MOOSE NOT MYTH, AFTER ALL

I take it back. Alaskans were not simply having fun with outsiders by claiming that there's such a thing as a moose. Unless this is a guy in a really good moose suit. Which, considering how remarkable everything else has been in Alaska, could be the case. Still, I'm willing to accept that this is some sort of enormous, ungainly, clumsy, hulking overgrown relation to a deer.

We came across him yesterday while taking a bike ride along the Coastal Trail in Anchorage, which is a beautiful, interesting, 11 mile waterside ride along the edge of the city.

We also came across Earthquake Park, where various informational signs are posted to inform passers by of the 1964 Good Friday earthquake that leveled a lot of this part of Alaska. My favorite factoid, is that Seward - a lovely little port town in a magnificent setting on the Prince William Sound - was hit by 40 foot tall waves, travelling at about 100 mph - AND THEY WERE FLAMING! The earthquake had ruptured a number of oil storage tanks, the oil had spread out onto the water, something ignited the oil, and when the tsunamis struck they were on fire. Now that's an image I have yet to see in any Hollywood production. I can hardly wait.

Yet another instance of truth being stranger than fiction. Just try and write something like that in a novel. No one is going to believe you. You'll be accused of writing fantasy - 40 foot flaming waves, my ass. And I thought Hitler Wong - who makes a brief appearance in GRAVE IMPORTS, my new book - would stretch reader's credibility. (You can look him up on the IMDB - Internet Movie Database.)

Speaking of fantasy. Here's Wonder Woman with Eva and Em - Eva who I live with and Em who's a friend and is also here at Bouchercon in Anchorage.

Speaking of which, this is the last day, the last morning really, and I ought to get over to the convention center and perform some conventioneering. It's been great. I'll write more later.

Maybe A Moose

Talking to the locals you might get the impression that moose are as thick on the ground in Alaska as rats in Rome. They aren’t. Not that I can see. Alaska has lived up to most of the superlatives. But it has been something of a let down in the charismatic mega-fauna sighting department.
Three eagles, some white dots in the distance that seemed to be dall sheep, a couple of swans, otters – plenty of otters, both ocean going and river otters (you can tell the difference because the ocean going ones prefer the backstroke and the riverine ones the breast stroke), a red-tailed fox that emitted a truly horrible screech late at night in a parking lot, a lot of crows – or are those ravens?, drunken teenagers in the bar at the Alaskan Hotel in Cordova – but the word “charismatic” doesn’t apply, one bear, and maybe, just maybe one moose – or was it a log – way off in the distance below us from Haystack Overlook off the Copper River Highway. That’s it so far for the animal viewing.
We’ve been told to expect moose along the Coastal Trail in Anchorage. Urban moose, I guess. They also, apparently, like to walk along railroad tracks in winter – so as to avoid slogging through high snow. A lot of them get turned into rail kill that way, and end up being fed to sled dogs.
We had dinner at The Pipeline Club in Valdez. It was where Captain Hazelwood got tanked up before that fateful night when he piloted the Exxon Valdez onto Bligh Shoal (named after the Captain Bligh.) Dinner was good. They pretty much left the salmon alone after a little bit over-grilling it. That’s not so easy to find around here. Like many places with unsophisticated palates, they wreck a lot of their food through ill-conceived attempts at sophistication. Cream sauces, and such like. This would be a great place to buy fresh seafood – well, limited sorts: salmon, halibut, crab, scallops, maybe a little shrimp, a few clams, I guess they’ve got some oysters sometimes, but that’s about it – and cook it yourself. So long as you didn’t want to accompany it with any fresh vegetables. Those, so far, are about as thin on the ground as the moose.
Last night, the place we wanted to go for Copper River salmon in Cordova being closed for the annual Ducks Unlimited dinner; and our second choice being closed for a private wedding party; we ended up at the OK Restaurant, which was okay. It is run by a Korean couple and serves Chinese, Korean and American food. It’s the first time I’ve eaten anywhere like it in many years, and it was surprisingly tasty. They made an honest effort at accomodating both the local tastes, and their own – and ours. A little innovation would have been nice though. If I ever go back to Cordova I’m going to make it my mission to show them that it might well be possible to cook salmon or halibut steamed with ginger and scallions, even in a small Alaskan fishing town.
Reindeer sausage is pretty good eating though.
During the day we had rented a big, powerful, high off the ground Dodge V-8 pickup to drive the 50 miles out to the Million Dollar Bridge and Childs Glacier. It was well worth it. The bridge spans a river with views of the enormous – but receding – Miles Glacier to one side, and the smaller, but up close and personal Childs glacier on the other. One can stand or sit around across the river from the Childs glacier and watch, and listen, to it calve. I have yet to get a chance to look up the derivation of the word “calving” to describe huge hunks of ice falling off the face of a glacier, but it’s pretty impressive. While we were waiting to watch the glacier fall apart, a grizzly bear trundled by, no more than about 150 or so feet away. He seemed a small, adolescent bear and paused only briefly to peer up at the six humans at the viewing area, before continuing to pick his way upriver through the rocks, no doubt in search of a simpler meal than we would have made.
As I write this we are on the good ship Chenega, a high-speed, catamaran ferry in the service of the Alaska Marine Highway System, on our way to Whittier. The entire population of Whittier apparently lives in one high-rise, hideous building. Which might be interesting but isn’t why we’re going there. We’re going there to drive through the three mile long, one way at a time, tunnel that will take us onto the Kenai Peninsula. Then it’s down to Seward, passing more glaciers and some Russian villages and varoius other Alaskan things to see and do. The highway guide cautions us to watch out for moose at several points along the road.
I’m hopeful.
Here’s some pictures. They can speak for themselves.

Ships and Other Big Things At Sea

Attempting to beat the heat - 107 (41.666 celsius) in our neighborhood yesterday - Eva and I and a couple of friends took to the water. We drove down to Long Beach, boarded a large catamaran and motored out to the channel between the mainland and Catalina Island. It was a whole lot cooler on the water. In spite of which - and a liberal slather of sunscreen - I got viciously sunburnt.

We did see whales. Blue whales, the biggest animals on Earth. We saw five of them, three for more than a fleeting glimpse. And even though we only saw small parts of them at a time, it was evident that at about 90 feet long they were nearly 30 feet longer than our boat. Faster too, if they wanted, but they were being pretty lazy while we watched.

For the most part, they looked like this:

Which, admittedly, isn't all that impressive. But there was something remarkable about them, their presence, the sounds they made, their grace through the water, the apparent, if not evident, size.

According to our captain, blue whales have hearts the size of Volkswagon bugs and arteries wide enough for a kid to crawl through. (I guess cholesterol isn't an issue for them.) That's pretty big. I wonder how many shipping containers could fit in one? Or on one.

While we were watching the whales, a large container ship hove (I like that word. It sounds very nautical. According to the OED it's been in use since about 1390.) into view. You can see it here in the distance.

The ship was headed into port at Long Beach - the largest port in the U.S. It was, of course, coming from China.

It's amazing how many mixed-feelings container ships from China conjure up these days.

Are all those giant metal packing crates full of toys that will hurt American kids? Are they full of food that will poison us or our dogs? Are they full of t-shirts, shoes, socks, linens, plates, glasses, stereo components, sex toys, tires, school supplies, and a million other sorts of geegaws, doodads and necessities of daily life that will a.) put more Americans out of work; or b.) allow Americans to keep buying stuff at cheap prices compared with the rest of the world?

What if the shorts I'm currently wearing were made right here in the good 'ol USA by good ol' American union labor? Would they have cost the $4.95 I paid for them at Costco? What about my $9.95 JC Penney t-shirt? What about the IBM Thinkpad computer I'm writing this on? (It's made in China, by Lenovo, the company that bought IBM's personal computer business. It's still expensive, but is it as expensive as it would have been if it was Made in America?)

If American workers made those shorts and t-shirts - and shoes and computers and everything else - could they afford to buy them at the higher prices they'd sell for, having not been made by cheap foreign labor?

