All Hallows Eve

Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it, or so they say. Let's hope not. Years ago, when we had bought our house in the Hollywood Hills, the approach of Halloween was met with the glee and anticipation of a grade schooler. Having lived all our adult lives in condos or apartments, we'd never had the imagined joy of decorating for the holiday and handing out candy to countless trick-or-treaters. Now was our chance, and we went whole hog. God knows how much we spent on decorations, but the house was done up to the nines. Halloween that year fell on a week day, so we both arranged to take the afternoon off, all the better to make all the final preparations. That fact that no one else on our narrow, unlit, winding canyon road so much as put out a pumpkin was blindly overlooked in all our excitement. As the sun went down, we lit the candles, cranked up the fog machine and threw on the "spooky music" CD and waited. And waited. And waited. One hour, two hours........ nothing. Finally, around 9, the doorbell rang! Our first (and what would turn out to be, only) trick-or-treater! A little girl from up the hill who was obviously on her way home from trick-or-treating somewhere else. Somewhere lit and safe. My partner had bought a monster mask in which to answer the door, and all the pent up adrenaline got the better of him and when he opened the door he kind of overdid it. The little girl shrieked and burst into tears and turned back to her father who was standing a few feet behind her with their dog. And then the dog freaked out, so now we have a hysterically screaming little girl and a barking, snarling, howling dog. All in all it was a fiasco. We felt so guilty we basically dumped all the candy we had into her bag, which her father was now holding because she wouldn't come anywhere near us.

Which brings us to today. All the decorations from the previous experience had been packed away and forgotten for years until the move. But once the boyfriend saw them, you could see the gleam in his eye... this year will be different! Let's hope so. All the decorations are back up, and he's running around making last minute preparations. I know there are a lot of kids in the neighborhood. There must be. There's a creepy ice cream truck that crawls through the neighborhood everyday around 4, even now that the weather has turned cold. It's not really a truck, but a panel van, the kind you always see on the news when they're talking about child abductions. It slowly prowls the streets, speakers blaring an electronic version of "Turkey in the Straw". Over time the music has become somewhat distorted and has shifted into a minor key, which just amplifies the pedophile vibe. Any parent that would let their children anywhere near it should probably have the kids taken away. But there it is, everyday. Obviously it must be doing some business. So we'll see if the kids come out. I hope so. I don't think we could deal with the crushing disappointment of another busted Halloween.

Masters of Delusion

So it ends up Bako has it's own official motto!

Bakersfield - Life as it Should Be

Hmmm. Interesting concept. Wrong city.

Paris - Life as it Should Be

Now that makes sense. Afternoons spent lolling about at outdoor cafes, smoking a Gitanes with an espresso. That I could get behind.

But Bako? Um... no. In fact I can't imagine any other city, outside of the Bible Belt, sitting around thinking "Ya know, what we really need to be, what we really should be, is more like Bakersfield".

Here's the thing -

I HAD a "life as it should be".

I lost it.

And now I'm here.

So allow me to offer an alternative:

Bakersfield - It Could Be Worse, You Could Be Dead

Now that has the ring of truth to it.

That Special Feeling

"And what is his relationship to you?" We were standing at the reception desk in the hospital ER, and the nurse had just asked my better half who his contact person and next of kin was, and he had just given her my name. He had gotten deathly sick over the weekend and we both had feared for the dreaded Swine Flu, or worse, Valley Fever. He seemed to rebound a bit on Sunday and actually seemed much better on Monday morning. He had decided to call in sick all the same, the better to fully recover. But by late afternoon he had gotten much worse again. I'm sure it had nothing to do with sitting on the couch for hours watching "Trauma:Life in the ER" - I couldn't even sit through 15 minutes of it without feeling sick. At any rate, here we were, and there it was...

"And what is his relationship to you?"

That's a good question - what are we these days?

"Husband" was off the table, thanks in no small part to our new found neighbors. We had dithered around about getting married when it was legal, thinking there was no rush since there was no putting that genii back in the bottle. WRONG. People who thought that have never been to Kern County - Proposition 8 (repealing gay marriage) passed by a whopping 75% here.

"Boyfriend" is just too... gay. You can kinda get away with it in print, but spoken by a man my age is just down right creepy. Makes it sound like our house is decorated with "Twilight" posters and stuffed animals. No, we'll leave that one for the ladies.

"Spouse" sounds like a fungal disease.

"Longtime Companion" is too 80's.

"Roommate"... meh. At our ages, being "roommates" isn't fooling anyone.

Which pretty much leaves "Domestic Partners", which legally we were, although just saying it sounds so Soviet. Something hatched by the People's Committee on Homosexual Relationships. In LA, you just shortened it to Partner and called it a day. Short, sweet, to the point. Everyone got it.

But what to do in Bako? The few times the subject has cropped up with some of the people I've worked with here, and I described him as my "partner", it was met with blank stares. One woman actually asked me what business we were in - she assumed business partner. Obviously they never got the memo here. In such a homophobic place, what could we safely refer to each other as? I was about to find out.

"And what is his relationship to you?"

"He's my SPECIAL FRIEND."

WTF? Special Friend?!?!? What the fuck is that? Barney? Richard Simmons? Could he have thought up a gayer answer? Or retarded. Special Ed, Special Needs, Special Olympics... the word "special" doesn't mean what I think he thinks it means anymore.

Dropped jaw. Grimaced face. Look of disgust. Get up and walk away.

That wasn't the nurse's reaction, that was mine.

She was actually completely unfazed, for which I give her mad props. The doctor, on the other hand, was another story. Cold and curt, after a cursory exam, he fled the room , never to be seen again. Even sent the diagnosis and prescription in with someone else. But it's the ER in flu season, so I'll give him a pass.

The diagnosis? "Acute bronchitis". They claim it was brought on by the actual honest-to-god Swine Flu, but of that I'm dubious - it's highly contagious and I've been living and sleeping next to my "special friend" for days now without so much as a sniffle. No, I'm going to chalk it up to breathing the toxic brew that passes for "air" here - equal parts dirt and dust, poisonous spores and aerial-sprayed pesticides.

But the good news is he's on the mend and should be back to work tomorrow. And the only remaining scar from this whole situation is the mental image of the two of us, riding the short bus, licking the windows.

Isn't that Special.

Keeping Abreast

So today is a red letter day in Bakersfield, and that letter is "H", and that "H" stands for "Hooters"!

Today was the Grand Opening for the first and only Hooters in Bako.

I don't know which is more shocking - that Hooters is still in business, or that it took so long for them to get one here. If ever a town was "Hooters-ready", it's this one. Maybe management, having never see the local TV weather, found the local talent pool, um, "under qualified". Maybe the pious scolds, who seem to run this town, cock-blocked it at every turn, only to recently have lost the battle. Or more likely, as with everything else, Bako is just 20 years behind the times. Regardless of the circumstances, today is a day of celebration - Bakersfield is officially "Hooterville"!

If only Vic Mizzy had lived to see this day.

Have It Your Way

So the first thing that struck me when we ventured into Bako to look for a new home is the sheer number of fast food outlets here. Not just fast food, but also "casual dining", as they like to be called. Every single major thoroughfare has every chain you can imagine, and even some I've never heard of before. In triplicate. And while the vast majority of them look run of the mill, there's a sizable number that look... off. Either the architecture is strange, or the logo and graphics look different. The first week we lived here, we had no fridge, so we hit up quite a few of them, and even in the "normal" ones, the menus seemed different.

Ah, but there's a method to the madness. There's a reason Bako has one of the highest per capita number of less-than-fine dining establishments. Corporate America has determined, through market testing and focus groups and demographic studies, that Bakersfield is the perfect cross section of this great country. God help us all. So they have turned Bako into one giant petri dish, a test market for all manner of new menus, new products, new looks.

That ice blended mocha from McDonalds? Bako tested and approved!

They even test new... concepts. Ever eaten at a JBX? Well, you never will. It was a new concept from Jack in the Box. It was "Jack in the Box... After Dark". It was a Jack in the Box designed as a lounge that served beer and wine. It even had a fireplace! In theory, I could see that working for, say, Starbucks. They already have the corporate fake coffeehouse thing down pat, and I could imagine around 6pm the whole back bar area swiveling around like a game show set, exposing a whole wall of cheap wines and micro brews. Maybe shots of Bailey's in their existing coffee menu. Throw in a lesbian folksinger and I think you might have a winner.

But Jack in the Box? The first problem was in the execution. They built two locations, and they both have a very industrial look, with twin metal chimneys shooting out the roof for the fireplace. The overall look is steampunk steamboat, and kind of menacing. Inside they went with dark muted colors and grunge type graphics everywhere. Grunge was on it's way out during the Clinton administration, so it already looks dated. Whenever corporate America tries to be "hip" they usually miss it by about 10 years. And there's only so far you can push the whole coffeehouse vibe with plastic furniture bolted to the floor.

But worse than the execution was just the whole misguided notion. You can figure out what happened - Jack in the Box saw McDonalds steal away a slice of the Starbucks crowd with their cheap imitation coffee concoctions and thought "we want a piece of that too". But there was no way "How about a lovely Pinot Noir to go with your curly fries..." was ever going to sound anything but wrong. And so it was a miserable failure. Lasted about 6 months, and now both locations have been reverted back to plain old Jack in the Boxes. RIP JBX.

So keep this in mind during your casual dining outings, and know that if you come across something new and yummy, you have Bako to thank for it.

Breakfast churros? You're welcome!

Good Bye Cruel World

Another new day, more dead cockroaches. Jeez - just once I'd like to wakeup and not have to worry about what I'm going to step on.

I rarely find live ones, only the dead. I'm beginning to think they're committing suicide. That's Bako for you - even the cockroaches have lost the will to live.

Back To You

The local news. It's hard to know whether to laugh or cry. Somedays it's just so cringe inducing you just have to look away. Shake your head and turn it off. Others, it's so unintentionally hilarious it's the bright spot in my day. All local news is generally awful, LA's included. But by comparison, the LA newscasts now look like the BBC World Service. The worst of the worst, or best of the best (depending on your frame of mind), are the morning news shows. My particular favorite is "No Bull Mornings", just for the title alone.

So imagine by shock and distress this morning when I found out that, come Monday, it will no longer be called "No Bull Mornings"! They're switching to the blandly generic "Good Morning Kern County!". What a shame.

In a city of only 300,00, there are at least four local news stations, each with their big city whiz bang graphics and "Action News" vans. They certainly aren't lacking in resources. And yet it's still all so head-scratchingly... awful. You certainly don't tune in to get any, you know, "news". Not unless you're dying to know who won "Fist Place Swine" at the Fair, or you need to know what time the Funny Car Drag Race is going off. But it certainly isn't lacking in entertainment value.

First you have Melissa, the weather girl. Or I should say "girls", 'cuz "the girls" is all you're going to be looking at. Supersized breast implants, straining to break free from two-sizes-too-small Forever 21 blouses. One of these days one of those buttons is going to blow and someone's going to get hurt. You say there's a cold front moving in? Well I can see that. Jeez, how cold is it in the studio? She's never quite mastered the clicker, so weather maps and forecasts unintentionally streak by at warp speed. If you want to get the weather from Melissa, you're going to have to freeze frame.

And then there's Karl, the sports guy. A walking bag of testosterone, he's needlessly loud and bombastic. He thinks he's quite clever and loves his puns, which when it comes to talking about high school football is unfortunate, because the hometown team is... The Drillers. So imagine the loudest, most obnoxious frat guy making endless jokes about "drill this, drill that". Oh, and Karl's last name? Mandick.

But by far the highlight, or lowlight as the case may be, is "Metro Traffic". METRO TRAFFIC! IN BAKERSFIELD!

There's only one fucking highway! And it goes to Fresno!

No matter. Three or four times an hour they cut to some old, toothless coot in a Hawaiian shirt seated in front a a plasma screen. His name is Doug. On the screen behind him is a graphic map of Bako, little animated cars whizzing to and fro. They cheat of course, they have to. What's the point of doing traffic if all you can show is little cars moving up and down on Highway 99? So they throw in a bunch of the side streets and try and make it look like Bako is a little urban beehive of activity. To no avail. Inevitably, they throw it to Doug, and Doug reports that there is nothing to report, and that's it. Back to you.

One morning I was in the kitchen getting coffee and I heard from the living room that there was a "Breaking Traffic Report"! Ooh.... whatever could it be? Jack-knifed big rig? Five car pile up? School bus on fire?

Nope. Bale of hay. Lane 2.

Darling I Love You But Give Me Park Avenue

So it was with great sadness I learned of the passing of Vic Mizzy on the news yesterday. He composed the theme song to "Green Acres", a song which has been running through my mind with alarming frequency recently.

Can't imagine why.

He also did "The Addams Family". Snap, snap.

But here's the thing - the northwest portion of Bako is referred to as Green Acres. We've come to a classic "chicken v. egg" moment... which came first?

Either:

A. A TV producer in the mid-60's unfortunately happened on this place, and thought - Hey! Sitcom Gold!

Or:

B. The city fathers were so taken with the TV show, and are so clueless, that they decided to name a huge portion of the city after it.

Dum Dee Dum, Dadda Dum Dee Dum.... Dum.. DeeDumDum, Dah! DeeDahDahDahDah...

