Los Angeles

Kerry James Marshall Paints Big

June 19, 2017

Skin Portrait of the Artist & a Vacuum, 1981 my black ass smiles a missing tooth over a vacuum i never use Self-Portrait of the Artist as a Super Model, 1994 photographers ignore my face until i bury it in dirty blond hair When Frustration Threatens Desire, 1990 black cat black snake black glove black…

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Money in the Bank

January 27, 2016

There aren’t any good jobs in L.A., and I’m sick of work anyway. I don’t even want to sell drugs anymore. I’ve got a better plan. Two friends and I are going to knock off a bank in Bakersfield. It would be too tough in L.A. In Bakersfield we’re dealing with hicks. I figure we…

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Kobe Decides

November 30, 2015

This story is in the collection “Basketball and Football”

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Deli Delight

November 10, 2015

I was hungry and the manager of the gallery showing wild faces said the deli across the street’s world famous go on over and get something. Okay I said and pressed the steel arrow to red-light busy Melrose Ave. and allow me to cross. Inside the deli large glass cases featured food I began studying…

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Bathroom Slip

August 4, 2015

At age eighteen Bill tossed everything into his old car and moved to L.A, yearning for a life of wealth, women, and major league sports close up. He knew he was destined for distinction, he just had to figure how to proceed. He’d gotten a job sweeping concrete floors and stacking boxes in a south…

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The Las Vegas Lakers

July 23, 2015

Have to admit, I don’t sit courtside when I go to Lakers games in Staples Center. I suppose I could once a year, if I find two tickets, but it would lighten me a month’s salary, so I sit up about twenty rows and that isn’t cheap either but is doable a few times a…

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Sophia Loren v. Jayne Mansfield

May 25, 2014

By delightful coincidence I was dining in elegant Romanoff’s restaurant in Beverly Hills that 1957 night when young and ravishing Sophia Loren entered, accompanied by several movie executives who, once seated, gazed across satin tablecloth and widened omnipresent smiles, laughing at her every utterance. I understand their behavior for I was equally captivated by the…

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John Wilkes Booth Today

October 15, 2012

We mustn’t permit deed of John Wilkes Booth to stand and therefore shall remove from time and place and raise today in theatrical family thriving in Manhattan and nod when Hollywood beckons splendid Booth who becomes movie star in early twenties making millions while he drinks and snorts and occasionally crashes cars but fires only…

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The Tumble

July 23, 2012

An old woman carefully descended steps of a museum amphitheater, stopped at the second row from the front, and said, “Excuse me.” I immediately rose, and she planted about half her foot on the step, a semi-high heel hanging over, spun ninety degrees and fell, her hips landing on the first step and then her…

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Bakersfield at the Movies

June 8, 2012

Legions of teenagers and adults march into theater carrying troughs of buttered popcorn and sodas large enough for elephants, and guffaw during previews of teddy bear wrestling man, creamed pants jokes, president slicing face open to reveal he’s bullet-dodging, axe-wielding “Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter.” Amid chomping and slurping, I wonder how many here have watched…

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Garden Party for William H. Johnson

April 23, 2012

(A major feature about painter William H. Johnson, 1901-1970, will be posted later this spring.) I wish William H. Johnson, gifted painter of a unique world, were at this party honoring young African American artists, staged by the foundation bearing his name, at an elegant old two-story home near the Wilshire district in Los Angeles.…

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John Wilkes Booth Today

January 30, 2012

mustn’t permit deed of john wilkes booth to stand instead remove from that time and place and raise today in theatrical family thriving in manhattan and nod when hollywood beckons splendid booth becomes movie star in his early twenties making millions while drinks snorts and occasionally crashes cars but fires only slurred words To see…

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Freeway Flow

November 20, 2011

another gridlocked nightmare on hot 405 south in santa monica mountains needing to pee late for work ready to drive on shoulder or in emergency lane must get hell out to civilized community would’ve imploded when whitecaps whooshed me through cloudy cold canyon flowing too fast to stop

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Getting to Madrid

August 9, 2011

My journey to Madrid began on a Sunday morning as I drove from blistering Bakersfield down Highway 99 toward Los Angeles and punched sports talk radio but heard an ESPN guy strain to be funny and cool but sounding lame: most jockeys lack comedic skills and can’t sustain the purported subject matter of their shows.…

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Clippers Carve Kings during Thanksgiving Feast

November 30, 2010

On Thanksgiving night I made my first visit to Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles since New Year’s Day when the defending-champion Lakers hosted an aroused and hot-shooting group of young Sacramento Kings who would’ve prevailed if Kobe Bryant, with customary flair, hadn’t swished a three-point jumper a millisecond before the final horn. The capacity…

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Basketball in Downtown Los Angeles

January 29, 2010

Trust yourself. You’ve been to the Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles many times, so you know you’re walking the right way, south on Figueroa Street a couple of blocks to the arena. Okay, then. Where is it? It’s got to be there. They haven’t moved a building holding almost twenty thousand people, have they?…

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