had my faith in the brand even mildly threatened.

Until this year, and it happened before this whole sudden acceleration business.

One day, while my wife was out shuttling the kids to and fro, the power sliding door on our top-of-the-line 2004 Sienna just up and broke.

Broke in the way that a door should never, ever break — that is, wide open.

On first inspection, it seemed the motor-and-cable assembly had worn out — at all of five years and 85,000 miles — leaving the door jammed and unable to close.

I guess the family could have called a tow truck at that point, but since they were close to a friend’s house and the car still ran fine, they buckled up and drove slowly over there for help.

After cutting the cable, they were able to close the door manually again.

In doing some research, I quickly discovered several online message board complaints from people who’d had the same problem, so much to the extent that Toyota had issued more than one “technical service bulletin,” which address known problems that either are of lower concern or haven’t yet risen to recall status, for whatever reason.

It seems the door hinge has a manufacturing defect and begins to sag and fail after a certain amount of time.

That wouldn’t be such a huge problem, if it didn’t then then wear on the motor cable, eventually causing it to fail as well.

In the end, the hinge and the entire motor/cable mechanism had to be replaced, to the tune of $1,400, and that was probably a good price as Toyota San Luis Obispo gave me a bit of a break and worked to keep the costs down.

Toyota corporate, on the other hand, wouldn’t budge one bit and simply said that the car was too far out of warranty for any courtesy service.

Which I took as this: We are not bothered that the door on our $36,000 automobile may fail in five years. Tough luck, Charlie.

Corporate repeatedly referred me back to the local dealer, like it was somehow their fault. Why is it the responsibility of a small-town businessman to cover the parts and labor costs of a obvious manufacturing defect?

Essentially, it was up to Toyota SLO to stand behind the product, because no one else was willing to.

This is not the Toyota brand I grew up admiring.

It is not the Toyota brand that is currently muddling its way through a far more devastating PR nightmare that has had deadly consequences.

Which leads me to one last point.

Up to now, Toyota has been trying to remedy the situation with the cheapest fix possible.

First it was the floor mats. That’s a cheap fix.

Now it’s the pedal. That’s not quite as cheap a fix.

But what if that doesn’t work? The other possible problem — which the L.A. Times first reported back in November — has to do with the electronic acceleration system, essentially some defect that causes the computer to open the gas full throttle.

Now that could be a nightmare fix.

But if you think about it from a practical perspective, it’s the only thing that really makes sense.

Here’s why: The problem in the fatal cases has been that the cars suddenly accelerate to uncontrollable speeds.

If it were the floor mats or some condensation causing the pedal to stick, wouldn’t the car just proceed at whatever speed it was going? How would either of those scenarios cause the pedal to become fully floored?

Imagine this: You’re driving down the highway at 65 mph and the pedal sticks. Logically, wouldn’t it stick at your traveling speed, 65 mph? If you didn’t put the pedal to the metal, how would it get stuck there?

If the pedals were sticking, this should be happening at controllable speeds. But they’re not. Something else is afoot that’s causing the throttle to jump to its limit.

What happens if Toyota fixes all these pedals and floor mats, and then another car suddenly accelerates?

A reputation that’s now in tatters could be obliterated.

Toyota is better than this. For their sake, I hope they’ve got this problem solved.

If not, buckle your seat belts. The company and all its fans could be in for an even wilder ride.

Associated Press photo

What do you think? Do you have a Toyota? Would you buy another? Share your thoughts here.

My condolences to any of you who were unwittingly duped into giving David Weyrich money in the hopes of having a wedding at Villa Toscana.

It seems the pricey Paso Robles nuptial hotspot has closed up shop in the midst of Monday’s foreclosure on several high-profile Weyrich properties.

Tell me this: How much would it suck, in the first week of February, to get a call from your site’s wedding planner telling you that the place you picked for your dream June date just went belly up?

Oh yeah, and the 10 G’s you forked over to reserve the weekend? Good luck getting that back.

