As I’m sure you’re well aware, the world has been strangely fascinated by an incident where the CEO of some company that does some data somethings was caught on the “Kiss Cam” at a Coldplay concert with an HR person from that same company, entwined in an embrace that appears to have been, um, illicit. They were cheating, it seems, and the lurid fascination of it all and the sort of alarming realization of how public our private lives can become have really captured global attention. But you know what the real tragedy is here? There were no cars involved.
Look, human relationships are complicated and often messy things, and I’m not in any position to cast judgment on anyone for that, or for going to a Coldplay concert or the existence and concept of the Kiss Cam itself or anything. But what I am in a position to comment on is the absolutely miserable lack of regard gearheads and car lovers and, yes, automotive journalists, get in situations like these.
As far as I can tell, there were zero efforts made to attempt to incorporate any sort of cool or interesting car into this scandalous tale. And that is very likely the real crime here.
By the way, if you’re somehow fortunate enough to not know what I’m talking about, allow me to destroy your bliss:
I mean, really, would it have killed them to have run out of the stadium in a fit of panic and embarrassment which quickly bled over into a sort of erotic acting-out where they could have, say, climbed into a nicely-restored Renault Floride and maniacally dry-humped one another until they knocked the hardtop right off the car?
Would that have been so hard? If they had even this most basic level of courtesy to car-lovers, then we in the automotive press could have covered the story as well, and shared in the delightful shadenfreude bounty everyone else was enjoying!
It’s maddening. These people, so caught up in their own inane affairs and Coldplay concerts can’t even take a moment to find, purchase, and drive an interesting car in which they can continue to do their questionable actions.
There’s so many options, too! Either of them could have had, say, a well-maintained classic Porsche 911 or a lovingly-maintained mid-century Lincoln Continental or even a rough but cherished old International Scout – none of those are that hard to find, and if you’re the CEO of an important company and are considering having an affair in public at a concert with a Jumbotron, I’d argue it’s your responsibility to at least have an interesting car for automotive journalists to write about when you make a huge public mistake.
It’s just insulting, this lack of an interesting car angle to this story.
I don’t think it’s going too far to say that we, the car-loving community, are the real victims here. Sure, there’s the families of the people involved and I guess the company, whatever the hell they do, I guess they have some claims to victimhood, but nothing that even comes close to the pain of the Greater Automotive Community as we are denied yet another opportunity to have an interesting car put into the spotlight for the world to see.
What if this CEO and that HR lady had secretly bought one another matching Lancia Aurelias? The first production car with a V6 engine? Now that would have enhanced this story immeasurably. If we had some video of them leaving the stadium in a pair of, say, 1955 Lancia Aurelia B20 GTs. Perhaps one a gleaming red, one a powder blue. Think how much more edifying this sordid mess would be.
Instead of getting bludgeoned with headlines about the affair or Kiss Cams or the willing surveillance state we’ve imprisoned ourselves in, we’d have headlines like Here’s All You Need To Know About The Amazing Lancias Astronomer CEO And HR Lady Drove Off In or Why The First V6 Engine Makes The Ideal Powerplant For Trying To Avoid Ending Up On Jumbotrons or even just welcome digressions into Pinin Farina’s incredible styling choices.
The point is, I’m sick of there being huge viral news stories that just have no car angle whatsoever. It’s blatant and deliberate discrimination, and it needs to stop, today. So, this is my message to every celebrity or business tycoon or scientist or author or noted personality of any type: get yourself an interesting car now, before you do something stupid on a Jumbotron or use some awful racial slur or expose yourself in public. Have the decency to roll up to your social undoing in something worth writing about.
And yes, I practice what I preach. Someday, when I’m caught on a security camera attempting to sensually violate a jelly doughnut in St.Peter’s Basilica or whatever, you can be damn sure that I’ll have rolled up there in something that my fellow car journalists can really get into. That’s my promise to you.
I mean it.
How about a meme based on maintaining your cool and not losing your shit, thus making things much more notable and worse?
Jaguar is really sleeping on the job, they could at least have set these two up with matching Jag concepts to drive away in.
I have never heard any of the albums Coldplay released in the past 20 years, but by all accounts they’re terrible. However, I have seen the car collection they built for Guy Berryman, and it is terrific.
Yes Mr. Caine, that movie with the minis full of gold in the sewer was terrific too.
Now what’s all this about not not seeing your dentures anywhere?
Apparently they have a kiss cam at their shows to keep people awake.
Well – Chris Martin, Aston Martin – potato, potato 🙂
Three Coldplay song titles that could be considered car related are “Broken”, “Fix You”, and “A Hopeful Transmission”. I’m sure none of them are directly about cars, but still applicable.
Insert an auto-felatio joke somewhere in the article. There’s your car content.
“a lovingly-maintained mid-century Lincoln Continental”
Let’s make that an open top for the more scandalous CEOs.
