Despite the depth of vehicle care programming currently occupying your television screen, there's nothing particularly fun about turning wrenches.
Sure, we tune in to Funkmaster Flex on "Rides" as he pores over the finer points of $70,000 customized SUVs. And who hasn't imagined the joys of seeing their own oil-burning bomb refurbished like the cars on MTV's "Pimp My Ride"?
But deep inside, even the mechanic with the filthiest fingernails knows that vehicle maintenance is right up there with hanging drywall and stripping paint when it comes to thrills.
So maybe it was a need to link mechanics with stripping -- not the sandpaper or turpentine variety -- that led Arizona's Andy MacDonald to create what has to be one of the strangest vehicle care concepts since the bikini car wash. MacDonald is marketing a series of DVDs known as the Topless Tune-Up, which involves himself, a pair of buxom young women, a series of late-model motorcycles and all sorts of activities that would have your local OSHA representative whipping out their citations book.
Not that there's anything kinky or even erotic going on during MacDonald's one-hour instructional videos. A skilled and experienced technical editor for several motorcycle magazines, MacDonald approaches the task of changing engine oil, replacing spark plugs and other mechanical necessities as if, well, as if he was being assisted by two bearded, tattooed guys named Bear and Chains.
But he's not. His two assistants are a pair of chirpy bleach-blondes who look like they've fallen off the cover of a "Girls Gone Wild" video.
The idea is supposed to be sexy, playful and even irreverent. Instead, viewers are overwhelmed with one thought and one thought only: Somebody's going to get one heck of an exhaust pipe burn. This ends up making the whole affair about as sensual as a root canal.
MacDonald, for his part, is not the first entrepreneur to try and make otherwise dull hobbies more interesting through titillation.
Videotapes of nude or near-nude women firing machine guns have long been available at truck stops and gun shows. And it's only a matter of time before someone sells DVDs of their girlfriends vacuuming and making beds with nothing on but the radio.
The problem is, by trying to make even the mundane sexy, even the sexy becomes mundane -- topless or not.
