Another event that goes on the long list of what makes being a big-city messenger such an enjoyable occupation for me. It all began at the Santa Monica court house. I pull up in front, with divorce papers to file. Lo and Behold there's a bike taking up a parking spot, another Yamaha XS-11. And the meter has time. So I pull in. I look at the other bike. It's poorly maintained, missing pieces and leaking vital fluids. The wiring harness looks to have been molested by chimps and there's an unusual amount of corrosion. Then I hear a voice: "It's a Yamaha, XS_1111 I look over. There's guy as fat as buddha, lolling on the grass. He has enormous blubbery lips that would be the envy of Angelina Jolie. He has greasy black hair. I offer to sell some spare parts. I write my phone number and give it to him. His name is Filip. I go into the court and file my papers. I go on about the rest of my day then I go home. I have a beer, listen to some jazz, cook some Ramen and go to bed. I just want to sleep. I have a dream about an empty city. I'm riding around trying to find a restaurant where I can get a meal. Then I'm awakened by the phone. It must have been ringing. I try to ignore it. It stops ringing, but then it starts up again 30 seconds later. I pick it up.

"Hey, this is Filip, we met at the Santa Monica courthouse today. I'm broke down, can you come get me?"

"No"

"AW ... c'mon, I'll give you some money."

"No"

"Aw... c'mon. I got no one else. I called everybody, my mom hung up on me." Filip starts to blubber. I think of how many times I've been broke down and somebody came through for me. I think of all those legends from every religion on earth where some loser is sent to earth by the gods, goddesses or great spirit, the sole purpose of this loser is to test the generosity of humans.

"Awright, where you at?"

"I'm in the middle of the split on the 5 right at the 605 interchange."

"North or south?"

"Right at the split where the 5 goes to LA or Santa Anna. Right off the 605."

"Great spot. OK, it'll take me half an hour. "

"Oh thank you thank you thankyou.."

I hang up on Filip. So I go pick him up and get his bike loaded in the van, no cop interference at all. I do see cops, of course, but they're busy this night. And I'm making all kinds of crazy cuts and turns and u's trying to get myself on the right ramp going the right direction.

Now I've picked him up he doesn't know where to go. First he wants me to drop him off at his bike shop on Alvarado in Silver Lake. It's one in the AM. His plan is to sleep in the street until the bike shop opens at 10 the next morning. Then he says maybe I could give him a ride to his house, which it turns out, is in Thousand Oaks, at least 40 miles away. I have the sinking feeling I'm stuck in a mudhole. We drive to 1000 Oaks, where Filip lives in a Motel 6. He pays over a grand a month for a room in a Motel 6 by the side of the Ventura freeway in 1000 Oaks. On the way he tells me about his pal Mike Tyson, how he was in the Marines and got stabbed in the hand in a barfight in Manila, and his hand was paralyzed, but it was brought back to life by some famous surgeon in a 12 hour operation at a hospital in London. Also Filips dad was a famous anestheseologist at Cedars Lebanon and his mom owns some famous house on Mulholland. Filip works for a real estate syndicate that buys foreclosed mansions for a few thousand dollars down and sells them to celebrities like Shaquille O'neal and Brittany Spears. He's owned 30 bikes and he has a dozen girlfreinds, which is hard to beleive given that he's about 5 foot 6 and must weigh at least 250 pounds. Also he was married for 10 years to the daughter of the second in command of the Gambino family, and they have a daughter who lives with the crime lord grandparents. So we go to his place, and by then it's like 3 in the AM. He asks me if I want to watch a flick, he has over 400. Most of them are corny Hollywood action flicks. But I say OK. Filip really wants me to appreciate his film library. The least objectionable turns out to be 'The Valachi Papers'. But I fall asleep. Before I can really get to sleep though I'm pounced on by Filips little orange cat. This happens several times until I threaten to drown the cat in the swimming pool. Then Filip locks the kitty in the bathroom. Meanwhile he starts tinkering with his bike, but he can't find the source of his problem. I wake up in the morning and Filip is passed out on the floor. I kick him awake.

"So what you wanna do?"

"Take the bike to the shop."

Back we go, down the Ventura freeway, all the way across the valley, through Cahuenga Pass and down through Hollywood to Alvarado. We get off at Alvarado and pull up in the alley behind the shop and unload the Filmobile. And I'm done with the guy. He's lost my phone number. He asks for it again so he can come over with some money or something. I write down an old number that's been disconnected for years. If Filip is one of those tests from the gods-goddesses or great spirit I've done my part. Time for somebody else to be tested.
posted by Pete Moss at 6:50 PM

I dig the big Twin Guzzis. I really do. I started out riding an Ambo for work as a messenger up in Frisco in the early ‘80’s. That was a great bike. I put 60K miles on it in one year. Driving all over the Bay Area and further, on up to Sacramento out to Modesto down to Santa Cruz and as far north as Healdsburg and even Eureka once, serving and filing papers for lawyers, delivering mock-ups and proofs for ad companies and designers, blueprints and change orders for engineers from the phone company to Bechtel, you name it, I crammed it into my messenger pack and was headed out on my trusty Ambassador.

But then times changed and Ambassadors and Eldos started to become collector bikes. Whereas at one point I could buy a basket Eldo for a couple hundred bucks, soon there were fewer baskets around and more ‘restored’ bikes showing up at the cafes in The Haight. I started to hear about whole shops that did nothing but rebuild and restore older Guzzis.

Well, I still needed a work bike and just then the Yamaha Seca series of UJM’s was starting to take over among messengers. To this day I use Yamaha XS-11. I’m on my third one, living and working in LA now, I got 220K out of the last XS-11 and my current one has 70K and is going strong.

I still wanted to have Guzzis. Yet on a messenger’s salary I couldn’t afford the big twins. Living in Frisco I couldn’t afford the garage space and I couldn’t afford the upkeep on a bike that was basically a toy.

Then I found my first Storanello at John Schwarz place in Hesperia. It was a rather dilapidated little thing, sitting under a Joshua tree, but I bought it right off. I’d always felt there must be more to Guzzi then the big twins, but in the USA it seems there was almost a conspiracy to deny the existence of the rest of the extensive product line of this proud old Italian Marque.

So when I got back to Frisco from Hesperia I commenced on some research and discovered that my feelings were correct. Guzzi did indeed make a wide range of vehicles and bikes. What fascinated me were the range of little singles from the late 50’s and early 60’s. These were Ladolas, Zigolos, Cardellinos, Galletos and of course the Storanellos. Basically if you want a Cardellino, Zigolo or a Galleto, you have to go to Italy and bring it back with you, though I did see a Zigolo (mislabeled as a Storanello) on the net not too long ago. There are a handful of Ladolas in the USA. I’ve found two for sale in the last five years. But with Storanello, without even trying, one had found me. I was bitten.

Soon I located the horde of parts that MGNA had sold off and bought them and brought them back to Frisco. I bought several more Storanellos until my tiny garage in the Sunset was literally overflowing. I sold off all the big twin stuff to concentrate on the Storanello’s. And I’ve been messing around with Storanello’s ever since.

But there was just the nagging issue of the Ladola. From all the pictures the Ladola looked like a great little bike. And the two or three I’d seen at bike shows or in the windows of bike shops, were enticing little machines. The were curvy and modern without sacrificing the charming patina of an antique. That was why I’d never really got into the really old Guzzi singles like the Falcones and the Airones, they were just too gangly and spidery with tubing and frame bits and engine sticking out every which way.

Now let me tell you, the Storanello is a great riding little bike. It’s amazingly smooth and fast for such a tiny machine, and it handles beautifully, like the darting bird it’s named for.

It can’t keep up with a pack of big twins on the twisty roads, though it won’t be that far behind, but, if the road deteriorate at all, becomes lumpy or bumpy, the Storanello starts to gain. Plus it gets 95 MPG. I make any excuse I can to ride my Storanellos. Often I’ll come home from a day of work on my Yamaha and get out the Story and hop on the Story and ride up to the store for some beer. And on weekends I’ll be driving all over SoCal dropping in on friends, who can’t believe I “rode that little tiny bike all the way from Long Beach”.

So about a year ago I finally got a chance to ride a Ladola. There was a good example for sale on E-bay, and it was only one town over. So I got hold of the owner and made an arrangement to meet up one Saturday afternoon.

First of all the Ladola is a 200 cc bike, around there. There were two versions: one slightly under 200 cc and the other at about 235cc. I don’t know which one I test rode, but either way it was a larger motor than the Storanello. But my first impression on sitting on the Ladola was that it was actually a smaller bike than the Storanello. It was also quite a bit ‘buzzier’. There’s allot more sheet metal on the Ladola, which unfortunately amplifies the buzz of an undamped aluminum motor bolted directly to a frame with no rubber washers or grommets or spacers in between.

So then the Ladola is going, and I’m sitting on it. And it is a great looking bike. It’s very red and swoopy and compact and modern looking, yet old, very unique and it has those exhaust pipes with the ‘GUZZI’ embossed on them, but there’s all that dang vibration. So I pop the Ladola into gear and start off. And wow, is it slow. The Storanello is a 125, but it has more pep than the Ladola.

The particular Ladola I rode had some worn rings, thus the compression was on the low side, but still a bicycle with a determined rider could get up to 25 MPH faster than the Ladola, and I never could push it past 50. Whereas all of my Storanellos will hit 60 and if I mess around with the gearing and have the motor in top tune I can do 80, with a tail wind.

I don’t know, maybe I should have got that Ladola anyway. But the price is another thing. Complete, running Ladolas go for around 2K, whereas the most expensive Story I ever saw was 1500, and that was show quality restored.

I still want a Ladola, but I tend to forget that on days like yesterday, when it’s sunny and I’m out on the Storanello, dropping by my freinds boat at Fish Harbor, then rolling over to Pedro for some seafood, then running down PCH to Huntington to see how another buddy is doing on his ‘52 Hudson project, then rolling around Huntington Beach with the riding buddies, and finally coming home after dark, with the 6 volt lights shining brightly as the little Story motor thumps along. And it is a noisy, thumpy little motor, for all it’s eighth of a liter. The only way I can think to improve the situation would be if there was a whole group of Storanellos to ride with once in awhile. I know they're out there. I know of at least 5 others, hopefully some of you’ all will be there at the national in Grass Valley in July.
posted by Pete Moss at 4:41 PM

Well I went and saw a flick. I went to the 26plex at the mall. Weekend before last I went and saw Baby Boy and Fast and the Furious. This weekend I was going to see Planet of the Apes, but the lines were too long. So I saw The Score, with Robert De Niro, Ed Norton and Marlon Brando. One of these times I'd like to see Robert De Niro lose. I'm pretty sick of his smug mug. And Marlon Brando has become the foremost ham actor on the planet. Ed Norton made an ass of himself over Courtney Love and there's nothing else to say. However, you put the three of them together in a well made caper flick and you do have an entertaining waste of a few hours. It was worth the 8.50. I got free popcorn and lemonade since my friend was working the stand. That was my score for the afternoon. Except for the parts where Robert De Niro gets to brag about how he digs boinking black chicks, the movie didn't drag. There was a good degree of tension between the leads, some shades of insight on the Oedipal struggle and a offbeat location, being Montreal, in Canada. There was also a satisfying moneyshot and a nice twist at the end. And here's the kicker:

The movie cries out for a sequel. Hey, Bobby D, you listening? Here's your sequel. Ed Norton, figures the jigs up, he turns himself in, cops a plea, turns states evidence, does 3 months county time. Meanwhile Marlon Brando dies without moving the goods, and without telling anybody where he hid them. Bobby D gets busted in Marseilles. He goes to the pen. But the state's case is weak so he only does a few years. He gets out. He goes looking for that little scumbag Ed Norton. He finds Ed working as a messenger in New Orleans. There's a confrontation. Norton saves himself by claiming he has an idea where the goods are stashed. Norton works double overtime, connects with a hacker, does his research and actually locates the goods, which are stored in a vault in a rich man's house in LA. Norton and Bobby D go to LA. They hook up with a local and plan the heist. This time it turns out the goods are about to be moved in a plain old Dodge van. There's a chase scene on the freeways of LA. Then there's a double cross right at the end, but it's reverse of the one the first chapter. Everybody gets away so there's room for a part 3. You got this De Niro? Call me. I can write it for you, ask Forbis.
posted by Pete Moss at 3:57 PM

This blog is a warm-up. I'm working on a chapter for a book. The book’s gonna be about my bad luck as a writer over the last quarter century. Of course lack of success in writing might be due to lack of talent. But I don't think SO. From what I've seen a lack of talent is actually a big plus. Matter of fact having talent holds you back. You see the talented ones sitting around in cafes stroking each other’s egos: "Oh, but you're so talented!" So anyway I write and write and write cause I'm like a compulsive writer. Blah Blah Blah I go, even though less and less and less people read anything anymore, but I keep writing away. Then once in awhile after I've written it I gotta do something with it. I could take it all and fold it up into paper airplanes and throw it off the tallest place I could find. Or I could use it to start a bonfire at the beach, or I could use it to wipe my ass, although that's kind of harsh with regular paper and toilet paper doesn't work very well in the typewriter or the printer, so wiping my ass with it really is not an option. But what the hell, there's places where you can actually mail your stuff to. Where they're like 'Yeah, we publish stuff'. As with most kinds of hell there's layers involved. At the tip of the pyramid there's a tiny group of insiders. They have agents and reps and there's money involved and dealmaking and so on. There's an equally tiny group of national 'zines and you see the same old names in the same old 'zines year after year. Now for me that's a whole ‘nother world and I really don't know nothing about it. I can imagine what it would be like to be getting calls from an agent saying the New Yorker wants to buy my story for 4OK and then there would be reprint rights and movie rights and action figures and I would own a house and a Porsche and MotoGuzzi Falcone, but that's strictly fantasy. For the life of me I can't see the way to make it come true. So I don't waste too much time thinking about it. What I do think about is the Small Presses. I have been able to get stuff run in the Small Press scene. Nothings perfect. Many of the publishers of small press ‘zines are some of the snottiest bastards you'll ever encounter. Then there's the mortality rate of SP ‘zines. Most of them don't get to the 1st issue. If they do get a first issue out the odds of a second issue are about I in 3. But if they get past the first few issues and keep going they can wind up running for years and becoming fairly established, even building up a sort of 'literary reputation' like a legitimate farm system for the big glossy national pubs. The problem is, from the writer’s point of view, these established SP ‘zines are few and far between and what ones there are are besieged by wanna-be writers. The publisher of a 'zine in Frisco which has been going strong for some 15 years once told me that generally he's 3 feet deep with material for every slot for a year and a half into the future. He said he gets about 1000 submissions a month. He's the only full time employee at his 'zine, even so, he occasionally has to take freelance editing work to make ends meet. He does get interns to help once in awhile, but once one of the interns threw out a complete mock-up of an issue that was ready to go to the printer, by accident of course. Another intern absconded with several hundred dollars in ad revenue and a third used to shoot up heroin in the bathroom and OD'd one time and the paramedics had to come, and after that the cops were nosing around for some time afterward. And this is all at a well-established Small Press 'zine.

