Paved with Drama

By David Matthews

You may think that “Romeo and Juliet” has been performed in every imaginable form over the past 400 years, but Estonia has found a way to give Shakespeare some added horsepower.

In a summer production, the Estonian theatre collective Kinoteater recast Romeo as a rally truck and Juliet as a red Ford pickup. The supporting cast included buses, firetrucks and even a cement truck with hearts painted on its drum. The whole thing took place in a disused limestone quarry.

Forget iambic pentameter — this wordless production featured excavators waving their mechanical arms in combat, vehicles spinning in choreographed circles, and yes, trucks extending their bumpers toward each other in what can only be described as “kissing.” 

And surprisingly, audiences were into it. Attendees described the production to Reuters as “sweet and cute.” Which, to be clear, are words now being applied to pickups and cement trucks.

As co-director Paavo Piik explained, “It’s basically a big experiment about what it means to do Shakespeare today and whether we can find new ways to do it.” As they say, all the world’s a quarry, and all the trucks are merely players. 

Title Fight

In Ohio, one woman decided that if a car dealership could take her Kia, she could take their name. 

Enter Tiah McCreary, who in February 2024 purchased a 2022 Kia K5 from Taylor Kia in Lima, Ohio, with financing arranged through Global Lending Services (GLS). Everything was fine until a month later when GLS said, “Oops, not enough info to finalize the loan.”

The dealership repossessed the car while McCreary was at work.

Instead of sulking, McCreary started digging. She discovered that the dealership’s parent group had been sloppy and let the business name “Taylor Kia of Lima” expire. So, she turned paperwork into payback and registered the dealership’s name for herself.

Once she owned the name, she sent the dealership a cease-and-desist letter informing them they could no longer operate as Taylor Kia without her consent. Cue the legal fireworks.

In June 2024, McCreary filed a complaint alleging fraud, unjust enrichment and violations of the Consumer Sales Practices Act. Taylor Cadillac tried to duck into arbitration, since McCreary had signed an agreement covering disputes about the car sale. The court initially agreed and dismissed the case, but McCreary won an appeal and now the dispute over the business name will be decided in open court.

A trial will ultimately decide whether a frustrated car buyer can legally brand herself as a dealership, but it’s clear that Shakespeare had it wrong — revenge isn’t a dish best served cold. It’s best served with a notarized business registration form.

Cigarette Butts

The cigarette butt is the cockroach of litter: small, ugly and nearly impossible to kill. An estimated 4.5 trillion butts are discarded each year, and they decay at glacial speed. So, researchers channeled Macbeth and said, “Out, damned butt! Out, I say!” 

Enter a team from the University of Granada and the University of Bologna, who figured out that filters in cigarette butts — mostly made of plastic and cellulose fibers — can be crushed, waxed, pelletized and mixed into recycled asphalt. Voilà: your morning commute could soon be paved with Marlboros.

The process is delightfully absurd. First, researchers strip out any leftover gunk (you know, the “organic material”), then squash the filters into pellets. These pellets melt into the hot petroleum goo known as bitumen, where they reinforce the asphalt by making it stronger, more flexible, and less prone to cracking. 

Plus, the added wax makes the asphalt easier to manufacture at lower temperatures, which means less energy use and fewer emissions. 

Tests showed cigarette-infused asphalt outperformed the regular stuff, leading scientists to imagine adding even more junk into the mix. Future highways could be a patchwork of filters, plastics and whatever else drivers can’t stop tossing out the window. 

So, the next time you see someone flick a cigarette butt onto the street, relax — they’re not littering; they’re contributing to infrastructure. RB

David Matthews has been chronicling the unexpectedly humorous side of transportation news since 2000. The stories are all true.