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road by luck

I’d blown a transmission one spring and was stuck in what most folk would describe as to hell and gone. In this case my hell was located on the northernmost outskirts of Phoenix. Took a space in a RV park.

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ARTIST AMBASSADORS

Having trouble keeping up pilgrim? No worries because it’s nothing but worry all the time about everything from now on.  I have a passing interest in Greenland, two in fact. One is as a flyover space to cast white out dreams upon while the other is following along as an expeditionary scientific research vessel samples […]

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the Canadian Resistance

Canadian Resistance soldiers will lure the libidinous soldiers into their lair where before any pleasure they are ladled heaps upon heaps of artery clogging poutine eaten with the fattest fried potato fries ever to be found.

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for the win—

<!– wp:paragraph –> <p>I have always preferred an elegant solution. A good fix in my book is transactional and balanced— it is win-win. In the winner take all world the win-win model doesn’t pay enough. </p> <!– /wp:paragraph –> <!– wp:paragraph –> <p>Life in Silicon Valley has veered off the tracks and this digitally enhanced monster […]

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wind turbine service repairman

Wind turbine service technician is one of the more abundant energy transitions jobs. You’ll need to be capable of dealing with heights, you will need to be physically fit, but otherwise it is a job well within the range of most of our workforce. The future is bright in this field where the career path […]

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climate comedy—

I had to begin by proving that there was a plausible path to writing a climate change comedy. Maybe if I could find the funny this type of script could attract the attention of the executive producers in the movie industry.  Finding the funny is where it begins. Weather related events that steal the headlines […]

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Into the Palisades/Altadena Future

There have been red flag warnings in some part of Southern California for 14 of the last 17 days. The stretch started January 7, the day the Palisades and Eaton Fires started. The dangerous conditions continue to pose a threat to our nation’s second largest city. The topography of Los Angeles is complex. The two […]

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Saving Ourselves—

Scale the business— and there is no bigger business than home ownership. That is not true of course but there is a kernel of reality attached to the single best way for an ordinary homeowner to build wealth. Obstacles in the way include rising insurance premiums, higher mortgage rates, shortage of properties which feeds into […]

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California Climate Migration

It’s on— millions of leafy-lane owning California homeowners are looking around their neighborhoods this morning and many do not like what they see. I am a climate-change-denying- it can’t happen here- Northern California homeowner. I was until Wednesday. The massive wildfires in Los Angeles can’t happen up here. We still get rain, our Diablo’s ( […]

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Hollywood Hills Wildfire

Hollywood Hills fire threatens the Sunset Strip. Four friends have fled LA. Two went south to Ensenada, two to Palm Springs where I have arrived for the week. The friends here both grew up in LA, they know every inch of the place, every mood, every era, every nook and cranny. Robbie said he has […]

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Pacific Palisades Conflagration

Wildfire has struck Los Angeles again. Squeezed between Malibu to the north and Santa Monica to the south is the Pacific Palisades. Years ago, I spent time in nearby Brentwood. My hosts had searched for some years and when this hillside home came on the market, they packed up their house in Belair for proximity […]

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I’m Still Here

First film of the Palm Springs Film Festival— I’m Still Here. Fernanda Torres received Best Actress Award at Golden Globes this week and her director Walter Salles both from Brazil were on stage after the screening to discuss. This an ambitious film dealing with Brazil’s dictatorship arresting and murdering Torres husband. Film set in 1971 […]

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Arctic circle squared—

You drive from Vancouver north to Horseshoe Bay Ferry Terminal. You’ll jump across the Strait of Georgia to Vancouver Island then more north by van some hundreds of miles to Port Hardy where you will board another ferry for the 18-hour passage further north to Prince Rupert. By all accounts the Inside Passage transits some […]

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Raining bossa pouring nova

Woven tight into the current script is music, it arrives unexpectedly as a bossa nova band becomes enchanted with their first visit to Big Sur. Like anyone alive on the face of planet earth bossa nova is born in Antonio Carlos Jobim’s The Girl from Ipanema, the all-time most popular bossa song ever written. The 1963 smash […]

