the end... for now

ok, heres the deal. and by the way i noticed my last post was a while back; i had meant to be more dilligent than that - my apologies. so since i last wrote i went to el paso, which was nice, and then spent six nights in austin. its a great city, and i very well may end up there, but i couldnt make the decision to commit that quickly, not to mention i was living in a hotel spending money quickly. so i decided to come back to new york, at least for a little while, get some rest, maybe make some money, and figure out exactly what it is im looking for.

but obviously austin to new york takes more than a day, so i went from austin to birmingham, alabama for one night. go look at a map for a second... it was a personal best - over 800 miles in aboot 13 hours, crossing half of texas, louisiana, mississippi, and half of alabama. the ultimate goal was to make it all the way to atlanta (wouldve been 1000 miles) but i just got too tired and sleepy, so i stopped in birmingham.

obviously with the goal of going to atlanta, the next morning i arrived at mikes house. it was an unplanned visit, so it just consisted of lunch, afternoon drinking, and going out drinking at night - but it was excellent, as visiting mike always is.

the next morning i left the atl and drove to north carolina to check out atoms new digs. it was very nice and he seems to be enjoying himself there. we hung out for a bit in chapel hill and later went to a massive state fair, which was bizarre but fun. i had a fried twinkie, which started out tasty, but by the end i really wanted it to be gone from my tummy.

i had made a motel reservation in southern new jersey, aboot seven hours from atoms, but when i got there it looked like a crackhouse. so i searched around maple shade, nj for an alternative lodging, but found nothing good. i went into a quality inn which looked just ok, but they wanted 80 bucks, so i just decided to soldier on home. it was supposed to be two-and-a-half more hours, but as the approaching-new-york traffic makes the rules, it took almost four. but i made it back in one piece, and put a fitting end on a journey that took me almost eleven-thousand miles and sixty days across the country. i hope you all have enjoyed reading this; ive certainly enjoyed both experienceing and writing aboot it all... im just wondering what the next adventure might be.

tombstone blues

right now im in tucson, arizona. its not a bad place; everything is very tan and that faded sunbleached pink. phoenix (where i stayed last night), on the other hand, i did not like at all. it seemed like a city full of crazy people. then again, they are forced to deal with 120 degree heat occasionally. back in vegas there was a record store called zia that i really liked, and i found out they originated in arizona and had seven other locations in phoenix, tucson, and points in between. so, yesterday and today, i went to all seven. they were ok.

im excited aboot tomorrow. im going to tombstone! the site of the famous shootout at the ok corral between the rustling clampett gang and wyatt earp and his law-upholding posse. 'the town too tough to die' they call it. the ramones have a great album called 'too tough to die'. its not a westerny album at all, so its unrelated as far as i can tell, but great nonetheless.

tomorrow night ill stay in el paso, which is basically the texas/new mexico/mexico border. its also memorialized in song, this time by marty robbins.

tonight i went to get some ice and noticed something in the vending machine... a cinnamon roll for a dollar, marked on the front with the words 'pastry of the year'. obviously i had to verify this. well unfortunately the only reason it even claimed 'pastry of the day' was because the rest of the day was particularly pastry-free. the lesson is beware of outrageous claims, especially when credited to (im not joking) the 'automatic merchandiser readers choice awards'.

i do believe ive had enough

after a few days of apartment/soul searching, ive decided to pack it in as far as la is concerned. theres just too much compromise attached to living here. allow me to explain: decent - and only decent - places to live around here are way out of my price range. in order to survive (briefly) id have to live in a tiny studio for like 900 bucks a month in an undesirable (dangerous) area. im not interested in not wanting to step outside of an apartment at night, worrying aboot my place and car getting broken into, etc. and even to afford that id have to have two jobs i bet. and to do something im actually interested in id probably have to work for little-to-no pay, which id be happy to do, except id be homeless in three months. i could always borrow a little money, but that would be stemming a tide rather than solving a problem. and living within thirty miles of a beach is even more cost-prohibitive. its not a place im in love with anyway. its got its good parts and bad. some things are super-cool, but also ill be giving up wildfires, earthquakes, smog, and freeway snipers (five incidents since ive been here).

