Libraries, tacos (yet again), and the meat to dollar ratio

I have a writer friend who hates libraries. She, thinking of her royalty statements, refers to them as "parasites." This strikes me as very short sighted. First off, unless you are a very well known author, libraries buy more hardcover copies of books than pretty much anyone else. Sure, they then lend them out free to people - which is, I gather, her complaint; but how many of those people are likely to buy the book anyhow?

And libraries promote reading. As a writer, I'm all for that. And sooner or later, readers are likely to buy some books, maybe even mine. And as for those people out there who can't afford to buy books, I'm glad they've got a chance to read some for free. Even mine. The more that people read, the better it is for all of us; writers and non-writers alike.

So I like libraries. On Monday I was the guest author at the Newport Beach Public Library's annual Friends of the Library luncheon. I consider something like that an honor. It was arranged for me by my aunt Adele, who is an active member of the Friends. They're an effective group too. Over the past six years, they've raised more than $1.44 million for the library. As you can imagine, it's a very well-equipped, well-stocked, well-staffed place.

Prior to my appearance, I was cautioned not to swear. I was cautioned a dozen or more times, by three different people. It seems that whoever their author was last year - they wouldn't say - swore a blue streak and bothered them greatly. Now I don't have a particularly foul mouth. A dirty mind, sure, but I'm pretty good at judging my audience and adjusting my presentations accordingly. And this audience was 95% women of an average age of about 76.3 years.

So I went, and I presented, and they loved it. I read an excerpt from GRAVE IMPORTS. I showed them my PowerPoint of photos with music relating to the book and about Cambodia. They oohed and aahed over the photos. They gasped at the horrors of the trade in stolen Cambodian antiquities. (Which is what the book is about.)

Anyhow, as I'm packing up to go, a woman tottered up to me to ask if I'd be interested in leading a tour group to Cambodia. She thought I"d be an excellent tour guide. And that I could make some good money leading a group. And she'd happily sign up for it herself. And I'd for sure know all the good places to buy authentic Cambodian temple art and would know how to help them get it out of the country.

SAY, WHAT?

As gently as I could - I am quite certain that I had made myself clear on the matter in my presentation - I explained that one of the points of the book was that the trade in Cambodian temple art was a bad thing and that it needed to be stopped. I would certainly never do anything to help someone buy or smuggle the stuff. She looked terribly disappointed. I think she had cheery visions of her living room stocked with stone apsaras and Buddha heads. This was in Orange County. I expect she went off in disgust to donate more money to the Republicans or something.

And I imagine she'd have had a thing or two, that I didn't want to hear, to say about the place I had tacos the other night.

Now if you've read my blog for any time, you know that I regard tacos as one of the perfect foods. A good taco is simple, a blend of flavors adding up to a whole lot more than the sum of its parts. And al pastor - spit roasted, highly marinated pork - tacos are my favorites. If I'm ever going to be executed and given a choice of my last meal, a good al pastor taco will be very high on the list.

So the other night, accompanied by Eva and our pal Bill, I went out in search of an illegal taco vendor of whom I had heard. We found his push cart surrounded by a modest-sized crowd (but still a crowd) along one of the far east stretches of Cesar Chavez Blvd. (East of Gage, for those of you hoping to find him for yourself.)

I may have had two better al pastor tacos in my life. One is at my favorite taco stand - all they have is al pastor - in Tijuana. It's open 24 hours a day and always has four big spits of pork crackling and roasting in the open flames. The other was from a street vendor in Mexico City.

But these East L.A. tacos can pretty well hold their own with those. They are sliced off an enormous spit of bright red - and black from the charred bits - pork, topped with a large onion on the spit and above that a scored whole pineapple. The tortillas are dipped quickly into the dripping pork grease, warmed until they're just pliant enough, then the chopped meat is spatulaed on. There's a condiment table with truly incredible red, green and avocado salsas, as well as chopped onions and cilantro. There's a big plate of roasted-to-perfection whole jalapeno peppers.

There's some stuff to drink, too; as well as a variety of other meats that I ignored. The 20 or so people milling around on the sidewalk were happily eating.

Now this isn't to say that any of this is legal. It isn't. The cops could bust this poor taco artisan if they so choose. He doesn't have the requisite permits. He didn't want me to take his picture. His business doesn't have a name, at least not that I could find anywhere. But this is one of the joys of life in Los Angeles.

As are, while we are on the subject of food, burgers. I don't know why anyone in L.A. would ever go to a chain burger place when there is such an extraordinary selection of independent burger establishments around town. Some people swear by In 'n' Out - a local chain. They're wrong.

Not so long ago I was in South Central L.A. - a place they tell us white folk we're supposed to be afraid to go. I'm sure there are some scary parts of town around there. And maybe it's a case of me being too dumb to be afraid. But when someone tells me not to go somewhere, that's a sure fire way of tempting me to go there.

So I was in South Central for lunch on Western Ave. just south of Vernon, at Master Burger. There's something to be said, I'm not quite sure what it is, for considering the ratio of meat per dollar in one's dining experience.

At Master Burger I did not eat the "Double King Combo." That's two, one-pound patties with the requisite fixin's, fries and a drink. It costs $6.99 plus tax = $7.58. That's a mere $3.79 per pound for the meat. Subtract the potatoes, oil, salt, drink, cup, lettuce, tomato, pickles, onions, mayonnaise and mustard, bun, paper wrapping, brown paper bag, straw, cup lid, napkins - and it's even cheaper than that. A whole lotta beef for your buck.

It has been many years since I have been to a McDonald's, but I seem to recall that the standard patty is one-tenth of a pound. (I recall this because I remember that when they brought out their quarter-pounder (one patty) they claimed that it was their burger with the most meat, even more than their double burger. If two regular patties didn't add up to a quarter of a pound, well, you get the picture, do the math. If, as I recall, their standard one-patty burger sold for 79 cents; multiply that by ten and you get $7.90 per pound - or $15.80 to equal the meatage of just one "Double King Master Burger."

The regular, half-pound, Master Burger that I had was good, too. Excellent even. Now it is most definitely not a plate and waitress sort of place, where you sit down and have your burger brought to you along with a cocktail of your choice - hopefully something without an umbrella or fruit that would be cause for embarrassment with a burger. But it could easily hold its own against any burger stand burger I've ever had.

My Editor and a Cambodian Saturday in the Park

This is my new editor, Alison Janssen at Bleak House Books. She is way cool, and way smart, and apparently hell on skates too. You can watch an interview with her here.

Working with an editor can be a tricky business. I ought to know, I was one for a long time - magazines, not books. We writers love what we write and don't usually cotton to someone messing with it.

I've been lucky. Win Blevins, my editor at Forge Books for The Living Room of the Dead truly helped make that a better book. I learned from him and the book benefitted.

At first, I was a little nervous about working with Alison. She's obviously smart and all that, but I'm old enough to be her father. (I can't believe I just wrote that. I must really be getting old.) Just before we started working together on the book I jokingly asked if I should be concerned. She "reassured" me - jokingly (I think) saying that I didn't have anything to worry about, she didn't think she'd want me to do much with the book, but she did feel it could benefit by my adding a cookie-selling girl scout to one of the scenes in Cambodia; which was, of course, ridiculous.

Alison then gave me her notes. And they were good, very good. Following her notes and some of her suggestions have made Grave Imports an even better book than the one I'd originally written. I learned some important things about my writing from her. That's the way it's supposed to work. (Maybe I'm not old enough to be her father after all.)

And I showed her. I tossed in a cookie-selling girl scout, sort of. And I did it in a way that helped satisfy one of her editorial notes. She liked it. I liked it. You'll have to read the book to find our girl scout for yourself.

Having worked with her, I can now hardly wait to see Mel Ignant, her roller derby alter ego, in action.

As for Cambodians, they feature significantly in my new book Grave Imports (this is my blog, I have to get in plugs whenever I can) that's coming out in September. A lot of them, more than anywhere else other than in Cambodia itself, live in Long Beach, California - about 35 miles from my house. And a whole lot of them were in El Dorado Park last Saturday to celebrate Cambodian New Year.

It was a reminder of a couple of things. One, how much I miss Asia, some countries - Indonesia, Thailand, Korea, Macau and Cambodia in particular - more than others.

And it was also a reminder of how great it is to live in a big city in the U.S. where there are large groups of people from all over the world. In the greater Los Angeles Metropolitan Area we have the largest immigrant populations in the world from China, Japan, Korea, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, the Philippines (I think), Mexico, most Central American countries, Iran and Armenia. We have increasingly large immigrant populations from Western and Eastern Europe, Africa, South America, the Middle East and other countries in Asia as well.

Despite all the problems, in spite of all the political arrogance and stupidity that this country inflicts on people all over the world, this is still, particularly in Los Angeles, a truly great and exciting place to live. And a whole lot of people around the world know that, or at least suspect it. Which is why they keep coming here and adding to the good things about living here. Here's some more pictures from what is not really an unusual (at least in L.A.) Saturday in the park:
There were kids with cool hair.


For some reason, there were a lot of women with streaked hair.



