Ken Park (2002)

This movie hasn't been officially screened or released in the US, except for its premiere at the Telluride Film Festival. There are a few PAL DVD's floating around out there, but North Americans are pretty much shit out of luck. And we aren't the only ones who have trouble getting a copy of the film, as it's been banned in countries like Australia and Singapore (anything banned in Singapore is almost always worth doing).

Ken Park presents a group of scrappy but mostly likable California skater punks, who, like any good teenagers, find themselves struggling with their abusive/crazy/absent/disconnected parents. Each of the four main characters has his or her own story, and the narrative progresses through a series of parallel episodes as directors/cinematographers Larry Clark and Ed Lachman jump back and forth among the lives of their various protagonists, much as Clark does in his other films like Bully and the seminal Kids.

And just like with Kids, Clark turned to Harmony Korine to pen the script for Ken Park. This is probably the film's greatest strength, as Korine imbues his characters with an instantly palpable sense of sincerity and mundane beauty. These characters feel most authentic in their moments of embarrassing normalcy, like when one boy trims his pregnant mother's toenails, or when a sullen teenager plays jumprope with a group of neighborhood girls. Particularly poignant are the scenes at the beginning of the film in which the teens introduce introduce each other through a series of personal anecdotes and still photographs.

So why exactly did people make such a big fuss about this film? It's chock full of murder, suicide, drug use, and curse words, but there's plenty of that in R-rated movies already, so I'm gonna figure it's the many scenes hot adolescent sex that prevented this film from being released in so many countries (though it couldn't have helped that Clark punched one of his distributors in the face at a party). Of course, there's plenty of lovemaking in other movies, too, but the sex in Ken Park seems to have freaked people out because it 1.) involves characters who are underage (the actors are not), and 2.) is obviously real. That's real, as in real penises going into real vaginas (good heavens!). Of course, this kind of thing immediately prompts cries of pornography, and this reaction alone is a big part of what makes the film's "unsimulated" sex so interesting.

Movie sex scenes have become almost painfully cliché, as filmmakers rely on the same tame and overused shots whenever portraying any kind of erotic content. In order to avoid the kiss of death that is an NC-17 rating (such films cannot show in major theater chains and will not be carried by big box retailers), many otherwise brilliant directors find themselves relying on visual techniques that the MPAA star chamber has traditionally awarded R ratings. While any imaginable form of violence qualifies a film for an R, a single flash of pubic hair is often all it takes to merit a financially disastrous NC-17. Clark and Lachman's sex scenes are therefore extremely powerful not only because they're hot (which they often are), but also because they so boldly and shamelessly dare to buck the societal hysteria over sex, pornography, and the seldom discussed difference between the two.

Despite these forays into the realm of cultural and cinematic taboo, Ken Park nonetheless utilizes a fairly conservative aesthetic. With few exceptions, the narrative remains clean and straightforward, and most of the characters never achieve the depth or nuance hinted at in the film's opening sequences. The adults feel particularly stilted, and few of them come across as more than caricatures of various types of bad parents. The film's narrative likewise fails to live up to its potential, as Ken Park's disparate episodes never come together in any satisfactory manner. Furthermore, the end of the film features perhaps one atrocity too many. I don't consider myself squeamish, but I found the film's authenticity began to wane as it lined up successive scenes of autoerotic asphyxiation, incestuous sexual assault, parricide, and a parent-child wedding ceremony. The earliest of these events pack quite a wallop, but Clark and Lachman allow for such little breathing room in between their sensationalist outbursts that the routine quickly becomes stale. I'm left to wonder if Clark made the right move in rewriting the end of Korine's script.

I would like to be able to further discuss Ken Park's strengths and weaknesses with my friends (and readers), but the film's "pornographic" nature and resultant lack of distribution have made this extremely problematic, if not impossible. Tracking down a copy of the film has actually become more difficult than buying a copy of just about any flesh flick. As it is, I can't even effectively debate Ken Park's merits or its status in relation to "pornography", as the film remains unavailable in most countries, including the one in which it was produced. That's some pretty fucked up shit right there.

