Dredging epistles past. The following from early 2005, right when I had plunged into composing the pastel works which would comprise [working title] the seasons: Summer of '68, Autumnal Sun, Winter Blue, Isle of Islay Revisited which is no longer part of the album (it has been replaced with a lovely piece called "the forever spring" -technicolor reworkings of which to be released in early 2009.

Friends-

I've been remiss with my updates, I know. After my last epistle in September, wherein I described going to the Playboy radio talkshow, Night Calls, to talk about HoneyBun, several people suggested I write a book about the vagabond marketing of HoneyBun and my newfound gypsy lifestyle.

Then it was time to go the International Lingerie Show in Las Vegas, preparing for which consumed every waking minute for almost a month. After Las Vegas, I was waiting for some major revelation to come to me about Las Vegas to come to me that I might share some grand new insight. Alas, what can I say about that place which hasn't already been said?

I just finished a stint of house-(and dog)-sitting in Laguna Beach. Lovely house. The dogs were three adorable pugs, cute, affectionate, prolific beyond any expectation in befouling and beshitting the lovely home up on the hill.

My cup runneth over.

Acquiring one of these pug dogs (rescue cases) is both noble and honorable, I think; two: evidence of neurotic and masochistic tendencies of the most narcissistic and grandiose kind; three: symptomatic of mental illness, unimaginable grandiosity, borderline megalomania, plain and simple.

But the house was lovely and when the dogs were peaceful or sleeping, afforded a magnificent view of the Pacific Ocean.

In the afternoons, the sunlight on the water shimmered like a great silver pavilion stretching to the horizon, rippling into blue at the edges.

At night, the moon rose in the sky and its light made a shining pathway across the waters. Venus shone brightly right above the moon in the dark, star-splattered sky. The multi-colored lights of jets, whispering in and out of the Long Beach airport, floated across the muted blur of the horizon in the distance.

Along the reef in the bay, calamari boats lined up, perhaps two hundred feet apart, halogen lights burning down into the sea to attract the squid—an incandescent necklace on the calm waters of the bay. They moved night after night, following the squid.

 
Claude Michel Celse, Seaside Town, 1948

the reason that I am alive

By Boris Vian

the reason that I am alive
the reason that I am alive
for the tanned leg
of a blonde woman
propped against the wall
beneath the round sun
for the billowing sails
of a sleek schooner
at the mouth of the harbor
the iced coffee sipped through a straw
for the caress of sand
gazing at the watery deeps
turning so blue
descending into the deeps
with the fish
the tranquil fish
they calm the bottom of the ocean
fly above the seaweed hair
like slow birds
like blue birds
the reason that I am alive
because it is beautiful

Translated from the French by Joseph Suglia, corrected by me.

Leisure Town

Tristan makes some of the funniest and darkest comic strips I've ever seen, like a modern-day R. Crumb, using toy animals, great location shots, superb photoshop skills, and, most importantly, a thoroughly twisted sense of humor. Excellent writing. Particularly hilarious are "Pussy Driven," "American Masturbator," not that I would have any first-hand, so to speak, knowledge of either subject, and "QA Confidential," an extremely insightful send-up of the computer industry and Silicon Valley/Multimedia Gulch mentality.  I have heard some odd stories about him—he is a local boy well-known to some friends of mine ... apparently, he mines his own life for much of his material. Let us leave it at that.

A panel from American Masturbator