Where huddled masses of metal yearn to breathe free...

Kathryn Bigelow's riveting movie, The Hurt Locker, about a U.S. Army bomb squad in Iraq, has the verisimilitude of a documentary. The title is bomb squad slang for the world of pain the soldiers will be in if they fail to "clear" one of the roadside improvised explosive devices they spend their days tracking down and disarming.

Somewhat closer to home, I visited another, much milder kind of hurt locker...

Oh, the compromising positions you get into working on your car...

I drove by the body shop to see about getting my 20-year-old BMW repainted, but they were closed. No problem, I had my 40D with me...

Was Christo in Morristown last week?

My aches and pains are nothing compared to those this man unkinks in my 20-year-old BMW, whose 189,000 miles dwarf even the large number of annums on my odometer.