California Beach Quotes

In these fast and fickle times, it’s nice to know that there are some things you can always count on: the enduring brilliance of the last page of The Great Gatsby; the near-religious harmonies of the Beach Boys’ “California Girls”; and the lifelong friendship of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.

I know," I say. "It sucks. Let's go get tacos and sit on the beach.

I grew up in a utopia, I did. California when I was a child was a child's paradise, I was healthy, well fed, well clothed, well housed. I went to school and there were libraries with all the world in them and after school I played in orange groves and in Little League and in the band and down at the beach and every day was an adventure. . . . I grew up in utopia.

Winter denial: therein lay the key to California Schadenfreude--the secret joy that the rest of the country feels at the misfortune of California. The country said: "Look at them, with their fitness and their tans, their beaches and their movie stars, their Silicon Valley and silicone breasts, their orange bridge and their palm trees. God, I hate those smug, sunshiny bastards!" Because if you're up to your navel in a snowdrift in Ohio, nothing warms your heart like the sight of California on fire. If you're shoveling silt out of your basement in the Fargo flood zone, nothing brightens your day like watching a Malibu mansion tumbling down a cliff into the sea. And if a tornado just peppered the land around your Oklahoma town with random trailer trash and redneck nuggets, then you can find a quantum of solace in the fact that the earth actually opened up in the San Fernando Valley and swallowed a whole caravan of commuting SUVs.

There are two Venices I know about and one of them is a hotel in Vegas. The other is an L.A. beach where pretty girls walk their dogs while wearing as little as possible and mutant slabs of tanned, posthuman beef sip iced steroid lattes and pump iron until their pecs are the size of Volkswagens.

The big problem with pornography is defining it. You can't just say it's pictures of people naked. For example, you have these primitive African tribes that exist by chasing the wildebeest on foot, and they have to go around largely naked, because, as the old tribal saying goes: "N'wam k'honi soit qui mali," which means, "If you think you can catch a wildebeest in this climate and wear clothes at the same time, then I have some beach front property in the desert region of Northern Mali that you may be interested in." So it's not considered pornographic when National Geographic publishes color photographs of these people hunting the wildebeest naked, or pounding one rock onto another rock for some primitive reason naked, or whatever. But if National Geographic were to publish an article entitled "The Girls of the California Junior College System Hunt the Wildebeest Naked," some people would call it pornography. But others would not. And still others, such as the Spectacularly Rev. Jerry Falwell, would get upset about seeing the wildebeest naked.

You could own the best hotel in the world located on the best beach in California, but if customers are treated like inconveniences and requests go unfulfilled, they won’t return.

the full California workup: shopping on Rodeo Drive, a ridiculously overpriced lunch at the Ivy, an afternoon at the beach, and dinner at a quaint outdoor bistro in Santa Monica.

From morning until sunset — and sometimes by moonlight — the surfer dudes ride waves onto shore worried about nothing more than impressing the gorgeous girls watching them. Sometimes those bikini-clad California sweethearts let a boy get to second base to a romantic Leslie Gore or Connie Francis song. If she's really in-love, and trusts him not to tell his buddies, she'll let him round third and wave him home. When that happens, it usually isn't long before Nautica is all abuzz about an impending beach wedding.

It was there that I wanted, out there somewhere, when I sat elbow-to-elbow with my giggling friends and let my thoughts swirl up and away from the three-mile radius of our small town lives. In my head, I careened out of town and across state lines, until the landscape became strange and unfamiliar. I wanted to see all of it. Everything. The vast expanses of the flat Midwest, miles of horizontal earth with the curving horizon at its end. Strange, stunted trees and driftwood skeletons on the lonely windswept beaches of the farthest coasts. Towering oaks hung thick with the gray lace of Spanish moss, looming like hovering parents over shaded southern dirt. The California sun, dipping and disappearing into the ocean, tipping the waves with orange light.

up in Pacific Grove, a coastal town on the Monterey Peninsula in California, I had spent many Sunday mornings combing beaches, hunting for sea glass. I once believed the surf-tumbled glass had come from mermaids when the mythical creatures wept for sailors lost at sea, their tears hardened and washed ashore by the latest storm front. Mermaid tears were treasure, meant to be guarded close to one’s heart. They brought wishes of true love and kept you safe

They say the drowning man relives his life as he drowns. Well, I was not drowning in water, but I was drowning in West. I drowned westward through the hot brass days and black velvet nights. It took me seventy-eight hours to drown. For my body to sink down to the very bottom of West and lie in the motionless ooze of History, naked on a hotel bed in Long Beach, California.

You raise them half-decent, and they grow up and leave. They move to Miami or California-- someplace with gourmet groceries and nude beaches because you've reared them to cook good and be liberal minded. It's just the opposite with your failures-- them kids stick to your tail like a cocklebur. You'd think it would be the other way around, but it's not. No matter how old I get, this will always amaze me.

We proclaimed the freedom of the individual, bought and drove millions of cars to prove it, built more roads for the cars to drive on so we could go the everywhere that was nowhere. We watered our lawns, we washed our cars, we gulped plastic bottles of water to stay hydrated in our dehydrated land, we put up water parks. We built temples to our fantasies--film studios, amusement parks, crystal cathedrals, megachurches--and flocked to them. We went to the beach, rode the waves, and poured our waste into the water we said we loved. We reinvented ourselves every day, remade our culture, locked ourselves in gated communities, we ate healthy food, we gave up smoking, we lifted our faces while avoiding the sun, we had our skin peeled, our lines removed, our fat sucked away like our unwanted babies, we defied aging and death. We made gods of wealth and health. A religion of narcissism. In the end, we worshipped only ourselves. In the end, it wasn't enough.

For Rosanne, much of the overall problem lay with fragmentation among social service agencies, both public and private. Her favorite slide displayed in sequence the forty-two different steps that six agencies and a landlord had to complete to get one homeless veteran housed in Long Beach, California. Part of the cure, Rosanne believed, lay in creating systems dedicated to solving each community’s issues. All the relevant agencies in a city or region would be represented in a single command center.

He studied her for a moment, then said, ‘You live in Newport Beach, California.

Then came that terrible Christmas with its awful presents when our father, with the vanity I was to find typical, sent his photograph. My gift from Mother was a tea set—a teapot, four cups and saucers and tiny spoons-and a doll with blue eyes and rosy cheeks and yellow hair painted on her head. I didn't know what Bailey received, but after I opened my boxes I went out to the backyard behind the chinaberry tree. The day was cold and the air as clear as water. Frost was still on the bench but I sat down and cried. I looked up and Bailey was coming from the outhouse, wiping his eyes. He had been crying too. I didn't know if he had also told himself they were dead and had been rudely awakened to the truth or whether he was just feeling lonely. The gifts opened the door to questions that neither of us wanted to ask. Why did they send us away? and What did we do so wrong? So Wrong? Why at three and four, did we have tags put on our arms to be sent by train alone from Long Beach, California, to Stamps, Arkansas, with only the porter to look after us?

In the wee small hours, California Highway One north of Half Moon Bay is about as desolate as it gets. The narrow, twisting road was etched from sheer cliff faces that towered above me on the right and dropped away a hundred feet to the Pacific Ocean on my left. A soggy wool blanket of San Francisco's famous fog hung a few feet above the roadway, obscuring the stars and dribbling tiny spots of mist on my windshield. My headlights bored through the gap between road and fog, drilling an endless tunnel through the darkness. So far as I could tell, there were only two other cars on the entire planet that night—actually, one car and a produce truck. They'd flashed by, one after the other, heading south just past Moss Beach. Their headlights glared in my eyes and made the road seem even narrower, but half an hour later, I was wishing for more signs of life just to help keep my drooping eyelids from slamming shut altogether. It was the wrong thing to wish for. She appeared suddenly out of the fog on the opposite side of the road. Only, she wasn't in a car. This gal was smack dab in the middle of the southbound lane and running for all she was worth. She wore a white dress and no coat, and that was about all I had time to take in before she was gone and I was alone in the endless tunnel again.

