MY FRIEND'S ALL HAVE PORSCHES

Oh lord won’t you buy me a Mer-cedes Benz?
My friend’s all drive Porsche’s…I must make amends…
Janis Joplin

I thought my friend Gary was kidding when he told me that Janis Joplin had owned her own Porsche and had it painted tie-dyed. According to Gary, at the time this was viewed as an outrage (to deface such a beautiful car), but now it is museum art! You can view a replica in Janis’ home town in Port Arthur,

Texas at the Museum of the Gulf Coast. I’m still working on locating the original.

Last sighting? The Summer of Love exhibition at the Tate Liverpool in September, 2005.

If you like her car, you too can be the proud owner of a replica of Janis Joplin's car in a cookie jar motif for only a hundred bucks! And that’s not all; it's also a music box too (which plays "Mercedes Benz" of course). The sellers have limited production to only 3,600 worldwide and claim this collectible is sure to be in high demand!

If you can’t afford the cookie jar, you can buy the same look and feel in a music box motif for only $45 big ones.

Stats: Janis’ car is a 1965 Porsche 356 Cabriolet (she purchased it in 1968) and was hand painted by the late Dave Richards, friend and roadie for Big Brother and the Holding Company.

Technorati Tags: Boxster, Cabriolet, Porsche, Janis Joplin

REPAIR CONFIDENTIAL

Took the car to the local Porsche dealer today and asked if they could get the repair history from the Scottsdale dealer. Valentin, my trusty service representative told me that other dealers did not share maintenance records.

"But I don’t want the personal details of the owner, I want the history of the car, with this VIN number, the car that I own".

"I know, I know", Valentin explained, "but they just don’t give out that information".

"So, let me get this straight, I can get a birth certificate for my Cabbage Patch Doll or a lineage for my puppy dog, but I can’t get the repair and maintenance history of my own car?"

"Yes, that's right" Valentin opined with a straight face.

****

For more on the Porsche service experience see "Service with a Smile" in BrainTangents.


Technorati Tags: Boxster, Porsche, Porsche Service

MONSTER IN A BOXSTER

Monster in a Boxster

"There's a party in my mind...And it never stops There's a party up there all the time...
Other people can go home...Other people they can splitI'll be here all the time...I can never quit"

Memories Can't Wait - Talking Heads

My heart is pounding, my head hurts, I want to lay down. Is it the flu? A migraine? No, it's just the come-down after driving my car.

The late author, Spalding Gray, had such a rough time trying to write his great American Novel that he dubbed it the "Monster in a Box". Now I have my own "monster", and it's a car!

I am accustomed to driving a car, but this car...is driving me! I never thought of myself as a timid person, but basically I am. I haven't been on a roller coaster since 1986 and THIS is what I've been avoiding. THIS is psychological war--who will intimidate who? Me? or...THE CAR?

OK, first the facts. I bought THE car last weekend. She is an "arctic silver" porsche boxster with a black top, and we are in love. Born in 2002, able to leap from a stand-still to 68 mph in under 5 seconds, she has traveled 46,000 miles just to be...with me.

Here's a snippet of conversation with my race-car driver friend:

G: Are you kidding, your car is a mid-engine! You can turn a corner at any speed and you will not roll, maybe spin around a few times, but you will NOT roll, not like a 911, THEY roll

Me: Oh?

G: With my car I have to steer with the gas pedal, you know when you're going 130 and then you just take your feet off the pedal just a little bit and the car kinda wants to spin out a little, so you just drop to 120 and then hit the gas. Your car can do that!

Me: Really?

I've only driven my dream car for a week now, so this may just be the period of adjustment. I have never heard of a car being "too much" for someone, but this one sure pushes the envelope. I'm used to driving a car, but not having the car drive me.

TANGENT: Speaking of race car driving and personality types... I'm reminded of a paper I wrote in college on the "Sensation-Seeker" personality trait--"...the pursuit of novel, intense and complex sensations and experiences, and the willingness to take risks for the sake of such experience". I don't remember much about our little study, but I can tell you this: I scored very, very LOW on the Zuckerman Sensation-Seeking scale.

And speaking of personalities...I am still trying to accept and recover from the loss of Spalding Gray, another of my heroes gone but not forgotten. I don't know if we'll ever get the details, but he died of an apparent suicide after a life long battle with depression and chronic pain. notable for me that this one-two combination punch of depression and pain quite reliably produces genius--but that's no consolation for the loss of Spald.



Technorati Tags: Boxster, Porsche, Spaulding Gray