Sunday, February 28, 2010

Waterfalls in Tennessee

We saw this waterfall in a weird state park in Tennessee. It was a nice trip, but my favorite part of it was spent hiking outside the park in a wilderness called The Great Gulf. One nice thing about this area was that--at least at the time (2007)--the hemlock wooly adelgid had not reached this section of the Cumberland Plateau, and the hemlock trees were free of infestation and completely healthy.

I took this photo from a very high vantage point. But actually these waterfalls were pretty high. (I took this in the midst of a truly horrid drought, so water levels were extremely low.) Despite appearances, these falls were about seventy feet in height.

I continue to work on the current novel. It's coming along in quick order and I have to say that I'm so far happy with the work.

Saturday, February 27, 2010

Various Photos of Joshua Tree National Park

The following are just random photos that we took on our day-trip to Joshua Tree National Park. Some are from outside the park, the rest are things that we saw within the park borders.


This was part of a truly vast wind farm that covers miles and miles and miles of territory in and around Desert Hot Springs.

My first look at some truly big western mountains. Not the biggest ones, of course, but some of the larger peaks around southern California. Bigger, of course, than anything we have here in the Southeastern USA.

Obligatory photo at the park entrance sign.

Carole walking along the trail to Barker Dam.

Beside the little lake. The first time that it's had water in over a year, according to the park ranger we spoke to.

Carole took this one of me at the dam itself.

Ancient petroglyphs at a rocky overhang along the trail.

I had to have a portrait taken with one of the Joshua trees.

And of course Carole could not keep me from scrambling up on the boulders and rocks.

One of the few wild animals we saw in the park. These little ground squirrels were begging for food at the Keys Point overlook. We didn't feed them anything.

Detail of a Cholla cactus. I was careful not to get stuck.

A self-portrait I took on one of my lone hikes while Carole waited at the trailhead.

The well-named Split Rock where we stopped to have a picnic lunch.

Carole took this one of my just before we left the park. There was a vast grove of these plants at the flat lands below the higher country in the northern part of the park.

Friday, February 26, 2010

Joshua Tree National Park Panoramas

Here are more panoramas that I stitched together from photos on our journey through Joshua Tree National Park. We drove through the park, North to South. The northern part of the park gets more rainfall than the southern section and is quite different in flora, fauna, and in elevation. The southern section is also quite lower than the northern section.

Frankly, I don't care for the desert. I know that some people love looking at stark desert scenes, but they don't generally appeal to me. Instead, I get fairly frightened when I look out at the desert. You can freaking die of thirst in the desert. I'd rather not do that.

However, that said, there is beauty to be found in such places. Carole and I were both impressed with the views and the changing landscapes at we traveled around the park. I didn't get a lot of time to hike there, so we'll go back again some day and I'll make sure that I have more time to spend there hiking and scrambling around on the peaks. But I'll make sure that I go back in the winter, as I did this time. I have an aversion to suffering from dehydration.


The stream from the spillway from Baker Dam.

This was in a canyon area near Barker Dam. Wonderful scenery and lots of the Joshua Trees for which the park is named.

I took this one from a ledge above Keys Point, the highest spot to which you can drive in the park (about 5,100 feet above sea level). The San Andreas fault is plainly visible in the flatlands far below.

This is Ryan Mountain, the only mountain that I was able to hike in the park. On a cool day it's an easy 1.5 mile hike to the summit.

A huge rock formation on the flank of Mount Ryan.

View along the road as we entered the southern and much drier section of the park.

This was a vast stand of Cholla cactus. The woman who described these plants to us at the visitors center had both Carole and me scared witless of them by the time we reached the trail through the cholla cactus garden. We hiked through it, but were pretty careful along the way. We avoided the spines.

Not long before we got to the end of our drive. The scenery was hideously arid.

Carole hiking toward a moist area of the park that supports a small oasis. There is a spring here which doesn't quite reach the surface, but which provides enough moisture for these enormous California fan palms.

This was the last spot where we stopped before leaving the park. If I go back, I've vowed to climb the mountain on the left of the photo.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

LaBrea Tar Pits and Page Museum

Carole and I really enjoyed the LaBrea Tar Pits and the related museum. One really cool thing was that huge explosions of gas would erupt from the tar and into the layer of water above the pits. I tried to catch one of the big eruptions, but never could capture one. But I did get a couple of smaller outgassings.
The museum is packed with fossils that have been excavated from the pits. There are active excavations going on now and important finds are still being made. The paleontologists were at work tinkering away on a mammoth that they have nicknamed "Zed". His scapula and femur were being processed in the lab while we were there.
One of the most common fossils are of Dire wolves. This is a display consisting purely of dire wolf skulls.
And this is how they process the excavation. A block of tar/earth is hacked out of the ground and raised to the surface where the fossils are carefully worked free of the matrix. I was impressed at the size of the blocks of tar that are being hauled out of the deep excavation areas.

Fossil skeletons of a mature and an immature mastodon pulled out of the pits.


One of the smaller sloth species once found in the area.

A short-faced bear. These were huge. They were the largest bears ever known. They're extinct, now, except for the closely related Spectacled bear of South America which is much, much smaller and also in danger of extinction due to human encroachment on its range. Behind the bear skeleton is that of a full grown extinct horse for a size comparison.

Here I am with a life-size sculpture of a fully grown Short-face bear. Yes, they were enormous predators. They were likely very fleet runners with long legs.

An exterior shot of the Page Museum. Highly recommended and only a $7 admission fee for adults! What a deal!

Watch where you step! Not poop, but upwellings of asphalt/tar can be found in the lawn around the museum.



Wilshire Boulevard runs right beside the tar pits. (The singing in the background was a live performance by a guy singing for his supper. He was pretty good.)



More later...





Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Tar Pits

No time for a detailed blog today. But here's a photo from our visit to the Page Museum at the Labrea Tar Pits on Wilshire Boulevard. An amazing place, and quite possibly the highlight of our trip to LA (not counting meeting friends).

Monday, February 22, 2010

Signing

The signing event for THE BLEEDING EDGE was phenomenal. Many hundreds of fans showed up. Sales were fantastic! I got to meet so many nice people and we autographed copies of the book for everyone who bought them. Many people bought multiple copies as an investment. I think they'll do well.

Here's a photo Carole took of me with several of the other contributors to the anthology:

In order from far left, front row (seated): Ray Bradbury, Norman Corwyn, George Clayton Johnson, John Shirley. Back row (standing) Unknown dude who had nothing to do with the anthology, James Robert Smith (in red shirt), Jason Brock (editor/publisher), Cody Goodfellow, John Tomerlin, Lisa Morton, Earl Hamner Jr., William F. Nolan (waving).

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Charlie

Yeah. We went to Hollywood. We saw Grauman's Chinese Theater, etc. This dude looking and acting and moving like Charlie Chaplin was NOT wearing a mask. He was wearing makeup and was quite convincing. We gave him some money for the photos I took.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Joshua Tree National Park

Self portrait taken yesterday in Joshua Tree National Park. The place was fantastic! I'll post details when I return from California.

Friday, February 19, 2010

Don't Ask!

I got these photos of various soldierly types from the comedy site Black and WTF. You have to wonder what goes on in those barracks.

Don't ask!

Don't Tell!

Capt. Lecter.


Jilli Dog!

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Waterfalls in Tennessee

We saw this waterfall in a weird state park in Tennessee. It was a nice trip, but my favorite part of it was spent hiking outside the park in a wilderness called Scotts Gulf. One nice thing about this area was that--at least at the time (2007)--the hemlock wooly adelgid had not reached this section of the Cumberland Plateau, and the hemlock trees were free of infestation and completely healthy.

I took this photo from a very high vantage point. But actually these waterfalls were pretty high. (I took this in the midst of a truly horrid drought, so water levels were extremely low.) Despite appearances, these falls were about seventy feet in height.

I continue to work on the current novel. It's coming along in quick order and I have to say that I'm so far happy with the work. And Carole and I are off to Los Angeles!

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Five Ladies

Also when I was a kid I learned to love the quirkier actresses who I'd see on the screen. These were women who were accomplished at their craft, but who were not classic beauties in the normal sense. Still, I found these ladies overwhelmingly attractive, and I still do. For the most part they were never "stars", and their careers, at best, held flashes of what we normally consider success. They were there for a while and then gone. But I really liked watching them as a young fellow, and I look for their performances wherever I can.

The first time I saw Sandy Dennis was in the movie UP THE DOWN STAIRCASE. I don't know what it was about her, but even at that age (I couldn't have been more than nine or ten) I found her very attractive. She set the stage for my attraction to quirkier women.

A woman of the 1960s and early 70s who I thought was a truly beautiful woman was Susan George. My pals at the time thought that I was crazy. "She has bad teeth!" and "Her eyes are weird!" Or similar comments would ensue if I mentioned how good looking I thought she was. So I began to keep my thoughts to myself. She was a real beauty to my way of thinking.

Joan Greenwood was another actress I first saw when I was really young. But again, whatever it was about her, she pretty much pushed all my buttons and closed all my circuits. I found everything about her completely hot--her voice, the way she moved, the delivery of her lines. Yeah, I think I wanted to bone her before I knew what that meant.

Barbara Harris is an actress that I found completely attractive. Not in the way one finds Claudia Cardinale attractive. But in a more subtle manner. She's always interesting to watch and she sometimes makes my heart melt.

I suppose Karen Black comes the closest to the model of classical beauty of all of my favorite actresses of my youth. I never had to deal with howls of derision from my buddies if I mentioned that I reckoned that she was hot. I've never figured out if she's all that great an actress, though. I was generally too busy thinking about how good looking she was. Plus, she made a lot of really crummy films. But what a babe.



Carole and I are getting ready to head out to Los Angeles for the signing event for the anthology THE BLEEDING EDGE. With so many authors from the book in attendance, it's now a ticket-only event. Pretty much sold out, I reckon.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Actors Tough Enough to be Hemingway's Pal

There's always a place for the genuine bad ass in Hollywood. And I'm not talking about some wuss actor who can pretend to be a tough guy. I'm talking about the guys who really are tough, who were tough. The guys who weren't completely pretending to beat the shit out their opponents when they were outnumbered.

The following are my list of the toughest of the tough. The real bad asses. Ernest Hemingway would have respected these guys:

Steve McQueen, the #1 tough guy in all of Hollywood history, as far as I'm concerned. Certified cool.

Yeah, Robert Mitchum was a close second. He beat the shit out of Marines in real life.

You had to like Lee Marvin. He really was a Marine and got shot in the ass by machine gun fire in Saipan. Most of his platoon was killt, but not Marvin. Yeah, that's tough.

Hell. Anthony Quinn. He was siring babies when he was in his seventies. And playing the great god Zeus around that time. It fit. As a young man he boxed professionally to earn extra money and was friends with Frank Lloyd Wright. Well, shit! It just cain't get much cooler than that!

Jack Palance. Yeah, one tough bastard. He was once 15-0 as a heavyweight pro boxer with 12 knockouts. He finally lost a close decision to a ranked contender and called it quits and was drafted. Burned in a training accident as a paratrooper, he had reconstructive surgery on his face which left him with the gaunt look we came to know on screen. The funniest thing I ever saw in a movie was a fight between him (as Toriance) and Charlton Heston (as Ed Bannon)--we were supposed to believe that Cheston could beat Palance. Right. For Palance, that was some real acting.

Well, I have to include a couple of modern actors. I don't think I need to elaborate too much here with Nick Nolte. Shit. Yeah, we've all had a laugh at his arrest mug shot. OK, OK--it's funny. But nobody as honest as this guy can be anything other than a total badass. He's got my vote for that. Damned good actor, too.

Sean Penn is not only one of our great modern actors, he's also got a toughness that's not just projected. It's real. Has to be. It takes guts to go against the grain of the status quo, which he does frequently. Viva Chavez, baby!