That’s the totally non-triumphant news that L.A. groom Michael Swan is dealing with this week, among others who had reservations at Villa Toscana, as reported by Tribune reporter Melanie Cleveland.

While trying to get to the bottom of what may be a bottomless pit of jacked-up Weyrich finances, Villa Toscana couples got nothing but squirrelly answers about how they might be reimbursed, seeing as how they probably don’t rank real high on the list of creditors owed money by the one-time North County mogul.

The best answer of the pathetic lot was that perhaps they could get their deposits credited toward, say, a stay at another thriving Weyrich property, that being The Carlton in Atascadero, because so many brides dream of trading a romantic vineyard wedding for one with a view of a muffler shop and a boarded-up Jack in the Box.

How sweet does that sound?

Meanwhile, and this is really rich, in case you’re an exceedingly trusting type and still wanted to hook up a reservation at the closed B&B, you’ll be happy to know the web site remains fully functional — at least as far as I was willing to test it — with no indication of the financial difficulties swirling in the background.

In fact, a highlighted red box on the site crows, “Reserve your stay at the Villa Toscana Bed and Breakfast and get away from all the rustle and bustle.”

Get away from the rustle and bustle? All you’re gonna get is rustled if you make a reservation.

I got as far as the place where they look to harvest my credit card information, before turning Firefox around faster than you can say, “there’s a sucker born every minute.”

I guess in addition to keeping all these couples’ wedding dough, Villa Toscana’s also going to see how much cash they can scoop up through their sham online portal before too many people get wise.

How many ways can I say “shameful?”

To wrap up, a message to David Weyrich:

You’ve been doing a good job of zipping your lips and dodging questions for several weeks now.

It was all fine and good when it was just your own empire that was crumbling. Don’t want to talk about that? That’s your prerogative.

But now you’re taking other people down too, innocent clients who are seeing the most memorable day of their lives dashed to smithereens.

The least you could do is level with them. The most you could do is figure out a way to make things right.

Anywhere in between is better than where we are right now.

UPDATE: So any of you couples who had designs on a Carlton wedding may have to rethink that too. The restaurant and bar are now closed.

Tribune photo by Jayson Mellom

What do you think? Share your comments here.

David Weyrich, what should you do next?(poll)

I’ve had it, already.

Can someone somewhere who supervises the hyped-up on-air talent at American television and radio stations please tell their people that “literally” is not a synonym for “practically” or “absolutely” or even “completely”?

Two cases in point in recent weeks:

• In a television broadcast from Haiti (Fox? CNN? Can’t remember which …), the reporter described how portions of the devastated buildings “were literally hanging by a thread.”

Unless they were textile manufacturers or Ross Dress for Less outlets, this is highly unlikely.

I’d like to see the thread that can hold up 10 tons of concrete and steel.

• From the Colts/Jets playoff game last week, the radio broadcaster, in describing the way Indianapolis had dominated the second half, noted how receiver Braylon Edwards was a non-factor: “They literally took him away,” he marveled, I assume while scanning the field for the apparently missing wideout.

That’s a nifty game plan, there.

What, did a Colt cornerback throw a burlap sack over Edwards’ head, hoist him over one shoulder and pitch him out onto the street?

If that doesn’t call for a penalty flag, what does?

Turns out the bad call in this case came from the booth, not the field.

To make this perfectly clear, “literally” literally means literally.

As in “this is exactly how it happened,” as in “truly” or “veritably.”

Not “nearly,” not “practically,” not “figuratively,” all of which are appropriate ways to describe how something seems in a metaphorical way.

Broadcasters, please excise this word from your vocabulary because as you hyperventilate to over-dramatize your story, you nearly always use it wrong.

Part of me really admires former Cal Poly baseball star Grant Desme for giving up a promising pro career to enter the priesthood.

Another part of me wonders why he didn’t save the seminary for a few years down the road and play ball now while he can.

