Here's another rerun…probably the last for now since I will finish the killer-deadline script within the next few hours. I hope. This is another of those "incredible coincidence" stories from my life and if you ever doubt these are true, ask anyone who's known me a long time. Ask Marv Wolfman or Paul Dini or Sergio Aragonés or Brinke Stevens or Steve Sherman or Jewel Shepard or anyone else who'll tell you, "Yeah, these things happen to Mark." This piece first ran here on 10/2/14…
Another story about a car I owned. This one is rather short but the coincidence in it is worth sharing with you.
In 1992, I bought the '93 Lexus…a very good car, by the way. It cost me twice what another new car might have cost but it also lasted twice as long as another new car might have lasted. It was not as extravagant an investment as it might have seemed. A friend of mine who bought a new Chevrolet — a Cavalier, I think — around the same time compared notes with me years later. He wound up spending a lot more money than I did once you factored in repairs and its shorter life and the pittance of resale value.
I'm thinking this story took place in '94 or '95…around there. Maybe '96. Whenever, it was before the Comic-Con in San Diego had a Preview Night on Wednesday. It opened Thursday so I decided to drive down Wednesday evening after rush hour. Wednesday afternoon before the trip, I took the Lexus in for routine servicing. My Service Consultant — his name was Andy — performed the scheduled ritual, rotating tires, checking brakes, changing oil, etc.
I got my car back at 3 PM and left L.A. for San Diego at 8, driving straight through without stopping. I pulled it into the circular driveway at the Marriott next to the convention center, let them unload my luggage and then left the Lexus for the attendants to valet park. I was checking in at the desk when one of them ran in and said, "Sir, we can't start your car."
As it turned out, neither could I. Absolutely dead. A number of attendants tried to push it to one side out of the way and they couldn't do that, either. The wheels were all locked.
Lexus then had its own proprietary version of the Auto Club. From inside the immobile car, I phoned and they told me nothing could be done that night; that I'd have to wait 'til morning and they'd dispatch a flatbed to take it to the nearest Lexus dealer. They also told me about a secret switch that had to be disengaged in order to push the car when it wasn't running. (I believe this feature did not appear on later models.)
That done, we pushed it to one side so departures and arrivals would not be impeded at the Marriott and I went up to my room and off to sleep.
Next morning, I went to the con and hosted a panel. I also arranged with a friend to host my Noon panel in case, as seemed likely, I didn't get back in time. Then I ran back to the Marriott just as the flatbed truck was arriving. Somehow — though it was parked on the curve of a circular driveway — they got my car on the truck. I rode with it as it was taken to the nearest Lexus dealership, which was in Kearny-Mesa ten miles away.
We arrived at the garage. The new head of the Service Department, there on his first day, took one look at it on the Flatbed, recognized my license plate and said, "My God! I know what I did wrong!"
It was Andy, the guy who'd been in charge of its servicing the day before in Beverly Hills. That had been his last day there before he started down here. Even while my car was still on the truck, he realized he'd forgotten to reconnect some cable under the hood. The driver unloaded my car, Andy popped the hood and reconnected the cable, it started and I drove back to the Marriott.
I got back in time to host my Noon panel. I think it was about Incredible Coincidences in comic books and how things like that never happen in the real world.