There were men playing traditional games.




And women on the receiving end of those games.







There were kids beating each other up with American flag clubs. (I'll leave any political implications up to your imagination.)

There was a temporary temple.

And live bands.

And beauty queens, of course.

And families cooking satay on portable grills.




And some nasty geese. I'll bet they'd be pretty tasty.








And strutting herons. You wouldn't think it, but L.A. is lousy with herons.

The Dodgers Irritate Me Yet Again

Baseball season hasn’t even begun and I’m already fed up with the Dodgers. I’m a lifelong fan. The first ballgame I ever went to was the first game the Dodgers ever played in Los Angeles, at the Coliseum in 1958. As an adult I average attendance at six to 10 games a year, and watch plenty on television.

The last few years I’ve gone online in March and bought a selection of tickets for games throughout the season. I usually buy four seats in what they now call the Infield Reserve” section – high up, but as close to behind homeplate as I can get. A couple of days ago I decided it was time.

They’ve raised the price of the “Infield Reserve” seats by five bucks to $25 each. They're not great seats, Dodger Stadium's stands slope too gradually, so in the reserve section you're a lot further from the action than you are in the equivalent seats at, say, Yankee Stadium, or even the Angels' ballpark. But I can live with that.

But then there’s a $4.50 per ticket “convenience charge” to buy them online. There’s another $2.50 “convenience charge” if you want to pay $15 to buy your parking in advance (also a five buck price rise over last year.) Adding insult to injury, there’s yet another $2.25 “convenience charge” if you want to have the tickets automatically emailled to you and then print them out yourself on your own home printer with your own paper and ink.

Just whose convenience are these extra charges for?

Let’s see now, I’m buying the tickets online so the Dodgers don’t have to pay the minute or so of salary it would cost them to have a person sell them to me. Multiply that minute by the number of people who buy their tickets online and it means they can probably lay off a few employees.

Maybe the parking’s fair, after all, they still have to hire someone to stand in the entry booth so that I can wave my parking pass at them as I drive by. Although, isn't that what the five buck price hike is supposed to pay for?

As for printing out the tickets; haven’t I just saved them the cost of printing and mailing the tickets? Isn’t that likely to add up? That's just plain robbery.

Buying and receiving tickets and parking vouchers onliine saves the Dodgers money. It decreases the chances of human error in the transactions. Sure it's convenient for me. It’s even more convenient for the Dodgers.

So, four nosebleed section seats and parking (let’s face it, the public transportation options for getting to Dodger games, especially for one of my friends who has very bad knees and another with a bad back) are nearly worthless) comes to $141.55 online. $22.75 of which is charged for the “convenience.”

And that’s even before you get into the ballpark and overpay for a lousy hot dog with a cup of beer at a price you’d expect in a swank, Manhattan cocktail lounge.

I didn’t buy the tickets. I couldn’t bring myself to. I could have afforded the $22.75 for the Dodgers’ convenience, but I was offended by it. I might go to a game or two if I’m near the advanced ticket office one day and think to pick up some tickets at their actual face value.

I went back on the internet and looked up the site for the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes. Near as I can tell they know how to treat their fans right. The best seats in the park are eleven bucks. Beer is reasonably priced. The hot dogs are tastier and cheaper. Okay, so the quality of play isn't as high, but the Dodgers haven't supplied a lot of moments for the highlight videos themselves over the past few years.

The Epicenter, a charming and intimate small ballpark where the Quakes play, is about a 40 minute drive from my house. I’ve spent as long as an hour and twenty minutes trying to get out of the Dodger Stadium parking lot, so Rancho Cucamonga is just as convenient - for me.

Politics: National and Local

First off, let's get one thing straight: I'm no kinda "...ist." When I was a teenager in the '60s and number eight in the draft lottery for Vietnam, I was a dope-crazed, anarcho-syndicalist, Yippie, draft-card burning (cutting-up in my case), SDS organizing marauding gang of one. Then I mellowed a bit, don't we all?, at which point I might have refered to myself as a "Groucho Marxist."

Now, arrogantly enough, I prefer to think of myself, if anything, as a "rationalist." But that's not really any sort of ist at all.

So while I have some basic ideas as to what's better or worse for the world, those ideas are not tied to any particular ideology. They're fluid. I figure that sometimes something will work better somewhere than something else; and sometimes not. Countries and circumstances are variable and the problem with ideology is that it gets in the way of flexibility.

But I am certain of where I stand on the issue of tacos. Or more specifically, taco trucks. I've written about this before. The L.A. City Council has passed a law that makes it very difficult for taco trucks to go about their business unmolested by either ticket-writing or bribe-soliciting cops. (There are undoubtedly a whole lot more ticket-writers than bribe-solicitors out there, but the law creates opportunities for both.) And it also restrains trade that is more often than not harmless, while providing a welcome service to mostly poor and underserved neighborhoods.

My city councilman - a nice enough fellow, he's a neighbor of mine - was one of the big supporters of this stupid law. He's currently up for re-election and that (with a couple of other things thrown in) would be enough for me to vote against him. But he's running unopposed, there isn't even a write-in candidate for me to vote for. Other city council seats will be voted on next Tuesday though, and I'm pleased to see that Bandini, whose The Great Taco Hunt blog is a wonderful and useful guide to one of Los Angeles' most vital resources - tacos, has made his electoral endorsements for the upcoming vote. If you live in any of the districts where Bandini has made his recommendations, I urge you to go to his blog and consider what he has to say. (Click on the red words to get there.)

It has been said, frequently, that all politics are local. The ravening pack of would be presidents has been descending upon Los Angeles - Bel Air, Beverly Hills and Malibu in particular - to raise money. I don't think anyone has asked Barack or Hillary where they stand on the issue of taco trucks. My guess is that the taco truck issue is beneath them, far beneath them. And I suppose that's as it should be. All things considered I'd rather that they pay more attention to Iran and North Korea's bombs than to al pastor or carnitas. But I wish someone would ask them anyhow. If they had a real answer to the question it might tell you something about how they view the world.

Now don't get me wrong. I like Barack and Hillary just fine and I'll happily vote for nearly anyone - not everyone, but nearly - the Democrats nominate to run next year. But there's a lot that I don't like about their candidacies.

The big problem is what their front-runnerdom says about money and the electoral process. There are other candidates, several who I like a whole lot better - Bill Richardson for instance - who aren't getting heard from because they don't have the money. If Bill Richardson were to somehow get the nomination, I think he'd be easily elected and he'd be a great president. But it will be almost impossible for him to get the nomination unless Barack and Hillary are discovered snorting coke and orgying together or something. (At this point they're both smart enough to put that sort of thing off until after the election.)

My state, California, isn't making any of this any easier. For years we've felt neglected because by the time our primary election rolled around in June, the nominees were pretty much already decided. So the most populous state in the nation didn't have much say in who runs for President. Other than, of course, by contributing enormous sums of cash. Our state legislature and governor have decided to remedy that by moving the primary to February.

It costs millions, tens of millions of dollars to run an effective statewide campaign in California - most of it on TV. What that means is that candidates for the nomination will have to spend everything they can here, if they have any hope of winning the nomination. They'll pretty much have to neglect all the other, smaller, cheaper states.

In the past, lesser known, less well-financed candidates would concentrate on the smaller, cheaper states in the hope of winning some early victories and building up momentum that would help them raise the money to run in the bigger, more expensive states later. That's how Carter got the nomination. Clinton too. And Kerry - but we won't talk so much about that.

Moving California - and several other big states' - primary elections up, means that candidates who don't go into the race with a whole lot of money from the start, have far less of a chance than in the past to get anywhere. And that sucks.

Meanwhile, Hillary? I thought her husband was a good president, not that that has anything to do with her running. But I also think she'd be a good president, and I'd like to see a woman elected. But for whatever reason - most of them bogus, but still with resonance - she is a divisive figure in this country. She might well get elected but an awful lot depends on who the Republicans nominate, who she takes on as a vice presidential candidate and a lot of other factors. I don't think she'll have an easy time getting elected. (I'm also getting tired of this whole dynasty thing. What are we, England? If Hillary gets elected and serves two terms, that would make 28 years during which we've had a Clinton or a Bush as president. After Hillary, who? Jeb? Then Chelsea?)

As for Barack, I wish I was, but I'm just not sure that this country is going to elect a black man president. Not yet. Even if he is half-white. (Stephen Colbert asked the question: "Why isn't he running as a white man?") Now I would personally love to see a black man or woman elected president. I'd be especially pleased if it was someone whose color we couldn't figure out and didn't give any thought to. Is Barack half-black? Or is he half-white? Who cares? That's one of the things I like about him. After eight years of Bush though, I'd like him a lot better if I thought he could be easily elected. Racism runs deeper in this country than we like to own up to.

As I said earlier, I like Bill Richardson. He's got a ton of experience, both domestic and foreign. He's a governor - and a whole lot more governors get elected president than senators. (For the excellent reason that they have hands on administrative experience that comes in very handy when doing the job.) He's liberal on civil liberties and the role of government in such things as education and health care; and he's moderate to conservative economically, all of which I like. He doesn't strike me as anyone with imperial ambitions - like the current crowd in D.C. He's even half Latino or Hispanic. (I haven't heard him bother to characterize it himself, so I don't know what he calls himself. And I don't care.)

