Mambo

Happy Birthday, MLKJ - Part 1 of 2

The friday before the long weekend, I asked the IT director, an enormous black man, what he was doing over the weekend. He told me:

I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm not coming in to work on Tuesday...'Cause I'm BLACK!

I think this was in reference to the inaguration, but I want to be racially sensitive and not jump to any conculsions. Personally, I celebrated the life of MLKJ,an avid motorcyclist,* by taking off on a four-day motorcycle trip.

Day I

I knew I would have some company upon leaving Los Angeles at 3:30pm on the Friday before a long weekend, I just did not realize how many people were bucking the trend of the staycation. I headed east, and traffic was so bad (how bad was it?) traffic was so bad there was more bumper-to-bumpers than at a Sir Mix a Lot orgy.



I must have passed ten thousand cars at a virtual stand still, riding in-between lanes for more than 50 miles, my brain locked in concentration. One of of twenty cars pulled out of the way, one of of twenty pulled into the gap between lanes to block me, but most people had fallen asleep at the wheel.


So I didn't make it to Twenty-nine palms, CA until well after dark. I found a motel that was a bargain at $45. It remind me of the $25, jizz-stained motels I stayed in on my Route 66 trip. There were cigarette holes in the bedspread, no shampoo, and salvation army decor. The place felt defiled. Horrible things had been done in the room over the years, you could just feel it.

I went to bed early, but woke up around midnight to the sound of a couple, along with a 14-year old kid, loudly rousing the inn-keeper. The couple checked into the room next to me, and had loud sexual intercourse for about 45 minutes while the adolescent waited outside. The kid smoked to kill time, and periodically banged on the door, and asked the couple if they were finished. Finally, they let him in. About an hour later, I heard the copulating resume, forcing me to assume that the kid was trying to sleep in the bed next to the couple while they carried on their love-making. I imagine he slept soundly knowing his mother was being gratified to such an extent. I know I did.

Day II

The next morning, I was having a ball hurtling through the desert. At one stretch, there was 100 miles between towns, and scaresely an automobile on the road. It's a great feeling tearing ass through the middle of nowhere, one hand on the throttle, white lines zipping by underfoot.


Fortunately, I made a wrong turn, and headed north via Needles. I say fortunately because when I arrived in Needles, turned off the Dirty Whore to fill the tank, and turned the key into the "On" position, nothing happened. This was bad.

I parked the bike, and pulled out a couple of wrenches that I always take with me on long road trips. I hear them jangle together, and it puts a smile on my face knowing that I am a guy that carries around tools in case shit goes down. I'm the guy on the camping trip who packed extra iodine tablets and toilet paper. I'm the guy with Shout Wipe stain removal in his office desk drawer. I'm the guy with supplmental oxygen on a 40-foot dive off the reef, I seem to have gum on hand after garlicy meals, I light your cigarette while you're searching for matches, I have extra beer at the party, a map of the area, a method for calculating the number of minutes until sunset, a corkscrew, knowledge of the weather over the next 48 hours, residential street parking next to the airport, and a guy that can score you drugs in every major metropolitan area west of the Mississippi. I am fucking prepared.

The wrenches were not the proper size to do anything except adjust the rear view mirrors. I walked into a garage attached to the gas station where a very large man was sitting on a stool, sucking on a lollypop, and eyeing me with contempt as I approached.

"Everything was fine with my bike until I filled up the tank and tried to turn her on...I think the problem might be the battery..."

The man sprang to life, and wheeled my motorcycle into the shop. Apparently, he used to be a motorcycle mechanic, and owned several motorcycles the same make, model, and color as the Dirty Whore. In fact, he had experienced the same problem with his own bikes.

Actually, he just looked at me slack-jawed, not in slack-jawed ignorance, but in slack-jawed indifference. I was inconvinancing him, and he was not happy about it. Not "unhappy" per se as much as disinterested. I was his wife telling him about the gals at the office.

"So if you have an 11mm wrench, I think I can access the battery and maybe figure out what's wrong."

"I don't have an 11mm wrench," he grunted. With great effort, he stood up and rummaged around a loose set of dirty tools. He found one, and handed it to me. I walked back to the bike, and took off the seat. The negative terminal on the battery was coroded with white shit. I blew off the white shit, and unscrewed the screw. Only half of the screw came off, hence the white shit. I cleaned it, screwed it back in, turned the key to "On" and viola, I saved the Dirty Whore from her certain demise in Needles.


I was still 210 miles to Flagstaff, riding on a windy highway, and racing against the setting sun. I hadn't counted on riding in the dark, and daylight temps were supposed to be in the 60's. It got cold quickly as I made my way east. I didn't realize I would have to cross a 7300 foot mountain pass, or that there would be snow on the ground, or that temps would get down to 30.