In this fleeting moment what extravagant respite as Promethean sunsets blossom, blaze and secede from splendor to mystery. In this fleeting moment what extravagant respite as booming surf speaks its mystical passage across the undreamed depths.

It is, for one thing, a clear sunny day, which is no small piece of luck when you’re on a Northern California beach in October. The sand is actually warm between their toes, instead of dank and gritty; but the air also has the crisp autumnal bite that makes you want to wrap yourself in something soft. No one acts crabby, or restless, or bored. Billie has packed some particularly delicious sandwiches—pesto chicken for the adults, hummus for Olive (who has recently gone vegetarian)—and they wash these down with tepid cocoa from a thermos

They spent most of that first summer in a campground in California, near the town of Oceano, central coast. South of the beach access road, people rode ATVs over the dunes, and the ATV engines sounded like bugs from a distance, a high buzzing whine. Ambulances drove down the beach to collect ATV drivers three or four times a day. But north of the road, the beach was quiet. Leon loved walking north. There wasn’t much between Oceano and Pismo Beach, the next town up the coast. This lonely stretch of California, forgotten shoreline, sand streaked with black.

I felt the stupidity rising in my throat and bit down harder, staring at his collarbone and the small piece of blue sea glass he wore on a leather cord around his neck, rising and falling. Rising. Falling. Seconds? Hours? I didn’t know. He’d made the necklace the year before from a triangular piece of glass he’d found during their family vacation to Zanzibar Bay, right behind the California beach house they rented for three weeks every summer. According to Matt, red glass was the rarest, followed by purple, then dark blue. To date he’d found only one red piece, which he’d made into a bracelet for Frankie a few months earlier. She never took it off. I loved all the colors – dark greens, baby blues, aquas, and whites. Frankie and Matt brought them back for me in mason jars every summer. They lived silently on my bookshelf, like frozen pieces of the ocean I had never seen. “Come here,” he whispered, his hand still stuck in my wild curls, blond hair winding around his fingers. “I still can’t believe you made that,” I said, not for the first time. “It’s so – cool.” Matt looked down at the glass, his hair falling in front of his eyes. “Maybe I’ll give it to you,” he said. “If you’re lucky.

California during the 1940s had Hollywood and the bright lights of Los Angeles, but on the other coast was Florida, land of sunshine and glamour, Miami and Miami Beach. If you weren't already near California's Pacific Coast you headed for Florida during the winter. One of the things which made Miami such a mix of glitter and sunshine was the plethora of movie stars who flocked there to play, rubbing shoulders with tycoons and gangsters. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference between the latter two. Miami and everything that surrounded it hadn't happened by accident. Carl Fisher had set out to make Miami Beach a playground destination during the 1930s and had succeeded far beyond his dreams. The promenade behind the Roney Plaza Hotel was a block-long lovers' lane of palm trees and promise that began rather than ended in the blue waters of the Atlantic. Florida was more than simply Miami and Miami Beach, however. When George Merrick opened the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables papers across the country couldn't wait to gush about the growing aura of Florida. They tore down Collins Bridge in the Gables and replaced it with the beautiful Venetian Causeway. You could plop down a fiver if you had one and take your best girl — or the girl you wanted to score with — for a gondola ride there before the depression, or so I'd been told. You see, I'd never actually been to Florida before the war, much less Miami. I was a newspaper reporter from Chicago before the war and had never even seen the ocean until I was flying over the Pacific for the Air Corp. There wasn't much time for admiring the waves when Japanese Zeroes were trying to shoot you out of the sky and bury you at the bottom of that deep blue sea. It was because of my friend Pete that I knew so much about Miami. Florida was his home, so when we both got leave in '42 I followed him to the warm waters of Miami to see what all the fuss was about. It would be easy to say that I skipped Chicago for Miami after the war ended because Pete and I were such good pals and I'd had such a great time there on leave. But in truth I decided to stay on in Miami because of Veronica Lake. I'd better explain that. Veronica Lake never knew she was the reason I came back with Pete to Miami after the war. But she had been there in '42 while Pete and I were enjoying the sand, sun, and the sweet kisses of more than a few love-starved girls desperate to remember what it felt like to have a man's arm around them — not to mention a few other sensations. Lake had been there promoting war bonds on Florida's first radio station, WQAM. It was a big outdoor event and Pete and I were among those listening with relish to Lake's sultry voice as she urged everyone to pitch-in for our boys overseas. We were in those dark early days of the war at the time, and the outcome was very much in question. Lake's appearance at the event was a morale booster for civilians and servicemen alike. She was standing behind a microphone that sat on a table draped in the American flag. I'd never seen a Hollywood star up-close and though I liked the movies as much as any other guy, I had always attributed most of what I saw on-screen to smoke and mirrors. I doubted I'd be impressed seeing a star off-screen. A girl was a girl, after all, and there were loads of real dolls in Miami, as I'd already discovered. Boy, was I wrong." - Where Flamingos Fly

Well, if you did, you’d be wrong. It is much, much smaller. Try this: Imagine you’re still holding that tiny grain of sand. Now not just the beach you are on, but all the beaches all over the planet, all of them, all down the coast of California and the East Coast from Maine down to Florida and on the Indian Ocean and off the coasts of Africa. Imagine all that sand, all those beaches everywhere in the world and now look at that grain of sand you’re holding and still, still, our entire solar system—forget our planet—is smaller than that compared to the rest of the universe. Can you even comprehend how insignifi- cant we are?

He remembered the black sands beach along California’s lost coast where his mother finally gave up the fight. He hadn’t even realized she’d been injured so badly after running into his father in Seattle. She’d bled most of the way though Oregon, but he hadn’t thought it was serious. He hadn’t known she was bleeding out on the inside, a kidney and her liver ruptured, her intestines bruised beyond repair. […] They stopped six feet from the tide and she made him repeat every promise she’d ever dragged out of him: don’t look back, don’t slow down, and don’t trust anyone. Be anyone but himself, and never be anyone for too long. By the time Neil understood she was saying goodbye, it was too late. She died gasping for one more breath, panting with something that might have been words or his name or fear. Neil could still feel her fingernails digging into his arms as she fought not to slip away, and the memory left him shaking all over. Her abdomen felt like stone when he touched her, swollen and hard. He tried pulling her from her seat only once, but the sound of her dried blood ripping off the vinyl like Velcro killed him. […] He hadn’t cried when the flames caught, and he hadn’t flinched when he pulled her cooling bones out. […] By the time he found the highway again he was numb with shock, and he lasted another day before he fell to his knees on the roadside and puked his guts out.

THAT masquerade as summer in northern California, as the wind whipped across the long crescent of beach, and whiskbroomed a cloud of fine sand into the air. A little girl in red shorts and a white sweatshirt walked slowly down the beach, with her head turned against the wind, as her dog sniffed at seaweed at the water’s edge. The little girl had short curly red hair,

Life everywhere is affected by these fires. Residents of Malibu have brought their animals to the beaches for safety, shelter and companionship... California is a paradise for all. A gift. We are sad to not be able to defend it against Mother Nature's wrath. We love California. We are not ill-prepared. We are up against something bigger than we have ever seen. It's too big for some to see at all. Firefighters have never seen anything like this in their lives. I have heard that said countless times in the past two days, and I have lost my home before to a California fire, now another. Hopefully we can come together to take Climate Change on. We have the tools and could do it if we tried. There is no downside... - more at neil young archives website

«Estimada señora Zott: Soy vegetariana. No es por motivos religiosos, es sólo que no me parece bien alimentarse de seres vivos. Mi marido dice que son tonterías mías, que nuestro cuerpo necesita carne, pero es que me parece horrible que un animal haya dado su vida por mí. Lo mismo hizo Jesucristo y fíjese cómo terminó. Atentamente, Sra. Nanette Harrison, Long Beach, California».

