West Coast Blues

excerpt from SANTERIA SUNSET

2011-10-23T23:19:00.000-07:00

Blowing through the desert at 85 miles per hour, Teri kept her eyes on the road. When she slowed to 55 mph the world seemed to shift and tilt, pale colors coming into sharper focus. I thought of a flight attendant gripping a microphone saying ‘this is our final approach, please stow your tray tables’ and all that shit, but it occurred to me that we might be landing in a dimension I knew nothing about, unprepared with stun guns and a few magazines of .40 ammo, our Glock 23s and a shotgun. I had a feeling this wasn’t a .40 caliber world anymore. Teri slowed down so she could make a left turn and braked nearly to a crawl to get over the first thick ridge of hardened clay that formed a barrier. We cleared the clay ridge and looked west over an empty prairie plain, sagebrush, scraped clean with wind that had been blowing for eons. Teri eased the big Chevy into the rutted road moving the steering wheel with little flicks of her wrists. After a mile and a half of bumping along the clay, Teri slowed, rolled the window down.

“Smell the sagebrush?” She said.

“Beats that fucking putrid rest stop bathroom stall stench. Jesus.” I shook my head and opened the door staying strapped in the leather bucket seat. “Teri, I know that gas station -Navajo-tourist-stop is right around here somewhere, but I’m just not seeing it right now. My eyes blurred up when we screeched to a halt on that runway back there. Tell me when we get there.”

“We’re there.”

“Come on, I gotta pee.”

“The world is yours, Mat. Do what you gotta do.”

Forging out to a stand of brush that hid my doings, I took a leak. Then I took another look around. Off in the distance a third of a mile stood a low bungalow, half of it was pale ochre, the other rust red. A man sat on a stool wearing a wide brim hat and a bright turquoise shirt. No privacy anymore, I thought, nowhere to hide your moments of necessity. I walked through the soft clay dust and got back in the Chevy. Teri steered the big SUV another seventy five yards in the direction of the hut, stopped it a hundred yards away and shut it down. She motioned to get out and we walked past a scattered collection of tin cans, skeletal remains of barbecue grills, microwave ovens, a vacuum cleaner that had sucked its last dust and a torn half panel of what looked like a small billboard with the pasted photo of an Indian man with a wrinkled face the texture of fault lines viewed from five thousand feet in the air. When Teri stopped, I stopped. She raised her hand at the man, who remained still. Finally, slowly, the wide brim lowered into a nod of acceptance, and Teri touched my left arm just above my elbow. Walking toward the man, I could see his eyes now, deep-set in thick folds of bronze skin, his hands folded in front of his large belly. Held between his thick clasped hands, a thin wooden shaft with brown and white feathers tied at one end.

“There are cold drinks in the refrigerator,” he said. Teri went inside and the man called out, “Bring the folding chairs next to the water cooler.” In a moment Teri came out holding three cans of Sprite and two brown folding metal chairs. I set up the chairs and we sat and all three of us popped open the cans.

“You have come from Flagstaff?” the man said.

“Yes,” Teri said. “This is Mat Arroyo, my partner from the Yuma office. Mat, this is Sicheii.”

“Grandfather,” I said. I smiled at him.

“You know Navajo?” he said.

“A few names is all.”

“Teri, I see your father in my dreams many times these days. He says you are protected and the land, it is no longer the sacred place. The big birds are everywhere.”

“Airplanes?” Teri said.

Sicheii nodded with his wide brim felt hat. When the brim dipped below his eyes it was if the sun had gone down, the light gone from his soul until he brought his head up again and the brilliant black of his eyes focused on me. He pointed to the west with his thumb, over his shoulder. “That way. At night mostly. They don’t have lights but I can hear them.”

I looked at Teri. “Airplanes are landing out here, on the Reservation?” I said.

Sicheii said yes, his brown brim flapping up and down.

“If you want ice,” Sichee said, “there is some in the freezer. You have to pick it out with the hammer in the top drawer by the toaster. There are glasses. I don’t use the glasses anymore.” He laughed and grinned, the wrinkles spreading around his dark eyes. “I don’t like to wash them.”

“Hey,” I said, “I don’t wash dishes as much as I used to, either. You’re sure the airplanes are landing? Or just cruising the edges of the canyon.”

Before Sicheei continued, Teri unfolded the USGS Topographical map and showed it to him. “Sicheei, how far are the fire lookout towers from here? According to my map, there are two along the canyon rim, but they look like they’re still several miles from here. Do you know?”

“Two, maybe. Many years ago I used to ride out there to the canyon. Not for a long time.”

I said “Does anybody from the Rez go out there?”

“First, Mr. Arroyo, I hear the engines of the planes. After midnight. They have come in right over this house. Then the engines stop. Later they start up again, and they rev them up to high speed when they take off.”

Teri looked at me. Then she spoke in Navajo. She explained to me that she wanted to speak to Sicheei in his native words so she could be sure what he was talking about. Later on in the Tahoe she would explain to me what was going on. Sicheei motioned to me, then out to the land, and I took a walk. At the Tahoe, I spread out another map on the back seat and tried to pinpoint the position of Sicheei’s house. Fifteen miles from his house, was the eastern end of the Canyon. The Colorado River separated the Navajo reservation from the National Park. Teri would know the road conditions and roughly how many houses might be in between Sicheei’s house and the Canyon. Scanning the sky over the horizon, only white clouds were moving, and there weren’t as many as when we’d been coming down into the rest stop. Fewer than when we’d left the stop after the Highway Patrol had secured the area. Across the rich red prairie, the breeze freshened and the sage and white fir, blue spruce and Douglas fir offered a pure fresh scent. Underneath the tinkle of spruce, beat the low notes of rubbery creosote. Off to my left was Sicheei’s pile of rusted metal. To the right, north, the Colorado tumbled down steep canyons from Utah, dammed at Page and Lake Powell and continued its epic journey through the carved desert. Down in Yuma the desert offered plenty of dump sites, municipal sites where locals alternately dumped and went looking for gems in the piles of refuse, and the random remote sites where refrigerators, stoves, old cars and mattress springs went to die. Often, I’d come across piles of bottles, cans, remnants of nights stewed in alcohol, syringes, ripped open packs of cocaine, heroin, long since given up their street-valuable contents to raiders, law enforcement and cartel thugs. What I saw, now, off in the distance, wasn’t the reflection of a can or bottle, a windshield or a flying machine. It was low, on the ground, the reflective glare of binoculars. There . . . fading now. Again. And gone. I didn’t see it again. Someone glassing the area. My face, the Tahoe, in the field of some 7x40 or larger binoculars. I didn’t move. Possibly a rifle scope. Slowly, I folded the map and moved so that the Tahoe shielded me from where I’d seen the reflection. Teri was walking toward the Tahoe, and I positioned myself so that she could see me, but still hidden from the position of the reflection of glass. I held my fingers around my eyes, like two lenses, until she saw me. She scratched her left shoulder, the signal that she saw me and what I’d just signaled had registered. Her pace didn’t vary, she gave nothing away. When she got to the Tahoe she handed me a cold can of Sprite and put a double plastic bag of ice under the front seat and got in, closed the door, waited until I’d strapped in and closed the door.

“Binoculars?” she said.

“Yeah. Three o’clock.” Teri looked out the windshield. “Sicheei says the planes have been coming for three weeks. Only at night. He’s driven out there a couple of times but he doesn’t want to go out there again by himself. There’s no phone in his house.”

“Did Sicheei say anything about finding anything out there? Junk, debris, like someone had dumped stuff out of a plane?”

“No. He didn’t see anything. No signs of any big fires, either. How far away would you say those binoculars were?”

“At least a mile. With the sun in that position he wasn’t looking at me. At least not at that moment. The angle of reflection would mean he was scanning southwest, or due south.”

“Can you get a bearing?”

My day pack was stowed behind my seat. From one of the outside pockets, I pulled the compass and set it on the spot where I’d seen the reflection.

“323 degrees.”

“Set it.”

The GPS took the coordinates and the Tahoe humped along at the designated heading.

“You’ve known Sicheei a long time,” I said.

“Almost my whole life. Actually, more than my whole life. According to my father, Sicheei blessed me when my mother started showing. Two, three months. I can’t even see a woman showing at three months. Not that I ever look.”

The horizon was accepting the evening light, a pale shade of rose fading up in the west. It was a beautiful time to look at the Canyon. For now, I swept the landscape with my eyes, 180 degrees, back and forth, slowly, as Teri maneuvered the big SUV. When Teri was speaking to Sicheii, I had checked the pump action Remington 870 and stocked the ammo case strapped to the stock. The binoculars I used were high quality Nikon and they brought the distant red rock into sharp focus.

Teri wore her Oakley wrap-arounds and driving gloves, grappling with the weight of the Tahoe like a bull rider tugging on the reins. Every time I thought she’d taken one too many unpaved roads on a high speed bump and run, she’d proved me wrong. A blind corner on a dirt road was time for Teri to put it into a slide, get some air, test the suspension, kick up a fantail of desert dust. Her hope was one day to drive in the Baja 500, or the big daddy, the 1000.

The binoculars were up against my eyes, ranging across the landscape. I kept them there and spoke. “The Remington’s loaded and the stock pouch is full.”

“Sicheei hasn’t seen smoke all month. The planes fly low and the way he described the sound, I’d say single engine. Fast single engine.”

“So we’re looking for a vehicle, somebody moving around on the ground with binoculars. Maybe some kind of an airstrip. A camp or a trailer. What happens, typically, if someone is on the Reservation without authorization. You call someone? Approach them by yourself?”

“People wander out here sometimes for bird watching, maybe photography. It’s okay to travel on the rez as long as you don’t camp, hunt or hike. Basically you can drive around and photograph.”

“Population. Density. About how many homes are out here, out to the rim of the Canyon.”

“Not many. The closer you get to the Canyon the lower the water table is and you won’t be able to drill a well.”

“So what are these planes doing out here?”

“Hell if I know.”

“Sicheei say he’s seen any vehicles out here roaming around? Campers, trailers, people?”

“He’s not as alert as he used to be. He’s starting to listen more to the spirits and not watching the land. I love him.”

“All alone out here,” I said, “what’s going to happen to him? He’s got some mileage on him.”

“He’ll wander off.”

“The old way.”

Teri nodded, her Oakley’s reflecting a pink glow now from the setting sun. She gripped the wheel at 10 and 2. “This is about a mile.” We got out of the SUV. Teri stood at the hood and I took the back. The binoculars revealed nothing. I looked at Teri, who had her back to me. Slowly, she turned and looked at me, over her right shoulder, her Oakley’s black and shiny. I reached into the Tahoe and pulled out a can of Sprite and took it to her. She snapped open the can and while it was close to her lips, she spoke.

“Campfire smoothed over. Fifty yards, ten o’clock.”

The campfire was hidden, but visible. Black rocks and smudges of charcoal surrounded it in the dirt, smothered and ground in. Sicheei’s house was a mile away, a bump that blended in to the landscape at this distance. “Sicheei would see it,” I said. “Unless a barrier hides it.”

“They’re not going to be landing planes this close to his place,” Teri said.

“Let’s take a look,” I said, pulling open the door and reaching for the shotgun.

Inside of a low ring of rock, grey and black charcoal embers were mixed with the soil and doused with water. The soil was cold. Teri kneeled down to inspect the ground a few feet from the fire ring. I watched the area in the distance for anyone moving, metal reflections, cans, bottles, debris. The last light of the afternoon sharpened the shadows, casting a relief pattern in the rocks giving a crisp glow to sage and conifer shrubs that wiggled in a slow wind. I was standing erect, a full target for a shooter, and a bullet would pierce my skull before I heard the sound and recognized what was coming. The bullet-proof vest would hold off the penetration of a high-caliber weapon from a distance, and a head shot took great skill from two hundred yards in a slight wind. Factors, calculations, angle of incidence, all of the judgment calls made on the fly in the wild, gave little hope for what I knew we were most likely dealing with. Drug cartel weapons men were among the best in the world, but most of their work was close-in, ten yards, twenty at most with fully automatic weapons. Spray and pray. A well placed head shot from two hundred, three hundred yards was the exclusive domain of experienced hunters, military snipers.

Teri stood up, looked around at the parched desert glow of sunset, nodded one time and kicked a small rock with her left boot. When we got back in the SUV, I sat in the driver’s seat. Teri closed the door on the passenger side.

“Couple of 9mm casings,” she said. “And a .308 Winchester.”

The Tahoe slid forward, and I steered past the burned out fire pit and headed west towards the Canyon.

“I could see a 9 mil fired without Sicheei hearing it when the wind is right,” I said. “.308 makes some noise.”

“We don’t know if this airplane stuff is connected with our guy. Could be but we’ve gotta decide if we . . .”

The impact sounded like a heavy metal skillet banging into the driver’s door and the next shot put a spider-web of cracks through the windshield, the back seat taking the bullet with a slapping thud.

“Goddamnit, keep your head down,” I yelled. Teri sandwiched into a folded torso so her head was below the dash. The steering wheel pulled lightly and I jammed the foot pedal all the way down until the wheels started to spin and I backed off. The Tahoe shot into the slanting sun’s rays while I heard the boom of a third shot that missed. Teri kept her head down while I fought the wheel of the big machine as it leaped and skidded around the corner of a thin edge of dirt road that looked recently scraped. Instantly, I pulled the vehicle off of the red dusty path, thinking it might be the runway and then I saw a smudge pot on the left side, then another forty yards ahead.

“This is the landing strip, Teri. I’m pulling off the road again. Hang on.”

“Don’t go to Sicheei’s house,” Teri shouted.

Warning shots, intent to kill, misplaced drunks doing some critter hunting, it made no difference and I was driving over what appeared to be a runway now, the last few yards before it emptied out into the low grass and shrubs.

I glanced at Teri hunched over with her hand on the console. “You okay?”

“Yeah, just keep going. Get out of this shooting gallery.”

Stunt drivers and second unit production crews spent millions to capture scenes just like this on film. Then they called ‘Wrap’, and everyone slapped each other on the back and met at the catering truck. No chance. This was live, in your face, and the Tahoe had taken a hit. The windshield was intact, minus a piece about a third of an inch just under the rear view mirror in the middle of the vehicle, but the shooting had stopped.

“Hold on I’m going to do some spins and kick up some dust.” Doing a rough mental fix, I figured the shots from the northwest, from the door shot and the windshield shot. If I could put some dust in the air, enough of it to cloud a sight picture, I could put distance between the shooter and be out of range in a matter of moments. Even an experienced shooter with a rifle scope and high powered cartridges would be hard pressed to make a hit from three hundred yards. Possible, but doubtful. The thick steering wheel pulled easily and turned forty-yard radius NASCAR-type donuts sending up dirty cover until even I couldn’t see. Punched it over the rev limit then, and the beast propelled down range until we were out of the target range. A half mile ahead a low stand of trees provided more cover.

“If he’s got a night vision scope,” I said, “we’ll be visible, maybe not in his target range.”

Teri unfolded herself. She didn’t say anything. I slowed down when we approached the stand of spruce and maneuvered the vehicle between a few saplings on the edge of the small forest, until the trees were too dense to continue.

“Just one shooter, you think? Teri said. Her hand was on the radio mike, but she didn’t key it up.

“Two hits on a slow moving vehicle, unknown range. Possibly .308. Doubt it’s the 9mm.

“The suspect in custody could have lied and said north rim to throw us off.”

“Then why give us anything near the Canyon? Could say they’re off to Gallup. Kingman. Anywhere.”

“He gives up his buddy and we find him, that’ll be in his favor, he thinks.”

“Planes and guns, Teri. And a big stash of cash and weapons coming across the border. Preliminary indication?”

“We’re outgunned. We don’t know how many shooters there are, but we do know what we have. It’s not enough to take down multiple shooters. We can radio in our position and call for backup. Hold it down in here.”

“Is there a way we can get to Sicheei’s house and get him out of danger without putting the focus on him?”

“When it gets dark, but night scopes can track us.”

“That’s a tough shot if we’re going evasive at 50mph.”

“They know he’s there. Up until now he wasn’t a problem. Old man living alone. If these are cartel men they know he’s got no phone and they know his habits. They see a black SUV pull up they know it’s Marshals.”

“Teri, I couldn’t live with it. We got to get him out of there.”

“I’m going to radio. We stopped at a roadside stand and we heard about planes coming in at night. You agree?”

I nodded. “Tell the truth. That’s why you’re a Marshall, Teri. You know the territory better than anyone in the office.”

“Unit one to base.”

Hissing and popping. No response. I looked up out the windshield. The tree tops were only fifteen feet high but the sightline to the repeater could be blocked.

“Unit one to base.”

“Hold on,” I said. “We may have to move out of these trees.”

“Unit one to any unit.”

The topo map and the GPS synched up, showing we were approximately a mile and a half now from Sicheei’s house and approximately two miles from the rim of the canyon. Darkness was settling in making it difficult to see the ground without putting on the headlights. It would be a challenge to get around the stand of trees, moving towards the direction the shots could have come from, and making it in the open another mile to his house.

“You’re a better driver,” I said. “Don’t worry about it, doesn’t bother me. Get in there, get us out of here.” I climbed in the back seat and looked at the torn rear seat back, reached in as Teri crawled over the console into the driver’s seat. The fabric of the back seat was torn in a small hole. My knife split the fabric enough to reach in my hand, but the thick springs were about an inch below the surface making it hard to move my fingers around. Teri said she’d wait a moment while I tried to find the bullet. The heavy foam of the seat back didn’t have much give and a bullet would even pass all the way through if the shot was from somewhat close range.

“I can’t get to it.” Just when I’d strapped the seatbelt over my shoulder and punched it in the lock Teri cranked the vehicle into reverse and started backing out of the trees.

“Go,” I said. “I’ll keep trying the radio.” Outside of the trees the space opened up in a wide swale of rock and low sage that took on the look of a gray marshmallow pie in the dusky early evening light.

We kept our heads low. No binoculars, I held only the Remington and I knew Teri had her Glock strapped in on her weak side for cross draw. The SUV shuddered over rough terrain but moved through paces like a thoroughbred heading for the barn. Teri varied her speed from death-defying to Oh Fuck―occasionally spinning tires until they locked into traction. I gave her headings from the GPS so she could keep her eyes on the horizon, dark now in the southeast. So far no shots, but I urged Teri to do evasive maneuvers, swiveling the steering wheel both ways so our path was S-shaped and random. Our speed reduced, but so did the target acquisition ability of a marksman.

We picked up a dirt road about three quarters from Sicheei’s house and Teri stayed on it all the way to the bungalow. Teri kept the vehicle running, jumped outside and went up to the house. I couldn’t see any lights. In the direction from where I’d seen the reflection of binoculars two hours earlier, darkness had taken over.

THE FLAG AT FENWAY

2011-04-23T15:24:00.000-07:00

The man asking the questions put his pen down.

“That’s okay,” the man asking the questions said. “There hasn’t been enough time yet.”

“Let’s have another drink,” the man asking the questions said.

The former major league ballplayer nodded.

The man asking questions tried again. “You remember how the flag blew out in right field at Fenway?"

“Flags? I don’t remember flags.”

“The hitters would take aim on that short fence and try and knock one out?”

“Maybe. I don’t think that much about it.”

“You always pitched away to left-hand hitters, when the wind blew out.”

The former major-leaguer turned and looked at the front of the bar. Rain was beading up on the window. He kept looking at the window, the rain making the light dim and gray, and the former major-leaguer wrapped his long fingers around the beer glass on the bar.

The man asking the questions kept going. “You said once, ‘I’ll take a chance with the Monster over the right-center field alley on a windy day’. You remember?”

“What I said doesn’t matter anymore.”

“All the hitters, Williams, Jeter, Yasztremski, they thought that wall was easy.”

“Really, I don’t think about baseball anymore. Let me buy this round.” The bartender put two beers down. Overhead light threw shadows on the grainy stained wood of the long dark bar and behind it they could see their faces in the mirror.

A small boy came up and asked the ballplayer if he would sign his name, the man turning and scribbling on the note pad but he didn’t look at the boy. The boy went away. The ballplayer emptied his beer glass in two or three big gulps and laid a bill on the bar.

“Listen,” the former major league ballplayer said, “I’m sorry I can’t tell you anything more. It’s there, but I don’t want to go there and bring it out, you know?”

He nodded, the man asking the questions.

Almost five years now since the former big-leaguer had pitched off of a mound, in a game. He could see a batter’s eyes and into their fear and threw hard bullets that flew with late action, smacking the mitt and striking hitters out swinging.

“You put it all behind you” the ball player said. “Every time. Each pitch, the game, and now, the whole thing. It’s hidden and I won’t let it out now.”

“Was it the surgery?” the man asking the questions said. “Is that it?”

“No.”

“You worked hard, to get back.”

“Yes.”

“You made it back.”

“Uh huh.”

“You made it, all the way back.”

“My arm made it back.” The ballplayer closed his eyes and rubbed his left arm around the elbow.

“Your arm was always good.”

“Better than before, that’s how good it was.”

“The way you left the game, do you regret that?”

“You leave when it’s over.”

“Your fastball was faster than when you started.”

“The game leaves you, it passes you by. If you don’t know when it’s left you, it’s worse.”

“You don’t watch any games now?”

“Don’t have a television.”

“You ought to hear what they’re saying.”

The ballplayer shook his head, pointed a finger at the bartender. The waitress came around the bar and held his arm while he whispered in her ear. She nodded and went away and the bartender put two more beers on the bar and waved his hand.

“They’re on the house,” the bartender said. Both of the men thanked the bartender.

The man that was asking the questions talked about new downtown ballparks; sight lines and suites, wide stadium promenades with sushi bars, imported white wine, playgrounds for kids who were bored by the fourth inning and wanted to slide into a pool of water, shops with MLB logo gear, boutiques where women and men could do almost all of their Christmas shopping with discount cards issued to preferred fans who had Gold American Express and sometimes they had valet parking for season ticket holders, if you bought the right plan. Yankees were in town, you’d spot Jeter and Mariano Rivera in the hot spots, leaving in limos in the late hours. The money. God, the man that was asking the questions said, the money. Wouldn’t it be something if Mays, DiMaggio, Hank Aaron had a little of the television money coming in today? Amazing, he said. Too much, really, he went on, and just the club house amenities, my God, wide screens and rap music. Hell, the writers even get carried away, the man asking the questions said, like they’re on the team payroll. He laughed, swigged some beer and put his glass on the shiny dark bar with the stains and sharp grain like the good wood of a bat.

The waitress, she wore a tight black skirt and tank top and she was forty five or forty eight years old, and she held the former major league ballplayer’s arm again and whispered in his ear. The ballplayer stood up. Looking past the bar, he took a step behind the bar chairs. The waitress leaned in to the man asking the questions.

“Mr. DeFrezzio has a phone call.”

DeFrezzio, moving along the row of chairs at the bar now, gave a nod to the man asking the questions and disappeared into a narrow hallway.

The waitress used a towel to wipe down the bar, and then straightened the high-backed chairs.

“Does he come here a lot?” the man asking the questions said.

The waitress smiled. “You want anything else? Got some meatloaf left.”

The man asking the questions said no. After paying the rest of the bill, the man asking the questions stepped outside. He could see DeFrezzio. DeFrezzio had on a long tan coat, his hair slicked and sticking out under a newspaper he held over his head. He was getting into a cab.
The sidewalk was wet. The cab pulled out and headed uptown.

IN THE GYM; an excerpt from 'Split Decision'

2011-03-29T20:42:00.000-07:00

A concussion is a rare injury in boxing. That’s why fighters wear padded leather gloves, to prevent a sharp blow to the cranium that causes swelling of the brain. Football players wear helmets, but when they hit another hard surface like another helmet, bang, they’re down. Hit hard turf, take a forearm shiver, there’s not much give. Ten-ounce gloves provide protection to cushion punches. Different thing altogether with a foot. Unpadded, all bone, the crushing power of the gluteus and the hamstrings and the quads unleashing whip-snapping force against an unprotected skull, and you have a brain crying out, why? why? and down you go.

In the gym the fighters wear padded headgear surrounding the face and chin so you can pound round after round getting ready for fights. The minute you walk in to a gym, your body knows what its in for. Leather on leather. Sweat. Canvas rings. Bags, mats. Bottles of Gatorade and tubes of liniment. It’s enough to stop you in your tracks, your brain getting the message, saying “No, no, no way.”

Or you thrive on it, and need it, and that’s what Phuong said when he walked in to Max’s. “Yeah, baby.” His nostrils flared and his lips curled. And even though he was a day or two from a doctor clearing him for a couple of minutes on the speed bag, and a longer wait to get in the ring and dance and move and take a shot to the head, he inhaled it.

Phuong watched. I followed his eyes, looking at what he looked at.

The ring. Canvas stretched into the corner of the gym so two sides were against the walls with the short apron extending beyond the ropes in the front, Max up there working the pads with a fighter, Max yelling Move your feet, move your feet. Phuong turned.

The speed bags. Three tear shaped leather bags hanging from black iron rings, one banging into rhythm from a fighter in a grey sweat suit with his hood on. Phuong grinned. No problem, boss, my hands good, watch this, and I had to grab his arm, pull him back. No, no, not yet, tomorrow we go to the doctor, tomorrow. Phuong raised his arms to his chest and made fists and perfect punches at half speed, twisting his hands at impact, bringing the power to a focal point, half-speed perfect, bringing his hand to his chin and he dropped a big, slow, open-palm right hand on top of my hand and patted me on the scalp, rubbing his knuckles on my thin spot. For luck, boss, for luck, he said. I’ll take it, I said.

The heavy bags. Thick leather tubes that took a big body blow or a jab and moved a few inches, rocking back then forward and you slapped it again and worked downstairs hammering a rib cage, imagining the pain from a liver shot that could drop an opponent and end it right there. That’s where it started, with the heavy bags, where you put your feet into position and torqued and twisted to full power.

Phuong brushed his spiky top knot and swung his head back and forth. Hip hop blasted from a tinny box on the apron of the ring and somebody said Get that Snoop Dog CD in there and somebody clicked off the radio and shoved in a CD and turned it up loud. Phuong walked to the side of the ring. Max and the heavy-footed puncher stepped off. Phuong climbed up on the apron and I ran over saying, No, no, and he was under the ropes and into the ring, moving along the edge of the canvas, leaning back, bending the ropes, moving his head to the beat until I climbed up and grabbed him, moved him to the side and under the ropes and back down on the cement floor. Max stood wiping his hands with a towel.

Max waved and I waved back, and I herded Phuong around the ring and out toward the back of the gym. Max yelled out something, but I held my arm up, turned around and said, “Just a taste, just getting familiar with the place. We’ll be back.” We headed out. Phuong wasn’t ready for an interview and questions and all the stares and looks he was going to get standing in there in front of Max. His visceral reaction was enough for now.

We stood in the back small parking area, the sun high, a hint of smoke in the air, Phuong’s eyes sharp, focused. It wouldn’t be long, now. Not long. That was important, that he wanted to be back in the gym, that he wanted to bang, he wanted to punch. The hard work was about to begin.

PALMS

2010-08-11T21:11:00.001-07:00

“There’s some heartbreak here, old wounds,” I said, staring at the palm of her hand. “You’re recovering, in transition. Spiraling. In and out of love. The cycle is endless.” She had to be twenty-something. Black t-shirt, Baby Doll in sequin script. “You need to jump off the merry go round. Get your shit together.” I watched her. Cleavage to the max, jet black hair, pure white skin, eyebrows arched over hollow eyes.

“Fire, burning,” I said. Sandalwood incense drifted up the Venice beach boardwalk. “I’m feeling smoke, not like curling trails from the end of a joint.” She gripped my fingers. “Walls burning, an entire room of a house. Catastrophe. I’m feeling catastrophic fire, fueled by your love desire.”

She winced, one eye shut.

“Fire.” I rubbed my thumb across her palm in a tight circle. “I’m really feeling it.”

“Last fire for me,” she said, “was in the fireplace. Two years ago. Me and the cat watching American Idol. The little Asian kid couldn’t sing but he won over that crowd.”

I looked around. “Water. Ocean. You’re traveling to water. Big water. Open water.” She glanced at a big diver’s watch on her left wrist.

“Flooding. Tsunami. Big, rushing water. Diving, scuba diving, off the coast, in a boat—rocking gently, you dive in, cold, wet, deep. . .big, really big water.” I squeezed my eyes closed.

She shrugged her shoulders. “My toilet flooded last week.”

“That’s what I’m talking about.”

“How long have you been doing this?”

“This?”

“Yeah. Set up here in Venice Beach.”

“Today.”

“Today?”

“Today. My first day is today.”

“Your first day is today? How many fortunes have you told?”

“Today?”

“Yeah.”

“Two. One before you.”

“And me?”

“And you.”

“What were you doing before today?”

“Selling used cars at Hodge Chevrolet. Down in Torrance.”

“You sold used cars?”

“Sometimes I sold new. Mostly I worked used. Lot of Hondas. Some reason, people trade up from Honda, they go Chevy. A nice Accord, ‘98, 22 to 25 miles per gallon. Five, maybe six grand depending on the mileage, above or below a hundred thousand.”

“Before you sold used cars, what were you doing?”

“Immediately before the car gig?”

She nodded. I held her thumb with the tips of my fingers, pink polish with glitter on her nail.

“Well, I sold cars for six months.”

“That’s a career for some people. Six months ago, where were you?”

“I managed a chain of medical marijuana clinics.” I jabbed a finger pointing north.

“A chain?”

“Two. People want to smoke pot, they come in and talk to the doc. Mostly I’m outside on the sidewalk. Bringing in the patients. ‘The doctor is waiting to see you now. Highest quality, let me show you the way’. Glossy flyers, clean rooms. Beats the hell out of that socialized medicine shit. At least our doctor’s always taking patients. Basically, you tell the doctor you have some chronic illness. I mean, they have a list on the wall, posters that tell you what to say. Symptoms, ailments, pre-menopausal, post-menopausal, migraines, gastric disorders are big, peptic ulcers, duodenal blockage.”

“That covers a lot of ground.”

“Shit, one old boy came in and said he ran a karaoke bar a couple nights a week. Said this dude always came in, thought he was Aretha Franklin. Not a tranny, just a guy who liked Aretha. He’d come in and sing ‘Say A Little Prayer’, like every week. The guy that ran the karaoke gig, he’s talking to our clinician─I can’t say he was a real doctor─he’s complaining about nightmares of Aretha Franklin eating gooey pizza and singing with her mouth full—R-E-S-P-E-C-T—vocals powered with Papa John’s pizza. Doctor prescribed a standard dosage of M&M. Medical marijuana. You want your money back?”

“’Say A Little Prayer’ and ‘Respect’ are two different songs.”

“Pretty sure it was Papa John’s, though.”

“Where was this karaoke night?”

“Dive bar here in Venice.”

“The medical marijuana clinic?”

“Right next door.”

“On Venice Beach?”

“Right up here,” I said, pointing north.

“How far?”

“Three, four blocks.”

“Let’s go.”

“Now?”

“Yeah. I’m feeling a little pre-menopausal.”

She could be perfect. Busting out in black and white, looking to score, looking for the cool. I packed the cardboard stand I’d put up an hour ago. A red plastic milk carton crate, fake Navajo print rugs a hawker threw behind my camper last night, the cracked white plastic chair pulled from a King Taco dumpster in Baldwin Park at 1:15 AM. The cash box. With three thousand one hundred and twenty dollars. I laid the box inside the red crate, stuffed the Navajo rugs around it so I could hold the whole thing under one arm.

“Someone can have the chair,” I said.

“That’s nice.”

We fell in behind a roller skating dude with ripped brown muscles in a black thong and disappeared in a crowd, squeezing around a gold-plated mime hustling his half-true Michael Jackson act; the real King of Pop was turning white, but his music was solid gold. Tattoo artists were looking for skin, musicians—legends in their own tunes strumming guitars, vintage RV’s sprayed in pastel graffiti, their generators purring in harmony, off-limits restrooms were wrapped in yellow tape next to make-do port-o-potty stalls and palm trees, palm trees, palm trees—Southern California’s horizon—and we came across the asphalt lot to the sand and the beach and the very edge of the continent, to my car, a ’98 Accord with just over a hundred thousand miles.

“You pick up this from the Chevy lot?” she said.

“Got if from a guy who did. He couldn’t make the payments, sold it to me for the balance.”

“No plates yet, huh?”

“I got ‘em, they’re in the trunk.” I opened the passenger door. “You mind driving a little bit? Something I got to do first.”

“Sure.” She opened the door, sat down, slammed the door and rolled the window down by hand. I put the milk crate stuffed with the blankets and the cash box in the trunk. I opened the passenger door and leaned in.

“Can you wait here a minute? Just one moment. Something I forgot. Just take a second.”

“Can I listen to the radio or something? Leave me the keys?”

“Just one second.”

There was a jewelry stand on the concrete boardwalk across the wall from where the RV’s camped out, an old beat-up guy selling Jamaican knit caps and smoking accessories. His eyes were closed when I got to his table. Bob Marley T-shirts, red yellow and green and black knit hats, a hand written sign said bongs were on sale if you bought two, next to bracelets made of black and brown nuts drilled with a leather thong threaded through. The old man’s eyes snapped open when I rapped on the table.

“How much for this thing?” I pointed to what I thought would work. Leather thong and a wooden medallion.

“Six bucks.” Dread locks danced down to his neck.

“Give you three.’

He took three bills, asked if I needed a bag, but I was around the side and over the brick wall past the humming generators, putting the leather through the hole on the Honda ignition key, swinging it by the thong by the time I got to the car. I sat down, closed the door, fastened the seatbelt.

“Cops here are big on seatbelts,” I said. “Driver’s got to do it too, if they’re driving my car.” I handed her the key.

She turned the key in the ignition, but nothing happened. The dashboard was dark.

“Hit the lights,” I said.

“Where are the lights?”

I leaned over, my head almost touching the tips of her nipples poking against her black t-shirt. A light coconut fragrance. Could’ve buried my head in there right then, smothered myself and the pain and the shame in those beautiful creamy stacks. I pointed to the turn lever, the light switch on the end, swung my torso through the coconut haze and back to my side of the car. She twisted the stalk, trying to get the lights to come on, the dash, anything.

“Open the door,” I said. She popped the door open. The ceiling lights were dead.

“Okay,” I said. “We can fix this. Battery’s dead.”

“Can’t we just walk to the clinic?” she said. “Fix the battery later?”

“That’s a good idea. You know, I don’t think I told you my name. I’m Vance.”

“Vince? Or Vance?”

“Vance. Like advance, without the ad.”

“Cool. They call me Pinkie. Don’t ask me why. Just call me Pinkie, or Pink.”

“Pinkie, I’m not a real big car guy. But here’s what I need you to do. I’ll show you. Get out of the car and I’ll walk you through this.” We both got out and met in front of the hood. I told her to wait a second and I opened the driver’s door, found the hood latch and released the hood. I came back to the front of the car and pointed to wires that were held in place with a Velcro collar.

“See these? Hold them in your hand like this.” I put my hand around the wire, without touching the grimy rubberized coating. “I’ll try and start the car, you jiggle the wires. Easy.”

I got in the car, left the driver’s door open, and looked at Pinkie. She nodded when I asked if she was ready. I turned the key, gave her a finger point, and she jiggled the wires. Nothing.

“Try it again,” I said.

I turned the key the other way, she rattled the wiring in her hands for ten seconds.

“Might be a fuse,” I said. “Let me check something.” I reached in to the glove compartment. The raised hood blocked Pinkie’s view. I pulled the .45 Colt out of the glove compartment, slid it down into my lap, pulled out a box of tissues I’d put under the driver’s seat and tore out a handful of extra-soft CVS’ best and wiped down the Colt. The barrel, the slide rack, trigger guard, very careful with the trigger, the safety, the back of the slide rack with the serrations, finally the grips. I put the tissues around the gun and put it back in the glove compartment, slipped the tissues off and wadded them up. Reached under the seat for the half-pint bottle of Jim Beam and jammed it in the glove box. I wiped down the steering wheel, stuffed the tissues in my jeans pocket and leaned out the window.

“It’s not a fuse.” I said. “Should’ve got that battery on sale at Pep Boys last week.” I got out and met Pinkie standing in front of the hood, told her to lower it for me while I looked around for a jump. She followed instructions nicely.

I moved down the lot. The old lady in the last RV with the tie-died paint job said she’d be able to jump the car when her old man got back. “Maybe an hour”, she’d said. “Maybe more?” Perfect, I thought. Perfect.

Pinkie was standing in front of the Honda holding a cigarette. “Think you were right,” I said. “It’s going to be at least an hour before we get some booster cables. Let’s walk. You need a light?”

“I’ll wait. Need me a good toke. Smoke this little guy later. You say these guys at the clinic are real ganja heads?” She had a funny way of walking, holding everything up high and tight like she knew what came first was the best she had. I couldn’t say, trying to drop back a half step and look. The Venice Beach regulars had a way of looking wind-burned, dried out. Couldn’t tell if they were in Junior High trying to look tough beyond their years, or prowling for a sailboat ride to Ensenada with bored executives on a mid-life crisis. Her pockets buttoned down over slim cheeks rustling in the fabric and it all looked fine. Pinkie. Some kind of name.

“What’s your real name, hon? Pinkie, it’s cute, like an email logon, Twitter maybe, your password so you won’t lose it? Keep it close at all times?”

“You weren’t supposed to ask me.”

“Come on, you figured me out. You need to trust me.”

“Not a matter of trust. It reminds me of things, that’s all.”

“It’s me, isn’t it? Sitting there with your hand, telling you that stuff. Hard to trust a person after that, huh?”

“I trust you. I don’t know why, but I do. You didn’t get all defensive, like, when I got you on that fortune telling thing.”

“I don’t have many defenses anymore.”

“See?”

“That’s something. It’s a start. Right?”

“An old boyfriend gave me the name Pinkie. He used to snort coke off my fingernail.” She held up her right hand, the left still fingering the filter tipped cigarette. She stuck her little finger my way, and I touched it again. We walked like that for a few steps, while I nodded to the woman at the tie-die van, getting her to smile when she saw me pulling Pinkie by her little finger.

“So if it reminds you of bad times, why do you still go by Pinkie?”

“It’s better than my real name. I don’t know. You ask all these questions. Like, can’t we just go get checked out, score some pot and get high or something? Shit. Then I got to find a place to stay tonight.”

“We’ll work on that.”

“I had to do a guy last night. Stayed in his dorm room over at USC. Right in front of his roommate, like he was trying to sleep next to us while we’re doing shit. He gave me twenty bucks.”

The beach crowd had thinned out on the north end of the strand, the meandering concrete beach walk that went from one end of Southern California to another, almost continuous, if you tried to connect the different parts.

“So what is it?” I said.

“My name?”

“I’ll call you whatever you want. I just want to know, that’s all. If you don’t want to tell me, that’s okay. We’ve confided in each other now, you know.” I let her finger go.

“Helen.”

“Beautiful. I had you for Karen. Michelle, Maggy, I was seeing mid-alphabet, Marnie, Mary Beth, Bethany even. Helen. That’s a cool name. You know, you hear a nickname and you start guessing.”

“In and out of love,” she said. “Heartbreak. Fueled by your love desire. I liked it. You were pretty good.”

We walked past the Boardwalk Café, the Jewish Center, a bicycle rental shop with old fat-tire heavy-framed two-wheelers that made your legs feel heavy in five minutes if you did more than coast.

“The love inferno,” she said, brushing my hand with her little finger. “Is that nearby?”

“Come on, that was just some bullshit I had written out. Smoke, boardwalk, fire, raging blaze, the burning desire. Cheap tricks.”

“I wanted to believe it.”

“You can believe it. You can believe anything, if you want it bad enough.” I swung my left hand out like I was turning, looking at something, trying to brush her hand again without setting off an emotional disturbance, giving it away, that I wanted in to those rustling layers of slinky fabric. Tight, smooth, black and white swirls ready to lick up and down the cone like soft ice cream. Pinkie, Helen, I fucking wanted to dive in, taste test, test drive, parallel park right up tight against the curb and turn all the knobs and switches until the heat came on and the windows steamed.

Dr. Yogesh Paliwal looked as white as me, spoke perfect English, and took Pinkie in right away. The guy outside with mohawk hair wore a skull and bones t-shirt that said “The Dead Never Die”. Dr. Paliwal’s background was dubious, at best. Studied in Pakistan, the mohawk hair guy said. Found out there was a clinical shortage of alternative medical practitioners in Southern California, he said, and he came west.

“He’s not from Pakistan, is he?” I said.

“No.”

“He’s from New York City,” I said. “South Bronx, I bet.” Mohawk handed out some glossy flyers to a couple of guys checking out the pharmaceutical dispensary sign on the peeling yellow wall.

“Come on in boys,” Mohawk said. “The doctor wants to make you feel better.”

Pinkie came out twenty minutes later holding a small brown paper bag. She took my arm and pushed me back down the strand towards the parking lot. She shook her head when I asked how it went. She lit her cigarette with a red plastic Bic lighter, passed the filter tipped cigarette to me and I waved it off.

“Fucking guy,” she said. “He’s not even a doctor.”

“How do you know?”

“I told him my problem. Female thing. Just to see what he would say. He told me to drop my panties and bend over and he’d check me out.”

“We should report him.”

“To who? The medical marijuana police? Nobody going in there gives a damn. Who cares? A girl goes in there to get some weed and she gets fingered by some gray haired old guy? Fuck, Vance, this is Venice Beach. Nobody gives a shit down here.”

Maybe I’d go back and take care of him later, after we did our business. After I got the car going, got to where I needed to go, did what I had to do. But I didn’t need any more attention pointed my way. Pinkie wouldn’t spill anything, she was getting comfortable with the idea of being with me, with the idea of trading secrets, coming clean. When we got to the car she got in the driver’s side.

“Go ahead and roll one, Pinkie. There’s papers in the glove compartment.”

“You got a pipe? It’s easier.”

I said I thought I had one in the trunk. She pulled the trunk latch from under the dash and I went around to the back of the car. I made some noise rumbling around in the trunk and found the collection of pipes. Crack pipes, hash pipes, marijuana pipes. I sometimes smoked grass out of the hash pipes, it didn’t really make any difference, except the glass hash pipe was a lot smaller than my two wooden grass pipes. And under the trunk, in the spare tire well, were three, fully packed, one pound ziploc bags of coke. Pure Colombian. I undid the butterfly screw-on nut and lifted up the panel, grabbed two of the bags and put them in the red plastic crate under the fake Navajo blankets, then got the third bag and did the same. I packed the blankets around the three Ziploc bags and re-set the bottom panel in place over the spare tire and fastened the butterfly bolt. I opened the passenger door and sat down. I handed the glass pipe to Pinkie.

“This medical grade marijuana they say is twice as strong as the street stuff. You know, long as I worked that clinic, I never got a free sample? The weirdest thing.”

Pinkie packed the pipe with the pot she’d scored, right out of a small glass jar from the brown bag.

“Did you have to pay for that?” I said.

“I put it on a credit card. I don’t have insurance. I don’t think insurance pays for that anyway. Government’s going to change all that, if they fix health care. I’m glad they’re changing that time-worn old system. Get the treatments you need, doctors you can trust. Then you don’t have to go see some dirty old man who wants to finger your cooze just so you can score some dope.”

Pinkie took the book of matches from me and struck one, held it over the bowl, sucked smoke and held it in. She handed me the pipe. Fresh, fragrant, verdant, the sweet smell of mother nature. The high life was coming our way. I held the pipe and drew on it. I held it out for Pinkie.

“Let me check the back seat for a second.” I got out and opened the rear door and leaned in, like I was checking something from the floor. “Check the glove compartment, there’s a bottle in there. Jim Beam. Have some if you want.”

I heard the glove compartment door open.

“What the hell is this? Oh, my goodness.”

“It’s bourbon. Jim Beam.”

“No. I mean this.” I looked up. She was holding it. The Colt.

“Shit. Forgot that was there. Keeping it for a guy I know.”

“Loaded?” she said.

“You know how to check?”

“No.”

“Okay, don’t do anything. Put your fingers on the barrel. So you don’t touch the trigger. Shit, I’m sorry. Point the barrel away from you.” She put her left hand around the bottom of the barrel, her palm against the bottom of the trigger guard.

“Good,” I said. “Easy.”

“Come on, is the thing loaded?”

