It's 3 p.m. on the first full day of Book Expo, the big book convention happening at the Los Angeles Convention Center until Sunday, and everyone's ready for a nap. In the foodcourt outside Exhibit Hall K, the woman at the table next to me falls asleep, her glasses slipping down her nose. A dapper man in a linen suit and straw fedora slumbers in his chair on the outside terrace between Exhibit spaces, shaded by a concrete embankment. The convention is not boring. Far from it. Yet a feeling of languor bathes the activity. Perhaps it's the brightness or the warmth of the hall. Everyone looks flushed as they dart about holding bulging bags full of books and press materials. I feel like a gold fish in a bowl placed in a shaft of sunlight.

"You have the best spot in the place," I joke to my friend Bonni Hamilton. Sales Director at Red Wheel Weiser Conari, whose booth is located directly underneath an air conditioning vent. Then I'm off, back into throngs streaming down the aisles. I hurry from meeting to meeting anxious about the time but too insecure to peep at my watch while engaging an editor in conversation. I take a moment at the Sourcebooks, Inc. booth to gush like a fangirl to the romance editor, babbling about my love for Linda Berdoll's Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife. Then I'm off again. I scurry past a long line of people awaiting author autographs. I turn to see who has attracted so many fans and see Los Angeles author Janelle Brown sitting with several other authors, ready to greet her fans. I congratulate her about the publication of her debut novel, All We Ever Wanted Was Everything, and we barely have time to catch up before my next meeting.

At this point, all I want is to sit down. Next stop, the Biltmore bar.

In 1887, a troupe of horses crossed the Atlantic, sailing out of New York harbor as excited crowds looked on and a cowboy band played �The Girl I Left Behind Me� � a tune that some of the horses, perhaps cavalry veterans, may have recognized. But this time, they were not heading off to war. They were traveling to the Old World, to re-enact scenes from a war they had helped to win. They were part of Buffalo Bill�s Wild West show, nearly two-hundred of them, along with 18 buffalo, various mules, elk, Texas steers, donkeys, and deer, as well as Buffalo Bill himself, Annie Oakley, King of the Cowboys Buck Taylor, and nearly 100 Lakota men, women, and children.

The great horseman Buffalo Bill had not fully figured the needs of the equine stars of his show, on this, his first sojourn overseas. Belowdecks, the ventilation was poor and they � the wind-drinkers as Native Americans called them - had trouble breathing. In a last ditch effort, the crew of the State of Nebraska cut holes through the timber hull so the horses could survive. The first life-saving streams of air filled their starving lungs, but although replenished, their instinct would have been to flee; the information they received, the scent, would have been one of no-land, no-grasses on which to feed, but of course their escape route was blocked. Several buffalo and elk did not survive the crossing and were thrown overboard. �On the seventh day, wrote Buffalo Bill, � a storm came up that raged so fiercely that for a time the ship had to lay to, and during which our stock suffered greatly, but we gave them such good care, and had such excellent luck as well, that none of our animals, save one horse, died on the trip.

Another one, 19-year-old Charlie � a favorite of Buffalo Bill�s, was about to put on his last show. Charlie, aka Charlie Almost Human, was a half-blood Kentucky horse purchased as a five-year-old in Nebraska. �Charlie was an animal of almost human intelligence, extraordinary speed, endurance and fidelity,� Cody wrote. When the horse was young, he rode him on a wild horse hunt, chasing the herd down after a 15-mile chase. Once, someone bet Bill $500 that he couldn�t ride Charlie across a 100-mile stretch of prairie in ten hours. Charlie went the distance in nine hours and forty-five minutes. When Grand Duke Alexis visited the frontier on his famous buffalo hunt, he asked Buffalo Bill for a good horse. Cody handed him the reins to Charlie.

As Buffalo Bill sailed into port in 1887, Spain was about to lose Mexico to the US, the West had been fenced in, and the Indian was not just vanishing but nearly purged from his homeland. The children of England had accomplished much since the Boston Tea Party and now on board the State of Nebraska, they were met by a tug flying American colors. The passengers cheered and the cowboy band struck up �Yankee Doodle.�

At the Albert Dock, the astonishing traveling version of the Horse Nations debarked � including Mustang Jack and Cherokee Bill and Mr. and Mrs. Walking Buffalo, Mr. and Mrs. Eagle Horse, Moccasin Tom, Blue Rainbow, Iron Good Voice, Mr. and Mrs. Cut Meat, Double Wound, the visionary Black Elk, and the sea-weary animals � and all headed to London where they would reside for the next several months in a huge camp next to a specially built arena. The encampment was frequently visited by royals, regular citizens, and reporters � all thrilled by the noble savages of the American frontier, red and white man alike. Of the cowboy Buck Taylor, a London reporter was moved to write in rhyming couplets:

The Cowboy King, Buck Taylor
Is quite an equine Nailer
What man dare he will dare O
Pick up his wide sombrero,
From off the ground
While at full bound
His steed away does tear O!

