After having spent the last four years using up just about every excuse not to drive in L.A., I finally caved last week and now have a car to call my own.

Anyway, driving sucks. Driving in traffic, especially, always gives me visions of T.S. Eliot’s description of the lonely masses in “The Waste Land”: “A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, / I had not thought death had undone so many. / Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled, / And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.”

Imagine if he’d seen the 405 on a Friday evening.

The Los Angeles traffic jam is the ultimate microcosm of modern man’s isolation. You sit alone among countless others, shut off from the rest of the world. No one wants to be there, but here we all are, and God forbid someone make eye contact and acknowledge human connection of any kind.

This gives rise to some strange behavior – we all become detached commentators on the outside world.

Someone will be rolling up right next to you, windows down, and you’ll turn to your friend and say something nasty like, “That guy looks exactly like what would happen if Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy had a kid together, only uglier.”

There’s also, of course, checking out the opposite sex. These are things you’d never say to people in the real world. The last time I crossed a street in front of a car, the driver was probably screaming, “Today!” in the safety of his air-conditioned bubble.

So the automobile offers the opportunity to say whatever you want about what you’re observing. If only arts writers were so brash. Har.

But, you’re in good luck, because this is my last column, and I’m going to go ahead and say everything I wanted to publicly state but never did, for whatever reason.

Prepare for a series of unrelated and contentious proclamations, a kind of amalgam of Oscar Wilde’s preface to “The Picture of Dorian Gray” and masturbatory Xanga entries:

Not that I don’t enjoy reading them, but I really don’t care whether these three critics like a film or not: Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times), Owen Gleiberman (Entertainment Weekly) and Richard Corliss (Time).

I mean, Ebert is the O.G. (Original gangsta) and all. Gleiberman, on the other hand, is most definitely not, despite his initials, but I appreciate him more for his knowledge and passion than his actual opinion of a film’s merit.

Major film studios are more evil than major music labels.

“The Big Lebowski” makes me laugh more than any other movie. Now, the Coens aren’t exactly the Marxes, but I grudgingly admit that that makes “Lebowski” the funniest movie I’ve ever seen (My favorite comedy, on the other hand, is probably “Manhattan.” Or maybe “Dr. Strangelove,” or “Bringing Up Baby,” or anything Billy Wilder ever made.)

The Oscars do matter.

Blockbusters are the most overrated kind of film. Critics hand out free passes when a big-budget movie contains just a shred of imagination or creativity because it’s not supposed to aim any higher. This summer alone we’ve had “War of the Worlds” and the new “Star Wars” get by on so little.

A great film about Sept. 11 has already been made, and it’s called “The 25th Hour.”

“Better Luck Tomorrow” was pretty forgettable. I was supposed to like it, see, because I’m Asian American, and that means the media makes me hate myself. And when an admirably intentioned movie comes along that puts us front and center, I should support it. Which I did – and I’m fine with that – but it’s nothing I’d ever see again.

“Singin’ in the Rain” is God’s gift to misery.

I’ve never seen a truly great anime film outside of Studio Ghibli, and I doubt one exists. This includes “Akira” and “Ghost in the Shell” and whatever else you want to throw out. There’s a lot of good stuff, clearly, but I’m never going to confuse Oshii with Ozu.

I’ve never cried during a movie (maybe when I was a little kid), but I should have during “La Dolce Vita” or “Au Hasard Balthazar.”

Finally, Clint Eastwood ain’t all that. This is coming from a pretty big fan of both “Unforgiven” and “Mystic River.” Though he’s one of the most celebrated American directors today, I would hesitate to call any of his films great. Just because they’re solemn and no-frills doesn’t mean they contain any depth. Call me heartless, but I thought “Million Dollar Baby” was cheap. And his scores are awful.

Well, that’s that. Now, if you’ll excuse me while I duck and run. Or hop into my Honda.

In over a year as a columnist, Lee has never received hate mail. Make history by e-mailing him at alee@media.ucla.edu.