The sounds of a barely passable collection of mostly nonsense winding down to nothing have finally ceased.
© Pseudocognitive
Incomplete rants, bad photography, mediocre haiku, interrupted musings, and other products of a severely limited attention span.
Showing posts with label Northern California. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Northern California. Show all posts
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Monday, January 2, 2012
Babs Delta Diner in Suisun City: Way better than Petaluma
I've never been to Babs' on a weekday. I assume that from Monday through Friday the spot is occupied mainly by locals and commuters. I will discuss the commuters first, to get them out of the way, as I do not enjoy thinking about people who are rewarded materially for all the wrong reasons. Do you detect some bias? Good.
Most of these commuters wear suits and drive German vehicles designed to let the rest of us know what miserable existences we endure since we don't have gold dust rubbed into walnut surrounding our instrument clusters. They read about Wall Street and hatch their little intra-office intrigues while they eat, and then they bluster off to the southwest so they can sit in Bay Bridge traffic while they shave their smarmy, entitled faces. Maybe their Muffy or their Biff stays home for the kids, but more likely they drop the offspring at daycare (where the teachers likely know more about their children's development and personalities than they do), return 12-14 hours later (after happy hour), and make grand and condescending entrances. Their lives are important, and they want to make sure you know it.
Maybe the real locals think the commuters are idiots, and if they do, I agree with them. If I had to choose one group or another to hang out with, it would be the locals--the people who work for a living and the retirees. Not the retired transplants in their polyester pants and Winnebagos. A Winnebago killed the oldest oak tree in Chico back in '76 and I am still mad at them, except for Jack Rebney, the Winnebago Man. He's not a spandex-waisted blowhard. He brings it with a reckless train wreck abandon and to hell with those nimrods who want to claim otherwise.
The true locals live and work in the area, and if they are retired, it is from honest jobs not more distant than ten or fifteen miles from the Suisun City waterfront. They hunt and they fish. They know how to bait a hook with a blood worm or pile worm without getting bit, and if they wear Dickies they do so in an honest manner.
Don't get me wrong, these locals are far from perfect themselves. Some, but by no means all, of them are hopelessly rigid in their desire to let Fox "News" tell them what to think, but a decent conversation can generally be had as long as you avoid politics. And anyway, there are plenty of them who don't fit that mold.
Everyone in town goes to Babs' place. It's more than a hangout; its a social hub, but not in that phony southern California way that seems more and more widespread as people flee northward from LA (they've stolen most of our water and now they want to co-opt our regional culture, I guess). These customers are real people.
-----------------------------------
EDIT: Sadly, Babs closed her doors. I do not know what occupies the space now, but I severely doubt it holds a candle to what Babs gave to her customers.
Meta-EDIT: Breaking news!!!! Babs may indeed be OPEN. As in OPEN AGAIN, or STILL OPEN. Trying to confirm details. Stay tuned, my tens of semi-loyal readers.
Super-Meta EDIT:
Babs sold the place. It no longer exists. There's no longer any reason to stop in Suisun City. Ride through it on your way down the old road to Cordelia.
© Pseudocognitive
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Chasing the Zodiac, Part II: The anniversary of the Lake Herman Road murders
 |
| Mt. Diablo, from the scene of Zodiac's first attack. Click for larger image © Pseudocognitive |
I wrote the following report after visiting the scene on the 40th anniversary in 2008 and amended it the following September. This report holds no new information of interest to anyone who’s followed the Zodiac murders with any significant level of attention over the last several years. It’s simply a description of my own experiences visiting one of the crime scenes. This is the second part of a series on Zodiac (read Part 1 first). The sequence of these two reports is opposite the order of the actual crimes because this is the order in which I visited the scenes. Before I begin, allow me to restate in no uncertain terms that this tale in no way seeks to celebrate the acts of such a depraved waste of oxygen as the Zodiac killer, nor is it an obsessive or misguided attempt to "investigate" the crimes.
