I was at a party the other night when a stranger came up to me, extended a hearty handshake, and excitedly let me know, “Yoooo I saw you on the news bro!”

I am the latest victim of the Allston Flamer, AKA the Allston Arsonist, AKA The Carsonist (my personal favorite). My 1995 Ford Ranger was the ninth in a string of car fires set by this serial arsonist in Allston. It was a shocking experience and probably the least fun thing to wake up to on a Sunday morning.

When I got back from a busy film shoot that night I was greeted by a small crowd of reporters from the local news affiliates. In addition I spent the day reading about my car and I on the web: the Boston Globe, Universal Hub, twitter and the like. Apparently the DJs at WAAF even played a couple sound bites from one of my news interviews, cracking a couple jokes about the fact that I didn’t listen to my mom’s warnings and didn’t lock my car door. Woops.

So it’s no surprise this enthusiastic party goer saw me on the news, because a lot of people did. My hands and shoulders ache from apologetic handshakes and hugs, and my ears are ringing with the sounds of “Sorry about your car dude.”

In the end, my wonderful landlord agreed to give me two months of free rent because neither of our insurance companies would cover the damages, I got emails from local DJs offering me free equipment to replace what was damaged in the fire, my mom and dad are buying me a new truck, and I got to be on the news. In all, its like it never happened. Except I got my fifteen minutes of flame. (Well technically it took like three minutes for my car to go up in flames, but you get it.)

Allston, allston arsonist, allston flamer, arsonist, boston fire, boston police, car, carsonist, fire, News, ryan piccirillo, truck, waaf Random Rants and Existential Crises