I was fucking cold, but Wal-Mart came through by providing me with low cost consumer goods manufactuered in foreign countries with cheap labor and limited trade barriers. $9.99 for a pair of sweat pants to wear under my jeans. About the same for a wrench set and universal screw driver. A man in a Wal-Mart is a man prepared for anything.

Even with the additional clothing, by the time I hit 89 south in Flagstaff, I was shivering unctrollably, and I couldn't feel my hands and feet. I carefully decended 1500 hundred feet on windy roads into Sedona in the dark and upon checking in, immediately jumped into the shower to try to save my finger tips.

The Dirty Whore had been ridden enough for one night, so I walked into town. I sat next to a flakey nutritionist at a restaraunt's bar. She advised me to "follow my soul [while on vacation]" Yep. I was in Sedona alright, the only place in the United States you could order a shakra rebalancing at 3:00am on a weeknight. Beautiful place and shiny, happy people. It's one of my favorite places in the world.



*I don't think this is true, but I have not read or heard anything to contradic it

Long Weekend


I just purchased California tabs ($97) for the Dirty Whore after a remarkably difficult time finding the VIN at the DMV just before COB. It was hidden under a thick layer of road dust. Time to give the old girl a bath, treat the leather seat and bags, change the fluids, cash a few checks, and hit the road, Jack.

Tomorrow, I'm heading for Sedona via secondary roads. I seek solace and the power of the vortex to work on my screenplay. Of course, I'm also planning on going for a long hike in the rugged Arizona wilderness. People are known to get lost in the mountains, and their mangled bodies end up dragged away by wild animals, never to be recovered, but I plan on throwing caution to the wind, hiking in completely unprepared, without informing anyone of my plans.

Good bye! err..So long?

Midwest Weather

This is not a post mocking the poor bastards in the Midwest who are getting donkey punched with a little cold patch. TNT, who appears to be regretting his move from San Diego to Minneapolis, wrote me with the following:

Did you know that there was a ninety degree difference between SanD and MPLS at one point in real time yesterday? WTF?

I did, in fact, notice this, but didn't have the heart to point it out.

Update: From another friend: ...as soon as I heard on the news last night that it was going to be 80 in LA today and -20 in MSP I knew I would get an email from you. Your responses to this are like clockwork...


It's Snowmageddon In Chicago - Watch more Free Videos

Los Angeles Map

My opinion of the Los Angeles neighborhoods.

On The Lam

It's difficult to fake your own death these days. This guy, Marcus Schrenker, would have been much, much better off going for a long hike in a remote area, changing his appearance in the wilderness, emerging from a different area than his entry point, slipping across the border into Mexico, making his way to Belize via minibus, and living happily ever after.


Right now, he could be living on sponge cake, and watching the sun bake all the tourists covered in oil. Instead, he's skulking about in a Yamaha V-Star like a midnight cowboy.

Why did he try to make it so complex? It's like he was going for the most cinematic possibility rather than the one with the highest percentage of success. Or maybe it was a cry for help? Did he seriously think the crash would create flaming wreckage that would incinerate his body? The federales can get DNA evidence from exploding space shuttles, much less some little turbo prop.

It reminded me of the end of "The Rock" (1996).

Agent Paxton: Congratulations, Dr. Goodspeed. You did it.
Dr. Stanley Goodspeed: Thank you, sir.
Agent Paxton: You know, for a while there, I didn't think you were going to make it. Well done, son. So where's Mason?
Dr. Stanley Goodspeed: Vaporized. Blown out to sea.
Agent Paxton: Blown out to sea, huh?
Dr. Stanley Goodspeed: Yeah.
Agent Paxton: [smiles] Poor bastard.

Well. His original plan is shot to hell, but he still has a chance to make a run for the border, and I for one am pulling for him. I tend to root for white collar criminals regardless, in much the same way African-Americans supported O.J. Simpson, a man clearly guilty of murdering his wife, based merely on some demographic similarities. We white white-collar males have to stick up for each other.

Update: The stupid son of a bitch got caught in a campground. And to think I was going to be the Mallory to his Mickey on a reign of homicidal terror across the southern United States.

Key Largo

My review of Key Largo, with the wisdom of an introductory course in screen writing:

"Key Largo" is a classic Humphrey Bogart movie from 1948 that showcases Bogart's massive head. Look at it! His head is the size of his fucking torso! Have you ever seen someone with a head that size? I have once. Some kid in my neighborhood in Duluth, Minnesota had a really big head. We called him, "Big Head." In retrospect, we called him that because pointing out the faults of others is a lot easier on the psyche than holding up a mirror to yourself, regardless of how normal sized your own head may be.

Also, no matter what anyone says about the prudishness of the era (40's & 50's), Key Largo has its edgy moments, for example, graphic incest:



One of the things I loved about movies from this era is that bad guys look like bad guys.




And the hero always wins. It's morally unambiguous.