My brother and I set out early on the morning of the 40th anniversary of the first murders that can be indisputably linked to Zodiac. We planned to get over to the site, take a few pictures, and be gone before the crowds who take this stuff far more seriously started showing up. I exclude myself from the ranks of the truly obsessed because my case is one of mild and intermittent manifestation. Almost all of my doctors (and most of the time, my wife) agree with that assessment. Once again, however, I warn you that this kind of thing isn’t for everyone, and I am fully aware of the fact that some of you may find it rather bizarre that a person who’s been drawing breath for over half a century spends any time at all visiting a site of an infamous crime. All I will say in my own defense is that I know it’s a bit strange, but I only have a high degree of interest for this specific case (for reasons described in the first installment of this series), and I do not allow this mild obsession to interfere with real life. Still, I’ll grant you, it is offbeat.
Enough already with the apologetic tone. Stop watching Hollywood movies that depict such things. Put down your true crime novels. Turn off those shows on A&E like “The First 48.” Sell your Stephen King books at a garage sale. Then tell me I’m weird.
On the frigid night of December 20, 1968, Zodiac killed high school sweethearts David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen in a little dirt turn-out on Lake Herman Road, about 2/3 of the way from Vallejo to Benicia.
 |
| Faraday |
 |
| Jensen |
Zodiac approached the victims–who were seated in David Faraday’s car–on foot. He shot and killed both young people, and the crime provoked intense media attention from the start. You can Google this and get tons of hits, so I won't chronicle all the details. All you really need to know is that on a dark, cold winter night 40 years ago, a psychopath murdered two young people on a lonely road.
 |
| Faraday's Rambler - zodiackiller.com |
That road and the surrounding countryside have changed little since 1968. No development has occurred along that stretch, and some of the original ranch houses stand exactly as they did before. The turn-out where the victims parked in David Faraday’s Rambler is also pretty much the same, save for the addition of a guard rail, a few traffic warning signs, and a new gate across the gravel road that leads to an undisclosed location. Pictured above is the scene in 1968, the morning after the murders. Note the location of the victim vehicle.
 |
| Same place, 40 years later (12/20/08). © Pseudocognitive |
 |
| Rambler had been parked near where the motorcycles are. Click for larger image © Pseudocognitive |
 |
Detective Les Lundblad at the crime scene the next day. zodiackiller.com |
Much has been written about this case over the years. Some of it is solid reporting that excludes or at least limits any groundless speculation, but a lot of it is sensationalistic tripe. Given the choice between a simple explanation and one so convoluted that it may attract the attention of a former practitioner of editorial cartoonerism and prompt him to write a yellow-jacketed book that will sell millions and millions of copies despite its many factual errors and outright fabrications, I choose the former. That is, unless and until I write my own book, at which time I might decide to shift strata a bit, since nobody buys books that promote reason and judgment. Here’s one explanation for why Zodiac chose this particular crime scene (besides the obvious reasons that the road is dark and semi-secluded and young people in the area were known to park at night in its turn-outs): Supposedly, Zodiac had a fascination with Montaña del Diablo, and that very place is readily visible from the Lake Herman Road site. Somebody came up with the idea that this symbol,
 |
which Zodiac drew on his famous Halloween card to San Francisco Chronicle reporter Paul Avery,
 |
matches up with the profile of Mt.Diablo. Let’s check: |
 |
| © Pseudocognitive |
So much for that. Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
We left the Faraday/Jensen site shortly thereafter and rode over to Fresno Street in Vallejo, stopping by the house once owned by the man whom many still consider to be the best suspect among those identified as potential Zodiacs, Arthur Leigh Allen. Whereas Graysmith’s second Zodiac book, “Zodiac Unmasked,” and the 2007 film “Zodiac” portray Allen
as the guy, there’s no physical evidence linking him to any of the crimes.
In fact, his DNA did not match that which was found on one of the stamps stuck on a confirmed Zodiac letter. Still, there are intriguing facts that seem to point to him. His status as a potential Zodiac notwithstanding, Allen, who claimed that law enforcement hounded him mercilessly and who died of natural causes over a decade ago, was a very bad guy. The crimes for which he was imprisoned were sufficiently heinous to dissuade us from having any sympathy for him whatsoever. In other words, the world’s a better place without him.