tonight is my last night in california, in pasadena, which is one of the nicer communities in the greater la area. but of course, its super expensive and pretty far inland.

one nice thing is there were a couple further south locations that couldnt be visited on my way out here... tomorrow i go to joshua tree national park and then phoenix and tucson for a couple nights. after that ill be "down in the west texas town of el paso" and then im gonna go back to austin for a while. it was probably my favorite place on my trip, so perhaps ill stay. everything there adds up - apartment costs are reasonable, its pretty safe, job prospects are good, and its big into independent film.

one thing im really looking forward to is some more open road. ive been in the la area for two weeks now, and ive grown to miss driving long distances. i did go to san diego twice while i was here, which is a two hour drive, but its different cuz of all the traffic. i cant wait to drive five hours through a desert with no one around.

sorry everyone

so... i wouldn't call this the end of the blog, just a slow-down. hopefully i haven't completely lost my audience. since last time, i went to san diego to see cousin megan, which was great. shes got a super-cool kid whos just shy of two years. i also saw my just-starting-college cousin, ryan. hes great too. san diego is a nice area, i wouldnt mind going back sometime in the near future.

anyway, i think im gonna stick around here, at least for a while. its a little difficult figuring out the order in which to accomplish things. first of all, housing is expensive, so i need a job soon. but do i go to ny and get my stuff? do i commit to an apartment first? do i get a job and then risk not being able to have time to go to ny and drive my stuff across the country in the next few months? theres a one month hotel/apartment i could get, but id need a job by the end of that, so i dont know if that helps me any. if anyone has any advice, id be glad to hear it.

ive looked at a few apartments so far - the dollar doesnt go too far around here. ive already resigned myself to get a crappy place for a year and just hope i can afford a nicer one by next year.

ive also run out of minutes on my phone and gone over by thirty or so. at 40c/minute, im using it as little as possible until the tenth, when my new minutes start. ive already upped my plan for next month.

so this is just a quick update, ive got some more apartment appointments today. this is a stressful time; i hope everything works out ok soon. hope everyone is doing well.

hooray for hollywood

the end of the road?











new fires on the other side of the valley!






ok ive yet to be engulfed in flames... but this area smells like a musty fireplace and ash is flying everywhere. ive gotten used to it though. anyway, yesterday i checked out hollywood and beverly hills and such. it was great! in hollywood i found the greatest record store ever (apologies to waterloo in austin, which just a few weeks ago won the 'greatest-record-store' title; it must now move into second) called amoeba records. its huge and, like i said, totally awesome. i also walked around hollywood boulevard a bit and drove around some of the more famous areas, like rodeo and melrose. i got a chili dog from pink's, which is one of those disgusting-but-delicious late night eateries.

today i explored some of the east valley cities, like sherman oaks and burbank. i went to universal city for a while but didnt go in the theme park, and then i went to warner and took the studio tour. i guess it was silly of me to think the tour would focus on my favorite films of theirs from the 40s to 70s; it was mostly aboot current tv shows, which i couldnt care less aboot. but it was kinda fun anyway. afterwards i went to downtown burbank, which is where that fire picture comes from. now the coolest thing was i didnt even hear on the news that there were new fires in that area, i just noticed as i was driving aboot some fire on the mountain (did i just start singing a grateful dead song?). so i got as close as i could, and i think i went to the right spot cuz there were a bunch of people standing around taking pictures. and i became one of them for a few minutes.

tomorrow im going to check out some of the northern/central beach communities - malibu, santa monica, venice and marina del ray. im staying one night in del ray and then going to san diego to see my cousins on sunday. ill be back here on tuesday to get some more exploring done. its taking a long time - this place is huge! and after all that... who knows?

los angeles is burning

i was proud of myself this morning - i accomplished the particularly difficult goal of leaving las vegas by 8am. so i rolled into the la area around noon, first stopping at san bernardino. well apparently they were going through some sort of wind storm, because there were huge palm branches flying around the street. i also actually saw a tumbleweed going down the middle of the street - it was like an old western. but anyway, that area isnt that nice (i think i saw a gang - black guys standing outside a convenience store in huge white t-shirts, right?). afterwards, i went to pasadena, which is really nice.