The Indians too received much coverage in this 19th Century media circus, with gallons of ink spilled over their novel appearance, and barely a trickle exploring the story behind the show. Many had joined the show as a way to make money � at $25 per month, it paid more than reservation jobs but less than what cowboys earned. Others, such as Black Elk, had joined up for the adventure and for the knowledge. �I wanted to see the great water,� he would say later, �the great world and the ways of the white men; this is why I wanted to go�I made up my mind I was going away�to see the white man�s ways. If the white man�s ways were better, why I would like to see my people go that way.� Equally popular among spectators and reporters were the horses, especially the bucking broncos, including a gray horse from Wyoming named Pat Crow, who came to be known as the �horse that bucked around the world.�

But perhaps most of all, everyone came to see Charlie, who had been the star of the Wild West show since it opened in 1883. At the Wild West camp, Buffalo Bill would race Charlie across the grounds, shooting glass balls that had been tossed up as targets. The Prince of Wales was evidently so taken with Charlie that while visiting the camp, he asked for the saddle to be removed so he could make a closer inspection. Grand Duke Michael of Russia, cousin of Alexis, showed up to ride Charlie and chase buffalo. And �The English Metropolitan� welcomed the frontier horses with breathless prose, in an article entitled �Mustangs, Horses, Mules, Some 250 Animals, 166 Horses.�
"These are not remarkable for height or the ordinary points of thoroughbreds," the paper said, "but they possess staying powers than an English racer does not. They are suitable for riding unshod over rough country for many miles together�Bronco horses, mustangs, or buck jumpers are to be seen here � animals that have never been, and never can be tamed; whose kick is death, and upon whose back no man could remain for a moment�"

In the past, when Queen Victoria asked for a command performance, the theater came to her. Now, Grandmother England, as the Indians called her, came to the theatre � to Buffalo Bill, although even he acknowledged that the Wild West show was too big to bring to Windsor Castle. The queen paid homage to the Native American members of the show, and in return, as Black Elk later recounted, they �sent out the women�s and men�s tremolo and all sang her a song � it was a most happy time!� The company put on its dazzling show, which always began with Buffalo Bill galloping into the ring, dressed in buckskin and sombrero, bringing his horse to a halt, doffing his sombrero and announcing: �Ladies and gentlemen, permit me to introduce to you a congress of rough riders� � and then the mounted cast would parade through, and proceed to present American history by way of five �epochs,� from the Forest Primeval, in which Indians and animals living together before the arrival of Columbus, to �Custer�s Last Stand,� which featured some of the Indians who were in the actual battle and then Buffalo Bill galloping onto the scene with the words �Too Late!� projected onto a screen behind the giant mural of the battle.

At the conclusion of the performance, Cody presented Red Shirt to the Queen, followed by two Indian women whose papooses were strapped to their shoulders. �The red babies were passed up and petted,� Cody later recalled. Queen Victoria was so taken with the show that she ordered another command performance. Within days, General Sherman received word of the success of the spectacle and wrote to Buffalo Bill. �I am especially pleased,� he said, �with the compliment paid you by the Prince of Wales, who rode with you in the Deadwood coach while it was attacked by Indians and rescued by cowboys. Such things did occur in our days, but they never will again.�

Half-way back to America, 21-year-old Charlie became ill. Plenty of horses live well past 21 and the record indicates that no one knows what befell the equine superstar. But with the frontier tamed and the country having less use for the horse, hundreds of thousands of Charlie�s own kind would soon be rounded up and sent to the front for the first wars of the 20th Century. While the Atlantic crossing did not take Buffalo Bill�s ship as far south as the horse latitudes where conquistadors once threw horses overboard to lighten their load as they crossed to the New World, the half-way point would have placed the ship directly due north of that deadly region, and perhaps, as sailors have reported hearing the moans and wails of those who have been claimed by the seas, Charlie too heard a distant nicker on the wind, the last notes of a panicked whinny, calling from the lower depths, echoes of another era in which conquistadors had thrown their steeds into the part of the ocean that came to be called the horse latitudes, in order to lighten their loads.

