After spending an awesome night in Agua Dulce (best known for being the shooting location for many of the Star Trek Original Series episodes) with SFX artist and author Mike McCarty, I sped down the hill into L.A. My intention was to have lunch with old friends Cody Goodfellow and John Skipp. Eunice had introduced me to Cody years ago and we’ve been friends since. While I’ve also been friends with Skipp, I have to admit that I’ve always had a fan boy love for him and his work, especially after Splatterpunk, which sort of changed my whole idea of horror and what it could be back when I first started writing.
Although getting near where Skipp lived was relatively simple thanks to light traffic and the GPS, that same GPS made it so that it took me 20 minutes to get the last 2000 feet. See, Skipp lives up on a hill in Eagle Rock, with more switchbacks than an Appalachian interstate highway. The problem seemed to be that the margin of error for the GPS was greater than the warren of streets I was driving up and down. Even though I must have backtracked a dozen times, with the same old lady walking a poodle giving me the stinkeye each time I passed like I was an ex-Mormon for Satan Drug Dealer, my GPS eventually came through. Soon I found myselt at Skipp’s.
I won’t share the address, but it had a great view of the canyons of L.A. and the downtown skyline. Skipp’s writing space was about perfect, opening up onto a killer deck. Then I met Veronica Hart, the owner of the house. Beautiful and gracious, I didn’t recognize her. Veronica was a big deal in the 1980s breaking men’s hearts(she's still a big deal). She’s since retired from her beginnings and moved on to other things. We were invited to a ceremony tomorrow where a friend of hers was to be married to the moon. Lots of booze, revelry and singing was to ensue. Only in L.A. I might just go because it sounds like fun.Soon Cody arrived and we went down the hill to a local joint called The Bucket, where we met Rocket (Jesse). I guess she was on L.A. Ink last week (episode 9 Rock and Ink) with her twin sister getting tattoos. She’s also a rock guitarist, drives a challenger, and gave me props for driving the evil red charger. We had a pitcher of Negro Modelo and burgers. At Skipp’s urging, I had the mushroom burger and oh my god there can’t be any more mushrooms left in the state of California. Just amazing.
So we talked for another hour or so, then had to head back. Our major concern was that we’d get stuck in traffic going to West L.A. Normally it isn’t an issues with enough time, but the Prez was coming to Glendale later this afternoon and we didn’t want to get caught in his wake. So, we all
headed in our own directions.
Now I’m killing time at a Coffee Bean on the corner of Sunset and Argyle. I’m sharing the table with a homeless man who is staring intently at a list of winning lottery numbers and picking his teeth. Whoops. He just adjusted his junk. So nice. Thanks for sharing.The signing is in three hours. Should be awesome. I feel fortunate to be signing at Book Soup. I can’t wait.
More later.
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