In fact, his DNA did not match that which was found on one of the stamps stuck on a confirmed Zodiac letter. Still, there are intriguing facts that seem to point to him. His status as a potential Zodiac notwithstanding, Allen, who claimed that law enforcement hounded him mercilessly and who died of natural causes over a decade ago, was a very bad guy. The crimes for which he was imprisoned were sufficiently heinous to dissuade us from having any sympathy for him whatsoever. In other words, the world’s a better place without him.
I didn’t want to bother the current occupants of the house, so I parked very briefly in front and took a couple of photos. These do not appear here. As I was framing the final shot, my brother advised me that someone was peering out at me, and I observed what appeared to be a brindle pit bull of placid affect silently watching through a big picture window. At that point I began to feel guilty for intruding, so I packed away my camera, put on my helmet and gloves and rode off down the street, expecting that my brother was on his way as well. He did not follow, however. I figured he was writing in that little memo book he carries, the one in which he has recorded every last drop of petrol he’s fed the red and chrome Triumph Rocket III beast, so I stopped and waited. What he was actually doing was talking to the owner of the house, who had come out to move his car down the street in order to produce a less cluttered photographic milieu.
That’s the sequel. I am not proud of stopping in front of dead Allen’s ex-house (I must take steps to ensure that act will serve as the absolute limit of my obsession), for, although I was there for only three or four minutes, I know exactly how I would respond if someone stopped on the street and began taking pictures of my house. I wouldn’t move my car to give the photographer a better view, that’s for sure. I suppose the guy figured that it goes with the territory of living in a home once occupied by a man suspected of being the Zodiac killer, and he didn’t seem bothered by any of it, so no harm, no foul, I reckon.
After we finished in Vallejo, city of one cop for every 100,000 residents, we dodged 4-wheeled bullets on I-80 to Fairfield, ate some tasty giant cheeseburgers at Nation’s on West Texas Street, and then slabbed on home to beat the cold. I still feel somethin’ in my marrow, though, and it ain’t exactly warm.
• • •
Update: Ten months later
The number nine is or is not important in Zodiac symbology, according to one or two things I may or may not have read. That made September 19th a perfect day to lose my ambitions for a longer ride to the coast (instead of allowing people to believe that I simply lacked the endurance for a longer trip due to my characteristic idiopathic slackerdom) and instead revisit one of the sites covered in previous reports. And to try out the new Nikon D5000, which had languished in its box, unexamined, ever since the big brown truck delivered it the week before. And because a major national travel magazine had expressed interest in paying me to write a series of hastily written semi-factual articles. The preceding statement is not true.
The number nine is or is not important in Zodiac symbology, according to one or two things I may or may not have read. That made September 19th a perfect day to lose my ambitions for a longer ride to the coast (instead of allowing people to believe that I simply lacked the endurance for a longer trip due to my characteristic idiopathic slackerdom) and instead revisit one of the sites covered in previous reports. And to try out the new Nikon D5000, which had languished in its box, unexamined, ever since the big brown truck delivered it the week before. And because a major national travel magazine had expressed interest in paying me to write a series of hastily written semi-factual articles. The preceding statement is not true.
There was nothing of interest to be found at the Berryessa Zodiac site, which was expected yet still disappointing, especially after I had gone through the trouble of persuading the friendly personnel staffing the gate to the camping area to let us in for free. The only item of note is that the place heretofore referred to as Zodiac Island is now a campsite. There’s a picnic table and BBQ pit right there at the scene of Zodiac's attack on 9/27/69. No replacement trees, 90-something degrees. Water level dropping to near subterranean levels. It was not an attractive place to set up camp. I will not show you any pictures of this place because it is now so utterly devoid of interest. Also on account of the fact that, in my usual state of impatience-inspired idiocy, I forgot to change the factory default setting for JPEG quality on the D5000 and everything was shot at “Normal” instead of “Fine.” And because my efforts were not very productive that day anyway. I make no excuses. Except for the idiopathic malaise, ADD, and the heat. And a creeping sense of dread, because the next day was Monday Eve.
There’s no new Zodiac info in this addendum to the sequel to the report on Zodiac. That’s due partly to the fact that I have already explored the Zodiac deal to the point where there’s very little left to interest me, and mostly because the only reason I’m posting at all is to tell you that the best rib eye steak I have ever eaten is available a short distance south of Zodiac Island at Cucina Italiana. With pepper sauce, made with whole black peppercorns. And roasted fennel on the side, and all of the bread and really excellent Balsamic dipping stuff you want. Want to know just how good it really is? I’m sitting there, with my D5000 in the saddle bag just outside the window, and some guy comes in and says, “Stefano, I got a buck, dude! Come out and see it!!!” As the guy with the old “Good Chevrolet, Sacramento” license plate frame and Chef Stefano go out front, I’m thinking about the cool shots I could compose if I could talk the hunter into taking the deer out of the truck and propping him up on the seat of the Rocket III while my brother lies inert under the front wheel of the red behemoth. I’m starting to get motivated to put some effort into picture-takin’, but then I look back down at that rib eye and decide that nothing is gonna pry me away from it. It was that good.
With just the right level of attentiveness from Chef Stefano and his business partner Sharyn, we continued our excellent dining experience. I am telling you, I have never been disappointed by anything I have eaten at Cucina Italiana. Let the crotch-rocket riders patronize those places farther south and east—all they need is bread, sandwich meat, and beer and then they’re off on their next double-yellow scofflaw Team Berryessa adventure, like a flock of angry, buzzing mosquitoes. You want real food? Go see Chef Stefano.
On the ride home we gassed up the bikes and then observed the strange behavior of locals and travelers at the Chevron station at the east end of Winters. It is not rumored that this place has some significant connection with Zodiac lore. I just missed an opportunity to get a shot or two of Winters PD in the process stopping a red car with two occupants, but they were past my vantage point before I could raise the camera. All I have to show for my efforts is an unprintable snapshot of the physical environment. There was a dire warning inside the gas station, though:
 |
| © Pseudocognitive |
And that’s the word.¹
¹Apologies to S. Colbert.
 |
| © Pseudocognitive |
For detailed information about all of the Zodiac crimes, I recommend Tom Voigt’s ZodiacKiller.com. The discussion forum can be over the top at times and is best sampled as an entertained observer, but the information on the main site is extensive and well-organized.
.
© Pseudocognitive
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Mob captain's severed head found - Zodiac Killer involved?
The severed head of reputed mob captain Ralph “Ralphie” Cifaretto was found in a steel drum behind a gas station in this sleepy northern California farm town earlier today by seekers of Richard Brautigan’s unique insights into the road habits of sheep. Police refused to speculate on Cifaretto’s viability as a Zodiac Killer suspect except to say that Ralphie would have been 17 at the time of the first Zodiac murders. Zodiac Internet “investigators” were not deterred, but they are some crazy motherfuckers.
Editor's Note: Please understand that the term "crazy motherfuckers" as applied here is not an insult, nor does it necessarily imply actual craziness. For one thing, "crazy" is not a medical term. Neither is "insane" (it's a legal term). Second, we too are crazy motherfuckers, each in our own way. We obsess on millionaires who wouldn't give us the time of day as they throw, carry, and kick a pigskin around a grass field, for example. All of us have our little obsessions, and as long as they harm no one and don't rule our lives, who are we to judge someone else for being a slightly different type of crazy motherfucker than we are? You'd do well to heed this advice: Judge ye not other crazy motherfuckers. Keepeth your own shit in line.
© Pseudocognitive
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Part V: The Zodiac Killer is born. Self esteem in 1968. Good fishermen don’t steal from the dead.
The road is made of dirt and gravel, and it runs south from the little turn-out on Lake Herman Road where Zodiac claimed his first victims in the cold waning minutes of Autumn in 1968. There are many stories about what might wait for you down this road, and most of them are as authentic as Carol Doda’s breasts. That is, they contain a lot of artificial filling, but are held in place by just enough truth to get the job done. It is within this zone of jiggling, fleshy semi-reality that we must complete our examination of Zodiac’s motives for his heinous acts. This little dirt road on the outskirts of Benicia is a good place to do it, but first you have to get here.
 |
| Click for larger image |
Zodiac left the River City determined to lighten his mood. Cousin Biff's self esteem was always sore, like it had just finished passing a stool of large caliber and insufficient moisture content. Biff never acknowledged this, since no one in 1968 even knew what self esteem was. On this occasion, he’d taken that permanently negative head-state and turned it on Zodiac, castigating him repeatedly for his unfamiliarity with power lawnmowers. Zodiac had been raised on the high plains of the Dakotas and knew only of the scythe and the goat as methods of grass management. He endured Biff’s taunts for as long as he could, then made as if to kill him with his boning knife. Biff fled to the neighbors’, and Zodiac took his car, a fine, ten year old glossy black Cadillac.