on my way to my hotel in van nuys - in the san fernando valley (anyone remember the movie 'valley girl'?), i got stuck in some of that notorious la traffic. also, in the western distance i could see huge plumes of smoke extending for miles. because im stupid, i thought to myself 'golly, there really is a lot of air pollution here'. but once i got to my hotel, all over the news were reports of huge wildfires coming our way. theyve yet to be contained, but theyre still a good 10 miles from me. but the area over there has undergone a mandatory evacuation, and the newly homeless folks have been sent this way. remember the san bernardino windstorm i mentioned earlier? well thats not helping matters - apparently the wind has gotten up to 50mph and dragged fires with it. also, it hit 100 degrees today. if all goes as it seems to be going, ill be on fire in a few hours.

tomorrow im going to explore the hollywood / beverly hills area. i think i have more than a days worth of stuff id like to see there, but ill do my best. then friday id like to explore around the valley, which has some towns youve probably heard of (like burbank, studio city, sherman oaks, encino, etc). i only have this hotel for three nights, and then im thinking of going to san diego to see two cousins saturday, but the cousin with a house (and hopefully a couch) has yet to call me back. after that i think ill come back here for a few days to explore more west and south la stuff that i wont have time for before saturday. you know, like compton.

viva las vegas!

view of the mid-strip from the stratosphere tower









three feet from a 400 pound lioness at mgm grand











shark tank at mandalay bay







alright... here i am in vegas. i had hoped to blog a little more often here, cuz theres lots to say, buts its actually hard to find a connection in vegas - if it doesnt have to do with gambling or shopping, they dont want you wasting time on it. seriously, you need major directional skills (of which i have none) just to get out of one of these casino-complexes. and just because two casinos are across the street from each other, dont think it wont take you twenty minutes to get between the two.

anyway, the drive to vegas was my favorite so far. i had spent saturday night in st george, utah, aboot eight miles from the arizona border. once in arizona, you descend some mountains, which is a lot of fun. then theres aboot 80 miles of nevada to go before vegas. but aboot fifteen miles before vegas, you pass a mountain, and the town just appears. its a neat trick. a few miles before the city i stopped at a gas station to pee and get a newspaper - it was like gas was an afterthought for them though. more like they were saying 'you want gas? are you sure you dont mean slot machines and hookers?'.

anyway, so i got into town with a little time to kill before checking into my hotel, so i went to see the corpse bride. obviously one cant see it without comparing it to a nightmare before christmas, and its nowhere near is good. as with any tim burton film, production design is awesome, but aside from that i found it a little boring. plus, they smoothed out the stop-motion, which makes it look more like cgi, which is bad.

i spent my first night on fremont street, which is the old vegas section, north of the strip. it was awesome. i urge anyone coming to vegas not to skip this section. they have a six block closed street with a ceiling that has light shows every hour. and theres dingy old casinos and junk stores a-plenty. my favorite place was called la bayou, which was a slots-only casino, but had the most delicious frozen drinks in yard glasses.

yesterday morning i finally made my way to the strip and started with the north section. the stratosphere has a 112 story tower with a roller coaster on top. at over 1100 feet, its the highest one in the world. im not super into roller coasters, but i figured i couldnt pass up the opportunity. its a very weird feeling to be whirling around outside when youre up that high. later i went to the souuth strip area, where i stayed at the tropicana. the casinos here are nice - i went to mgm grand, mandalay bay, the luxor, new york, new york, etc.

today i went to the mid strip, which is where the nicest casinos are. i went to paris, the venetian, caesars, bellagio, etc. all nice, but its a lot of walking around. like i said earlier, just crossing the street can be a major chore. tonight im staying at the excalibur, which i visited last night and liked a lot.

im reminded of a comedy routine of patton oswalts in which he compared los angeles to a demon-cock. but he said at least its not vegas, which is a demon-cock dunked in glitter and deep-fried. anyway, tomorrow i go to la. hope its nice demon-cock.