By all accounts, Charlie went quickly. Buffalo Bill had gone belowdecks on the morning of May 14, 1888 to give him some sugar. Less than an hour later, the groom reported that Charlie was sick. Cody went down again and noticed that he had a chill. �In spite of all we could do,� Cody wrote, �he grew rapidly worse and at two o�clock on the morning of May 17 he died.� The crew took him to the main deck, wrapped him in a canvas shroud, and covered him with an American flag. He lay in state that day and everyone reminisced about their times with the horse. Cody stood alone near Charlie and was heard to say the following:

"Old fellow, your journeys are over�Obedient to my call, gladly you bore your burden on, little knowing, little reckoning what the day might bring, shared sorrows and pleasures alike. Willing speed, tireless courage�you have never failed me. Ah, Charlie, old fellow, I have had many friends, but few of whom I could say that�I loved you as you loved me. Men tell me you have no soul; but if there is a heaven and scouts can enter there, I�ll wait at the gate for you, old friend."

At eight o�clock that evening, candles were lit and with all hands and members of the Wild West show assembled, the band played �Auld Lang Syne.� Charlie was lowered into the water � his bones laid bare over time and perhaps borne by current toward the grave of his ancestors - and the ship�s cannon boomed farewell.

When it was all over - the traveling, the re-enactments - Buffalo Bill came to Hollywood to participate in the new myth-making machinery, and produce a movie called �The Indian Wars.� Among other things, it featured General Miles and the cavalry acting out the massacre of Indians at Wounded Knee, with everyone playing themselves. The film fared poorly, criticized by Indians for excluding women and children from the massacre scene and not appreciated by whites, who were not moved by the anti-climactic ending in which Indians were assimilated and went to school, instead of going on the warpath. The strange relic is said to have disappeared, with a few remnants rumored to exist somewhere � a celluloid anti-grail that bears nothing transformative or magical.

With the failure of his film and the vanishing of the Wild West show, Buffalo Bill got sick and prepared for his final scene, calling in his friends for a last round of poker just before he died in 1917. Although he wanted to be buried in Wyoming, the Denver Post paid his wife $10,000 to have him buried in Colorado, so that�s where he was laid to rest, on Lookout Mountain in the town of Golden, overlooking the plains. Months earlier, so many people had gathered for Buffalo Bill�s funeral that the country had its first traffic jam � or so newspapers reported.

His body was carried by caisson past a sea of spectators, escorted by fellow members of an Elk Lodge in top hats. One of his favorite horses, McKinley, followed the caisson. When the casket was lifted and carried into the Lodge, according to a witness, McKinley tried to break free from his handler. As the Lodge doors closed, the horse whinnied, bolted, and ran to the caisson � like Sitting Bull�s horse, looking for his rider. Then he sniffed and whinnied again. The handler grabbed his reins and led McKinley away. But he turned his head and stared at the doors, longing for Buffalo Bill.

Excerpted from the author's forthcoming book, Mustang: The Saga of the Wild Horse in the American West (Houghton Mifflin, June 9th)

Graphic by jon-e |

Yesterday afternoon, as the skies once again threatened rain, my friend Roxy (not her real name) and I – well, not me: Bob – sat in a Valley Starbucks sipping vanilla lattes (her's extra hot -- like her), talking about our kids, Nikolai and Gregor (names changed to protect our too-soon no-longer-innocent offspring). Suddenly my cell phone rang. My wife, Debbie (I think it’s Debbie on Saturdays), had just woken from a nap and wanted to know when I’d be home. I told her that Betty (for the moment), and I (not me: Mohinder), were just finishing our coffees and I’d be back soon so we could be on time for our date (every week: secret of a good marriage) to see the new Indiana Jones movie. (He’s actually a Henry, I think, not that it matters.)

Janelle (please try to keep up) and I (not me: Julio) had taken a walk after lunch and decided to have coffees -- a rare treat since designer coffee costs about the same these days as a gallon of gas. We were laughing about how her ex-spouse Conrad (you think that’s his real name? Think again), had interrupted our lunch by calling twice and wouldn’t get off the phone. Perhaps he’d heard the lively ethnic music in the background (this wonderful, dark, red-booth restaurant is too crowded already or I’d give you its name), and wondered if she was having too good a time without him. (“Hi. Sorry to bother you again, but did you just call me?”).

Back to our vanilla lattes – that’s what we were really drinking; why would I lie about that? – and where this all began. I had noticed Rachel’s name on her coffee cup (not really her name, but there is an "r" in it), and I told her that I never gave my real name to the barista.

“Why not?”

“Why not? Why?”

“It’s just ...”

“Don’t waste humor on the help?”

“Sure. But it’s just your first name. You can’t be worried about identity theft. Why don’t you ...”

I wanted to say that the familiarity made me feel a bit queasy, that this name thing was just a crass marketing attempt to personalize service -- though, I suppose, it’s better than saying, “Venti double caramel mocha, extra whip, for the short fat guy salivating by the bakery case;” or “Skinny black coffee for the brunette toothpick with the implants.” I remember a recent business-class flight to London on which the flight attendant kept using my first name every time she wanted to know if I wanted a pillow, a personal DVD player, or some of those incredibly addictive warm nuts. I don’t need to be called Mr., but something about her chatty cozyness made me want to increase my personal space and say, "Please. Just call me ‘Hey you.’”

I guess I simply want to retain what small bits of my privacy that I can, given that I'm unable to resist writing for public consumption, hoping someone will notice. (You think I do this only for the money? I'm an artist.) Otherwise, it's not so philosophical. "I just get this urge to lie, to make up an identity that lasts as long as it takes to brew my latte . . . and hope I remember it when they shout out my name," I explained. I'm just having some fun. God knows we need a little fun in this crazy mixed-up world. (We can't depend on the Bush Administration forever.) You bought the coffee today. If I had, my cup would say Krishnamurti.”

“I get it. It’s your coffee name!”

“Right. Hmm. Right. Hey ... that’s a great idea!”

Francine smiled, proud. She deserved it.

“I think I’m going to write about this,” I said. “Of course, I’ll give you credit.”

“Not if I write about it first,” Angelina said. The idea of a little writerly competition felt like a double shot in my latte. Perfect for a chill Saturday afternoon in late May. "I know what you mean," she continued. "Every time I give them my real name, no one can spell it, so I end up doing it for them. You know: does it have one “l” or . . .

“Please don’t say anymore, or I’ll have to put it in my post.”

“You mean my post!”

We spent the next ten minutes toting up the places that, in order to make the customer feel more like a guest, they ask for your name. I can’t tell you which ones because it would clearly contravene the purpose of this exercise. You're on your own.

But if you share this post, feel free to use my real name. And Margarita's. We had a few of her namesakes at lunch, but at least we can still spell our names.

UPDATE: I've since discovered that others also have "coffee names." One friend uses his middle name. Another, a name that sounds great when it's shouted. In fact, he confessed, he's thinking of legally changing his real name to his coffee name. I kid you not, Jack.

A week ago today I was caught in a storm of feathers on the 405 South. One of my stranger LA observations of late.

Click for a bigger view.

Here's a press release that came over the email transom today. I'm sharing it as a public service for anyone still scrambling to make their summer vacation plans.

New York Plastic Surgeon to Save Hampton's Real Estate Market

Park Avenue Plastic Surgeon Stephen Greenberg is announcing the Hampton's Plastic House in which for a half a million dollars, a lucky consumer can get a summer mansion in Hampton's with a season full of lipo, new boobs and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of treatments including, a full time nurse and chauffeur to take you back and fourth to the hospital for surgery. He will also throw invites to celeb parties and a new summer wardrobe for the changing.

I have a few questions:
1. Is this offer for women only? (The boobs)
2. Can you take the kids?
3. Is this what Mr. McGuire (in "The Graduate") imagined when he said told Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman): "I just want to say one word to you. Are you listening? Plastics."
4. Do you have anything closer to home? Say, Malibu? Carbon Beach? Oxnard Shores? Maybe something power plant-adjacent in El Segundo?
5. Can you get me in to hang with La Lohan at Hyde?

While the City of Los Angeles is busier than ever implementing its incredible, amazing, wonderful yearling master plan to revitalize the L.A. River, still the big river kudo this year so far goes to the brand-new Dominguez Gap Wetlands in Long Beach, where lovely new river projects have been sprouting steadily but with far less media attention and fanfare.

Brought to you by your public servants and your money—the L.A. County Public Works, using state (mostly) funds—this quondam big ugly ditch has now become a fifty-acre, mile-long quiet riverside wetland with a walking path through tens of thousands of blooming native wildflowers.

It is, without exaggeration, one of the prettiest things I’ve ever seen in the L.A. basin—yes, hard by the 710 between the 405 and Del Amo Blvd. [To see it for yourself, you can enter from the north side off Del Amo just east of the river (park on Oregon); or enter from the south end at 4062 Del Mar Ave. off W. San Antonio Dr.]

And it’s one of the smartest things. Like a lot of L.A.’s upcoming master plan projects upriver, it’ll catch and clean up polluted stormwater runoff, and recharge and store our local water supplies. You know, that water—not the stuff that we use up to a quarter of our energy expenditures and ~1200 miles of aqueducts to import from northern California and the Colorado River.