And he's the governor of New Mexico. I've eaten some mighty fine tacos in his state. I'd bet he could give me and Bandini an answer we'd like on the taco truck question.

Race, as an Issue, Rears its Ugly Head in Hong Kong

Here's a link to an Agence France Presse article in which I'm quoted. It is what most recently set me to thinking about race.

Actually, I've been thinking about race a lot lately. The novel I'm currently working on is a sort of coming of age story that deals with it. I'm writing it as the all-seeing narrator. I spend plenty of time letting my readers know what's going on in the heads of my three main characters. One of them is a 20-something black woman in Southcentral Los Angeles in 1946. I'm a 50-something white guy in a trendy neighborhood in Central Los Angeles.

Race and sex are two subjects - near and dear to my heart - that are seldom dealt with honestly. One of the reasons that Chester Himes is one of my very favorite writers is that he, more than most, often dealt very honestly with both topics.

All that is only peripherally germane to the current ruckus that is unfolding in Hong Kong, at the Literary Festival which I attended last year. So I'll get to the other stuff later, but for now, here's what's going on in Hong Kong.

Nury Vittachi was one of the original organizers of the Hong Kong Literary Festival. Nury and I used to work together on Asian Finance and Executive magazines when I first moved to Hong Kong in 1986. (We are both now recovering journalists, if anyone out there knows of any good 12-step programs...) Nury went on to fame and, I don't know about the fortune part, as a columnist, humorist, novelist, public speaker and all around public personality and bon vivant in Asia. (You can find Nury here.)

When I participated in the Festival, I was very impressed by the work that Nury had done; how well the festival ran, how well it was attended, the remarkable mix of people from around the world who showed up for it. A lot of its success was clearly due to Nury's work.

Now he's been fired by the Board of Directors, essentially, they say, because he's a pain in the ass to work with. (My words, not theirs.) I think that's a lame excuse. Over the years Nury has rubbed a lot of people the right way and some the wrong way, as anyone in the public eye is likely to do. When we worked together we had our share of differences, but we always respected each other and when working together were easily able to come up with mutually satisfying compromises long before anything ever threatened to erupt into fisticuffs.

Near as I can tell there are two real reasons for all the trouble, one having to do with corporate loyalty, the other racial.

The corporate loyalty comes into play because Nury, whose books sell very well, switched publishers from Chameleon Press and distributors from Paddyfields (now maybe I'm in trouble, I think Paddyfields distributes me too) both companies of which are heavily represented on the Board of Directors of the Literary Festival. According to Nury, that caused some bad blood.

But that wasn't enough to cause an eruption. The present rumpus got underway when Nury noticed that the judges for the first Asian Literary Prize to be awarded by the Festival, weren't Asian. Initially the judges were almost entirely white and male. Since a fuss was first made, the Board has added a Canadian-Chinese woman, a mixed-race Australian and an Egyptian - none of them resident in Asia. Nury then, quite rightly, employed the R-bomb, "racism."

The fur has flown.

Now here's where I attempt to connect my work on my current book to all of this. Here's the questions. Why should the race of a judge for a literary prize matter? Isn't literary excellence the only criteria, and shouldn't any smart, conscientious reader be able to judge that?

On a personal level; I, a white man, am trying to write from inside the imagined mind of a black woman, so who the hell am I to talk? In my detective-thriller series I write about Asia, but not from an Asian perspective, at least not yet. I write from an American expatriate's perspective that depends as much on my memory as my imagination.

If some readers think I've got my head up my ass with regard to black women, I can hardly wait to hear about it. Maybe I'll learn something. Or maybe my imagination really is that good. You tell me when you eventually read the book. I think it's educational when people of a particular race, culture or gender write about other people. It's a good way to see yourself through other people's eyes. Here's a book recommendation: "Black on White: Black Writers on What It Means to Be White," Edited by David R. Roediger.

But judging literary merit isn't the same as writing. A big part of what makes a writer great, especially within a given region (remember, we're talking about an "Asian Literary Prize" here) is the cultural resonance of their work. I lived 11 years of my life in Asia. I've spent many months, probably another year or more added up, traveling there before and since. I'm still an outsider in Asia. I always will be, even if I do retire to that village in Central Java or Cambodia.

An outsider's perspective can be valuable. So sure, put one or even two on the panel of judges. But for a group of people, none of them born in Asia or resident there, to award an Asian literary prize that they expect to be taken seriously, is just plain stupid, arrogant at best, and yes, racist.

I was hoping, what with a new book coming out this Fall, to be invited back to the Hong Kong Literary Festival next year. I haven't yet decided what I will do if I am invited. I wouldn't go without speaking up, loudly, about its faults. Or I might not be willing to go at all.

What's Cookin'?

Tacos are one of the great joys of life in Los Angeles. The variety of tacos, and of the places where they are made and sold and eaten is truly astounding. I feel that I have only scratched the taco surface of the city and I have encountered tacos made from beef, pork, goat, lamb, chicken, duck, fish, shellfish, bivalves, insects, potatoes, cactus, cheese, assorted other vegetables, even a little fruit and pretty much any part or preparation of any of that that you can think of. I mostly eat tacos made with soft corn tortillas, but you can find them with fried tortillas or flour tortillas too.

I've never eaten a taco made from human meat, at least not that I'm aware of. But I like the signs:



The pig cooking the man graces the side of Taqueria El Trampitas, at the corner of Main Street and Gage in Southcentral L.A. I ate there yesterday and the more traditional tacos - man cooking pig (picture below) - of carnitas and al pastor were good, if not great.



The goat cooks woman taqueria is just about four blocks up Main Street, in a stretch of three blocks that seems to be dedicated to eating goat. (There must be five or six places to eat goat within a three block area.) I was too full to do anything other than stop and take a picture. I'll have to go back.



The goat in the picture is saying: "Como que birria buey." Birria is "goat," or at least cooked goat. Buey is "ox." This must mean something in colloquial Mexican-Spanish, but I can't quite figure it out. If anyone out there reading this can, please let me know.

I have since come up with two possible translations. In Mexican Spanish, "buey" is colloquially used for "asshole." One figurative translation is: "How does that feel asshole?" Another, more literal translation is: "How's that [version of] birria asshole?"

I've been on something of a taco quest lately. My favorites so far are the carne asada and the al pastor at La Taquiza at 30th and Figueroa, near USC. Still, I have a mere passing interest in tacos. If you want to follow an expert's mania for tacos, you can take a look at Bandini's The Great Taco Hunt. He has never steered me wrong.

I have also resumed my slow but sure progress toward traversing the entire length of the mighty Los Angeles River.

Now most people think I'm joking when I refer to it as "mighty." Some people don't even know it exists, they think it is simply a concrete drainage ditch. But L.A. wouldn't have come into existence without its river.

The Mississippi River, at about 2,350 miles long, is more than 45 times as long as the Los Angeles River at 52 miles. No surprise there. But the Los Angeles is steeper. It drops 795 feet in elevation from its headwaters at the Canoga Park High School football field in the Valley to where it spills into the ocean near the Queen Mary in Long Beach. By comparison, the Mississippi drops a mere 645 feet along its entire length.

At its peak flow, the mighty Los Angeles carries 183,000 cubic feet of water per second out to the Pacific Ocean. (According to the website of The River Project, that's the equivalent of 40 million garden hoses going full blast.) It's also 14 times the flow of New York's Hudson River.

One of the bike paths along the river is near my house. Here are a few pictures I took on a recent ride:

A Grinch, But a Charitable One

Don't worry, this isn't all going to be me being grumpy about Christmas, but I have to get that part off my chest so if you don't want to read it you can skip the next few paragraphs.

First off, why the hell is Christmas a national holiday? It is the only national holiday with non-secular origins. Despite the fact that it has become a seemingly non-religious orgy of bling and material cravings, its very name "Christ-mas" betrays where it comes from. In the spring we've got spring break and a scattering of holidays that go along with it. Some people still refer to it as "Easter Break" and that's their right. But there is no national Easter holiday. I've got nothing against "Winter Break" or celebrating the solstice - a natural phenomenon - but I don't want my government giving legal standing to anything of religious origin, no matter how far it has travelled away from its creche. With all the current battling over the separation of church and state, it astounds me that Christmas has managed to somehow stay above the fray. Maybe that's because everyone's afraid if they say anything about it they won't get any presents under their tree.

It's hardly worth carrying on about the dreadful, oppressive music; the forced and often hypocritical good cheer and goodwill; the porcine greed of shopkeepers preying on the terror that parents and partners and nearly everyone else has of not satisfying the craven desires of those who expect gifts; or the traffic.

Well, maybe I will whine about the traffic. Where do they all come from? Does half the population avoid going out in public the rest of the year? It seems as if people who neither drive nor shop on a regular basis, suddenly emerge from hiding and hit the streets and stores in a tsunami that sweeps all before it. Addled by their daunting tasks, no less so than if they were on heavy drugs, they smash into each other on highways and roads, in parking lots, with shopping carts, careening down sidewalks laden with loot.

