Back in the Day

My brother Dan told me a great story about himself and his car.

He was leaving the UConn campus the other night and rolled down his window while leaving the parking garage. Actually, he didn't roll down his window; the car has electric windows, so I guess he just "directed" the window to go down. As the window opened, he heard a strange "clunk" sound.

He has a VW Beetle (the new version) that he bought when they first came out. It's black and looks pretty sharp. It was even pictured on the company magneticflames.com website. Well, I think his car still looks good- I recently heard that his wife ran over the front fender while backing a big dually Ford pickup up his driveway. I haven't seen the damage but I think it gave Dan a heart attack.

Anyway, his car is getting on in years (and miles) and, like I said, the window went down and sounded a little funny. As you can probably guess, the window was stuck. Dan decided to try to drive home with the window wide open. Needless to say, with the cold weather we've been having, he didn't make if very far. After he almost froze his hands and half of his face off, using a lot of muscle and some choice words, he pushed the window closed. Now, of course, he can't open it without fear of it never closing again.

Maybe he should experiment a little and do something like this to his car:


As you probably know, I have a story for everything and this is no exception. After hearing Dan's tale, I remembered at time when I was a junior in college and invited my little brother Alex up for a Kiss concert at the Worcester Centrum in Massachusetts (Listen to this lineup of bands: Slaughter, Winger, and Kiss). This was a big event- his first weekend visit to UConn and his first big rock concert.

I picked him up and we went out to dinner at Woody's off campus. It was my favorite hang out at the time (they made the best sloe gin fizzes I've ever had). My friend Pete was our chauffeur that night. He had a black Camaro Z-28 with t-tops and a killer stereo. For some reason, even though it was the middle of winter, we decided to drive around with the tops off and the windows open that night.

Actually, when say "we" decided, I don't mean to imply that Alex had a vote. Pete and I decided it would be fun to stick my little brother in the back seat as we drove around the campus with the windows down, the tops off, and AC/DC cranked on the stereo so loud that we couldn't hear each other talk. Poor Alex. It couldn't have been easy to be my little brother back then. I remember him saying, "Guys, I'm really cold!" That just made us drive faster.

Other than the driving situation, Alex had a great time. The concert was great. Well, at least Kiss was. Slaughter and Winger couldn't compare to the show Kiss put on. And believe me, Kiss's claim to be the "Loudest Band in the World" couldn't be more true.

We got back to campus in the middle of the night and crashed for a few hours. Alex and I had to be up early the next morning because he had a cross country meet up near Hartford.

We were recently reliving this escapade when Alex told me something I hadn't heard before. When he lined up for his race in the morning, the starter's pistol went off and Alex didn't hear it at all. His ears were still ringing from the concert. He saw everyone else start running so he figured he better catch up.

Those were the days!

Speaking of cars and the stupid things that happen with them, check out this video. Paris Hilton runs out of gas and. . . well, watch it for yourself: