It's official -- Diesel, a book store, Malibu's beloved indie bookstore, is coming back. Owners Alison Reid and John Evans, who finalized a lease at the Malibu Country Mart on Aug. 30, expect their new location to be up and running by mid-October.

The new store, in the Malibu Country Mart's interior courtyard, will be roughly the size of the Brentwood location, which opened in December 2008. The couple, who opened their first bookstore in 1989, also own a shop in the Rockridge neighborhood of Oakland.

John and Alison have been working to re-open in Malibu almost from the instant they realized last February that they would have to close their seven-year-old store in Cross Creek. The Country Mart location, while a bit smaller than the previous Malibu iteration, has a far better vibe. It's a light-filled space with soaring ceilings, a beautiful wood floor, and a great view of the neighborhood's new hardware store across the street.

Added bonus -- the courtyard location offers ample space for Diesel's popular events and readings. (And for anyone worried about Malibu Shaman, a specialty book seller in Malibu since 1983, shoppers looking for books on the metaphysical will instead find a sign directing them to owner Scott Sutphen's store upstairs.)

Congratulations, John and Alison! And to the many devoted friends of Diesel Malibu who have phoned with questions and encouragement -- your calls have been answered.

Late into the season, what does a week at Hollywood Bowl bring? Memories of big-boned, sweeping symphonies? Of long-built explosive climaxes? Of thundering musical monuments? No, to those.

But yes, to what guest conductor Leonard Slatkin and the L.A. Philharmonic delivered in their Ravel evening. Afterwards, how about having the tenderly misty strains of the "Mother Goose" Suite, followed by the glinting sensual silver of the "Daphnis and Chloe" Suite No. 2, branded in your brain for days and days? Spinning 'round and 'round on that imaginary turntable, despite all the more sensational works that came before and after.

The likeliest bet is that such textural delicacy will dissipate, and certainly not haunt us. What we've come to expect at the orchestra's summer home in Cahuenga Pass is big-muscled music with broadly stated themes. You know, the resounding stuff.

But there it was, the L. A. Philharmonic waxing luminous in the Ravel. And there he was, hometown hero Slatkin, back from musical wars around the country, finding both a lofty place via the French composer, and kindred musician spirits to commune with.

We never quite know the magic ingredients, besides the artistic ones -- climate conditions, sound engineers turning knobs and all other variables that affect outdoor music - but somehow they coalesced to a state of near-perfection here.

What's curious, though, is how the powerhouse piano/orchestra works that Slatkin and the band also dug into made less of an impression. For starters, there were two soloists: the veteran André Watts and the young Russian Olga Kern -- both of them keyboard firebrands who go for the literature's knuckle-busters. And if you think that they're not compelling, with the Bowl's cameras zooming in on their every cheek-muscle spasm, every elbow thrust skyward, guess again.

But listening to music needs a focused ear, not a captive eye, per se. And so, the big screens don't always do us such a favor. Especially in Watts' case, playing Liszt's 2nd Concerto.

Because here is a pianist who, even without a close-up capturing him, entertains us with his facial antics. To the point of laughter, I'm afraid. Just imagine what the Jumbotron adds: his fast-fluttering auctioneer lips with silent incantations of gibberish that never stop; meanwhile his physicality at the keyboard -- those big hands that grabbed up fistfuls of notes and unleashed percussive might -- were a thrill. In a concert hall, without a camera? Okay, if you like his brand of pianism. Here, a severe compromise.

Kern, on the other hand, didn't put on that kind of show. Although the tall, gorgeous blonde came close histrionically several years ago when she then, also, took up Rachmaninoff's "Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini" at Royce Hall with the touring National Philharmonic of Russia. She was more assured earlier (better rehearsed, having played it countless times with the same orchestra and conductor). Here, her approach to it seemed broken down, section by percussive section, with some sound lapses between -- until, of course, she got to the big, dreamy, all-encompassing ultra-romantic theme. It always scores.

Lesson learned: Mammoth amphitheatres can sometimes win with the most intricately spun music and fall behind in blockbusters.

At 2nd Street and Beaudry, just west of the Harbor Freeway from Downtown. Second in the Night Vision series.

The Lisker Chronicles have followed Bruce Lisker since his release from prison in 2009. Story and photos by Iris Schneider.

This time things were different. The juror was a witness. The private investigator, now and always best man, had it easy proving his case. And Bruce Lisker happily volunteered for a different kind of life sentence.