That’s the good news. In the dubious-news column, the big L.A. River blooper this year so far goes to…the cabal of civic and business leaders in Long Beach who seriously propose to move the mouth of the river--and its assorted loads of trash and toxics--from downtown Long Beach a mile west to the port. This project has received, mercifully, little media attention outside Long Beach—please forget it after you read this—and qualifies as the worst really huge plan for the river since 1989, when a state assemblyman suggested that L.A. convert the river into a dry-season truck freeway.

What would be the best use, after all, of hundreds of millions of dollars (conservatively) of your money and several decades of efforts by your public servants? We could clean up the L.A. River, or, alternatively, we could divert the pollution to someone else’s neighborhood—and to the area that already happens to suffer the worst air quality, no less.

Moving the river could, of course, make at least some of Long Beach’s ambitious master plan to revitalize its own nine miles of river—a plan that's not being nearly heralded enough--completely pointless.

The L.A. River is a lot like that just now: it thrives in parallel universes of imagination. In the older universe, it’s a reviled concrete anti-river of a sewer, a joke, and the place to dump the bodies in movies. And in the second universe, it’s now the Great Green Hope of the Future. It’s the inspiration for wildly ambitious plans to create a 51-mile greenway along the river corridor, which itself should serve as the backbone for a county-wide network of greenways, green streets, wetlands, and other projects that can give us the park and public space we need, clean up our polluted water bodies, and maximize our local water supplies.

Try a visit to the Dominguez Gap Wetlands. It’s a preview of the second universe.

Alas, I grew up in the one and only Detroit, in the city, a distinction that likely matters little to all but those of us who actually grew up in the actual city. But, with the Detroit Pistons showing enough potential to end up facing the Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA finals, that Motor City distinction could soon force me and my fellow former Detroiters to pick a side. I was born and bred in one place, but have long lived in the other. There's a lot between these two towns, far more than me, and not the least of which is that the Lakers sent Detroit packing 20 years ago, after the Pistons' first trip to the NBA finals in 1988. (Detroit got even in 1989, and again in 2004.)

But, this isn't just about basketball.

As the planetary capital of entertainment, LA has played a large role in shaping what the world thinks about Detroit, what with all the movies and rappers pushing "The 313" area code as some sort of badge of honor, as though any affiliation with it provides a kind of instant "street cred," as if just saying "I grew up in Detroit" means that you survived life south of Eight Mile. What could be more badass than that?

Whatever it is, or whatever that means, the Detroit I grew up in was Murder Capital of the World and Y.B.I. was no frozen-yogurt parlor. Even as a kid who'd never known anyplace but Detroit, I knew I wanted out of it as soon as I was old enough to commit my street address to memory.

I continue to be amazed by how many people boast of their Detroit roots. Based upon my personal observations alone, I'd say there's enough to constitute a retroactive recount of the city's Census figures from all those post riot years, during which the population was supposedly shrinking. But, then again, maybe some of these folks have their borderlines mixed up.

Madonna may be one of them, although I don't profess to know who started spreading her Detroit myth. The Material Girl, it seems, was a suburban girl, not that there's anything wrong with that, but she doesn't appear to miss it. Her "Sticky & Sweet Tour" won't even stop near Detroit, let alone in it. Toronto and Chicago are as close as she'll get.

Eminem has made much of his affiliation with Motown but, near as I can tell, he grew up in the suburb of Warren. Rough as Warren may or may not be, the dictionary defines "warren" as a network of rabbit burrows, so you can hardly blame a rapper for choosing not to emphasize that to a worldwide audience on his liner notes. Regardless, Detroit does not claim Warren. It's a suburb as the dictionary defines it, though probably not in the affluent sense society so often expects.

But the Detroit Pistons … Surely the Pistons are from Detroit.

Indeed, and so are the Lakers.

And just like the Lakers, the Pistons don't play in Detroit anymore either.

The Lakers started as The Detroit Gems, an NBL team in the late 1940s. It left Detroit in 1947 to become the Minneapolis Lakers, then, of course, left Minneapolis in 1960 to become the LA Lakers.

The Detroit Pistons left Detroit in the late '70s, but kept Detroit in their name (Psst, Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim take note). The Pistons play in Auburn Hills, which I couldn't find on a map without first consulting an index, and I grew up in ... like I said.

So why does it matter?

It matters because it's a lie, because, like so many others, the Pistons fled to the suburbs, but still claim to be a part of city. It matters because that kind of behavior is part of what's ailed Detroit since the '70s.

The suburbs are where all the money in Detroit went, leaving behind empty houses and stores, and a lot of people who couldn't afford to get out. Would a Piston NBA championship in 2008 benefit the city? I can't imagine how with all the games being played out in the burbs. Despite all the talk and play off the city's name, I still see more boarded-up builidings in Detroit than in any other major US city. Its sidewalks are cracked and overgrown with knee-high weeds, vacant buildings mark the landscape like giant tombstones, and urban prairies now sit where blocks of homes once stood.