If you're a Christmas lover, it's safe to read from here on...

Okay, so now you know I don't like Christmas. The best Christmas I ever spent was in Dakar, Senegal. I ate a fantastic pepper steak and drank a great bottle of red wine. Then I went and danced and boozed the night away with a crowd of about three dozen prostitutes, one white girl from Oregon (my traveling companion) and a dozen or so men - eight of whom were in the band that played in a scrapwood barn of a place near the railroad tracks. We all went out to breakfast on the beach when the sun rose.

But still, it's that time of year and you've gotta give gifts or suffer the consequences. Luckily it's also near the end of the year when it makes sense to work out your tax deductions - a much more honest reason for giving this time of year then trying to promote the fiction that something about the season makes you feel more generous than usual. I'm not saying that my charitable impulses are entirely pure. I tend to donate money throughout the year whenever it occurs to me to do so, or it seems like it might be needed. I even donate to organizations such as the ACLU that do not bestow tax deductions on me.

It is a very good thing that there are charities who do a good job of doing our dirty work for us.

This year, as I tend to every year, I donated what I could to Doctors Without Borders. I'm not about to go to Darfur and get in everybody's way trying to help in a refugee camp. They are. And they do a great job of it without any political or religious agenda to promote. They also have one of the best ratios of program spending to administrative and fund raising costs in the charity biz. I made a donation in the name of the Stone Family and sent cards. The relatives are going to have to make do this year with some antibiotics and rehydration in Central Africa rather than another ugly sweater, book I know they won't read unless I buy it for them, CD of music I want them to like or the latest breakable toy or gadget.

Eva and I went to Heifer International on behalf of the nieces and nephew. They've now got some money with which they can pick out a farm animal to donate to a needy Third World family. It's a great idea and seems like the sort of thing that might get kids involved in charity in a fun sort of way. (We're kind of hoping they don't notice the part of the catalog where it points out that the cute little bunny rabbits make good eating.) But then the nine-year-old niece said: "Not another water buffalo." Apparently another set of relatives had the same idea. We'll show her. They're probably coming to visit next year. I think I've got a good rabbit recipe somewhere.

As for Eva, luckily she doesn't like bling and we've got a moratorium on buying any more wine for the house. She did love Cambodia when we were there. And she is adamant on many women's issues. A column by Nicholas Kristoff in today's NY Times (you might have to be a registered reader to use this link) gave me a good idea. I got her a year of school for a girl in Cambodia. I got one for me too while I was at it. With some extra money thrown in to help build and stock and staff a school. This was all done through an organization started by a journalist, called American Assistance for Cambodia. This group will be hearing more from my bank account during the coming year. My next book which will be published in Fall 2007, GRAVE IMPORTS, is about the smuggling of stolen Cambodian antiquities. It seems only fair that some of the proceeds will find their way back to that country.

That was the seasonal gift giving taken care of. Throughout the year I also coughed up bucks to a number of other worthy (IMHO) causes: The Emma Goldman Papers Project, The Center for Inquiry (Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal), Books for Laos, Fringe Benefits, and a few other things connected to events and local museums and NPR stations.

I am not writing all this to demonstrate how great and caring I am. But these are organizations that I think are doing important and good work and that I like to support. I'm hoping that at least a few of my readers might come across this blather of mine, be looking for a place to send some of their money, and might consider donating to some of these groups as well.

For your information, here's how I decide what organizations to donate to:

I'm an atheist, so they can't have any religious affiliation, much less agenda.

My politics are a complicated mishmash of things. I am not any sort of ---ist, (other than the previously mentioned lack of religious belief.) I don't believe in any sort of ---ism. (There was a time when I described myself as a "Groucho Marxist" but I won't even go that far anymore.) So if it is an aid organization, they can't have any sort of political affiliation or agenda either.

I don't think that professional do-gooders should be getting fat off my donations, so I do what I can to make sure that a much higher percentage of my money is going to the actual projects, than is going to administrative and fund raising expenses. In 2005, for instance, 85.71% of the money raised by Doctors Without Borders went to program services. That is a very high percentage. A good place to start figuring this out is Charity Navigator.

And sometimes I just donate to things that I appreciate for the fruits of their labors. The Emma Goldman Papers Project is an example of that. I think they are creating an archive of significant historical importance and interest, in a field that has been sorely neglected. (I've also loved reading the first two volumes of the four volume set that they're working to put out.)

So I guess that's my Season's Greetings to you all. Next Fall will see the publication of GRAVE IMPORTS (look for Chapter One, or an excerpt on the website sometime in the next few months), as well as the paperback of THE LIVING ROOM OF THE DEAD. I'm currently working on a new novel that has nothing to do with my Ray Sharp series and I'm raking through the coals that make up my brain in an attempt to come up with a good non-fiction topic that will give me an excuse to travel.

Let's hope we all have a great New Year and that 2007 sees at least a little improvement over 2006.

Mistress Eva is Dead

http://www.metroactive.com/papers/sonoma/09.02.99/norvind-9935.html

I knew this woman. I recently found out that she died. When Eva, my Eva, the one I now live with, first called me at my mother's house many years ago and my mother picked up the phone, my mother was most disappointed that she wasn't "Mistress Eva."

I met Mistress Eva when I lived in Los Angeles before moving to Hong Kong, I think around 1982 or so. I lived in the lower part of a duplex. One day I went upstairs at around 5pm to ask my neighbor a question. My neighbor, a witch who had coven meetings every full moon, wasn't home. But the front door was open and a tall blonde woman wearing a skintight black and purple leather body suit unzipped to about her belly button with, maybe, seven inch spike-heeled boots, was sitting on the sofa and drinking a Miller Hi-Life out of the bottle while listening to some sort of syrupy folk music.

I introduced myself. She introduced herself as Eva. She asked if I wanted a beer. I got a beer and sat on the sofa with her and we chatted about this, that and the other thing, mostly politics, art and music. I seem to recall that she liked John Irving and got annoyed with me when I said that he kept writing the same book over and over and over and I hoped that one day he'd feel like he got it right. I slowly worked the conversation around to what, exactly, it was that she did.

She whipped people, of course, and tormented them in various other ways as well. Mostly men, mostly powerful, rich men, but some women too. She didn't ever touch them, never. The closest she got to that was when something she was holding, like a whip or a cattle prod, touched them. And they certainly never touched her. And she charged a minimum of $300 per hour for this. She lived in New York and was visiting L.A. for the grand opening of a new dungeon in West Hollywood, and to visit some clients, and somehow or another she ended up staying with my upstairs neighbor.

So Mistress Eva and I became pals. Most days she'd get home from work and I'd be at home because I was writing and doing photography and worked out of my home, and she would more often than not change into jeans and a t-shirt and we'd get a bit drunk together and chat.

She finally invited my neighbor and I to the grand opening of the dungeon. It was on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood. We walked in and were offered a tray with glasses of champagne, served by a middle-aged man in a French maid outfit. We wandered about the place, nibbling on canapes and sucking back champagne and good French wine and having casual conversations while all around us people were being whipped, sliced with razors, stuck in holes in the floor with only their heads poking out so that they could be more easily peed on, and any manner of other Sadeian sort of goings on, going on. Eva was too busy to talk much with us. At one point I brought her a white wine and a smoked salmon with creme fraiche and caper on toast, then briefly held her whip for her while she consumed them.

I lost track of Mistress Eva not long after that. But then a friend of hers, a beautiful crazy, brilliant Mexican filmmaker came to stay upstairs. One night I got a knock on my door at about 2am and it was Mistress Eva’s friend in tears. My upstairs neighbor had raped her, or tried to, or made very unwelcome advances, or something. I took her in. I gave her something to drink. I asked if she wanted to call the cops, take a shower, sit in a chair, whatever. She jumped my bones. We had about a one month fucked up, torrid affair that ended with my screaming at her when one night I was sick - 103 degree fever, throwing up, shaking and shivering sick - and we had a dinner date and I called to tell her that I couldn't make it. She showed up at my place a half hour later - she was no longer living upstairs - and practically tore down my door, stormed around my tiny little apartment demanding to know where I was keeping "the whore" and ended up scratching the hell out of me. She didn't believe that I was sick. Unfortunately I had already puked up everything I had in me, so I couldn't vomit on her to make her understand.

Then she went away and that was the last I ever saw or heard of her.

Until now. Many years passed. I’m now a guy with a website. You can see where this is going. So who do I get an email from out of the blue but Mistress Eva’s friend, the crazy, Mexican filmmaker. She is somewhere, I think in Mexico. She remembers me fondly. (I remember her fondly, with some reservations, too.) She remembers my "watery eyes" and thinks they had something to do with me being a Cancer, or is that a Gemini? (I think they must have had something to do with allergies.) Mistress Eva is dead, she writes, drowned in Mexico while making a film about a man with no arms. “She gave herself to [the sea], naked , free ... and stubborn. She was told the sea was too rough, she replied that she was an excellent swimmer.”