Things I Only Now Realize About Television Shows I Enjoyed as a Child

While I was home for Thanksgiving, my father presented me with the amazing discovery he had recently unearthed in our garage: a (mostly) functional Panasonic AG-170 VHS video camera. He had actually been planning on throwing it away, and I'm so happy that he didn't. We unpacked it from its carrying case (a thick plastic valise), plugged it in, and managed to coax it back to life. And it turned out to be pretty damn awesome.

My father pulled out a few old video tapes to see if we could get them to play back, and they ended up being full of footage of me and my brother growing up (which is kind of funny, seeing as I don't remember my parents ever using the video camera). We started going through all of our VHS tapes, and one of the first ones we put in was of me as a newborn with my grandmother shortly before she died. I don't have any memories of her, so it was really a wonderful discovery.

I borrowed my dad's VCR and went through the rest of our unmarked tapes. I found a bunch of these old home movies, and I've been working on digitizing them so I can create DVD's for my parents. I figure they'll make good Christmas gifts.

However, most of the tapes were of TV shows that my brother and I had recorded at some point. It was strange for me to scan through all these old shows and remember a time in my life when I regularly watched television (I haven't had cable since I graduated high school). Scanning through excerpts from these shows, I found myself remembering the reasons why I had found them so enchanting when I was younger, but I also discovered tons of stuff that I never noticed when I was a kid. For example:

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
This 1964 TV special is more or less entirely based on the Christmas jingle of the same name. I know, eww, right? It's also a musical. However, coming in on the awesome side is that it's done with stop-motion animation, and it features an waistcoat-wearing snowman storyteller, a murdrous yeti, and a place called The Island of Misfit Toys ruled by a lion king. For some reason, most of my punk rock high school friends had never heard of this show before. Did we grow up in parallel universes? Or was it because they were almost all Jewish?

What I Only Now Realize: This show is apparently from the 1960's. When I was young I had absolutely no concept of time or way of telling the difference between shows that were brand new and those that were decades old, especially when they were cartoons. This is probably why Looney Tunes and Scooby Doo can play on TV forever and still seem fresh to the latest crop of American children. Nowadays it's just the opposite: I freak out if I watch an old movie and am off by more than one when I guess the year (something my boss teased me about this week when we were going through archival materials for our documentary). This goes to show that advances in special effects mean nothing if the story isn't any good.

Still Enjoyable Today? Mostly. It's cheesy in just the right ways, and even though the song numbers are a little grating, the stop motion animation is totally fucking charming. Plus it's full of unironic sexism (the young bucks all train to fly for Santa while the does watch and daintily flutter their eyelashes) and incidental violence (an elf revenges himself on a yeti by yanking its teeth out) that would never fly on today's children's programming. The Island of Misfit Toys is pretty damn wonderful, too (like, I kinda want to move there).

How would it have voted on Prop 8? Definite no. Maybe I'm just turning into a queer media studies douchebag, but I couldn't help but find gay subtext in most of these shows from my childhood. Seeing as this one is all about outsiders who get rejected from society for being different, but whose differences actually serve to make that society stronger, I'm going to give it a big gay thumbs up. Plus most of the main characters are clear stand-ins for homos: the overly sensitive blond elf and the rugged but friendly mountain man look like regulars from any queer watering hole.


Nick Arcade
Between the ages of 6 and 16, I was more or less completely obsessed with video games. They had a certain pop-culture cachet of cool in the late 80's and early 90's, resulting in TV shows based on Mario, Zelda, and Sonic the Hedgehog, and movies like The Wizard (which I used to watch religiously). Another offshoot was the game show Nick Arcade, which rewarded teenagers for being good at video games and knowing trivia. It also allowed its contestants a chance to go inside a video game (via some surprisingly convincing green screen).

What I Only Now Realize: This show was apparently made by lunatic crack addicts. The host looks like he's anxious to get the hell off the set and can barely read the cue cards. Based on his in-your-face dance moves and barely hidden contempt for the contestants, he really, really wishes he were a VJ instead of some guy who gets paid to watch teenagers lose at video games. The challenges involve backwards-playing videos and acid-trippy "robot vision" puzzles that seem to reinforce the notion that drugs and video games were meant to be consumed together.

Still Enjoyable Today? Not really . Except maybe the parts where the contestants lose at video games (I'm such an asshole).

How would it have voted on Prop 8? Yes. Marriage should only be awarded to homosexuals if they can touch all three power crystals before time runs out (read: never).



Mighty Morphin Power Rangers
OK, so this is probably the only uber-fad I ever really got into. I can even remember playing Power Rangers outside of an Oscars (before it was Pat & Oscars) with friends and having to be the pink ranger because all the boy rangers had been taken already (I sign of things to come?). I also remember calling 911 from the pay phone in front of the restaurant for no apparent reason. In conclusion, I did a lot of crazy shit I didn't really understand when I was 8.

What I Only Now Realize: This show is apparently Japanese. Was this point completely lost on the rest of America? The show had been on in Japan for years, and all the action scenes were taken straight from the Japanese production. The Japanese rangers (who fly away to heaven at the end of the series) were replaced by a multicultural cast of American teenagers, and the whole thing was repackaged for an English-speaking audience. The really weird part is that the American version ended up being more popular in Japan than the Japanese version.

Still Enjoyable Today? Hardly.

How would it have voted on Prop 8? Yes. I only scanned through a few episodes, but sample plot points included how gross and silly it is when a boy accidentally kisses another boy, how the hunky boy wants to go on a date with the cute girl, and how awful it is when a man becomes trapped in a woman's body.



The Adventures of Brisco County Jr
This show was about bounty hunters, time-travel, cowboys, robots, and a magical orb. Basically, it was every 9 year old's dream come true (there were even ninjas in one episode). Plus, it stars Bruce Campbell as the titular badass. However, it only managed to last for one season before mysteriously disappearing.

What I Only Now Realize: This show is apparently much less enjoyable for me as an adult than it was for me as a boy (sad!!!). The jokes feel cornier, the twists much more predictable, and the action more hackneyed. All in all, the whole series comes across as a great idea that had been watered down to make it more family friendly. Ugh, do I officially not have a soul anymore?

Still Enjoyable Today? Sometimes. Despite the flaws listed above, it still has some nice moments, especially between Brisco and his con-artist pseudo-girlfriend, Dixie Cousins. There are some nice instances of future technology combined with wild west cowboy action, and the shows strongest thematic moments come in its extremely self-conscious reflections on what it means to live in an era of dynamic change.

How would it have voted on Prop 8? No. This show was way too forward thinking and ahead of its time to settle for the shitty status quo.



X-Men
I regularly sat through several hours of Saturday morning cartoons that I actually kind of hated just because X-Men was part of the lineup. Words can't describe how badly I wanted to be an X-Man growing up. Probably because I got him in in my first pack of X-Men trading cards, my favorite was Cyclops. It was fitting, though, because he was such a straight arrow boy blue prepster type. It's who I wanted to be when I was a kid, but since then I think I've become more of a Gambit type.

What I Only Now Realize: This show is apparently actually a soap opera disguised as a superhero cartoon. So much of the action revolves around love triangles, hidden agendas, and complex webs of secrets and lies. Yeah there are super powers too, but those end up serving mostly as filler in between the diabolical plot twists.

Still Enjoyable Today? The soap opera parts definitely. The action not so much.

How would it have voted on Prop 8? A resounding no. As Bryan Singer showed so well in X2, the mutant struggle bears striking similarities to the LGBT rights movements: mutants, like gays, are special members of the population whose true nature manifests itself during adolescence and who are persecuted by civic and religious figures because of their innate identities. The core theme of the show- outsiders finding power in their special status- speaks to a much broader human experience, which is probably one of the reason why the X-Men have remained so popular over the past 40 years.



Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (& also Xena, duh)
This is one of the only TV shows I ever used to watch regularly with my dad. Like most of the other genre-busting shows I enjoyed, it managed to feature all kinds of crazy shit like vampires, deities, and wizards all packaged into one delectable program. I seem to remember that the Xena spinoff was actually better than Hercules, especially during Herc's later years, though I might have been swayed because Lucy Lawless was such a badass.

What I Only Now Realize: These shows were apparently made by porn stars. The women are all ridiculously hot, and Xena spends most of her time in a bondage outfit. Looking back, I can remember feeling extremely uncomfortable when my middle school gym teacher would tell us that he wanted us to keep doing situps until we looked as good as she did.

Still Enjoyable Today? Surprisingly, yes. I guess gods and monsters and warlords and moral dilemmas still manage to hold my attention (I'm kind of a sucker for mythology). The special effects are totally ridiculous and shitty looking, but both shows have a really nice, clean 35mm look and a spot-on blend of action, romance, comedy, and pulpy goodness. (Tesla, if you're reading this, I think we should invest in some VHS copies of these series if I ever move up to San Francisco.)

How would it have voted on Prop 8? Most likely yes. This is supposed to be ancient Greece- where are all the homos hiding? And Xena and Gabrielle remain trapped in the closet for six fucking seasons?? Still, the show wins points for having gay subtext long before it was in vogue to have a token transgender character on your weekly drama.

The Day After the Revolution

Attention Heterosexuals

I see you've been celebrating today. It appears that your marriages are safe once again. But you also seem to be worried about what the gays are going to do next.

It turns out your fears are well founded. Just as you had anticipated, we are coming for your children. We will convert them. We will recruit them. And we will teach them to love.

You have the tiger by the tail, bitches.

Hugz + Kisses,
-The Queers

Death by Stiletto

Chère Dominique,

I found myself thinking about 11th grade French the other day. "Thinking about" might not be the best way to describe it, though. It was more like I was struck by an uncontrollable torrent of memories that suddenly and uninvitedly came flooding over me. The deluge was heavy with the detritus from that time in my life I spent so many years trying to erase. But by that point, I had taken to writing in pen, which could be crossed out but never deleted. No matter what, there was always something left underneath, muted as it might have been. It was forever etched in thin lines of ink that flowed from the expensive pens I would buy with my parents' money at the office supplies store. I often chose black ink because I thought it fit my temperament, but sometimes I used blue because Monsieur permitted it and I was eager to take advantage of any flourish or excess that was allotted to me.

We shared stick figure cartoons between the two of us back then. The stick figures carried knives or guns or sex toys and flew with angels' wings or crawled on the ground or erupted in flames. We would challenge each other to put order to these random acts of salvation and despair. The figures were given voice bubbles or thought bubbles- the trickier ones were already partially filled in with words or phrases or stray punctuation marks. Perhaps a stick woman shackled to a dungeon wall would be saying something that contains "World Trade Center" and ends in a question mark. Nearby, a stick vampire would be beginning his thought with "Banana pudding...".

I can't remember for sure, but maybe there was one particularly cocksure stick figure with spiky hair. If so, I wonder what mad twists of fate we threw in his path. Did we heap misfortunes and embarrassments on him before consigning him to the cannibals or the serial killers or the hyenas? Or perhaps he made it through unscathed, despite our attempts to rid ourselves of him. He would have been skilled in this regard.

We shared other things as well: make believe crushes, suburban misadventures, and industrial gothic battle cries (the kind that get banned from the so-called Free Speech Wall at the library). We would occasionally trade short stories back and forth, to be completed in alternating bursts as quasi-exquisite corpses. I remember one involving a thief traipsing through a moonlit glen before arriving at a well-preserved manor. Inside, things turned sinister and culminated in death by stiletto heel- this was definitely your touch, as it was the first time I had ever encountered the word, "stiletto".