Jurisdictional boundaries may be faint pastel colors on a map, but in Detroit you often don't need a map to see them. All you need do is look at the condition of the structures and the roads.

I can't say I love Detroit, but I feel a certain sense of responsibility to defend it. My earliest memories are of it and the sports teams that bear its name. I remember the red transistor radio that used to dangle from the handlebars of my banana-seat bicycle, always tuned to WJR's broadcasts of Tiger games with Ernie Harwell (it was that or the Watergate Hearings). The only TV I ever knew until I went to college was a black-and-white box no bigger than my current microwave oven with a telescoping antenna on top, good enough to get WDIV, The Detroit Tiger Network, with George Kell and Al Kaline. The first professional baseball game I attended was at Tiger Stadium. It was also the day I realized the beauty of grass. I got my first hockey stick at a Red Wings game, on Stick Night, at Detroit Olympia Stadium. I drank Vernors and Faygo Pop, both Detroit originals. I ate at coney island restaurants and stood sentry behind the bushes out front every Devil's Night. My first and second cars were used American cars, though I can't say for sure either of them was made in Detroit. Fewer and fewer pistons have been coming out of there the past couple decades.

But can I root for these so-called Detroit Pistons?

No.

I'll take the Lakers, a team that, like me, is a Detroiter by birth, but proud to call Los Angeles home.

Unlike The Pistons, The Lakers are part of the city they represent. The Lakers play in LA, whatever LA is supposed to be. We're so unlike any other city, so spread out and apart, more than 100 different municipalities stitched together to make the Greater LA Area, which in terms of jurisdictional boundaries makes LA more of a state of mind than New York purports to be. And yet, The Lakers play in LA.

The Pistons? Posers.

-- Portions of this post first appeared in response to questions from fellow writer and blogger John Ettorre at Working With Words, in Cleveland. Click to e-mail TJ Sullivan.

Stop me if you've read this one:

While rooting around in the spam mailbox looking for authentic emails that somehow got trapped in the junk filter, I found the email that follows. Now, I've seen countless of these, but they tend to come from beleagured African nationals looking to reclaim money filched from a dictator's illegal stash. But this is the first one I've seen featuring ersatz American servicemen.

Even if this is commonplace and I've just missed the latest ploy to play on American guilt and sympathy for our Armed Forces -- whatever your stance on the war -- I'm posting it.

Call it outrage at the audacity of hype.

Of course, maybe this explains where some of our trillion dollars were "lost" in the desert by Brown & Root services, Halliburton, Paul Bremer, etc. Check out the links if you dare.

Forget WMDs. Time to go digging for DMD's: Dollars of Mass Destruction. If we find them, and bring them home, we'll not only be able to fix our national infrastructure and stop the dollar's plunge, but we'll be able to afford both a gallon of gasoline AND a grande non-fat Vanilla latte. Right now, I have to choose between them since the price is the same.

Now, if you'll excuse me. I have to turn over the mulch in my old SUV. (Really keeps the heat in, and the worms don't get into the house.) Makes great fertilizer for the fruit trees.

Hello,

I and Late Staff Sergeant Oscar Medina on the 7th of June 2003, using our position secured the sum of US$7.5 Million for ourselves(This was quite an illegal thing to do, but I tell you what? No compensation can make up for the risk we have taken with our lives in this hellhole. Of which a roadside bomb killed my brother in-law last week), which was from the over US$200Million recovered at a remote Baghdad neighborhood (please view http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2988455.stm) a year later Staff Sgt Oscar Medina died following an ambush by militia insurgents in Iraq...(also view http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2004/May/13/ln/ln01a.html).

I have now found a much-secured way of getting the package out of Iraq to your country for you to pick up, and I will discuss this with you when I am sure that you are willing to assist me. I want you to tell me how much you will take from this money for the assistance you will give to me. One passionate appeal I will make to you is not to discuss this matter with anybody, should you have reasons to reject this offer, please and please destroy this message as any leakage of this information will be too bad for us soldier's here in Iraq.

I do not know how long we will remain here, and I have been shot, wounded and survived two suicide bomb attacks by the special grace of God, this and other reasons I will mention later has prompted me to reach out for help, I honestly want this matter to be resolved immediately, please contact me as soon as possible my only way of communication email... (poster's note: email redacted for your own good.)

