7.27.2009

RIVER RUN

Bullhead City. Weather? Hot, hot, blast furnace hot, hot enough you don't have to light up the barbecue grill, the reflection of the mobile home or the trailer wall is enough. Grill a burger, fry an omelet, melt your mind. Nobody cares, everyone's overheated, saturated with sun, and the water runs forever in this desert oasis, just runs and runs, finally ending in border runoff .
I should have stayed there, in Laughlin, at least a night. The food was good at the Black Bear diner. The rooms are cheap. The Mexicans own the border these days, but we own the water. Not sure which is more pressing, but drug trafficking won't stop, until we stop demanding it. All the water in the Colorado is diverted, dammed, channeled, carried by canal or aqueduct to California Arizona. The Mexicans get none.
Jet skis skim the water like flies jumping in the morning on a cool trout stream, cash-fat casinos drain wallets of sweaty travelers who like the cheap alternative to Vegas. Laughlin is small time. Bullhead City is the border town. Draws in all types of folk, you see them in the back alleys and the gravel drives, mostly staying indoors though, in the heat. They come out at night. The old run down trailers gather together in the trees along the shore of the Colorado, riverfront property, sheet metal homesteads on blocks.
The town looks hit and miss, come and go, people on the run, looking for the quick fix. They move on. Maybe I'm wrong. I don't think so. They're there. The signs are all around if you know what to look for. Liquor stores on the odd corner, out on the highway standing alone. Asian Massage. Low rent rooms, all night buffets across the river, motorcycle shops and four wheel drive after-market parts where they put anything on a vehicle and make it desert-ready.
Down river, the Parker Strip is jet boats, water skiing, campgrounds, moveable vacation homes on wheels, an upscale version of Bullhead City. Floating beer bars. A veneer of respectability. But not much. It's beer soaked, less rust, but it still has that feel about it, like people there don't have too many choices.
Maybe I'm wrong. I don't think so.
Maybe I'm not seeing something. I don't think so.
I'll look, next time. Try and find what I'm missing. But I don't think so.

7.17.2009

Zac Sunderland completes solo sail around the world - Los Angeles Times

Zac Sunderland completes solo sail around the world - Los Angeles Times

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LARRY KING AND THE POP

James Rainey had an interesting column this morning in the LA Times about Larry King and the elder's fascination with the death of Michael Jackson. Rainey details King's endless programs with speculation about the cause, who's at fault, even speculating on the speculators, like 'who's going to reveal the truth', 'where is this going', and the endlessly driven drivel of an aging talk show host who really, really, should just hang it up. I thought Greta Van Sustern was the stamina queen for driving shock stories into the ground, with the Natalie Holloway parade from the shores of Aruba and the live stand-up from the Jackson family estate in Encino.
Me? Of the three recent celebrity deaths that opened the summer with some notoriety; John Carradine, asphyxiated in a Bangkok hotel room (did he pay the bar fine?), Michael Jackson and another possible OD to add to LA's long lineup of entertainment-related cardiac arrests, and Arturo Gatti getting in in Rio from his young Brazilian wife, I have to say if I could choose, Gotti's is the way to go.
It's in Gotti's genes to have a bloody death, and we have the HBO2 trilogy on tonight to get right into the heart of Gotti's bloody heart and head. Legendary battles with Mickey Ward notwithstanding, Gotti gained fame fighting in the East Coast as a stylish brawler, the latest in a long line of brutes who please crowds and earn paychecks. With Gotti, you knew it was going to be bloody and you knew he'd go down in heroic fashion.
Carradine, what was he, in his early seventies? Hey, if I have heart palpitations or chest pains, I might just jump on a plane to Bangkok, grab me a bar girl and go out in some style. Better than OD'ing with a doctor at my side with a mouthful of prescription pills made out to Bret Bray or some phoney who's picking up my meds under a pseudo name.
Larry King, now how old is he, really? I mean, sans the badly colored hair and a few heart attacks, by-pass surgeries, what's in it for the former radio-meister gone cable host? Really.. Great career, Rolodex second to none, but dude, you're in LA, for God's sake, have someone spike your martinis at Musso and Franks, take a dive off the top row at Dodger Stadium and end up in the dugout, drive off the bluff at Griffith Park ala James Dean in 'Rebel'. . .just do it. You had a run, you had a go, you were the man. . .twenty years ago, and now you're holding on to celebrity through the death of a weird genius and we all need to move on. So let's move on.
I'm moving on.