Once again, the wonders of the Internet. It is increasingly difficult to hide from one’s past. I’m not so sure I want to anyhow.

Amnesia Needed & Some Other Stuff

What the world needs is a highly contagious, non-fatal, fast-spreading virus that erases memories. To be really effective, the disease needs to also infect books, dissolving those pages with records of historic conflicts.

Last week I was watching Ted Koppel on The Daily Show. He was talking about his new reportage on Iran. One of our primary bones of contention with Iran can be traced back to the taking over of our embassy in Tehran and the holding of American hostages for 444 days. Go back a bit further, to 1953, and the Iranians remember when we overthrew their democratically elected government and replaced it with the Shah - a brutal dictator. That's a relatively recent problem that some amnesia could help fix.

When I turned off the TV I turned to my reading: William T. Vollmann's Rising Up And Rising Down. (I'm most of the way through volume five "Studies in Consequences.") That night I read the opening chapters of the section on the wars in the former Yugoslavia. The grievances that everyone is fighting over in that part of the world go back to at least 1389. There was a slaughter. Then a retaliatory slaughter. Then one in revenge for that and so on up into the "modern" era when the ancient animosities led to everyone choosing up sides against each other in the Second World War and it's all still going on. (Okay, so there's a lull at the moment, but I would not take odds that it will last forever.) They could use some deeper amnesia in their part of the world.

The next morning I read the newspaper. The Israelis and Palestinians were swapping killings again in Gaza. Who the hell even knows who got to any of those places first? Israelis will tell you that they did; it's the promised land that Moses led them to and they've been there ever since. Palestinians will tell you that they were there when the Israelis showed up and they've been there ever since. Either the Israelis or the Palestinians and Arabs - depending on who you're talking to - tried to drive the others out of their homes when Israel was created by UN mandate. No one really knows who started it, who was there first, who killed who first, or anything that could possibly rely on history to resolve the questions of today. There's plenty of historic "evidence" to support all sides of the conflict.

Won't someone erase these people's memories and free them from the chains of their perceived histories?

There's an old saying that is all too often accepted as a truism: "He who forgets history is condemned to repeat it." But the saying itself is a good example of the problem of history. It's been attributed to Sisyphus, various French philosophers, Karl Marx, Winston Churchill and a slew of other notables. No one actually knows who first said it. It just sounds good.

But the other morning I was thinking it might be time for an update. Something along the lines of: "He who thinks he remembers history is condemned."

World Starts Fresh Day
If no one can come up with a biological fix for this memory conundrum, maybe it's time for an international holiday; the annual, perhaps bi-annual, "International - World Starts Fresh Day." At exactly 12:01am every World Starts Fresh Day, no one will be permitted to use any historical arguments to press their case about anything. They have to start fresh, as if they just woke up and found themselves, surprise surprise, in the situation that they're in, and now they have to make the best of it.

They'll be allowed to keep their history books only so long as they regard them as, and teach them as literature; no more, no less. Much as the Bible and the Koran and the Teachings of Buddha and all that stuff ought to be regarded and taught. Anyone who acts on their perception or interpretation of history will be rounded up and sent for re-education. If they fail to learn their lesson, they should be transported, isolated from the rest of us, so that we can live in peace. Australians, as a people, seem like they're concerned about world peace. They'd probably be willing to move elsewhere to make way for those who remember their history to be marooned on their island. It might even appeal to those who remember Australia's history.

Enough's Enough
Now I'm going to try and forget about what I saw, heard and read last week, other than the new James Bond movie, Casino Royale. It is the best Bond movie in a very long time. Daniel Craig is by far the best Bond since Sean Connery, maybe even as good as Connery. He has the air of menace about him that makes him seem a more likely killer. And best of all, the action is driven by stunts, not by gadgets and special effects. There's a chase scene that is worthy of the best of Jackie Chan. There's even a stunt person listed in the opening credits.

And lastly, I seem to have been getting a lot of spam email lately from people flogging bad stocks. There is one group, however, that sends them with truly wonderful subject lines. Here are some of my favorites:

Impudent statesmanship
Sadist assembly line
Manliness gratuitous
Good Book refugee
Very Woof
Realism sheepish
Protagonist detention
Garbage can voyage
Indisputable sadly
Mistook deadpan
Sticky democratic
Sickening yep
Eccentricity probe
Chicken feed alcoholic
Flatulence wide-eyed
Guy drunkenness
Insufferable champion
Strenuous vomit
Token prosperous
Perky coolness
Estranged pajamas

Whores and Whoring and Elections, Oh My!

I guess it's an old cliche to say that as a writer, I'm a whore. I sell myself for money. Or at least I try to. Parts of myself at least. My readers, read "customers," get to buy what's going on in my brain. My body's off limits, usually.

The more traditionally acknowledged sort of whore, doesn't usually sell what's going on in their brain. If they do, they ought to think about getting out of the business.

Now this is on my mind today because of what I did a couple of nights ago. I drove 67 miles round trip to spend an evening with a book club. On the drive there, through rush hour traffic, I was thinking: "The things I do to sell my books. Am I out of my fucking mind?"

On the drive home, singing along with the radio, happy as a clam (I've always wondered how happy clams can be, really) I was thinking: "Hey, that was great. I oughta find more book clubs to hang out with."

What happened, of course, was that my ego got stroked and it was also an interesting, thought-provoking evening. There's an old saying about how whores shouldn't come (an aside here: most porn writers spell this "cum," but in my Oxford American Dictionary of Current English it is spelled "come") with their customers. In a sense I violated, happily, that maxim. (Or in my case perhaps, that canard.)

I spent the evening with 14 or 15 (I lost count) women, ranging in age from about my age to, perhaps, 80, all, or at least most, of whom had read my book THE LIVING ROOM OF THE DEAD and were intrigued enough by it to want to know more about me, the story I told and the issues the book raised. It's a privilege to spend an evening like that, one of the perks of getting a book published. Last night I was one very happy hooker.

Speaking of which, one of the questions that came up, since the book deals with prostitution, was what do I think of it? Is prostitution good or bad? What should be done about it? Since this is my blog and an election is coming up in which prostitution isn't an issue, at least in terms of anything we're voting on, I'll answer that question here:

I think that whether prostitution is good or bad is irrelevant. It exists. It has, near as anyone can tell, always existed and in all likelihood it always will. Even in societies where it is punishable by death, it has continued to exist. Even in societies that aren't terribly impoverished, where women have full rights and where there are opportunities for other types of work, it continues to exist. So, it must, in some way fill some very elemental human needs.

To me it all boils down to issues of consent, coercion and exploitation. I think that every adult has the inalienable right to do with their own being, mental or physical, whatever they damn well please just so long as it doesn't harm or interfere with anyone else. I think they have the inalienable right to do whatever they please along with other informed, consenting adults so long as it doesn't harm anybody else. I think that right extends to things that other people might find morally reprehensible, just so long as they don't force those other people to watch what they're doing. That's a matter of privacy.

If a person, of their own free choice, decides to sell their sexual services, I think that should be just as much their right as it is mine to sell the fruits of my brain, fingers and computer keyboard. If you don't want to buy and read my books, that's your choice. If you don't want to go down to the corner massage parlor and have some sex along with your shiatsu, that's your choice too.

But this all depends on choice, and informed choice at that. Too much of the prostitution in the world is coerced. It is engaged in by people who have been kidnapped, enslaved, tricked or bullied into it. That sort of prostitution is, and ought to be, criminal. But it is not the prostitutes who have committed those crimes, it is the people who have trafficked them, tricked them or bullied them and those people should have the full force of the law brought against them.

Laws against prostitution get in the way of enforcement of the laws against the people who enslave and exploit prostitutes, the victims of those crimes. A woman who has been smuggled into the U.S. and bought and sold by pimps and is now working in an apartment brothel in Los Angeles, is afraid to go to the police because what she's doing is illegal. She's told she'll be arrested and deported and get in even worse trouble than she's already in. And for the most part, that's true. She has few, if any, legal rights or protections.

It is rare, nearly impossible, for prostitutes to get the services they need: health, social, police, financial, etc. Criminalizing their profession contributes to the AIDS and other STD statistics, helps to keep them impoverished, makes it difficult if not impossible for them to get police protection in matters such as rape and physical abuse and generally victimizes the victims, rather than the real bad guys.

In Thailand and China, where prostitution is rampant, open but technically illegal, the men and women engaged in it are fiercely oppressed by the legal authorities, pimps, traffickers and their customers, all of whom rely on the laws to assist their exploitation. The same goes on, less obviously but just as much so, in the U.S., with one notable exception.

Prostitution is legal in most of Nevada's counties. Prostitutes in that state are licensed and regulated. They work in safe environments. They are given weekly health checks. (More than 10,000 legal prostitutes have been tested for HIV in Nevada and not one case has been found. That's a much lower percentage than the general population.) Their money is not stolen from them by corrupt cops and pimps. They have access to social and financial services that in many cases have helped women to get out of the business.

In nearly every place that prostitution is legal, the people who work in the trade are better off, healthier and have greater opportunities to get into other work if they choose.