“I don’t know. Let’s not take chances, okay?” Pinkie was holding it by the end of the barrel with three fingers, like she was extracting a piece of silverware from the dishwasher.

“Shit, Vance, what do I do now?”

“Easy, girl, take it easy. Put it on the seat. I’ll put it in the glove compartment. Set it on the seat.” She put the pistol on the passenger seat. I could hear her breathing. I came back to the passenger door, leaned in and opened the glove compartment door. I held the bottle of Jim Beam, twisted open the cap, looked behind me in the parking lot to see who was around, faked like I was taking a swig, then leaned in to the car and handed the bottle to Pinkie. “Take a drink, just a little nip, you’ll feel better.” She took the bottle, slugged back a huge swallow and put the twist cap on and the bottle on the console.

“Don’t want this to be a traumatic experience or anything,” I said. “Go ahead and put the pistol back in the glove compartment. Believe me, you don’t want your last experience with a gun to be some memory that stays with you like a mark for the rest of your life. You just hold it by the handle, don’t touch the trigger, point the gun away from both of us, down at the floor, and set it in the glove compartment. I’ll close the door, we’ll drink, and we’ll be good. Simple enough?”

She followed instructions. She was good at that. Fingers wrapped around the wooden grips, she kept the gun pointed down, reached across the center console, and laid it in the glove compartment. Slow, smooth, quiet. I latched the door. Reached out for the pipe, took the Jim Beam and put it between my legs and twisted the cap off, pulled it to my mouth and felt the cool burn on my lips and down my throat. Stuck the cap back on and lifted the pipe to my lips and pulled a sharp puff of smoke down hard, felt the Jim Beam and the medical grade marijuana fueling my foggy lift off and I looked at Pinkie, scooting towards me in her seat, everything tight and smooth and breathless. I sank back in to the seat.

“I think he wanted me to blow him.”

“Who?”

“Dr. Palamino, whatever his fucking name was. That guy in the clinic.”

“I don’t think he’s even a doctor.”

“He said something about ‘orally administered medication’ and he had this grin on his face. Like I’m supposed to drop down and be a research subject or something. Find the prize in his pants, something like that. Can you believe it?”

“Pinkie, that’s the part about being a girl, I think I’d freak. Getting hit on all the time.”

“I had these in junior high,” she said, looking down at the thin line between black and white, no grey area. “Guys didn’t know what was going on, but they liked what they saw. You get used to it.”

“It’s not going to stop.”

“Didn’t say I wanted it to stop. I got ‘em, so be proud, I say. Don’t hog the pipe, man.”

I sucked in a breath, held the pipe over to Pinkie. She gave her lips a little tongue swirl before laying the end of the pipe in there, and I wondered where they learned that shit. How to turn a guy on with some un-rehearsed gesture, some little thing they didn’t even think about, all the hours of makeup sessions and hair salons and close-up time in front of mirrors, it was some little thing that sent a guy over the moon. A birthmark, a hickey on a girl’s neck, a run in her pantyhose, hair all piled up going nowhere and everywhere, like she’d just gotten thrashed in bed and needed to sleep, one missed fingernail out of ten, red-glossed blinking digits—hot buttons in the worst way. Some chick with a couple of extra pounds that somehow all fit perfectly, yet she’s complaining about gym time and diets and dress sizes and all you want to do is squeeze all of it in your palms, polish it, wax it, shine and buff and tell her ‘don’t do a thing, don’t do a thing’, but girls don’t think that way. Guys do.

“Nice stuff,” Pinkie said. I handed her the Jim Beam. She slugged a swallow.

“I need to jump this car.” I need to jump Pinkie’s bones.

“Okay,” she said. Hot glittered nails on ceramic pipe, glowing smoking coals of pot, a 1982 Honda Accord. All hot. Too hot.

The woman at the tie-died RV had changed her cammo T-shirt for a light blue flowered dress, limp and clinging to her sagging frame. But she had cables. I showed Pinkie how to clamp them on both batteries, red to red, black to black, and I fired up the Honda. Pointed to the red cable on the Honda, and Pinkie pulled it off. Then the black, same thing on the old hippie RV, handed the cables back to the woman smiling through missing teeth and the light blue dress ruffled in the breeze. She winked at me. I shot my eyebrows up, my salute to age and experience and the wisdom of the sixties and all that ‘where were you in ’62?’ shit that used to be hip and now seemed pre-Vietnam and Nixonian, all the fucked up crap that bogged us down and put us where we are now, some new politician promising how to fix it with global-protectionism and ‘can’t we all just get along?’ diplomacy. Pinkie grabbed my hand and held on all the way across the sand swept asphalt crunching under our feet, the beach blowing and drifting under whispering palms.

“Gotta stop at my trailer,” I said. “Glad you don’t mind driving. My license is expired. Sort of forgot when my birthday was coming around. Nobody sends cards no more to remind me. Got a guy staying at my place that owes me rent money. Make sure that pipe is cleaned out and covered up. This isn’t the time to get pulled over with no plates and a car full of pot.” She wrapped up the pipe in the tissue from the box under the driver’s seat and handed it to me. I put it in the glove compartment. We pulled out through the Rose Avenue gate and turned down Main street going south.

“Even if it’s medical?” Pinkie said. She had sunglasses on, looked straight ahead, both hands on the steering wheel.

“I don’t want to take any chances. Cops don’t care if you have a prescription or not. Bust you now, ask questions later. LAPD.” We picked up speed past Venice Boulevard, turning east on Washington down to Lincoln Boulevard south. Pinkie drove well, taking each turn, following instructions, exactly as I said. She drove slowly, too, giving me time to think, each step, like numbered diagrams saved to my hard-drive brain. I opened the window, took in some ocean breeze. My head needed to be clear. I’d taken only one real hit on the pipe, just a half-swallow of Jim Beam. Pinkie wanted music so I played with the radio dial until we got something that made her slap her palm against the steering wheel.

“What is that?” I said.

“I don’t know, baby. Just feeling it.” Glittery nails drumming the wheel, she slid one hand down, landed it on my thigh, slid it up and down, letting it rest. Her fingers fluttered on my thigh, her hot buttons making me come alive, five hard nails digging in, letting up, circling around.

“You live down here?” she said. She pulled her hand away, gripped the wheel with two hands and turned the Accord into Dockweiler State Beach.

“Been staying down her for a couple of weeks.”

“Cool.” She pulled to the right, down the back row until I told her where to pull in and park, backing up behind the pickup with the cab-over camper shell. The curtains were drawn on the camper windows. It was parked alone in the back north corner. There wouldn’t be much noise anyone could hear, crashing of waves, the wind picking up.

Pinkie left the engine running, put her hands on the volume and turned up the music. Slapped her palm against the steering wheel, turning to me, the white V swallowed up in the black fabric of the T-shirt, and it wasn’t the innocent move this time. Her hair was clean and straight, her nails bright and glossy, lips pale, leaning forward.

“I need a place to stay for a couple of days,” she said. “Is it real crowded in there?”

“Won’t be after I take care of some business.”

Her fingers rested on my thigh. She led with her best, lips touching mine, fingers squeezing a muscle that had some power but no sign of conscience. We kissed like teenagers in a salty dream, where it fills up and spills over and you can’t help any of it, drawn over the falls like a rubber raft without a rudder, going where it takes you on that wild ride. She was wet and warm and she pulled me in to the fold, into the nest, taking little breaths that sounded like little sighs—you never know—and when we broke away she held me an inch away from her, and whispered.

“Do what you need to do. I’ll be here.” The music had been loud, the song was ending now, the beat fading, and another little beep-beep played on. Pinkie slapped her purse.

“Cell phone,” she said. “Don’t need that, do we?” She pinched my thigh up tight and close, smiled and kissed my cheek.

“I’m going to need some more of that, baby,” I said. She squeezed again, harder, firmer. “I get done here, everything’s going to be good, smooth sailing. Promise. Every doctor will be licensed, everything will be under control. No nonsense.”

I could feel her little breaths now, the ones that sounded like sighs. “Don’t stop all the nonsense,” she said in a whisper, as if she was talking to my eyelids. “Keep a little around, use it sparingly, you know. Like a precious resource.”

“I was right, wasn’t I? Old wounds, heartbreak, the cycle. Swirling around, love desire.”

“Yeah. You had it going. I never believed that stuff, but I just needed to sit down. I’m not going to lie. I didn’t want that hocus pocus. I’ve had lines thrown at me my whole life. Like you were saying a minute ago. But you, you had style, and I was alright with that. You didn’t fight when I busted you.”

“Couldn’t. Shit, couldn’t, with you. Listen, Pinkie. Can I call you Helen?”

Helen. Helen of Troy. She wrapped me in her arms, sequin Baby Dolls rubbing against my chest, launching a thousand ships.

“Sure. Call me Helen.”

“Let me take care of this business. This guy’s on his way out. Sun’s going down, we’ll have the beach all alone. You won’t have to go anywhere. Okay?”

“Okay.” Her eyes were filling up, straight on me. Next to me, between the seat and the door, a golf glove was wrapped in a rubber band. I put my right hand down and moved it under the front of the seat, Helen smiling with those wet eyes.

“One drink?” I said. Helen nodded. I opened the glove compartment, pulled the Jim Beam out, twisted off the cap, handed it to Helen. She took a long pull. I reached for the golf glove, snapped the rubber band off and had it half over my right hand when she handed me the bottle.

“You going to kill that guy?” she said. Her smile was gone.

“What did you say?”

Her hands were in her lap. Then one hand moved up to the radio knob, the car still running, her fingers moving the knob around, turning the volume, up, loud.

My left hand was on the Jim Beam, right hand half-gloved, Pinkie moving her hand to the shift on the console, the car revving in park, Reggae beat click-throbbing.

“Turn that shit down,” I said.

Pinkie didn’t move. She kept her hand on the shift lever, the glove compartment door hanging open. The Colt wasn’t there.

“Where’s the gun,” I said.

“With my fingerprints all over it?” She pressed the gas pedal, the engine roared, the little Honda shaking, the four cylinder doing what it could, holding in place behind the camper shell pickup.

“Hey,” I said. “Okay, let’s work through this. Work with me.” Wind was blowing through the windows, smelling like the sea, driftwood and kelp, forgotten forms of life washed up on shore to die. “It’s not my gun. Belongs to the guy in the camper, okay? I’m helping you here, okay? Trusting each other, right?”

All the smooth tight skin gave way to the cold blue Colt she’d had somewhere, and now it was pointed at me, the bore bigger when you were looking into it, a black hole that could come to life and end mine.

“Hey, hey, hey,” I said. “It’s not loaded.”

The muzzle hardly moved, she just pulled the slide back, released it in one pure motion. “Oh yeah,” she said. “Now it is.”

“Come on, Pinkie.” I leaned towards her, keeping my eyes on hers. “Helen.”

“No, no, stay right there. Don’t move.”

“I’ll fix this thing up,” I pointed to the camper shell pickup in front of the car. “You don’t know anything about this. Believe me. Let me wipe it down. You weren’t even here. You got it all wrong.”

“Manager of two marijuana clinics. Used cars. I was getting kind of hungry when you got to Aretha Franklin and Papa John’s pizza. Now I got the munchies.”

“That part was all true. I didn’t bullshit you, except the fire stuff, the big water, that shit I told you, goddamnit. Fuck, you’re getting rough on me now.”

“Okay, you were charming. I give you that. Me? I’m not so charming. Got thrown out of my house three months ago. I don’t know much about staying alive except I gotta stay true, you know, stay out of shit like this, guys getting me to hold guns. What the fuck kind of scum do you think we are? Huh? Venice Beach, there’s a million chicks going up and down all day, everyday, you think we’re all suckers? Ready for your line of bullshit so they can drop down and kiss your fat ass? Suck your little dick?” Colt barrel had a little jiggle to it, like it was getting nervous.

“This is my camper,” I said. “It’s all I own. Okay? Let me go in there, give him his gun, get what he owes, we hang out and, I don’t know, get to know each other, I guess. You’re right. We both been on the streets too long, and we’re too young for this.”

“No, I’m too old for this. Maybe you’re too young. I got to get on with life. Go on up there, get your money, but you’re not going with this gun. Go on. I’ll wait.”

“You’ll wait here?”

She nodded her head. I pulled the glove tight, opened the door, stepped out and felt the wind right up in my face, hard, thought I could feel those little sighs Pinkie was letting me have, breathless wonder dancing on my blind eyes. The Honda pulled up its windows, stayed where it was, and I heard the beep-beep of Helen’s cell phone, the same time the camper shell door opened.

Two black uniformed LAPD officers jumped out. Big guys.

I heard ‘hands up, turn around, don’t move’ and the black cop, big guy with some cheap aftershave that cut the salt air, wrapped the cuffs around my wrists and turned me around so my back was against the steel wall of the camper and read me the rights.

“Seth McAllister. Possession of narcotics,” the black one said. “For sale or distribution, un-registered firearm, stolen vehicle.”

Pinkie was talking in the cell phone. I could see her through the windshield. The big cop went up in the camper and came back with a folding camp chair. Green canvas stretched between folding black tubes of steel. He motioned to me to sit.

“Gonna be here a while,” he said. Pinkie was looking at me through the windshield. She wasn’t holding the cell phone.

“You know her?” One of the cops pointed at the Honda.

“Met her today,” I said. Everything can and will be used against you.

The Honda revved up, cranked into gear, scratched up some sand when Pinkie gave it gas, and it rolled fast out of the parking space and down the asphalt to the Dockweiler State Beach entrance, and then it was gone.

“Know her name?” the cop said.

I shook my head.

Riverside, fiction by Kurt Taylor « Fried Chicken and Coffee

2010-07-03T12:34:00.000-07:00

Riverside, fiction by Kurt Taylor « Fried Chicken and Coffee

excerpt from 'Split Decision'

2010-04-24T14:21:00.001-07:00

The pharmacy was south of McCarran airport. Traffic on I-15 was light. Clouds put a grey tint on the back side of casinos rising to the left.

Commercial buildings in the south side bloomed like weeds, all bearing the same gritty DNA. Light industrial one-story tilt-ups. 4-wheel drive after-market parts shops, floor covering stores, outlets for kitchen and bathroom tile. Non-descript, low profile, month-to-month.

988 Wagon Trail Avenue was tucked in the corner of an industrial park just west of I-215. Just the number, no other identification on the cement. Four parking spaces in front of the glass door entrance. A beep sounded when I walked in. The woman who came to the counter was under thirty, tank top, heavy arms, lots of tattoos.

“Yeah?”

“Picking up for Bando.”

She disappeared down the corridor into the shop. Two small point-of-purchase displays were on the counter, nothing on the walls. No chairs. The POPs held flyers, one for a tattoo convention a month ago in Bullhead City. Another advertised a concoction promising ‘Energy Surge! Improve your Sex Life! Non-Prescription!’ A big V-twin motorcycle fired up from one of the parking stalls down the lane, then another.

The woman came out holding a brown paper bag and put it on the counter and rang up a charge. I gave her Freddy’s credit card, signed the slip, and held up an index finger.

“Freddy asked me to take this up to Doctor Hue. He didn’t have the address, though. He said you’d have it.”

She cocked an eyebrow, didn’t say anything. I wanted to ask her if she’d finished school, had more than the word “yeah” in her vocabulary, if she even knew the words on the silly tattoos covering her arms and what the little loops of metal were doing wrapped around her lip. Her nose. All over the tops of her ears. I waited.

“What?” she said.

Two words in her marvelous vocabulary. I wanted to stare in to her eyes until she began to think. That might take a while. I took a flyer for the herbal erectile dysfunction cure from the display and showed it to her.

“This stuff any good?” I said.

Her lip began to move, chewing on her metal piercing.

“My boyfriend uses it sometimes.” She flicked the nose ring with her finger. “Not because he has to, you know.”

“Oh, yeah. Hey, sometimes you crash hard and you need something to, you know, wake everything up.”

She giggled, through the nose, not moving her lips.

“It’s big in strip clubs. Some of the girls order it.”

“I bet those corn-fed boys from Iowa probably have trouble even finding their damn things.” I gave her the knowing eye.

“My boyfriend, he don’t have that problem. Sometimes, you know, he just needs a little help.”

“Your secret’s safe with me.” I gave her a crooked smile and a breathy low voice. “How about this Dr. Hue. You have his address on file somewhere?”

She turned and walked down the corridor. On the back of the flyer were listed various therapeutic uses of “Buoys Up”, the super non-prescription potion that cured constipation, erectile dysfunction, hemorrhoids, prostate symptoms, general male plumbing malfunctions. If I had to buy a product like this just to get Hue’s address, and charge it on Freddy’s credit card, I’d be subject to a lifetime of abuse. The boxing world was unmerciful. Maybe Dave would come though with a location and spare me the stigma. Spare me having to come back and engage the tattoo lady, listen to stories about her old man coming down off meth or booze, the miracle of over-the-counter erections. I heard a door close down the hallway. Interrupting momentary thoughts of tattoos and piercing and fleshy desires.

It was a guy this time, skinny, black t-shirt with skulls and gothic script and a shaved head. Something scrawled on his forehead up where his hairline would be.

“Help you?” he said.

“I gotta get this stuff to Dr. Hue’s office. I forgot the address.”

“Hue doesn’t live out here no more. Who are you?”

“Delivery guy. You know where he went?”

His eyes, a pair of red-tinged slits set deep in dark sockets, locked in on mine. Whatever was on his forehead was written backwards. Tattooed. I could make out “Jesus” in reverse, like it would look in the mirror. I leaned closer.

“Do you know where he went?” I said. The block letters on his forehead was a prison tattoo, something a guy would do behind bars after losing a bet.

“No.”

“How about you check in your file? I’d appreciate it.”

“How about you get out of here.”

Jesus in My Life Every Day was the tattooed message on his forehead. What he’d seen in his five-inch prison cell mirror, his last chance, his only prayer. Three of my fingers were on the brown paper with the receipt stapled to the top. Inside the bag, the coagulants, Avitene, epinephrine. Everything I needed to stop the bleeding.

“I’m just delivering this stuff,” I said. “Come on, man.”

His bloodshot slits hadn’t blinked. Until now, when he blinked fast three times and moved his head down an inch, his left arm out two. I slapped both hands on the counter and vaulted, a hand spring with both legs swinging left, up over the counter, rolling into the guy, slamming us onto the cement behind the counter, up tight against the wall. I had a hand around his neck and a hand on his mouth. I got right into the rheumy eyes and six inches from Jesus in My Life.

“I don’t want to hurt you.” I could feel the wetness of his mouth. “I’m going to look in your files, and you’re going to keep quiet.” My guess was he was on parole, no room on his record for another police report. “Move your head a bit if you understand me.” His head moved. I looked under the counter for a tissue box, paper towels, something to stuff in his mouth. Nothing but a stapler, paper clips, a blue bottle of cleaning product.

“We’re going on the honor system. If you say anything, I crack your head until your mouth shuts. We clear?” He moved his head. I squatted on his chest, held a hand over his mouth and pulled out my phone. I dialed Freddy. Come on, Freddy. . .

When he picked up I told him to call the pharmacy, the girl would answer. “Talk to her. . .talk to her for a couple of minutes. . .What?. . . Just do it, okay?. . .Tell her you’re interested in the male enhancement product. . . No, Freddy, not for you. . . . No time, man. . .Things are a little tight here now. . . Have her go in the back and check a shipment or something. . .Talk dirty to her, she’s a skank.”

Thirty seconds later the phone rang three times. I heard the girl talking.

“Show me the files,” I said to the guy. “A phone directory, whatever. Do it now.” He was skinny, weak, probably malnourished, living off drugs and sex and coffee and late nights. I clamped the hand around his mouth and twisted his arm behind his back and shuffled him around the counter. I locked the front door. We went into an office off the corridor and he pointed with his free arm to a computer.

“Pull up his account. Do it fast.”

He logged in, typed some strokes, waited. The girl was calling out something. I put my finger to my lips. He nodded, didn’t say anything. He hit a couple of key strokes.

I could hear the girl. Loud. Saying one word at a time. I pointed at the guy, held up one finger.

“I’ll open the door, and you say ‘Just a minute, I’ll be right there.’ Say any more, you got a huge headache.”

I opened the door a foot. The guy called out just what I said, the girl yelling back “Shut up, I’m on the phone.” The most she’d said, just about, since I’d come in. I closed the door. Freddy had a way.

The guy pointed to the screen. I walked around. Hue’s account was on the screen, green letters and numbers. Phone numbers, address, shipping addresses. Credit cards. I copied as much as I could in a minute onto a pad on the desk. I pulled him up and shoved him out the door and into the front, stood him at the end of the counter.

“Here’s what I’ll do,” I said. “I’ll let you forget about this and you’ll never think about it again, never remember it. Or I call the police right now. I’ll even stay right here. And you can explain the operation, what I’m doing here, what I did, let them search the back and find out all about Buoys Up and whatever else is shipping out of here. Your choice.”

“Get the fuck out of here.”

DESERT NIGHT, from 'Lane and Mia'

2009-11-29T14:47:00.000-08:00

“We’re almost there,” I said. “Just a dirt road, there won’t be a sign. We drive past it, we’ll never get there. Slow down.”

The GPS X was tracking us along the eastern side of the Weapons Range. Boris said he was able to examine documentation of stuff that was uncovered on the range when ordnance exploded, old mining sites, weird stuff the Navy didn’t really care about but had to track. Not like there were endangered species or anything hiding out that some nerd was keeping notes on. All that environmental stuff was off-limits on the range. Nobody could get close enough to find out if some desert tortoise habitat was seriously threatened. Everybody pretty much knew a bombing range takes no mercy. That was the whole point. Boris said there was a joke around headquarters, the Navy had posted signs throughout the desert range telling the critters to go find a new home. Like lizards could read.

“Slow, dude, slow,” I said. “Man you got one speed, whether it’s pool, drinking, or driving.”

“Yeah and you go no speed.”

“This is it, man. This is it. This is it. Turn here. Left, left. LEFT. . .LEFT.”

The F-150 screeched left, bucked a foot-deep ditch, spun back tires over the top of the hump and settled on a dirt path with a headlight-view of stark scrub brush and a cracked mud-sand mix spread like spackle.

“Slow, here,” I said. “Just hold on, okay?”
Boris held the truck still.

