9:35 The dealership is playing old classic rock, and I’m surprised: I haven’t heard some of these in a while. I’d forgotten these songs. Moody Blues, Question. A good song. A bit episodic, with different parts bolted together, but that wasn’t unusual then. We’re about twenty minutes into the car-buying process, and I’ve signed four pieces of paper and seen the estimate on the trade-in knocked down a bit. I understood this and expected worse. The trade-in car drives fine but it steers like a Conestoga wagon.

The odd thing is that I want to drive my old car to work. Until I give it to my wife, I want to reassure it I still love it. And that’s the damndest thing about all this. After all that shopping and thinking and testing, I find out I love my car anyway. I saw some unfamiliar vehicle on the way here, brightly colored, interesting style, and I winced - me want, me want shiny thing - but then I thought no, google it, falls apart, door slams like a dorm room mini-fridge. No.

Also, there’s something ridiculous about men my age and sporty cars. Everyone looks at them with amusement and pity. Dude. You’re not fooling anyone.

9:50 Now staring out the window at the grey bleak street, listening to Misty Mountain Hop. Waiting for that great drum full towards the end. A salesman at a nearly by desk is nodding his head to the song.

“Here comes that great drum fill,” I say. I air-drum it.

He nods. “They were the best.”

“This song is 55 years old,” I said.

“Still good.”

10:10 I signed four pieces of paper, and then the salesman went somewhere to do something and I’ve no idea what. I don’t know why I am sitting here instead of driving home. I want to walk into a showroom and point at something and say “that one,” and drive it away. Yes there has to be some paperwork, licensing and all that, but all this signing and then waiting and consultations with the manager about something or other - it’s annoying. I’ve sat here through Moody Blues, Led Zeppelin, and a Hendrix tune. Now it’s Steely Dan. Reeled years and all that. That wonderful Elliot Randall wet lead guitar.

10:25 I signed more papers and had the chance to get a black license plate. It’s $30 a year. The regular plate is $15, once. I passed on the opportunity to give the state $30 annually when I re-up my registration. The lady who handles the license said “perfect” in response to every choice I made.

10:50 Now it’s ZZTop. Tush. Had no idea in high school that this band would turn technotronic, and be astronaut dudes with leggy wives. They sounded like a roadhouse band.

11:30 After Tush the salesman returned. The music was Taking Care of Business, BTO. The salesman, asked who he thought it was, said Huey Lewis. So we had to look up BTO and talk about the Guess Who. He was better on these things than I expected, for a guy in his 30s. We ended up talking about music for 20 minutes, during which papers were filed, I guess. He got a signal from someone and we were done! I had a car. I went out and looked at it and I thought: well, yes! I like this car.

I got in the car and felt right at home.

He offered to show me the buttons and such, and I said I’ll figure it out. He said “Well, if you run into anything, let me know!”

I said that I did not intended to run into anything, I just bought it.

Then I hit the highway and punched it and it gave more than my old car, unstintingly, and handled like a dream.

The color is Nordic Forest Green. We’re done. The relief is all-encompassing.

So! What's the journey that takes us from this beloved fellow . . .       . . . to this one?

For a while, Don Knotts was the spokesman for Gaines. He’s a dog shrink. Question: does the ending still make sense to most people? The dog is obviously insane, because he thinks he’s Napoleon. You didn’t have to spell it out. The hat said it all. From the long-gone Straight Dope, answering a reader’s query about the I - am - Napoleon crazy cliche: In his landmark 1890 treatise The Principles of Psychology, William James describes a typical exhibition of hypnotism in which a subject is for comic effect led to believe that he’s Napoleon; a character in William De Morgan’s 1907 novel Alice-for-Short thinks he’s Napoleon but is counseled to keep it to himself lest he get locked up. The earliest filmed version of the gag is almost certainly found in the 1917 Stan Laurel short Nuts in May. No complete print survives, but film historian F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre says the story involves Laurel wandering the grounds of an insane asylum doing the Napoleon bit — hat, hand tucked in shirt. (Some of this footage made it into a later Laurel vehicle, Mixed Nuts.) To the extent that thinking you’re Napoleon remains with us, I’d bet Napoleon Bunny-Part (1956), starring one B. Bunny, did plenty to keep the premise alive. I think it was more than that. But why does Bugs limp at the end? I think . . . it's this. The famous Spirit of ’76 painting, and since the fife player has a bandaged head, do we transfer the implied infirmity or diminution of abilities to his leg?