Friday, September 14, 2007

Vanity Plates of the 21st Century



Shortly out of film school, I was working as an electrician on a movie that was being shot in my hometown of Springfield, Illinois. Most of the crew was from Los Angeles. I struck up a friendship with one of the electricians from L.A.

I don't believe he had ever spent a great deal of time in the Midwest. One of his observations was the abundance of vanity plates.

The first license plate I had was a vanity plate. No, it wasn't my name, nor was it "Splotchy" or any derivation thereof. It was a common word that I just happened to be fond of at the time. Guess what the word was if you care to (hint: it foreshadowed my career in computer programming).

Currently I read a variety of people's blogs, and a variety of people read mine. To the best of my knowledge, the blogs I read are in the Midwest, with a few on the east coast.

Blogs seem to have a tendency to clump together, aligning themselves along lines of similar interests, political beliefs, etc. I imagine geographic region also plays a part in this interblog stickiness as well. Still, I find it curious that that in the months I have been relatively active in the blogosphere, to my knowledge I haven't come across any west coast bloggers.

Is there a connection between the perceived prevalence of Midwestern vanity plates to a visiting Californian, and my perception of the overwhelming number of blogs in the Midwest region?

Vanity plates are essentially a very tiny expression of one's identity, set adrift in the "autosphere" of anonymous license plates. Blogs to me in some ways seem to be a very elaborate vanity plate.

So how many of you bloggers have vanity plates on your automobile?

6 comments:

Fran said...

Matty Boy of Lotsasplainin'... California boy.

Tengrain,too.

I think you're right though-mostly midwest, east coast. Our southerners, Dr Monkey and DCup.

And then Dr.Z- but he's on the Planet of the Apes.

jin said...

Guess for yours:
"BYTEME"
:-D

I'm
"DOLCI"
('sweet' in Italian...also used for 'desserts'...my car is used almost exclusively for shoppe delivery so I figured it was fitting.)

However, if I ever win the lotto bigtime I shall have a mini cooper sporting "JINLUV" plates.
:-D

Barbara Bruederlin said...

Never!

Dale said...

Nope, and never.

Splotchy said...

Curses!

Why must you people disprove my brilliant hypotheses?!!

My license plate was "QUERY 4" by the way.

Let the ridiculing commence!

GETkristiLOVE said...

Guilty as charged.