People don't become prostitutes because they are bad people. They aren't like bank robbers. They get into the business because they dont have an alternative; because someone has forced them into it, or poverty has made it seem like a better choice than other work, or their society doesn't value women or gay men and makes outsiders of them in any event so why not. (There are undoubtedly a few who get into it because they actually enjoy the work or are curious to try it out, but my guess is that that's a pretty small minority.)

Laws against prostitution victimize people who circumstances have already fucked over. We ought to be voting to get rid of them.

We also ought to be voting to tax religious institutions. I just paid my property tax and it was a lot higher than it needs to be. One of the reasons is that the Catholic church is the largest private property owner in the County of Los Angeles. Throw in other churches, Jewish temples, mosques, etc, and there is an enormous amount of untaxed property in this county. That leaves the rest of us to pay for everything.

Recently, October 11, there was an article in The New York Times about the tax breaks given to religious institutions and their employees. For all kinds of things, even paying state unemployment or workers compensation benefits or sales taxes on religous books.

The whole thing disgusts me. Separation of church and state should mean that everybody, even religous leaders and groups, should share equally in the same rights and responsibilities. I wish we were voting on that too.

But we aren't. Instead we're voting on the usual passle of crooks, cretins and assholes and in California we get to pass judgement on the latest round of badly written, confusing and undoubtedly ineffective initiatives and referendums. I'm a great lover of democracy, but it sure does take a lot of work to maintain the relationship.

Myopes at Bouncercon

"Myope" must be a real word, but I don't have my OED with me so I can't look it up. It was used the other night at dinner by Catherine Manning, better known to her reading public as Elizabeth Ironside, to describe herself; her vision, actually. While we may have had to fight a revolution against them, and their lawyers do look ridiculous in those filthy wigs and robes, and I must admit to cringing when confronted with all the lord and lady stuff, and the Windsors? well, enough said. The English did, after all, invent English, something for which I am deeply indebted to them. And a word as fine as "myope"? Sometimes you just have to give it to them.

Lady Catherine - I'm poking a little fun at her here because although she is apparently entitled to the honorific, it might embarrass her were I to use it - and her husband Sir David, the U.K. ambassador to the U.S. (who I think would have laughed me away from the dinner table had I called him by his title) were at Bouchercon in Madison, Wisconsin to help promote her books. The titles, previously out of print in the U.S. are being reissued by Felony & Mayhem Press, which is owned by my pal Maggie Topkis - also one of the owners of Partners & Crime bookstore in New York City.

This is all by way of saying that I had a grand time at a very small dinner party - five of us in total - with the Ambassador and his Lady - Catherine and David - who seem to embody just what you would want from diplomats. They were friendly, warm, easy going, smart, funny, well read, well travelled and well informed. The sort of folk anyone in their right mind would want to be friends with. I was very impressed when David told us about how he had gone to Dodge City, Kansas not long after being sent to Washington D.C. to become what is almost certainly Great Britain's most important ambassador. He wanted to get a sense of America away from the big, sophisticated cities. He picked Dodge because he had watched Gunsmoke many years ago and it was around the agricultural center of the country. He spent three days there, talking to everybody he could about whatever he could. He returned surprised, a bit horrified by some of what he came across and heartened by some other of what he encountered.

Perhaps it's the difference between the foreign (diplomatic) service and politicians, but somehow it gave me a vague sense of optimism that there might yet be hope for the world.

Bouchercon, the annual mystery writers and readers convention, struck me as a bit of a mess initially. No one seemed to have the slightest idea of what, where or when things were happening. There was a terrible, near-financially ruinous screwup with Maggie's new book by "Elizabeth Ironside". I was grumpy about the panel I was scheduled to be on. Overall, the early stages put me in a grumpy mood.

But then things turned around. They sorted themselves out. In large part due to the tireless efforts of Jodi and Kate - two of the organizers. Events happened as they were supposed to. People milled about and chatted each other up. Contacts were made. Books were sold and signed. People had fun in the bars. (We're writers, we drink, or we're sober drunks. It seems to be an occupational hazard.) I was almost constantly busy, on my feet a good 14 to 16 hours or more a day and found the whole thing enjoyable and useful.

It helped that this was my third one. The first one I almost swore I'd never come back. I didn't know anybody. I didn't have a book out yet. I moped in corners. This time I can't even keep track of all the people I know from previous years. It's like trying to walk down the street in Chicago with my sister Nancy - the world's most gregarious and friendly human being - it takes forever to make a block because she has to stop and chat with nearly everyone we come across.

Anyhow, it was great, just what I wanted from a conference. And on Sunday I got in the car and headed south, then west for home.

Before all that, Chicago, Barbara's Books in Oak Park was the last gasp of the Disoriented Express. It was a disappointingly small crowd, but a nice enough one as they always seem to be. I have yet to have a heckler. I'm looking forward to one eventually though. The bookstore people and the attendees seemed to enjoy the show. We had six total, not counting the bookstore employees, but counting my sister. I'd estimate them at a reasonable 1,005 lbs. That brings the tour total to a close at:

More than four tons of people, 8,915 lbs of readers (excluding bookshop employees) viewed the DisOriented Express!

From Chicago we took the back route up to Madison, along small, beautiful Wisconsin country roads, pausing to take photos along the way. What we were photographing was Colin's Dilys award: with a fish shaped mailbox, a red, white and blue cow for Bush - Cheney 2004, a refrigerator compartment of cheese, the Welcome to Madison sign and other things. Fun was had. We showed the entire slide show of our silly Dilys photos to a group of people who'd come to hear Colin at a luncheon and we had them rolling in the aisles. (The Dilys is awarded by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association to the author of the book they most enjoyed selling during the year.) Here's some pictures we took all along the way:





Driving across country, I was once again happy to be reminded of what a remarkably diverse and beautiful country this is. There are few places on the planet that offer as many different types of terrain, flora and fauna and in the Fall the color palette is just about overwhelming. That and despite all the carryings on about how America is becoming such an intolerant, fundamentalist Christian place, I encountered a whole lot less evidence of that (although I did come across some) than I did of the basic friendly, tolerant, good nature of most of my fellow Americans. I think if everyone in the country could drive across it once every ten years or so, and talk to a lot of the sort of folk that they don't usually talk with at home, there might be a lot fewer misunderstandings and fear of each other.

Does that sound Pollyanna-ish? Did Pollyanna ever drive 926 miles - North Platte, Nebraska to Mesquite, Nevada - in one day?

The World's Largest Prarie Dog

wasn't all that impressive. It was made of chipped concrete and looked like an ill-informed attempt at an art deco prarie dog. The real prarie dogs, that kept popping out of their holes all around us, were much better looking although not nearly so cooperative for photographs. The highlights of Prarie Dog Town, somewhere near Hays, Kansas, were the snakepit - 55 to 60 rattlers that the guy who ran the place startled into rattling for us - and the postcard selection, which was the usual middle of nowhere traditional fare: jackalopes, cowboys herding cattle while riding enormous rabbits, oversized trout and corn and a very fine selection of monstrous prarie dogs. Once I get to my own computer and a scanner, I can post some of the photographic evidence.

The drive, as it always is across the Great Plains, was all about weather. Most people hate driving across the middle of the country because they seem to think it's featureless. I guess they're looking for mountains, or big lakes, or forests or cities or something - so of course they're disappointed. What they fail to take account of is that the weather is the primary geographic feature of the Great Plains. The roiling clouds, the puffy big clouds, the huge expanse of blue sky, lightning, thunder, rain, hail - all of it is every bit as much a part of the terrain as any mountain or river or lake ever is. I love driving through eastern Colorado, Kansas and Missouri. To me it seems as if I'm driving through a landscape that is in constant turmoil, that is undergoing far more change far more rapidly than almost any other I can think of.

We stopped for the night in Salina where I took Colin to the Vientiane Market - a small but surprisingly well stocked Lao-Thai market just about where you'd least expect one. The woman who ran it was Lao - not Hmong - which was unexpected as most of the people from Laos who have come to the U.S. are Hmong - they often fought with the U.S. side during the war, so they got out quick when the other side won. She said that they got customers from all over the area - pretty much any Asian family that needs groceries in Kansas or Western Missouri shows up there from time to time. Other than that, there wasn't much going on in Salina.

Heading east, we stopped in Abilene for breakfast. It was at the northern end of the Chisholm cattle drive trail and I figured it would be a well preserved wild west town. It isn't, not much at least. It's sort of a well preserved 1910 to 1935 town with a whole lot of Dwight David Eisenhower stuff there, since he was from there. Colin attempted to eat a healthy breakfast at the diner we found there - HAH! I know better and opted for eggs and biscuits with gravy. They did, oddly enough, have a bottle of Thai Sriracha hot sauce. They must have got it from the market in Salina. It doesn't really go well with eggs and hash browns, but I felt obligated to drench everything with it on general principle. We also dropped by the most modern, impressive, and largest if you don't count the grain silos, building in town: the Greyhound Hall of Fame. It wasn't open yet so we didn't go in.