Thanks,
Sgt. Ted Murry

Los Angelenos learn the meaning of these terms the way most people acquire knowledge, by paying tuition, albeit in the form of parking citations and fines. Those who say we in LA don't read have obviously never parallel parked on our streets, where we not only read, but debate the subtext and hidden meanings intended by the author. Is "stopping" the same as parking, or something permanent? Is "Flag Day" a holiday? What exactly qualifies as "loading?" And, can Hondas park wherever in Beverly HIlls, or is that particular privilege afforded only to late-model Jaguars and UPS vans?

Confusing as it can be, there's now one more lesson -- a sign that regulates unregulated signage -- the course materials for which have been posted at various locations throughout the city, most recently along Olympic Boulevard on the Westside [see inset].

Perhaps credit (or blame, depending upon your perspective) for this latest addition to LA's curbside Library of No ought to be assigned to those placard-loving real-estate agents, who plant their satin flags and signboards at street corners and freeway exit ramps Sunday after Sunday. Forever in pursuit of an edge, some enterprising souls a few years ago purchased mini-billboards mounted to stripped-down, steel-frame, stand-alone trailers, and began parking them sans vehicle as close as possible to corners at busy intersections.

"New Condos Now Open," they beckon. "Still Available."

I expect the application of these rolling platforms is not limited to real estate, so perhaps it's a bit unfair to give real estate agents all the credit for their proliferation, but, c'mon … This is a profession that puts its face on business cards, bus side panels and bench backs. Only canines mark as much LA territory on any given day of the week.

In marketing, bigger is better, I guess. But, in the case of mini-billboards on unhitched trailers, bigger also seems susceptible to tipping in high winds. And, surprise, even when upright, these steely skeletons tend to snarl traffic on high-volume roadways like Olympic Boulevard through Century City and Westwood, where street parking is allowed on weekends, though about as advisable as doing so on any free-flowing Southland freeway.

Thus, the need for a law, and the associated posting of signs to curb the use of signs.

Nontheless, not to worry. When next you park and encounter this big, crossed-out "P" take a deep breath and relax. Unless you're dropping a trailer, this probably isn't going to get you ticketed. Then again, in a city where a "one-way plan" is actually a "two-way plan" that's got people crying "no way!" … er … maybe you should find out what the city considers an "unhitched trailer" before you risk it.

[For the motion and ordinance approved by the LA City Council in 2005 see this link.]

Click to e-mail TJ Sullivan.

This week, Larry McMurtry received the Los Angeles Public Library Award for his extensive contribution to literature, joining other great American writers such as Norman Mailer, E.L. Doctorow, Louise Erdrich, and August Wilson, who have received the award in the past. Today, he's speaking at the library's important ALOUD series (full disclosure: I'll be speaking there myself in June). In a difficult time of funding cutbacks for all things cultural, including libraries, his talk draws attention to the crucial role that the LAPL plays in our lives as citizens - as a literary and educational town square, as well as a palace of history and connection. On the occasion of his award, I posed a few online questions to McMurtry; here are some of his thoughts on the modern West, great books, and his favorite librarian.

1. Perhaps more than any other American writer, you've explored the nooks and crannies of the cowboy's nature. Do you agree that America is a cowboy nation, in terms of the way we see ourselves, and if so, what aspects of the cowboy character have helped us in the world? Which ones are destroying us?

No, I don't consider us a cowboy culture. We're a suburban culture. The cowboy survives as an image because it's an image of independence. In reality, that independence only survived for about twenty years. The cowboy myth comes out of the trail drives. Once the railroads came into existence, there was no need for cowboys to do cattle drives. Since then, they've been workmen--hired hands in a rural trade, and have become more and more marginal.

2. In your memoir, "Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen," you mention that the frontier experience produced a silence in women - at least in two of the ones you knew, the "skunk woman" as well as your paternal grandmother. In your work you have shown a deep affinity for women and have written memorable and complicated female characters, unlike other writers who have chronicled the West. Have you ever thought that in some way, you are speaking for these silent women of the West?

No. I don't think that way. I'm speaking for whatever character is speaking on the page at any given time. It's about the story and the characters I'm writing.

3. You've written that the media supplies memories. Are you saying that one's personal memory of something isn't real unless it is broadcast on TV or the internet? Do you think that the mania for taking pictures with cellphones and standing in public talking loudly on the phone is a way to take our memories back - create our own - star in our own stories, as obnoxious as that is for people standing behind the person on the phone? What are the consequences of all of this when it comes to the written word?

What I meant by the media supplying memories is that we watch movies, or television, and those things become part of our memory bank. We'll have to wait and see what consequences these things will bring. I don't know. Maybe no consequences. Maybe these things will eliminate the written word, but it's unlikely. I don't use a computer, nor go near the internet. In fact, Diana Ossana, my writing partner, is typing my spoken responses to your questions into her computer.