The other level is the kind of publication put out as a hobby. And basically this one is read by friends and family of the contributors. It’s existence is precarious and the issues come out haphazardly at best. Like as not any subs you make will just drop off the face of the earth. I once did a mass mailing of 50 envelopes full of stories, essays, poems and so on. And didn't get back any replies at all. I began to wonder if I was going mad. Perhaps I had hallucinated the whole episode of printing and collating and writing endless cover letters and stuffing envelopes and taking the bundle to the PO and forking over my dirty wad of hard-earned ones and fives. But then I found the receipt for the mailing. So ever since I keep receipts, like touchstones. So this is me. I was on﷓line and the online Small Press is even more ephemeral than the paper. But it's cheaper. Buy the computer, pay the TSP every month and that's that. No ink, no paper, no postage. And you can find some community. Occasionally T would get a stray email from someone saying they'd read my piece at such and such a website, and they hated it, or they liked it but they wanted to know what it 'meant'. I never explain anything, cause I don't know. I write because I write. I'm not trying to explain anything that I know of. Anyway my computer got repossessed so I'm back on paper, mailing stuff out. I'm working from an old copy of the Small Press Guide. Before I got the 'puter I had become so discouraged by the whole air of hopelessness surrounding submitting to Small Press pubs, that I'd given up writing altogether. Well, not totally. I still wrote letters and poems, when I was drunk. But the idea of publication was no longer with me. Then I got online and within a month had found two websites to contribute to. That was a huge boost to my confidence. Now the computer is gone and I'm back to the Paper Small Press. But I'm getting more reactions. I'm thinkin’ the future isn't so bleak after all.

posted by Pete Moss at 4:58 PM

Strange. I was stopped for a light at Overland and Pico. I saw guys walking up behind me. Dressed in narrow lapel dark suits. Their faces painted red. They moved in jerky mechanical strides. I almost wanted to gun it. I saw them coming up between cars in my mirror. My mind flashed on any number of scenes from Tarantino flicks. I didn't have anybody who wanted to rub me out, that I know. I didn't take off. The three came and stood in a row next to me. I sat on my bike, waiting for whatever would come next. Their suits were dark, the ties were narrow, their faces were painted red. They just stared at me, I stared back. The middle one reached into his pocket and pulled out a calling card. The card had a picture of a hand, semi-clutched. There was an eye in the hand. I looked at the card. 'Look.' it said along the bottom. I expected a dot com address. I turned the card over, there was nothing on the back. All there was, was the image of the hand with the eye in the palm and the single word 'Look.' I looked up at the red faced guys. I thought for a minute they might have something to do with the blue faced guys who've been on TV commercials. I didn't say anything. These were the red faced guys, pulling a stunt in the middle of a busy intersection on the westside of LA. It was live theater in the street. I looked at the guy in the middle, the one who handed me the card. The whole thing had a menacing air to it. Then the guys went and got into a Acura, being driven by a driver who was got up like a zombie waiter. The light changed and I hurriedly drove off.

This is a true incident. I've seen these 'Look.' people around over the last year. Making spectacles of themselves in public places. This is the first time I've been directly accosted. It was creepy, especially since I can't figure any real meaning to it. I can't decide what I'm supposed to get out of the event, if anything. Have I been singled out for some sort of horrible punishment or am I about to receive a huge reward, or is it just a bit of art student absurdity, best chuckled at and forgotten? I hope it's the last. I've had it with all that other shit. I just want to be left alone. Given lots of money, of course, so I can do what I want and not have to worry, but aside from that left alone.
posted by Pete Moss at 10:06 PM

