Jimmy Hollywood

This month marks 20 years since I moved to Los Angeles and started interning at Ixtlan. Whenever I see some film or show set in L.A., or read a crime novel set there, triggers go off. 
The Bosch TV show and an old Barry Levinson flick - Jimmy Hollywood - have tickled the ever-present pining for what might have been into a palpable ache.

The L.A. of too much sun.  City transit windows graffiti marred.  Side streets split and band-aided by dark, fresher asphalt seams.  All the Spanish-style homes.  The human refuse stutter stepping up and down Hollywood Boulevard.

Very often I think I should've stayed.  I left in November 2000, tail tucked.  The oddest part of abandoning the city was the unexpected escort out of the city. 

For a time, actor and all-around nice guy Troy Martin and I worked at the same god-awful Brentano's bookstore.  He had the good sense to jump ship a little before I did. 

So it's a Saturday morning, my little Toyota is full to the brim with personal belongings, and I'm pooping up a side street towards a freeway on-ramp.  Got my driver side window rolled down, and when I come to a stoplight, I hear someone call my name.  It's Troy in a truck, accompanied by a severely cute lady in his passenger seat. 

The basics were passed between us.  What he'd been up to.  What I was up to.  We drove right next to each other a few blocks and then I finally hit my on-ramp. 

Even more disconcerting was weeks later, at my folks house 1000-miles away, watching my usual Sunday FOX line-up and seeing Troy as an extra in an episode of Malcolm In The Middle.

Watching Jimmy Hollywood made me feel weak.  It's an o.k. movie featuring a great understated performance from Christian Slater, and it fully reinvigorated my admiration for all those people that move to L.A. and stay there through thick and thin.  

Me, I waffled and dallied and dicked myself over and grabbed my ball and ran home.  I kind of wish Troy had used that unofficial escort out of the kingdom to bark at me to man the fuck up and stay.  

But that wasn't his job.  Besides, he could smell the weakness radiating off of me.  He knew L.A. had had enough.  Garbage out as easy as garbage in.     

  

The Rabbit Hole

The not-so-surprising part of trying to pick up and start writing again is when things blow apart.  Or don't even blow apart just sag and fall apart with a wet ploosh like a poorly conceived of water balloon.   

I finished The Lipless Gods last year in a sprint.  Since then I've poked at writing, but nothing substantial forms. 

Tom Robbins once wrote you should look at porn before writing.  Problem with that these days is the rabbit hole of the Internet. 

Chandler said even if you aren't productively writing, you should keep the same hours and if nothing else, stare at the wall.  Problem with that these days is the rabbit hole of the Internet. 

Elmore Leonard blessed his success to the fact he never started coffee until he'd finished one page.  Problem with that is I need coffee to adequately fulfill my role as slave to the cats prior to scribbling. 

My fear is that to jumpstart what is currently titled Grimgrack, I'd be grafting onto it the major MacGuffin from Hellbreaker, a novel I've tried to write some 3 times (including 2 separate attempts in 2012, neither further than Chapter 15).  Then, if it didn't work, I'd call Hellbreaker officially dead with Grimgrack notched into the same column in one fell swoop. 

Further eroding my writerly underbelly is thinking that Larry Brown finished 5 novels before getting published and Grimgrack would only be my fourth child and though I've now made money from writing (thank you whoever bought a book!), it doesn't feel like I've earned my stripes or badge or whatever it is writer's model to tout their elevation from 'I'd-like-to-be' to 'I-am'.

When Michael Keaton comes knocking on the door to play Sipe in The Lipless Gods movie, or when Jim Harrison's estate comes after my bank account for copping one of his lines for a book title, those would be indicators. 

I won't hold my breath.

End of sob story. 

 

Lucid cover sketch courtesy Jenny Dayton.

Lucid preview available at Smashwords. 

The Lipless Gods.  Free at Smashwords, Apple, and Kobo.

Or - if you're feeling like a Moneybags - $.99 at Amazon.   

LUCID 5.8.16

When it got dark, I stood in my bedroom and looked out towards the mini-camp.  Flashlights and lamps and the tiny blue bobbling shapes of phones and laptops and pads floated like neon vessels. 

The sound of the crowd washed towards the house and a large portion of the noise failed to penetrate the wood and glass, but still some managed to seep inside.  Not only had Dad brought dinner (burgers and shakes from the local drive-in), but he’d stopped at the hardware store and asked for the earplugs carpenters used, the kind that would really do the job and keep noise out.

