DEFEND YOUR RIDE: Ben At Amoeba Music

Q: Where did you get this cool convertible?

A: I got this at a dealership on the way to Joshua Tree. I was just doing a short film and I found this on the way to where I was shooting. I just stopped by and gave a deposit.

Q: You're an actor?

A: Uh-huh. And a comedian. It's benmorrison.org.

Q: Good plug. So how long have you owned this car?

A: I think I got it in March or so of last year. I bought it at almost exactly 100,000, so 18 grand at this point.

Q: Do you primarily use your car for auditions and stuff?

A: Oh, for everything. I mean in Los Angeles, most of your life is lived in your car. So yeah, I use it for sanity, getting away. Insanity, when the engine keeps braking, which I fixed. I hope.

Q: Is there anything else wrong with the car right now?

A: Thankfully, no. I've had two successful road trips and nothing's gone wrong. Since I bought it, I've replaced almost the entire cooling system. I had major overheating problems. First it was the radiator. I swapped that out a couple times. It kept overheating and then the head gasket blew, so I replaced the head gasket. Then the bottom of the engine went and I was like, "Oh God." I basically replaced the whole engine and the whole cooling unit, so at this point it's all good. This baby has now successfully made it to San Francisco and back and Las Vegas and back, so high hopes.

Q: Did you do all that work yourself?

A: Hell no! No, I'm an idiot when it comes to cars. If it were a computer, I could do it all myself. When I drive up to a mechanic, I can tell that they can tell that I don't know what the hell I'm doing. I could go to a mechanic and he can tell me that my flux capacitor is off and I'll be like, "We're gonna have to fix that and swap that out."

Q: Is San Francisco the farthest you've ever driven in this car?

A: Yeah. Last year, I attempted to make it to San Francisco to do a charity event. I made it as far as Oakland before it started overheating. Then I had to very slowly get it home, overheating half the way, and then AAA towed me for 90 miles to get back here. It was bad. I'm just glad it works.

Q: I saw you put the top down. It was automatic, too.

A: What's nice about this thing is it is a convertible, ladies. It's old, but it's a convertible. Oh yeah, totally. There's a button I push and the roof goes back, ladies. When it's nice and sunny, I take a lot of day trips. Recently, I just drove blindly in the Los Angeles National Forest and just kind of tried to get lost. It's beautiful. Then I just went hiking. What's nice about GPS--at least in California--is you can get a signal almost anywhere, so you can go and get as lost as you want and throw it on. It'll guide you back.

Q: Where's the craziest place you've ever driven to in this car?

A: I go to a bunch of music festivals. Actually, I went to one about an hour away. I forget where it was, but a lot of the festivals you go to are in some remote outdoor location. The directions are like take a right at the dirt road and go three miles, reset your odometer and head west at the cow skull on the ground. You're like, "Where the hell am I going?" just flying up and down. I went to one that involved climbing a big dirt road to get to the field where it was. The drive back down was the first time that it began overheating and getting back from that was just not fun, especially if you've been raging for a couple days. That was the first time I realized that something was actually wrong with the engine. I was like, "Great, we're in the middle of nowhere and it's overheating again." It wasn't the coolant or the radiator. It was the actual engine. Later I found out that my head gasket had blown.

Q: Does your car have a nickname?

A: Yeah, the Red Rocket.

Q: How did you come up with that?

A: It's a long kind of slender red car. There's a "South Park" episode that involves--how do I say this--a dog's manhood anatomy part that Stan calls the Red Rocket. And when I saw this, I was like that looks just like a dog's red rocket. Sorry online people.

Q: What do you think your next car will realistically be?

A: Man, I think about that a lot. I do love the car and now that it works, I'm just going to drive it until it doesn't work anymore. I have a very hefty medical insurance payment. Let's just say it's like twice as much as leasing a really new car would be, so I don't really know. If I had to get one thing, I think I'm going to stick with a convertible because it's California, and I love it. I really love the Nissan Z. That's a pretty sweet convertible.