UNIVERSAL DONOR: MA VIE EN CROUTE
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Universal Donor
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You are just a number to me! And that number is: PAGES UD MADE: My Books Page My Reviews Page My Reference Page My Music Page My Pictures My Store UD-RELATED PAGES: My LiveJournal My MySpace music page My Flickr page My del.icio.us page My Last.fm page My Amazon Wishlist HEAVY ROTATION Dan Deacon: Bromst Animal Collective: Merriweather Post Pavillion Bon Iver: For Emma, Forever Ago Vampire Weekend: Vampire Weekend Fleet Foxes: Fleet Foxes BLOGS ETC claude le monde nuncstans rock 'em stock 'em tomato nation postmodern drunkard tuckova 22 ghastly mess constintina total virility fuzzysquid drunken bee stacey nightmare elyse from ANTM stereolabrat dark side points jf_franklin 123 i love you READ NOW brotherhood 2.0 NOT BLOGS ETC qwantz (dinosaur comix) go fug yourself the burg cat and girl book of ratings married to the sea icanhascheezburger fire joe morgan fivethirtyeight.com READ NOW hospitality on parade WEIRD LOVE dead amusement pks craters! all content © 2002-2010 Jeremy Broomfield 
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Friday, July 21, 2006
NOTES FROM NEW ENGLAND, Part I
I do a really good Maine accent. I could do an audio post to prove it to you, but unfortunately I'm not gay, so that won't happen. But I beg your trust: the Mainers kept on saying "you do the accent better than most Mainers" -- which is a perfect Mainer statement if I ever heard one -- so all the Californians who were like "your Maine accent suxx!" can eat hott coxx with the joxx, because they knew not of which they spoke, and were mad jealous of my skills. So Thursday June 29 around 7:30pm I get picked up after work by my pal Andy (I'm not gonna waste time trying to come up with temporary pseudonyms for anybody who doesn't already have an established nickname or internet identity). Immediately he apologizes for the lack of AC in the car, explaining that he bought the '98 Saab from a friend for exactly nothing, so it's a little dodgy. Wires of all color and gauge poke from orifices in the dash. I lean back all cool and say "Andy, the thing about driving with me is that I don't give a fuck. I don't care how fast we get there, I don't care if shit doesn't work exactly right, and if we end up lost on the side of the road at 4am, that's cool too. I'm just happy to be riding with you." Andy says something like "Okay then," and we hit the road, North from 44th street on Madison. Wooo! Look out, Kennebunk! Here we come! We hit a small snag at the on-ramp for the FDR at 61st Street when the dashboard lights get all flickery, which Andy counters by revving the engine in neutral every time we stop in the outgoing holiday traffic. He pulls to the side of the ramp and takes a quick gander under the hood, which is not so ridiculous because he actually knows something about cars. And whatever he sees makes him decide to get off the FDR at the next exit, and he hands me a Saab repair manual -- a well-worn repair manual that exhibited characteristics of frequent and recent use -- and says with disarming nonchalance "see if you can find anything under 'alternator'." We stall at the next exit and do that fun thing where you open the doors like wings and push your car and then jump in like bobsledders and pop the clutch. We fill the radiator from a Slurpee cup at the Shell on 96th or somefuckingwhere and after getting very rained on and told to move by a grumpy tanker truck driver, we hit the road, North on whatever avenue is right there. Woooo! As dusk falls on the Merritt Parkway it becomes clear that our headlights are dimmer than our hopes for America's future, and all the dials on the dash have fallen defeatedly to zero. It's always bad when that happens in a plane in a movie, but it's okay in a Saab in Connecticut. We get off at the next exit and when the car dies we just roll and roll and roll until we see a completely deserted area with no street signs or identifying markers at all. Which is maybe not the best plan, in retrospect. BUT ANYWAY there we are, an hour out of New York after three hours on the road. The place is deserted except for passing cars that pay us exactly zero mind, but we call AAA and devise a plan. A tow truck will be here in half an hour. I take out my guitar and put on some long pants, and I start playing some songs. Andy pokes at the engine again, but he wants to play music too, so he opens his trunk and pulls out a fucking tuba. It's some kind of magical tuba that fits in the trunk of a hatchback, so maybe it was actually a Sousaphone or something, but he brought a tuba to Maine