Duke Cunningham Can't Have Gun
Don Bauder 9:47 p.m., May 25
Beyond The Big Metal Fence
Entries
Ted, Please Beat Your Wife More Quietly
This could have been any day here in Baja, really, but it wasn’t. It was on a Friday night. My grandson was coming over, all 27 pounds of him. He’s the only beast that still ...
Curse Of The Gypsies
We have a dog now, this is such an American thing to do; to have a dog in the house, it reminds me of my youth. The dog is a puppy, some sort of a ...
Powis Castle
It was nineteen hundred and ninety four, when dinosaurs apparently still roamed the planet Earth and my Spanish wasn't all that stellar, and I wandered into the Caliente Race and Sports book at well before ...
Either Side Of The River
It starts slowly here in Baja. The sky, normally blue with an occasional puff of a cloud, fills with more clouds, and the wind comes up. People bundle up in their coats if they brought ...
Dirty Old Town
I met my love by the gas works wall Dreamed a dream by the old canal I Kissed my girl by the factory wall Dirty old town Dirty old town Ewen MacColl did not write ...
Shell Game
Over a decade ago, I found myself stumbling around in downtown Tijuana with a cup of coffee in my hand. It was in the early morning, before nine o’clock, before most Tijuanenses were out and ...
In Case Of Continued Irritation, Discontinue Use
Junior High School was a zoo. I hated it. I remember gym class, it was the first time I met Todd Dice. Hi, Todd. Amazing we grew up and continue to live after that debacle. ...
Savior
The rumor was that I wanted to kill my ex-wife, as I am certain that many in such a position stand accused. This was not true. My fantasies were much more complicated. Daydreams involved coming ...
Engineering
The days seemed simple a couple of weeks ago but they ground like shifting gears, with the morning gray casting an uncertain threat onto this Tijuana lifestyle and neighbors complaining like restless children at Sunday ...
Gimmick
"There it was. The unbearable thing was not the fear that the Great Spirit had forsaken man, nor even that in granting awareness of death, He had made man’s hope ridiculous, but that from the ...
Notes From A Second-Story Window
The kids that roam this neighborhood are terrorists. Of course, we were all such terrorists when we were kids, at least to one degree or another. But here - in a place where I don't ...
The Ghost Of Ma Joad
In attempting to define the normal childhood, whatever that might be, I think that perhaps we begin by examining our own and then try to use it in some meaningful way. I therefore insist that ...
Of Soil And Blood
Call me Prometheus. That brilliant, hot, burning orb in the sky was trying to kill me one week ago, but this week there is a marine layer saving me from melting. So, I stole that ...
Requiem For A Fellow Cynic
"A cynic is just a disgruntled idealist." ~ Ian Orteza, 2006 * * I was born in San Diego, California, in the United States of America in nineteen hundred and sixty-one. My father was in ...
Independence Day
Last Tuesday was to be an excursion with a purpose, although I immediately began to question my own good judgement before I arrived at my first stop, and I considered the years and years of ...
Lesbians Without Tacos
Mona was pretty, but more cute than anything else, in an odd way that you wanted to put your finger on but couldn’t. I was a freshman in college, or perhaps a sophomore, near Los ...
Merry Christmas, Ted
Christmas Eve was easy. Rocio’s parents opted for an early meal, breaking with their traditional midnight dinner, and they ate tostadas up the hill while I cooked up two large pots of clam chowder down ...