I was overlooking some of my blogs from the last month, and I had a sinking feeling. Janet Jackson? Ian Zierling? Adam Ant? Ohmygod! What's become of me?! And there's a totally interesting development, right in my own neighborhood. And I haven't said anything about it. Here's the scoop. You can always tell where the best speed dealer is hangin out cause the skanky blondes start to congregate. That's right. You've seen 'em. All skinny and toothless in their micro outfits. Twitching and jiggling and eyes darting like sparrows after breadcrumbs. Pretty disgusting. Anybody knows you only do speed when you have a job to do. If you've got 24 hours and 1600 miles to drive, then you line up. Otherwise speed is not a recreational drug, duh. Cue up the dumb blonde jokes. I've never seen a black chick strung out on speed, crack maybe, but that's not the same thing. Asians dig speed, but that's because Asians are the least relaxed race on earth, they're always working, they never take a day off, so they need it. I think that Calvin dude that inspired the pilgrims must have spent some time in China. (I'm actually going out with a Korean woman right now and every time I have to go away from her I say 'Time to get back to work' and she says 'Aw, you work too hard', damn it, it looks like another stereotype might be losing its authority, what's this world coming to?) What the hell was I talking about? Oh yeah, my neighborhood. For the longest time now the bar down the alley has been the speed dealers place. He didn't actually work out of the bar It was a cozy arrangement in that he had a place up the alley. I'm giving too much away. I'm not gonna say anymore, except that it was mildly entertaining watching the skinny chicks hustling up the alley all night, ducking into X's pad, and then coming out a few minutes later, so much relieved of all their worries. But there's a new owner at another bar up the street from X's bar. This place had a long slow decline. Then it got sold. Then it got remodeled. But the remodeling crew was not the usual crew of silent brown kids from Oaxaca. It was middle aged white guys on Harleys. When the place reopened the skanky blondes were going in and out within minutes. I don't know. I know the guy up the alley who's been making his living the way he has for the last 5 years. He's a tolerable guy. He has a wife and a kid. I hope things work out for him. Sometime life just kind of rises up and slaps you in the face and tells you when it's time to move on. The secret is to know when to actually move on instead of turning the other cheek and keep on doing the same shit you been doing.

posted by Pete Moss at 11:13 AM

Friday I delivered to Adam Ant. People may not recall him. He had a college radio hit called "Ant Music for Ant People" back around '80 or so. This was before college radio mattered. Most bands on college radio back then never went anywhere else. College radio was fragmented and unsupervised. Bands could just walk into the booth and hand the deej a tape they made and he'd play it and out it would go over the airwaves, at least as far the stations whopping 50 watt broadcaster would carry it. Nowadays I run into people who say stuff like "I was in a punker band, we had a regional hit in Oklahoma back in '82". What they mean is that the college station at the U of Oklahoma in Normal played their tape half a dozen times and then when the band played a gig at some student hang-out, a few people recognized their song. But Adam Ant actually did have a a college radio hit cause I heard from people as far away as Boston and Minneapolis who'd heard his song, more than once. I've wondered about the effort it must have taken to dub all those tapes, research all those mailing addresses and then mail all that material. And the song had to be half decent in the first place or it wouldn't get played. Well anyway it worked for Adam, later on he had a song called 'Strip' that got on MTV, (If you strip for me I'll strip for you) the vid had all these people dressed up in 18th century garb dancing around and spouting salacious lyrics, pretty weird. Then he was on a couple of episodes of Miami Vice, the epitome of cool, back then. I have to admire the trajectory of his career. In person, he's actually very slight. A small guy, reminded me of a leprechuan. And he has a loft at the Brewery, which is the most prestigious address an arty artist can have in LA, although I wouldn't live there as it's on the edge of a hardcore Barrio just northeast of downtown LA and one of the busiest sections of the 5 goes practically through your living room. The roar of huge trucks and zooming cars never lets up. Maybe that loft is just his city place, maybe he has a country getaway, or maybe he just digs the smell of Carbon Monoxide.
posted by Pete Moss at 10:13 AM

deep down
the bell rang
my answer
died
on my lips
in the dream
I was having the day
before you died

Joe sifted through his wrenchs
and they were musical spilling over
the concrete driveway

Chicken and waffles
ice cream and petticoats
and inner tubes patched 40 times
by exhausted Okies

I don’t know what I’m saying
or why I’m saying it
or what it means

I don’t feel any pain
I don’t feel any joy
I’m a flatliner
trudging up Vine

I had a dream
I have a dream
my dream lives on in me

posted by Pete Moss at 10:09 AM