This time, instead of a dreary courtroom, they and many others were gathered on a sun-drenched hillside. Joy was in the air as Lisker walked down the aisle and willingly gave up his freedom. It was two years to the day after his murder conviction was overturned and he was released from prison on August 13, 2009 for a crime he did not commit--the murder of his mother, Dorka Lisker.

This time there was not a dry eye in the house. Family, friends and supporters were happy to shed their tears as Bruce Lisker and Kara Noble were married at a secluded mansion in San Diego County.

"You are the woman for whom my years of solitude yearned," Lisker told Noble as he read his vows in a moving, funny and life-affirming ceremony that marked the attainment of another of Lisker's dreams. I recalled a conversation we had the first time we met, in a courthouse in downtown Los Angeles shortly after he walked out of Mule Creek prison, $200 in his pocket and a new life ahead of him. He was anxious for a relationship but concerned that he didn't know the first thing about how to make that happen or what he would do if he did.

Among the many holes in his life, experience with women was a big one. On trial at 17, incarcerated at 18 and finally freed 26 years later at 44, Lisker had missed out on all the innocent mistakes we get to make as we learn how to live our lives.

But shortly after his release he met Noble and the worries disappeared. Suddenly he realized that it was easy to love someone and he knew how to do it after all. Noble had been touched by his story when she read about him in an LA Times article in 2005 and began corresponding with him while he was in prison. Once they met, sparks flew and they soon began a relationship that they both describe as what they had always been searching for.

The wedding ceremony was part of a three-day celebration put together by friends and family from different cities and different eras--childhood friends of Lisker who remember him riding his skateboard up and down the streets of his neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley, or who sat in the courtroom as they watched his freedom disappear. Relatives who recounted the days of the trial and subsequent family gatherings especially the funerals of his mother, father and stepmother — he missed while in prison.

All those departed family members were represented at the wedding. A small table next to the bride and groom held photos of Bruce's mom, dad and stepmother, and Kara's mother, father and beloved cat.

Lorraine Maxwell, the juror who was the last holdout for his innocence before she succumbed to the pressure of 11 other jurors and voted to convict Lisker in 1983, was in the crowd. She and Lisker have been getting together since his release. She says the day she heard that Bruce and Kara were engaged was "the happiest day of my life." Now 81, she was hailed by private investigator Paul Ingels as a hero whose subsequent declaration of his innocence helped in his ultimate exoneration.

Maxwell and Lisker share a moment.

There were moving speeches and reminiscences, good wishes and words of wisdom. Many marveled at Lisker's lack of bitterness and anger, his gracious demeanor and his uncanny ability to move on in a positive way . I remember him telling me early on that if he carrried bitterness with him on the outside, he would remain a prisoner forever.

Ingels talked privately about his role in Lisker's journey, spending ten years trying to win his release from prison, most of those years unpaid. "I made a few thousand dollars in the beginning but by the time Bruce's money ran out, I knew he was innocent. I had no choice but to keep going," he said. "I remember the day he got out. That night before I went to bed, I looked at myself in the mirror and thought: 'You did good.' That was my payment."

Now, two years later, Lisker looked into Noble's eyes as she read him her vows. The man who had called a 6x6 foot prison cell his home for 26 years faced a future without limits, with someone at his side. "I am your forever GPS, guiding you home," she said.

After the ceremony, Ingels made an emotional toast and talked about the joy on Lisker's face as he watched his bride walk toward him down the aisle. "I never thought I'd see him happier than the day he walked out of prison," he said.

"Until today."

Fixed: Spelling of Lisker's mother's name. Also, Lisker was married once before.

The summer I stayed at the Malibu beach home of a novelist friend was a season of discovery. By day I looked for work with my newly minted bachelor's degree, and by night had a series of experiences you don't find in a classroom.

There was the night the house next door--a contemporary, tubular structure--burned down in a matter of minutes. The inferno consumed everything, leaving its two residents in shock, standing in our living room, reeking of smoke.

There was the night the Hollywood movie producer came for dinner and chatter about the novelist's latest screenplay, the waves crashing theatrically beneath the deck. Later that evening there would be skinny dipping, prompting my naïve notion that this is how people in California spend their summer vacation.

There was the very late night on the deck when we turned on the floodlights illuminating the waves, and captured the whole beach undulating like a shiny silvery sheet wafting in the breeze. I'd never seen anything like it, a remarkable show Nature stages at regular intervals every spring and summer. The running of the grunion.

