by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

It's good to be clean and well-presented. This does not apply to cars. Don't worry about your car. Don't fix it, don't clean it, don't maintain it. For some reason, we project virtue on those who drive shitboxes.

Proof? I give proof. I asked a French journalist about Pierre Foglia, the city's big name veteran columnist at La Presse. In the past, my friend always shrugged indifferently about Foglia. But since then, he's seen Foglia's car and can't stop spouting his virtues. "He drives just a normal car!" Apparently Foglia has foregone the standard columnist helipad-and-motorcade routine.

Yet another: when widely-admired preservationist-activist Mike Fish discusses city politicians, he usually relies on an unflattering adjective that begins with the word "cock" and ends in "sucker." But one day, during the Bourque era, the then-mayor motored by to meet Fish. The usually-cynical Fish sang a new tune. "He was driving an old Toyota!" Fish couldn't bring himself to say a bad word about Bourque after that.

Our current mayor supposedly saved a guy's life while driving on Pine. Rather than becoming a folk legend, the story was forgotten. Why? The mayor was sitting in the back of a limo at the time of the incident.

Bad cars are good press. The National Enquirer once ran an article about how Wal-Mart billionaire Sam Walton always only drove a crappy old pickup. For this I remember him fondly.

As a kid, baseball photographer Aussie Whiting took me to an Expos practice. I got to visit the clubhouse. But most memorable was Whiting's car. It had no floor. You could see the pavement flying by beneath your feet. Beats a DVD player any day.

My father also consciously un-maintained an impeccably rusty, inoperative car in our driveway when I was a kid. It was designed to lower our expectations and scare off creditors and bailiffs. The neighbours must've been thrilled at the fact that we made keeping-up-with-the-Joneses so easy.

When you get a car, try to get one without such needless luxuries as a windshield and floors. You got a new $40,000 import? Slap on some ugly duct tape around the back bumper - that'll help prove to the world that you renounce vanity in its vehicular form.

Meanwhile, you want to know who'll win the PQ leadership and the city mayor's job. Who's hauling the most rust?

• • •

A few more points I've been wanting to whisper into your ear. This is not to be read out loud.

1. Moving Day is upon us, and in my books you have the right to free discarded boxes from grocery stores. Most will hand them out, according to my phone survey, although not Loblaws. Theirs go straight into a box compactor (some branches will put some aside if you phone). Some crazy clerk at the IGA on Bannantyne says they can't hand out boxes because "we have to pay for them now."

2. The big new library never opens on Mondays. Quebec officially sucks.

3. Miss Canadiana has me miffed. This subversive Toronto she-devil has been conducting a clever art stunt. She declared herself Miss Canadiana and shows up at events and poses for tourists wearing her tiara and sash. She's visited Frankfurt, London and Senegal with her maple-leaf laden outfit, as well as parts throughout Canada. But she won't come here. She refuses to come to Montreal because some lunatic-idiot in her group of advisors believes the maple leaf costume might offend Montreal separatists. Write her via www.misscanadiana.ca to urge her to reconsider.

4. This farm labour scandal has me bugged. Why is it that only farmers get to hire dirt cheap, less-than-minimum-wage labour? What about the rest of us? I propose we just hire migrant workers to do all our government jobs. Imagine the tax savings.

5. I keep getting tipped off about Celine Dion secretly flying in to wail a few ditties at the latest H. Grégoire showroom launch in St-Eustache on June 8. The ridiculously fast-growing company, owned by the Armenian-Canadian Greg Harabedian, denies the persistent tale.

Comments? kgravy@openface.ca