Molly Hatchet – "Flirtin' With Disaster" (1979)

I’m traveling down the road

And I’m flirting with disaster

I got the pedal to the floor

Have you seen the new Tesla Cybertruck?

Here’s one that was in the garage where I park most Saturdays before taking my weekly post-farmers market bike rides:

I’m not sure if realtor Nwabueze “Eze” Okwodu drives that Cybertruck or simply pays the owner of the vehicle to advertise his business.  

After seeing that ad-covered Cybertruck, did I jot down Eze’s phone number so I could call him the next time I needed a realtor?  

Actually, I did not.

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When I rode back to the parking garage at the end of my bike ride, this Cybertruck was parked next to my car:

Cybertruck exteriors are made of unpainted stainless steel.  Tesla will sell you urethane-based film “wraps” in a variety of colors – including Tactical Green, Rose Gold, Abyss Blue, and Iridescent Purple – for a mere $6500.  Bu it looks to me like the owner of the Cybertruck that parked next to me opted for the clear wrap that Tesla offers for only $5000.

I don’t care whether you choose the clear wrap or one of the colored ones: the Cybertruck is the stupidest-looking thing in the history of the world.

The cheapest Cybertruck model that’s currently available costs almost $100,000.  It’s mind-boggling that anyone would pay that much money for something that looks like it was designed by an eight-year-old Minecraft prodigy.

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Here’s what the Internet thinks of the Cybertruck:

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Molly Hatchet is sort of a poor man’s Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Both groups hailed from Jacksonville, Florida.  At one point, rumor had it that Skynyrd frontman Ronnie Van Zant was going to produce Molly Hatchet.

“Then the worst possible thing happened,” Bruce Crump (the band’s original drummer) told an interviewer in 2008.  “We were coming back to Atlanta after playing a gig near Lynchburg, Tennessee.  When we pulled into the hotel parking lot, Pat Armstrong, who had become our manager and had gone with us, went inside the hotel to check us in.  All of a sudden, he walked onto the bus, white as a sheet, and said that the Skynyrd plane had crashed.”

Molly Hatchet’s founder, the late Dave Hlubek, once offered this explanation of how the group chose its name:

We took a John Deere Tractor hat and everybody  came up with three names apiece and put them in the hat.  We did  it  like the lottery.  We said that whatever name was pulled out of the hat, by God, was going to be the name of the band, and that's it!  Well, the 18th name, the only one left, was Molly Hatchet!  We said, ‘What the f*ck is that?’  It started out, ‘Molly F*cking Hatchet.’  Everyone was saying, ‘Who’s the  girl  in  the band?’  People of Jacksonville took it upon themselves to start making bumper stickers.  We just kept the name.

According to the the group’s website, Molly Hatchet was a 17th-century woman who decapitated a number of her lovers with an axe.  Another source says that “Hatchet Molly” was a Civil War-era prostitute who had a penchant for beheading her customers.

“Flirtin’ With Disaster,” the group biggest hit single, peaked at #42 on the Billboard “Hot 100” in 1980.  I think it deserved better than that.

Click here to listen to “Flirtin’ With Disaster.”

Click here to buy that recording from Amazon.