The country of Croatia was lifted from recession when Kandinsky took a liking to its beaches and built a vacation home, plus several manufacturing plants; certain historians pin America’s downfall to a tax that chased Kandinsky’s California business away. Moreover, Kandinsky boasted a blue-blood pedigree: the right schools, the right clubs, actual royals in the roots of his family tree.

Or, so I thought it could all make sense if I felt it all the way through, no matter which direction or sense of purpose. What started me on this insane path to begin with? Women, death or luck; perhaps all three I knew that much, this nuke dream filled with silver wet screens. California was on fire, my heart was racing and I thought it was still about to make sense at any moment until I was a tidal wave of matrix information approaching the beach I stood upon.

I see together with Lovecraft the potting around of enormous foul masses, moving in endless waves, stepping over the last remaining crystal structures of resistance of spiritual elites; I am gazing, in ecstatic powerlessness of my hallucinatory awakening, at the shimmering black foam, the foam of black disintegration, terror of democratic stench and frightening organs of these convulsing corpses, which – in the makeup of dirty whores with a deceitful smile, with the California beach smile of European anti-fascists, with the smile of mannequin whores in flickering windows(so I would define it) — are preparing our final defeat, leading us to a destination which they themselves do not know, or, more precisely, know it too well, on the way there with relish sucking out our bone marrow; this is the hallucinatory leaden mantle of Human Rights, this faecal-vomitory discharge of Hell, although by saying so, I am insulting Hell.

Ramona was willing to talk about anything, now, about things beyond the present moment. Childhoods in El Modena and at the beach. The boats offshore. Their work. The people they knew. The huge rocks jumbled under them: "Where did they come from, anyway?" They didn't know. It didn't matter. What do you talk about when you're falling love? It doesn't matter. All the questions are, Who are you? How do you think? Are you like me? Will you love me? And all the answers are, I am like this, like this, like this. I am like you. I like you.

How many people know 10 good things about America? Almost anyone can tell that. But thing is that cities in America is not certain or similar to each other. The many popular cities are also popular due to their food style like Portland Oregon, San Francisco, California, Las Vegas, Nevada, and Seattle Washington etc and many other cities like this including Miami too. According to wallet hub, Miami stands at 3rd position about their craze of food and other things. But Miami is not just a food city but also claimed a name as a crime city.

Dawn cackles as she guides me through the all-glass porch. Thinner, paler Reina shuffles about behind Dawn, watching as I slip my boots off. Although she tries to hide her hands, her fingers flicker nervously. I place my boots neatly on the floor of the porch beside the other pairs in the shadows under the coats. Music drifts through to us from a distant room – it’s the Beach Boys’ California Dreamin’. Dawn looks at me and I smile – they’ve put the record on for me. Dawn nods along happily. ‘Hear you’re a surfer boy!’ she says and she mimics riding a wave.

I don’t wish to be unfair to Southern California. When the place was not on fire, or trapped in a brown haze of smog, or rumbling with earthquakes, or sliding into the sea, or choked with traffic, there were things I liked about it: the music scene, the palm trees, the beaches, the nice days, the pretty people. Yet I understood why Hades had located the main entrance to the Underworld here. Los Angeles was a magnet for human aspiration - the perfect place for mortals to gather, starry-eyed with dreams of fame, then fail, die, and circle down the drain, flushed into oblivion.

That spring everyone in Judy Chicago’s class collaborated on a 24 hour performance called Route 126. The curator Moira Roth recalls: “the group created a sequence of events throughout the day along the highway. The day began with Suzanne Lacy’s Car Renovation in which the group decorated an abandoned car…and ended with the women standing on a beach watching Nancy Youdelman, wrapped in yards of gossamer silk, slowly wade out to sea until she drowned, apparently…” There’s a fabulous photo taken by Faith Wilding of the car—a Kotex-pink jalopy washed up on desert rocks. The trunk’s flung open and underneath it’s painted cuntblood red. Strands of desert grass spill from the crumpled hood like Rapunzel’s fucked-up hair. According to Performance Anthology—Source Book For A Decade Of California Art, this remarkable event received no critical coverage at the time though contemporaneous work by Baldessari, Burden, Terry Fox boasts bibliographies several pages long. Dear Dick, I’m wondering why every act that narrated female lived experience in the ’70s has been read only as “collaborative” and “feminist.” The Zurich Dadaists worked together too but they were geniuses and they had names.

Since the experiment began, dead beaked whales have been discovered stranded on beaches of the Gulf of California by senior marine biologists at the National Marine Fisheries Services, including several experts in beaked whales, the impacts of noise on marine mammals, and the stranding of marine mammals. These scientists, and others who care about whales, wrote letters to the expedition’s sponsors. Columbia University failed to meaningfully respond. The National Science Foundation’s response was to write a letter stating, “There is no evidence that there is any connection between the operations of the Ewing and the reported [sic] beached whales.

You wouldn’t think this, but I almost never went to the beach as a kid, even though it was only a few miles away. The first time I ever went to the ocean I couldn’t believe it. My dad took us, and I was so scared at the size of the ocean. Also, I had light skin that burned easily and I didn’t like squinting against the sun for hours. Once I went with my friend Rich Sloan and I kept my jeans on so the sun couldn’t get to me. And there was barely any surfing either. I tried once and got conked on the head with the board. So Los Angeles and California were more about the idea of going in the ocean than they were about actually going in the ocean. I liked to look at it, though. It was sort of like a piece of music: each of the waves was moving around by itself, but they were also moving together.

I press the blue glass triangle to my lips and smile for Matt, my best-friend-that’s-a-boy, my last goodbye to the brokenhearted promise I carried like my journal for so long. Somewhere below the black frothy ocean, a banished mermaid reads my letters and weeps endlessly for a love she’ll never know – not for a single moment. Before the trip, Frankie and I set out to have the Absolute Best Summer Ever, the summer of twenty boys. We’ll never agree on the final count – whether the boys from Caroline’s should be included in the tally, whether the milk-shake man was too old to be considered a “boy,” whether her tattooed rock star interlude was anything other than a rebound. But in the end, there were only two boys who really mattered. Matt and Sam. When I close my eyes, I see Sam lying next to me on the blanket that first night we watched the stars – the night he made me look at everything in a different way; the breeze on my skin and the music and the ocean at night. But I also see Matt; his marzipan frosting kiss. All the books he read to me. His postcard fairy tales of California, finally coming to life in Zanzibar Bay. When I kissed Sam, I was so scared of erasing Matt. But now I know that I could never erase him. He’ll always be part of me – just in a different way. Like Sam, making smoothies on the beach two thousand miles away. Like Frankie, my voodoo magic butterfly finding her way back home in the dark. Like the stars, fading with the halo of the vanishing moon. Like the ocean, falling and whispering against the shore. Nothing ever really goes away – it just changes into something else. Something beautiful.