Zodiac drove that car in a style of wild, anti-cognitive abandon, later employed by Charlie Sheen as he piloted the craft that carried his boss, Mike Huckabee, to little country grocery stores and juke joints all across the south. This whip was a mighty fine automobile, and its twin dorsal fins cleaved the hot, dry air like glistening machetes slicing through beef jerky. Speeding south on Franklin toward the county line, he thought he just might outrace his demons for good this time.
 |
| Click for larger image |
 |
| Rio Vista Bridge |
Bob’s home was under the Highway 12 bridge on the banks of the deceptively languid Sacramento. He had an old pink lawn chair and some fishing equipment and a good view of the river.
What he didn’t have anymore was his .38, having lost it on a bet with some bikers from Cordelia. Zodiac took advantage of the opportunity, putting four slugs from his grandpop’s Army Colt right into Bob’s smooth forehead. Damn, but didn’t that old man have an unnaturally smooth forehead before he got shot.
Afterward, Zodiac took Bob’s fishing rod over to the pier and caught a few undersized stripers, which he kept to eat later. Unbothered by the conscience he didn’t have, he saw no difference between killing a harmless old man, breaking fish and game laws, and indexing the dominance hierarchy of gulls as they quarreled over bits of tuna sandwiches tossed skyward by a screaming mob of first graders shepherded by two harried teachers.
I dare you.
Zodiac became Zodiac when he killed Bob and found an old, wrinkled horoscope in the dead man’s back pocket: “You will see a mountain, cloak a visage, master the photovoltaic arts, quarter a circle, and eat a mango.”
© Pseudocognitive
Friday, December 16, 2011
Non-Redacted Zodiac Killer Profile Part II: He’s dead, Jim
 |
| Lake Berryessa Zodiac crime scene |
Zodiac is dead. If you cling to the hope that he’s alive and you might be the person who catches him, I suggest that you get comfortable in your mom’s moldy basement, stock up on ganja and DiGiorno, and get a new keyboard to replace that one with the overused CAPS LOCK key. If I have a few spare minutes, I’ll look for you on the various
fora every December 20 and see what you’re up to.
As I possibly described in part one of the profile, Zodiac is rumored to have had ties to a PETA precursor group somewhere in the high wheat country of western Kansas, perhaps very close to the small town of Holcomb. I got my start on the path to this tentative conclusion when I discovered a previously overlooked piece of evidence: Zodiac’s right Wing Walker shoe. I am not currently prepared to explain the circumstances of this discovery, as it may have been found on federal BLM land, but the shoe has been examined and authenticated by somebody in some agency someplace. Please remember that many to most of the statements herein are complete dreck. Zodiac was possibly terrified of small insects as a child. It has been suggested that it may have been the sight of scurrying creatures small enough to chew on his eardrums that did more than anything else to steer him toward his eventual fate. Each of his thumbs had a highly flexible metacarpal phalangeal joint. He ventured into two-bit seedy dives in the worst part of every town he passed through in order to hone his fighting skills. It was in one such place that he almost met his doom when the bartender shot at him point-blank with an old 10 gauge his grandpa had used to hunt geese out of season on Suisun Bay. The gun misfired.