A top prospect in the A’s organization, Desme had a breakout year in Single-A ball and in the Arizona Fall League, where he was MVP.

There was talk he might have gotten an invite to spring training as early as this year.

I can understand his calling, and his dedication to his faith is a level of admirable you rarely see today.

But the baseball fan in me wishes Desme had given the game a bit more time.

These are God-given talents he has after all, right?

What if he’d become a star?

Think of the platform that would have provided, not to mention the potentially vast resources and earning potential he could have routed to charitable purposes.

It’s a minor point but one that leaves you wondering, “what if?”

He could have been the baseball priest.

Of course, this is coming from someone who far more often prays at the Church of Baseball than any other house of worship.

So do with it what you will.

Grant, you are a far better man than me. Good luck in your journey.

Tribune photo by David Middlecamp

I went to see “Avatar” the other day after avoiding the hype for five weeks.

Good movie, but I liked it better the first time I saw it.

When it was called “Dances With Wolves.”

Na’vi = Lakota Sioux

2154 = 1860s

Jake Sully = John Dunbar

American military plundering a native people = American military plundering a native people

Disillusioned soldier who learns to appreciate the native culture and then switches sides = well … you get the picture.

Glorious special effects aside, all James Cameron did was put Native Americans on another planet, paint them blue and conjure up newly spectacular ways to destroy them.

Again, cool movie, but a total plot ripoff.

Wonder if it will fare as well at the Oscars as its predecessor, which won 7 awards, including Best Picture and Best Director.

The dumbest thing I’ve read in a long time comes by way of today’s Dear Abby column, from a dim bulb in Alabama who wrote to the advice columnist to settle a disagreement.

It seems the wife and author of the letter believes you screw in a lightbulb counter-clockwise, while the husband believes it’s clockwise.

Before I even get to the answer to this mind-bending dilemma, reflect a moment on the kind of person it takes to write to a newspaper columnist for an answer to a question that could be instantly solved by walking over to the nearest lamp.

Unscrew the bulb.

Screw the bulb back in.

Look at a clock. (This step really shouldn’t be necessary!)

Repeat. (This step shouldn’t be necessary either.)

Compare directions and come to a conclusion.

Shoot, you shouldn’t even need a lamp. Just imagine the process.

Yet here we are, relying on Abby to shed light on this vexing issue lest any of us, her readers, be as dense as this particular twosome.

It turns out the husband was right: clockwise.

But he gets no points for his genius because he was still party to the effort of sending the question to Abby, which is the most inane thing about today’s bit of comedy relief.

With that settled, you know it has to come to this:

How many Dear Abby readers from Alabama does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Two, one to hold the lightbulb and the other to ask for directions.

Tears run down a woman's face as she attends a group prayer in Port-au-Prince, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2010. International aid flowing into Haiti after last week's earthquake has been struggling with logistical problems, and many people are still desperate for food and water. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

Here’s another observation on the response to the Haiti earthquake.

The L.A. Times had a story on Tuesday pondering the supposed conflict of interest that faces the many medical correspondents working for TV networks in Haiti.

The assumption of course, in the ivory towers of Journalism, is that reporters should be singularly focused newsgatherers, ideally without any secondary concerns or motivations that might cloud their dispassionate documentation of events.

As a result, some apparently are questioning whether these medical correspondents, who are certified doctors, should “consider forgoing their journalistic roles if they’re going to participate in the relief effort,” according to Matea Gold’s story.

The report included the obligatory “expert opinion” from a journalism values scholar at the Poynter Institute, Bob Steele.

While Steele agrees journalists should help if they can prevent loss of life or grave injury, he also said, “I think it’s very hard for an individual who is professionally and emotionally engaged in saving lives to be able to simultaneously step back from the medical work and practice independent journalistic truth-telling,”

I don’t.

And even if it is, it’s a worthy endeavor, one that offers very personal, human accounts that resonate with viewers while doing measurable good for a population in dire need.