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Comedy as Cure

Hurricanes are more powerful; droughts linger longer and wildfires rage uncontrollably across the landscape. I have a second climate change comedy screenplay under construction. The best way to think about the climate is to laugh about our predicament and then because we can see for ourselves the impact our runaway climate is having on our […]

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Random Answers Only

Barbecue weather this week. Heatwave arrived Monday did a little higher temperatures Tuesday with the big finale today— National Weather Service has our respite arriving late Thursday night. Bay Area sailors do their best to put a smiling face on all our wind and fog, sailing is a bundle up affair. Terrestrial creatures are scalding […]

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Out and About

Curiosity drew the steer to the fence. I approached hoping I might coax a scratch atop the head between the horns, no deal. When you are out on the road a certain degree of mistrust can keep you alive— I’d jumped from the Bay Area to Cold Springs, Nevada. As drives go it was not […]

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Ode to Emptiness—

One of the Northwest’s great illusions are its forests. Like water it is impossible to imagine that there is a shortage. No such problem in La Paz where the organism we know as a tree is almost nonexistent.

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North to Ensenada

…for reasons to do with friendship and decision-reversal-syndrome the reluctant mariner had been junketed in by plane and bus to become part of one of sailings least desirable passages—

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Baja Bash 2024

Starlink— satelitte connectivity will provide you with access to the latest and greatest weather information twenty-four-seven. That piece of equipment is worth its weight in Tecate, mescal and your finest bikini briefs.

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Romp Along the Baja Coast

The sailor’s holy trinity— the sun, wind and sea. A sailboat can go if you know how to feed her wind. A destination can be a joy to reach for. You’ll need to consider the hidden forces working to challenge your bows aim. The direction of the wind is one force and invisible but tangible […]

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Subtropical Cyclones for You and Me

I asked the store clerk how he survived the storm. “Power was out for three days. Three trees fell and blocked our access to the party. Drove up to Livermore from San Luis Obispo. We should have stayed home.” Sunday’s hard hitting bomb cyclone was reprising its 2023 role when last year a similarly intense […]

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pineapple express—

This weekends atmospheric river event continues to unfold. I travel to Santa Barbara in two days, hoping roads are dry, rivers have receded and the mud has been cleaned up. This morning here in Northern California we have a textbook example of what is becoming the new normal, an atmospheric river fueled storm.  If you look […]

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Whitewashed Green Desert

Near one half of California’s Imperial Valley water is used to grow alfalfa. Much of this crop is used to support the regions dairy operations, what isn’t shipped to the regions milk producers is exported to foreign markets. Let’s get this said plain and simple. Alfalfa is a water intensive crop, perhaps the most water […]

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Conversation with Greta Gerwig

I arrived in time to take in the Palm Springs Film Festival’s first offering, the screening of Barbi and then after a conversation with the film’s director. The film was screened at Palm Springs High School. Nice auditorium maybe seats 800. We weren’t sold out, but it was nearly so. Here is a pro tip […]

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backstage 2024

—our fetching bossa nova singer remains convinced that there is only one man that will have his way with her and that is the man she plans to have a family with— that’s funny right

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physical comedy

If you are seated at your writing desk it may seem that the first task to attend to is bringing the words of your characters to life on the page. Often the story unfolds by what the characters say, much less attention is given to how a character moves, what they are wearing, even the […]

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Paul’s Slide Changes Everything

To the north near Carmel is Malpaso Creek and to the south near San Simeon is San Capoforo Creek, between the two is Big Sur. Erupting out of the Pacific Ocean rise the Santa Lucia Mountains. The Coast Highway rises and falls here, its winding path cuts through the steep rock and rubble, the highway […]

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Road Closure Landslide Barricades

Truth as told by a highway traffic control worker turns out to be worth its weight in barricades. Our trip north from Morro Bay up the Coast Highway would terminate 50 miles from our start at Limekiln State Park. This is where we meet the grizzled veteran of many a highway closures. Born in Bakersfield […]

