Ephemera: California Trip

Home Already

In San Diego: Me lunching with a group that includes Dr. Bill Nericcio and his students

And at the Castle Ivar in the Hollywood Hills

In the Ivar Castle, Chelsea Cain Gave Everyone Differently Colored Painters Tape

And asked us to create messages on the walls. Can you recognize where my message comes from? Yes, that suit of armor stood in a niche in my bedroom.

Weird, yes, but not as unsettling as the Museum of Death. I killed an afternoon there; which seemed fitting because in next year’s book I set a scene there. The place seems to ramble on forever, including gallery after gallery about snipers, serial killers, car wrecks, suicides, capital punishment, cannibals, NAZI atrocities, taxidermied house pets, the works. Not the place to microdose — which I did not. Numerous screens play high-def videos of autopsies, and a surprising number of families with young kids wander the rooms, slack-jawed. The overall impression is of vastness and sadness and sex.

At one point Chelsea sent workshoppers to find the last apartment occupied by the writer Nathanael West, and they happened across the current occupant putting out the garbage. The man gave them a tour of a small, unremarkable studio apartment. A shock when you consider how large West’s work continues to loom in the culture.

Likewise, in the Museum of Death, Jay Sebring… who’d always seemed so stylish and dashing… photographed at the Tate murders, his corpse looked like a small boy wearing 60s Mod clothes, trussed in ropes and splashed with blood. The truth of everything seems so much smaller in real life.