INDIAN HILL

This little guy was sitting up in my secret place today. I told him to leave.   He said, 'I was here first.' Then he stuck his tongue out at me. We settled the dispute and I looked around. Chaparral yucca spears glow like candles and are needle-sharp. The wind was my only companion, and there wasn't very much. The lizard found rock shade and settled in to warm his cold blood.  The East Fork San Gabriel River canyon, far below, is dry tinder, ready for fire season.  Slender shadows are the only relief from the blistering October heat.

The day starts out late , around 8:00 AM.  Coffee, the newspapers, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, checking emails, Facebook, Twitter, looking for something to get excited about. I’ve been working pretty good on my novel this week and last night around 10:30 I’m exhausted, my eyelids closing while I’m reading ‘Hong Kong’ by Stephen Coonts (it’s my first ‘Jake Grafton’ novel that I’ve read by thrill-master Coonts and it’s pretty good) and I’m re-thinking the scene I’m working on in the novel---I think I have the way to end it. Got it, I’m thinking, then considering whether to open up the computer again (it’s getting late and I’m already tired) but no, leave it for today and end it up when I’m fresh. But I’m not fresh. Coffee and the newspapers and computer and emails and web-surfing only put me in that never-land; mid-day blues thinking it’s either nap time, go-out-to-lunch-time, get-out-of-the-house-at-all-costs-time, hit email refresh over and over until someo...

Morning in the Snake River canyon. I don’t know when exactly it happened, but at some point I realized my life was following patterns; places I was living, things I’d do, people I’d meet, opportunities I followed. And so it went. Jackson Hole, Colorado, Southern California. Not everything went according to plan. There were heartbreaks, big ones, little ones, inconsequential ones and ones I made up to prevent myself from changing and compromising. More about that? No. Not now. In my mind I’d string together great thoughts about the reasons certain things were happening. My first radio job, getting into cable television, why I had to go to Colorado and the disasters that broke my spirit for a while. Getting down into Southern California thrust me into a culture of entertainment. Many of the cable networks had major offices there, and I did some work on live television producing and hosting shows featuring actors, athletes, politicians, and went on to co-host a show for the Lo...

In Steven Soderbergh's sexy adaptation of Elmore Leonard's crime novel 'Out of Sight' , Jennifer Lopez and George Clooney come from opposite ends of the crime spectrum. Lopez is a Federal Marshal, Clooney an escaped convict.  Clooney's pickup lines get her attention during their chance opening encounter, locked together in the trunk of a car.  Clooney does time, wondering what would happen if he and Lopez met under different circumstances. Here, Lopez is waiting alone in a hotel bar while men try and buy her drinks, when Clooney shows up. . . They move upstairs... We all fall in love sometime, somewhere, sometimes with the right person, sometimes with the wrong person.  Noir is inevitable.  It's a romantic momentum that can't be stopped.  The wrong place, the wrong time, the wrong girl.

     Maya pointed to an ad in Arizona Highways for a place called The Blue Buddha Bar and she was driving the Yukon so I said, Sure, why not? and I buckled up, the Camaro fueled with the key under the mat, white roses resting at the Comfort Inn, and two police cars side-by-side flashed lights but no sirens down Navajo Drive as we pulled into the Buddha. Inside, blue neon striped the bar and high spotlights spilled amber on tables and booths. The waitress mixed 60s Indian-chic retro with green day-glow earring loops. Maya ordered while I wondered how long I’d last here with my side shrieking from a million screaming nerve-ends. I’d lifted two vials of pills from the hospital, but not the Pentacozine. I wanted to numb the pain for a while until the waitress served two cocktails with contrails.  Dry ice vapor. The waitress gave her spiel about the house specialty drinks. Blue Velvets.        “You know you never order sushi ...

Got a gig doing some boxing coverage for BillyCBoxing.com so last night it was a late one, getting home at midnight, working the story and sending photos. Driving home through the mean streets of Ontario and Rancho Cucamonga, no traffic, a few stragglers hanging out on the corners, listening to jazz … Sleep comes fitfully and I get up at 7:00 AM, eyes half closed into slits that can’t quite see and I’m down to the bagel shop for a toasted one with lox and cream cheese . Got reading and writing for school, lots of reading, critical papers, getting ready for residency in the desert with writers and colleagues. Tons to do. But today, boxing is on my mind, sitting ringside just under the blue corner, sweat and ice water flinging down on my laptop, clicking my camera, shooting action shots, blood on the cheeks, sweat on the backs shining over tattoos and ripped lats and sculpted abs, the work of iron-man workouts that steel the soul and the body …these fighters are a d...

I’m driving on I-15 from Victorville toward Barstow, starting up the old road past the faded gray quarry and the railroad track where the bin cars wait for gravel to roll into the cars.   Immense, gray tall structures with conveyer belts intertwined in a labyrinth of intersecting ramps and the railroad track filled with an outbound waiting to load.  It is an imposing structure and I like it.  The light is dusty and thin and not good for shooting photos, and I turn westbound up through the edge of town, past vast wrecking yards filled with flattened dead autos and up past the logistics airport.    The road turns into Highway 395 and I move north up to Kramer Junction, and then turn off the main road into Randsburg.  It’s a dusty faded squatting town filled with backyards of junk and plywood sheds, a few main streets intersecting but no interesting restaurants, cafes, but only a couple of motels with cracking paint blistering in the desert heat.  ...