What the Internet Is Good For

Settling a debate over 9/11 photos. Now if everyone else in the picture would come forward, we'd have a story.

Heat

When I came back to Palm Springs after two weeks in the East Bay helping the family pack decades into cardboard boxes, I immediately began to sort my own possessions into heaps. Most of them should be thrown out or given away as gifts.

I thought as much leafing through the lastest issue of GQ that arrived in the mail. A friend bought me a subscription. I value it for the journalism and entertaining features, and resent the fashion advice even as I read it.

I have in recent months made more use of the hottub outside. Often, late at night, alone, I go there to think or just relax. Most nights this summer in the desert, even the hottub is a relief from the heat.

It is thought that the heat killed Terry. I think he was in his 50s, early 60s. He managed a golf course, or maybe he was a retired cop. Details blur at the bar. He first suspected I was that guy, you know, that son of the guy who ran the club back in the day. A lot of people in this town ask me if I'm that guy, so often that I'm conditioned to spit out "That son of the guy who used to run the club back in the day? Nope, not me," as soon as they see me and the look flashes across their face and they say "Hey -- "

I'm not that guy, and it's good, because some people tell me he knew certain people, and other people tell me he's long since gone, and other people tell me he went -- or was taken out -- to a spot in the desert and never came back.

No, I'm not that guy, I told Terry, but he still gave me shit every time he saw me, and I eventually started giving him shit. Starting introducing him as my nephew. And the other night, I learned he was dead. Someone had propped an envelope up against a bottle of beer on the bartop: In memory of Terry. They say he went out for a walk in the desert heat, and when they found him, it was in his apartment with the fan on.

And I had just shaken hands with him the other night.

Death is like that. Death is an unfinished sentence.

So I was, in defiance of grammar, a little bit gladder tonight in the hot tub, alone, looking up at the moon behind the silhouettes of the palm trees as the desert slept. I may not have made the most I might have had out of life so far, but tonight wasn't the time to bitch about it. At least I was out of the heat, and the moon was beautiful, and I was, in all likelihood, going to wake up in the morning and have the luxury of bitching about not being able to afford this or that.

Still, I plan on drinking several glasses of water tonight. Can't be too careful, with the heat.

Force Choke on Aisle Six

Look, Up in the Sky! It's Spoilerman!

I wish that Western Civ would find a new story to tell. Seeing Jesus everywhere -- the Matrix, Coruscant, Metropolis, a tortilla -- is getting predictable.

When the new Superman flick isn't evoking our Savior, arms outstretched, it's reminding me of 9/11. The criticism is immediate: Silly American, why must you view everything through the lens of Sept. 11? It's hard; I can't think of any other day I've seen bodies plummeting to earth from such great heights.

The recycling of John Williams theme from earlier Superman movies and the cannibal dog joke earn this movie a C+. Demerits stick in the mind:

Parker Posey completely miscast as Lex Luthor's ditzy moll. Would have been a wonderful, edgy Lois Lane. Instead, earns acting points for playing dumb. She probably had more fun. Bad for the flick, though.

Casting of Tucker Carlson in Jimmy Olsen role disasterous.

James Marsden, now typecast as the cuckolded schmuck in not one but two comic book universes. Would the Man of Steel and Wolverine fight to bed Marsden's woman in a crossover?

First half of the movie with Superman as a stalker: Creepy. Equally disquieting, the suggestion that Superman's love life drives him to take out his frustration on the world's criminal element.

Lois Lane a non-presence. Much better in that surfer girl movie.

The framing of the shots in parts is better than the scene. Not desireable. I don't want to go to a superhero flick and leave saying, "Wow, that shot of the spiral staircase from above panning into Luthor's lair really impressed me." Great scenes, not shots.

Superman in the ER, large crowds outside hospital. I know, I'm at a movie about a flying guy in blue tights and a red cape, and I'm complaining about plausibility? But please. What scalpel do they have that's going to dent the epidermis of steel? What hospital is going to allow sign-holding throngs to clog its entrance? Does Metropolis have a two-tier health care system for the sole benefit of the Son of Krypton? Bruce Wayne wouldn't put up with that shit.

Short "Nacho Libre" Review

Not so much "offbeat" as "off key."

Oh, Wonderful

CHICAGO — One in 20 Americans may be susceptible to uncontrollable anger attacks in which they lash out in road rage, spousal abuse or other severe transgressions that are totally unjustified, researchers from Harvard and the University of Chicago have found. Full story.

The Town That Banned the Devil

In honor of today's date and all the silly fussing over it, let's flash back to a special town in, naturally, Florida:

Would banning the Prince of Darkness from the town's three square miles deliver Inglis from drugs, thieves and drunken drivers? Would it ease the fears of a small, isolated community -- frustrated by joblessness and uneasy about war overseas and terrorism at home -- and attract an angel of light?

[snip]

At the Mousetrap, a watering hole popular with bandana-wearing, tattooed bikers and truckers on weekdays and lipsticked, moussed, rock-band lovers on weekends, owner Walt Deal cuts a draft beer and laughs.

"Did people stop drinking? Heck no," he says. "If anything, business got better. I mean, for a while there, people were driving into town to see where the devil is, or was. Only thing it did was make us a laughingstock. I mean, I had relatives calling me from South Jersey saying, 'What the hell kind of a town are you living in?' "

Steve Morris, a captain on the five-man Inglis force, might take issue with Deal's analysis. Morris' main nemesis is crystal meth. The drug isn't hard to make, and it's sold cheaply on the street. Since the proclamation, Morris says, drug-dealing and burglary are way down and busts way up.

Exactly how much?

He pauses, his regard clouding a bit. "Significantly." Morris glances upward. "And the Big Man upstairs is the reason."

Mary Jo Farnan and her husband, Bob, who own the Port Inglis Restaurant around the corner from the police station, aren't convinced. Their eatery has been broken into three times in less than a year. A few weeks ago, they fired a waitress because she and her boyfriend were getting high in the bathrooms on the evening shift.

"I see Satan all the time," Farnan, 69, says. "His name is crack, pot, coke and meth, and he roams around Inglis like he always has. Steve Morris? Shoot, he doesn't even live in this town. After 5 o'clock, he gets in his car and drives home to Homosassa, a half- hour away."

[snip]

A year ago, Floyd Craig, a Korean War vet who owns a farm produce market, ran for mayor against [Carolyn] Risher, the incumbent by default for 12 years. Nobody had run against her before.

Craig got whipped. The devil, he says, didn't.

"Our drunks still drink, our hookers still hook, and truckers still ride like the devil up and down the highway," he says. "People are going to sin, plain and simple. No proclamation is gonna stop that."

He bags some lettuce for a customer. "I got nothing against the mayor. She was trying to do right by the community she loves. But if you start thinking that the devil is outside of you, foreign somehow, you stop taking a good, hard look at the evil inside yourself, in your own deeds."

Full story, and a still good one.

Seen on a Church Billboard in Palm Springs

SMILE! WE KNOW OF HOTTER PLACES.