 |
| A possible former Zodiac haunt in an undisclosed location |
 |
| Secret place in Rio Vista, thought by some to have an undefined role in the etiology of Zodiac's mental pathology |
There are tantalizing hints of Zodiac’s passage in the dry summer of 1960 through many places around the arid southwest. In Needles, California, which sits across the mighty Colorado from Arizona, there was later discovered, carved in the riverbank silt at the spot made famous by Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath,” a symbol eerily similar to the one Zodiac scrawled on his letters to Bay Area newspapers (and on the door of Bryan Hartnell’s Karmann Ghia). |
| This is rumored in many zones to be a former Zodiac hideout/staging headquarters. |
Returning to the actual time of Zodiac’s activities, if you will consult any 60′s era gas station map you will discover—with the aid of a ruler and pencil—that the driving distance from North M and Vine in Needles to the summit of Mt. Diablo is 555 miles. If you add that to the 111 miles from Washington and Cherry Streets in San Francisco to an unspecified spot alongside US 50 west of Cameron Park, you get 666 miles. These are possibly coincidences, but as hardwired pattern-seekers, you want to accept it, so I suggest that you do.
 |
| The gravel turn-out at the Lake Herman Road Zodiac crime scene. |
We could, under some circumstances, know incontrovertibly that Zodiac can definitely be placed in the Bay Area by 1961, perhaps. Legends of possibly unexplained phenomena involving gravitational anomalies, mysterious ice blue (or white or gray or silver or pearl-colored) pursuit cars skulking along dark roads, as well as several nearly-confirmed disappearances within a 50 mile radius of Samuel P. Taylor State Park from January 1955 to July 1967 tend to support this contention. This kind of behavior, according to several persons identifying themselves as experts, often escalates to homicide. That these incidents occurred within a nearly 8,000 square mile area over a twelve and-a-half year time frame just about nails it down. Additionally, the socio-chronological progression along a vaguely described continuum of moral permissiveness in that era set the stage for all kinds of undifferentiated behavioral permutations. The time was ripe, and by the end of this period, Zodiac was ready to take his twisted games to the ultimate level.
© Pseudocognitive
Monday, August 29, 2011
Zodiac Country: Lake Herman Road
Yeah, right here.
Coming soon: Zodiac, part 2. Read part one first.
© Pseudocognitive
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Not nailing down reality on Morgan Territory Road. And a vulture.
Morgan Territory Road snakes its way over dry ridge lines and through a brief respite of shady oak woodlands and past old chaw-cheeked rednecks fixing you with menacing but impotent stares from astride their half-dead tick magnets. After a final stretch lined by homes of millionaires, Morgan Territory joins the terminus of Marsh Creek Road--a more interesting path in its upper regions--and dumps you unceremoniously into the town of Clayton. Nothing happens in Clayton worthy of examination; in that regard it is almost worse than Petaluma.
A full examination of this road would cover a lot of ground, but I favor prosciutto-thin slices of real-space, and if you require more I suggest that you get some travel brochures or go to a blog that people actually read. I don't try to understand or describe a road's true nature (if there even is such a thing). It would accomplish nothing to emphasize any particular aspect of what I think it is, or what it says to me about our place in an impersonal cosmos, or how it relates to the Way of Ants Crawling on Oak Bark.
This turkey vulture did not want to leave Morgan Territory Road just to provide me with an opportunity to record him as he took to the air. I don't have a GoPro or any other mountable camera. Riding while holding an iPhone in one hand is stupid. This is what we have, then--a stubborn carrion eater, a fixed wide angle lens on a cell phone, and a road. Infer nothing else. Sometimes, the search for meaning renders it moot.
© Pseudocognitive
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Cheeseburger Club
Welcome to Five Guys. The first rule of Five Guys is: You do not cut in line. The second rule of Five Guys is: You DO NOT cut in line! Third rule of Five Guys: if someone yells “stop!”, goes limp, or taps out, you eat their food.
Apologies to Chuck Palahniuk and Jim Uhls.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Profiling the Zodiac Killer
I was recently asked by an unknown character to profile Zodiac; specifically, I was asked what I thought Zodiac's work background might have been. Having absolutely no formal training (but being a semi-frequent viewer of “Criminal Minds” and other entertaining yet unrealistic cop dramas), I naturally agreed to render my opinion. This analysis (although it is a complete fabrication) is at least as accurate as something that any other untrained person could come up with, so I feel vindicated already.
Zodiac could have been rejected for employment by the Montana Dept. of Corrections due to unknown factors and creeping suspicions still not spoken of by anyone in hushed tones, not even the regulars of the the Death-Delay Club near Missoula. He could’ve always wanted to be a correctional officer at Deer Lodge, and the rejection was rumored to have been a precipitating factor in his crimes. Long hours spent hauling bleating sheep to the rendering plant while listening to Jim Eason on the radio fueled his addiction to driving and forged in him a mental connection between piloting a vehicle and causing death. This was back in the celluloid age, of course, and his skill set reflected the times. He was an avid student of football strategy and was the first high school coach to pioneer the West Coast Offense, decades before anyone ever heard of Bill Walsh or his brother Joe. The warm smell of colitas did nothing to allay his suspicions that he was the beast and that steely knives would one day be driven home decisively. For this reason, he took up the cudgel and the mace and the longbow. I am certain there is some possibility that he used his considerable skills in Kyūdō to fish for carp in his estranged father’s pond under the cover of darkness and that this had very little to do with the eventual death of his father at the hands of a vagrant at N. Houston and Main in Dallas. It is also possibly likely that the Panamint Mountains held great allure for him or that he once coveted the jar that held the head of the legendary outlaw Joaquin Murrieta, shot by Harry Love. Knots were not his thing especially. He mastered only the half-hitch and balked at the granny. He was ambidextrous and ate beans from a can, worried open with a key to an old Karmann Ghia and time, lots and lots of time. He worked in highway construction and event planning and was, for a fortnight, a renowned surgeon who specialized in the excision of pilonidal cysts from the backsides of worthless hate-mongers. In short, as many others have previously concluded, he could have been anything or nothing or even an expert cartographer or USDA inspector or an organic bull testicle trader. Or maybe he was just a guy who built jet boats in his garage next door. The possibilities are not endless, but almost.
© Pseudocognitive
The ultimate fate of Charlie Sheen
I don’t give a damn about Charlie Sheen. For all I care, he can drop in on Chuck Manson at Corcoran and commiserate about the effects of lost influence—Manson will ratchet his glinting shrike’s eye over Sheen’s adam’s apple and wish for a pair of pinking shears. Charlie Sheen can stare at timorous apprentice chefs through night vision goggles as they prepare organic thimerosal-free potato pancakes for Jenny McCarthy. Jenny ought to be locked up in a deep cover North Korean maggot-gruel joint, not some soft Martha Stewart resort like the one Gibbs calls “Camp Cupcake.” Charlie can paddle a dinghy out past the 200 mile limit and cast his powder keg mindscape along the herring gull’s path and peer intently at the anemic krill below. He can enter a convenience store with a note and leave on a stretcher after an elderly woman decides she’s had enough self-infatuated putty-minded tough-guy-with-the-ladies stupidity for one day. Those purses are loaded with Eisenhower dollars.
Charlie can enhance his home rehab with sandpaper self-abuse, he can form a Dixie Mafia wannabe club with Gibson and Busey, he might kidnap mini schnauzers and lose money on the Cowboys-Vikings game and maybe go up against George Kennedy and stick his head up after getting fooled by a bad turkey imitation. Or he can have Don Meredith smear peanut butter on his license and eat it. I don’t care what the hell he does, as long as I don’t have to see his smarmy ass (or face) on a news update in the middle of a TV show I'm enjoying. Fade away, Charlie. Become as insensate as you are insensitive to the rights of others. Either that, or grow a pair and demonstrate a conscience. Eleven Mary Six, call the station.
© Pseudocognitive
Sunday, August 21, 2011
An unblinking eye rimmed with crusted road kill. A church. A V-Twin motorcycle.
Hitchcock’s “The Birds” was filmed here. In the town of Bodega, California, you will feel a sense of unease—either that or the serenity that comes from accepting the inevitable. Look up at the turkey vulture. He circles, cocking his smooth head, looking down at you with an unblinking eye rimmed with crusted road kill. This feathered dinosaur, this well-adapted carrion eater, this harsh unyielding avian judge of you—he’s just riding the thermals. For now.
Post and photos © Pseudocognitive
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Your Feets Too Big
One never knows, do one?
—The Immortal Fats Waller
Photo © Pseudocognitive All rights reserved, forever.