We stopped in Mission, Kansas to visit I Love A Mystery bookstore. It has recently moved into new digs and is one of the biggest, most comfortable, really pleasant specialty bookshops either of us have ever been in. They were very pleased to see us - especially Colin as he is one of their current big sellers and their reading groups have been consuming his books. But, they remembered my books from last year and might now order some more. We spent a while in there chatting with Karen, the owner and the other people who work there. I highly recommend it if you are near Kansas City.

Afterwards we dropped by Rainy Day Books, the major independent general interest bookshop in town. It's also a grand place to meet and chat with people and get information on all sorts of things. I gossiped plenty about the book business with one of the managers. It's a nasty business, what more can one sayA?

Then it was off to the Negro Baseball Leagues Museum and Hall of Fame, which is conveniently located in the same building as the National Jazz Museum. I wish I'd had the time to go to both, as from what Colin tells me the jazz museum was excellent. But, I had my priorities, and communing with the spirits of Satchell Paige, Josh Gibson, Oscar Charleston, Buck Leonard and Cool Papa Bell, has long been high on the list. It's a very well done museum, an in depth look at black baseball from a social, cultural and historic perspective. I sat for a while in front of a film loop of the amazing feats of Willie Mays and reminisced with a guy who was maybe ten years older than me, about the times we'd seen Mays play - when I was a kid and he was a teenager.

I'd been looking forward to Stroud's Fried Chicken ("We Choke Our Own Chickens") for lunch, but they've closed down their funky old, roadhouse location and reopened in some distant neighborhood in what used to be a mansion. I was fearful of disappointment, so instead we walked down the block from the museum to the Peachtree soul food restaurant, where I had fried chicken that was nearly as good as Stroud's, along with utterly perfect collards and a dish of okra stewed with tomatoes. So lunch was not at all a disappointment.

Finally it was off to St. Louis where we were greeted by a blinding display of lightning that went off with near strobelight frequency as we drove into town. The rain, luckily was elsewhere. We arrived at Helen Simpson's big, beautiful rambling house near the big, beautiful rambling park in the center of the city. Visiting authors could hardly hope for nicer accomodations - our own guest rooms, comfortable beds, beer and wine in the refrigerator, a Cardinals game on TV and best of all Helen who is funny, smart, charming, welcoming and one of the best people anywhere to talk baseball, mystery books and politics with.

So a good time was had by all, although the turnout at the store was somewhat disappointing: as for strangers, there were three of them - two of them brought their kids so I don't know if I should count them or not; Susan McBride, a good friend, and a good local St. Louis writer, came along with her newish sweetie Ed - they've just bought a house together and seem near disgustingly happy. In any event, we had a nice time, although no one was going to have to call out the riot squad to beat back our legions of crazed fans. It was a mostly skinny crowd too, so it didn't do a whole lot for our pound counting, still, if I count the kids I can pretty safely estimate about 1,015 lbs. Bringing our event total thus far to: 7,910 lbs, just a runway model shy of four tons!

Helen was disappointed as we left after the event and headed north. We were determined to take the remnants of Highway 66 all the way from St. Louis to Chicago. Getting out of town on it proved a problem due to bridge construction, so we had to take the freeway far enough into Illinois to hook up with it later. The old highway is surprisingly well marked, with signs pointing the way to different segments from different decades. Unfortunately a lot of it is frontage road along Interstate 55, so it wasn't exactly as quaint and scenic as we had hoped. Although it did have moments when it veered into small farm towns along the way.

As we approached Springfield we started looking for a motel, hoping for an old-fashioned roadside courtyard place. But none were to be found. We drove into Springfield and still couldn't find any. We finally had to stop and ask at a cocktail lounge where they kept the motels. They were south of town on I-55 and that's where we ended up for the night, drinking too much and shooting bad pool (well, me, Colin was reasonably good) for a long while in a nearby collegiate sports bar that we'd walked to. College kids, even white ones, sure do listen to a lot of hip hop these days. I can't say that I've developed much of a taste for it myself.

We'd had a tough time getting our hotel rooms. They might have been the last two in the area, as the home of Abe Lincoln was hosting the annual Route 66 Car Show and the whole county was loud and proud with highly polished jalopies and classics. I guess no one ever simply trundled down 66 in a regular old car or a beater. The mystique has far outstripped the reality of the thing. I do wonder though, why there doesn't seem to be a highway that actually ran all the way from the East Coast to the West Coast that has the same sort of cache? Maybe it's the song. I was trying to think of all the people I could who have covered it over the years and it's just too many.

Yesterday, Sunday, we continued our slow crawl up toward Chicago, through endless fields of dry brown looking corn and soybeans, past tiny little towns with little to recommend them - although we did come across a giant man holding a giant hot dog not too far past Normal, Illinois. What could be more normal than that? Unfortunately Normal seems a little shy about its name, we were hoping for a lot of pictures of things like the Normal Bakery and the Normal Gun Shop, but most business don't seem to be using it in their name.

We also stopped at the St. Anne Pumpkin Festival, but it seemed as though we missed the parade, which is apparently the highlight. By the time we got there the whole town was reverberating to the torrent of decibels emerging from the town dump where they seemed to be holding a tractor pull or some sort of automotive event. We needed to continue on to Chicago so we didn't stick around to watch.

Driving into Chicago from the south - we took old Highway 1 which turns into Halsted and runs north all the way through the city - Colin was astounded and shocked, and I was somewhat surprised, by the lack of racial mix along the way. For something around 75 blocks we didn't see one person who wasn't black. Not even in other cars. Colin had heard about the defacto segregation that still exists in American cities, but wasn't prepared for how overwhelmingly obvious it can be. I was a bit surprised since Watts and Compton, the black parts of Los Angeles, are also home these days to a lot of Latinos, some Asians and some working class whites as well.

We talked for a little about why that might be - beats me in this day and age - and why the U.S. is so willing to spend billions and billions of dollars and thousands of lives trying to solve both real and imaginary problems overseas when there are still such massive inequities here at home. I figure it's because it's easier psychologically when you can fight an external enemy. Here in the U.S. we are our own enemy and few people, or countries, are much good at constructively fighting themselves.

Tons of Readers

Denver, CO

I hadn’t really forgot what book tours are like, but I guess I’d forgot enough to embark on this one with the usual stupid optimism.

It helps to think about the "crowds" differently. Colin and I have talked about buying a scale and weighing everyone who comes to our events. The number of pounds would certainly be a lot more impressive than the number of people.

In Tucson, at Clues Unlimited, we had six, five of them friends of mine or friends of their’s. Somehow people you know and who know people you know, just don’t seem to count as much as total strangers when it comes to book events. Still, add all six up and that was probably in the vicinity of 845 lbs. Not a bad start. (It’s good that we’re in the U.S. rather than Asia where people tend to be a lot lighter.)

After the event Colin went back to the hotel and I went out to drinks and dinner with some of the friends who were there and some friends who weren’t there but showed up later. We went to the Congress Hotel in downtown Tucson, a fun venue with several bars, good outdoor places to sit, mediocre trendy food and okay cocktails. It was a mostly nice time, although the two couples I was with both have young children and so, at least 75% of the conversation was about children; a subject that is of little or no interest to me. I sucked back some whisky and returned to the hotel where the internet didn’t work very well, despite the hotel’s assurances.

It is nearly impossible to pass a motel these days that doesn't advertise high-speed internet. I had pretty good luck with it last year. This year it's proving to be a problem. I'm writing this in a motel lobby - as the internet in the room doesn't work - and evesdropping on the desk clerk's conversation with a friend about how she can't live on a thousand bucks a month and certainly can't afford to go to college on that. Makes me feel pretty good about even the underpaid writing biz.

In Phoenix, at the Poisoned Pen (Scottsdale really), we had ten, count them, ten actual strangers. That is a very good turnout on a Saturday afternoon. Although I would have thought Colin would have roped in more – his books sell very well and are very well reviewed. It’s a great store though, and the staff there really liked our “soundtrack album” and played it often - much to the chagrin of one or two patrons who mistook it for "noise." So, let’s see, ten people, averaging about 165 lbs per person; that’s 1,650 lbs.

That evening we went to a baseball game. Colin is something of a total sports fan. Throw a ball into the middle of a bunch of people and have them do something with it leading to one group winning, and you can get his attention. He likes baseball, something which pleases me no end. We had fantastic seats thanks to the Diamondbacks; right behind the third base dugout in the second row. Shame it wasn’t much of a game. There was plenty of sloppy play, not much of elegance to be seen on the field, and we ended up leaving after twelve innings when it seemed as though neither team was capable of winning. (Eventually, I heard, the Diamondbacks won in the bottom of the 16th on a sacrifice fly.)

Then it was off to Sedona and The Well Red Coyote; a charming little bookshop, near as I can tell the only one in town that doesn't specialize in new age books. It's run by Kris Neri - a fine and fun writer on her own - and her husband Joe, who used to play in a blues band in L.A. We had two people for that event. One for each of us. And they weren't fat. The woman might have weighed in somewhere around 125 or so; the man at, perhaps, 170. So I'll be optimistic and give them each two and a half more pounds bringing their total to 300.