But the whole thing really gets confusing when you start looking deeper into it. I bought the shorts I'm wearing because of the material they're made from and the design - especially the location and size of the pockets. It was an American company that made those decisions and outsourced the manufacture to China. Same with the t-shirt. I'm writing this post on software owned by Google and invented in the U.S., on a browser from Mozilla, using an operating system by Microsoft - all American companies. I ran the photos in this blog through Photoshop - more American made and owned software.

The thing is, one of the stupidest things that any country can try to do, is to be completely self-sufficient. India tried it for years. It is one of the major reasons why India is so poor today. If one country can do something just as, or nearly, as well as another; and it can do it cheaper and more efficiently, in the long run it benefits both countries to let the cheaper and more efficient one perform the task. There may well be temporary disruptions along the way, and there will be casualties - and those casualties are people who will lose their jobs and face hardship - and yes that's terrible. But it's necessary to make things better for everybody down the line, including the same people who are initially hurt by it.

Every single country, throughout history, that has opened itself up to greater free trade - and immigration for that matter - has prospered from that opening. No country, ever, anywhere, has totally eliminated poverty and hardship, and probably no country ever will, but the countries that have come closest to that goal, are the ones that have opened themselves up, not closed themselves off.

I wondered and marveled at the blue whales. And I wondered and marveled at that gigantic overladen freighter hoving into view. And I thought to myself, for all of its foibles and stupidities and misery - ain't the world a grand place.

Then I got home and it was 98 degrees and humid in the kitchen. I quickly drank a glass of cold water, then got back into my air-conditioned car to go out in search of somewhere with a larger - and so cooler - carbon footprint.

NEW BOOKS COMING - THE SET UP

I wonder what a book tour is like in Africa? Take a look at this picture. It's from the current issue of The Economist. It's a satellite view of Europe and Africa at night. The Africans are certainly doing more than their fair share of the work to combat global warming.

I don't know how many inches of glacier I've melted with all the emails I've already sent out to lay the groundwork for my upcoming book launch. I am driving for most of the upcoming tour. That's not good, but it's not as bad as if I was flying to the 20 or so cities where I have events planned. At least my office isn't air-conditioned. (Which is something I've regretted during the past week.)

The problem with book promotion these days is that you never know what's going to work. Lately I've heard that the only guaranteed book sellers these days are appearances on Oprah, The Daily Show and on the display ladders at the front of Barnes & Noble and Borders. (B&N and Borders sell 85% of the books they sell, from within the first 20 feet of the front door.) Supposedly, even The Today Show and Good Morning America can't guarantee book sales anymore.

Everyone's talking about viral marketing and every new book seems to come complete with a "book trailer." Click here to see mine. If your book trailer hits on YouTube, you'll supposedly sell a lot of books.

But, there's no way to guarantee a hit on YouTube, or anywhere else. Not long ago a publisher spent, by its own admission, $60,000 on two one minute short films to get a buzz going online about a new book. It didn't help. So far as I know the book hasn't earned back its advance, much less that extra sixty thousand bucks.

I suppose getting arrested could help, a little. Getting arrested in a compromising position with Paris Hilton might help even more. But maybe people are getting sick of Paris. I know I am.

So what can a writer do? What sells books?

I'm opting for the machine gun approach. Jam as big a clip as I can into the thing, set it on full auto, hold down the trigger and blast away in as many different directions as I possibly can. Surely I'll hit something. If I was a big name author like Stephen King or somebody, my publisher could afford the hydrogen bomb approach, laying waste to readers all across America - and the world. But they can't afford that, and neither can I.

So, here I am again, a blind man with a gun. (Oh wait, there's a Chester Himes novel called something like that - Blind Man With a Pistol.) Only this time, having been through this a couple of times in the past with previous books, I've got a bigger magazine of bullets and I might be able to conserve some by shooting in controlled bursts.

And I've got some booksellers on my side. They're good allies.

