I’m in the heart of California’s Central Valley through the weekend, then I’ll head up to the Bay Area and maybe Sacramento. It’s a time for sorting things out, from book hell to certain personal relationships. All that is to be sorted touches on money and L.A.’s unwillingness to pay me for what I do. It’s basically come down to being near my loved ones versus writing for a living.

I’m leaning toward the latter, just because I ain’t got skills to do much else. And other towns are intimating love.

For now I settle in Hanford, where it’s absolutely calm and silent while I medicate along my early java walk. (I have a doctor’s note for this won’t ever have to be said in the current neighborhood. Not at 6 a.m. The morning is pitch back, almost lifeless.) Tonight my host and I will likely ride into Fresno to see how the city folk do Halloween.

We did the Kings County seat’s downtown bar scene last night. The drunken burghers were kinda nutso. The most uneventful barfight broke out just over my shoulder. I followed it outside.

There, too sick to drink but not so much that I couldn’t smoke, I watched a MILF hump a stranger’s yellow sports car while her girlfriend deeply groped her ass. Their husbands (I lazily surmise) looked on, pretending to be aloof but actually excited. Then, after a taxi took them all away, I flirted with a homely girl before calling it a night.

Has everyone else noted that “Thriller” is now officially a Halloween carol? The song has always been at the door of contention, but with MJ giving up the ghost, it’s a full-blown carol. And we don’t get these too often. To my recollection, there hasn’t been a holiday song with staying power since “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”

What does it say about us that we broke a streak of decades to endow a horror show anthem?

Former MLB journeyman Doug Glanville just penned a cool little opinion piece about the leader of Philadelphia’s Phillies. High up, Glanville tells how he, Scott Rolen and Bobby Abreu voted the talkative Rollins out of their hitting group in 1998.

An addendum to this anecdote is that Abreu and Rollins became great friends. In 2007, Rollins told me that Abreu, a business titan in his native Venezuela, taught him how to make money without a ball, bat or glove. He said he never would have developed Flip This House without the guy.

Sidebar: Abreu’s fiancée really fucked him over back in the day!

This shapes up to be a banner year for the NBA, and not just because of the NFL and college football are sucking majorly. Not because the Buckeye homey LeBron and the pride of Brooklyn Jay-Z are being handed the hands to the kingdom.

Prediction: In the NBA’s first full Obama-era season, formerly (?) racist white people will come to the fold, some them for the first time since Tom Heinsohn stalked courtside at ye olde Boston Garden.

I’m hella glad that the NBA’s primed to be awesome because… I am an awesome basketball player…

Nevertheless it is a Lakers year… Somehow this is gonna lead up to my all-time top 10 favorite interviews that aren’t about Rick James:

Ed Powers

Missy Elliott

Chuck D

Bernie Richter

Ron Artest

John McCrea

Arriana Huffington

Method Man

Michael Dukakis

Alonzo Spellman

Honorable Mention: Ana Takseena, Latrell Sprewell, Barry Bonds…

What Deadspin is doing in the week of ESPN’s latest sexual harassment scandal is pretty outrageous and ballsy. Printing rumour is anathema to my j-school upbringing. That said, The Worldwide Leader (or four-letter network, as some prefer) has played bullyboy in the public relations department for far too long.

BTW, anyone who wants to understand the depth of ESPN’s harassment issues needs to read Mike Freeman’s ESPN: The Uncensored History. If you haven’t heard of it, thank the network’s P.R. mafia.

Now that the Dodgers’ loss in the NLCS has begun to stop feeling tragic, we can fix our sights on farcical elements dead ahead.

I’d put the next three years of the Dodgers starring youth core — Loney, Ethier, Kemp, Kershaw, Billingsley — against that of Philadelphia or anybody else in the league. (The jury’s out on closer Jonathan Broxton, who — and I regret how sexist this analogy is — got his skirt pulled up in the ninth inning of that crucial Game Four. A closer’s hubris is so crucial to mano-a-mano, ninth-inning showdowns, it’s hard to know if his talent can fully overcome the pussy he’s so publicly displayed.)

Their future, however, is no match for the present of the remaining post-season competitors. The Yankees and Angels would most likely have given LA a spanking, too. So, yeah, the biased East Coast media establishment was right. Nothing short of an infusion of experience or the re-emergence of pre-positive drug test Manny could have gotten the Dodgers to a World Title.

This morning I decided it’s okay to refer to that dead guy with whom I share so much space in Ghetto Celebrity as Dad. Because he wasn’t around to raise me, I thought it was wrong to refer to him that way.

On the way to shoot hoops in the pre-dawn hours, the pointlessness of this naming business revealed itself to me. Once, we had a tearful exchange that included my voice cracking while I cried, “Daddy!” So, now I’m thinking that my Dad embargo is probably about baggage. It’s probably best to have everything out there. Besides, there’s no punishing dude. He’s fucking dead.

Unrelated, but not really: The Temptations “Standing on the Top” is an amazing song. Way back when, Rick James told me that he used the experience of The Temptations to write about himself. The lyrics are plain. The feeling of the horns, low end and vocal melange? Unfakeably real.