The best I can think of is Henrik and Geeta Gupta-Fisker.
Not because they were cheating on each other…they were just cheating on all the buyers, investors, and partners of Fisker Inc.
How about a joke about large screens? The Celestiq’s is 55″. Got to be something there, but I’m not good at this type of thing.
You know in a weird way I felt bad for these people until I just watched this video and saw the guy triumphantly pointing up with both hands when Chris Martin says “having an affair.”
The rest of his party also being all stoked about it… Yeesh
What interesting car angle could possibly come from these two white, middle aged, corporate executives at a Coldplay concert? They are the human equivalents of the gray luxury midsize crossover.
I mean, they probably did drive away in a gray Q5 or something like that.
Custom high dollar paint job, but still grey!
They must have killed their wives or children or someone’s children for this to be a story.
Something
The way they stupidly hid from the camera is the viral part. If they had just ignored it, no one would have recognized them.
Just enjoy Mr. and Ms. Phanatic reenacting it and call it a day.
I was looking for a Cold Start / Coldplay mashup and came up empty.
Wait!
Cross out the S in Cold Start: Cold tart
Though that does place an unfair burden on the HR person… Maybe Cold Shart would summarize the situation adequately and, uh, fairly to the participants.
“People like Coldplay and voted for the Nazis, you can’t trust people” – Super Hans, BBC’s “Peep Show”.
How to tie a story about cheating into something automotive related? Come on, Torch.
Top racing cheats in history. Some examples could include Marty Robbins at the 1972 Winston 500 or Toyota at the 1995 World Rally Championship.
VW emissions?
Jim Farley daily driving his Xiaomi SU7?
My problem with big arena concerts is always the low fidelity.
So to be Clear, Ghosn and Nissan Accountants as a couple, never crossed your mind? you could animate Ghosn going into a piano case
I keep thinking there was a car called the Loyalty, which would have been nice and ironic here. Oh well. I doubt anyone has ever made a car with name that roughly means say goodbye to half of your shit.
Subaru once had the Loyale
That must be what I was thinking about.
Jules: Heh – “Loyale with cheese”… What did they call a Twingo?
Vincent: I don’t know; I didn’t go to a Renault dealership.
You know why they don’t call it a Subaru Leone?
The metric system?
Check out the big brain on Disphenoidal!
You’re a smart mother@#$%^&, that’s right.
I think that would be a Corvette.
That look on Roy Wort’s face when you catch him behind a Camero?
Deep dive into Jalop history!
Perhaps they could have driven away in a Cheetah.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ae/b9/bc/aeb9bc8ce0867309a919516bd11eb1c9.jpg
I was thinking Lamborghini prototype offroader. Either would have been interesting.
She’s more of a Cougar.
-Hello I want to report a crime in progress
911: What is the situation?
-There is a guy stealing some marine batteries with a chainsaw loaded them into a yellow bug
Jason: Its a 1973 VW Beetle, the first year of the elephant tailights!!!
*When you try your best but you don’t succeed*
I’m not sure what’s more embarrassing….everyone finding out about your infidelity or everyone finding out that you went to a Coldplay concert.
This was a very good joke, the first few times it was made.
Lighten up Francis, laughing at Coldplay’s expense is a blast
Says the most original person ever.
I didn’t realize we had a collective pole up our ass about repeating dumb jokes, but I’ll keep that in mind moving forward
You’re not going to be winning any Peabody awards with those tired Coldplay jokes…
Lol, yeah, this is the comments section of a blog whose whole purpose was to break down the wall of what can be blogged about by a car site, by criticizing the lack of cars in what is being described lol. Which I dig, but yeah, nobody needs to be bringing out their best material for this. Totally appropriate venue for a couple of standard Coldplay jokes.
There was a whole tales from the slack that was David confessing to being a Coldplay Enjoyer. Therefore, Coldplay jokes are absolutely car related and they belong on this website.
Keep ’em coming. A lame/overused comment is just fine. I think many of us are dads or of dad age, and the lame jokes are right up our alley.
Anyone who feels the need to criticize said lame/overused comment needs to do some self-reflection on what is important in their life. And anyone who feels the need to pile on… doubly so.
I am a mid 30s dad. I exist to make bad jokes.
Know why bears at the Coldplay show refuse to wear shoes?
Why?
Because they always end up with bear feet anyway!
One thing’s for sure, they both failed “Cheating 101” at “Ashley Madison University”.
Chris Martin in the background: yeah oooo OHHHHHHHH you were all yellow
I have no opinion on Coldplay, but my wife loves them. She and her boyfriend said it was the best concert they’ve ever been to.
I wondered if the company had a suite at the stadium. Like, do either of them like Coldplay? Or were they able to use the company suite that evening because no one wanted to go to the Coldplay concert?