Bob’s bobber
Bob rides his bobber. He had some guy build it and now he finally gets to ride. He took off early from his briefcase job in a stifling high rise. He’s waitin’ on his patch he ordered special from some outfit in Hong Kong—twenty bucks on eBay. He intends to be one bad bobber-ridin’ Bob.
Post and photo © Pseudocognitive All rights reserved, forever.
The Iron Door Grill in Groveland, California
 | |
Rode into Groveland, took a snapshot from the saddle, over-sharpened it, posted it randomly. The end.
Post and photo © Pseudocognitive All rights reserved, forever.
Monday, August 15, 2011
Random snapshot of the day, again
Long-dead McCammon in Bodega, California, home of Hitchcock’s “The Birds”
Cut in two by a neighbor’s ax. Or trampled by a gang of mutinous mules. Or maybe it was the grippe. Or a ride-by shooting with cut-down shotguns. At least he died long before those avian fiends took over the town and started pecking out human eyes. No disrespect for the long-dead intended.
Post and photo © Pseudocognitive All rights reserved, forever.
Random snapshot of the day
A snapshot exhibits no artistic pretensions. It’s content to simply record the conditions in a particular place and time. Most of the pictures I take are snapshots.
This is the rail station in Jamestown, California, where the hired guns arrived in town in the 1952 film “High Noon.”
Post and photo © Pseudocognitive All rights reserved, forever.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
One Paragraph Town: Petaluma
 |
| No, this isn't a Prius. It's a Karmann Ghia, and for all I know it's headed to Berryessa. |
Petaluma has some interesting old buildings, but it's full of chicken feathers and Priuses. Any hints of nostalgia or dreams or similarly valued states are rendered moot by that peculiar mix of hubris, pseudo-friendliness and quiet despair so ubiquitous in small towns. The last time I rode through, the place produced in me a torpor that lingered until I reached the wide spot known as Valley Ford, on the way to Bodega. There, an old man named Pete recounted the time back in ’68 when he went into the diner and announced that if they served his eggs over-cooked just one more time he’d nail ‘em to the wall as a warning to others. Those eggs are still there. They were laid by chickens in Petaluma.
© Pseudocognitive
Addendum: In all fairness, I must make it clear that there are a few bright spots in that hellish little town, such as the various filming locations used in the George Lucas classic "American Graffiti." In addition, the city's lone refreshing counterpoint to the usual foul nature of the fowl business can be experienced by sampling the severely tasty free range birds at Petaluma Poultry.
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Meatball Photography
I like this picture. I selected it from thousands of others I have that range from very ordinary to downright bad (with the occasional exception). I used to shoot these pictures during brief stops on motorcycle rides within a 150 mile radius of home. The geographical limit was not imposed by an ankle monitor and parole officer, although my 99 year old grandmother was a parole officer for the State of California until her retirement in about 1975. It was and is a self-regulatory boundary that makes no sense to most observers.
In "M*A*S*H" (the Robert Altman film, not the TV series, which was okay for the first few seasons but went downhill fast when Trapper John left, Henry was killed en-route back to the States, and Hawkeye devolved into a sanctimonious caricature of Phil Donahue phony liberalism), they referred to their brand of intervention as "meatball surgery," a term that's been stuck in my head for decades. They operated on soldiers with horrific injuries under primitive conditions and did the best they could and then sent the survivors to a rear area for better treatment. I have used this as a metaphor for all kinds of completely unrelated processes throughout my life, mainly because once something gets into my head I can never, ever get it out of there. I call my style of picture-taking "meatball photography" because I do it with very basic gear under extreme time constraints. Once in a while, this method produces something that seems to be enhanced, rather than compromised, by my peculiar procedure. The gritty, contrasty qualities of the above photo were influenced by this method. It's a state of mind, I think. I want to really go off the deep end and make some connection to Steinbeck's peepholes and the perspective they provide on "...whores, pimps, gamblers and sons of bitches," in other words, "Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men." I'll avoid that particular exercise in grandiosity right now, though, and simply say that once in a while my fractious mental processes work to my benefit. I count myself lucky if that happens for maybe one shot in every thousand. That's why I like this particular picture - its imperfections mirror my own.
© Pseudocognitive
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)