LOS ANGELES – I read the item on my Facebook page yesterday morning, and my heart sank:

Um, yeah, so if anyone sees my car out there without me behind the wheel, please let me know. Much to my surprise my whip was stolen last night.

My good friend, Todd Munson, had lost his “whip”. His ’86 Tercel was gone.

Todd and his better half live in a nice little enclave of LA not far from my own Hair District residence. The keyword, though, is LA. Big city, USA. After filling out the police report, he can follow up with questions about any, you know, leads. “Leads, yeah, sure. I’ll just check with the boys down at the crime lab, they’ve got four more detectives working on the case. They got us working in shifts!”

I thought this would be a good project for my Man from B.L.O.G. He agreed to enlist his staff at the applied technologies division of B.L.O.G. Seems they’ve been working with the Intelligence and Information Systems division of Raytheon, and along with Google Maps Street View, have created some really innovative night vision time displacement technologies.

We start out by locating the original car in the Street View window. Ah, there it is. ’86 Toyota Tercel. Roof-mount bike rack. Check. Duct tape bumper/fender integration. Check. Good.

Next, we insert my avatar/cybernaut into the program, using the same plug-in used in my first Hyuntley post. Scroll backwards through the space-time continuum, bending the fabric just-so. We’re getting into pre-dawn darkness now. Better invoke the Raytheon. What’s that? He sees something already? Aha! This is what we were looking for.

Just as Todd thought. It’s a similar model Tercel, probably trolling for a parts car. Who is that getting out of the suspect vehicle? He looks familiar. The next frame is just a lonely, empty space, except for a couple of New Zealanders who appear to be riding around the block on a tandem bicycle. I think they may be part of The Slow Bike Movement. Or perhaps they just decided to go for a bike ride.

We will indeed be checking in with the boys down at the crime lab from time to time. Just remember: sometimes you eat the bar, and sometimes, well, he eats you.

[MAY 12, 2009 UPDATE: Todd has launched his new online home, Unicorn Battleground, and has hit the ground running with his treatment of this incident. Give it a read, won't you? As a further incentive, Todd wrote a hilarious open letter to the thief on Craigslist. See his page for the link.]