One Eye on the Sky.

I had a great weekend hanging out with DL King. Our quest for Mexican food led us to Balboa Island down in Newport (We ate pupusas and tortas at an El Salvadorian place), La Super Rica in Santa Barbara, our local "been here since the dawn of time" cantina, and the drive-through of several Jack In The Box restaurants.

Besides sitting in a traffic jam on Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu above Sunset Boulevard, and shopping for flavored balsamic vinegar in Balboa, DL and I also met Stan Kent of the Shoe Leather series fame for a very fun lunch. If I hadn't been driving, I would have drank more than a single shot ofsaki . Stan is fascinating, funny, and smart - the perfect combination for a rather ribald lunch conversation. We talked about erotica and the LA version of In The Flesh erotica reading series which Stan is now running. He had some great ideas. I'm looking forward to next month.

The weather was flawless. It was in the low 80s, unbelievably clear skies, and just cool enough near the beach at night to kind of need a jacket. Some people were calling it false summer, but I've lived in LA long enough (but not long enough to call it home. I don't think I'll ever feel like any place is home.) to know that this is typical January weather here. This is when we start looking to the skies and fretting about rain, but it's hard to imagine rain when it's so incredible outside. There were high clouds today though. If you're not from around here, you're probably saying, "So what," but in LA clouds are rare unless a winter storm rolls in. So it could be that monsoon season (they've recently started calling it that) is really on the way. (Although I think they should stop trying to make it sound exotic and call it what it truly is - mudslide season.)