“High beams and fog lights, please,” I said. The GPS had a zoom-reduce feature, so I toggled the map to a larger scale and looked at the coordinates I’d plugged in from Boris. The desert brightened under the Ford’s headlights and the low-light from the fog lamps sprayed out to the sides. The rutted path disappeared beyond the blaze of light, into a night darker than I remembered.

“What does it show?” Boris asked.

“Six, seven miles.”

“You ready?”

“In a minute. Shut off the truck.”

“What?”

“Stop the truck. Turn off the engine.”

Boris switched off the ignition and I opened the door and stepped out. The surface had a crunch, then a doughy consistency under the dry-cured crust. The western sky was in full bloom, the planets tucked in behind the horizon when the twilight faded, hours ago. Black everywhere, with pure pinpoints of ancient light sparkling up high when your eyes adjusted, stars fired up a billion years ago, showing their signals. Silence you can hear, it’s so thick. A dense, hard, impenetrable stillness that feeds you like a drug. You get some, it’s never enough. Solid bedrock bottom, like the planet is starting all over again, right in front of you.

SUN SPOTS

2009-11-27T22:23:00.000-08:00

Fading cell phone batteries (not just mine. .), careers in transition speed-talking over screaming hot rods, police cars and EMTs and blinking fire trucks jamming intersections. . .dinner at Grazianos, wine bars.
Man, a cigarette, tonight, on the deck, Friday night cruisers running stop signs and moaning all the way to the moon.
The stars are brighter in the San Joaquin Valley and tonight, tonight. . .clouds spread the sky announcing autumn and rain, leaves firing hot red and gold in time for black Friday. Oh, what a show. . .early shoppers huddling for value--huge discounts please--grab a number for that half-price hundred dollar television.

Get a job. Spend money--charge it. Drink wine. Smoke a cigarette.

Scan the sky--stars still point the way--watch the sky.
I got a job.
Study the sky

SAM

2009-10-18T18:39:00.000-07:00

I worry about Sam. Kid I met over the summer at the ballpark, a kid I used to give a lot of shit to, a kid I used to say stuff to like 'Do as I say, not as I do'--the Arnold movie line that came over the PA during every game that I'd mimic as I passed him--a kid who told me he was in high school when I asked him how old he was and the kid who told me he was going into the Marine Corp. This was June. I gave him my email and told him to give me a note, send a joke, let me know how things are going once he got settled somewhere. I shook his hand on his last day, wished him well.

I haven't heard from Sam. He's probably doing fine, down in Pendleton, some boot camp hell, learning how to defend our country. He's probably doing fine. I don't know why I just thought about Sam. Maybe somehow, he'll know someone is thinking about him. Nice kid, buzz cut hair, I used to rub my knuckles in his scalp, maybe once a week, male bonding stuff.

I worry about Sam. Sam, are you out there somewhere? Midnight watch on some outpost?

Where are you, man?

DESERT HIDEOUTS

2009-10-18T14:00:00.000-07:00

CHACO

2009-10-18T13:57:00.000-07:00

THE DOORS

2009-10-18T13:56:00.000-07:00

OVERRATED

2009-10-14T11:37:00.000-07:00

Here they are, somewhat the province of the solitary observer, items I’ve been meaning to put in their place; acts, objects, things, traits heretofore elevated somehow in current popular status, that I declare to be overrated.. (and in no apparent order)

--Hair, in general; shave it off, let it grow, color it? Whatever. It comes and goes, so let it go..
--Perez Hilton; why is this hack exalted? Who gives him the soapbox? Dunno..
--Backing into parking spaces; why, I ask? Solely reserved for drivers of pickup trucks that can’t seem to be able to maneuver these behemoths, so they cheat, back into spaces, rather than back out? Perplexing, especially when this habit is extended to four cylinder autos..
--The Final Four; hey, I’m a fan, but let’s face it, March Madness isn’t so much about hoops as a general post-winter madness, cabin fever, and the promise that baseball is around the corner…college b-ball in front of any more than 10,000 fans in a stale, musty gym is way beyond what Naismith had in mind…
--College Football playoffs; okay, not actually in existence. . .YET. . .but the whole discussion reeks of new money, those who can’t just enjoy college guys playing ball, and the ‘I have to be Number One’ syndrome. Go to the Rose Bowl, Pac 10-Big Ten, and tell me how you feel..
--Hummers—the vehicle; If you have to ask why, you don’t deserve the answer..
--Dancing With The Stars; have to admit, I’ve never actually seen it. But anything having to do with ex-athletes, washed up politicians and ‘B’ list players getting prime time with hot chicks, is, well, not exactly what I’d call a productive use of time. Their’s, not yours. Okay, your’s either. Gone are the days when jocks drove delivery trucks in the off season so they could get to know their fans, then sold insurance until they died.
--Running—it’s just wrong. Bad on the joints, the whole lower body--just bad. Swim, hike, bike, walk, but run? Nah. Rather spin the treadmill, play air-guitar, chase moths. NO RUNNING. Should be a sign up everywhere.
--Dodger Stadium—just another nice place to play baseball, nothing special, nothing classic or timeless. Face it LA, most of you grew up loving the Dodgers, so I can’t blame you. Check out ATT Park, Wrigley, Camden Yards, Petco, Coors, and find out what you’re missing. Can’t even find a sign for the off-ramp. Why? O’Malley chose to finance the stadium himself and couldn’t get the city to pop for even a freeway sign. Nice parking lot with a stadium.
--Pete Carroll—not in the won lost sense, but in the sense that when his players get arrested, get involved in, shall we say campus shenanigans (and leave it at that), Uncle Pete is the first to deflect the questions, defer to the ‘we’ll wait and see what develops’ kind of response, and NEVER EVER comes out and says ‘we don’t tolerate this behavior on this team, at this school, or on this campus’, thereby making the kind of statement every other coach is quick to do. If you like the W-L record, Pete is your man. Check the rap sheets of the players, to find out the coaching philosophy of Carroll.

I believe we’ll stop it right here, for now..

BIG HAIR AND MINE

2009-10-01T10:36:00.000-07:00

She had Big Hair, perched on the salon chair wrapped in black, and Bobby looked her over, holding scissors and a hair dryer like he couldn't decide.
Little shorter over the ears, I told Julie-Ann, my girl. In the mirror Bobby shifted his glance back and forth, the Big Hair broad going on about her 59 year old husband's three hour gym workouts; 'abs, mostly, yeah he's pretty serious about those abs' she was saying, Bobby finally clicking on the hair dryer like he was racking the chamber of his 12-Gauge. High powered, big recoil, I could feel the blast on the back of my head; hot, wet, Bobby wielding big fire-power in one hand and razor-sharp clip-clips in the other, fully loaded, and Julie-Ann buzzing my fading scalp like she'd done for the past fifteen years.
Bobby admitted he'd given up on Facebook, he was telling Big Hair, and then she shifted gears, revved up and took off.
She announced the title of her speech; 'Social Media', and she launched in.
'I Facebook, Twitter, I'm on Linked-In' she crowed, and I asked Julie-Ann for another buzz around my neck because it felt so good and might drown out revelations on Tweet info I really didn't need, and when the buzzing from my neck down my spine shriveled up she was still at it; 'Facebook Security? I don't know, everthing's just out there', she said, big-hair piled up loose, like Bobby would let it all down in a moment when he revealed why he'd given up social media. Big Hair called it that, its correct name, 'Social Media', like there was a new section in the newspaper with that title, replacing the old 'Social Scene' pics of deb balls and champagne receptions benefiting Zimbabwean pre-school or cloning colonies, protesting men and women landing on the moon, like drinking champagne and moon shots had more in common than maybe the phrase 'shots' and that's not all that much of a stretch when you get down to it.
I waited. Big Hair, Bobby with fire power and steel, more social media wisdom, while her old man crunched abs of steel for what? This big-haired broad?
Bobby says he's divorced, maybe the reason he'd lost so much weight, he revealed. 30 pounds in a year. He still looked kind of used up to me. Better maybe than Big Hair. Julie-Ann was using her scissors to clip my scalp, the thin stuff up top, surgically-honed snips thining my top-side like a hedge that was hiding old tennis balls and beer cans. She's a pro. No gossip, small talk when we need it, nothing too damning, nothing too gooey, she never misses a spot, always leaves me trimmed and happy. Everyone else coos and crows, dispensing gush and schmooze with rinse and highlights, perms and trims, last minute dos for late night cruise. No problem, I think. Big Hair needs a day off from crunchy abs and three hour workouts leading to sixty, and I know that need. I know that feeling.

Don't Blame Carla

2009-09-10T16:13:00.000-07:00

She wasn't to blame. Carla? Nah...wasn't her doing. One o'clock lunch on a Thursday, nothing much going on, down on the border of Ontario and Chino, where we used to eat Mexican food down off the 60 Freeway and Mountain avenue. Those were good days, when Don used to say he needed a cell phone, and it was only to call his wife when he was heading up Cajon pass during the fires, but we got him one. 1989.
Carla said to meet at Canatarro's, and I knew where it was. Carla pointed to the ceiling when we sat down, with the trellis's and the fake wine grapes and vines poking through.
Old style, I said. Reminded me of times we used to eat at pizza dives when I was a kid, Italian red-sauce hangs in San Leandro; Italian Villa, the Pine Cone, Jake's, spaghetti and meatball joints with red checkered table cloths. They've never gone out of style.
Now it's Vince's, Graziano's, Canatarro's, working crowd ristorantes for pickup trucks and four wheel drives, places I used to avoid and now find refreshing, cool dark spaces and lovely waitresses.
Hear that Henry Mancini? Sharp organ chords playing against strings, you know, pre Pink Panther? Early lounge? It lives.
Poinciana? Cal Tjader? Luzon? Smooth, baby, as oil on a backside in late sun on the Caribbean, before dinner and after lunch when time melts and you can set your watch to any old place you want. Drink up... order some appetizers, you ain't goin' anywhere for a while, relax and enjoy. Shower together, the humidity is forever, you know.
I need this. Back at home, smoke some old butts hanging around in ash trays from the nineties, is okay...I say...is okay. I know better, but I know too, is not a thing that lasts, okay? Let it go, let it happen, is okay. . .
Tomorrow? I talk some bizness..work a little bit on my craft. . .take it slow. . .doctor's orders. . .is okay. Is okay. Not Carla's fault.
Is okay. . .blame it on Jay-Lo, Clooney, 'Out of Sight'. . .blame it on Caritanno's. And the vino...

DESERT RUN (excerpt from 'Lane and Mia')

2009-08-21T09:32:00.000-07:00

Nasty’s had a little tournament going in the back room, a dozen guys chalking their sticks and pulling on beers around ten o’clock. Boris had staked out end seats at the bar.

“Polish sausage is on special,” Boris said when I walked up. We did the knuckle-fist touch. “Fries, pickles. Pretty good last time I had it.”

“Ate already.” Leaning in to the bar, I caught Slash’s eye. “Arnold Palmer, please.” He nodded. “Hey, Slash, put in some of those lemon wedges, okay?” Slash tapped the bar with his finger and went to the refrigerator. Nasty’s used real iced tea and homemade lemonade. Arnie would be proud. The pool balls at Nasty’s clicked in a rhythm sometimes all at once, four tables in back, a wooden thunk-click, balls in the pockets. A shout, a groan, a clink of beer glasses.

“So what is this place you got in mind?” I said. “Where is it, at the end of a dirt road?”

“We can get a game with some of these guys,” Boris said, nodding towards the pool tables. “Couple of guys we could take real easy.”

“Don’t want to waste karma. Got it all stored up where I need it. Pull it down like beer from a keg.”

“Jesus Christ. All right. Fuckin’ pool game, man. I could use the money.”

“Karma is like cash, dude, spiritual currency, to be used wisely and for the greater good and the enlightenment of the species.”

“And I thought you were off the medication. What’d you do, switch up to meth?”

“Hey, I’m not laughing, man. I spent three fuckin’ months at county getting shit together. Three months. Mia said I didn’t even know I was there half the time. In and out. Still got some work to do, though, dude. You’re going to help? Or no, you’re chickening out. Hmm?” The Arnold slid across the bar. “Thanks, Slash.” Slapped a five down next to the coaster.

Skinny long-haired freak at the front table snapped up a twenty from the rail, spun his cue stick like hands of a clock going twelve to six, then back the other way, Tom Cruise-style; ‘Color of Money’. Paul Newman was awesome in that movie. He and Jason Robards, Nicholson. Old dudes could play characters, defining the archetypes, cultural heroes we could depend on. Over and over. That was the cool thing about DVD’s. Lock in to something real, you watch it over and over, perfect it, learn it, master it. Sat there in my smoking jacket all day for a couple of weeks, ‘resting’, but I don’t waste time. Don’t waste time, don’t waste karma. Eventually, it all runs out. Just a matter of when.

Boris wanted that long haired freak, I could tell. Smelled money on the table, that was his problem. Couldn’t grasp the real issues, the bigger picture.

“Boris, tune your frequency, dude, I need you, man. Dial it down.” Boris turned from the pool tables back to the bar, put his finger up. Slash pulled a draft and set it down.

“One game man,” he said. “Just one game.”

“Where is this place, man? Where is this happening?”

“So you sat around all day watching ‘X-Files’?” Boris had foam around the top of his lip. “Got all pumped up nominating yourself for ‘alien abduction of the year’?”

“Uh, no. That’s not it dude.”

“Well this place, I’m telling you, nobody goes up there. We pop a tire or something, this time of year, morning comes, we fry.”

“You ever heard of a spare tire?”

“Why do you think I want to get a game here? Unlike you, Mr. Employed Truck Driver, I don’t have unlimited domestic funding.”

“And I don’t have unlimited time. I almost found that out. I did find that out.”

“Congratulations. Welcome to the human race.”

“Yeah, I’m alive. Great.” I leaned closer. “But how alive am I?”

“What are you, mixing shit now? Little meth, Arnie Palmers, what else? Splash of Karma on the rocks?”

Boris’s teeth were so fucking ugly, I really wanted him to consider an orthodontic-surgical approach, or a good pool cue to the jaw. That could be arranged.

“Thanks, Slash.” I slid the tall glass across the bar. Stood up.

“Sit down, man.” Boris pulled an index card out of his front shirt pocket. “Okay, okay. Come on.” He handed the card to me. It was yellow, light blue lines. In black ink; a time, a date, a GPS coordinate.

“I don’t have GPS,” I said. “That’s what this is?”

“Can you borrow one?”

I nodded. If I had to. They could locate us, then, I thought. GPS worked both ways. At least in this town. I didn’t say anything. Filed it away, kept it in my head. Go home, write everything out, dispose of the yellow index card, take a shower, clean off, wipe down. Jump in bed with Mia, lay my head on her beautiful thigh, the two of us arranged like a ‘T’.

White House health plan back to square one - Carrie Budoff Brown - POLITICO.com

2009-08-20T23:28:00.001-07:00

White House health plan back to square one - Carrie Budoff Brown - POLITICO.com

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Close Calls

2009-08-12T11:01:00.000-07:00

The eggs popped in the pan when the water boiled down and the kitchen was billowing smoke and it smelled. It was a while before the house cleared out, windows all opened and the fan blowing. I'd been on the computer writing and forgot about the eggs boiling. I threw everything out in the trash.
Later, after working out in the gym and reading a few pages of my story I fell asleep. My eyes felt heavy and I slipped into a dream with a dark figure looking at me. She smiled. This happened very fast, so when I woke up it seemed like it was only a few seconds. The next thing, it was a half an hour later, and time to get dressed and get down to pick up Carlos.
Driving my Jeep, I hear Carlos yelling at me; 'Watch out, watch out,' and the brakes slammed on and chattered, the ABS system worked, and I was an inch short of running into a road sign in the median. We were going to Hollywood, and I wondered if accidents happened in threes.
At Hollywood and Highland the chairs were all taken. We found a table. People came up to us saying this was their table, and I said no, we'd been there for an hour. The guy grinned and pointed to something he'd left at the table to mark it as his. I said, no, no way. But join us anyway.
Carlos from Peru and Ivonne and Eliezer join us after a while. My friend Carlos is from Columbia and has been here for eight years. Carlos, numero dos, es de Peru and is an actor. Eliezer is an actor, via Puerto Rico and New York. Ivonne is an actor, Carlos' acting coach and well known in Latino cinema.
The music is beautiful, Francisco Aquabella on congas, very precise and strong band. The wonderful horn section plays the breaks with strength and style. Francisco sings in his wavering voice. He will play forever, I think. He will always play.
Carlos from Peru is amazed that this great music is free. The summer in Los Angeles has so much to do, with free music, wonderful beaches and weather, the city celebrates this, embraces it as ours, our gifts to enjoy. It is why we are here. The KJAZ summer series draws music fans and locals and great musicians together in a setting where we all feel together, people meeting new people, talking and joined by great rhythm and sound.
After the music, Carlos and Eliezer and I have dinner upstairs at the Grille, and talk about coffee and cinema and not much about politics, but a little.

Shangri La

2009-08-10T15:38:00.000-07:00

Jerry's dead. His widow runs the place now, the Hardyville Trailer Park and The Shangri La. Both popped up on the radar on my first mission to Bullhead, couple of weeks ago. Sitting at the front end of a dusty gravel drive that passes by trailers stacked against the river. Old ones, rusty and held up it seems by plywood panels, shaded with groves of palm. I couldn't tell if the roots poking up were from trees or trailers, they'd both been there so long. Grime covered motorcycles huddling in shade--no plates; broken barbecues; mis-matched chairs and gray wooden planter boxes sprouting flowers and dried up withered stuff that couldn't stand the heat.
The Shangri La is the motel wing of this riverside lean-to.
Didn't catch her name but she showed me a furnished room. Upstairs. Introduced me to Morris, but Morris didn't say anything. He grins at me when I say hello, sitting in the sun next to the vacant studio suite. He'd be my next door neighbor if I moved in there. Doubt if he'd make much noise.
600 a month includes cable, no internet. Furnished with a kitchen.
'Kathleen lives down here," she said, pointing down the second story hall. "Works at the Riverside. Most people here are full-time residents. Mary sold her place in San Diego, couldn't afford it no more. Moved in here."
600 a month moves just about anybody in. Me? Couple of months, play like I'm on the run or something, hole up, sketch out a few scenes, see what pops.
She took my card, but said she didn't have much use for them.
"In case I call you up, later," I said. "Maybe you'll remember me."
Up the road a few blocks I stop in to the Longhorn Gun Shop, just as my friend texts a message about buying jeans and shirts. My fashion advisor, she has the scoop on what guys need. Turns me on to some cheap shopping at Sam's.
The Longhorn has an old time rough wooden plank door, big brass handle, chimes that sound when you walk in the cool dark room. Glass cases hold turquoise jewelry. Rifles and automatic weapons line up against the walls.
The biggest guy I'll see in three days walks out from the back.
"Ammo?" he says. "We've got ammo."
I pick up a couple of boxes of 9mm and .45. I ask him about shooting ranges in Bullhead City.
"We just shoot in the desert," he says. He gives me directions to a road heading east, to a deserted hillside where locals fire away.
"Targets?" he says. "No. There's old cars out there, though."
I didn't bring any guns, but I want to check out the local shooting spot but get a bad feeling when I spot two police cars positioned at the beginning of the dirt part of the road. Some other time.
After cruising the waterfront looking for fixers on the river I end up at Lazy Harry's Bar and Grille, overlooking the curve of the Colorado River.
'Music Food Cocktails Darts'. Old boys inside complaining about the heat.
"Ten weeks in a row", the guy next to me explains, "been over 110 F. 117 today." Men compare the temps at their houses, everybody agreeing it's hot, even for Bullhead. I drink an American Ale. Seemed like the thing to do, with four boxes of pistol ammo sitting in the back of my Jeep parked up against the river where I could keep an eye on it.
Later on I pull up at the Castle for a salad and a beer. The waitresses seem nice when I ask a few questions about winter rentals.
"Winter time this place is packed at night," the older one says. The younger one is cute and spotless, bright eyed. "Pretty much an older crowd," she continues.
I tell her I had a drink at Lazy Harry's.
"How'd you find that place?"
"Cruising some property, came up on it," I say.
"That's the place for gossip and gathering," she says.
I know now what she means by 'older'. Older than me.
Brand new homes up on the hill sell for just over $200K. Not many left, but they're nice. I could hang out here, I think. Check out the river scene for a couple of months in a rental, before I decide to pack up and leave California for good. Could happen.
Next day, I'll get my first major rejection email on my novel. But first, I'll have a round or two at the tables, see if my luck has dried up like the rustling stalks hanging on in the weathered planter boxes down the path from the Shangri La.

Bullhead

2009-08-09T23:45:00.000-07:00

River run, I-10 to Blythe. Who lives in Blythe? The question isn't who, it's why. Not a bad place, just not mainstream. Now, a freeway rest stop. Gas up, water, head north along the Colorado to Parker. Fields of green crops dot the landscape accepting searing sunlight and blistering heat, water from the river to keep things lush. They are. Trailer havens cluster along the river banks; Ranchos Not So Grandes, the best name I found. Vidal junction, not like any other. Two highways, barely a truck stop, the cafe closed for almost a year now. Economic bad times? Maybe. More like these are the way things are in Vidal. Slow moving.
Move on, cross the river, enter Arizona and the Parker Strip. Ahhh...
The north side of the river hosts a few trailer villages, boat houses, semi-retirement or worse on the semi-quiet no-way-out drive skirting the Colorado. It's the one-way street, the slow lane, 'don't bother me I'm out of the way, out of sight' folks that mean, well. . .they just mean well.
Across the water it's condos and upscale, as up-scale as the river gets. Not much, it turns out. The river drive runs along the east side of the river along campgrounds and winter retreats, and, as it turns out, some river bars that are too loose with their cooking temperatures. As in undercooked food; as in, get your money back, get your water back, along with a shot to go to kill the bacteria and hope I get to where I'm going and stay alive. That kind of undercooked.
I live. I drive, I arrive in Laughlin via Bullhead City. Joe's Crab Shack has good ale, good service, and cooked food. The moron from Boron is nowhere to be seen. It's been a year since I've been here, so I don't really expect to see him.
Tomorrow, checking out the Shangri La. Furnished rooms by the month. Let's make a deal.

RIVER RUN

2009-07-27T22:27:00.000-07:00

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.