It was a Dorothy-you're-not-in-Kansas-anymore moment like the one from my freshman year at college in Claremont. That was in early winter, after the first snow had fallen on Mt. Baldy, which loomed over the campus. Some students who had grown up nearby were excited about being able to "go to the snow."

Curious, I thought; in Colorado, where I come from, the snow comes to you.

In summer, in coastal SoCal, the grunion come to you. They're not running, of course, they're spawning, and although I've never again seen the abundance of that night in Malibu, it's an astonishing sight, even if only a handful of fish come to dance at your feet on the beach in the dark.

I went to the late show last night and was not disappointed.

It was a mild, muted, overcast evening. In stark contrast to crowds and noise earlier in the day, the beach was abandoned, except for a couple of silhouettes maybe a hundred yards toward the pier, one bearing a headlamp and carrying what looked like a bucket. We seemed to be the only people interested in the small, silvery blue-green creatures flopping around the hard, wet sand like the fish out of water that they are, if only for a minute.

You're allowed to catch grunion, if you have a fishing license, use only your hands and do not dig holes to entrap them. I'm told they're delicious, if dainty. But I'm not a catcher, I'm a watcher--if I'm going to eat flesh, I don't want to have had any kind of prior relationship with my meal. On the beach, at nearly midnight, flashlight in hand, I'm not looking for snacks, I'm looking for continuum.

Like many other creatures that share a moody planet with humans, grunion have faced challenges to viability. Beach erosion, pollution and harbor construction have resulted in a loss of spawning habitat. But their lot has improved now that harvesting is not permitted early in spring and beach-grooming is restricted on their spawning turf.

Floodlighting their Malibu bedroom all those summers ago didn't seem to impede grunion group lust, but I've read that these dinky little fish--they max out at 6 or 7 inches--are not keen on bright light. If they show up on the beach you've chosen--and that's never a given--they're not too shy to make piscine whoopee in the circle of a flashlight's glow.

If human procreation were dependent on the public dance to which these grunion are subjected, homo sapiens would be a threatened species. At the risk of anthropomorphizing, this is a peep show, and I feel a bit pervy, squatting to observe several fish who have ridden up the shore on an incoming wave become stranded in the wet sand. She gets vertical, wiggling her tail into the beach to dig a hole that nearly swallows her as the males circle her body. Sometimes there's only one male, sometimes there's a team.

You can't see it, but she's depositing eggs into the hole as the fellas release milt (fish sperm) that runs down her body and fertilizes the eggs. It takes maybe 15 seconds before the guys finish and swim back into the Pacific on the next available ebb, and no, the punch line need not be articulated. My flashlight is trained inches from her face as she wiggles up and out of the sand, and flops around awaiting the next wave.

Lots of fish seem to ride up and back without digging or depositing, females awaiting a partner--they're not going to leave a gift no one's home to receive. A fish is not a a fowl.

The fish follies occur for a couple of hours during the highest tides of the month on three or four sucessive nights. Eggs incubate in the sand and, if they aren't gobbled up by shorebirds, flies or beetles, hatch about 10 days later.

For fishermen and other human peepers, birth is not as exciting as conception. Hatchlings are only about 7mm long, and they're transparent. You couldn't see them with X-ray vision.

Although their name is derived from the Spanish word for "grunter," although they supposedly make a squeaking noise, all I've ever heard during a grunion run is the sound of the waves and human commentary about how weird the whole thing is. But objectively speaking, is the human act of making babies, and its attendant grunting and squeaking, any less strange?

After all these years since my first California summer, no other next-door neighbor's house has burned down, I haven't had dinner (or skinny dipped) with a Hollywood movie producer, but I regularly wander to the beach, late on a summer's eve, in the hopes the grunion are running in my direction. It's about continuum, about the resilience of nature, about being a visitor in the place you call home.

Photo: K. Martin/Grunion.org

The passage of time is something that people perceive in different ways. We all know about how long it seems to take for the workday to end right before you go on vacation. Sometimes workdays just fly right past us in a blur of activity that preoccupy us. A three hour long baseball game may seem to be torturous, but a three hour long football game may give you the feeling that something was left out.

Something that happened eighteen years ago today should not seem that it happened just recently. Children born on that date are now legal adults. The population of the United States has grown by over 50 million people. There have been four different Presidents in that time. The technological changes in the world have been dizzying.