Consider California. Its wealth was initially built on gold mines. But today it is built on silicon and celluloid – Silicon Valley and the celluloid hills of Hollywood. What would happen if the Chinese were to mount an armed invasion of California, land a million soldiers on the beaches of San Francisco and storm inland? They would gain little. There are no silicon mines in Silicon Valley. The wealth resides in the minds of Google engineers and Hollywood script doctors, directors and special-effects wizards, who would be on the first plane to Bangalore or Mumbai long before the Chinese tanks rolled into Sunset Boulevard. It is not coincidental that the few full-scale international wars that still take place in the world, such as the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, occur in places where wealth is old-fashioned material wealth. The Kuwaiti sheikhs could flee abroad, but the oil fields stayed put and were occupied.

Malibu catches fire. It is simply what Malibu does from time to time. Tornadoes take the flatlands of the Midwest. Floods rise in the American South. Hurricanes rage against the Gulf of Mexico. And California burns. The land caught fire time and again when it was inhabited by the Chumash in 500 B.C.E. It caught fire in the 1800s when Spanish colonizers claimed the area. It caught fire on December 4, 1903, when Frederick and May Rindge owned the stretch of land now called Malibu. The flames seized thirty miles of coastland and consumed their Victorian beach house. Malibu caught fire in 1917 and 1929, well after the first movie stars got there. It caught fire in 1956 and 1958, when the longboarders and beach bunnies trickled to its shores. It caught fire in 1970 and 1978, after the hippies settled in its canyons. It caught fire in 1982, 1985, in 1993, 1996, in 2003, 2007, and 2018. And times in between. Because it is Malibu’s nature to burn.

For example. But I cannot give you an example. It was not so much any one example, any one event, which I recollected which was important, but the flow, the texture of the events, for meaning is never in the event but in the motion through event. Otherwise we could isolate an instant in the event and say that this is the event itself. The meaning. But we cannot do that. For it is the motion which is important. And I was moving. I was moving West at seventy-five miles an hour, through a blur of million-dollar landscape and heroic history, and I was moving back through time into my memory. They say the drowning man re-lives his life as he drowns. Well, I was not drowning in water, but I was drowning in West. I drowned westward through the hot brass days and black velvet nights. It took me seventy-eight hours to drown. For my body to sink down to the very bottom of West and lie in the motionless ooze of History, naked on a hotel bed in Long Beach, California.

As the steak sizzled, she removed an envelope from her apron pocket. “While that’s cooking, I wanted to share with you all a letter I received from Nanette Harrison in Long Beach. Nanette writes, ‘Dear Mrs. Zott, I’m a vegetarian. It’s not for religious reasons—it’s just that I don’t think it’s very nice to eat living things. My husband says the body needs meat and I’m being stupid, but I just hate thinking an animal has given up its life for me. Jesus did that and look what happened to him. Sincerely yours, Mrs. Nanette Harrison, Long Beach, California.’ “Nanette, you’ve brought up an interesting point,” Elizabeth said. “What we eat has consequences for other living things. However, plants are living things too, and yet we rarely consider that they are still alive even as we chop them to bits, crush them with our molars, force them down our esophagi, and then digest them in our stomachs filled with hydrochloric acid. In short, I applaud you, Nanette. You think before you eat. But make no mistake, you’re still actively taking life to sustain your own. There is no way around this. As for Jesus, no comment.

As the steak sizzled, she removed an envelope from her apron pocket. “While that’s cooking, I wanted to share with you all a letter I received from Nanette Harrison in Long Beach. Nanette writes, ‘Dear Mrs. Zott, I’m a vegetarian. It’s not for religious reasons—it’s just that I don’t think it’s very nice to eat living things. My husband says the body needs meat and I’m being stupid, but I just hate thinking an animal has given up its life for me. Jesus did that and look what happened to him. Sincerely yours, Mrs. Nanette Harrison, Long Beach, California.’ “Nanette, you’ve brought up an interesting point,” Elizabeth said. “What we eat has consequences for other living things. However, plants are living things too, and yet we rarely consider that they are still alive even as we chop them to bits, crush them with our molars, force them down our esophagi, and then digest them in our stomachs filled with hydrochloric acid. In short, I applaud you, Nanette. You think before you eat. But make no mistake, you’re still actively taking life to sustain your own. There is no way around this. As for Jesus, no comment.” She turned and, jabbing the steak out of the pan, the dripping juices a bloody red, looked directly into the camera. “And now a word from our sponsor.

Inside the Galleria it was dark and dank, with fountains and foliage unchanged from the 1980s. I instantly knew it—an old friend—despite having never stepped foot inside, and the loneliness that had been haunting me all day lifted in an instant. Even though I was two thousand miles from it, I was home. I had just moved from Philly, and I didn’t know a soul. My new life was feeling so empty, I needed cheap stuff to fill it up, and there was something particularly alluring that drew me to the Galleria that day—a store I had heard about that was becoming ubiquitous in Los Angeles, popping up faster than a rash of Starbucks in the cityscape. It was a fast-fashion empire to rule them all—pitch-perfect knockoffs of designer styles on an endlessly rotating trend carousel that changed out daily. If you couldn’t afford a Murakami Louis Vuitton monogram bag or the Miu Miu pleated micro mini, you could pacify yourself with their bogus cousins for a fraction of the price, and not feel bad tossing them when the trends shifted in a month or two. I spotted the store’s golden logo overhead. Forever 21. The name alone was pure poetry written in the California sand. Forever 21—like the spirit of a roller-skating bikini girl riding into the Venice Beach dusk. Forever 21—like Madonna, like Angelyne—faces and bodies sculpted into youthful approximations of their aging corporal forms. Forever 21—the true spirit of Los Angeles. I felt it enter me, I was possessed.

Dear Matt, In less than a day, I’ ll be standing on the same sand you stood on so many times before. Well, not the same sand, with the tides and winds and erosion and all of that, but the same symbolic sand. I’m so excited and scared that I can’ t sleep – even though I have to wake up in five hours! You know, I saved every one of your postcards. They’re here in a box under my bed – all the little stories you sent, like little pieces of California. Like the beach glass you guys always brought me. Sometimes I dump it out on my desk and press my ear to the pieces, trying to hear the ocean. Trying to hear you. But you don’ t say anything. Remember how you’ d come back from your vacation on the beach and tell me what it really felt like? What the ocean sounded like at dawn when the beach was deserted? What your hair and skin tasted like after swimming in saltwater all day? How the sand could burn your feet as you walked on it, but if you stuck your toes in, it was cold and wet underneath? How you spent three hours sitting on Ocean Beach just to watch the sun sink into the water a million miles away? If I closed my eyes as you were talking, it was like I was there, like your stories were my stories. In many ways, I feel as if I have memories of you there, too. Do you think that’s crazy? Matt, please don’ t think badly about Frankie’s contest. It’s just a silly game. It’s so Frankie, you know? No, I guess you wouldn’ t. You’ d kill her if you did! She just misses you. We all do. I’ ll look out for her, though. I promise. Please watch over us tomorrow, and for the next few weeks while we’re away. You’ ll be in my thoughts the whole time, like always. I’m going to find some red sea glass for you. I miss you more than you could ever know. Love, Anna

For fifteen years, John and Barbara Varian were furniture builders, living on a ranch in Parkfield, California, a tiny town where the welcome sign reads “Population 18.” The idea for a side business came about by accident after a group of horseback riding enthusiasts asked if they could pay a fee to ride on the ranch. They would need to eat, too—could John and Barbara do something about that? Yes, they could. In the fall of 2006, a devastating fire burned down most of their inventory, causing them to reevaluate the whole operation. Instead of rebuilding the furniture business (no pun intended), they decided to change course. “We had always loved horses,” Barbara said, “so we decided to see about having more groups pay to come to the ranch.” They built a bunkhouse and upgraded other buildings, putting together specific packages for riding groups that included all meals and activities. John and Barbara reopened as the V6 Ranch, situated on 20,000 acres exactly halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Barbara’s story stood out to me because of something she said. I always ask business owners what they sell and why their customers buy from them, and the answers are often insightful in more ways than one. Many people answer the question directly—“We sell widgets, and people buy them because they need a widget”—but once in a while, I hear a more astute response. “We’re not selling horse rides,” Barbara said emphatically. “We’re offering freedom. Our work helps our guests escape, even if just for a moment in time, and be someone they may have never even considered before.” The difference is crucial. Most people who visit the V6 Ranch have day jobs and a limited number of vacation days. Why do they choose to visit a working ranch in a tiny town instead of jetting off to lie on a beach in Hawaii? The answer lies in the story and messaging behind John and Barbara’s offer. Helping their clients “escape and be someone else” is far more valuable than offering horse rides. Above all else, the V6 Ranch is selling happiness.

If you could travel anywhere in the US for a vacation, where would you go?" He reached up with his free hand and rubbed his jaw, two creases forming between his eyebrows. She wanted to take over for him, brush her fingers across his whiskers, make him groan the way she had earlier. But she decided to behave herself. For now. "I've always wanted to go to Yellowstone," he said. "See all the wildlife. Maybe go fishing.".... "I'd pick a beach, Florida or California. Where I could be in my bikini more than not, rarely wear shoes, and wake up to the sound of the ocean." "Well, if you're gonna be wearing a bikini, I'm switching to a beach vacation with you.".... "Okay, so foreign vacation," she said, snuggling against him. "Then where would you go?".... "Let's just cut to the chase and say wherever you'd go.

from Mad for It, a short story in the Asian Erotica anthology: And I didn’t leave California with my pockets full of gold. About 20k in the bank and an old Taylor guitar on my back. I chew on dowry for a week or two, but she doesn’t like delays. I came to Thailand because I can live in a bungalow near the beach, swim every day and eat mango, coconut and banana. Drink red wine. She locks herself in my bedroom and talks on her cellphone for hours. Comes out in a denim mini-skirt and heels and leaves me alone until midnight. I’m licking paint off the walls. She gets distant. Starts the going out thing a few times a week. I try to follow her once, but get lost in the mountains. I’m on a steep, dark incline. No streetlights. Weird sounds from the forest. A cool and ominous wind shakes the trees. I’m the only man on the planet. On the way down, I crash into a guard rail. Call her for help, but she doesn’t answer. I know she’s fucking around. But it feels like a way out. I didn’t come to Thailand to be a wingman.

Though outsiders always assumed Southern California is perpetually soft and subtropical with the perfect beach breeze, that sweet lick of sunshine, I knew the truth. The real Southern California exists in extremes. It's a place of spontaneous wildfires, and Santa Ana winds, and droughts that turn lakes into craters, splintering the earth like pottery that has crazed. It's a place of storms that transform streets into oceans, and I had no doubts now: the rain was coming.

California during the 1940s had Hollywood and the bright lights of Los Angeles, but on the other coast was Florida, land of sunshine and glamour, Miami and Miami Beach. If you weren't already near California's Pacific Coast you headed for Florida during the winter. One of the things which made Miami such a mix of glitter and sunshine was the plethora of movie stars who flocked there to play, rubbing shoulders with tycoons and gangsters. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference between the latter two. Miami and everything that surrounded it hadn't happened by accident. Carl Fisher had set out to make Miami Beach a playground destination during the 1930s and had succeeded far beyond his dreams. The promenade behind the Roney Plaza Hotel was a block-long lovers' lane of palm trees and promise that began rather than ended in the blue waters of the Atlantic. Florida was more than simply Miami and Miami Beach, however. When George Merrick opened the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables papers across the country couldn't wait to gush about the growing aura of Florida. They tore down Collins Bridge in the Gables and replaced it with the beautiful Venetian Causeway. You could plop down a fiver if you had one and take your best girl — or the girl you wanted to score with — for a gondola ride there before the depression, or so I'd been told.

Though she knew she was not personally responsible for the collective sins of the world, she couldn’t shake a creeping shame for enslaving Africans, decimating the American Indian tribes, annihilating the passenger pigeon, building strip malls on California’s beaches and leaving behind unsightly junk on the face of the moon. Clintus

Rockaway Beach has a number of eateries, including the original Pronto Pup corn dog stand.

In California, hiking trails, state parks, and beaches were closed off, with a “regional stay-at-home order” that would not lift until January 2021; for millions, the miles of open, windswept beaches were inaccessible.47 As in a communist regime, people were told what they could and could not buy, and where they could and could not go, and indeed how close they were permitted to be to one another. Scared and confused, they complied.

Best Budget Travel Destinations Ever Are you looking for a cheap flight this year? Travel + Leisure received a list of the most affordable locations this year from one of the top travel search engines in the world, Kayak. Kayak then considered the top 100 locations with the most affordable average flight prices, excluding outliers due to things like travel restrictions and security issues. To save a lot of money, go against the grain. Mexico Unsurprisingly, Mexico is at the top of the list of the cheapest places to travel in 2022. The United States has long been seen as an accessible and affordable vacation destination; low-cost direct flights are common. San José del Cabo (in Baja California Sur), Puerto Vallarta, and Cancun are the three destinations within Mexico with the least expensive flights, with January being the most economical month to visit each. Fortunately, January is a glorious month in each of these beachside locales, with warm, balmy weather and an abundance of vibrant hues, textures, and flavors to chase away the winter blues. Looking for a city vacation rather than a beach vacation? Mexico City, which boasts a diverse collection of museums and a rich Aztec heritage, is another accessible option in the country. May is the cheapest month to travel there. Chicago, Illinois Who wants to go to Chicago in the winter? Once you learn about all the things to do in this Midwest winter wonderland and the savings you can get in January, you'll be convinced. At Maggie Daley Park, spend the afternoon ice skating before warming up with some deep-dish pizza. Colombia Colombia's fascinating history, vibrant culture, and mouthwatering cuisine make it a popular travel destination. It is also inexpensive compared to what many Americans are used to paying for items like a fresh arepa and a cup of Colombian coffee. The cheapest month of the year to fly to Bogotá, the capital city, is February. The Bogota Botanical Garden, founded in 1955 and home to almost 20,000 plants, is meticulously maintained, and despite the region's chilly climate, strolling through it is not difficult. The entrance fee is just over $1 USD. In January, travel to the port city of Cartagena on the country's Caribbean coast. The majority of visitors discover that exploring the charming streets on foot is sufficient to make their stay enjoyable. Tennessee's Music City There's a reason why bachelorette parties and reunions of all kinds are so popular in Music City: it's easy to have fun without spending a fortune. There is no fee to visit a mural, hot chicken costs only a few dollars, and Honky Tonk Highway is lined with free live music venues. The cheapest month to book is January. New York City, New York Even though New York City isn't known for being a cheap vacation destination, you'll find the best deals if you go in January. Even though the city never sleeps, the cold winter months are the best time for you to visit and take advantage of the lower demand for flights and hotel rooms. In addition, New York City offers a wide variety of free activities. Canada Not only does our neighbor Mexico provide excellent deals, but the majority of Americans can easily fly to Canada for an affordable getaway. In Montréal, Quebec, you must try the steamé, which is the city's interpretation of a hot dog and is served steamed in a side-loading bun (which is also steamed). It's the perfect meal to eat in the middle of February when travel costs are at their lowest. Best of all, hot dogs are inexpensive and delicious as well as filling. The most affordable month to visit Toronto, Ontario is February. Even though the weather may make you wary, the annual Toronto Light Festival, which is completely free, is held in February in the charming and historic Distillery District. Another excellent choice at this time is the $5 Bentway Skate Trail under the Gardiner Expressway overpass.