Bukowski tours Hollywood

2009-07-24T10:33:00.001-07:00

Bukowski tours Hollywood & Western - LA Observed

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

2009-07-17T19:04:00.001-07:00

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

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LARRY KING AND THE POP

2009-07-17T16:00:00.000-07:00

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.

POLITICO: Shenanigans: The lighter side of politics - Sen. Barbara Boxer, accused of race politics today during the EPW hearing

2009-07-16T19:44:00.001-07:00

POLITICO: Shenanigans: The lighter side of politics - Sen. Barbara Boxer, accused of race politics today during the EPW hearing

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CUT AND TRIM

2009-05-30T10:42:00.001-07:00

Remington, Sunbeam, I don’t even know the brand, and I’ve got two of them but only one works, electric shavers and trimmers to tidy up sprouts of eyebrows and ear stuff that makes me look old and then I thought about Roy, seeing him walking with his wife and his dog and I stopped yesterday as I was driving by, dropped the window to say hello. Floyd came over to the car, leaned in, pulled a patch off of his right eye. He looked diminished.
‘How am I doing, or what am I doing?’ he said, arms on the window sill. I said how, and right then I knew it wasn’t good. His eye looked bad.
‘Got a huge melanoma in my eye. They take the eye out next week.’ He twisted his mouth, shook his head. He was fifty yards from his front door, next to the sidewalk around the greenbelt in our neighborhood, where tree trimmers hacked and buzzed the last two days, where dogs bark from behind fences and brick barbecues and under the canopies of hot tubs and gazebos, in the comfort of backyards in this comfortable neighborhood.
I stand in front of the mirror admiring my brown eyes and trimmed brows and yes, I have a few grey hairs I need to pry out or cut back like weeds that spring out this time of year—my hair grows well, Julie Ann said last week when I got mine cut—and I take pride in my well-cut short hair, I don’t have to shave it yet, the sign of either going bald or a mid-life moment gone awry.
‘Can’t talk about it,’ Roy said. ‘Or I fall to pieces.’ His wife stood by on the sidewalk holding the dog on a leash. I don’t know the dog’s name. I don’t know Roy’s wife name. I know Roy. I know Roy, who owned an auto repair shop in town that still bears his name and pays him rent on the land. I know Roy from homeowner’s association meetings and landscape committee walk-throughs where we inspect shrubs and trees, watch the lawn for other-worldly greens we need to eradicate, sterilize, do over-seeding and re-planting and the seasonal work that keeps the neighborhood property values in line even through the downward slide.
Roy knows where I live. He nodded when I reminded him. Anything you need, Roy. He nodded. I grabbed his hand and it was strong. Big hands for a man his size. He moved back to the sidewalk, kicked a pinecone, I nodded to his wife. She had a grim smile. Roy told me once he carried a gun in his compact truck when he rides around in the neighborhood, this coming after a punk robbed a person walking his dog up the street one night. The word about the robbery had gone around the neighborhood. Roy was taking no chances. Said he told the Police Chief he was packing. Wasn’t taking any chances with a gun in his glove compartment. He said the Chief didn’t seem too concerned. A Chief that let a citizen do what he thought was right and didn’t call in the National Guard or something, overreact, trusting a long-time resident in a moment of concern in a neighborhood that had a blip on the radar.
I trimmed out the grey this morning. It looks okay. Julie Ann does a good job on the hair. Two weeks before the next trim. Shampoo, a little conditioner, maybe Elia will have my neck over the bowl, rub my temples, Julie Ann taking her three-hundred dollar scissors across the top, along the sides, carefully around the ears, nice and short, little feathering around the bald spot on the crown. Nice. Check the brows next week for those little stragglers. Listen to the lawnmowers and the weed whackers and leaf blowers on Monday and Tuesday, all the machines and tools for cutting and trimming the unwanted. A scalpel going in to Roy’s eye to pull it out. A silent scream. And then what will the neighborhood look like?

MILEAGE

2009-05-26T18:29:00.000-07:00

Mileage, I call it. When you're surprised by what you hear, where you hear it, what you see and where. . .the signposts of life, the hawk flying close along next to you when you drive, veering up and off to a perch with a nod, letting you know he's there and guiding you along. We all have the 'moments' when things click, go straight down smooth track like ball-bearings on oiled rails, when someone's lovely eyes pierce through a smoky room and land on yours, and she doesn't look away.
When you hear Miles Davis in a store, in a little corner among the hip hop beats and the reggae jams that patter around the jeans and the Sketchers and larger-than-live cutout underwear models in black and white that are, well, embarassing, there's Miles, and pianist Red Garland doing Ahmad's Blues, largely a looping noirish-piano tune (actually, no Miles at all on this cut, from 'Workin' With The Miles Davis Quintet, 1956 on Prestige) that is unmistakable. So I stopped in the middle of the Alfani 'hip' section, smooth cotton t-shirts at half price, silk bowling shirts and wanna-be Tommy Bahama look-alikes, and truly, hip-hop and Reggae tunes coming down just an aisle or two away, but there they were, from a speaker or two, Red, jammin' it on the ivory, I mean really doin' it, right there in Macy's and before I could break out the American Express card and make a fool of myself buying every damn black T and scruffed-faded jeans and bowling shirts and calling to make an appointment to have my hair frosted, I just listened, to the American musical hero's quintet. Miles at Macy's. Last time I heard Miles in a store it was Barnes and Noble, and they sell Miles, of course, so no real Mileage there. But Macy's? Montclair Plaza? Come on, now, that's real, baby, Miles is the real deal, among the men's fragrances and bright blue dress shirts with electric blue ties, hell, I couldn't even FIND the Ralph Lauren Polo section--I think it's gone, and those shirts fit so good--but Red was getting down, romping 1956-STYLE, I mean Prestige baby, in Macy's. . .eleven thirty AM after plugging the Writer's Cafe event I'm co-hosting at the Epicenter in Rancho with twelve hugely successful LA Noir mystery and baseball writers, after hooking up for coffee with one of the beautiful ladies from the Q's staff I ran into when I picked up some posters, I end up at Macy's, the quintessential American store, with the great American jazzman of the 'cool', the Miles Man, for a little extra mileage. It was fine..it was fine..

SIX TAMALES

2009-04-18T13:12:00.000-07:00

I bought six tamales from Gloria in the parking lot at Stater Brothers when I was folding t-shirts in the laundromat, then ate them at home in the kitchen.
La esposa de Gloria came in to the laundry and said want to buy some tamales? and I said, Gloria? and he said yes. Six for seven dollars, chicken, pork, beef’.
Yes, I said, six, please. Three pork, three beef. Diez minutos, I said, pointing to the parking lot.
I zipped the big army duffel full of socks and t-shirts and shorts, neatly folded, and walked into the sunshine. He followed me to the car, handed me a brown bag with warm tamales, big bronze hands crusted and knotty with two gold rings on his fingers.
Su esposa, una buena cocinera? I said. Yeah, he said. I had her card from before but I never bought them.
I ate two pork tamales, warm, soft, wrapped in banana leaves and thin paper. They were delicious. Rich flavor of roasted pork and not too spicy. I will buy more.
Gloria works the parking lots of the markets on weekends with la esposa. She takes phone orders. I will order more from now on. She will survive because she is a good cook and she works an honest trade. People will buy from people who are honest and work hard.
Patrick, he is a craftsman, he tells me, standing in the small courtyard-driveway between the front and back houses. He lives on the ground floor. He pulls out a tile saw and tools from the shed that hangs over the front of his downstairs flat. He has a weeks worth of gray beard and cheap wraparound silver-framed sunglasse, a red ball cap. He does home repairs, carpentry, tile, cabinetry. I ask him about doing some tile work in my kitchen, maybe installing a sink. He can do that, he says.
It has to be in Claremont, he says. I made a commitment to the environment, so I don’t own a car.
How do you get materials to the house? I ask.
I have them delivered. He has it worked out. He likes to walk, he says.
I buy groceries at the farmers market. It is a few blocks away on Sundays.
I like to stride out, he says. Sometimes people offer to give me a ride. I won’t even get in a car, he says.
I introduce myself and he shakes hands with a strong firm grip common to craftsmen. It is their signature, I think, the way men who work with tools shake hands. It is a signal, I am thinking, that the hands are the important part of their body, of their craft, and shaking hands is a way to communicate trust, integrity. The hands don’t often lie, I think.
He says my name and smiles. We talk about the downtown area, how it feels to walk through town and see the old homes and people who live there, in large craftsman homes, smaller back apartments, one-room add-ons, all kinds of people, I say. We shake hands again, to seal our new relationship, and he says my name again, as if he’ll remember it by saying it out loud.
David is huge and cuts meat at the market where I shop, thick tattooed arms holding little Angelo as he opens the door with the baseball game playing on the television. He lives in a small bad apartment in a unit that is not well kept up. The driveway is gravel and the door jambs are cracked. David says the game on television is the Dodgers’ opening game. They play the Giants, and he says the San Francisco team has a pitcher from Claremont on the mound. I see the pitcher on television a day or two later, his cap pulled down low over intense eyes, straight brim, knee socks and a high leg kick. David is an Angel’s fan, he says.
That’s my team, he tells me. Named my son Angelo. I tell him I shop at his market and we talk about the new refrigerator cases they installed over the winter in one night. I had come from the gym around eleven o’clock when they were ready to close the store and trucks were parked at every angle close to the store and the workers were tearing the old meat cases out. One night they said, it’ll all be installed when by the time you come in to the store.
David works there, he says, two swing shifts, the rest day shifts. His heavy brown arms are laced with blue and black ink. He wears a thin-sleeveless t-shirt. I will give him tickets to the minor league baseball park where I work part time. I have promises now for several people who like to go east to watch baseball, in the small ballpark in the warm evenings with the breeze blowing and the big red-tail hawk doing fly-bys showing his broad wings in the waning sunlight on his way to the top of the left-field light stanchion where he lives for free. Angelo pushes off on his scooter in front of me, twists and falls and rolls perfectly on his side and he jumps up, unhurt, taking the scooter’s handle. Nice fall, I said. Really good.
Later in the afternoon I am back on Patrick’s street, on the other side. My feet are tired, my ankle aches. I see Patrick on the other side of the street holding a glass. We wave. He calls out my name. I crossed the street and Patrick holds out his hand for the firm grip. He wears the silver-framed sunglasses but I can tell his eyes are shining, he is smiling, and he tells me that Ted is next door getting out of his car. I should introduce myself, to Ted, Patrick says. I am getting close to the end of my day, I say.
Go meet Ted, Patrick says.
Ted has a wide smile and says that if Patrick likes you he’ll open up and talk, but otherwise, no, he says. Ted is nice but I feel that Ted talks to everybody. It is more interesting, I think, to talk with Patrick, who lives alone in the downstairs flat with the overhanging shed with the tools, who’s figured out who he is and how he wants to live and is good at it. I have his card. I will car him for repairs and carpentry and I’m already thinking it’s about time to fix my patio so I can use it. It will be warm soon and nice to sit out in the back and have cold iced drinks.

SUMMER JOB AT THE EPICENTER

2009-04-17T11:32:00.000-07:00

I start my summer job tonight, ushering at the Epicenter for the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes. In addition to walking the streets canvassing addresses and map listings for the US Census, the Quakes is a great gig for a few months mostly helping fans have a great ballpark experience.
Rancho Cucamonga plays in the California League, a ‘high A’ level professional minor league franchise affiliated with the Los Angeles Angels (of Anaheim).
Minor league baseball is alive and well and value-priced, giving fans an intimate view of the game in a comfortable, clean, safe and well managed park with great food and friendly competent staff. I can’t tell you how many fans said to me ‘what a great experience, great ballpark, what baseball is supposed to be like.’ It’s like hometown baseball, one fan told me.
Wooden bats, real grass cut short, soft summer breeze to cool down the stadium, great food, real smoke wafting from out of the grills in the café concession stands, good baseball where you see players before they migrate up the professional ranks and you do see some major leaguers on rehab assignments coming off injuries. Plenty of foul balls, between inning fun, great mascots in Tremor and AfterShock who are always moving about the park trailed by a gaggle of kids wanting hugs photos and autographs. Players sign autographs before and after the game, fireworks on most Friday nights.
Check it out, either in person or on KSPA radio 1510 with announcer Jeff Levering.
Anybody coming out to the park and mentioning to me that they read this blog, I’ll buy you a hot dog!
See you at game time!
Monday through Thursday, 7:05 PM, Friday nights 7:35, Saturdays at 7:05 and Sunday’s 5:05 PM or 2:05PM. Check http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/index.jsp?sid=t526 for details.

POMONA-PITZER INVITATIONAL

2009-04-17T11:16:00.000-07:00

I walked on to the Pomona-Pitzer Track and Field Invitational a couple of Saturday’s ago. Nice casual meet with a ton of college athletes from schools like Occidental, Redlands, UCI, UCR, Fresno State, Southern Utah (Cedar City in SW Utah), schools where academics are first and sports a serious but more casual second. Very nice atmosphere, NO bleacher seating, only lounging in the grass. No great times. I think the winning 4/100M relay time in the top flight was 41.something. No Husein Bolt-like times. A few cute girls in the high jump. Where were they when we were in school?
Oh yeah, couple of girls were wearing t-shirts saying ‘East Bay’ and I was going to make contact and inquire where they were from when I realized, that’s the old Cal State Hayward. It was sunny, not too warm, not exactly the Kennedy Games of the Mt Sac Relays (this weekend but I’m gassed from walking and I do the ballpark gig tonight and Sat) but it was pretty cool seeing that many track athletes gathered together and NOT be at some super-meet with tons of sponsor money and stuff. Not as much speed, but hey, you get what you pay for. I walked in and sat down..

LIGHTS OUT AND SUGAR SHANE

2009-03-28T14:50:00.000-07:00

I was sitting in La Verne having lunch, fifty yards from the gym where I work out, the same gym where ‘Sugar’ Shane Mosley is said to show up before fights to shake hands and remind people he’s from here but I’ve never seen him. Not in there.
I was thinking about ‘Lights Out’ James Toney. He sat right behind me at the Nokia Theater last night for the Sam Peter-Eddie Chambers fight, and he looked magnificent.
Somebody yelled ‘Lights Out’, I heard a reply, and I turned around. The Champ was within reach. I gave him a fist bump.
“You’re watching your weight,” I said, acknowledging the career-long battle with size.
“Trying to,” he said.
“You look great,” I said, slapping him on his knee. He nodded. Everybody noticed.
‘Looking good, champ’, ‘Hey, you look beautiful, man’, ‘What’chu been up to?’, fighters and fans passing by on the aisle. He’d stand, give hugs, pose for photos, shaking hands with those big meaty fists he’s used to punish fighters his whole career, laser-sighted missiles those hands, as accurate and deadly as any in the sport.
“You got anything coming up?” I said.
“We’re working on something,” Toney said. Even at his age, nobody is real eager to fight Toney, one of the smartest and slickest boxer-punchers of his generation.
Forty years old now, he sounded eager to fight. Calling out fighters to friends and acquaintances moving down the aisle. ‘Tell him to give me a call, he’s too scared to fight me,’ and it went on like that all night.
I turned to talk to his beautiful wife Angie, telling her how much everyone loved James, and she smiled. Got his weight under control it looks like, I said, and she said yeah, we’re working on it.
He battled weight his entire career. Often I’d see him at the Hamburger Hamlet in Sherman Oaks with his group. He fought between 156 and 168 pounds for six years until he had trouble making weight for Roy Jones Jr. and looked worn out. He moved up in weight. He fought as high as heavyweight, winning the IBA Heavyweight title beating John Ruiz, weighing in at 241 pounds.
He tested positive for a performance enhancing substance after the Hasim Rahman fight and was stripped of his title. It was disputed when his promoter Dan Goossen explained it was a consequence of an inflammation suffered as a result of surgery on muscle tissue in his arm.
“225,” he said to me, about his weight last night. He looked shaped.
“How long will you continue to fight?” I asked. “You look like you’ve never been hit.”
Toney whipped off the amber colored glasses to show his face, framed by two big diamond stud earrings, clear eyes pointed at me in that fierce ‘Lights Out’ stare, but that broke down when I stared back. We both laughed.
“He’ll fight until he gets knocked out,” a guy said sitting next to him.
“He’s never been knocked out,” I said. The guy nodded.
The only thing James Toney was missing was a natural weight class. Fighters starting out at 155 and ending up at 240 over a span of 20 years can’t seem to find a natural ‘walking around’ weight, the weight the body assumes with the natural exercise of an athlete, without the rigorous boxing regimen. Toney went up and down with his famous hamburger diet. But his skills never eroded.
Sugar Shane was always in shape and fought a brilliant career, his most recent win over Antonio Margarito a masterpiece. His career is tainted by a steroid charge, one initially disputed then admitted to by the quick-handed champ. Impressive wins over Oscar De La Hoya, disappointing back-to-back losses against Vernon Forrest, Mosley will be remembered as a great champion, a Southern California fighter who rose to the top of the game. I’d met him, too, once, at a garage where we both had our cars serviced. I asked him a flattering question about the De La Hoya fight and he answered in dead pan. It was just me, no big audience to play for. Sometimes you see and learn more about a man in that intimate setting. I don’t know.
For me, ‘Lights Out’ is a people’s champ. The people showed it last night. And he showed it to me.
“You still fight at Goossen’s,” I asked.
“I train at 360 up in Reseda,” he said. “Come over, check it out.”
The guy who’d given a great version of the National Anthem in the pre-fight ceremonies was sitting next to me. We’d been talking the whole night.
“I handle his website marketing,” he said, pointing at Toney. “T-shirts, signed photos. Bobble-head dolls.”
“Bobble heads?” I repeated.
“Check it out,” he said, and gave me the www.jamestoney.com address.
They’re out of bobble heads. The T-shirts look good. I’ll order a couple. Have him sign them when I show up at his gym. They might be valuable. Signed shirt, one of the oldest world champions in boxing history. Could happen. Keeps doing whatever it is that got him to looking at forty what he looked like last night?
Could happen.
Future Boxing Hall of Fame member. People’s Champ.
It’s all I need.

'TAKE OFF MY SHOES?'

2009-03-27T11:26:00.000-07:00

She was indignant. She frowned at me. “Why”, she said, “should I take off my shoes at an airport?” The discussion at my favorite downtown coffee house was going south. They were all looking at me. I was holding on to patriotic notions that airport security should do its best to prevent further attacks like 9/11. I don’t know, sounded like a good idea to me.
She was an Episcopal Priest. Her friend next to her was a former clergyman. I was surrounded with no where to hide. The best and the brightest, in front of me, grilling me on not just the unconstitutionality of the Patriotic Act, enacted by that ‘idiot’ (their words) George Bush and his henchmen, but it was the sheer inconvenience, she was saying, of having to stand in a line and remover her shoes. I looked under the table. Ordinary flats worn by thousands of middle aged women. No specially anointed brand that I could see, no insignia or label that gave them ‘Divine Right’ or anything like that.
“I don’t want to have to remove my shoes at the airport.” The indignity. Not to mention the ability to listen in on phone conversations and watch internet conversations (as technology permits) to protect us from the terror within. Tap phone calls without a judge issuing a warrant? The coffee house crowd deemed that not only potentially unconstitutional, but un-American. An innocent person could get rounded up! ‘I’m shocked, shocked’, and you know the rest of that famous conversation at another infamous Hollywood-made gathering post.
That was the Patriot Act debate, three years or so ago, and now I’ll be anxious to see the reaction to the new idea floated by Treasury Secretary Geithner, that should businesses display ‘unsound’ financial stability, the government ‘could dismantle (italics mine) companies whose failure threatens the nation's financial stability’. And she was outraged at having to remove her shoes in the name of national security? How are they gonna feel when their company gets padlocked when the government feels they’re threatening national ‘financial security’. Is there a difference?
Slap a retro-bonus tax on overpaid execs, issue union cards to the shop crews and lean on workers to sign up for the ‘union’ without the company having a say (management training routinely tells you that if your shop has a union organizing effort underway, you probably deserve to have your workforce represented), and now Geithner, who issued billions to AIG knowing they were paying execs millions in bonus’, wants the government to step in and, I love this word, ‘dismantle’ companies that threaten national financial security. It’s okay to shutter a business if they’re over the line with bonus’ or toxic loans, but whoa to the poor security guy at the airport with a wand and a metal detector suggesting we all remove our shoes so bad guys can’t fly planes into crowded buildings.
We should all be outraged at the pathetic performance of some of our most revered financial institutions. Some of us took out loans we couldn’t pay, whether for our primary residences or for that ‘second’ note to buy the boat or the timeshare. We know who we are. And I’m not qualified nor do I want to try and compare 911 with the economic meltdown.
What I am here to do is point out the frightening similarities of the national reaction. And, to some degree, the initial reaction of the American public. Post 911, it was all about getting the bad guys. George W stood at ground zero with a bullhorn and we knew he was right. Seven years later he was all but thrown out of the White House.
Post financial meltdown, Obama was swept (by a surprisingly narrow margin, in my opinion) in to the White House and is now leading a series of sweeping reforms. Yes, get the economy back on its feet. My doubts are strong about nationalizing healthcare insurance, but let’s create jobs and get our home loans back on track.
But this back-end ‘let’s go after the financial bad guys’ will bite Barack. It will bite us all. Regulation? Yes. Sound fiscal controls for both Wall Street and the US Government? Absolutely. Taking over financial institutions, ‘dismantling’ them when they show sounds of instability? Let’s wait on that one. True, we haven’t suffered a post-911 911, so I’m okay, and was okay, with the Patriot Act. Soldier on, I say. Take a similar watchdog approach against Wall Street with the power to dismantle, potentially nationalize crippled financial institutions? Careful. You fought the Patriot Act when you thought it too stringent and without proper controls to tether zealous federal agents listening in on phone calls. I want the same careful scrutiny from those that fought the ‘indignity’ about removing her shoes to be applied to the government's ability to take over struggling financial institutions. American’s can’t expect Wall Street to cozy up to financial bailout plans and go along with this idea that the government will take them down if they make a bad loan or write off some debt. GM and Ford have been doing that for years.
If you fought against the Patriot Act under the notion that it gives government too much power, apply the same principled scrutiny to Geithner’s ‘dismantling’ concept.
And try not to talk out of both sides of your mouth.

