UNIVERSAL DONOR: MA VIE EN CROUTE
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Universal Donor
We can ill afford another Klendathu  feed it up!
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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 TV on the Radio: Dear Science Walkmen: You & Me Fleet Foxes: Fleet Foxes Ratatat: LP3 Beach House: Devotion 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 © 2002-2008 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! Friday, July 14, 2006
I've been trying to do one of my travelogue emails about my trip to Maine and Massachussets and all but I have to tell you about something first. I saw a pill-dispensing robot at the CVS near my doctor's office and it was FUCKING HOTT. I hate CVS, but there it was, looking capable, which I know is a lie but I was in a hurry to get back to work. So I walked in, asked them if they a) had my drug in stock and b) could fill it sometime this century. Then I totally rolled my eyes. At the end of the roll, my eyes fell on a Willy Wonka-looking machine that once a minute disgorged a pill bottle. I got all giddy. There was a window in the side of the thing with a bunch of drawer-like hoppers. I was like "ooh ooh ooh" at the pharmacy assistant like a kindergartner who needs to pee. She was like "yes?" and I was all "oh my god does that machine fill prescriptions all by itself? Does it have like the top 100 drugs in it?" and she replied "No, it has the 100 most frequently prescribed drugs in it" as if I hadn't just said that, but whatever, and I was like "and so it puts on the label and picks the right bottle size and counts the pills and puts warning stickers on it too?" and she begrudgingly admitted that that was the case, adding finally, with a hint of a grin: "we just got it." And I said a little too loudly "WELL I THINK THAT'S AWESOME." She stared at me a sec. And then told me that in fact she couldn't fill my script this century but I could come back when the next ice age began and I was all "later for that noize bitches" but secretly I didn't care because that pill robot was the motherfucking shiznit.
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OTHER REVIEWS: John from Cincinnati Menomena 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" |