L.A. Man: Profiles from a Big City and a Small World
The O. Henry Prize Stories 2016
We Dropped a Bomb on You: The Best of Slake I-IVNot Dead Yet: The Novel as Lifeline
Originally published in the LA Weekly I read and I read and I read.I read like Forrest Gump ran, because I didn’t know what else to do or where else to go. He went running. I went reading. Novels mostly. The supposedly dead form. The only thing deader than poetry, or so the joke goes. […]
Who’s That Girl? Lauren Weedman’s Search for Home
Originally published in the LA Weekly, 2007 “DID YOU EAT MY NAPKIN?” asks Lauren Weedman when I return from dousing myself with cold water in the bathroom. No, but it’s a fair question seeing as how I have eaten all of our bread, plus the calamari-in-marinara-sauce appetizer, my chicken ravioli, some of the better bits […]
Citizen Beck
Originally published September 27, 2006 in the LA Weekly When I moved here 10 years ago, Beck’s Odelay was a constant companion, like the sun, the smog and the Tapatío sauce in which I’d drown my tacos. Being a newbie, it seemed necessary to me that I digest Odelay, in the same way that other […]
Leaving Home
Originally published in the LA Weekly COUNT ME AMONG THOSE WHO WOKE UP on November 3 and thought: secession! My turn toward the idea that California should secede from the Union was based on some bedrock logic that my father used to admonish me with as he suspiciously eyed my derelict teenage friends: You can […]
The Malloy Brothers Conspiracy
Originally published in the LA Weekly THE HILLS ARE THERE in front of us, the sun behind, and he’s getting smaller and smaller, framed by the burnishing light, the water, the sand, the hills. I remember for a moment how much beauty is still left in this world. And now here’s my wave, lifting me […]
Tapping the Source
Originally published in the LA Weekly THE QUEST I have to start with Kem Nunn because Kem Nunn is where this started for me, just about a decade ago. At the time, I was living near Vail, Colorado, chasing powder on a snowboard and writing a novel that tried to portray that fleeting sensation of being […]
Stecyk – Father of the Now
Originally published in the New Times Los Angeles Surf, skate and street-art legend Craig Stecyk spawned the “extreme” generation, but these days he’s an absentee dad. Click here to read the article originally published in the New Times: Stecyk – Father of the Now
The Ghosts of Dogtown
Originally published in the LA Weekly THEY PROBABLY DON’T KNOW THEY’RE ripping on holy ground, but it holds out the promise of something sacred for them just the same. “We’re 27. We’re too old to run from the law anymore,” says the shorter of the two. Both are dressed in khakis, white tees and flat […]
Wet
Originally published in the LA Weekly. A version of this story was included in the anthology Naked:Writers Uncover The Way We Live On Earth. EVERY NOW AND THEN, you are given an opportunity to face your demons. I’m talking about the aspects of your psyche that when on display can reduce you to a […]