Things wouldn’t get too loud out there.  A deputy remained posted.  The news vehicles had left for the night.  Ruth Arnett’s car was gone, but a black SUV remained in our driveway, occupied by security courtesy of the Church of Lucentology.

I lay on my bed in the dark and tried to imagine the crowd out there getting even bigger.  And then at some point, something triggering them, like a noise or signal, and the crowd ran down the driveway, swarmed the guards, and the fans, the raving mad and the simply curious, washed up around the base of the house, like flood waters reaching a house without crashing through.  Whoever was in the home couldn’t leave.  Wouldn’t dare it.  Not with the water at its doorstep.  The hazards the water presented too stark. 

Then Sherman showed up, parting the crowd, getting me to safety.  I smiled at the image, at the merging of imagining the crowd and water, Sherman arriving at the house in a boat of some sort.  I was trying to reconcile the mash-up of images in my tired, exhausted brain when sleep rolled me up into her arms.

Birds tweeting, the sky a murky predawn white, I woke on my side, the unopened package of earplugs near my hand.

 

Lucid cover sketch courtesy Jenny Dayton.

Lucid preview available at Smashwords. 

The Lipless Gods.  Free at Smashwords, Apple, and Kobo.

Or - if you're feeling like a Moneybags - $.99 at Amazon.   

LUCID 5.8.16

Most of what Principal Colan said slipped by me.  Dina and the three other security people plus the deputies were going to keep order.  Still...they hadn’t been able to keep order out at the house.  All those people had swarmed the school bus. 

I heard Principal Colan say “--her younger sister, Eaton High’s own Lucy McCall!” 

Applause broke out.  A few people called out my name.  One person hooted, probably Sherman. 

Principal Colan stepped away from the microphone and motioned it was now my turn. 

Distracted by everything else I’d forgotten my dread of this moment. 

I could barely speak in front of a classroom let alone a gym packed full of people.  My public speaking achievements consisted of re-enacting bits of scenes from Shakespeare for English class and staring at the carpet and occasionally at the prompts on my index cards in speech class.  The index cards always shook in my hand.  I always felt like I might faint.  Fainting in front of the entire Eaton School District would haunt me far longer than it would take the resulting bruise to heal. 

I cleared my throat.  I was taller than Principal Colan, or Jack, or Maddy.  I hunched down to be able to talk into the microphone.  If I tried to adjust it up high enough to my mouth I knew instead I’d only knock the entire stand off the podium and onto the gymnasium floor. 

Lucid cover sketch courtesy Jenny Dayton.

Lucid preview available at Smashwords. 

The Lipless Gods.  Free at Smashwords, Apple, and Kobo.

Or - if you're feeling like a Moneybags - $.99 at Amazon.   

LUCID 5.8.16

House locked, backpack over my shoulder, I walked down the driveway to the gravel road.  Getting close I saw the sign resting at the woman’s feet and I got an inkling of what Dad had meant. 

The sign read ‘Kip Arnett Was Murdered’. 

Kip was one of the tens of thousands of hopeful actors and actresses who populate Los Angeles, looking for the break that catapults them from obscurity to the spotlight. 

She’d been found starved to death in a Hollywood apartment. She'd been battling a drug addiction, but more interesting was the fact she was a practicing member of Lucentology. 

The press spin on the tragedy was that instead of going through detox or getting herself to a rehab facility, Kip had tried to tough it out using Lucentology methods to make herself clean and pure.  According to the literature, Lucentology Centers were always available to help anyone – not just members – deal with addictions, but it could become costly.  Just because anyone was welcome didn’t mean it was free.   

Kip had appeared on one of the videos for The Program, the 12-disc series for people interested in becoming Lucentologists.  Just a quick appearance, but the press had used it as fodder for stories after her death.

The woman on the shoulder of the road was a cute, short blonde, almost a perfect copy of the relatively unknown comedienne who’d been found weighing all of 66 pounds, her face partially eaten away by a housecat.    

 

Lucid cover sketch courtesy the gloriously talented Jenny Dayton.

Lucid preview available at Smashwords. 

The Lipless Gods.  Free at Smashwords, Apple, and Kobo.  Or - if you're feeling like a Moneybags - only $.99 at Amazon.