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Cliffhanger

We drive to camp south of Big Sur. We’ll head over to Death Valley for two days, then to Grapevine Canyon Petroglyphs. This last stop isn’t too far from Searchlight, Nevada where the pugilistic Harry Reid got his first haircut and fistfight.  I’m still plotting out the next screenplay— Cliffhanger— that’s a working title of […]

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Blame it on the Bossa Nova

Key decision in my run up to the next screenplay is selecting the music tracks. Even if things all get tossed out, I like building a file of songs that catch the flavor. Bossa is of course Brazilian built for yearning, heartbreak and pathos. You want to dance you’ll play a samba.   Bye, Bye […]

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What the World Needs Now—

I’ll never forget seeing West Side Story for the first time. Until that moment I had thought the American musical could never accommodate what Bernstein, Sondheim and Jerome Robbins would stage for audiences. West Side Story’s impact was like St Peppers Lonely Heart Club Band, 2001 A Space Odyssey—these are not insignificant moments, we don’t […]

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Maestro—

Capturing Leonard Bernstein’s life would revolve around the story of his extraordinary marriage to Felicity— Felicia Montealegre Bernstein—

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bike ride bijou

Occupational hazards abound for the writer. Sitting at a desk all day, incessant use of reading glasses, fighting off the flurry of notifications our digital overlords have embedded on our phones, iPads, and desktop computers.   Exercise patterns have changed, there is now a daily bike ride to account for. I’m averaging 100 miles a week, […]

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Microchipped Pet Geolocation Giveaway

We all know about the Defense Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, Department of Homeland Security and of then the more familiar Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation. Reading today’s Financial Times the sage reporting of Ed Luce by way of a feature story Lunch with the FT-Christo Grozev spills the spy craft beans. […]

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barbie goes BAZILLION—

For my money Dunkirk is Christopher Nolan’s apex directorial moment. His impulsiveness reminds me of the challenges Robin Williams presented when trying to contain the great performers tendency to be let loose and run unbridled.  Nolan isn’t as frenetic; he doesn’t fly off on some stream of consciousness riff, his challenge is the same as […]

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script coverage

See you on the other side of Independence Day, we can get to work on the campaign to oust the gay haters who have lied their way onto our nation’s highest court—

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60 Word pitch

Flatiron’s two best pilots are both Black American women, both skilled pilots, there is Major Emma Bezel and Lieutenant Colonel Dovey Doverspike.

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finish the line

Revisions to the screenplay continue at a measured pace. I unpacked a lengthy exchange between two characters, that helped with flow. I’m still miserable about trying to hide a few key facts without bringing the narrative to a grinding halt. The manuscript is in Word on my computer and iPad, I can read while I’m […]

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Sausage Along the Potomac

Principled people can disagree about a lot of things, casting a vote not to raise the debt ceiling is not one of them. I don’t like the deal, but I don’t like defaulting on the national debt worse. Bernie, Warren and AOC are not on the same principled page over the debt and think they’ve […]

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Let’s Talk City Buildouts—

If Phoenix is a hot mess of a beast, Gilbert is the sizzling distant unknown reptile nobody has ever heard of. I’d come in from the south, drove through Coolidge, then finally the long straight boulevard into downtown, the very beating heart of this anonymous gargantuan valley town.. Three lanes in each direction for 20 […]

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Nine Arizona Touchstones

Nearing late afternoon in Tempe, late April touching 91 degrees F, waiting to pickup Eileen coming in from Denver. Crow, a street performing friend lives in Tucson. After blueberry pancakes this morning drove to his place for coffee before heading north. Married to a Korean wife, she’s visiting family and is away, when she returns […]

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Casey’s Gift

Rivers that originate in Arizona are few, the Verde River begins its journey up in the mountains in northwest corner of Yavapai County. Once upon a time the river’s water was counted as one of the tributaries to the Colorado River. In modern times every drop remains here in the state and is relied upon […]

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Collecting Surprise

Traveling can be inconvenient. Entering Arizona was a longer jump, followed by a series of shorter jumps from town to town. Arriving at each place there is a setting, a building, people and their things. This is a picture of just one object in a home filled with thousands upon thousands of carefully collected objects […]

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House on the Verde River

First time I came out from San Francisco for Casey’s 60th birthday. I had not ever been to a desert home built on the banks of a river. The home is surrounded by a is a mix of mesquite, cottonwoods and sycamore trees. Last night I saw a scarlet tanager. Morning we drank coffee watching […]

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On Choosing Mudflap’s—

The Kid’s Super Special Guy flew south, he had come this way to get a 1995 Toyota pickup truck and deliver it to Seattle. Never mind the arctic blast, the closed highways, the barely open chains only interstate, he’d hole up in a motel and wait for the all clear signal, his goal was simple […]

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Proletariat’s Rejuvenation—

The global proletariat thrill meter is pegged at infinite— I told you so.  Tesla’s stock has fallen from $384 a share to a close of $156 per today. It turns out the richest man in the world is no longer the richest man in the world. Trolling is misunderstood. Behaving like a privileged, adolescent, juvenile, white supremacist isn’t […]

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Emergency on the Wasatch

The Salt Lake City Tribune posted a water story (see it here) that straightened my back and got my attention. The story is well researched, we learn there are 10,000 family hay-growing operations in Utah, that the crop market value is $500 million, and one-third of the crop is sent overseas.  Profits in Utah’s alfalfa […]

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Johnson’s Johnson

n terms of how many Johnsons away from tragedy, and let’s be generous now, on average say there are two Johnson’s for every foot of water, we are just 276 Johnson’s away from a climate catastrophe of a kind the modern world has never experienced.

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Can Kicking Over— Hard Part is Here

Half-truth tellers, braggarts, and exaggerators are stealing water from Americans. Take the executive director of this outfit called the Agribusiness and Water Council of Arizona. With millions of acres farmed in Arizona less than half is dedicated to the food that ends up directly on our dinner plate while a whole lot more of the […]

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Tight as a Tick Dry as a Bone

If you are living in San Francisco, don’t have a car, rent an apartment, don’t have a garden, haven’t got out on a road trip, then it is likely the 20-year drought gripping the American West may well have gone unnoticed. If on the other hand you are Max Gomberg the Director over at the […]

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Dusty Days on the Klamath

North of Yreka the Klamath River passes beneath Interstate 5 while flowing west through the Siskiyou’s to the Pacific Ocean. Over the last two decades the megadrought has pummeled the region. For 13 of the last 20 years the governors of Oregon have declared a drought emergency east of where I am standing in the […]

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Call for a General Strike

The ruins of Chaco Canyon give us a glimpse into the life of one of America’s earliest civilizations. There is evidence the first people prevailed as a culture and economy for 1000 years, the tribes of the desert southwest of Arizona and New Mexico thrived here. After years of abundant rain our first people were […]

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Vet Showmen Pay Lip Service

Trip to Kona has been a bit of a tale. A carrying cart failed just before coming over to the islands resulting in a propane tank landing square on my big toe. That kind of changed the last two weeks. An urgent care doctor glued the gash back together slapped me on the butt and […]

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The Garden Bench

Cork oak trees come from the Iberian Peninsula (so does the loyal but obstinate donkey); it is estimated that there are perhaps as many as 5000 cork oaks in California.

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Northwest Natural Wine Night

As dinner party’s go this one turned out to be out of this world. The mix of characters worked swell, the invited included both curveballs and straight shooters— this the odd woven with the even. There was even an expectational tardy arrival of our party’s Hickey Boggs from The Iceman Cometh along with his second […]

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Seattle’s Wet Spring

Needing a dose of the kid I hopped a flight on Southwest from Oakland to Seattle for the weekend. Here’s her new condo on Capitol Hill. Never done but always organized. This is not something she got from her dad. Last night we ate at Blotto. Lucky for me they had vegan pizza. Joint was […]

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Gratitude Sails South

Sailing vessel Gratitude was underway with three crew by fifteen hundred hours on March 25th. In the first hours the Hylas 46 motored westbound with the ebbing tide toward the Golden Gate Bridge. An overcast sky began to open up and beyond on the Pacific Ocean there appeared the telling detail of a faint blue […]

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