So if in the next few months you get more emails than you want from me, you see my name more than seems seemly on websites and bulletin boards (and maybe some restroom walls), and I show up in your town and pester you to come see me in person and buy multiple copies of my books and it all seems like too much shameless self-promotion... Tough! A writer's gotta do, what a writer's gotta do

Why I Don't Have Any Tattoos

Commitment issues, it's as simple as that. I can't come up with any particular image, word or symbol that I want permanently on my body. I know myself, I'd change my mind sooner or later and getting tattoos removed is painful and not all that effective.

The closest I ever came was when I was in college in Olympia, Washington. I used to hang out on Pacific Avenue in Tacoma and I had befriended a tattoo artist named Painless Brenda. One night I was drunk. I walked in to Brenda's shop, sat down and told her that I wanted a mushroom cloud on my right bicep, with the words, "Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke" written below it. In my inebriated state it struck me as an existential badass tattoo.

Brenda looked at me, shook her head no, then threw me out of her parlor. She told me that she didn't permit "cursing in her presence" and to come back when I was sober.

I did go back when I was sober. I brought her a bottle of the wine she liked and thanked her for having tossed me out.

I like tattoos. A good tattoo can be beautiful, and sexy. There are plenty of others that are just plain interesting, fascinating even. There are plenty of bad ones though. Sooner or later some of the chain tattoo removal parlors are going to start making lots of money. There wasn't, however, any traffic at their booths yesterday at the Tattoo and Body Modification Expo at the L.A. County Fairgrounds.

Every chance I get, I go to tattoo expos. What's great about them is that everyone who's there, shows up to see and be seen. They take the word "expo" seriously. It's a photographer's paradise. A whole crowd of people who love it when you take their picture; who are comfortable with their bodies; who are, often literally, colorful.

Here's a few photos from Friday and Saturday at the Tattoo Expo. (If you want to see a lot more, I've put them on a Flickr page. (I suggest using the slide show function.)

But, for those of you who don't want to go to the Flickr Page here's a preview:

Emma and Immigration

Emma Goldman has long been one of my heroes. The beliefs that she so clearly and beautifully articulated, speak to the best sides of human nature. As I've grown older - my 55th birthday was on Wednesday - I've come to regard some - not all, not even the majority, but some - of her beliefs as naive. That's due, I suppose, to the growing cynicism with which I regard the world around me.

And it's a shame. This would be a far better place if Emma's vision could realistically be fully implemented.

Whether her vision for the world was realistic or not, Emma Goldman's writing and speeches still resonate. June 27th is the 138th anniversary of her birth. As a donor, I received the following quote in an email from The Emma Goldman Papers Project at UC Berkeley. It is from her closing statement at her 1917 trial for speaking out against the World War One draft. She was convicted, imprisoned and then deported. Her words, from 90 years ago, speak very loudly to the issues of today.

“Gentleman of the jury, we respect your patriotism, we would not, if we could, have you change its meaning for yourself. But may there not be different kinds of patriotism as there are different kinds of liberty?

"I for one cannot believe that love of one’s country must... consist in blindness to its social faults, in deafness to its social discords, inarticulation to its social wrongs. Neither can I believe that the mere accident of birth in a certain country or the mere scrap of a citizen’s paper constitutes the love of country.

"I know many people — I am one of them — who were not born here, nor have they applied for citizenship, and who yet love America. Our patriotism is that of the man who loves a woman with open eyes. He is enchanted by her beauty, yet he sees her faults.

"So we, too, who know America, love her beauty, her richness, her great possibilities; we love her mountains, her canyons, her forests, her Niagara, and her deserts — above all do we love the people that have produced her wealth, her artists who have created beauty, her great apostles who dream and work for liberty.

"But with the same passionate emotion we hate her superficiality, her cant, her corruption, her mad, unscrupulous worship at the alter of the Golden Calf...We say that if America has entered the war to make the world safe for democracy, she must first make democracy safe in America."

If you want to know more about the Emma Goldman Papers Project - they are producing a remarkable set of volumes of her writing, speeches and articles about her - you can click here and be taken to their website.

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: