Hell-A

Los Angeles - The next stop on this summer's 'They're Sending Me *Where*?' tour...

9:00 a.m. and I was ascending through the chemical haze into the brown foothills above Los Angeles, the handy GPS clipped to the dashboard feeding me directions every 10-odd miles (“Take the next right”/”Stay to the left”). It was dry and hot and that was precisely why I was here: To spend the day hanging out with the aviators who fly those giant water-spewing supertankers over the forest fires threatening to destroy acres of very expensive Southern California property.

I am not very comfortable with driving. Partially this is because I learned on a snarky stick-shift with a seemingly variable friction point, partially because at 16 I was almost killed while driving by a woman who did a very stupid thing. As with so many things, it left me with unshakeable neuroses, a tendency to sweat while behind the wheel, an urge to stick to driving in the early morning hours when it’s just you and the deer and a few truckers.

Anyway, this is the cure: Strap the neurotic patient into a rental car with a sticky accelerator and then send them bombing down I-15 S from Victorville at 4:45 on a clear afternoon. Join the rest of the herd zooming along at 85-90 mph down steep switchbacks and over suspension-rattling thumps…building enough momentum by the end of that 15-mile stretch so you hit the concrete spaghetti of the LA highway system with the car shimmying on its axles from the speed. “I’m not dead,” I said to myself, half-wonderingly, half-expecting the universe in its infinite sense of humor to send an 18-wheeler crunching into me at that precise moment.

“Take the next exit,” the GPS told me.

“I love you, too,” I told the GPS.

Then we hit traffic. If '24' wanted to be realistic, they could do an episode where Jack Bauer shoots a whole bunch of people in the first two minutes, gets into his car to drive to his next destination...and sits in traffic for the remaining 54:30. Tapping his fingers against the wheel. Cleaning his gun. Practicing shouting "Damnit!" to nobody in particular.

Yee-Haw

On a horse, riding on a narrow pine-lined trail through the Montana mountains. "Whoa, good horsie! Don't kill me, horsie! Don't gallop down that incredibly steep slope, horsie!" This morning I woke up in Brooklyn. Air travel is a very strange thing.

Blues Traveler

Two things recommend the Deep South: the music and the lovely belles who will coo over your presence as they pour you yet another drink to combat the oppressive heat. Which is where I found myself mid-week: the Ground Zero Blues Club in Clarksdale, Mississippi…

The night before had been a three-hour cruise south from Memphis along US-61, a yellow moon glowering overhead and insects spattering clear on the windshield of my SUV like raindrops. Blasting through the Delta at midnight with Robert Johnson crackling over the radio, you feel in your soul the edges of the reservoir from which those legendary ghosts drew the Blues: You want to light a cigarette (preferably hand-rolled), even though you don’t smoke; you want to take a stiff drink, even though you almost never do; you want to ruminate over women done you wrong, even if you don’t realize yet you’ve been dumped.

It was my first time behind the wheel in several months and the directions from Memphis airport to Clarksdale had come in via text message, from a photographer trapped in NYC by a canceled flight and who needed me to pick up the rental vehicle. First I accidentally bombed down I-55 toward Jackson, singing along with heavy metal. Then realized I was going in the wrong direction, and had to drive all the way back to Memphis, play Flying Dutchman of the Federal Highway system, and eventually by one in the morning slingshot myself in the right direction, towards Vicksburg.

I pulled into the concrete lot behind the Ground Zero Blues Club at four in the morning (Clarksdale being a totally run-down, crumbling city amid the cotton fields), crashed out for two hours, woke up and drove back to Memphis to pick the rest of the crew up. Thus began my four days of getting a grand total of ten hours’ sleep…which was okay, because it helped kill the nervous jitters I usually get before celebrity interviews.

Why I Am Slightly Depressed

Well, A., now you’re gone. Abruptly, but not completely. You want to be friends, “hang out,” still be “part of my life,” and all the rest of it.

Which is why, early this afternoon, coming back from Coney Island and the annual hot-dog eating contest (shown live on ESPN), I’m sprawled in the back of the last car of the N train, listening to the Rolling Stones’ ‘Miss You’ over and over again on my iPod, when one of the train conductors walks up.

“Hey, my man,” he says. “How old are you?”

I turn off Mick Jagger wailing about walking in Central Park alone, which right now seems not a half-bad idea, especially if a mugger with a pipe can grant a bit of sweet oblivion. “Um, 26?”

“And how long you been losing your hair?”

“Um, seven years?”

“Yeah, it’s hereditary, then. Same thing happened to my bro. He uses this shampoo, it does wonders, I swear, he’s looking all good on top…” The conductor mentions the name of said miraculous product, then looks at me expectantly, maybe waiting for some sort of hallelujah act on my part, a collapse to the knees in wonderment.

“That’s, um, great,” I say, fixing my ear-buds back in, already wondering if my next song selection should be ‘Innocent When You Dream,’ by Tom Waits. “Thanks. I’ll keep it in mind.”