for a wedding, just in case, you see. Heh. But that's Andy. After five minutes of assembly and flarty sounds and valve-oiling, we're faking our way through some Daniel Johnston, Neutral Milk Hotel, and Joanna Newsom. We feel very cool because we're not panicking like SOME folks might in a similar situation. No indeed: LOOK AT HOW MUCH WE DON'T GIVE A FUCK! WE'RE JUST MUSICIANS AND TRAVELERS fucking TROUBADORS DAMMIT GLLLARRGLE! After about five minutes we silently realize that we were much more into the idea of whipping out instruments like we didn't give a fuck than we were into the buggy and humid reality of the situation. We're packing up a little sheepishly as the tow trucker arrives like oh fuck lookit these goddamn clowny faggot fucks. So we hit the road (Woooo!) and it's tow tow tow, McDonald's (which: barrruf), tow tow tow, 58 miles to the Saab dealership in Hartford. It's a noisy windy ride, and the driver clearly has no sense of direction AT ALL. He's working from point-to-point directions he got from AAA, and as always, point-to-point directions are fine until you fuck up. He pulls off the highway North of Hartford to ask a gas station for directions, at which point we discovered a book with tons of detailed local maps in it that was crisp and minty from never being used. (I should point out that nothing else in the cab of his truck could be described as "crisp" or "minty." Except for, I suppose, the Kools the driver chain-smoked all the way to the destination.) Anyway we weren't lost at all, and he was just a dude who had no business driving people around for a living. But he got us to the Saab dealership, where we ditched the expired Saab and got a $40 cab to the airport Avis rental place, where we rented a slammin' cream-colored Taurus, hit the road (Woo!) and cruised to Boston without incident, waking our pals in Cambridge at 3:30am for a quick game of mumbledy-peg before going to bed. To summarize: eight hours and four vehicles to get from New York to Cambridge. Somewhere in there Andy observed that he was glad I wasn't full of shit when I said that stuff about being a good traveling companion. I felt cool when he said that. At the rehearsal dinner, they had a seafood buffet that included watermelon slices for dessert. Because I am a super fucking megagenius, I took some lemon wedges from the fish platter and squeezed it all over my watermelon, creating fucking AWESOME GENIUS WATERMELON. I made people taste it, and the sequence was always the same: 1. "Why are you shoving watermelon in my face?" 2. "Okay fine, calm down, I'll take a bite. Jeez." 3. Munch munch. 4. Eyes open wide. 5. "HOLY FUCK THAT'S AMAZING." That's right, bitches. It spread across the room like Ebola. Because I'm a super genius, and NOBODY HAS EVER DONE THIS BEFORE. People were all walking up to me like "Are you [U.D.]? The guy who made watermelon awesome? Such is my gratitude that I wish to cradle your genitals in my hands." That same dinner featured one of my favorite events from the entire vacation. It starred Mary, who is generally a very excitable and cheer-filled gal, and it went like this: MARY: Oh! I can't believe how good this seafood chowder is! Mmmmm! I can't get enough! Waagh! This is like my third bowl! I LOVE IT. ZORGOT: Yeah, that's because it's got bacon in it. MARY: What? ZORGOT: Bacon. That's why it tastes so good. MARY: But... I'm a vegetarian.... A pause. A hush falls over the table. MARY: Or at least, I WAS. That tastes AMAZING. Holy shit! I love bacon! Why did I ever stop eating bacon? OH MY GOD. BAY-CONNNN!!! ALL: Hooray! 0 comments |
OTHER REVIEWS: Scrabble NEW! LATEST BOOK REVIEWS: The Game Moneyball One-Upsmanship Siddhartha You need the Fear Not Guide to Life. Buy it already. ($4) Now available! The Broomfield Variations CD ($10) or go to The UD Store 
MY IMAGINARY GIRLFRIENDS Chan Marshall Rotem of the IDF Eleanor Friedberger Amy Goodman Bernardine Dohrn ('69) Maya Rudolph Joanna Newsom Imogen Heap Caroline Dhavernas Shana Rae Ray DISALLOWED FOREVER "I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you!" - "from whence" - "...the exception that proves the rule" - any use of the question "spit or swallow?" - the phrase "drop trou" - fake-o reviewer verbs: "penned" for wrote "helmed" for directed "lensed" for whatever - "expat" - the euphemism "passed away" - pronouncing merci beaucoup as "mercy buckets!" (see also: "grassy-ass!") PET PEEVES "confinscated" - trying children "as adults" - "drownded" - misuse of reflexive pronouns, as when someone says "Please talk to Bob or myself." Come on people now. "Myself" is not just a fancy version of "me"! LEARN IT. - tattoos in the Courier font - any use of Comic Sans |