BANNING

2009-03-15T13:05:00.000-07:00

“It’s ‘old school,’ Detective Doug Monte said about his town. Banning, California. I’d stopped to get water on my way up the mountain to Idyllwild, behind Palm Springs. Up the street from the convenience store, kids wearing blue and gold t-shirts waved and shouted free car wash. My Jeep needed a scrub.
In an open lot on San Gorgonio Avenue behind an old school, dozens more kids, all ages, boys, girls and adults, pointed to a coned-off area, motioned me to a stop. Something was alive in Banning this Saturday morning. Enthusiasm ruled.
I dropped off ten dollars and talked to a woman who explained the event. Police Athletic League. It’s where the kids hang out. The Chief is around somewhere.
Her husband, Detective Doug Monte was in charge today. T-shirt, I asked? No problem, Doug said.
The old part of downtown Banning has a few blocks, a furniture store, an independent market, an art gallery in an old house, a café or two, schools. I stopped sometimes for gas in Banning back up the freeway on my way to Palm Desert or Joshua Tree. Today I found more. The Police Athletic League kids lined San Gorgonio Avenue waving hand-painted signs.
About thirty thousand people live in Banning, Doug said. Old school, he said again. The gym here, he pointed to the beautiful structure with high windows, beams latticed inside the glass way up top, built in 1929. Yeah, still has games every week. School teams, they play there.
Well maintained, a good coat of paint, the kind of gyms that smell like they’ve been used, survived an overtime game or two, all wood, aged, the sound of the ball on hardwood that echoes on an empty floor with sun streaming in, casting shadows from the high beams. Roaring with cheering and screaming when the winning bucket falls in.
That’s not old school, I thought. That’s Main Street USA.
Spent thirteen years in the sheriff department, Doug said. A hundred and twenty kids play soccer on the field back up there. He pointed to the northwest. In addition to the dozens holding signs and spraying water and lathering my Jeep and the other cars lined up in the shade, more kids were playing soccer on this Saturday.
Doug shouted instructions to kids holding rags and buckets and spray nozzles, smiling, nodding his head. Building trust. The kind of guy a kid could go to in a time of trouble or need, someone who was willing to talk with a complete stranger about his town, talk about 'old school' and a wooden gym and a soccer field with over a hundred kids, blue and gold t-shirts.
He gave me a t-shirt. ‘Banning Police Athletics League; Making a Difference One Kid At A Time’. I believe it. Something’s going on in Banning.
We’re here every Saturday, Doug said.

TRONA LIGHTS

2009-03-06T09:20:00.000-08:00

Last night it was dark in the Panamint Valley west of Death Valley, the two nether-world stretches of folded earth that time has to catch up with.

I drove through the Panamint with a car behind me. I was glad it was behind me. It was forty miles to Trona. Twenty more to Ridgecrest.

I turned south onto 178, the truck not far behind. It was flat, I’d remembered. Sixty miles per hour steady, the truck tracking me from a hundred yards back, not crowding me. Sixty-five miles per hour, high beams on, rough road. After several miles my Jeep started to slow and I added some gas to keep my speed. I could tell from the speedometer and the tachometer that I was going up hill. I had no sensation of up or down. Black on black, headlights disappearing just beyond reach.

I felt the Jeep struggling to keep my speed and lights behind me were coming up. I kept my speed, lights reaching ahead to the yellow reflective arrows pointing left, left LEFT and a curve came fast. I braked and turned, swerved and fought the steering wheel, slowing to thirty five.

In the curves now, walls of clay and rock flash by, the lights behind me shining through the edges of little bridges across the draws I must have been driving over on the edge of this desolate valley, the lattice patterns of the bridge rails flashing and tilting from the lights behind me.

Reflective arrows pointed right, right RIGHT and I slowed this time. The walls of the canyon were on me, and the lights behind me played on the rock and scrub brush. I felt the Jeep downshift through the turns, left, right, left right, tight, around the bend, lights behind me throwing patterns on the wall in front of me, reflectors pointing left, right.

I came out of the turns, felt the Jeep still pulling, looked at the tach and speedometer to gauge the vehicles ascent or descent, all sensation of up and down gone, the only sign the tach and speedo to tell me which way the Jeep was heading.

The road flattened out. I could see the tach slowing down under two thousand RPM’s and the speedometer moving above sixty, sixty two, sixty three miles per hour. The road was straight. The headlights were on full, high beams with fog lamps underneath if I dimmed them, but there were no cars. Just a light in the distance. Maybe an approaching car, maybe a motorcycle. Far away, too far to know.

The light was twinkling like a star. Maybe a safety light, a warning for a curve, highway work being done. I headed into the dark night, watching the light. For a moment it seemed like the light was just ahead, coming towards me like a car, moving out of the dark edge of night. No, it was far away. Maybe a light in front of a motel, a sign to turn off, a warm bed and a meal and a shower. The light was so far in the distance, even after watching it for two, three minutes. All the lights I could see; my dashboard, tach and speedometer and the blue ‘high beam’ indicator and the green ‘fog light’ indicator and the light of my headlights and the light behind me and the light ahead of me, I questioned them all. None seemed to be right. My headlights had no reach, the brightest light I had and it fell short of telling me anything. The tach and speedometer were showing I was moving up, down, the shadowed light from the vehicle behind me on the curves throwing ladders of shadow and dim light on the walls of the canyon, and this bright spectre winking at me coming at me down the road, but holding its ground.

I wanted this light in front of me to show itself.

Identify yourself in this midnight valley. Who goes there?

Three minutes, four minutes, what vehicle lights would be visible for three, four minutes, without showing itself as two headlights coming down the road rushing past me? I looked in my mirror for the headlights of the vehicle behind me and there seemed to be another vehicle behind him, another pair of headlights. I looked back to the road in front of me. Still there, moving toward me, the light seemed to be coming down a grade, the strange winking light. I’d been watching it for four minutes or so. In my mirror the vehicle behind me gave space.

There were two lights in front of me. It was a car, a truck, not a motorcycle. It had been in my vision for over four minutes. Four minutes or five minutes. A pinhole of light in the desert of night, Venus coming at me on the horizon. I could not tell the difference. The vehicle speeded past me, two headlights out of the dark. Then they were gone. I drove on. Trona was coming up, its lights steady and distinct, the old plant on the edge of town, I could see it a few miles away. I’d make it.

In Trona I came up on a black Mustang convertible going twenty miles an hour, no more than thirty through town. For five miles I followed him. This driver knew his way home, all the way to Ridgecrest. The truck followed me. The Mustang weaved and hobbled like an old pony with a bad leg, but he knew the way.

I’d come through the dark desert highway. I could go forty, forty five, fifty through the dark, down in to Ridgecrest behind this old pilot. He could be my tugboat captain.

I turned in at McDonalds and ate in front of a family of large people. Their young children were respectful and delighted to sit with their big mom and dad. I heard the girl calling ‘Mom, Mom, come look at this’ and I knew she was happy.

WOLFE'S

2009-03-06T09:15:00.000-08:00

He is a big man, too big, and I heard him talk about surgery.
I thought it was a good price, I hear him say, then I eat my sandwich, my mind drifting to writing, sun shine after rain, cars coming in and out of the driveway.
I talked to him.
He is young, friendly, sitting at a small table outside.
‘Market’s been here since the early 1900’s’, he says.
‘Heard it was going to change’ I say. ‘Take out some of the grocery aisles and make it a gourmet market, deli, counters with meat and salads, and not compete with big chains that bring oranges in from South Africa’.
‘But they didn’t’, he says. ‘They talked about it. People have been coming here thirty, forty, fifty years’, he says, ‘they talked to the owner, wrote letters, said they didn’t want the market to change. They know where everything is’.
‘I’ve been coming here for twenty years’, I say. ‘Used to bring Dad here and get sandwiches’. He liked coming here. Reminded him of an old time market, I think.
‘I like the meat counter, the deli sandwiches’, I say. ‘Good quality, good price, everybody’s friendly’.
I have cravings. Corned beef. Brunkhorst’s Boar’s Head beef bologna with American cheese. Nothing else will do.
‘Business is pretty good still’, he says. ‘Economy hasn’t hurt too much. Lots of people only shop here’.
Lot of BMW’s. Couple of Prius’. My Jeep Grand Cherokee. Delivery trucks with breads and produce and a few men walking in and out carrying small bags.
The birds will come back to the small bare trees when they blossom in a few weeks. That’s when I like it. Outside, with a corned beef sandwich. And the birds.

VOICES

2009-02-24T12:10:00.000-08:00

I was a boy when I asked my mother about people talking when no one was around. Park benches, sidewalks in San Francisco, heads down, busy talking.
They’re not well, she said.
Things are sticking in their ears now.
‘Yogurt’s on sale, ten for seven dollars.’
Looking at pieces of paper, talking loud in front of the canned beans.
‘Barbecue or ranch?’
Paying money to stick things in their ears.
‘Chicken or fish?'
'How’s Kenny doing?'
'Where are you?'
'What are you doing?'
Pound weights and pump machines at the gym.
'What are you doing? Overnight it? Be there tomorrow.'
When I was a boy, people talking with no one around scared me.
I think I will go across the street and talk with Raoul who is raking leaves in front of his house.
He’s wearing a NY Yankees t-shirt and he shakes my hand.

FOUR WOMEN

2009-02-17T19:55:00.000-08:00

A woman in a big blue smock on her phone blonde hair short,
waves and starts across.
A woman in a fuchsia blouse from the other direction.
She stops. Blue smock and blonde hair short, stops
They’re in the middle of the crosswalk
They smile
They embrace
They chat
The light is red.

Two women in black, black, black, black shirts hair, pants, all black,
They wave.
They walk.
They come to the woman in fuchsia.
They smile.
They hug. They all hug.
Me Too, Me Too,
They keep walking. The woman in fuchsia to the left.
Black, black, black to the right.
The light is red. I sit in the car.
Me, Too, Me Too.
I think about it.
The light is green.

AROUND THE PARK

2009-02-17T19:53:00.000-08:00

I walked around the park today,
Near a place I used to work.
I walked on grass, softball fields,
Boys and girls kicking soccer balls,
On grass, on cinder path, men and dogs,
Cocker Spaniel dogs and larger dogs.
Earphones all plugged in.

Softball fields were smooth like someone cared
Near a place I used to work.
The fields were scraped clean and even,
Little footprints first to third,
Ready for action,
With lumpy tufted grass.

Woman walking in green scrubs,
Large man to small boy, ‘What are you doing?
‘Small boy stuff’,
Woman running, pounding her best,
Two men in their language,
Clouds get grey in late afternoon
While people fight theirs.

Everyone I needed to see,
Women,
Men,
Young,
Old,
Animals and cars going
In, out
All there,
Near a place I used to work.
I worked today.
Someday,
I can say.

HANDS SHAKING

2009-01-18T21:21:00.000-08:00

Mort Sahl was sitting in Starbucks
I held out my hand and he shook mine,
The handshake that men of a certain age do,
The hand you want to hold on to for ever,
The hand that you think, if you did, would lead you places, teach you things,
Hold- on-to-those-hands-for-the-rest-of-your-life kinds of hands,
Soft, firm.

Hands-that-have-done-things-hands and know how to shake another man’s hands without making him seem unimportant,
too important,
trying to get over on you,
insult you,
intimidate you,
overpower you.
Not too firm,
Not too limp,
Just-right-hands,
Trustworthy hands,
Believable hands,
Good hands. Mort Sahl’s hands.

Men of a certain age,
Men who look like twenty-five year olds in older men’s skin,
Like they could zip down and step out and go one-on-one,
Firm, still in shape,
Bodies of men who take care of themselves,
Make them last and
Make them count because it’s the only one we get and they want to go the distance.
Firm hands and steady eyes that light up with twinkle and energy,
Eyes that know things, could tell you things, could lead you to secrets and wisdom.
Eyes that see.
Hands that know,
Hands that read you,
Hands that aren’t afraid to hold another man’s hand, feel him, touch him, let-him-know-he-understands kinds of hands.
My hands were shaking, and then I was shaking hands.
The way I want to shake another man’s hands.
If I know anything.

OLD SCHOOL

2009-01-13T10:18:00.000-08:00

Sign of the times? The new radio ‘ad’ for the Sugar Shane Moseley – Antonio Margarito fight Jan 24 at Staples; ‘Due to the unbelievably high demand for tickets, we’ve made additional seats available, at the low, low, price of only twenty dollars!’
Read; ‘we ain’t sellin’ no seats, dudes, come on down, get ‘em while they’re cheap’
These two fighters are outstanding, and have both shown abilities to excite crowds, take on fights as underdogs and win, and show the highest levels of courage and skill under extreme pressure.
Shane beat Oscar De La Hoya twice, Margarito wore down Miguel Cotto in a very entertaining fight this past summer. He didn't just beat Cotto, he mugged him in the alley. Nobody wants to fight Margarito because he’s just too tough. Shane is past his prime and is accused of using ‘juice’.
Is Oscar through? Probably. After what I reluctantly call an embarrassing fight loss against Manny Pacquiao, Oscar only needs to go to the counting house, stack up the coin, continue promoting fights for the good of the sport along with ‘good guys’ Goosen Tutor and be the bright face for the sport of boxing.
I’ll be checking out the talent and talking with John Bray at Fortune’s next week. John is training a team on The Contender and trains fighters and helps kids with his youth clinics and boxing exhibitions through the John Bray Foundation. Fortunes is a 50’s style gym in Hollywood. Might have to pull on the Everlast hoodie, take the train and hustle on in there.
Don't give up on boxing. We'll see how the economic conditions treat the newcomers to the fighting sports. Me? I see a return to brick, skylight and ceiling fans, the thump-thump of speed bags and the crunch of hard abs and the pain, man, the pain. Recession/Depression brings out the old school. Protect yourself at all times.

OJ, WHAT I'LL REMEMBER

2008-12-06T12:10:00.001-08:00

If you ever saw him pick up the baton, 205 pounds of muscle hurtling down the backstretch, smooth, controlled, fast, handing off to Fred Kuller who would give to anchor man Lennox Lewis, leadoff man Earl McCulloch and OJ standing on the infield now watching Lewis head for home, you wonder now, seeing OJ Simpson shackled in prison blues, trying to explain his behavior in a hotel room with a gun, how it ends up like this.
I do.
I’m no OJ Simpson apologist, I just happen to have a history with the guy, as a fan, back in the Bay Area, watching him play football at USC and run track, the most gifted two-sport athlete I think I’ve ever seen. Bo Jackson was a great three-sport athlete, football, baseball and track, but he was different, more power, less finesse, but yes, he could hit major league pitching. OJ, man,he was poetry. Simpson was the first back in my memory that was over two hundred pounds that combined enough power, with blinding speed and the slick hips and quick feet to move through holes and past linebackers so fast he was unstoppable in college. Gayle Sayers had beautiful style and great speed but he couldn’t take the pounding. OJ had it all. He combined Jim Browns ability to slip tackles and give you the wrong angle with the quickness and speed of the smaller backs. Gayle Sayers was Count Basie. Great style and a great band who played well with others. OJ was John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, Elvis, Horowitz. Stand alone on a stage and do it. The full range of style, grace, power and touch, every run was a masterpiece, every hand-off a chance to score. He was that good.
Few athletes really excel at football, and track. There have been a few. OJ, Herschel Walker, Bo Jackson, Isaac Curtis, to name a few. OJ was part of a world record 440 yard relay team. World Record. That’s how fast he was. It’s hard to think of OJ as under-appreciated as a professional, but you have to wonder if he’d been in the backfield with say, a Joe Namath, or Bart Starr, how he would have been regarded. Yes, he’s in the Hall of Fame and held the NFL rushing record, but fans are quick to point out players like Emmitt Smith, Walter Payton, Jim Brown, Tony Dorsett and even Franco Harris when the discussion comes around to the great running backs. Don’t forget Juice.
And now, he’s infamous. Along with Pete Rose and Mike Tyson, undoubtedly the three most enigmatic athletes of my time. Great, all three, but tragically flawed. Unable to separate their athletic greatness from the innumerable flaws as humans. The same fine-tuned concentration and focus they use to become the best at their sports, they use to block out their flaws and quirks, allowing them to dominate their personalities to the point of destruction.
I don’t know what message there is in this most recent downfall. I don’t. He’s a criminal, clearly. Perhaps guilty of much more than armed robbery and kidnapping. Perhaps much more. We’ll never really know, but we’ll always have our suspicions.
But I know he was great, once. I know he was one of the first super-human gifted athletes who ran in trunks on a track where there is no hiding. He ran in college with the best and dominated on that field. As a pro he set records for teams that were average, extending his career beyond his greatness, perhaps the first sign of the vanity that would do him in.
But, God, he was beautiful to watch. I make no apology for bad behavior. I’ll always remember him after the murders, on trial, going free. I’ll always remember him in the court of public opinion, losing. I’ll remember the Vegas debacle and the trial and the sentencing, his last words a sham, a scam, nobody buying it.
But I’ll also remember him holding the baton, the way I’d never seen anybody run, and on the field, reversing his direction, after a sweep was shut off, cutting back, launching a pass into the end zone to beat Stanford, something no mortal could possibly do. But he did. He did once, he did. He did those things that no one else could do. I remember.

WHAT I MISS ABOUT BERKELEY

2008-12-02T18:21:00.000-08:00

Memorial Stadium and Edwards Field; Telegraph Avenue, Durant Ave, Shattuck and Ashby, some of the best street names in the whole country. Grove Way, University Ave, Solano Ave, Dwight Way, Benvenue, where I lived for a year a block from the Patty Hearst kidnapping. Kleeburger Field where I played intramural soccer with the legendary ‘East-West’ team filled with Jamaicans and Americanos and big Don Ross guarding my ass when I was goalie. Kips, where I worked for three years and almost got fired for drinking beer one night before I was twenty one and someone told owner Joe Di Sano. He kicked my ass. Tower Records, Leupold’s Records; KLAX radio, that study in the failure of racial college politics but good training for my radio script writing, Sproul Plaza and the drum line on Sunday’s, the Edwards Field baseball complex in the spring when I cut class and almost flunked Econ 1-A with Professor Nadel; a couple of the girls at Kips, Nancy something who had terrific tits and tried to seduce me one night after a party at my house but she couldn’t quite swing it, me holding out for some damn reason; Sandy Browne, God bless her; Cody’s, the Coop market; REI, Ski Hut, North Face, some of the best outdoor shops in the country back in the early 70’s; The Big Game, Larry Blakes after a big Kennedy Games track meet when all the runners would show up and drink beer; Eddie Hart, Isaac Curtis, Wesley Walker, Joe Roth, Steve Bartkowski, Vince Ferragamo, Chuck Muncie, Dave Fishbaugh, Phil Chenier, Brady Allen, Dave Masters (these were the jocks that ruled Cal in the early 70’s); The Keystone, Freight and Salvage, the Berkeley Community Theater, the Jazz Festival at the UC Greek Theater and looking out over the stage and the columns when Miles Davis was in town, seeing the Golden Gate Bridge at night and the Bay Bridge and San Francisco and thinking it ain’t going to get much better then this and damn, it hasn’t, really; Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, George Benson, Carlos Santana; wondering, during the Viet Nam war era and the protests and the anger at the US botching a major foreign policy initiative that ended in a useless and deadly war, if the United States would ever regain enough honor to lead in any other worldwide conflict and you know, the jury is out on that and I don’t know if that qualifies as something I miss but it was sure a part of life then; my going away party when I moved to Jackson Hole Wyoming and the great friends and the wine and good food and the gifts; Cindy Greer and that’s all I’m going to say about you, my dear, you’re one that got away; my 1964 Karman Ghia convertible, and of course the lovely Nora Lindahl, who sat in that car many times and was she a sweetheart, or what?? Crappy little FM radio in that Ghia, but with the top down, who cared?

