Posted on: Tuesday, June 22, 2004

Phat rides make for good TV

By Lee Cataluna
Advertiser Columnist

Try this out and let me know what happens:

Ask the most unlikely person in your circle if they've seen "Pimp My Ride." Ask your grandma.

People love this show, and it's not just the 12- to 34-year-old male demographic feelin' the love for X, Q and their phat rides.

For the uninitiated few, X is the host of the show, Xzibit, a rapper and car enthusiast. Q is the team leader for the sketchiest group of work-furlough-looking auto body and car accessory experts you've ever seen. And phat rides are what they make out of the rustiest, clunkiest, puka-est junka-lunkas they can find.

It's Cinderella's pumpkin-to-a-coach, except the coach ends up with 40-inch rims, DVD players with 17-inch monitors and flames shooting out the back.

(Actually, the crew at West Coast Customs, the Los Angeles shop that does the make overs, had to take off the flames. Too dangerous.)

The first season of the auto makeover show has just finished on MTV, and during that time, the boyz installed a fish tank, a bubble machine, a fountain, a ping-pong table and myriad fabulous audiovisual and gaming packages on cars that used to look like they had been pulled off the side of Kapa'a Quarry Road.

The show's appeal to the auto-accessory/tech set is obvious, but to those of us who think the radio that came with the Camry is just fine, the lure is more the spirit of the show than the flash of the accessories.

It's charming. In a pop culture/television atmosphere of obnoxious tricks, fabricated conflict and only-one-is-the-winner, "Pimp My Ride," despite the title and surface appearances, is happy and good-natured.

The folks who drive the rust buckets are young, struggling, and doing the best with what they have — which, judging by what they drive, isn't very much. Some of the episodes feature particularly hard-luck cases, like the guy who just had a kidney transplant or the 19-year-old boy who had a baby seat in his jalopy because he takes care of his little sister. But the show's producers don't lean heavily on the sympathy button. They don't insult us with sentimentality. For the young man with a kidney transplant, the team's upholsterer, Ish, designed a pouch in the seat to hold a supply of water he could drink while driving. And that's all that was said about that.

For those with delicate dispositions, you should be forewarned that the typical first words out of the car owners' mouths when they see their new pimp rides almost always have to be beeped out.

But if you look past the tattoos, the piercings, the bleep-out-every-other-word dialogue and the sometimes outlandish accessories on the cars, it's a show that celebrates creativity, teamwork, second chances and kindness.

Ask Grandma. She's down wid dat.

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.