When you’re on the top
There’s no place you can really go but down, down, down
People on the street congratulate you
They say they love the way you sound, well

When you’re on the low
No one wants to chit or chat or even know your name
Your agent’s never there
Your manager has ripped you off and gone somewhere
Standing on the top
The song was written and produced at the Punk-Funk King’s height of popularity. Rick was doing breathtaking amounts of cocaine and felt himself teetering over the brink. As a producer, he beautifully intermingles the contradictory feelings of hubris, pain, and joy.

As I told a friend recently, I bugged Rick for a tip on playing bass. He told me the best thing I could do is play guitar, so that I’d have greater dexterity. Man, that was one of my five favorite all-time interviews.

Now soliciting all top-five interview lists.

Now that I’m done with Malcolm Gladwell’s piece on similarities between NFL headbanging and dogfighting, I’m ready sit down with some books. Consider this notice that I’m going be offline more often, at least for a couple of weeks.

One book I wish I had in hand is Something in the Air by Richard Hoffer, an account of the 1968 Olympics. As my man David Davis pointed out in his Los Angeles Times review:

Athletics aside, the most compelling story from Mexico City remains race. San Jose State sociology professor Harry Edwards, himself a former athlete, broached the idea of a boycott by African American athletes at a meeting in Los Angeles in 1967. He knew that a boycott of the Olympics would devastate the U.S. team and count as a propaganda victory for the U.S.S.R. “It’s time for black people to stand up as men and women and refuse to be utilized as performing animals for a little extra dog food,” Edwards said. In connecting sports to the civil rights movement, Edwards and his allies spotlighted hypocrisy on the playing field. Many Southern universities did not give scholarships to African American athletes. In the professional ranks, there were no black managers or head coaches. Muhammad Ali had been stripped of his heavyweight title because of his refusal to fight in Vietnam.

As Hoffer points out, few athletes chose not to compete.

That’s huge, in terms of providing context for John Carlos and Tommie Smith’s historic black fist protest. Davis says the book lacks historical perspective in certain parts of the story. I tend to believe him. However, where the International Athletic Commission is concerned, Hoffer is detailed and telling.

The IOC pressured the U.S. team to exile Smith and Carlos. The pair were vilified by, among others, Brent Musburger, who called them “dark-skinned storm troopers.”

I always thought Musburger should apologize for that.

Zadie Smith’s White Teeth finally has a hold on me. And when I’m done with that, there’s a Sugar Ray Robinson bio that’s been assigned. Lots of reading on my plate. Talk to you when I’m caught up.

Here’s last week’s podcast. Place it with my demo and a decent public radio appearance to get a better idea of how I rail on, aloud.

The podcast isn’t something I’ve listened to. At first there was too much baseball going on to give it the once over. Then I got too depressed from the baseball I just had to witness. Tell me if my stuff on the recording sucks.

To be more honest, I love L.A. This is great, great day. There’s a lot to love.

Oh, I’m into Venice and my kids and my girl. Almost as much as those things, I treasure the rare… let’s call it an occasion when I ingest some of nature’s medication. It’s wild kingdom outside my living room window.

Tree time in Cali remains like nothing in the nation. Mary Jane is the state’s queen, reigning down on Sunset Strip just the same as Mendocino, you know?

Venice Beach, where ya at?

It’s awesome that we’re on the front lines of getting pot higher up in the mix. Cali without weed is unthinkable, and local folks here for a long time have been bettered by embracing the buzz. Today’s local injunction suggest what a lot of us have long believed: Pot’s not going anywhere.

A few brave dispensaries sued the city of Los Angeles, whose overeager attorney’s tried to turn back the hands of time. from today’s L.A. Times:
In its answer to the lawsuit, the city argued that the moratorium is not subject to the conditions and limitations of state law because it is not an ordinance dealing with zoning, but with public safety. Zoning ordinances cannot be extended beyond 24 months. The city adopted the first of two moratoriums on Aug. 1, 2007.

The judge rejected that argument.

The city also argued that a decision to issue an injunction would cause “grave irreparable harm.” “This lawsuit is not just about one ‘bad apple.’ It is about illegally dealing marijuana,” the city’s answer said. “Hundreds of unlawful marijuana stores have cropped up throughout the City and will likely attempt to bootstrap their illegal operation on the outcome of this action.”

Jeri Burge, an assistant city attorney, told the judge this morning that granting the injunction would “reward illegal conduct.”

“You’re going to open the floodgates,” she said.

Yeah, a floodgate of revenue and coolness. Haven’t you had it with these fuckers? Why do we even indulge their debate. Well, in Washington and LA today, judicial voices effectively decreed, “Game Over!”
Listen up, Ohio: It’s time to get your weed.

Michigan, getcha weed on.

Indiana, aww I know you Hoosiers hear me. Call a pol, sign some neighbors. Then, getcha motherfuckin- weeed… mayn!

Tell your square friends they need to recognize, this place is falling apart. We need some revenue.

I’ve spent the past week or so on Rush patrol. (Good news: The comments have taken an improved turn; Bad news: Still no sigh of the podcast I taped on Wednesday.) That means I’m late in getting to Malcolm Gladwell’s article on the relationship between dogfighting and the NFL.

Kyle Turley makes the perfect NFL subject…