I'm going to go with "B" Alex, even though I didn't ask the answer in the form of a question.

But You Can't Check Out

The first thing I noticed immediately when we walked through the door of our soon to be future home was the cockroaches. Dozens of them. All shapes and sizes. Dead, belly up on the "fine imported Italian tile" - that's what it said in the listing. If by "imported", you mean "Home Depot", and if by "Italian", you mean "China". But there they were, a roach graveyard steps inside the front door.

And surprisingly, I wasn't alarmed. And I hadn't even popped a Xanax. I figured the place had sat empty for awhile and perhaps they had just fumigated. No matter - the management company had everything all spic and span before we moved in. There were no cockroaches.

Until the next morning.

In the bathrooms, in the kitchen, they literally seemed to come out of the woodwork. And my attention quickly turned to our neighbor. Mary. What kind of slovenly hoarder were we living next to? How many feet of rotting garbage were piled up against our common wall? How in the hell... wait... Turns out, they are EVERYWHERE. Go out to mail, whoops, hey, how ya doin', roach in the mailbox. Pick up anything outside and whoosh, away scurry god knows how many. Is this a Bako thing, or did we just happen to pick the wrong neighborhood? All the neighborhoods here have names, and I hadn't bothered to catch ours, but for all I knew it was "Roachville".

So I decided to ask a local. I'd become quite friendly with a few of the woman at one of the agencies I'd gotten work from. I tried to figure out the polite, politically astute way of inquiring about the, er, roach issue. Had it all planned. Gonna ease into it, not offend anyone. But when the moment arose, I blurted out "So what's with the ROACHES here?"

P R E G N A N T P A U S E

"Oh.... you mean the Water Bugs?"

Water Bugs? Are you fucking kidding me? WATER BUGS? What the fuck is a Water Bug? I'm talking about C O C K R O A C H E S. No, she patiently explained, they were "Water Bugs".

Delusional. It's become my "go-to" explanation for all things Bako. The woman was delusional. But the more I thought about it over the next few days, I came to appreciate the brilliance of it. She wasn't delusional. She works in marketing. She had... re-branded the cockroaches! "Cockroaches" are gross and icky and carry disease and pestilence. "Water Bugs" are cute and fun and probably have a Saturday morning cartoon on the Disney Channel (or could... if we play our cards right... hmmm... I know people... ). You'd let your kid play with a "Water Bug". I could see "Water Bug" back packs, lunch boxes. Maybe they weren't so bad after all. Part of the circle of life and all that.

And then in the middle of the night, a "Water Bug" crawled across my face.

Fucking cockroaches. So much for the new "brand".

Trading With The Natives

So the word out of Hollywood is nothing but grim. Frantic emails from former colleagues desperate for any leads on any work. Oy. If they only knew where I was. Advertising in general has been in crisis ever since we lurched into the digital age. Traditional advertising just doesn't work anymore. Newspapers and magazines are in a death spiral, taking print advertising with them. Television commercials have been Tivo'd into irrelevance. People have been flinging money into the online world for years now, with little or nothing to show for it. Even the most lavish website needs people to actually visit it. Phony "viral" ad campaigns can be sniffed out fairly quickly and end up being met with derision. And no amount of dancing ducks is going to make anyone click on a banner ad - banner ads are essentially visual noise to most people and generate no results.

And as bad as the general Adworld has been, the entertainment side of it has fallen off a cliff. All the studios and networks are now owned by multinational conglomerates, and to them, marketing movies should be the same as selling light bulbs. Not to mention, having suffered crushing losses in some of their other businesses, they've tended to treat Hollywood as their personal rainy day fund, forcing massive layoffs and slashing budgets to cover their asses elsewhere.

My business started crashing a couple of months before the meltdown of Fall '08. Panic set in as work dried up, and what little there was was paying a fraction of what it had the year before. First went the savings, then the 401K. And then... everything else. I've actually maintained a fairly steady work load, albeit at Malaysian sweatshop prices. It wasn't enough to save my house, or my former life. But it appeared to be more than enough to pay the freight here in Bako. Until recently.

My meager stream of work from Hollywood has dwindled to a trickle. So drastic measures were called for - looking for additional ad work in Bakersfield.

I approached this with quite a bit of trepidation. Were there even any ad agencies here? And if so, selling what exactly? And would I be treated like a carpetbagger, bigfooting all over the local talent?