HALLOWEEN MOON

2008-10-16T10:21:00.000-07:00

He was bent over. He looked okay, though. She didn’t.
I’d popped into Coco’s in Barstow after hiking in Owl Canyon north of town. It was a full moon. Hadn’t shaved in almost a week.
They always treat me good at the Coco’s in Barstow, usually after I’ve been wandering around the desert, rooting around in my Jeep, hiking, taking photos, trying to capture that eternal silence you only find in the desert. I’d found some, where you keep listening, waiting for something to disturb it like a pebble rippling a pool but it stays silent, pure.
I could feel them moving towards the counter where I was sitting. Moving, barely, so slow. They came closer, the woman holding the arm of the man. I turned and looked and saw a man bent over holding a cane and a woman with a sickly grin and no teeth, holding his arm and he looked at me with clear blue eyes, hunched over, and asked if there was room for two next to me.
Of course, I said. He smiled. She smiled. She had very few teeth yet kept her mouth open. He turned and leaned his cane against the counter and gripped the edge with his hand and I asked if he wanted me to hold the cane. He said yes, and I took the cane. It was warm from his grip and he leaned in to the seat and I pulled the cane back out of the way, my fingers curled around the black vinyl handle, holding something that had been in his hand for how many days? How many hours?
It was his back, he said, mumbling that he didn’t know if was the bed that was causing the pain, looking at me with the blue eyes framed with bushy black eyebrows. The woman stroked her chin and opened and closed her mouth, a row of incomplete teeth.
My back bothers me too, I said, working out, at the computer, writing. Locked up pretty good a few weeks ago, I said, putting the cane back in his hand. I needed more lemonade and held the glass up to the waitress who disappeared and came back with another one.
I study law now, the man said. I guessed his age between seventy five and eighty.
Like to become a lawyer? I asked.
He reached in the pocket of his white shirt, a blue turquoise bolo tie hanging around his neck. The woman stroked her chin, moving her jaw up and down, working it.
He handed me a business card.
Life & The Future as an ethical theory and a Philosophy of Law
It’s a philosophy that supports the future of life, he said.
They come to me, I thought. Let them speak.
Are you studying this? I asked. Developing this idea?
You tell one person, who lives it, the idea that all actions should support the future of life, and it influences another person, he explained. It could change the world.
My sausage and pepper fettuccine arrived.
I’m on board, I said, between mouthfuls of spicy Italian sausage and a salty marinara. It might need a little explaining, some developing, I said, to get the point across.
What needs explaining? He said. He gave the waitress his order. One order. Two plates. She scurried away.
Canals, he said. Build canals.
For what? I asked.
Develop desert property, grow crops.
We have canals, I said. The Colorado River is siphoned off to Vegas, Southern California.
He said China had canals.
He asked me if I would consider China successful, under this new ethical concept that supported the future of life, compared to the United States.
They’ve got a lot of people, I said. They’ve been at it a while. Three or four thousand years, I said. They had philosophers writing down theories of life in the fifth century, B.C. Earlier, even. Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Confuscius.
Well, they had canals, he said.
I’ll eat a bit, I thought, let the conversation breathe. I gulped lemonade, heavy on the sugar. Nice and cold. The waitress cruised by a couple of times, looking my way, asking if I was OK. Fine, I’d say. I probably looked exactly like what I was, a desert rat crawling out from a dusty trail, chowing down next to a local and his companion.
No difference between a child and an eighty year old man, he said.
Experience, maybe, I said. Judgement. A child is open but he lacks experience to find his way in the world. He needs guidance. An eighty year old has wisdom. Children have no wisdom.
I started a family worship when I was five years old, he said.
Did you grow up here?
Oregon, he said. What do you think of my idea?
Nice. Good stuff. Can’t go wrong with that, I said.
The woman hadn’t said a word. I’d seen women like that standing at freeway exits with shopping carts and black plastic bags and a cardboard sign scrawled with a plea for help and I’d probably driven by a hundred of them. She sat, patient, some relationship with this man who wanted to change the world.
Then I noticed the man’s hands. He had hair on his hands. Long hair, growing out of his fingers, at least an inch. Lots of hair, on the fingers, the spaces between his knuckles, on the back of his hands and on the wrist coming out of the cuff of his white shirt.
The waitress took my plate and asked if I wanted to have some desert and I waved it off, saying no, that was plenty. She left the check.
So what do you think of my idea, the man said again.
Good, I said. Good luck with it.
You think you can do anything to help me with it?
I gathered the check and the Daily Press: Victor Valley and the High Desert.
I’d like to, I said. I don’t live around here. I enjoyed talking with you. I shook his hand.
He smiled, his bushy black eyebrows giving way to wrinkled creases and he nodded his head. The woman smiled.
Maybe I’ll see you around, I said.
The cane leaned up against the counter between them. She hadn’t said a word since she’d sat down, that I’d heard. I wonder if she ever did. Wonder if she had much to say to the man. Maybe he did all the talking.
The cane was brushed aluminum with a black vinyl handle.
The big full moon was over the horizon, light dimming in the west. A young woman in nice jeans and a rust colored shirt walked across the parking area to a pay phone and put in some coins . She looked good in the nice jeans. Strawberry blonde hair almost matching the shirt, tied back in a pony tail. Neon signs were coming on at the restaurants and gas stations and motels on Main Street, Barstow. People, moving in and out of shadows and pink sunsets and the big harvest moons that shine over the desert, eating at café’s and putting coins in the pay phones. A man walked up and stood at the phone kiosk on the other side of the woman in the rust colored shirt.

I KNOW HOW JAMES DEAN DIED

2008-09-24T09:54:00.000-07:00

I was fighting it, my lids heavy, eyes tired from getting up at three thirty, four o’oclock in the morning for a couple of days. I was snapping out of it, on the highway, out around Blackwell’s corner and the San Andreas fault and a lot of nothing out west of I-5 coming out of Paso Robles. Maybe it was the fish sandwich at Foster’s Freeze. The girl said the fish sand at McDonald’s scared her, no way she ate that stuff. ‘I make my own tartar sauce,’. Do it, I said. It was good. Maybe it was cruising Paso Robles looking for a Chevron station and settling for an Exxon. What’s the difference? Out past the wineries and vineyards and new housing projects silenced in mid-form, out into the dust and empty hills, heading towards Blackwell’s corner and Lost Hills. Didn’t want to do a James Dean. Didn’t want to find some chasm in the San Andreas and become a fossil for someone to pick up a million years from now and speculate. Hmmm…maybe he was driving one of those gas powered vehicles they used to drive. Right here, in front of the oil derricks pumping crude out of the ground, strung together with pipes and electric poles with cord running all through the patch and big steel locusts like insects sucking blood. Stay awake, stay awake.
Blackwell’s corner is in the middle of nowhere. No trees. No signs, no motels, a big steel warehouse, they’re putting in gas pumps and a big parking area on both sides. Air conditioned, snack bar, aisles of almonds in all sizes of plastic zip lock bags. Walnuts, pistachios. Roasted, raw, lightly salted, Cajun style, jalapeno, onion and garlic, get your almonds any which way and suck ‘em on down with a splash of your favorite soda.
From a distance the oil wells in Lost Hills look like a construction project putting up skinny frames of black steel, way off, a couple of miles maybe, just structure, an outline, low lying scatter in some early form of organization, and you’re looking for a sign or something announcing the development, for-sale, call this number for information. There are a couple of pickup trucks parked near the dirt road entrances, little white square signs announcing Chevron Field 29, guys sitting in the front seats behind the wheel with the door open wearing white hard hats, hell of a job, I think. No chance to take some photos without getting run off so I head on down the straight blacktop.
If you’re going to devastate a few square miles of land this is the place to do it, I’m figuring. Nobody tills this land, no one for miles. I don’t see any almond orchards in sight, no walnut trees, nothing, just dried grass making the land golden but it’s the crude that makes the dough, here. Not almonds and beer and gas stations. Lost hills is a stop light of two-story sand colored apartments and a bar or two and a Mexican restaurant and that’s the life, I guess, you go on in to Bakersfield for some real fun.
I wonder what it will be like when we drill in ANWAR. I’ll never be up there, I don’t think. I’ve been to Alaska and there’s a lot of open space but it’s pristine, majestic, mountains and streams and eagles flying off the trees next to the rivers in big looping beats of wings making their own wind, snow cap peaks and glaciers and there’s no room there for sucking the ground. I know we need oil. I know.
I pick up two one-pound bags of roasted, unsalted almonds for six ninety-nine, a couple of bucks cheaper than Von’s, and I’m good. Drinking a coke in the car to wake up and on down past the enclave of Lost Hills and I’m pushing out on to I-5 south with the trucks and cars and the funneling of effort down to the grapevine and the rush to get over the hills.
I’m back now, home. My sound system sounds better, the air conditioning cools down the house, I put away some groceries and steam some vegetables and eat some food and settle in. Out on the San Andreas the earth shifts, little by little, and we pull out what we think we need from down below. My air conditioner shuts off and I turn on the television. I need some ice in my drink.

HANDS HIGH

2008-08-19T19:36:00.000-07:00

At the end of the first fight, the referee held up both fighter’s arms and the crowd cheered. We had cheered all through the fight. The fighters deserved our best. The boys had given it everything they had and we knew it. They were eight or nine years old.

When the bell sounded to begin the fight they stood together in the middle of the ring and planted their feet, and without moving their heads or their feet, they swung mighty punches at each other and hit each other and landed blows on their faces and their arms and their necks and chests and they didn’t back down, neither of them, until the bell sounded ending the fight after three two-minute rounds.

We clapped our hands until they were raw. We cheered and whistled and the trainers cut off the gloves and then the fighters went to the center where the referee checked both fighter's hands for his initials signifying that the taping had been approved before the fight, and he held both of their hands high.

Finally the referee held one fighter's arm high, the winner, and the fighter took a medal on a long ribbon and placed it around the other boy’s neck and I was moved by this simple act of kindness and sportsmanship in a rough sport that boys take up. He put the medal around the boys neck, and then he took the winner's trophy and held it over his head.

LARRY BOWA'S YELLING AT ME

2008-07-17T10:10:00.000-07:00

I read today in the Sports Pages where the Dodgers staff is issuing the outlook for the second half of the season, Torre and Bowa wondering what the hell happened between New York and LA, more than a sports version of culture shock. Torre says something like ‘if you have kids you can tell them not to play with matches but until they burn themselves…” That’s not the kind of Knute Rockne ‘Win one for that McCourt guy’ speech I’d be hoping for if I was the Dodger owner.

The Dodgers have some pitching but mid-way into 2008 the manager and the coaches and the media are still wondering when the wonder kids will wake up and start realizing they’re playing for Joe Torre and not Grady Little or Jim Tracy. Torre. Guy hangs rings in his closet. Torre, the guy caught Bob Gibson, for God’s sake. Torre, manager of Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera and (gasp!) Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte. Listen to the man.

Bowa talks about professionals being consistent. “That’s what the big leagues is all about. Have a game plan, execute, consistency, work ethic, not getting distracted. Guys who do that are the guys who succeed. Guys who don’t do that have one good game and three bad games.” Perfect. So I’m writing. Day by day.

I ran into a woman I’d worked with in the cable television business the other day at the supermarket. She shouted my name! She was a real cutie, always flirting with me and wearing low cut shirts. Man, oh man. She was stacking magazines on the racks and we caught up. I told her I was done with the corporate world. Writing, going to minor league baseball games to work for a few bucks, find a way to squeak by until the 401K money kicks in. Lay low, maybe get a book signed, published, that’s the plan, I said.

In the corporate world you get paid just to show up. Results oriented pay usually comes as bonuses, but you get paid. Sometimes some pretty damn good money. I see the names of some of my old colleagues now on Facebook but I really don’t want them around any more. I know who I need to know, who I want to know. Lots of people I never really wanted to but had to. Done with that.

Thumbed through a dozen Bukowski books last night and bought one book of poetry. His picture in the back of one of the books showed him standing in the betting room at the race track penciling in long shots on the Racing Form, alone with his horses and the windows. He drank a lot, I know, and his poetry makes no excuses. Somewhere I see he said he didn’t do much if any editing, just wrote and crossed out lines and sent them to magazines and publishers.

What kind of day-to-day technique did these guys use? Bukowski, Hemingway, Henry Miller? And these guys didn’t have computers. Long hand, Steinbeck and his long legal pads and his pencils. Every Day. ‘Journal of A Novel’, his letters to his publisher each day, his daily warm-up writing, he called it, the summoning of his powers, the stretch of creative muscle, admitting the tough going.

But how many days, how many hours did I waste in the morning in corporate conference calls, waiting for some email to tell me where to dial in, what to think about, what the topic was, listening to managers and the fearful chiming in, the hastened cries of ‘I’m here!’ coming from some cat on the freeway speeding from El Segundo to Chino with a cell phone. Mornings staring at the computer screen, waiting for my turn.

I told Grace, the woman at the market with the magazines, when she said she’d put on weight, that you’re the kind of girl who could put on a lot of weight and still be sexy and I don’t think she even heard that or she didn’t want to respond.

‘You look great!’ she told me. Yeah, I got a good hair stylist, I said. She gave me one of those side hugs, where you grab a shoulder and meet elbow to neck, something like that. Can I publish a story in one of those magazines, I’m thinking? Can I get a book on the rack somewhere, with my name on it? That’s what I want.

Little bit everyday. Have a game plan, execute, make adjustments, work ethic, don’t get distracted. I could see Bowa standing in front of me at nine o’clock in the morning. Yelling, his neck straining. Time is not infinite.

DOWN BY THE RIVER

2008-07-10T16:23:00.000-07:00

Laughlin, Bullhead City, Havasu and Parker, the Colorado River, Vidal Junction, Needles; people hiding out, getting by, laying low. So was I.

Listening to the Radio; Top Three Stories from Laughlin/Bullhead City/Parker July 7-9;

3- The ‘adopted’ son shoots and kills his adopted parents in the trailer, then wanders a hundred yards outside the metal box and puts a bullet in his brain. The Coroner’s probably trying to figure out a way to just leave all the bodies where they are and give the buzzards the day off. Don’t think he shot the dog, though.

2- DJ in Bullhead City calls up his buddy, the Friday jock, to play the new promo just cut for the Friday guy’s special show, ‘Southern Fried Firearms’, your basic radio gun show. Highlight of the call was the open, when the guy answers the phone and the live jock asks the gun-show guy if he’s shooting his guns this afternoon. The guy says no, he’s watching Battle Star Galactica. “It’s a really good one!”

1-Two Las Vegas guys arrested in a Bullhead City motel room with guns, $27K in cash and computer software used to make forged checks.

The stories that make small town news so rewarding!

Laughlin, Tuesday night; At the Crab Shack I'm drinking beers with Benny, and he wants to just go back to Boron, and take back his trailer, with his girlfriend of twenty five years who he never bothered to marry and who gave him three nice girls. He was glad to talk to me, he said, because it cooled him off, took his mind off maybe going back there to his trailer and killing the guy who’d moved in with his girl friend. Kill him, he said, with his bare hands. He’d just been in jail for domestic violence, a little three day stint of a ninety day sentence, but he said he didn’t hurt nobody. Maybe the girlfriend just said enough, and kicked his ass out?

He was on his way to Kansas, he said, to get a job, get away from it all but that fell through so he ended up in Laughlin. His dad gave him a thousand dollars to help him out. He hadn’t talked to his dad for two years, they’d had a falling out. But his dad came through with a grand.

Brian ordered another Absolut with cranberry juice and a beer for me, told the girl to put it on his tab.

Andrea, with beautiful breasts and a t-shirt that said “Diamonds are Forever but You’ll Always Remember Crabs; The Crab Shack” shucked boxes of Mexican oysters like she meant it, cracking the crank with slender arms and stealing glances at me.

"I’m going over and get one of those t-bone steaks," Benny says. "Hear it’s the bomb. I’ll be out at the pool later on if you want to come on out."

THIRTY SECONDS WITH JACK McDOWELL

2008-06-30T09:27:00.000-07:00

I didn’t ask Jack McDowell about the thrill of winning a Cy Young. I didn’t ask him about growing up in Van Nuys California in the San Fernando Valley where I worked for eleven years and I didn’t ask him about getting to the bigs after only 27 innings of minor league ball. Didn’t ask him about Stanford or being a number one draft choice of the White Sox in 1987, fifth overall.

I asked him about the four albums he’d recorded with his band Stickfigure and he smiled and laughed. He said no, there’s no music to download in the internet, no records likely floating around in the bin racks at used record stores.

“I wish guys like you could play forever,” I said. I shook his huge hand, his fingers almost crawling up to my elbow. He’d thrown out the first pitch at the Epicenter on a sunny hot Sunday afternoon and the long right arm ended up almost in the dirt, the trademark Black Jack delivery still going strong.

He had the ‘live’ arm as they called it, nasty stuff coming down off his six foot five inch frame and he hid the ball as well as anyone, ninety-plus with movement shooting out of his hip or his elbow that he’d whip at you.

I don’t think pitchers ever shave, at least not when they’re scheduled to go live, and Black Jack had gray going in the scruff spreading on his face and on his head.

He was ready for me, for anyone wanting to shake hands and get autographs. I’d asked the girl at the table out front about Jack’s career and she smiled but said ‘don’t know’ when I mentioned the music and I pointed to the program guide and the mention of Stickfigure and Yahoo sports and the Cy Young.

I’d take that resume. Baseball and music and writing.

I didn’t ask him about Roger Clemens, I didn’t ask him about Barry Bonds. I didn’t ask him if he wishes he was still playing, in US Cellular Field instead of old Comiskey, but I don’t think he minds a bit. Didn’t ask him how he might like to play with the Sox today under Ozzie Guillen with players like Orlando Cabrera and Jim Thome and Alexei Ramirez and A J Pierzynski and maybe the best team in baseball.

Didn’t’ have time. I only had thirty seconds.

DOWNSIZING

2008-06-15T10:58:00.000-07:00

The salesman at Van Nuys Chevy was twenty eight years old, tops, two diamond stud earrings. He grinned too much.

He did it again, as we walked off the back lot into the office.

“You are what you drive,” he reminded me. All those teeth. Then he motioned me in to his felt-lined gray cubicle with the elegance of an intern about to examine my prostate.

A half-hour later and I was a 1992 Chevy Silverado Club Cab pickup. An hour ago I was a 1998 Corvette. The difference in cost between being a Corvette and being a used Silverado Club Cab? Twelve thousand dollars. I folded the check and put it in my pocket.

Maybe, not so much like a prostate examination. More like a sex-change. With a rebate.

I love LA.

UNFINISHED

2008-06-12T10:29:00.000-07:00

We don’t really know what to do with deserts. They just sit there, and we drive by them or fly over them or drop bombs on them. We feel a little uncomfortable, out of place in the heat and the desolation. They're lonely and unforgiving.

Three big deserts, huge geological works in-progress, spread out east of Los Angeles all the way to Utah, New Mexico and Colorado, and extend south deep into Mexico.

For certain climactic and esthetic reasons, Southern Californians mostly live on the coast, in Los Angeles and the beach towns, San Diego, Santa Barbara. I like the ocean. I like beach towns. I like sand-in-the-bikini kinds of days where you watch girls spreading tanning oil over smooth brown skin and all of that clandestine eroticism that takes place at the shore.

I get away to the middle of nothing, though, escape into desert, where pavement falls apart a mile or two from the interstate and you’re on your own, hoping you’ve brought along enough water and maybe food and a blanket or bag to crawl into if you get stuck with a flat tire or you bog down on a trail, get stuck in the sand. I stop the Jeep in the middle of a dusty road and turn off the engine to hear how hard the wind blows and to catch up on the calls of the ravens and the buzz of crickets and the hum of desert survival and the creatures who work this land for a living.

The burned out Joshua Trees and creosote turned crisp in a fire blackens rusty land and etches an outline against evening sky. Breeze crawls up the back of my neck, a puff of sound against my sleeve and the rush of a kestrel flying low along the brush. Jackrabbits stand at every corner, tall ears and long legs, scrambling for cover as I drive by. Lizards take to the rocks for shade and cool air, taking no time to cross the road in straight lines. Nobody is up here but me. No vehicles, no campers, no one hiking or driving or settled in with tents or shelters. It is barren, rough, untouched, pure. It’s mine.

I’ll see no one for close to two hours, no person, just a few houses a half-mile off the road, a few cows grazing, one that scrambles over some loose barbed wire she knows how to negotiate.

Get gas in Ludlow, the girl at the Mojave Preserve office in Barstow advised. Stay away from Essex, she said, you’ll pay $5.59. Wild Horse Canyon is beautiful, she says, changing colors and decent roads, some sandy spots but the Jeep will handle it fine. I get to Hole in The Wall an hour and a half later, a campground and visitor center compound with an equestrian camp. The Ranger’s Tahoe is parked at the visitor center but it’s closed and no one comes out to greet me. It’s after four-thirty, the sun’s dropping in the west, still enough light for a cruise up to the Mid Hills camp and around back the long way to Essex.

Two hundred yards back down the road Wild Horse Canyon road turns up into a dirt trail that crosses a couple of cow catchers painted turquoise and a small enclave with a windmill spinning in the breeze. A raven flushes on my left and flies low through a hollow for a while, guiding me up the grade until he finishes his duty, pulls up into a perch and I continue past the wash and up towards the crest. Burnt brush, sage and creosote and Joshua have a crust of fire and the survival instinct of something that has been through worse. A daily battle with harsh elements of extreme heat and thirst and dry wind will fossilize some, and who will hold them one day? Say here, there was a tree, a bush, some pre-historic remnant that one day was prescient on this vast plain? Who will come, look back on where I was today, alone on this empty plateau, wandering like some newborn thing searching the desert for a new way to see? And what did I see?

I saw the earth, unfinished, raw, empty.

The breeze kicked up and the sun slanted in against piles of granite and fine grain of sand. The dry air, drawn in across the scrapings of geologic time. I saw the earth, working itself, becoming. And full of life.

JOHN WOODEN

2008-06-01T13:00:00.000-07:00

Larry Jones saved me. I was scrolling e-mails and punching up conference calls in another desperate day of tactical corporate survival, until Larry called. John Wooden was in the studio.

'John Wooden? I'll be right down.'

Connie Martinson had just finished up interviewing John Wooden for her show 'Connie Martinson Talks Books' and the Wizard of Westwood was sitting alone on the set. The legendary UCLA basketball coach's book on leadership was hitting stores and the coach was on the talk circuit. Mr. Wooden shook my hand with his strong, soft grip, stared me in the eye with that steady, hawk-like gaze. He looked like my grandfather.

I told him I'd seen some of his championship teams play up in Berkeley. In high school we'd gone up to Cal and bought scalped tickets in the top row of Harmon Gym and watched the Bruins play in front of a rowdy Berkeley crowd.

Mr. Wooden was so nice and polite to me, saying he hoped that I'd enjoyed the games.

I remember the Bruins in their light blue warm-up jackets and white pants coming out and taking the court. The old expression for a basketball team coming out for the game was 'the team took the court.' It meant simply that the starting five went out for the opening tip. Not for the Bruins. They came out early, and literally, took the court, as in took it away from the other team with their opening passing drills.

Lew Alcindor, Lynn Shackleford, Mike Warren and the rest of that team ran a four corners passing drill to start out, with three or four balls, two or three players moving to the center of the half court, pulling in passes, pivoting and firing passes to the other corner, the balls never touching the ground. Crisp, precision, like James Brown coming out on stage and working through dance moves in front of the rhythm section before ever handling the microphone. Just teasing the crowd. They'd break the passing drill with a mock 'dunk' drill with the players just dropping the ball into the hoop, the slam being outlawed when Alcindor arrived in college.

They took the court.

Mr. Wooden was lingering in the studio, in no hurry, so I asked him if I could ask him a couple of basketball questions.

'Sure,' he said, 'go ahead.'

'I've been wondering,' I said, 'in college basketball these days, why no teams use the full court press as their base defense.' The press was the Bruins trademark, a zone press when they made a basket or free throw, turning the tempo up and forcing a fast paced game that favored the quick, tireless Bruins. No one plays defense like that anymore.

'Well', Mr. Wooden said, 'I can't speak for other coaches today, but I can tell you why it took us a long time to get where we could do it.'

I thought I knew the answer. I asked, like a student in the back row, 'because you didn't have the players'?

'Right,' and his eyes twinkled, those killer eyes that have charmed interviewers and players and opponents for decades with that ruthless fundamental approach to the game of basketball. His Bruins made it look simple. Brutal, attacking full court defense, beautiful positioning both on offense and defense and a fast break that preyed upon opponents that tired under relentless pressure.

'We didn't have the players for a long time to be able to play that way,' he continued.

For a starting five to play every night with a pressing full court zone after every basket requires absolute discipline and superior conditioning. Did he mean that he didn't think today's players were up to it?

The eyes sparkled, and he shrugged. 'I can only tell you how we got to develop it,' he said.

