Mineral King

The Mineral King Valley was seriously dreary this weekend, but it's still a magical place. Just ask Walt Disney!

Yosemite

Incongruous things I found on top of Half Dome: a snowfield; a swarm of breeding ladybugs (or, for accuracy hounds, ladybird beetles); a young boy (Me: "How old are you?!?" Boy (shrugging): "11." Me: "You're amazing!" Boy: "I was 8 the first time I came here."); chunks of cable (which, as you can see from the photo, need maintenance); a lighter; and, happily, not a cloud in the sky.

Monomania, In Praise Of

There is a scene in "Into the Wild" where Emile Hirsch visits Salvation Mountain. That scene didn't stick with me, but a recent screening of "Plagues and Pleasures of the Salton Sea" forced me to make a pilgrimage to Leonard Knight's mound of adobe and paint.

Farewell, George

My virtual shoe (and friend) celebrate the end of George W. Bush!

In the Red

On Friday, I traveled with 224 Californians to register voters in Las Vegas.

By the time our splinter group reached its first voter registration spot, a post office, it was 95 degrees. I was terribly nervous the first time I asked, "Excuse me, sir, are you registered to vote?" I got a shrug and a mumbled yes. At least he responded, I thought, which was encouraging. Before I could query a second patron, though, I got a tap on the shoulder. The tapper was a hairy post office employee who was very firm that we must leave the premises immediately. I was confused and irritated -- was it wrong to register voters in front of a public building that distributes voter registration forms? We decided it wasn't worth arguing, so we moved on to a Whole Foods parking lot. We agreed it was better to ditch the Obama paraphernalia, which would prevent getting the boot for electioneering.

Our companion, David from Long Beach, CA, was rabid -- he was determined to fill his quota of five registrants before lunch. So we parked and off he went. I got my first registrant almost immediately, a young black woman who was happy to chat and knew exactly who we supported. After her, registrations were hard to come by -- "I won't vote until the Electoral College is abolished," "I don't vote," "Don't speak English," "No!!!" etc.

I decided to split up and try my hand at a nearby strip mall. Panera was slow, Chipotle offered too many "Yes, I'm registered"s (and one "Yes, I'm a registered Republican!"), and Michael's booted me immediately. I was discouraged, but then I spotted a dream location across the 8-lane boulevard (in shade, no less!): a Coffee Bean next to, holiest of holies, a check cashing place. I high-tailed it over there.

Within 10 minutes I'd registered a caffeine-jonesing rocker with a birthday just south of mine. A couple of young girls followed, one of whom was ecstatic to register for the first time (giving me four total). I nearly eradicated those scores, however, by next registering a Republican woman (She was young! She was originally from San Francisco!). I didn't feel too bad, though, after David dropped by and reported he'd registered two Republicans. I wasn't sure whether he was serious or not when he said he didn't sign his name on their forms, meaning if those forms were somehow, oh, lost, there'd be no one to trace them to (and therefore no one to pin the $20,000 fine on).

After David sped off to a 99-cent store, I queried two musclebound black guys who emerged from the check cashing store. The bigger man immediately waved me off and disappeared around the corner. Ten seconds later he stuck his head around the building and asked, "I got a felony 10 years ago. Does that stop me from registering?" Our UNLV trainer had mentioned felons, but I didn't remember the protocol. I winged it and said no, they strip felonies from your record after 5 years (pulled wholly from my arse). It turns out felons who have had their "civil rights restored" are indeed able to vote in Nevada. My fuzziest feeling of the day came when he said, "They've taken away my rights for too long," and he guaranteed me he'd vote for Barack.

I encountered two more felons in the next hour, both of whom were not nearly as enthusiastic. Felon #1 said, "Sorry, boss, I got multiple felonies." Felon #2 was quite sure he couldn't register because he was arrested "yesterday." I conceded he probably couldn't vote, though I encouraged him to do so in the future. (I also witnessed a man emerge from his pimped-out car and hand a package to teenagers at a bus stop -- a felon-in-the-making?)

At the end of the day, our little group registered 18 people. Not a big number, but Nevada went red in 2004 by only 21,000 votes. 225 Californians x 18 = 4,050. Watch out, McCain.

Elitist Side Note: Casinos are the most depressing place on earth.

A Supposedly Fun Thing....

David Foster Wallace killed himself last week.

Infinite Jest was the first time I heard of Mr. Wallace -- I was coming home from a hike in the Hollywood hills and saw a flyer announcing a "marathon reading" in honor of the novel's 10th anniversary. I decided to check it out. After all, I'd made it through Gravity's Rainbow and Ulysses (barely), and a book that long, that footnoted, deserved my attention. I made it to page 40 and gave up.

Later on, after hearing an interview with Michael Silverblatt, I decided to give Mr. Wallace another shot (Brief Interviews with Hideous Men). Again, though, I had to stop. The writing was cutesy, turgid, ironic, indirect -- contradicting much of what I found touching in his interview, particularly his points about how young writers shouldn't be afraid to depict real emotion or to appear unhip (shudder!).

More time passed. After reading about Mr. Wallace's place in the Pantheon of Forty-something White Guys Who Have Written Brilliant Novels since 1990, I decided to go to bat one last time with his cruise ship travelogue, "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again." Finally, I got it. In addition to being the funniest essay I've ever read, I had the sense I was in another world. Mr. Wallace navigated the ship like a benign ghost, returning each night to haunt blissful tourists, shoot skeet off the Lido deck, etc. It was such a clever, wonderful skewering that I wished the essay would go on for another 100 pages.

Fretting be Damned

This will not happen again.