So imagine my surprise when my very first attempts to crash the market were met with... WORK. I'd become so jaded and cynical in LA that I didn't realize how much cred all the Hollywood work generated. "You worked with Nicole Kidman and now you want to work with us!?!?!?!" Well, not exactly, but any port in a storm.

So here I am. A Bakersfield Mad Man. I was prepared to be shell shocked, grinding the gears as my creative life suddenly downshifted. And you know what? Not so much. Oh sure, the first tractor ad was a bit of a, oh what's the word... disaster. Who knew there were so many different kinds? But the transition has been fairly trauma free.

One day I'm selling Eddie Murphy films, the next commercial grade fertilizer.

In essence, no change.

T.A.R.D.

So I keep seeing these little mini-vans running around town with the acronym "BARC" on them. Curiosity got the better of me, never a good idea here, so I googled it.

Stands for "Bakersfield Association of Retarded Citizens".

Really? Well they're going to need much bigger buses, and a lot of 'em. But it turns out it's only for the mentally handicapped, not the entire population, as would have been my first thought.

Good to know "retarded" is still acceptable here. I think I'm going to be using it a lot.

Drill Baby, Drill

So imagine my shock last week when I discovered one of my neighbors drove an electric car! Two doors down. The other recycler. Hmmm...

My first thought was "Good for him!". Actually, that's a lie - my first thought was... "are you fucking insane?!?!... In this town?!?!" This is oil country - Black Gold, Texas Tea. Everyone in this town is connected in one way, shape or form to the oil industry. Half the cars here sport "Drill Here, Drill Now. Pay Less" bumper stickers. I kid you not. And they show their hometown pride by driving the biggest, baddest, gas-guzzliest vehicles on the face of the planet. Preferably a Ford. American Made. USA! USA! USA! I've never even seen a Hybrid car in this city, let alone an alternative fuel vehicle. Every time he drives down the street, it's a slap in the face, a poke in the eye. What kind of sick death wish did this guy have?

And then I thought.... "but he recycles..."

I'm beginning to believe recycling is this backwards city's version of the old gay hankie code- just substitute blue bin for red/black/green/etc. hanky...

"Hi there.... I couldn't help but notice your BIG BLUE BIN..... wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more..."

So I may have a new gay neighbor! Suddenly my mind danced with hopeful images of us all having Cosmos in the dinky backyard, mocking the yokels. But alas...

I walked out this morning to walk the dogs, and there it was - the huge moving truck.

He's leaving.

Maybe he just couldn't take the pressure. Maybe death threats. An electric car-driving recycler... perhaps it was just a bridge too far for this burg. But he cracked, he bailed. And he wasn't gay - when I saw the Early American/wagon wheel furniture coming out of the house, that particular fantasy vanished in a heartbeat. Such a waste.

But whatever - he's gone. Drove off a bit ago into the sunset. Silently.

And I'm bummed, not only because of the loss of my imaginary new not-gay friend, but also the loss of some convenient cover - you have to believe that a petroleum denier/fossil fuel heretic rates lower than the gays, so I thought he would take all the incoming anti-socialist fire. But like the French, he's retreated. And we're left here all alone.

With our Big Blue Bin.

Oh Canada!

So the neighbors appear to have caught on to the whole "gay" thing. We've been here a month, so they aren't going to get any points for speed.

My partner had a brilliant idea - throw them a curveball and hang out a Canadian flag. I burst out laughing, something I haven't done in, oh, a month. I had the mental picture of them all congregated, en masse (oops - that's French, non?), on the sidewalk in a forehead-slapping realization that...

"Oh.... they aren't GAY, they're C A N A D I A N !"

But sadly, what may have worked a year ago is a non-starter now. The vicious health care debate has exposed the Canadians of having a working healthcare system. A better system. A socialist system. And to think... they seemed so nice. Well, we aren't having any of that, thank you very much. So the Canadians are now on the shitlist, with the French.

Merd.

The Valley of The Shadow...

So the first winter storm is pounding the state. Or so I hear. Here in Bako?

Not. A. Drop.

After touting this storm on the local news for the past few days, only this morning do they mention the "rain shadow" effect. The bottom line? If I ever want to see rain again, I'll have to go elsewhere. Trust me if I could, I would.

And I was so looking forward to the rain. I was hoping it might wash away the despair.

Next Up: Locusts

How the hell do people live here? Every day seems to bring another Biblical plague. Actually, now it's making sense, the whole Jesus-ness of this place. Anyone with a working cerebral cortex has obviously fled, and all that's left are the snake handlers and tongue speakers who get off on being smote.

