Matrix Meet

Matrix Meet

On Saturday afternoon, Tony, Abel and Mike picked me up and we headed to the Palisades Park Mall for um, a "Matrix Meet." WOOT! For those of you who aren't in the know, a Matrix Meet is when the owners of Toyota Matrices hook up, park their cars and take pictures of them in various formations. Okay they also talk shop. Supposedly. From what I saw, mostly they flash Matrix gang signs and admire their rides. I tried to learn their secret handshake but they scoffed at me for being an outsider. In the end I managed to find out what it was, but only because I told the guy I'd pose naked on his car, next year on February 29th. Mark your calendars.

The only person in our group who had a legitimate reason for being there was Tony, the rest of us were just Meet Crashers. He even got an official name tag that said "Hello my name is BLUE MATRIX." Okay not really but I would have cried with joy if he had. Prior to the gathering, I actually thought we were being stereotypically Asian, including Mike, who gets lumped in with us despite being more pinkish than brownish yellow. I so thought that it was going to be a big rice bowl, I even contemplated putting on black pants with a black tank top and stuffing my Sanrio coinpurse, M.A.C. lipstick and Issey Miyake perfume into my Prada bag. But when we got there, out of the 40 or so people there I only saw one Asian guy. Weird. But he was taking a lot of pictures with a really big camera so I felt instantly better.

The Matrix Meet attracted other types of cars as well (who obviously didn't get the memo about what type of gathering this was going to be) and they branched out and formed their own various car meets all over the commuter parking lot. The most amusing were three guys with Scions who were trying to re-enact a Scion showroom commercial by trying to park their cars in sort of a W. It was... well it was a little sad. Not kicked puppy sad, more like old guy at the dance club sad.

After we had looked at Matrices for awhile ("Hey, there's a red one!!!" "Oh look, a grey one!!" "Hey that one is grey too but a different shade!") I pretended I had to pee. It was really just a shameless but successful ploy to get us into Target. But on our way to pretend bladder salvation, we got sidetracked by something in the parking lot of Home Depot:

"Don't hate me because I'm beautiful."

Even people with $440,000 cars need screws and paintbrushes.

The puddles underneath the Carrera GT are me and Mike's drool. I took about 50 pictures of that thing. V10, 605 hp and does 0-60 in 3.8 seconds. Holy Christ. One one thousand, two one thousand three one thou-- VRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM. I told the guys that when I win the lottery I'd get them each one. So if you're on the Turnpike and you see a black one (Geo) followed by a deep red one (Mike), a midnight blue one (Abe) and a pewter one (T) then you know.

All in all it was a fun day. I walked away with a stomach full of country-fried steak, garlic mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, gravy, garlic toast and a side salad with sesame ginger dressing. YUM.

Comment from Mike J: "I believe your exact words for extraction from the Matrix meet were, 'Where ever I am in FIVE MINUTES I'm peeing.' And then you went and sat in my car."