4. You once wrote that "Texas is where the real West begins." To what degree is George Bush representative of the whole cowboy thing? Is he a total fake or does his invocation of the West go beyond "clearing brush"? And what about Laura Bush? I've had a hard time figuring out how a lifelong book lover and librarian has connected with a man who seemingly does not brake for the written word. Is it a case of "oh you big ole loveable brute"? Do you have any thoughts about what connects those citizens of the Lone Star State?

George Bush is from Greenwich, Connecticut. He likely thinks he's a Texan, but he is not. I don't really know either George or Laura Bush well enough to comprehend or understand what connects them.

5. In your memoir you wrote that the American West has not yielded up a great book. You talked about some books that were really good - Little Big Man and Son of the Morning Star. Now, ten years later, do you still feel the same way? What new books about the West, if any, do you recommend? Which ones have you gone back to, if any?

I do feel the same way about books and the American West; however, No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy is a very good book. I went back to Son of the Morning Star because I was reviewing a book on Custer--and it is still an excellent book.

6. When you were starting your career, you wrote that publishers were eager for new fiction. Nowadays, there is a mania for memoirs, and in fact there are so many of them that they have come to be called in some quarters "mis lit" (misery literature). Obviously certain novelists, including yourself, have a large following and continue to be published. But has the truth trumped its recast version - fiction? Why are publishers encouraging writers to write memoirs instead of fiction? And what does this bode for the novelist?

I don't think that's widespread. There have always been young writers who have written memoirs, for example, Frank Conroy's Stop Time. I think it's just another fad, which will pass. There are far more first novels published in a given year than memoirs.

7. You have noted that the most iconic image of the West is the running horse. The country has nearly purged itself of mustangs, and some say that our four-legged partner is on its way out. Texas, which once had hundreds of thousands of them, now has none. The cowboy scribe J. Frank Dobie saw it coming and today, he would be devastated. You write about cowboys, including your father, who often cite the "two or three good horses" they once had as a highlight of their lives. Apart from the King Ranch, which is privately owned, why couldn't all the cowboys in the Lone Star State manage to keep a few thousand wild horses on the range?

I wasn't aware that all the wild horses have disappeared from Texas; I thought there were still a few out near Fort Davis somewhere. The large concentrations have been in Nevada and Idaho, and maybe eastern Oregon. I know there are sanctuary movements trying to capture them and find homes for them.

8. I'm sure you've heard the Hollywood convention that westerns never work. Of course, your movies have disproved that notion. But others have too, and good ones inevitably win awards and attract large audiences. What accounts for this attitude towards westerns, other than the fact that they don't have special effects and can't be turned into brands, etc?

The attitude that Westerns never work came from the financial debacle of "Heaven's Gate." Now "Heaven's Gate" is considered a masterpiece, but it destroyed a studio because Michael Cimino was uncontrollable budget-wise. A good Western is like any other good film--it tells a compelling story with convincing characters. The ones that succeed are because they tell an interesting story, just like any other film that succeeds. The ones that fail do so because they're not good films and don't tell good stories.

9. For some time small bookstores have been falling by the wayside and places such as your antiquarian bookstore in Archer City must now compete with amazon, alibris, and so on. Do you have any thoughts about the fate of stores such as yours in this strange era of ours? Do you ever buy used books online?

I only purchase books online if I need it overnight in order to write a screenplay. Small bookstores are doomed, unless the people who own and run them have deep pockets.

10. Do you read reviews of your books? If not, how do you reconcile this with being a book critic yourself? If so, have you ever contacted a reviewer with whom you disagreed?

I don't read reviews of my books because I don't learn anything by reading reviews of my books. The book is already written and has left my consciousness. So much time has passed that I feel little or no connection to the book anymore. I don't see any contradiction in reviewing books and not reading reviews of my own books. Reading other people's works in order to review them is simply a writing job.

11. As you wrote in your memoir, books came into your life when your cousin dropped off a box of them as he was leaving for World War II. Is it accurate to say that this was your first library experience? Later, the world became your library as you began to collect books and assemble them in your store in Archer City. But what about official libraries? What role have they played in your life and are there any in particular that were key to you at any given time? Do you have any favorite librarians and is it ok to talk in the library?

Actually, my cousin's dropping off those books was my first READING experience. The Rice University Library—the Fondren Library—was the library I used when I went away to school, and so it was integral to my introduction into the vast world of books. My favorite living librarian is Nina Matheson. Nina ran the medical library at Johns Hopkins as her last librarian job, but is now herself a bookseller.

12. Finally, in California, the big question is "paper or plastic?" In Texas, I hear that it's "Willie or Waylon?" Any preference on this front?

No. I don't listen to music, except the music of my son, James McMurtry.