I’ll admit that I wonder this as someone who has been inappropriately close with a coworker in the company suite at the local stadium. In my defense, neither of us were married (or in management). Also in my defense, we’re now married to each other.
I like it. Also a Coldplay fan (former, I guess. First four albums were great before they decided to shift to being a techno-pop band, which is a disease that can affect a lot of bands, especially those from the UK and Europe).
Some jokes simply don’t get old.
I’m a dyed in the wool hater of coworker music in general but I’ll concede that Clocks and Speed Of Sound are great songs. Viva La Vida is an ear worm as well, although they stole the melody for the chorus from Joe Satriani which is lame.
I have Surfing with the Alien in the van right now 🙂
Not to sound too hipstery, but I liked them well before they got globally huge (wife and I were in the 7th or 8th row in 2002, in a theatre seating about 1,500 people. Hard to believe.)
Like two of my other favorite bands that people love to hate — Dave Matthews and Barenaked Ladies — very little of their best material makes it as a single, they’re more “full album” types of bands for me.
As an avid guitar player and collector of course Satch was a huge influence on me. I can’t say my style bears all that many similarities to his but Surfing With The Alien is a must listen for any budding guitarist. Joe has a real gift when it comes writing instrumental hooks. When it comes to guitar solos one of the things I always tell people that don’t play but are curious about the art is that a good solo should be memorable enough that you can (and want to) sing the melody.
I literally get the main melodies in Crushing Day and the title track stuck in my head my head regularly. I’ll even jam on Crushing Day and add my own little interpolations sometimes. I think technical prowess is cool, but if the only people you’re reaching with it are other musicians you should rethink your priorities. For this reason many other guitar virtuosos like Yngwie and Petrucci don’t do much for me…but Joe does. He really knows how to craft a song.
Really the only guitarists that I shamelessly borrow from at this stage are Marty Friedman and Synyster Gates. I’ve mainly been studying fusion players lately though. Woof what were we on about again?
Oh. DMB. I have a complicated relationship with them. I think they’ve made a lot of bad, annoying music that normies are overly attached to over the years. I could go the rest of my life without hearing Ants Marching, Crash Into Me, Tripping Billies, etc and yet I get subjected to them constantly.
But I’ll be damned if they don’t also have some music that’s absolutely tremendous. #41 is just perfect in every way. Those weird jazz chords, the sax, the absolutely anguished lyrics about a love lost, the outro jam…god that song is good. Drive In Drive Out is a real favorite of mine too. That syncopated, groovy outro in 6/8 is just so cool.
I guess you could say DMB frustrates me because I think they’re an absolutely stellar group of musicians that doesn’t always write music that meets their potential…but I don’t think I’d ever say they’re overrated necessarily. I also really love the Dave Matthews solo song Stay Or Leave. That’s another beautiful gut punch of a song.
I think #41 from the old Luther College album helped seal my fandom. I’m a mediocre guitarist, but always used Dave Matthews, Zeppelin, and a few others as my “goals” and striving for some of those songs has made a lot of other things much easier in comparison. #41 was one of the first songs I think I learned to play all the way through and I still love it.
DMB is one of those bands where a lot of the songs are “the whole is less than the sum of the parts” which is kind of a sad statement.
I’m terrible on any kind of lead parts, but Dave almost blends the realms of rhythm and lead, which is cool. But like you said, good solos fit the song and can be vocalized as part of the melody. I can “sing” the Comfortably Numb solos in my sleep. Satriani and Vaughan and Steely Dan were all staples of my childhood, so there’s a lot of nostalgia there, too. And all the old Metallica stuff, even if Kirk Hammett felt like he was just showing off in most of the songs.
No matter how hard I try, I will never be able to disassociate the Dave Matthews Band with the poop-dumping incident on a bridge over the Chicago River.
Oh, trust me, same here. “New Dave Matthews content dropping tomorrow”
Grab the umbrella.
It was when Clear Channel’s algorithm clung to Viva la Vida like a mother bear that they jumped the shark for me and I started calling them Overplay.
Could infidelity be used to describe sound quality?
A white Bronco would have been an interesting retro touch.
OTOH the retro touching is what got them here in the first place, so maybe not.
*salutes*
Anybody want a peanut?
White Ford Bronco is a well known 90s cover band here in DC. I’ve been dragged to a couple of their shows. Unfortunately they’re like THE night of the year for basic, hard drinking white people. The crowd is always real drunk, real confrontational, and devoid of standard rock show etiquette. Fortunately all of my friends that were into their schtick realized the last time we were subjected to it that there are better ways to spend a Saturday night then getting pushed around by sweaty dudes that are 13 Millers deep trying to rock out to Little Black Backpack….
It’s track season in Saratoga Springs right now. The above situation can be found at a dozen bars within a 3 block radius from now until Labor Day.
Think I remember those guys when I lived there a few years ago, didn’t look like a good time. (Sure wish I’d gotten out to more gigs while I was there tough.)