According to a standard account (which is probably correct), genetic engineering in the modern sense was born in 1972, when two biologists met for a late-night snack at a delicatessen near Waikiki beach in Hawaii. Stanford University medical professor Stanley Cohen and biochemist Herbert Boyer, of the University of California–San Francisco, were in Honolulu to attend a conference on plasmids, the circular strands of DNA found in the cytoplasm of bacteria.

This is not a book I could have imagined writing a dozen years ago. When an older couple from another town attempted to set up and lead a Bible club at my daughter's public elementary school in Southern California in 2009, they might as well have been alien visitors showing up at a beach party. The purpose of the club was to convince children as young as five that they would burn for an eternity if they failed to conform to a strict interpretation of the Christian faith. The club's organizers were offered free and better space in the evangelical church next door to our school, but they refused it; they insisted on holding the club in the public school because they knew the kids would think the message was coming from the school. They referred to our public school as their "mission field" and our children as "the harvest." ... As I researched the group behind these kindergarten missionaries, I saw that they were part of a national network of clubs. I soon discovered that this network was itself just one of many initiatives to insert reactionary religion into public schools across the country. Then I realized that these initiatives were the fruit of a nationally coordinated effort not merely to convert other people's children in the classroom but to undermine public education altogether. Belatedly, I understood that the conflict they provoked in our local community- -I was hardly the only parent who found their presence in the public school alarming was not an unintended consequence of their activity. It was of a piece with their plan to destroy confidence in our system of education and make way for a system of religious education more to their liking.

Amid all this, I read Good Habits, Bad Habits: The Science of Making Positive Changes That Stick, a fascinating book by Wendy Wood, a psychology professor at the University of Southern California, who argues that habits change when they’re harder to practice. Addiction isn’t about rational decisions, she wrote. If it were, Americans would have quit smoking soon after 1964, when the US Surgeon General issued his first report on its risks. American nicotine addicts kept smoking, knowing they were killing themselves, because nicotine had changed their brain chemistry, and cigarettes were everywhere. We stopped smoking, Wood argues, by making it harder to do—adding “friction” to the activity. In other words, we limited access to supply. We removed cigarette vending machines, banned smoking in airports, planes, parks, beaches, bars, restaurants, and offices. By adding friction to smoking, we also removed the brain cues that prompted us to smoke: bars where booze, friends, and cigarettes went together, for example.

Jesus (Don't Touch My Baby)" In California Forever summer and hot Into the ocean You're smiling a lot On sandy beaches And the blankets are hot You're in my arms And I kiss your heart Jesus, don't touch my baby Jesus, don't touch my baby Jesus, don't touch my baby She's all that I got Reflections coming In through the sheets You love your baby are sweet Out on the highway We ride tonight Jesus don't know you He was just saying "Hi" Don't touch my baby Jesus, don't touch my baby Ryan Adams, Demolition (2002)

When you have an unexpected crush on your childhood best friend, you spend a lot of time imagining the way you might kiss him one day. The fantasies I entertained of this moment were ridiculous cliches, based on movies and TV shows, and the romance novels I used to find in the pool clubhouse at Grandma Clark's condo. These scenarios often involved a helicopter over the Grand Canyon, a ski lift in Colorado, the top of the Eiffel Tower amid fireworks, or an unspecified beach in California.

100%原版制作學历證书【+V信1954 292 140】《加州州立大学长滩分校學位證》California State University – Long Beach

Fifty Best Rock Documentaries Chicago Blues (1972) B. B. King: The Life of Riley (2014) Devil at the Crossroads (2019) BBC: Dancing in the Street: Whole Lotta Shakin’ (1996) BBC: Story of American Folk Music (2014) The Weavers: Wasn’t That a Time! (1982) PBS: The March on Washington (2013) BBC: Beach Boys: Wouldn’t It Be Nice (2005) The Wrecking Crew (2008) What’s Happening! The Beatles in the U.S.A. (1964) BBC: Blues Britannia (2009) Rolling Stones: Charlie Is My Darling—Ireland 1965 (2012) Bob Dylan: Dont Look Back (1967) BBC: The Motown Invasion (2011) Rolling Stones: Sympathy for the Devil (1968) BBC: Summer of Love: How Hippies Changed the World (2017) Gimme Shelter (1970) Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World (2017) Cocksucker Blues (1972) John Lennon & the Plastic Ono Band: Sweet Toronto (1971) John and Yoko: Above Us Only Sky (2018) Gimme Some Truth: The Making of John Lennon’s “Imagine” Album (2000) Echo in the Canyon (2018) BBC: Prog Rock Britannia (2009) BBC: Hotel California: LA from the Byrds to the Eagles (2007) The Allman Brothers Band: After the Crash (2016) BBC: Sweet Home Alabama: The Southern Rock Saga (2012) Ain’t in It for My Health: A Film About Levon Helm (2010) BBC: Kings of Glam (2006) Super Duper Alice Cooper (2014) New York Dolls: All Dolled Up (2005) End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones (2004) Fillmore: The Last Days (1972) Gimme Danger: The Stooges (2016) George Clinton: The Mothership Connection (1998) Fleetwood Mac: Rumours (1997) The Who: The Kids Are Alright (1979) The Clash: New Year’s Day ’77 (2015) The Decline of Western Civilization (1981) U2: Rattle and Hum (1988) Neil Young: Year of the Horse (1997) Ginger Baker: Beware of Mr. Baker (2012) AC/DC: Dirty Deeds (2012) Grateful Dead: Long, Strange Trip (2017) No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (2005) Hip-Hop Evolution (2016) Joan Jett: Bad Reputation (2018) David Crosby: Remember My Name (2019) Zappa (2020) Summer of Soul (2021)

California was open and free, with purple mountains and salty brown-water beaches and dying palm trees and lavender jacaranda trees. Liberated green parrots found refuge in California, squawking as loud as they could on power lines in the early morning hours. Coyotes roamed the streets at night during the occasional downpour. Brown bears bathes in swimming pools and mountain lions stalked hiking trails. It was a magical place where anything was possible. That was home.

of the tiny aircraft and helped the third passenger aboard, his girlfriend Sandra, 30. The plane taxied and sped down the runway. As it rose into the blue California sun, Norman felt a surge of excitement. But as they banked east over Venice Beach, it was clear there was a storm ahead. In front of them a thick blanket of grey cloud was smothering the San Bernardino Mountains. Only the very tips of their 3,000 m (10,000 ft) peaks showed above the gloom. Norman Senior asked the pilot if it was okay to fly in that weather. The pilot reassured them: it was just a thirty-minute hop. They’d stay low and pop through the mountains to Big Bear before they knew it. Norman wondered if he’d be able to see the slope he’d won the championship on when they wheeled round Mount Baldy. His dad nodded and sat back to read the paper and whistle a Willie Nelson tune. Up front, Norman was savouring every moment. He stretched up to see over the plane’s dashboard and listened to the air traffic chatter on his headphones. As the foothills rose below them, he heard Burbank control pass their plane on to Pomona Control. The pilot told Pomona he wanted to stay below 2,300 m (7,500 ft) because of low freezing levels. Then a private plane radioed a warning against flying into the Big Bear area without decent instruments. Suddenly, the sun went out. The greyness was all around them, as thick as soup. They had pierced the storm. The plane shook and lurched. A tree seemed to flit by in the mist, its spiky fingers lunging at the window. But that couldn’t be, not up here. Then there really was a branch outside and with a sickening yawn, time slowed down and the horror unfurled. Norman instinctively curled into a ball. A wing clipped into a tree, tumbling the plane round, up, down, over and round. The spinning only stopped when they slammed into the rugged north face of Ontario Peak. The plane was instantly smashed into debris and the passengers hurled across an icy gully. And there they lay, sprawled amid the wreckage, 75 m (250 ft) from the top of the 2,650 m (8,693 ft) high mountain and perched on a 45-degree ice slope in the heartless storm.

In the fall, he briefly flew to Northern California to attend his father’s funeral and also spent six weeks training at Roosevelt Roads Naval Station in Puerto Rico, one of ten thousand Marines training for an amphibious “mock assault” on Onslow Beach, North Carolina.

So, what is the takeaway from this, aside from never underestimating a California beach kid and her dog? The first is not to fall victim to the fallacy that we can do a better job at intuitively spotting psychos than Debra Newell did. When we are lonely, we can be very sympathetic targets to the emotionally unhinged or predatory.

Santa Cruz was the safest place on Earth I could imagine: my sweet hometown, where the forests kissed the beaches on foggy mornings and their tender whispers liked you to sleep at night

Mr. Gazowsky and his wife were in a season of fasting and were praying on a beach in California. His wife had apparently walked a little farther down the beach and began praying for a woman they knew who was being tempted into adultery. The moment she spoke the woman’s name out loud, “a swarm of flies ascended from the ocean surface, as if orchestrated by an invisible conductor, and swept like a blanket across the water and onto the beach.”1 He rushed over to see if his wife was OK. When she told him she’d been praying for their friend, the Lord revealed what Gazowsky referred to as a “vulnerability in Satan’s kingdom,” that being the flies.2 When I read that, I immediately thought of Matthew 12:24, “Now when the Pharisees heard it they said, ‘This fellow does not cast out demons except by Beelzebub, the ruler of the demons.’” They were accusing Jesus of operating with the power of Satan, or as they called him, Beelzebub, which means, “lord of the flies.” How interesting that during prayer for someone being tempted by demons, a horde of flies came out of nowhere and descended on this woman. As Gazowsky found, the “weakness” relates to the life span of flies. You can study just about any of the species and you’ll find their reproductive cycles can range from a day to as many as forty days. That is why, in order to exterminate an infestation of flies from a crop, for example, you have to spray pesticides for forty consecutive days in order to utterly destroy them. If you stop short of the full forty days, you will destroy only the existing generation, but the next generation will live on. Just as spraying pesticides for a full forty days wipes out an infestation of flies, when we enter into a season of forty days of fasting and prayer, we can break free of the bondages in our own lives and in the lives of the next generation. As Gazowsky noted, “The devil is a short-term skirmisher.”3

Sheila Finch was born and raised in London, England. She did graduate work in medieval literature and linguistics at Indiana University. Dragged to California in 1962 by her (then) husband, she fell in love with the state and has stayed there ever since. She taught fiction writing and the literature of science fiction for thirty years at El Camino College, in Torrance, California. She lives in Long Beach with a cat and a retired racing greyhound.

A.Q., Keyes remembered, stood for Asshole Quotient. Skip Wiley had a well-known theory that the quality of life declined in direct proportion to the Asshole Quotient. According to Wiley's reckoning, Miami had 134 total assholes per square mile, giving it the worst A.Q. in North America. In second place was Aspen, Colorado (101), with Malibu Beach, California, finishing third at 97.

Claire Wiche is an ordinary woman, running her Wicca shop in an ordinary California beach town.

I, the driver of this car, that used to be Jim Ross, the teamster, and J.A. Ross and Co., general merchandise at Queen Centre, California, am now J. Arnold Ross, oil operator, and my breakfast is about digested, and I am a little too warm in my big new overcoat because the sun is coming out, and I have a new well flowing four thousand barrels at Los Lobos river, and sixteen on the pump at Antelope, and I'm on my way to sign a lease at Beach City, and we'll make up our schedule in the next couple of hours, and 'Bunny' is sitting beside me, and he is well and strong, and is going to own everything I am making, and follow in my footsteps, except that he will never make the ugly blunders or have painful memories that I have, but will be wise and perfect and do everything I say.

From the Bridge” by Captain Hank Bracker Ships Ships are generally different from boats depending on size, thus a ship can be considered a relatively large buoyant watercraft. Historically, sailing vessels that had least three square-rigged masts and a full bowsprit were considered ships. A rule of thumb is that a boat can be lifted onto a ship but never the other way around. Modern ships are power driven and usually made of steel, however this rule of thumb is not always the case. The lure of the sea may no longer have the universal appeal it once had but the profession of going to sea still presents many of the same challenges. The size of ships has increased over the years, with the French liner the SS Normandie being the first passenger liner to exceed 1,000 feet in length. Her length overall was 1029 feet. The next year in 1937 the SS Queen Mary was launched having a length of 1,019 feet. Although the Normandie caught fire, capsized and sank, next to the pier she was tied up at in New York City, the Queen Mary is now a floating museum and tourist attraction in Long Beach, California. For those that go down to the sea in ships, the ship is their home.

While reading some old articles to jog my memory for this book, I came across an article in the Chicago Sun-Times by Rick Kogan, a reporter who traveled with Styx for a few concert dates in 1979. I remember him. When we played the Long Beach Civic Center’s 12,000-seat sports arena in California, he rode in the car with JY and me as we approached the stadium. His recounting of the scene made me smile. It’s also a great snapshot of what life was like for us back in the day. The article from 1980 was called, “The Band That Styx It To ‘Em.” Here’s what he wrote: “At once, a sleek, gray Cadillac limousine glides toward the back stage area. Small groups of girls rush from under trees and other hiding places like a pack of lions attacking an antelope. They bang on the windows, try to halt the driver’s progress by standing in front of the car. They are a desperate bunch. Rain soaks their makeup and ruins their clothes. Some are crying. “Tommy, Tommmmmmmmmy! I love you!” one girl yells as she bangs against the limousine’s window. Inside the gray limousine, James Young, the tall, blond guitarist for Styx who likes to be called J.Y. looks out the window. “It sure is raining,” he says. Next to him, bass player Chuck Panozzo, finishing the last part of a cover story on Styx in a recent issue of Record World magazine, nods his head in agreement. Then he chuckles, and says, “They think you’re Tommy.” “I’m not Tommy Shaw,” J.Y. screams. “I’m Rod Stewart.” “Tommy, Tommmmmmmmmy! I love you! I love you!” the girl persists, now trying desperately to jump on the hood of the slippery auto. “Oh brother,” sighs J.Y. And the limousine rolls through the now fully raised backstage door and he hurries to get out and head for the dressing room. This scene is repeated twice, as two more limousines make their way into the stadium, five and ten minutes later. The second car carries young guitarist Tommy Shaw, drummer John Panozzo and his wife Debbie. The groupies muster their greatest energy for this car. As the youngest member of Styx and because of his good looks and flowing blond hair, Tommy Shaw is extremely popular with young girls. Some of his fans are now demonstrating their affection by covering his car with their bodies. John and Debbie Panozzo pay no attention to the frenzy. Tommy Shaw merely smiles, and shortly all of them are inside the sports arena dressing room. By the time the last and final car appears, spectacularly black in the California rain, the groupies’ enthusiasm has waned. Most of them have started tiptoeing through the puddles back to their hiding places to regroup for the band’s departure in a couple of hours.” Tommy

Tides have come and gone since the Beach Boys formed in 1961. But Brian Wilson, architect of the band’s signature sound, endures: He turns 73 on June 20. So crank up “California Girls” (50 years old this year) and explore the Pacific coastal stretch from

Ventura Keys is one of the most sought-after areas on the coast of California, not only because many of the homes here have beach front and water front views, but also because of how close it is to the shopping, dining, and night life of Ventura itself. It has all the beauty of living on … Ventura Beach properties, offers shopping for and merchandising of on-water and off-water homes, at Ventura keys, with free consultation fees, settled on the beach front, making a stunning outline.

