It’s an opressively hot October afternoon. I have the worst writer’s block of my life. I can write a few words together, I can create one or two images, but I can’t connect them. I want to tell the story of the young girl who sees the carnival come to her small town, the girl who is just 18, and aware of her power over men, the girl who tries to use this power on a young ride operator so she can escape her small town. The girl who has her power turned back on her and ends the story crying in an empty field surrounded by torn tickets and cigarette butts.
I want to tell the story of the powerless man who watches his wife cry herself to sleep at night. The man who can’t provide for his family, the man who can’t protect them from the Bogeyman. The man who wanders his empty house at night, looking for the joy he knows once lived there. The man who waits for exhaustion to claim him in the deep of night, and give him a brief reprieve from his sadness.
The stories sit cross a river of doubt and frustration, and the ferryman demands a payment I don’t have. I decide to walk down the shore, in search of a bridge.
I find myself in Old Town Pasadena, in front of Hooters, where this whole journey began. Maybe my muse is inside.
I walk in and find the place filled with middle-aged businessmen who drink beer and leer at the young waitresses over fish sandwiches. A young girl with hair so bleached it looks like straw says, “Welcome to Hooters!”
“Can I get food at the bar?” I ask.
“Of course!”
“Thanks,” I say, and take a seat.
The waitress working the bar appears to be about the same age as me, in stark contrast to the other girls who look like they’re all in their early 20s. There are heavy bags beneath her tired and sad eyes.
“What can I get you?” she asks.
“A Guinness and a cheeseburger,” I say.
She turns, and pours me a pint. It’s still settling when she puts it in front of me.
“Not many people drink Guinness in the middle of the day,” she says.
“Is that a fact?” I say. In my mind I’m Sam Spade or Phillip Marlowe, and I’m in a 1920s Hollywood speakeasy.
“It is,” she says, “I think this is the only pint I’ve poured all day.
“Well, I don’t like to drink beer I can see through,” I say, as I lift the now-settled glass to my lips.
Her laugh doesn’t make it to her eyes, but it’s still friendly. I find a kindred spirit in her sadness. We’re both in a place we didn’t expect to be. I bet I’m the first guy she’s waited on all day who hasn’t stared at her skimpy outfit while talking to her.
“Hey, honey, can we get another pitcher of Bud over here?” calls a guy in a George Zimmer signature suit at the corner of the bar. His tie is loose and he bounces his leg on the rail. It shakes under my foot. I don’t like that at all.
I look around the restaurant. I’ve never seen it this full during the day. John Fogerty tells me that there’s a bad moon on the rise.
“Sure,” she says, and walks down to the taps.
Two young girls turn heads as they walk in and sit at a table behind me. “Oh my god! Your eyebrows look so great!” the tall one says.
“Don’t they? I totally had them tattoo’d on,” she says.
I tune them out and count the rings down my glass: one . . . two . . . three.
Four.
I look down the bar and see Men’s Wearhouse and his business partners putting their best midlife crisis moves on the waitress — my waitress. Brown Suit stares at her chest while Blue Suit flashes a capped smile at her. She giggles and fusses with her hair, and fills their glasses.
“Hurry back!” Brown Suit says, as she walks back up the bar.
Five. I stare at the top of my beer. It looks like clouds over a black sky.
“So what do you do?” she asks.
” . . . I guess I’m a writer.”
“You guess you are, or you are?”
“I am. I’m blocked today.”
“By what?”
“The Bogeyman.”
“What’s that?”
“A convenient literary metaphor.”
“You are a writer.”
I laugh. “Yeah, I guess I am.”
“Have you written anything I’ve read?” she asks. A loaded question.
“Probably not,” I say, “I wrote one, and the people who read it seem to like it, and I’m working on another one.”
“But you’re blocked today,” she says.
“Yeah. This place is sort of involved in my career choice, so I thought I’d come here and try to break the block.”
“How’s that working out for you?” she asks. A flicker of mirth passes her eyes.
“Well, at the very least, I’ll get a Guinness out of the deal.”

I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me, but I can’t write. I’ve started and stopped so many times this morning, I lost count.
I want to write. I need to write, but I can’t get my words to work. I’ve grown so frustrated, I want to scream.
I mean, it took me several minutes just to write that, for fuck’s sake.

Major updates to my Gallery, including some new Vegas images.
But I’m most excited to share the first few shots from our road trip to Tulsa this summer. Right now, I have Eastbound California, Eastbound Arizona and Eastbound New Mexico completed. I hope to have the remaining Eastbound galleries completed by the end of the week.
UPDATE: The direct links to the roadtrip and vegas aren’t resolving correctly. Thanks go to Tim, who pointed out it was the trailing slash in the URL that made it resolve incorrectly.
I asked some nija monkeys to beat up the server until they *do* work. In the mean time, you can still see the new pics by following the links on the main gallery page. Sorry ’bout that.
Here is a funny Fark Photoshop featuring yours truly to make the pain go away.

I just read that bOING bOING dot nET hit their 10,000th link today.
Congrats to, Cory, Xeni, and everyone else who makes bOING bOING teh rock.

I’ve done a lot of interesting things in my life. I’ve seen a lot of interesting places. I’ve made out with Ashley Judd. But something was always missing . . .
On Wednesday night, that all changed.
You see, on Wednesday night, I got to ride in the Munster Koach. To a Big Hollywood Screening. With Leonard Stone, Marilyn Monroe, George Barris and Screech.
Don’t worry. I had to read that twice myself. Take a minute to let that sink in. go ahead, get up, rub your head, and try to get a mental picture. Maybe these will help.
The whole thing was put together by my friend Wally to promote a pilot he did called Uncle Davver’s Really Scary Movie Show.
See, for years, Wally has held these parties over at the Silent Movie Theatre on Fairfax, where he screens cool old movies and puts on a bit of a show for all his friends. (About two years ago, I was asked to play Santa Claus at his Xmas show . . . but I was the worst Santa ever. The only gift I brought was one jar of Sauerkraut, and everyone had to share it.)
Most of Wally’s friends are incredibly talented performers. Many of them are improvisers, so the screenings quickly turned into a mixture of MST3K and Rocky Horror, and people started showing up more to listen to the audience even more than to watch the films.
Because we live in Hollywood, this super-fun party was, of course, turned into a TV concept: Wally plays this character “Uncle Davver” (pronounced like a-cadaver) who gathers his friends together to watch really scary (and awful) movies, and hilarity ensues. It’s shot just like one of those campy old Saturday Afternoon Horrorfests that you’d see on UHF back in the early ’80s, complete with awful puns like “Drew SCARYmore” and “Boys and GHOULS.”
I hear there are some Uncle Davver bootlegs already floating around the ‘net . . . if you see one, grab it. It’s hilarious.