When You Get a New Car...

And you're feelin like a star
What you gonna do?
GHOST RIDE IT!

This is the mantra, the theme song, of the insanely brilliant ghost riding movement. Long languishing in the defined and dark shadow of regular driving, ghost riding has finally broken free. No longer will it be considered second rate, behind rolling down the strip in your whip. Ghost riding, like the proverbial adolescent who rejects his father to become his own man, has rejected conventional wisdom, safety concerns and common sense and can proudly say, "I'm my own man!"

A weekend in Amherst spent watching Rihanna videos* (good god!), Ghost Riding The Whip 4: Ghost Ride It! and other crap on youtube has taught me many valuable things. For one, ghost rided the whip, not ghost rode the whip as many mistakenly believed, is the past tense of ghost ride the whip. The other is that ghost riding was/is so popular because secretly, all rappers want to ride floats in a parade.

*PS Rihanna's military outfit seems quite functional.