"The Car" is an autobiographical spoken-word account of the exact moment I decided to leave my small hometown and head out to the once beautiful, majestic, and venerated Los Angeles, CA. (LA is a shithole now, but that's a story for another time).

Way, WAY back in 1982, I spent many nights in Pittsburgh riding around in my friends' car drinking, smoking, and dreaming of a better, more exciting & fulfilling life. We did what most teenagers do: blast music as loud as the speakers could handle, hang out at the local burger joints, and try our best to stay out of trouble, though we almost always ended up knee-deep in it.

One evening during yet another dead-end adventure of getting intoxicated in Lee's powder blue Ford Fairmont, I had an epiphany, a vision... I needed to get the hell out of there or lose my sanity. I was still a year away from graduation, but I made up my mind THEN and THERE to get on the first Greyhound bus to Los Angeles as soon as I logically could escape without causing too big a rift in our family unit.

"The Car" is an abbreviated version of that fateful night. As a side note: Every time after that night my friends would try to get me to go "Out for adventure, (as they affectionately liked to refer to our outings), I would try my best to refrain from going. The times that I did go, I often would sneak away from the keg parties, run home, and practice my keyboard & guitar. It would be me, alone, in my basement, in secret, for the rest of the night while my former gang drove around aimlessly through the wooded, snow-covered streets and suburbs looking for adventure...