NEW MOJAVE DESERT COLUMN: From your editor, for the Los Angeles City Beat paper, and also for viewers like you. And do not forget your Weekette collection, so go read the paper, if you are in Southern California today. [LA CityBeat]
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Mr. Layne, Nothing is more enticing than Route 66.. Good luck in your new writing endeavors from your true fans! – teehee!
ps : photo a little 2001-ish, no?
“[J]ust sitting here 50 feet off a forgotten highway that used to define America.”
It was just outside of Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when Ken began to take hold . . . .
He’d see the bats soon enough, I thought.
Or perhaps he already had . . . Hillary is EVERYWHERE!
If you want completely miserable, check out “Slab City”.
The Owens Valley is way better than Mohave. Why not put Wonkette into “The Sheet?”
Maybe it’s gauche to say this, but that’s really fucking good writing.
Damn Ken that was some good shit. Have you considered writing for a living?
[re=48587]shortsshortsshorts[/re]: Shortscubed: It’s good writing, in the main.
But it lacks that final, ironic hook that would have brought closure to the story. The reference to the Air Force doesn’t make it. In fact, it’s something of a distraction given the focus.
A better closing paragraph would have linked back to some element of the story . . . say, those tortoises. How about something like:
“The Air Force wants to renovate this old Army Air Field, for the new generation of robot war planes, those high-altitude drones often mistaken for alien spacecraft over the Mojave and, these days, over Iran. That’s another desert, like the Mojave. Only in that desert, tortoises aren’t protected. Or local teenage kids who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
The last three sentences give you the “hook.” And you get a bit of a rhetorical “build” from the first two of the three.
You could had a final clause to the last sentence: “. . .when the Air Force decides to destroy a bunker.” But that adds another, overtly political element, which I think weakens/distracts.
[Editing: It's not a game; it's an ADVENTURE!]
[re=48590]Neilist[/re]: “Editing: it’s not just for idiots anymore.”
I’m sure the LAP and NYT, or possible the WP are really hitting home runs right now, or something, but think of the children. The children.
[re=48592]shortsshortsshorts[/re]: “but think of the children. The children.”
Personally, I leave that kind of thing to the Catholic Church, Shorts. After all, they have the experience.
And the FABULOUS, light shitbrown colored “Our Lady of The Angeles” Cathedral is less than 1000 meters away from where I am typing.
A wonderful use of the Catholic Archdioese’s money.
MUCH better than that “Vow of Poverty,” helping the poor, and “camel though eye of needle/rich man into heaven” nonsense.
Don’t listen to these kids today who want everything spelled out, Ken. That’s good writing.
[re=48594]Neilist[/re]: Absolutely yes.
[re=48595]SayItWithWookies[/re]: Absolutely yes.
And that is why one van can fan can spans flans.
Sometimes these daze it seems like you gotta be a damn turtle to get jackshit in this country.
I’m wondering if the people who read the papers are totally confused by referring to McCain as ‘WALNUTS!’
Do they have a weekly print review of YouTube?
Ken, that was wonderful writing, please keep linking your stories here..
Kids and dog in the car, I finally investigate “Silver Lakes.”
Whoa there. I didn’t know we Wonkette commenters had kids to support.
May some of you Westsiders can clarify… is this all set in San Bernardino? Because if so, I just want to point out that there’s an awesome Frank Zappa song about that place.
Kids and dog in the car, I finally investigate “Silver Lakes.”
That should read:
‘Kids in the car and the dog strapped to the roof, shitting himself, I finally investigated “Silver Lakes.”‘
It’s a great area to write about, and you’ve done a fine job Ken, the line about the killers having a MySpace page is adroit…I have to go out that way now and again, because my sister lives in Fontana. We stayed at the Wigwam Motel on 66 in Rialto, which I’d recommend, even though the neighborhood is skeevy. Mildly ironic that a teepee shaped motel is run by Indians these days (from Bangalore, I think.)
The Stater Bros down the highway had an amazing selection of crack hos in the parking lot, and I live in a town whose crack hos draw customers from all over the Bay Area, so I’d know. We tried to get a bottle of cold white wine, because it was 95 degrees, and the cashier had never heard of such a weird custom. There are more mutants out that way then in Chernobyl.
PS–people who think Dr. Thompson hallucinated the bats ought to go swimming late at night in Lake Mead. There are CLOUDS of them, and they buzz your head like mosquitoes.
Ken Layne has kids? That is a terrifying thought.
And the sun hit the derrick and cast a bat wing shadow
Up against the car door on the shot gun side
And when they pulled her from the wreck
You know she still had on her shades
They say that dreams are growing wild just this side of Burma Shave
Woah, yes, that was good.
And isn’t that a pic of ‘Ozymandias’? You know, “Gaze upon me, ye mighty, and despair.”
[re=48594]Neilist[/re]: off topic, but my husband and I saw a black and white ribbon decal on the back of a car yesterday that said “Pray for Our Priests”.
Of course, we both laughed hysterically and noted several things: 1) aren’t priests supposed to pray for us? That is their job, no? But in many priests’ cases, they confused “pray FOR your congregation” to “prey ON your congregation”. That pesky proper preposition issue.
Also, 2) one letter change makes it “Prey for our priests” (e.g., altar boys)
and, really lovely writing there, Mr. Layne.
except not enough TruckNutz.
Very nice. Wait. Wby do you live in the desert, again? Cuz it’s cheap? So is Alabama from what I hear.
[re=48733]NoWireHangers[/re]: Because it is pretty much incredibly amazing in every way.
[re=48651]jagorev[/re]: At first I read “Ken Layne has AIDS,” not “kids.”
I’ll keep watching.
[re=48757]shortsshortsshorts[/re]: no, you only automatically get AIDS when you move to SF. You also turn geigh and get married to the first same-sex person you see.
[re=48672]TGY[/re]: “Look upon my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
(From MEMORY, no less! Pathological editing, and quoting poetry when no one cares: The Mark Of the Irish!)
The Mojave has it all. I think I already let out the secret, but if you find yourself driving between Vegas and Barstow, you will get to see a place called Dunn, in the California desert…and the greatest collection of Ron Paul signs in any desert, anywhere….which, you know, is sort of appropriate. I wish I had gotten pictures, it just has to be seen to be appreciated contextually. Totally baren landscape, a former Stuckey’s converted to a nondescript gas station / market…HUGE Dr. Paul signs. It’s a must see.
[re=48672]TGY[/re]: Here’s the Ozymandias poem. It’s George W. Bush (“wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command”)!
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert….Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
[re=48590]Neilist[/re]: Gross, puke, vomit, ew.
Oh hi Rebecca, and thanks all of you all for reading these things. Yeah, I do live out here, at the moment. So did Rebecca, sort of, and your beloved Choire Sicha, and L. Ron Hubbard was always out here, and Gram Parsons (until he had that heroin accident), and Charles Manson, and Mary Austin, and Pancho Barnes, and Victoria Williams, and lots of other fun folk.
But once all of these people are dead, you are looking at a pretty fantastic place, as far as flora and fauna. Tortoises! Mojave Green Rattlesnakes! Cactus wrens and Roadrunners.
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