After the event we drove from Sedona to Bluff, Utah; probably the only town in the whole state without a Mormon majority. Some 300 people live there, six of them making their living as writers. It's very near Monument Valley and on the edge of the Navajo reservation. There are rock paintings on the cliffs by the river, plenty of hidden away cliff dwellings, rock so red it could parade on May Day; and we stayed with Win and Meredith Blevins, two old and close pals of mine and excellent writers. (I've known Meredith since 8th grade; and Win since she took up with him a number of years ago.) We drank, we ate, we walked around, we watched baseball (Win is a St. Louis Cardinals fanatic) and had a good, relaxing time.

Then yesterday we drove north. We stopped for breakfast in Cortez, Colorado. I recommended huevos rancheros to Colin - he's a vegetarian - and for the first time in my experience they came with meat. America outside the big cities is not an easy place for non-omnivores.

We continued on to Durango, Colorado which is a splendid town. If I were looking for a mountain community to live in, it would definitely be in the running. Part of what makes it good is Maria's books, which is an excellent bookshop where you wouldn't expect one.

But then we turned north on Highway 550, rising into passes above ten thousand feet, surrounded by snow covered craggy peaks and bright yellow aspen trees accenting the green trees. It was one of the more beautiful drives I've ever been on. We took nine and a half hours to drive what would normally be a five or so hour drive. All the stopping was well worth it. We ended up in Gunnison, Colorado for the night where I had an excellent, very reasonably priced steak - it is the middle of cattle country - and Colin had nothing other than a bite of my baked potato and a beer. Afterwards we went to the rather rundown Alamo Bar, where we were greeted warmly by locals, one of them, Claire, an englishwoman who had settled in Gunnison a few years ago and was delighted to be encountering Colin, an englishman. Her boyfriend didn't seem overly pleased, but he warmed up when we posed him with a pool cue for a picture at the pool table.

Something, however, didn't agree with Colin and he spent the morning in the very same medical clinic where a woman died a couple of days ago from eating spinach. Vegetables kill, apparently. He had food poisoning of his own, although not fatal, but very uncomfortable. He managed to sleep somewhat on the drive today to Denver, and he rallied to do a good job at tonight's event at Murder By the Book in Denver.

It was an excellent event: nine strangers and Heidi Mack - my truly splendid webmistress. The store presented us with a cake decorated with our book covers. The baker had done a great job with the dragon on Living Room of the Dead. The people there were interested, friendly, interesting and bought a bunch of books. I think they bought a dozen or more of Living Room - which is pretty unusual for a book that is a year old. So, let's see though, it was a pretty wide range of sizes, maybe averaging out around 150. 1500 more lbs of people.

Where do we stand so far:

The Mystery Bookstore - Los Angeles - 20 people, a very rough estimate of perhaps 2,600 lbs.

Clues Unlimited - Tucson - 845 lbs.
Poisoned Pen - Scottsdale - 1,650.
The Well Red Coyote - Sedona - 300
Murder By the Book - Denver - 1,500

Total approximate pounds of people so far = 6,895

More than three tons of fans! Now that's impressive.

DisOriented Express on the Road

The naked bookseller has been one of the highlights so far.

We left L.A. a little after eight this morning and encountered no traffic to speak of. I wasn't even sideswiped by a truck this time like I was in my first attempt to leave town on the last book tour. The radar detector did the job and we made very good time to Quartzite, Arizona where we stopped for lunch.

Colin, being English and a fishetarian, ordered the daily special at the small diner in the very small desert community - fish and chips. It didn't, apparently live up to its counterparts in the UK, although he implied that he's had similar served in his native land. He was, as is the usual case with foreigners in America, flummoxed by the enormous portion that was put before him. Quite sensibly he didn't eat it all. I ate all of my club sandwich, but it was smaller and not fried.

Then we went to visit the naked bookseller. I first heard of him on Lee Goldberg's blog and had been awaiting my next opportunity to pass through Quartzite to visit his store. There isn't a whole lot to say beyond this picture of Colin and Paul Winer the naked bookseller:

Next time you're passing through Quartzite, I suggest a visit. The store has an eclectic and interesting mix of books as well.

We did finally make it to Tucson. I always forget what a long drive it is. Our event at Clues Unlimited was fun. We enjoyed putting it on, Chris Acevedo the bookstore owner enjoyed it, and the crowd (okay, six people - what do we authors have to do to get more people to book events? Maybe if we were naked? Nah!), anyhow, the crowd enjoyed it too and they also enjoyed scarfing up all the Asian snacks that we'd brought along - as well as drinking up some Beer Lao - quite possibly the best beer in Asia.

Earlier in the week we kicked off the DisOriented Express with an event at The Mystery Bookstore in Los Angeles - sort of my headquarters mystery bookstore. We had about 20 people who also seemed to enjoy our extravaganza. It was our first show and we had a few minor kinks that we worked out. Good to do that at home before hitting the road.

Tomorrow - later today I guess - it's on to Scottsdale to Poisoned Pen, then a baseball game at night. Sunday to Sedona - The Well Red Coyote - where we will present a workshop on researching exotic locales. Basically - go there, have fun, be observant. Well, there is more to it than that, sort of.

Eventually we will make it to Madison, Wisconsin for Bouchercon, where among other events, Colin will be presented with his Dilys Award - for having written the favorite book to sell of the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association last year. He doesn't know it - and unless he reads this I probably won't tell him - but I was handed the award in a box and asked to deliver it to Bouchercon. It's currently sitting on the floor of the backseat of my car, right behind where he has been sitting.

I'm tired and tired of fixing my typos - even in blogging, neatness counts - so I'm afraid I will have to shut down for now and come up with pithy statements and fascinating observations some other time.

The Ugly Stupid Season Kicks Off

Here we go again, it's 62 days of idiocy until the mid-term elections, then it will be at least another 62 of recriminations and chest thumping afterwards. The Republicans are getting nervous and that's going to make things even worse than usual. You don't corner a rattlesnake and expect it not to strike.

It burns my ass to say this - because I tend to agree more often with Democrats than Republicans - especially these days - but Republicans are better at playing politics than Democrats. That's because they're more ruthless, better organized and more unified.

The big push started yesterday. They are going to force a congressional vote on establishing legal military tribunals of the sort that President Bush already had shot down by the Supreme Court. Nevermind that the proposed tribunals stomp all over many of the very same rights that we're supposedly protecting from the bad guys. Nevermind that even a lot of Republican congressmen and senators get queasy feelings in their guts when they think about giving the President what he wants.

It's an election year. If dumbing down the debate over how to deal with terrorism to the President's level of, "you're either with us or you're against us," and hammering away at the Constitution helps the Republicans to keep control of Congress, well, that's all that really counts. Isn't it? Republicans stick together better than Democrats do when it comes to the really important things; like getting re-elected.

Keep in mind that this is a mid-term election; one in which voter turnout is traditionally very low. The party that wins this election is going to be the party that gets the most bodies to the polls. There's been an awful lot of speculation that GW Bush won Ohio - and thus the 2004 Presidential Election - because Republicans cheated. I don't know if that's true or not, but I do know that the Ohio vote would not have been close enough to steal if it hadn't have been for the Republicans mobilizing voters to come out in droves to ban gay marriage.

The Republican Party has perfected the art of confusing the important issues in elections with hot button, emotional issues that rally their natural supporters. People flock to the polls to vote against gay marriage or medical marijuana (or civil rights ballot measures in the South in the 1960s and '70s; which is when and how the South started voting Republican). Since those people are in the voting booth anyway, they might as well punch another couple of holes for Republican candidates.

The problem is, how do the Democrats combat that? Fear, negativity and simplicity almost always have greater emotional resonance than anything positive or complicated or intellectual.

Unfortunately politics in the U.S. isn't so much a battleground of ideas as it is of personalities. The Republicans have succeeded in recent years because they've managed to scare people shitless; over taxes, over terrorists, over drug-crazed homosexuals coming for their kids. They've managed to pass themselves off as the nation's protectors from these terrible scourges.

The only way to fight that is with reassuring charisma. FDR talked Americans into believing that the only thing they had "to fear, was fear itself." JFK oozed charm and smarts and strength (which was a pretty neat trick for a guy with all his medical problems.) Jimmy Carter was comfortingly honest and fatherly and his timing was good; any Democrat could have defeated Gerald Ford, the guy who was appointed by and then pardoned Nixon. Bill Clinton wanted to hug everybody, and there was something about him that made people want to hug him back. LBJ was the exception. He rode in on the coattails of the even-more-popular-after-his-assassination Kennedy and he also played the fear card nearly as well as the Republicans do today. He cast his opponent, Goldwater, as the crazy guy who was going to blow us all up.

I don't know what's going to happen in this mid-term election campaign other than that it will be gruesome and stupid and brutal and by the end of it anyone with a lick of sense will be even more fed up with politics in this country than they are already. Two years from now though, it's going to be even uglier. And the Democrats either need a candidate with charisma, a lot of it; or they need to find a way to scare the pants off voters about four more years of a Republican president.