So the first big winter storm is moving into California today, and I was actually looking forward to it. And last night as I walked the dogs, you could feel it approaching, the wind gusting, a chill in the air, a Fallish feeling you rarely get in LA. And I went to sleep hoping to be woken up by the sound of rain.

No such luck. What I woke up to was a "dust" storm. That's what they call it. They're delusional. It's DIRT. Airborne dirt. From the hundreds of thousands of acres of fallow farmland and bankrupt, half finished home developments. Enveloping this craptastic city in a cloud so thick you can't see to the end of the street. You walk outside and immediately your eyes sting, they scratch. Just walking to your car coats you in a fine film of dirt. I just tried to walk the dogs and even they wouldn't venture into it, and digging in dirt is their JOB. It's what they DO. They aren't idiots. Unlike the residents of this hellhole. I was outside for less than ten minutes and I feel like I just clawed my way out of a shallow grave. And it's LETHAL. It carries something called "Valley Fever", which, I'm told is only occasionally fatal. If you grew up here, you have a certain immunity, or so they believe. Well, if you grew up here, and you're still here, you're a moron. Meanwhile, it's only us newcomers who evidently have to be concerned with, you know, dying.

I'm hoping when the rain comes, if it does, it'll wash all this crap out of the air. But the way things are going, if the rain finally does arrive, it'll be flaming.

Going, Going, Gone

So escrow closed today on my house. My home. My Ex-home. And I just feel numb and empty. I had made my peace, as much as I could, and shed my tears the last time I was there two weeks ago. In my heart it was already gone and I knew it. But today it's official. It's now someone else's home. And I'm just filled with incredible sadness. Because it isn't just the home that's gone, it's also the last, tenuous link I still had to my former life. It's like sitting in a lifeboat, watching as the fantail of the Titanic finally dips below the sea, and realizing you are truly alone, in the middle of nowhere, adrift.

And unlike the survivors of the Titanic, help is definitely not on the way.

Behind Enemy Lines

Kern County is considered the most corrupt county in California. It also has one of the highest percentages of registered Republicans. Go figure. This is the home of Real Americans, and you know this because almost every house flies the American flag. All the time. Some of them have been hanging so long they've become almost bleached white by the sun. From a distance, they almost look like the white flag of surrender, which is definitely NOT the look they're going for. But for many, the flag simply is not enough. Some houses fly two flags, or have taken the liberty (the God-Given American Liberty) to erect their own flagpole, so that their flag flies higher than the rest. Others have painted their mailboxes like Old Glory. Or littered their front yards with every patriotic tchotchke Home Depot stocks. These must be Better Americans.

As much as they love their country, they hate the French. I've seen any number of "Boycott France" bumper stickers, which I find amusing since for most of them the closest they'll ever get to anything French is the toast at IHOP. Then again, I doubt they eat there because it is, after all, the International House of Pancakes and probably secretly part of the UN, the pancake batter being delivered by black helicopters in the dead of the night.

And they despise Obama. Fascist Socialist Obama. Socialist Fascist Obama. They clearly have no concept of what either word means, but then Republicans have never let aggressive stupidity stand in the way of, well, anything.

Bakersfield is ranked the 6th most conservative city in the country. Not the state, the entire country. It beats out most of the Bible Belt! Which actually isn't all that surprising - driving around Bako you're as likely to see license plates from Texas, Oklahoma or Tennessee as from California. I guess having fucked up their own states, they've now decided to try and colonize this one. They love their Jesus, and they love their Bible, just not the part where Jesus actually appears - they rock their God Old Testament style, the more wrath and vengeance the better.

This is the type of place where people drive around with ginormous 12 foot wooden crucifixes resting in the bed of their trucks, propped up on the cab, and no one bats an eye. I saw that last week. The truck was plastered with Born Again stickers, the most prominent one saying "Body Piercing Saved My Life" next to a graphic image of a giant nail being driven through the palm of a hand. Well, that has to make driving difficult. Oh - it was Jesus, not the driver.

It's also the type of place where you see pre-teen girls standing on street corners at rush hour holding up signs saying "Abortion Kills Children". Not an adult in sight. I don't know which is the more frightening thought - that a 12 year old girl was out there with that sign on her on volition. Or that perhaps she wouldn't get dinner if she didn't do it. Either possibility sent a chill down my spine.

And finally, this is the type of place where all the men cruising for gay sex online are married.

