No, I had not ..yet. But since, have put on some ry cooder music & read available excerpts. Thanks, Andrea.

--- “Los Angeles Stories is a collection of loosely linked tales that evoke a bygone era in one of America’s most iconic cities. In post-World War II Los Angeles, as power was concentrating and fortunes were being made, a do-it-yourself culture of cool cats, outsiders and oddballs populated the old downtown neighborhoods of Bunker Hill and Chavez Ravine. Ordinary working folks rubbed elbows with petty criminals, grifters and all sorts of women at foggy end-of-the-line outposts in Venice Beach and Santa Monica.

Rich with the essence and character of the times, suffused with patois of the city’s underclass, these are stories about the common people of Los Angeles, “a sunny place for shady people,” and the strange things that happen to them. Musicians, gun shop owners, streetwalkers, tailors, door-to-door salesmen, drifters, housewives, dentists and pornographers, new arrivals and hard-bitten denizens all intersect in cleverly plotted stories that center around some kind of shadowy activity. This quirky love letter to a lost way of life will appeal to fans of hard-boiled fiction and anyone interested in the city itself.” ---

The 3 Reals is a flight o fancy…I think; Epic little yarn-treatment for an epic little dbis board w/some hint of deference for some epic little characters. Someway I went awry with brackets at one point, but the fantasy is kinda cool if one expands on it. There’s a lot going on that could be fascinating enough to explore…I imagine. Chockfull of unwitting (if whoops maybe unwilling) characters. At least 4. & there are others that I’d be remiss in leaving unintroduced. Can’t remember exactly how this blurb came into being. If I recall there was an argument between Mick & somebody. Then talk of some random lost (or shelved) music…in the can. Then I think that’s around when DB started his studio move …or something like that – ahh history. The story…leaves me curious what the heck’s going on in the heart of that crevasse? Yeah. & one has to wonder what sorta treatment Brad would give to The Double-D Lamentations. … Mick’s just Mick. I just wrote him real. Prove otherwise. Then the notion of the “3 Reals”. What three “reals”? & the number three, the shape; triangle, the triptych, tripod base & strength has mystic martial arts connotations. Yeah. Has potential for some fun applications. But…so does two scantily clad & deeply charismatic lesbians on a headboard-side-raised yin-yang shaped bed on a stage; their argument: to attempt to reteach “love” to the world (audience) and deal(ing) with individual doubts & fears ..while helping “man” understand how two women bi lovers can possibly explain the noosphere of love from any meaningful vantage point…while acting as sexual surrogates.