There were poems, too. These were the kind that were often doomed to be ignored by the faculty-endorsed literary clique. Ours were too full of passion and energy and rage, and they lacked the slowness and rhythm and nature imagery that was required for publication in the literary journal.

Passing these X-rated missives could be hazardous, as Monsieur had keen eyes that were full of doubt and judgment. Exchanging bits of paper under our desks would have been obvious and therefore foolish, so we would instead loan each other binders, having tucked the latest edition of whatever story or cartoon safely behind their laminated covers. I remember one crisp winter morning when you passed me your thin black binder right at the beginning of class. I removed a sheet of lined paper that had been torn from the inside of a spiral notebook. It featured several short, neat rows of confident and precise words. It was obviously a poem you had copied- perhaps from memory- and you had included a short note near the top of the page: "This is the only one I ever wrote."

There was no need to ask what the subject was. Even before reading the hallowed words that followed, I knew there was only one thing that would merit having a single and most serious poem composed in its honor. Volumes more could have been written, but too much ink had already been spilt in my journal- probably in yours as well, if you kept one. And after all of the things that you had explained and I had left unsaid, there was precious little left to be discussed. As it was, we both knew that there was so much that we couldn't explain or understand, and so we ventured no further than that solitary poem.

Time is supposed to do a lot of things, but it certainly hasn't healed my wounds or shed any light on the situation. I find myself turning to distorted memories when I try to piece together what might have been really going on with the three of us, and I'd like to search for any clues that I might have left in my high school journal, but that burned last year in the fire. At first this loss infuriated me, but I've come to appreciate the freedom with which I am now able to romanticize the journal's contents. Instead of pages of bad poetry, sullen diatribes, and furtive attempts to explain away my desires, I can imagine an epic journey filled with melancholy beauty. Moments of darkness and banality can be replaced with the unspeakable fantasies I was too afraid to commit to words. If I try hard enough, I might even be able to give it a happy ending.

How deceitful I've become.

Amitiés,
-G

Mysterious Skin (2004)

Greg Arraki's Mysterious Skin hovers over those bittersweet and languid teenage years- that time when life seems ruled by a complicated matrix of desire, ambition, and boredom. It's a world where the everyday comfort of mom's apple pie meets the mundane pleasures of the jaded, adolescent prostitute. Arraki's misfit teens long to escape from these small-town banalities, but even in their moments of triumph, they find themselves drawn back to the meandering joys and sorrows of their suburban upbringing.

At the heart of the film lies the troubling decade-old legacy of sexual abuse secretly inflicted on several young boys by their little league baseball coach. For sullen Neal, these events served as a sexual awakening, and he eventually finds himself working as a hustler- partially as a big "fuck you" to society, but also as a mechanism through which he attempts to reconcile his conflicted feelings about the unspeakable bond he shared with his coach. Prone to nihilistic angst and random acts of self-destruction, his devil-may-care attitude nonetheless endears him to his fellow teenage outcasts, a motley crew who hopelessly lust after the affections that Neal is only able to share with older men.

Meanwhile, geeky Brian leads a sheltered life at home as he prepares for community college. His seemingly quiet demeanor hides a roiling psyche, for his dreams abound with haunting visions of the sinister moments of darkness that he has repressed from his childhood memories. After watching a television special about UFO's, he becomes convinced that he has been abducted by extraterrestrials, and he sets out in search of the truth that only Neal can help him discover.

The film's exploration of child abuse is terrifyingly powerful, and Arraki boldly chooses to present this subject without the shrill menace that dominates more traditional after-school-special approach to such issues. Instead, he coats his scenes in a glossy, almost romantic sheen, and the result feels much more true to the nightmarish fantasy world into which young Neal and Brian have been shepherded.

