12-31-99 6:05 PM F New Year's Eve
The millennium is going out weeping.  An inexplicable rain has been falling all day, in torrents at times.  Just before sundown, we heard a series of explosions, and the power went out.  Y2K?  Terrorism? The Rapture?  A copter circled overhead.  The sky glowed eerily.  The neighbors came out to the street.  It was spooky.

"I can't believe you killed the Cookie Monster to make a jacket."

1-2-00  11:09 AM Su
Gringo Pass, Arizona
New Year's Eve was mostly uneventful.  We went to a party where everybody was on X.  It was so-so.  We danced and drank.  My brother and sisters were with me.  Getoff's party was dead, so he and Astarte came up.  I was pretty drunk.  Rochelle drove home.  Everyone else spent the night.  In the morning, Rochelle and I picked up the rental.  We ate at Denny's by the airport.  I took a nap back at the house, and then we loaded up the car and left about two in the afternoon.  By three o' clock, I had gotten my first speeding ticket of the day.  Ninety in a sixty-five, claimed the cock-hole, son-of-a- bitch, piece-of-shit, no-good-to-anybody highway patrolman..  I was just lucky he didn't run my license and find out it's suspended or he might have hauled me off to jail.  We continued on our merry way.  We drove I-8 east of San Diego through a twilight, otherworldly landscape.  Rochelle said the terrain of boulders looked like biscotti dough.  We stopped at some little rural outpost called Live Oak Springs and got gas and beer.  Then we continued on our merry way.  Soon, I got my second speeding ticket of the day.  I asked for a warning, and the prick told me that asking was a misdemeanor.  I was doing eighty in a seventy.  Rochelle drove.  Boy, was I bitter.  We had been listening to the Rose Bowl and having fun.  Rochelle took Wisconsin and I took Stanford.  "Your guy just sacked my guy," I would say, and she would clap and cheer.  But then "Mr.-I-want-a-job-where-I-fuck-people-over" had to spoil everything.  We crossed into Arizona about eight thirty PST and moved our watches up an hour.  We turned on to Route 85 at Gila Bend and drove down to Ajo under screaming stars.  Rochelle got pulled over in Ajo.  They made us sit a while but let us off with a warning.  The Sheriff was actually very nice.  He gave us advice about hotels and said he didn't want to give us a third ticket.  We stayed at the Marine Hotel.  A beautiful, clear-eyed blond gave us our key.  We saw a place called The Hut with a bunch of cars out front.  We walked there through the chill.  It was mostly Mexicans dancing cumbias.  Rochelle and I drank beer and shot pool and said we would get married in New Orleans. 
We drove through Organ Pipe National Monument just now and are sitting at the counter in a diner in Gringo Pass with Kahluas and coffees, heads full of saguaro, hair combed like cholla.  Guess we'll try for Carlsbad.

12-30-99 Th 5:22 PM

I’ve just come from the market.  The last minute just-in-casers were raiding the place for bottled water in the event of some Y2K-induced catastrophic disruption.  I was there to buy cream cheese. 

I wrote one third-person page.  It was jumpy and random.  I walked down to the corner and bought a newspaper.  I read it as I walked back up to my house.  I walked right past my house and across the street to the next block before I looked up from the paper.  I couldn’t figure out where I was.  For a moment, I thought I was on the wrong street; my house was nowhere in sight. 

Some of the kids from my school came running out as I was walking back down the block.  They walked with me to my house.  I guess I better expect some egging and TP in the magnolia out front, though they actually seemed delighted to see me. 

I read the paper on the couch.  I took down the shelf I don’t like from up in the kitchen.  I hung the toy basketball hoop my sister gave me.  I cleaned the bird’s cage.  Or was that yesterday?  I lifted some weights.  I ate day-old fried chicken and some bread stuffing leftover from last week.  I ate an apple on my way to get the newspapers.  I bought a gold-framed mirror to hang over the mantel.  I’m not sure I if I like it yet or not.  I read the table of contents in my volume of Blake.  I read the jacket and forward of the McCain memoir.  I bought a bottle of cabernet-merlot, some of another kind of wine, a bottle or rum, and one of Carolan’s Irish Cream liqueur.  I might go out to Rio’s Pizza in Montebello to pick up my dope sack.  Rochelle should be home soon.  Maybe she will want to see “Toy Story 2” with me.  Or maybe tomorrow.  I should call some people.  And dig the dirt out from under my fingernails.  I called IKEA about the chair.  Their system was down.  They said to call in the afternoon.  When I called back, they said it would be a couple of weeks.  They said I should call again after the fifteenth.  Rochelle is home.  She’s singing she’s on vacation.  I took three hundred dollars out of the ATM.  The mirror cost eighty.  The paperwork came to donate the Chrysler and deduct a grand off my tax bill.  Rochelle’s in the shower.  I got the cable up in running in the parlor. 