The village needs men who head into the woods and kill whatever is eating the livestock. It needs men who can charge remote beaches, men who can fight, not just at work, but also at home. The world needs Living Myth now more than ever. It needs men like my friend CJ, who moved from California to the projects of Portland to live among the needy, the poor, and thousands of homeless teenagers—to restore dignity and love them quietly and without fanfare. CJ

Bryant lived in a two-story Malibu beach house elevated above the surf on pylons. A lot of celebrities insisted on living in this pretty part of town, and every few years their houses were swallowed by the sea or consumed by fires in the canyons, or swept down the hills in mudslides. They would come on television, looking stylishly disheveled, and proclaim how they weren't going to let misfortune break their spirits, and how they were going to rebuild, and Daniel would throw a shoe at the TV.

The rest of the house had a casual California boho-beach vibe, with its distressed wood floors, ivory furniture, and gauzy curtains, but the bedroom was very Zen. Decorated in a cool palette of sage greens and charcoal grays, with a floor-to-ceiling window along one wall that looked over a tiny tranquility garden of stones and succulents, it was my little oasis.

Coral couldn’t decide if this was everything she’d ever wanted or a sad mistake. We often call that feeling grace. However, it could’ve just been satisfaction, regret, or the early stages of appendicitis.

When I was three and Bailey four, we had arrived in the musty little town, wearing tags on our wrists which instructed----To Whom It May Concern---that we were Marguerite and Bailey Johnson Jr., from Long Beach, California, en route to Stamps, Arkansas, c/o Mrs. Annie Henderson.

than one thing very well at any given time. Multitasking was a myth and exists as a footnote in the standard text issued upon entry to those enrolled in the Clinic for Telling Lies to Avoid Pending Death.

The unique relationship to water among the living was incomparable to any other. It was more than sex, murder, food, or faith. It was their god and their whore.

Though he’d never traveled outside Canada, Warren knew a few things about California. He knew his namesake, Warren G., as well as Dr. Dre and Ice Cube, lived in the cities of Long Beach and Compton.

With the concept of Later came the perversion of More. Early humankind clearly had a keen sense of More. They always wanted More: more food, more water, more sex, more reasons to war for food, water and sex. It wasn't complicated, but once Later entered their consciousness, the limits of More widened to hazardous extremes. Later had to be filled with More and Later, an abstract concept with no concrete parameters and that possessed a special range to hold endless junk and garbage or essential items that would eventually wither into junk and garbage. The perversion of More did not simply end with decay but also eroded the simple act of sharing. With limitless space in the future, there was little room left i the present to gauge how much was too much to keep for Later and to spare for others. And so humanity began to hoard.

What quakes and burns in the cosmos will always roar with or without warning. We must bear the sound.

They stopped thinking in the same reality and retreated to separate ones, losing consciousness and dreaming in lies, like accidentally destroying your own nation with a biological weapon meant for a neighbor, an easy mistake.

In the Clinic for Excavating Repressed Memories in Search of Solutions to Current Crises, we are children, promised love and toys in exchange for the unbearable weight of growing up.

That is how happiness works; it is faith and forgetting that there is so much else to worry about.

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Frances Prizzia Criminal Defense Lawyers serves Newport Beach, Irvine, Santa Ana, and surrounding Southern California areas, offering expert defense in all types of criminal charges. Whether you're facing a misdemeanor or felony, our recognized firm is dedicated to beating your charges. We provide focused defense counsel to safeguard your future, committing the necessary time and energy to your case. Contact us today for a free consultation.

was one man in a fleet of alpha specimens from back East and down South, the blue-collar and big-money surf beaches of California, a few from corn country like me, and plenty from the Texas rangeland. Every BUD/S class has their share of hard-ass backcountry Texans. No state puts more SEALs in the pipeline.

Ugly or not, I could still kiss you if I wanted to, and you’d let me.” I choked on the rich cocoa in my mouth, my book dropping to the ground and closing without a bookmark. Shoot. “Why would you ever think that?” I’d turned to him, scandalized. He’d leaned close, one flat chest to another. He’d smelled of something foreign and dangerous and wild. Of golden California beaches, maybe. “Because my dad told me good girls like bad boys, and I’m bad. Really bad.

After a long day, he cleaned up and met her almost every day after work to take her out for supper at an Italian restaurant in North Beach or a restaurant at the docks to get fresh-caught seafood. They feasted on crab sautéed in garlic and olive oil, hot clam chowder and fresh sourdough bread, and raw oysters shucked right off the boats at the pier.

AT LEAST FOR the immediate future, there would be no arenas in Young’s life—just the opposite, in fact. Returning to California, he reached out to Mazzeo, who had moved onto a communal farm in Santa Cruz with his guitarist friend Jeff Blackburn. A beach town roughly seventy miles south of San Francisco, Santa Cruz had a population of just over thirty thousand—a size that would have fit into one of the venues on Crosby, Stills and Nash’s reunion tour. Young told Mazzeo he didn’t want to be alone on his ranch. “There were still a lot of Carrie vibes there,” says Mazzeo. Mazzeo invited him over, and Young made himself at home on the farm. Blackburn had been playing local clubs with his eponymous band, and Young was fascinated. “I said, ‘Buck has

AT LEAST FOR the immediate future, there would be no arenas in Young’s life—just the opposite, in fact. Returning to California, he reached out to Mazzeo, who had moved onto a communal farm in Santa Cruz with his guitarist friend Jeff Blackburn. A beach town roughly seventy miles south of San Francisco, Santa Cruz had a population of just over thirty thousand—a size that would have fit into one of the venues on Crosby, Stills and Nash’s reunion tour.

Paul strolled over from the food court, projecting that casual angst peculiar to guys who never left our hometown, who stayed committed to a dusty California free of ambition or beaches.

Reaching California, many of the Pacific-bound servicemen were caught in limbo, waiting for a ship, and that suited them fine. No one doubted that the route to Tokyo would be long and bloody, and they were in no hurry to travel it. The sweating malarial jungles of the South Pacific, the infinitesimal atolls of the central Pacific, all those obscure islands with their alien names—Efate, Espiritu Santo, Malaita, Guadalcanal, Emirau, Tarawa, Majuro, Kwajalein, Eniwetok, Ulithi, Palau, Saipan, Morotai, Mindanao, Iwo Jima, Okinawa—they would see them soon enough. “Golden Gate in ’48, bread line in ’49.” That pessimistic slogan, which began circulating in 1942, revealed a great deal about the attitudes of the American servicemen who fought in the Pacific. They fully expected that the war would last twice as long as it eventually did, and they assumed, as a matter of course, that the long effort would exhaust and bankrupt the nation. But the words also indicated a gritty, persevering determination. The Japanese had fatally misjudged them. They were not cowed by the prospect of a long war and a destitute homecoming. They would go on fighting, killing, and dying, overcoming fear, fatigue, and sorrow, until they reached the beaches of the detested empire itself. There, in 1945, the irresistible force of the Yankee war machine would meet the immovable object of the “Yamato spirit,” until two mushroom clouds and an emperor’s decision brought the whole execrable business to an end.

The beaches of southern California were the inspiration for "Zetty," but it was in the landscapes of the Pacific Northwest that I found inspiration for "A River for Gemma.

I got light-headed. Smoking-California-homegrown-and-drinking-Hennessy-at-the-beach-my-God-look-at-that-fucking-sunset-how-come-nobody-ever-talks-about-Zen-anymore light-headed.