JANUARY 22, 2025

The original - and still our favorite - Autoextremist logo. 

The AE Quote of the Century: Everybody loves The High-Octane Truth. Until they don't. -WG 

Editor-in-Chief's Note: This just in from the "Fools And Their Money" File. Guess what? St. Elon's "Cyberfiasco" is a bust. In an Automotive News report on Thursday, the "Cybertruck" has been officially designated a flop. Despite Musk’s claims of more than one million Cybertruck reservations before its November 2023 launch, the joke of a pickup came up short in its first full year of production, according to industry estimates and U.S. registration data. How short? In 2024, Tesla sold about 39,000 Cybertrucks in the U.S., according to a Jan. 13 estimate from Cox Automotive. S&P Global Mobility said there were 35,236 Cybertruck registrations from November 2023 to November 2024, the most recent data available. For all those Muskateers out there who paid way over sticker in stupid money to be the first-on-the-block to have one of those abominations, Boo-Fucking-Hoo. You deserve to be anywhere from $20k-50k in the hole when the "instant" depreciation catches up with you. -PMD 

The AE Song of the Week:

I've been a bad, bad girl
I've been careless with a delicate man
And it's a sad, sad world
When a girl will break a boy just because she can

Don't you tell me to deny it
I've done wrong and I want to suffer for my sins
I've come to you 'cause I need guidance to be true
And I just don't know where I can begin

Ooh, what I need is a good defense
'Cause I'm feeling like a criminal
And I need to be redeemed
To the one I've sinned against
Because he's all I ever knew of love

Heaven help me for the way I am
Save me from these evil deeds before I get them done
I know tomorrow brings the consequence at hand
But I keep living this day like the next will never come

Oh, help me but don't tell me to deny it
I've got to cleanse myself of all these lies, 'til I'm good enough for him
I've got a lot to lose and I'm bettin' high so I'm begging you
Before it ends, just tell me where to begin

Hey, what I need is a good defense
'Cause I'm feeling like a criminal
And I need to be redeemed
To the one I've sinned against
Because he's all I ever knew of love

Let me know the way
Before there's hell to pay
Give me room to lay the law and let me go
I've got to make a play
To make my lover stay
So what would an angel say the devil wants to know?

What I need is a good defense
'Cause I'm feeling like a criminal
And I need to be redeemed
To the one I've sinned against
Because he's all I ever knew of love

Yeah, what I need is a good defense
'Cause I'm feeling like a criminal
And I need to be redeemed
To the one I've sinned against
Because he's all I ever knew of love

Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh
Ah, ah, ah-yeah
Yeah

"Criminal" by Fiona Apple from the album "Tidal" (1996)*. Written by Fiona Apple. Publisher: FHW Music. Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind. Watch the Offical HD Video here.

*This song is about Apple making a mistake in a relationship and therefore making her a "criminal." Depression and self-loathing were a common theme in Fiona's songwriting at the time. She told Interview magazine: "It's psychologically and chemically impossible for me to be happy." The video, showing an 18-year-old Fiona Apple stripping down to her underwear and wandering around a basement filled with lots of young bodies, is one of the most controversial ever to hit MTV. Apple has a dissociated look throughout, and the setting is rather seedy, implying it's where immoral acts take place and are sometimes recorded - at one point we see Apple on a TV screen, as if someone is making a video for the "barely legal" market. It was directed by Mark Romanek, whose credits include "Closer" by Nine Inch Nails and "Rain" by Madonna. "We wanted something blatantly erotic," he told Entertainment Weekly. His plan was to have Apple play the part livelier, with some booty shaking, but she did it in her natural melancholy way instead - nobody has asked her to shake booty since. Apple was on board with the concept and remained on good terms with Romanek, but sometimes got uneasy discussing it over and over in interviews. "I decided if I was going to be exploited, then I would do the exploiting myself," became her sound bite. Apple typically works by writing songs that are extensions of her journals, baring her soul for all to hear in a process that can be years in the making. "Criminal" is an outlier: she claims she wrote the song in just 45 minutes to prove she could, and to give her record label (Work, a division of Sony) the hit song they were after. She sprang into action after one of her friends was giving her grief about how she wasn't writing more songs. "The next time you see me, I'm gonna have a new song," she told her. "I can force myself to do the work, but only if someone is right up behind me," Apple explained. (Knowledge courtesy of Songfacts.com)

Editor's Note: Click on "Next 1 Entries" at the bottom of this page to see previous issues. - WG