Hoonage

Thank you for joining me today for an introduction into a very important topic.

"Hoonage" is a noun that broadly covers the spectrum of usually extralegal activities people undertake in their motor vehicles, but can be more specifically defined as those activities that said people do with great enthusiasm, some level of ingenuity or boldness (however misguided in either case) and reckless abandon.

Hoonage is not a simple subject and shouldn't be approached as such. Hoonage has a long history, has both light and dark aspects (as we shall examine), and can even be the subject of heated debate.

The best recorded hoonage allows the viewer to bask in its beauty much as he would in the warm, radiant light of a fine stained glass window in the sanctum of a church. Conversely, in some cases, the hoonage is so gratuitous that the viewer can be moved the exclaim, "Ahhhh, that's some good hoonage," with much the same inflection as he commented about good porn, before he grew out of that. A long, long time ago.

"The Blues Brothers" is a good introduction to hoonage for those of you otherwise unaquainted.

Recently, I reviewed soon particularly daring hoonage on Jalopnik.com: Hoonage, Exhibit 1

Said hoonage, although very exciting, ultimately disheartened me. Put more directly, (and this is a term with which you might not be familiar), it sucked. While this kind of action is fun in movies, these hoons put many lives in danger to satisfy their own egos.

This hoonage is therefore in direct opposition to the best hoonage, which endangers the hoons and the hoons only, thereby inspiring admiration of the hoons' bravado in the audience (sort of like the chase scene in Batman Begins, but without the rubber suit). This hoonage is also characterized by a universal appeal: In the instance of watching a Citreon 2CV being blown to pieces by the engine of a 747, few viewers can keep a straight face.

Several more satisfying examples can be found here: Hoonage, Exhibit 2.

Thank you for taking the time to learn more about this important topic.