All the churches I've seen so far have been of the evangelical variety. Most look like strip malls and don't refer to themselves as churches... they are "Worship Centers". Like WalMart Super Centers. I guess you can get your oil changed and and eye exam too. I was raised Christian, but I've lapsed, in no small part because of people like this. The Christianity I knew and loved died on the vine sometime during the Reagan Administration., and in it's place sprouted this pinched and toxic variation. I'll pass, thanks.

So this is how it is here. For someone like me, this is the Ninth Ring of Hell.

Bambi

Saw a house around the corner with a front lawn populated with concrete deer. And both trucks in the driveway were sporting NRA stickers. I have a feeling their appreciation of wildlife begins and ends in the Home Depot Garden Department. I could be wrong.

Labyrinth

Either to relieve the monotony, or out of sadistic pleasure, the developers here have seen fit to design their enclaves to resemble laboratory mazes. Streets zig. They zag. They form lazy S's, they circle back on each other and half of them dead end into cul-de-sacs. For added fun, some streets even change names mid-curve. Once you're here, it's going to take cunning and skill to find a way out. Which is pretty much how I feel about Bakersfield as a whole. On Google maps it's actually quite pretty, like a Celtic knot or the filigree work you find on currency. I'd had to consult the map to try and figure out a route to walk the dogs. Originally I'd just head out the door, thinking this town was laid out like others, with some sort of grid to it. No such luck. I'd become so intimidated by the maze that I'd resorted to walking the dogs to the end of the street and back, and now the dogs were bored.

So I found a route that looped from the house, and that's been our reliable trek every morning.

Until this morning. We walked out the door, and there across the street was a kindly looking elderly woman. Let's call her Gladys. She was walking one of those genetically altered/ hybrid dogs, the tiny ones whose name usually ends with "poo". As sometimes happens, my dogs and hers took an immediate dislike to one another from a distance, barking and snarling across the street. Gladys was already headed in the direction we normally go, so to keep the peace I decided we'd just do our route backwards. So off we went, down the street in the opposite direction. We turned the corner, went up a bit, made a right.

And there was Gladys.

Huh? She had been going in the other direction. And I didn't remember a street on the map connecting our current location to where I imagined she should be by now. No matter. Odd coincidence. But with the dogs barking again, we changed course and headed away from them. Left. Right. Right again. I was now off our course, but pretty sure I knew where we were. Left again. Right.

And there was Gladys.

Gladys knows something I don't. Secret passages, back alleys, something. We headed away from them again. Left. Right. Left. Oops, dead end, double back. Left. Right. Right again. I'm now thoroughly lost and starting to get a little panicked. The houses all look the same and there are no landmarks. I haven't a clue where we are and have no idea how to get home. We turn another corner...

And there was Gladys. I'm beginning to think Gladys isn't so kindly. That she's doing this on purpose. That she's malicious. But then it occurs to me that Gladys is actually ahead of us now, by about half a block. And Gladys knows where she is going. Gladys can lead us home. I need Gladys. It's a calculated risk. Most dog walkers seem to have a somewhat circular route, and since we first encountered her on our street, there a better than even chance she'll end up somewhere nearby, someplace I recognize. So we follow them. Left. Right. Right. Left. Now Gladys is checking over her shoulder. She must think I'm stalking her. I don't care. I want to go home. After a few more twists and turns, we're finally on a street I know, not far from our house. And then Gladys suddenly makes a turn up a driveway and scurries into her house, slamming the door behind her. She's probably calling the cops on me.

We finally make it home and the cops never arrive. And I vow never to leave the house without my phone, because it has GPS.

Missing Persons

Somedays, just to cope, I try and imagine I'm just in the Witness Protection Program. And in reality, it's not that far off the mark. Almost no one knows we're here. Either out of shame or embarrassment, we've simply decided not to spread the word. My parents know, of course, and the handful of friends who would actually miss us. A lot of my friends are now scattered around the country and the globe, and there didn't seem to be any compelling reason to let them know, since we stay in touch exclusively online.

Professionally, it's more a charade out of necessity. The handful of clients I've been able to maintain would pull the plug in heartbeat if they new I wasn't nearby. But the beauty of it is that no one has requested a face-to-face meeting in over a year. They e-mail me projects, and I upload the work a few days later. As far as their concerned, I'm still toiling away in the Hollywood Hills.

And no one misses me, because I stopped socializing with them years ago. I work in entertainment advertising, the hellish marriage of two of the sleaziest professions on earth. A greater collection of hacks and liars you're unlikely to find. I used to be quite social, mostly for political reasons. You never knew when you might find yourself on the wrong side of a palace coup or the semi-regular creative purges. Or more likely, when the partners cratered the agency out of ego and greed. In situations like these, it was important to "know people". And I "knew people". A lot of people. Fat lot of good it did me.