The film abounds with such darkly romanticized imagery, and Arraki uses these moments of to construct a mythic cycle of boredom and cruelty that fuels the American youth's Promethean yearning: a young boy is left without a ride home after his little league baseball game is cut short by a massive downpour; trick-or-treaters kidnap and torment a developmentally disabled child; two teen boys kiss in order to antagonize the grizzled truck driver sitting next to them at a stoplight. Through episodes like these, Mysterious Skin transforms suburban America's treasured icons into sinister pressures that compel the adolescent outsider to abandon his small-town roots in order to construct a more desirable identity. However, such efforts at cultural betrayal are doomed to fail, and Arraki's characters must eventually abandon their fantasies and confront the internal forces that have shaped their troubled worldviews.

At times, the film's dialogue and scenario begin to feel a little hokey, but Arraki manages to get away with it because this kind of melodrama makes sense in a world framed by teenage insecurities. The mostly age-appropriate actors are fittingly awkward, and their moments of unabashed rage and desire feel true to life. Or at least they did for me. Watching Mysterious Skin, I found myself drifting back to those pointless teenage years, that first time getting drunk, those gothy posters in the attic hangout, and that desperation to become somebody else. I can only hope I haven't been too successful.

The Myth of America

I first noticed the Myth of America a few weeks ago, when I was home in San Diego. It came to me while I was jogging around the neighborhood where my father has lived for the last 20 years. As I made my may towards the local elementary school, I passed a middle-aged woman chatting happily with friends as she pushed a trash barrel down her driveway, a group of children on rollerskates who were shouting to another group of kids who were up in a tree, and a lanky teenage boy washing an old car in front of his garage. Touring the neighborhood like this reminded me of so many seemingly similar episodes from my own upbringing , but something about about still struck me as strange. I kept thinking to myself, this can't possibly be real. It was almost too perfect in its encapsulation of the America that's packaged and sold on television and in movies (and in dreams). It's the suburban paradise that is as inescapable and tragic as it is stirring and romantic.

I recently had three back-to-back encounters with this Myth of America. The first was during a sunny afternoon at Disneyland, where I met my old friend "Samantha" in front of Pizza Port in Tomorrow Land. She just graduated from college and has been living in Canada with her boyfriend, but she was in California with her family, who had been on a cruise down the coast for the past week. We talked briefly about art projects and old friends, and she showed me some of her new watercolors- there were some really lovely landscapes, which surprised the hell outta me because her old stuff had been so dark (it's probably why we had become such good friends in the first place).

We met up with Samantha's brother and father, and got in line to ride on Space Mountain. Samantha's brother started talking me up right away about politics and film and all the other wild things going on in the world. He was opinionated but also very affable and inquisitive- he reminded me of myself in his eagerness to argue issues both profound and mundane. His unabashed curiosity, happy-go-lucky demeanor, and "Bank of Dad" t-shirt all made him seem like a kid stuck in a grown man's body, though this effect was probably heightened by the fact that we were at Disneyland. This certainly isn't to say that he was childish- it was more like he reminded me of yet another Myth: that apparently ordinary youth who makes striking brilliant remarks without seeming to recognize the impact of his words. Or maybe his underlying maturity had something to do with the fact that he was a few days away from leaving for a tour of duty in Iraq.

Samantha's father was a also an army man, though his fighting years appeared to be behind him, and he stopped every half an hour to buy one of the crusty $3 churros from the colorful carts strategically positioned throughout the park. I used to love the things as a kid, and I can hardly remember a trip to the zoo or to a baseball game that does not involve me immediately begging my parents to buy me one. I've gotten over them, though (along with most other processed sugar injections), but I certainly appeared to be in the minority at the park. I know it's a cliche that American has gotten so incredibly fat, but it was still eye-opening to be surrounded by people who were from outsdie of image-conscious California. I made me wonder when I abandoned dreams of cotton candy and churros and cinnamon buns and instead started to see a single piece of chocolate or a plate of fresh fruit as dessert. Had I bought into some other Myth of eating "just right" and depriving myself of the good stuff, or had the wool really been pulled over the eyes of the many people lumbering after the disgustingly sugar-coated, fried wads of fat that had been squeezed into the shapes of various Disney heroes?