12-29-99 W 5:20 PM

I’m writing this at my desk in my office.  I haven’t been very productive today.  I struggled to type fifteen minutes this morning.  I finished Poe.  What a boor.  I ate an English muffin.  I put butter and garlic parmesan on one half.  I had to maneuver around the moldy parts with my knife.  I hung that shelf in the kitchen.  I’m not loving it.  Kay and Chuck came by with the girls and the Brougham, and I brought them to the airport.  I went to the market and got a paper and an extension cord.  I read the paper and watched x-rated films and slept.  Syracuse beat Kentucky in the Whatever Bowl.  Now Washington and Kansas are on.  I poured some bourbon in a bucket of ice, but I haven’t sipped any yet.  I packed a bowl, but I haven’t smoked any.  The cynical parrot has a brooding brow.  So Jim and Lorena or Lorisa or whatever her [pencil and crayon drawing of a Senegal parrot] name is are at the gas station now.  Ladies at the gas station need help putting transmission fluid in their car and enlist Jim’s help.  I’m not sure this scene adheres to Poe’s definition of plot.  I’m pretty sure it doesn’t.

                What will I read next?  Dan Jenkins?  The McCain bio?  Blake?  Swann’s Way?  I’ll read a Lardner short.  And an essay.  I still have to do a third-person page and work on Jim.  I haven’t played any guitar today.  What else?  What to do tonight?  Go out?  See a movie?  Rent a movie?

                Rochelle just got home.  I gave her a long kiss.  I felt like saying some Pepe Le Pew things about her lips, “…So full, so firm, so fully packed.”   I poured her a glass of wine, and then I kissed her another long one in the closet where she was changing her sweater.  We talked about going to a movie or watching the one I rented, “Election,” or going out for a drink.

                 I could go for a smoke.  Mac is supposed to call in about fifteen minutes to arrange a dope drop.  All alone ain’t much fun, so you’re looking for a thrill.

12-28-99 Tu 2:12 PM
I'm at Getoff's on Keniston.  We've just come from Larchmont where we sat at a sidewalk table and ate bagels and drank coffee and a bottle of merlot, talking about sex, savagery, and civilization.  I read the paper which was full of more of the same.
Yesterday, I drove Rochelle to work in Huntington.  Then I went to a Denny's in Placentia and had biscuits and gravy with a chicken-fried steak and eggs, hash browns, toast, and coffee.  I read the paper.  Then I went to my mom's. I went from there to Target and got a bunch of stuff with the seventy-five-dollar gift certificate my mom and Josh gave me.  I got plates, towels, some kitchen stuff, a "Personal Grooming Device" nose hair trimmer, a Metallica CD, a Beastie Boys CD, a Coleman air pump, and some other stuff.  I ran over by like two hundred bucks.  I went back to Mom's and my aunt and uncle and I went up to the driving range at Brea and hit a couple of buckets.  When we got back to my mom's, I played some Disney charades board game with my cousin before heading out to pick up Rochelle. We stopped at her mom's (where she lives) to pick up some stuff for her to bring back to my place.  Then we went back to Placentia to have dinner with the family at Outback Steakhouse.  Rochelle and I shared some mahi.  Mac's friend Pete came.  He said he could get me on "Millionaire" if I want.  Rochelle and I drove home to LA after.  A spectacular fire lit up the sky in a crimson glow in the mountains above Arcadia. 
After we unloaded the car, I went straight to bed.  We jerked each other off at about five this morning.  Roch went to work, and I slept 'til about nine.  I added about four lines to Jim this morning.  I puttered around the house trying to set up Rochelle's TV and the new lamp and shelf and some other crap and ran into snags at every effort.
Getoff's giving me some New Orleans advice.