So, I gathered, either he didn't think today's players were up to it or the coaches lacked the will to impose a zone press. That was my take, but he wouldn't elaborate.

But I know what I saw in those games up at Cal. Even late in the second half with the game on the line and the crowd screaming, sensing an upset, the Bruins held their poise and made every big play, every defensive stop that they needed to, never leaving their positions and using relentless pressure to force mistakes and turnovers. That comes from daily practice, gym time under a coach who demands all out effort and dedication to detail. Hour after hour of passing drills, fast breaks and outlet passes, stifling defensive pressure without committing fouls. Mr. Wooden didn't use a lot of substitutes to rest his stars. He worked them.

Listen to players like Bill Walton and Kareem talk about 'Coach' like he's a supreme being. He is. He didn't know any more about the game than Bobby Knight or Dean Smith. But he knew how to get more out of his players by demanding that they play a certain way, a way where no one else could keep up with them. That was his genius.

Everyone at the top college level has great athletes. It's the coach who has the guts to turn them into predators on the court, and who can get players to play that hard that dominates. The Bruins overpowered teams before they even got on the court. In the animal kingdom a creature knows when he's dominated by a predator, and submits.

John Wooden was a power coach who walked the sideline in a blazer holding a rolled up program as a foil. Now, Mr. Wooden has the kindly air, the friendly smile and the dimples that crinkle his cheeks. But he still has those piercing hawk-like eyes.

KELSO

2008-05-14T17:24:00.000-07:00

Trains don’t stop at Kelso anymore. The freight trains still roll by the old Kelso Depot everyday, but the railroad stopped using the Depot over twenty years ago.

A red tile roof leans out from the second floor, with gentle Moorish arches framing the dusty oasis and palm trees standing in the green grass and sand and hardscrabble. The Depot is the visitor’s center for the Mojave National Preserve now, the sprawling desert outpost north of Interstate 40 and Amboy, and east of Baker, stretching out to Nevada. The Preserve is big and lonesome, the town of Kelso almost dried up in the sun, like most things in the desert without purpose. The Kelso Depot is open everyday for visitors.

I ran over a snake wiggling across the road south of the Kelso Dunes. It was the only living thing I’d seen up close in a half hour. There was no avoiding him. Swerve and maybe roll the Jeep, at fifty miles per hour. So with a little blip, he was done, and I was speeding on towards the Dunes, six hundred foot high wind-blown hills of sand that look like big piles of gold dust in afternoon sun. A few miles back I’d passed the cinder cones, and down further below I-40, the Amboy Crater. These are big, black, volcanic cones that poke up out of the ground from eruptions that started between 7 and 8 million years ago and continued as recently as 10,000 years ago when the Ice Age came to a close.

Inside the Kelso Depot the park ranger greets you.
‘Hello. Passing through?’

‘Yeah, stretching my legs,’ I say. She nods. She’s used to visitors plodding around, not really seeing anything, stopping in, halfway between nowhere and someplace. I was no different.

It’s cool inside the Depot. The old lunch counter forms three sides of a square in the middle of the tall main room, maps and brochures spread out on the dark wood. The hard plastic laminated maps start with a small one of the Mojave Preserve, detailing the roads and trails and open space of the immediate area.

In the lower forty-eight, the Mojave Preserve is the third largest piece of land that the National Park Service manages. A larger map shows Southern California. The Mojave and Colorado (Sonora) and the Great Basin deserts join up southeast of the Mojave, down in Joshua Tree National Park. In Joshua, the three desert climactic zones are all on display, the high desert, the lower desert and the Basin that runs all the way out to Utah. Another map shows the entire United States.

Deserts cover much of the Southwest. They get rain and even some snow. But by definition, deserts give up more moisture from evaporation than they take in through precipitation.

The counter has chairs, bolted down, wooden ones that swivel on a base. They surround the counter in simple formation, with plenty of room in between. It would have been nice to stop in during a train ride, while the steam engine or the coal engine gets fired up with fuel, watered down. Take a seat at the counter and order a tall chocolate milk shake, talk with the waitress about the temperatures that get up over a hundred degrees four months out of the year.

In the West, historic structures stand alone, abandoned by time and money, no longer useful except as memories. The old buildings are allowed to hang around, no threat to modern development. In this new century, we look to the recent past, declare styles to be post-modern, mid-century, left-over structures that take on nostalgia with a bow. The lucky ones live on, guide books and preservation societies reciting pedigree, recalling their history.

A train rolls by today, not stopping. Oh, once it did, though, taking on water and fuel and food, people getting off, getting on. Mailing a postcard, a letter. 'The West,' they'd say, 'It’s vast."

They did once. They did.

LOOKING TO LAND

2008-05-09T16:35:00.000-07:00

I opened the sun roof and watched a helicopter hovering over the Strip, looking for a landing zone in a battle of light. It veered, slowed, floated down onto the top of the Mirage. Somebody in the jungle had said that choppers were The Angels of Death, but I said it was too close to call. More like schizophrenia, the mechanical equivalent of a decidedly split personality. Inside one, you were either having a great time, flying the Grand Canyon or Denali or some great wonder of the world, or you were seriously fucked up, plucked out of some hell hole, broken and split up and desperate. Dropping into the gambling Mecca for the time of your life, or the jaws of life were popping your car like a can and packing you off to trauma care. Somewhere nearby, your soul was making decisions. Live or die, win or lose, hold or stay. I drove on, the sunroof open, neon reflecting on the metal top framing my head.

FOUR WHEEL DRIVE

2008-05-07T09:49:00.000-07:00

Shit, gimme a new passport. I might be needing it. Got me a Four Wheel Drive.

The Jeep runs great, it ran great, I’m hoping it will always run great. A few weeks ago the little idiot light came on and now they don’t just blink red at you, they spell out more specifically what might be wrong. ‘Service 4WD System’ sounded ominous. It was. The first Jeep shop I went to spent almost a full day to figure out what it needed. Took a couple of phone calls from me to the service writer who’s voice mail promised that he returns all voice messages promptly. He doesn’t. Turns out the next day when I finally had him paged after getting his VM three or four times, he doesn’t exactly return messages that quickly. Didn’t even pick up voice messages, on this day. Turns out he didn’t know what was wrong with my car, on this day, because the mechanic was on lunch and there was no way he’d find out until the mechanic got back, now was there? So he doesn’t return voice messages and has no way to get the mechanic to tell him what’s wrong with my 4WD system. When he does find out, it’s almost two thousand dollars of work. A new transfer case.

When I picked up the car he says, oh, I got your voice message. It was almost three o’clock. I said what do I owe you? Nothing he said. Didn’t think so. I’ll get a second opinion.

Back at the dealer where I bought the Cherokee Laredo, used, with a 75K mile warranty, it took them about twelve hours to tell me the same thing. Transfer case. But they knocked six hundred off the price when I whined. See, I bought this 75K mile warranty, I reminded them. And then just a week after I started getting those so friendly phone reminders from the peppy automated male voice that I COULD renew the warranty, and now of course was the perfect time to do so, the IDIOT light comes on for me, the IDIOT. Because I didn’t renew the warranty? Maybe? Maybe the light going on coincides with a big database that begins calling customers who don’t renew warranties. Is it possible the whole thing is connected in some auto-manufacturer conglomerate Daimler-Benz-Chrysler-Jeep software, programmed to punch up idiot lights, make reminder calls and zap you with fifteen hundred dollar repairs if you don’t ante up?

So how much 4WD’ing do I do, to justify this kind of maintenance headache? Not that much. But it’s a cool ride, a stripped down, silver painted, charcoal interior urban cruiser, and I can ride out any earthquakes, floods, fires and other catastrophes in comfort and safety thanks to that ‘Trail Rated’ badge on the side. Says I can pretty much go anywhere I damn well want to.

Meanwhile I get the 4WD Hardware parts catalog I emailed for, a four color thirty page goody list of Dick Cepek and Mickey Thompson custom wheels, huge Goodrich tires and Super Swampers with tread the size of beer cans. Maybe I’ll just order some new floor mats. And that camo travel mug. That roof rack looks good, the one where I can stuff a mattress, a small television and a surfboard for those extended beach excursions. Gonna need a winch too, when I’m stuck down in the Grand Canyon and that bull elk is charging and I have to pull it all up along the wall and bivouac the whole damn thing from a tree. Some extra strength tensile steel cable, make sure we don’t plunge down into the whitewater, submerge some poor raft trip floaters and get all that grey hair wet and rinse away the hair coloring. Hey, do those Super Swamper tires double as float pontoons? No? Just carry spares, on top of the mattress stuffed into the custom roof rack and the whole thing will float down the Colorado, come out into Mexico somewhere under the border bridge? Got it. I’m there. One more thing? That steering column extension thing, the one that takes the steering wheel right up onto that roof-rack mattress with the television and the Super Swampers stacked up into a nice seat, can I get some pedal extensions too? Ride up there on the Super Swampers, steering and yee-hawwing up there high enough to ward off the critters and banditos and border patrol agents?

Shit, I better get my passport replaced. Lost it in a whorehouse in Tijuana a couple of years ago. Lost it with enough cash in my pockets to start a damn shrine down there.

Probably some maid found it the next morning, or that whore, saying Holy Mother Mary, it’s a miracle, it's a sign. Something like that.

FINAL DAY

2008-05-05T12:40:00.000-07:00

Jared Incinelli stood alone in the bullpen, taking his last look at the Quakes who would go on to beat Lancaster 3-2 on Sunday. Late afternoon sun was slanting in over blue and black and gold flags flapping above the left field stands. Incinelli’s arms were folded.

He never threw a pitch today. He walked off the field and into the dugout for the last time, his final day this year. He would go home to tend to family affairs, retiring from baseball, for a while anyway.

I stuck my hand out, said good luck, touching fists. Thanks, he said, I appreciate it.

Not that he wasn’t good enough. He wasn't released. But the grind and the time away from family can pull a ballplayer away too soon, before there’s time to reap the rewards of rich salaries, bonus’ and endorsements.

Incinelli watched his team, storing up memories, feeling the breeze in his face for the final time. It’s not easy letting go of a dream.

He was standing by himself, yesterday. Today, he’s with people who need him too. Another team, the one he’ll always be a part of. They need him now. He’ll throw and he’ll catch and keep the glove soft and oiled, keep the ball near the television set to finger and flip and roll around in his hand as he watches, remembers, keeps the dream alive. To teach his new child what it was like.

In the sun, under the lights, with a shot at the show.

It’s okay, Jared, it’s good to have dreams. They never die.

RUBY

2008-05-01T16:28:00.000-07:00

Ruby was struttin’ down the left field line, waving at the stands, the empty stands, chin up, pigtails bouncing. Ruby, in her royal blue jersey, number 4, big white letters, RUBY, walking down the line with her team and the dozens of other Little League and T-ball squads.

Ruby, seven or eight years old, beaming, smiling, hands up to the stands where she was seeing fans cheering for her and her team, the stands that were empty this afternoon.

No matter to Ruby, who was waving anyway, getting ready for that home run she’s going to hit. Land on the plate with both feet, hands out, looking up at that crowd cheering for her.

Ruby, tiny Ruby, looking for somebody.

I saw her. I waved. Her eyes were way above mine, searching the stands. I held my hand out. Then she saw me, pointed at me with two fingers, like Barry Bonds coming down the line to the plate after number six hundred. Ruby, pointing at me like she knew how to do it all along. Nobody else around, just me and her. Ruby’s eyes bright and brown and the jersey crisp and smooth and deep blue. Ruby, moving on down the left field line waving at a crowd only she could see. It was all hers this afternoon.

And the home run she hit is going, still going, still going, way, way up there. It'll never come down.

DANCING

2008-04-01T10:04:00.000-07:00

In one week, the last two days, stories in the LA Times of all places, where you’d expect them to hold out on this kind of junk. There they were.

Floyd Mayweather defeating ‘Big Show’ at WWE’s Wrestlemania 24. The next day, Jason Taylor and his debut on Dancing With The Stars. What’s next? Danica Patrick, Mel Gibson and Charlie Sheen in a midnight road race into Malibu Canyon on ABC?

Yeah, I could see it coming, a little faster than I’d expected, like watching a Roger Clemens fastball zinging at you with that buzz of spinning laces, thumping into the catcher’s mitt. But it still shocks me, jocks and sports pages selling out.

Mayweather must be heartbroken, 27 years old and nobody to fight him. Just another best pound-for-pound that nobody loves. Twenty million dollars to fight a seven foot monster in the wrestling arena probably looked good to young Floyd. Can’t say I wouldn’t do it.

Jason Taylor, at 33 and near the end of his pro football career, has every right to try and extend his popularity. The ever expanding market for celebrity based television can probably make room for another good looking ex-jock. Tiki Barber, Ahmad Rashad, Dan Marino, Boomer Esiason all have passable talent, enough to survive on television networks that deliver drivel. No harm there.

But keep the circus acts off the sports pages. Mayweather, Taylor, these stories don’t belong up there next to opening day baseball coverage and the final four. I’m all for creating a special section at the back of the sports pages, just covering strip club arrests, drug and steroid abuse, track stars racing horses and cars, and college football spring practice in the SEC.

Maybe I should be happy that Taylor wasn’t caught in a lap dance and instead caught a national audience with his own dance moves, I don’t know.

Sports Pages were designed, I’m sure I learned this in high school journalism, for the specific purpose of delineating the distinction between legitimate news, the kind that sends countries off to wars and elects presidents, and the sporting kind. Entertainment sections cover movies and music and gossip. Never the twain shall meet, someone said who’s advice I respect.

Yeah, I’m old school, old period, call me what you want. The new school is saying if it pops up on a screen somewhere, a video screen, a computer screen, an Ipod or a cell phone it’s already legitimate and who cares. If it entertains us and holds our attention for more than five seconds, let it be. It used to be fifteen minutes, but that was twentieth century. The Medium, IS, The Message, oh shut up…that’s so analog.

So this is the digitization of American media. Twenty four hours a day and nothing to program. So we take whatever celebrity we can, mix and match with some catchy location background, put the pieces back together like a digital puzzle and everyone comes out with a television career, with no attachment to previous achievement or history. Take a celeb and paste them up on the screen on a digitized background; Barry Bonds climbs Everest! Roger Clemens throwing poison darts at charging rhinos on the savannah…Jose Canseco cliff diving in Acapulco (we wish).

Remember when Jesse Owens raced against horses?

I still consider him one of America’s greatest heroes, sports or otherwise. He sold out. He had to. Had no choice. Today’s heroes? They have no excuse. And the sports pages have no excuse for covering it. Throw those bones to the entertainment editors, the gossip columnists. Do they even have those anymore? Oh, they’re entire twenty-four networks themselves?

There you go.

No Boycott Here

2008-03-28T10:17:00.000-07:00

Let’s get this part straight, right up front. I dig the Dalai Lama. His brand of Buddhism is straight up, pure, as far as I can tell. I even heard him speak, or one of his top guys once in Denver. I wore the red string around my neck or wrist or wherever it was. Even lost my girlfriend at the time to our spiritual advisor who’d turned us on to the Dalai’s appearance, then ran around holding on to ‘her’ hand before the last little spiritual retreat we had up in Keystone. Greg, his name, he smoked cigarettes, I remember, the only spiritually impure activity that he admitted to. Besides probably boinking my girlfriend, a lovely spiritual seeker who was seeking enlightenment from the big huge male totem, it appeared.

Anyway, now that Tibet is blowing again, in trouble with the big Feds from Beijing, we hear from the usual Hollywood suspects prescribing all kinds of solutions for the trouble. I love it when the Hollywood crowd gives us a conscience. An easy checklist we can follow to ease our worldwide political pain.

It usually involves asking someone else to make the sacrifice.

This time they’re calling on athletes. Right. They’re the ones who train and compete just about their entire lives for the opportunity to represent their countries, themselves and their sports on the world’s biggest stage. Just give it up for old Tibet, ‘cause Hollywood says so.

No, Mia Farrow, Quincy Jones, Steven Speilberg, Ang Lee. Why don’t you give up your career, the proceeds from your next movie? Call on America to boycott your next project instead of asking athletes worldwide to give up their quest.

Athletes can’t just pick up the phone and get a studio deal or a movie script to shoot with a major star packaged up from CAA. Ever been to an Olympic Trial, say, in Track and Field? Ever seen what athletes go through, four or five days of races, heats, competitions, to get on the team that wears the colors of the USA, to march in the opening ceremony among thousands of beautiful athletes in native garb from every corner of the world?

Give it up for Tibet, Mia? This is their one shot, lady, their one chance to compete at this level. They don’t get a lifetime pass from a couple of movies that lets you cash it in at the bank for the rest of your days, make a phone call and get a part, a script for ‘older women’ that the old Hollywood gals all say is so missing in today’s film industry. These athletes get their one time ‘part’ the old fashioned way. They win it.

So you want peace in Tibet? Free the monks? Then boycott your own projects, Hollywood. Give up yours, and stop asking the athletes to give up theirs.

Like I said, I dig the Dalai. But I’m not giving up mine, and I’m sure not hoping athletes give up theirs.

Hollywood, it’s time to look in the mirror. Send a film crew over there, do a documentary. Cover the games in that grand style we used to see in the older games, from Rome and Tokyo. Do it in great detail, use the industry to show us. But don’t ask us to give up what is meaningful to us, to close a door on athletic achievement. Close the door on your own projects, if you want to boycott. Or use the industry to focus our attention. Just don’t send Al Gore or Michael Moore. Send someone who isn’t trying so hard to impress us. Someone who won’t try and cash in a trip to Tibet or Beijing for an Academy Award. Send a film student crew, an AFI project team. Make us feel good about what you’re doing, and try and not turn it into a celeb-fest with Angelina or Brad or Mia or Richard Gere grabbing headlines instead of carefully showing us the way.

Me? I’m digging into Olympic preliminaries, getting ready for the trials and the competitions and the games.

Maybe I’ll take a movie DVD and light it on fire and dump it over the back deck. My own protest against Hollywood.

Let the Games begin.

Jump Start

2008-03-27T15:37:00.001-07:00

Mom is doing fine, she says. She had cataract surgery yesterday and I think I was a little jumpy. I told her on Tues I didn't want to call her yesterday, the day of the surgery, so she spent the night with a friend and I got a hold of her today and she sounds fine. She said they wanted her to stay with her friend last night because her blood pressure was pretty high. She sounded fine this morning and is going back in today to change the bandages. Maybe I should have gone up there.
I about bit Gene’s head off yesterday on the phone. No real reason. Probably a little jealousy in there too...hot Asian girl friend, business going well, closing deals...
OK, I feel better
Kee Mo Tay

Everybody Knows Lonnie

2008-03-11T13:48:00.000-07:00

Everybody knows Lonnie. I pick him up and we go to lunch. The hostess, Denise, the lady who I had talked to about Ray Charles and some of the musicians she had worked with in the music industry when I was in a couple of weeks ago, she knows Lonnie.

The waitress knows Lonnie. She knows me too. She knows what I want before we even sit down. Chicken salad sandwich on sourdough. Lonnie orders a cheese omelet.

Robert comes by. He always keeps his sunglasses on. He starts to invite the waitress over to sit with us and I say Robert you’re pickup lines are starting to wear thin. He says I’m not trying to pick up anyone. Just trying to socialize, have a little conversation. If you can’t talk to the girls on a nice sunny day like today, what’s the use, he says.

I love you man, I say to Robert .

I’m going to tell Lonnie about you and my blog, Okay? I tell Lonnie that I’d run into Robert about three times in thirty six hours and finally I’d showed him a chapter from the novel and he read it and then he put it down without saying anything. I said, what, you don’t like it and he said hey, I didn’t throw it away, that’s something. His way of encouraging writers, I guess. I asked him if he'd looked at my blog and he said he saw something I sent but he didn't read it. So when I saw him a couple of days later he was talking about one of his girl friends and how she’d been hesitant or something with his brash come-ons and I said, hey, why don’t you just read my blog? We get together, what, once every six months? And the conversation is ninety nine percent you, I said, and one percent me, so read it, okay?

He emailed me that afternoon. I like the grey background, he said. I emailed back, just read it! He sends back this policy he has. A statement that he doesn't read anything literary and some other stuff about how he doesn’t have time and he just reads law books and don’t take it personally buddy boy just go with the flow. I tell this to Lonnie.

Robert grins, hiding behind his sunglasses. I love you man, I say.

The food comes and Lonnie has this huge plate with a cheese omelet and rice and beans and my sandwich looks small. Robert looks on. He lights up a Marlboro from a green box.

Denise comes out and banters with us, asks Lonnie how he’s been and asks him if he’s still with his girl friend. He says no, they broke up. That was a year ago. Denise says oh, I didn’t know. She asks Robert if he needs anything. He doesn’t have any food and he’s smoking. He says no, unless you want to give me a neck massage. He rubs his neck. She laughs. Oh not now, she says, I’m working but that’s the kind of thing that’s for after work. She leaves and I look at Robert. I love you, man, I say, and slap his knee.

Robert gets ready to leave and we shake hands. I invite him to our festival we’re planning, me and Lonnie. It’s blues, barbecue, baseball, beer, broads, beans, stuff that starts with B, I say. My place. Listen to some music. Robert says yeah, maybe, unless I’m fucking Clara. Beer and barbecue, I say, and Robert says yeah, unless me and Clara are fucking. I don’t want to interrupt that, I say, but you got to eat. He gets up.

Lonnie says he’s been laying low. The cheese omelet looks really good, all gooey, hanging down from the fork. My sandwich has stale bread.

I’m fine, Lonnie says, just laying low. Sometimes I just get tired of people. But you’re okay? I say. Yeah, I’m okay, he says. I stayed in the house for the entire day yesterday, he says. Just watched movie after movie after movie. Hamlet, he says. The best. Laurence Olivier, he says, and I say, yeah, he’s the best. He ran down his top five Shakespeare movies; Olivier in Hamlet, then Othello with Orson Wells and Romeo and Juliet and The Taming of the Shrew with Burton and Taylor. Henry V with some guy I don't know.
Albert says he’ll send me over some of his poetry, but only the old stuff. Not ready to go public with the new stuff, he says, and I say I’m not the public, and he grins. Later he says he’ll send over some older stuff but warns me that it’s kind of amateurish.

I think people who write poetry have heart and soul and are brave. I didn’t tell Lonnie this, but I think he knows.