The same people who happily let you pick up the tab for dinner or drinks one week, would feign complete ignorance of you a few weeks later when your agency unexpectedly filed Chapter 11. "Will he know what's this is regarding?" Um, yeah..... I'm out of work and he told me to call him. "I'll give you his voicemail..." Dicks. So I stopped voluntarily hanging with these douchebags a long time ago. Life is too short. And e-mail allows you to maintain a veneer of friendship with people you loathe. One or two "heys" a month is really all it takes to keep the relationship on life support. And you can always up the ante by inviting them out for dinner or drinks when you know they're going to be out of town or otherwise unavailable. "Hey you.... I haven't seen you in FOREVER. How about we get together for dinner on Thursday? My treat! What? It's Yom Kippur? Damn.... some other time I guess."

And so the charade continues. I have this fantasy that things will turn around and we'll be able to move back to LA and pretend this unfortunate move never happened. Like that season on "Dallas" that ended up just being a dream. But each new day in Bako seems to make that a dimmer and dimmer prospect.

Day 20

There may come a day when this will all stop seeming like a hostage drama.

Today is not that day.

We're now into October, and in Bako that can mean only one thing... inflatable Halloween decorations.

Go West

"Oh you don't want to live there - that's a bad part of town." We were in a property management office looking at rental listings and a map of Bako. And the woman behind the counter was vaguely pointing to the east side of town. Listen honey, you're going to have to be a bit more specific, because we aren't from here and it all looks bad to me. But it ends up she was being specific. Bakersfield is almost perfectly bisected by Highway 99, and everything east of it was considered East Bakersfield.

East Bakersfield is bad.

Now every town and city has areas that are considered "bad", little pockets of mayhem that you can usually avoid. But not here. They've written off half the entire city.

With that new information, we cast our gaze west and soon found three listings that we thought would make a good start. Rents are so cheap here that we thought we might splurge and rent a house with a pool. It was mid-August and 106 and the heat may have clouded our judgement.

They're very trusting here, a luxury I guess you can afford when everyone is armed. You check out the keys to the various listings and have a couple of hours in which to return them. If they tried that in LA, every rental home would be stripped of it's fixtures and copper wire in a matter of days. So armed with three sets of keys, we headed out.

Contestant Number 1 was a smallish house, but it had a beautiful backyard and pool. When we showed up we were surprised to find the homeowner inside waiting for a handyman to replace the shattered window from the previous night's break-in. Hmmmm. Clearly we were still too far east. Check please!

Contestant Number 2 was a real contender. It was a duplex, not a house. And it had no pool and a smallish backyard. But it was HUGE. Two thousand square feet of the best 1978 had to offer. Dark wood, cottage cheese ceilings, tile counters and a wet bar. A wet bar! Screw the pool. To survive Bako I think the bar would prove to be a bigger asset. It was so "Mad Men". If "Mad Men" took place in Bakersfield. In the 70's. All the appliances were "vintage", meaning the microwave probably leaked more radiation than Chernobyl. But we loved it. We're a little strange that way.

Contestant Number 3 was in the middle of nowhere. And that's saying something here. We drove west until the housing developments gave way to abandoned oil fields and weed patches. And kept driving. Finally after several miles it appeared on the horizon like a mirage... Bella Terra. Or was it Terra Bella? Bella Vista? Vista Terra? Who the fuck knows. Anyhow, there it was. Fate had not been kind to little Vista Whatever. The recession had caught it mid-development and many of the lots were vacant. Of the houses that had been built, half looked like they were in foreclosure. There was no landscaping to speak of, except for the occasional tumbleweed. On the sales brochures, that's probably listed as "drought tolerant landscaping". The house we looked at was even bigger than the last, but with the oddest of layouts. All kinds of strange nooks and alcoves. In the model homes, these were probably filled with stylish writing tables and fainting couches. In reality, they were more likely stacked high with boxes from the Home Shopping Network. It did have a pool, surrounded by a security fence. That looked relaxing. Floating on a raft in a minimum security prison. No trees or greenery of any kind, just the pool, the fence and concrete. The whole thing creeped us out and we quickly left.

We decided to cut our losses. We chose Curtain Number 2.

This Just In...

"A Kern County woman discovered a smily face in a green bell pepper..."

That was this morning's breaking news.