FARMINGDALE, N.Y. — Uber driver Jehu Maboul had absolutely no clue what his passenger Darren Blaylock was going on about after continuous references to post-hardcore band Drive Like Jehu, befuddled sources confirmed.
“The universe works in mysterious ways,” said Blaylock before asking Maboul if it was ok to smoke a cigarette in his car during the ride. “Someone a bit more cynical might refer to this as mere coincidence, but Drive Like Jehu meant so much to me in 10th grade, ya know? This is basically equivalent to seeing the band live in 1993 or dare I say their reunion in the mid-2010s. How could this be random? Automatic five-star rating for Jehu.”
Maboul was bewildered by Blaylock the entire ride and assumed his passenger was intoxicated.
“This man sounded delirious and just started spouting word salads like ‘Yank Crime’ and ‘Bullet Train to Vegas,’” said Maboul. “He was bowing down to me and saying Fugazi was too political and Quicksand was too commercial and that he needed to call Matt because Matt would love this. Who is Matt? I do not know. When I asked Darren what he meant, he did say that Matt is more of a Hot Snakes guy, which even further confused me. But hey, he tipped me 50% in the end. Totally worth fearing for my life for the majority of that ride.”
Police pulled Maboul over at one point after he was seen swerving on the road.
“There was no indication that the driver was impaired, but the passenger kept belligerently repeating something about how Jehu drives like that. I don’t know. I couldn’t follow any of it,” said Officer Aiello. “In fact, it was the passenger who appeared to be the aggressor, and kept saying that if a seminal post-hardcore band was his namesake, he’d want to check out their seminal major label debut. We immediately performed a field sobriety test on Mr. Blaylock and had to detain him right there on the spot despite him passing our procedures. We just can’t have reckless passengers endangering the lives of rideshare drivers.”
At press time, Blaylock couldn’t believe his luck when he met a woman named June who just happened to be 44 years old, as he couldn’t help but constantly reference post-hardcore group June of 44.