There are times the Fourth Estate simply gets too full of itself, and this is one.

Medicine is among the most honorable professions a person can choose.

In the vast majority of cases, doctors are thoughtful, judicious, practical people who constantly must weigh far more difficult decisions than we ever do.

Why would we not expect them to handle this balance of interests in a sensible way?

But no, instead of expecting the best, the cynics among us assume the worst and then dash out to cover the story of potential conflicts before any bona fide cases have presented themselves.

This is simply stupid and far more irresponsible in and of itself than anything I’ve seen, heard or read from the correspondents in Haiti.

Following the story, Matea Gold posted an update noting a similar possible “crossing-of-the-boundaries” moment by CNN’s Anderson Cooper, who while covering a scene of looting, intervened to help an injured child who’d apparently been hit in the head with a brick.

Again, the assumption here by the cynics is that Cooper is doing this at least partly for ratings purposes, not that he might be a heart-felt human who’s gut reaction to an emergency is to help first and report second.

Watch the video. What do you think?

Why Cooper felt the need to help when plenty of others were around, I don’t know. But the video doesn’t show anyone jumping in to offer direct care for the boy, whose face is smeared with blood from an open wound.

In the end, a child was removed from harm’s way. If it took a journalist to do it, then so be it. If CNN chooses to air the dramatic footage to help tell the story of the quake aftermath, so be it.

First-person accounts can be valuable, emotional ways of telling a story when you can count on the “first person” — whether it’s Anderson Cooper or a head-and-neck surgeon from Pennsylvania — to treat the moment with care.

That’s what professionals do, whether their college education taught them how to hold a microphone or a scalpel.

What do you think? Share your thoughts here?

The last week has been filled with hordes of disturbing images coming out of Haiti following Tuesday’s magnitude-7.0 quake.

Most of them, you probably never saw.

The piles of bodies outside the morgue, limbs and torsos tangled together like discarded mannequins.

Shots of the dead still trapped in collapsed buildings, visible but inaccessible.

And the many images of appendages, jutting from beneath tarps, blankets and masses of concrete.

One of the saddest I saw was of a girl killed at the site of a destroyed school. In an open gap, only her legs were visible, feet dangling as though she were sitting on an unseen ledge.

The pictures become surreal and distant in short order, much like those from the Asian tsunami a few years back, one looking like the next, each scene an endless repetition of pain and melancholy.

Around the third day, the pictures started to change a bit after international relief workers began arriving.

One in particular, of a rescuer airlifting a quake victim, struck me as particularly jarring.

Up to that point, all the rescue images were filled with poor, desperate people, hauling injured friends and family in carts, wheelbarrows, makeshift litters … whatever.

Then, suddenly, this image of a professional operation pops up.

It turns out the team was from Virginia and had extracted an unidentified U.S. citizen from the rubble of the Port-au-Prince’s luxury Hotel Montana.

Looking at the image, I don’t know whether to feel ashamed or reassured.

There is something just a bit troubling about the idea that we can dispatch elite emergency crews to a third-world country to pluck our citizens from the brink of death while, nearby, the locals claw through the dust with their bare hands.

Then again, there is something comforting in that too.

I suppose it’s an example of our tax dollars doing some of their very best work, saving a citizen from death in a foreign country.

It’s nice to have luxuries like that and is another reminder we are far luckier than we ever acknowledge living in a country like this.

It could so easily be a different way.

What do you think? Share your thoughts?

Associated Press photo by Gerald Herbert

I was talking with the indomitable Bill Morem today, about the weather of all things.

He was noting — his silver beard bristling in the climate-controlled breeze — how we have a bit of precipitation in the forecast.

Such a bit, in fact, that apparently there’s the possibility we’ll see as much as seven straight days of rain next week. See here. Look at all the pretty raindrop icons.

Bill was also noting how this run of perpetual storms — lined up one after another like a bunch of Duggar kids — could pose a decent threat of flooding.

