at the monument

It's almost 1am and I'm at Keyes View in the Joshua Tree National park, posting from my iPhone. I'm looking down at an awesome view of am orange glowing city below me. The full moon is bright enough to read by.

There's a bit of haze in the air, so the view is not crystal clear, but it's still awesome. If I can find a motel with Internet tonight I'll post pics. If not you get to wait

Keyes View

IMG_5762
Originally uploaded by shadowink.

Keyes View, in Joshua Tree National Park, looking down on Palm Springs and more.

Salton Sea Hotel

Salton Sea Hotel
Originally uploaded by shadowink.

An abandoned hotel at the shore of the Salton Sea.

See the full set here

I can has Alzheimers?`

I forgot stuff in Atlanta. Stuff like a razor and shaving cream. So I went to CVS in LA to buy replacements.

I forgot that stuff in LA, so I get to go to another CVS to buy more replacements.

Also, I brought a pair of boots so I could run around in the desert. At home, I have two pair of identical boots: the hiking-in-the-wilderness boots, and the clubbing-in-the-city boots. Same kind of boots, just one is intended to get dirty. Somehow, I managed to bring the left one from each set...

loooong day

532 miles in 24 hours. I shot in Joshua Tree last night, then crashed. Hotels where the "high speed wireless" is slower than my iPhone are the suck.

Today I drove south through Joshua Tree (pretty!) then around the Salton Sea (stinky!). I found an awesome abandoned hotel to shoot in. I drove around the whole thing and didn't find much else. Then I headed back up across Joshua Tree again. I think tonight will be spent drinking rum and coke in my hotel room.

Did I mention you can buy liquor in the drug store in California? Well, you can. I was tempted to buy a bottle of 12 year old single malt at Rite Aid just so I could say I did.

Pictures to come, if I'm not too lazy.

creativity

I'm coining a new phrase. "Porcupine buggery" is a term for an act that, in theory, should result in a positive outcome, but in reality will result in a lot of pain.

"Everyone keeps insisting I vote in this fall's election, but I think it's a load of porcupine buggery"

Californavigation

One of the things about driving around the greater Los Angeles area is that every street sounds familiar. Some of them are obvious, like Sunset Boulevard or Mulholland Drive. Others are harder to place, like Crenshaw. The name sounds familiar, but did I hear it as a line of dialog in LA Confidential, or was it a line in a Dr Dre song?