August 10, 1993 was the day that my mother died. And sometimes I don't even believe it actually happened. But I know it did. I saw the effects that colon cancer took on her body. I helped out as best I could with home hospice care for her. I saw two men from a funeral home come and take her body away. I went to a viewing and a funeral. I ate food at a reception where people tried to make me feel better.

Every day, I think of my mother in some way. But, it is harder and harder to think of her in concrete terms. She seems much more of an abstraction than a real person. I look at photographs of her and wonder just who this woman is. She gave birth to me. She nurtured me and looked after me with boundless love. When I went to go live at UCLA, she would call me at the dorm, but if I wasn't there, she would leave a message saying "Jeanne called." She didn't want my roommates to think that his mom was calling to check up on him.

I try to remember why I loved my mother and how she loved me. I was the youngest of her four children, all boys. Since there was a little bit more separation between Timmermann boy #3 and me than there was between #1-3, I was able to spend a little more time at home with her as the last fledgling who didn't have to leave the nest.

It would be much more literary to think of the great shared experiences my mom and I had to be something involving nature or a great work of literature, but most of them centered around movies or television. Perhaps that is just the nature of life here in Southern California.

My mom had a somewhat sarcastic sense of humor. She was the one who convinced me to start watching "Seinfeld," which was about to start its fifth season on the air a month after she passed away. She somewhat sheepishly admitted to me that, despite her fairly strict Catholic upbringing, "The Contest" episode was something she could not help but laugh at a lot.

Since my father did not like going to the movies, I became my mom's "date" for most films. We cried together at the end of "Field of Dreams" for reasons we never could quite comprehend. I still remember the last movie I took her to, "Howard's End." She enjoyed it immensely as she fit the Merchant/Ivory demographic to a T.

My mom also was a big sports fan. She started as a baseball fan growing up in St. Louis, living and dying by the Cardinals. When she moved west with my dad in 1960, she didn't seem to have trouble switching allegiances to the Dodgers. As her sons grew older and became fans of different sports, my mom adopted them too. She learned the ways of football quite easily (something my father never could do) and I had a great time with her at the 1984 Rose Bowl, when UCLA routed Illinois, 45-9. She adroitly handled performing card stunts for two different seats during halftime. I do miss having the chance to commiserate with her about how bad a coach Rick Neuheisel is. But, I suppose I miss a lot of things to do with my mom. I lost count pretty quickly after she passed away.

While I resemble my father physically, I am very much my mother's personality. Although I have improved with time, I used to view everything in life as if the worst case scenario was going to happen. Perhaps after my mom's death, I realized that the worst case scenario already had happened. And I survived it.

Iris Schneider is starting an occasional series of photos on Los Angeles at night. She's calling them Night Vision. She spotted Steve McQueen last night on Union Avenue near 12th Street in Pico-Union.

A mere three years ago, George Wolfe led a flotilla of kayaks down the LA River to prove the Army Corps of Engineers wrong, that LA's phantom waterway is, indeed, navigable. (And yes, that's George in the video above.)

This morning, thanks to George and FoLAR and a great number of people I'm unable to name, anyone with an internet connection (and fifty bucks for a ticket) got a chance to take part in the historic Paddle the LA River pilot program.

May I say the process also took a bit of patience and persistence?

The first-come first-served registration web page went live at 7:00 a.m. At precisely 7:00:01 it crashed. And stayed crashed for many long, heart-breaking minutes. I hit the reload button and kept reloading until voila! There it was, the registration page. With all the trips I was interested in now full.

But I kept re-loading and suddenly, there were openings. I quickly grabbed two spots on the Sept. 17 trip, which features a speaker from the California Native Plant Society. I hit 'enter' and the payment form appeared, and so did a countdown clock. Nine minutes to fill out the form. How hard could it be?

You'd be surprised. I filled and re-filled and re-re-re-filled the form, but each time I thought I was finished, I was told I'd left a crucial space blank. It took multiple tries (and some rude words uttered in multiple languages) to get finished. It was frustrating and infuriating and, when I reloaded the main registration page, I learned I wasn't alone.

Where once nearly every 10:30 a.m. trip had been sold out, there were now trips with 2 and 4 and 7 open slots. I suspect the buggy registration process separated the enthusiasts from the obsessed.

But now, with a pair of river kayak tickets for Sept. 17 burning a hole in my browser, I can say it was worth it. And of course (seriously, do you read Here in Malibu?) once the trip is over, you'll hear all about it.

See you on the river!