That got me thinking again about how long it’s been since we had a good old-fashioned kick-in-the-pants natural disaster.

Back in the ’90s, it seemed like Mother Nature opened a can of whup-ass every other year, what with the various wildfires named after local highways and the moderately biblical deluges that soaked Cambria to the waist and filled San Luis Creek to its roiling brim.

Toss in a couple of windbag storms, and you could make a pretty good case we have weather here after all.

Then things calmed down.

In fact, with the significant exception of that little earthquake near San Simeon a few years back, it’s been mostly quiet on this farthest of western fronts.

Too quiet.

Finally this year, we got the forecast of a little El Niño toddling around, and the youngster did get off to a good start in the fall.

Believe it or not, we’re still ahead of our average rainfall, thanks to a couple gully-washers in November and December.

But after a few mild weeks  that stretched the sunny weather into January, you wouldn’t be at fault for thinking drought deja vu all over again.

Now, maybe not so. And forecasters are indeed saying winter 2010 may have some back-loaded pop in store for us.

Time to break out the raincoats and umbrellas.

It seems the boy is back in town.

This is a message to the careless and selfish woman who, while driving her blue Kia Spectra south on Highway 101 through San Luis Obispo Monday morning, rolled down her window, stuck her hand in the air and then flicked away the remains of a cigarette, in the ever-so-thoughtless way that only someone who’s killed off several trillion brain cells can.

Where do you get off thinking our public places are your personal ashtray?

Apparently the Marsh Street exit, because that’s where she was heading.

If anyone happens to see her car in the Chorro Street neighborhood up there, feel free to throw a handful of sand back through the window, because she’s apparently in need of somewhere to stash her butts.

This isn’t the first time I’ve seen some idiot smoker chuck a cigarette stub out onto our highways.

More often, it’s at night and even more obvious when the lit butt bounces off the pavement in a little explosion of sparks.

(It’s at this point I wish life was a video game and my car came with hood-mounted laser-guided missiles. Lock on target. Destroy.)

Just how dumb and irresponsible do you have to be to think this is okay by any stretch of the imagination?

1. You’re littering.

2. You’re littering with a smoldering wad of paper and tobacco.

3. You’re littering with a smoldering wad of paper and tobacco in a state that’s a virtual tinderbox half the year.

Why don’t you just throw flaming bags of used toxic waste out the bed of your pickup while you’re at it?

Smokers who throw lit cigarette butts out of car windows are verifiably the worst offenders, but they’re only marginally ahead of their other numbskull cohorts. In fact, they all are likely one in the same.

Lumped in with the car-window-butt-chuckers are these jewels of humanity:

Smokers who snub out their butts at the beach.

Smokers who discard their butts on the sidewalk.

Smokers who toss their cigarettes on the ground anywhere!

A few weeks ago after that big weekend rain, I rolled the trash cans out to the street and was puzzled to find a bunch of used cigs strewn all over the front yard, apparently having been picked up by the water from god knows where and deposited here.

It’s bad enough you think it’s your birthright to pollute the air. Must you pollute the land and water too?

And you wonder why the majority continues to impose ever stricter regulations mandating when and where you can resume your long-term suicide attempt.

Here’s the deal, and it will come to this, someday not so long from now:

You can smoke in your house, and that’s it.

No bars, no restaurants, no beaches, no parks, no streets, no sidewalks, no businesses, no stadiums, no airplanes and no, not even your own cars, because even if you can be trusted to contain your smoke somewhat, the same isn’t true for your trash.

Smoking is a privilege and one you’ve methodically, chronically, serially, pathologically abused.

Don’t be surprised when it’s all but taken away and put up on a high shelf, like the favorite toy of a self-centered, misbehaving 4-year-old.

Grow up, and stop being irresponsible brats already.

Is this too much to ask?

What do you think about smoking and smokers who litter? Share your thoughts here.