Best Of The Worst

With the pending release of a new video game called Bad Day L.A. in which the city gets tsunami’d, earthquaked, meteor’d along with other natural and unnatural disasters, Mack Reed over at L.A. Voice is echoing L.A. City Nerd in wondering and cataloguing what’s perhaps the definitive worst day in L.A.’s history. From my perspective …

I Scream You Scream

When I was a teen growing up in Hollywood, the place I wanted to go everyday during the summer was the Fosters Freeze that was on the eastside of La Brea a few blocks south of Fountain for a large chocolate-dipped vanilla cone. Looooooooved them. More often then not I’d wind up at the ice …

What’s In A Name

I’m moderately seriously thinking about nicking myself and going by “Dub” instead of “Will”… if not in person than in whatever print and online bylines I manage to generate. Now before you go rolling your eyes (I know: too late) it’s not like I’m gonna call myself “Rock” or “Bear” or “Boss” or “The Edge” …

Cap & Me

Caspar Weinberger died today. When we met it was a far different time in this country. 1985. December. I was about halfway through a solo train trip around the country. I’d come coach on Amtrak from L.A. through the southwest and Texas for a whirlwind overnight layover in New Orleans. Then it was into Alabama …

Doing The Write Thing

Such a strong compulsion to write hasn’t happened before or since. It was the summer of 1982 and everything had gone wrong. I’d somehow managed to graduate high school, but not much more than a month later was locked up at the Beverly Hills jail, arrested for assault with a deadly weapon. In the incident’s …