I drove Samantha back to her hotel room after it started to get dark. We were both pretty exhausted from walking around the park all day, and we agreed that it wasn't as fun as either of us had remembered. Samantha's brother and father stayed behind to watch fireworks and have a father-son moment that Samantha said would probably turn out to consist of the two of them talking about guns for an hour. She told me that things had been tough on her brother for a while, as he had learning disabilities and had struggled through college. He was struggling now, too, though that was mostly because he was queer but had stopped dating because of the whole Army thing. It's this inevitable melancholy that is probably the most terrible- and the most beautiful- thing about The Myth.

I had my second Mythic encounter the next day at Hansem Dam Park in Los Angeles. I had just gotten out of my car and was looking for some friends amongst the various picnickers who were tending barbecues and kicking around soccer balls. As I made my way out of the parking lot, I heard a scream and watched as a pair of horses raced across a dirt trail. A man in a cowboy hat was on top of one, trying desperately to catch up with the young girl on the horse in front of him. She had apparently lost control and was holding on tight and screaming bloody murder as her horse thundered through the park. An older man- her father?- started shouting to her in a frantic mix of Spanish and English, and at one point he told her to let go. She obeyed and was immediately thrown beneath the horse's hooves. She didn't move or scream anymore after this, and a delirious woman ran to her side, shrieking like a banshee. I thought I heard the little girl groan as I approached, but I couldn't be certain.

Her family gathered around her, and everyone was shouting at each other in Spanish, though they still said "911" in English, and a few of them quickly pulled out their cell pones. Lifeguards arrived in pickup trucks, and there were ambulances, firetrucks, and police cruisers too. One of the firetrucks made its way down a baseball field, and the fireman got out and cleared the area so a helicopter could land right in the middle of the outfield. My friends and I watched as the ambulance rambled down to the baseball field and the girl was rolled out on a stretcher before being whisked off into the sky. I checked the news for the next couple days, but I couldn't find anything about what had happened to her.

My met The Myth for a third time amongst the rolling canyons northwest of the city. My friend Ryan had been trying to get me to go riding with him for the past few weeks, as he has also just bought a motorcycle. I'd been feeling much better about my bike ever since I finally took it to a mechanic for an overhaul, so I shot up the 134 to meet him in Calabasas near where his parents live. He led me through a series of winding country roads where motorcycles outnumbered cars 10 to 1. The dusty hills reminded of the ones that I had spent so many hours staring at during my youth, whether it was hiking the trails near my father's house, traveling down the lonely stretches of the Del Dios mountain highway, or on trips to the apple orchards of Julian or the sweltering paradise of Palm Springs.

We stopped for a break at a little biker grill along the main passage through the canyon, and it had that same hardy roughness that I would expect to find at Robin Hood's den of thieves. It was a place for tough-guy types and their badass middle-aged girlfriends to eat burgers and throw back beers and relax to classic American rock music. I remember wondering to myself, is this America through Republican eyes? The mix of easygoing comfort and exotic beauty reminded me of the times I've visited my family in the South.

We eventually shot off on our bikes again, this time racing towards the Malibu coast. When we emerged from the canyon, we were hit by a blast of crisp ocean air that rushed off the various beaches and coves. We stopped to eat lunch at Neptune's Net, where I ate the "famous" fish and chips and Ryan had the fried calamari. We sat outside and watched as suntanned surfers emerged from the coast with their longboards and other bikers arrived and dismounted from their steeds, which came in so many beautifully different colors and sizes and styles. In a very anti-Mythical moment, both Ryan and I agreed that Japanese and European bikes are much more elegant than their American counterparts.

The whole time, I kept asking myself where this other America hides. Is this land of surfers and motorcycles and glorious meandering hillsides still there when I go back to my little apartment in the city? Does it vanish when I look away, or when I wake up in the morning? I also wondered if this Myth shares in the same sadness that hangs over the other Myths I encountered that weekend. Perhaps I've sacrificed something to maintain this bikers' paradise along the coast. Or maybe- and this seems much more likely- someone else has.