Posts Tagged ‘Travel’
Universal Studios Fire Threatens MTV Movie Awards
I woke to the sound of a helicopter swooping what sounded like mere feet overhead. Moving towards the window of my hotel room, a column of black smoke billowed where the mountains used to be, then flattened like an anvil just a few hundred feet overhead. The air was cast a gauzy, grayish-orange. Four helicopters…
Read MoreWithout Love It Ain’t Much
Ok, so here’s my super-glamorous life on location at the 2008 MTV Movie Awards, part two. It’s 10:27. R.E.M. — my favorite band of, like, all time — is performing exactly 2.4 miles away at The Hollywood Bowl. For a minute, I considered jogging over there (Driving in L.A.? Not so fun.). And then I…
Read MoreGoodnight, Hollywood Boulevard
Invariably, every time an event like the 2008 MTV Movie Awards pops up, I’m on the receiving end of all sorts of comments about how cool, glamourous or sexy my job is. So let me set the record straight. True, I woke to the sun rising over Mountain Wilson. And yes, the air smells like…
Read MoreIt Never Rains In California (It Pours)
True, my life has unfolded differently than I might have planned (or dreamed). Tonight finds me at Universal Studios Hollywood (more Burbank than Hollywood, really), not on the road like my pals The Nadas or Raining Jane. Fortunately, though, I receive the occasional email from my rock ‘n roll pals. In fact, Raining Jane cellist,…
Read MoreYou Feel Like Home To Me
I blame Jason Walsmith. It was last June. The 30th, to be precise. My wife, Abbi, and I had flown into Iowa City that morning, then streaked westward on I-80. My pal, Josh Davis, was performing on the Authentic Records’ stage at the Des Moines Arts Festival when we pulled up to Western Gateway Park.…
Read MoreSuperman In Reverse
That was some serious Clark Kent shit. I left the Santa Monica office at 5:43, pointed my Nissan towards Temescal Gateway Park (as I’ve done so many times before), and reasoned with myself the entire way there. “If I get there by 6:30,” I thought, “I can run ’til 7:00. That’ll leave me an hour…
Read MoreYou Are The Star Tonight
Mulholland Drive follows the ridgeline of the Santa Monica Mountains from Hollywood westward all the way to the Pacific Coast Highway. The two-lane, meandering road was built in 1924 by a consortium of Hollywood Hills landowners hoping to turn a buck by bringing development to the Hollywood Hills. There’s David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive,” and Lee…
Read MoreRio Grande Vista
The Rio Grande River descends some 13,000 feet over the course of its 1885 miles journey from Southern Colorado to the Gulf of Mexico. I’ve crossed this, the third largest river in America, at Interstate 25 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, twice — on the return leg of my first cross-country road trip in 1990, and…
Read MoreI’ll Sleep When I’m Dead
I’m not sure it’s the Xanax, the exhaustion, the altitude, the soundtrack, or the odd, suspended-animation of transcontinental air travel, but something’s going on here. Suddenly, I feel immensly blessed. Sitting here in my exit row seat next to the galley soaring some 33,000 feet above the sun-bleached desert southwest, I feel like I’m in…
Read MoreThe Prince Of Tides
In my experience, most vacations yield a similar dividend. Whether one steps out of one’s experience for three days or three weeks, time off from one’s daily routine inevitably motivates an assessment of said routine. And rarely does that routine benefit by comparison. Not surprisingly, then, the first thing I noticed upon landing in Charleston,…
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