It was over so fast I wasn’t even sure it happened. I was at the window at the bank. There had been no line. I was separated from the teller by a ceiling-high sheet of glass. I noticed an industrial-strength can of Lysol on the counter next to her. In the nanosecond between the time…
The Walking Dead
The text that began my day read: “Please dear God tell me you’re still alive.” My friend Kim from back home. “Lord,” I’m thinking, “what natural California disaster have I missed this time? Earthquake? Fire? Kale shortage?” You get these sort of texts often in our wonderful/volatile state. But the next one proved even more…
New Car Smell
“There’s mud up there in the rainy season,” I hear myself saying. “And lots of it. So from now on, you’re driving us and that’s that.” Anyone who buys a new car knows the drill for the first few weeks – park a block away at the market, no eating in the vehicle, get it…
Panic in Post-nasal Park
I’m not a drug addict. I mean, not a professional one. You won’t find me in a burned-out Hollywood building waiting for some ne-er do well to bring my next red chicken fix. And even though most of the crowd I ran with in high school thought pot was the greatest thing ever, it always…
The Vortex
It all began with a tooth. Beginning of June. Cracked a filling. The only filling I have. My dentist, whom I adore because she loves to cuss and talk politics, holds a q-tip drenched in something so cold it’s smoking in front of her face and in her thick Iranian accent warns, “I’m going to…
Abbot Kinney
The partner LOVES crowds. I don’t. If we both get blown to smithereens in some random terrorist bombing you know who to blame. The annual Abbot Kinney Street Festival in Venice, so named for a famous conservationist, has been a part of the local scene since God was, like, nine. And I’d never been. For…