Ride-Alongs Are The Way To Make Charlotte Ronson, Jesse Eisenberg, Florida Sheriff (!!!!) Open Up

What is it with New York profile pieces and moving vehicles? Charlotte Ronson, 32, recently learned to drive, so naturally she takes a WSJ writer on a ride. Jesse Eisenberg, geeky movie star, goes pedicabbing with a New Yorker wordsmith, and - most importantly - Sheriff Grady Judd takes a reporter around in his cruiser.

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[Photo courtesy of WSJ]

What do these traffic encounters tell us about the notables? Well, we learn that people drive and ride in vehicles, and can talk while doing it. Okay. We can get behind that.

In Charlotte Ronson's case, she's just another adult-adult who's learning belatedly. Which means that the WSJ, in NYT-fashion, is probably going to publish a THIZ IZ A TREND article soon. Ronson's newly minted license was motivated by sibling rivalry with model sis Annabelle, and by the designer's increasingly frequent trips to LA to promote her line. In the car, Ronson frets about the auto-shift ("I gotta reverse, I gotta reverse."), comments cheerfully on billboards, berates herself for poor habits ("Fun times. I gotta focus."), and gloats over full radio control (she listens to "Telephone" and "Hotel Room Service," the WSJ faithfully reports) . She has no plans to buy a car, because she'd still "rather just walk or take a taxi."

Charlotte Ronson can now wear her own Zelda Booties everywhere, as she no longer has to walk.

Good talk! Moving on . . .

Jesse Eisenberg, who learned to pilot a pedicab for the low-budget flick "The Living Wake," turns the tables and rides in one with Talk of the Town's Lizzie Widdicombe. Mostly he discusses his own awkwardness and talks to the pedicab driver, Oz, a Turkish integral calculus teacher. The actor doesn't demonstrate his pedaling skills at all; instead, he mostly lists the skills he doesn't possess - math, kissing girls during his preadolescent years, going to birthday parties, understanding what teenage fans are shouting at him, interacting socially. The ride is more revealing than Ronson's, mainly because Eisenberg mentions that he ended up in a mental hospital while still in middle school. Non-pedicab-riding rubes will be interested to learn that rides cost two bucks per block . . . but Eisenberg, whom we now want to indoctrinate into the world of kissing girls and going to birthday parties, pays Oz 75. Jesse Eisenberg tells Curent TV that his mother is a clown and he is no longer impotent. Here is the point of this entire blog post: Sheriff Grady Judd, who is "like a movie star" in Polk County, Florida, takes a tv reporter around in his cruiser. He goes to a prayer breakfast. He does a radio station interview. He delivers a speech at the Fallen Officers' Memorial. Charlotte Ronson and Jesse Eisenberg could take lessons from Grady Judd on how to deliver the perfect ride-along interview, because the lawman's soundbites are pitch-perfect. The Sheriff discusses his 2006 explanation to a reporter that his SWAT team pumped sixty-eight bullets into a stand-off suspect because "that's all the bullets we had." He declares, "A thug is a thug." Also: "Some bad guy is going to jail for aggravating the community. So, how do you beat that?" Maybe Charlotte and Jesse should just become southern sheriffs?

Sheriff Brady Judd demonstrates how to make meth. Seriously. If you don't believe us, you can read about the new meth recipe at News13.