Photo Essay: The California Museum That Celebrates the Art of the Clown

There's something so appealing to me about single-genre museums—like the Bunny Museum or the Banana Museum—and narrowly-curated collections, like the Crochet Museum or the Beauty Bubble Salon and Museum. 

So, despite having no particular affinity to clowns (other than dressing up as one last Halloween), visiting a clown museum in Barstow was still a must-do detour on my way back from Death Valley this past summer.

Photo Essay: WeHo Halloween Carnaval 2025

I've lived in the same Los Angeles neighborhood for 15 Halloweens—and for almost half of them, I've spent the night of October 31 at the West Hollywood Halloween Carnaval.

The Things I Never Learned (A.K.A. Time Goes By So Slowly For Those Who Wait)

 

I was born knowing certain things—and knowing how to do certain things. 

I was born knowing how to laugh—and while I may have learned some things along the way, I think I naturally knew how to make others laugh. 

I had a certain understanding of the world once I emerged from the womb—to a certain extent, how to read peoples' minds, or at least grasp their true intentions, despite what they might say or do. I had a natural knack for mimicry—which made me a fast learner, and a deft impersonator. I naturally had a musical sense, which my Grammy praised during our piano lessons—but then I learned how to read music and play it on keyboard, horn, and voice.

But there are certain things I came out of the birth canal not knowing—and, having never been taught those things by my parents, I never learned them. 

A Matter of Taste

With all the work that I've been doing writing The Los Angeles Breakfast Club centennial history book over the last two years, it's no surprise that I would get sick.

Having two autoimmune diseases puts me in the crosshairs for various illnesses anyway—but then I went to the Lady Gaga concert at the Forum—the first such thing I'd done in a long time—and I think that's where I caught a bug. 

But this wasn't just any bug. What started as a loss of appetite, sore throat, and the sniffles turned into the worst headache of my life—one that almost sent me to the emergency room.

Photo Essay: Sequoia National Park's Only Public Cave Reopens (Claustrophobes Beware!)

Sequoia National Park is just one of those places that has intimidated me ever since I moved to California. 

For some reason, I've been able to tackle all the unforgiving deserts—but give me giant sequoia trees, and I shrink away at the enormity of it all. (I feel the same about Yosemite.)

So even though I've been spending 6-8 hours a day on my book—in addition to working full-time—I took the opportunity to join some friends who were headed up north to Sequoia-Kings Canyon for the weekend. 

Their main draw? Touring Crystal Cave after its four-year closure.

There are a few magic phrases in this life that can make me spring into action, like saying "Open Sesame" to a secret passage door hidden in a bookcase. One of them is "never open to the public," and another is "reopened after being closed."

Needless to say, I didn't think twice.

 

A number of natural factors caused the public tours of the cave to cease—first, the 2021 KNP Complex fire, and then the winter storms of 2023. Up until then, it was the only publicly accessible cave in the combined national parks of Sequoia and Kings Canyon. 

 

 

Photo Essay: Beasts, Bagpipes, and Very Good Boys at Idyllwild's 4th of July Parade

I'd been wanting to go to the Idyllwild 4th of July Parade ever since the Idyll-Beast himself told me he marches in it every year.

Besides, I love a good small-town celebration of Independence Day—so a friend and I set out into the San Jacinto Mountains to watch the festivities on "the Hill," under the shadow of Tahquitz Rock.

Photo Essay: The Uphill Battle at Sequoia National Park's Moro Rock

"We're doing what?!"

That might not be what I said out loud, but it certainly was what I was thinking. 

We'd spent the day driving from LA to Sequoia National Park—and I was already battling altitude sickness just from the little walk to the General Sherman giant sequoia tree.

But it wasn't my trip—I wasn't in charge of the schedule, which is how I wanted it—so I had no choice. 

We were going to climb Moro Rock to watch the sunset.

 

Not to be confused with Morro Rock near San Luis Obispo, Moro Rock in Central California's Sequoia park is a dome-shaped granite rock formation that's more for hikers than rock climbers. 

Photo Essay: Nevada's Home of the 'Miracle Metal' That Helped the Allied Forces Win World War II

For as many times as I've visited Las Vegas, I still have a lot to learn about the Las Vegas Valley—and Southern Nevada as a whole. 

That's one of the reasons I like traveling for the annual "Home + History" weekend sponsored by Nevada Preservation Foundation—whose events have taken me to unexpected places on the Strip, just off the Strip, on Fremont Street, and even to nearby Boulder City. 

This year, the one big draw for me was the historic bus tour of Henderson, now Nevada's second-largest city. 

While Boulder City had the Hoover Dam to thank for its founding, Henderson had something completely different: magnesium.

In fact, although Henderson wasn't incorporated until 1953—named after Nevada Senator Charles Belknap Henderson—it began over a decade before that as the "Basic Townsite," home of Basic Magnesium, Inc. (BMI).

And the bus tour I'd driven five and a half hours for, which was co-presented by Nevada Preservation Foundation and Henderson Historical Society, took us through the old BMI plant.

 

I Could Write a Book

[Last updated 8/29/25 10:38 AM PT to update the book cover and revise the book team.]

I've been a professional writer since I was a senior in high school (and broke a national news story). But since then, I've aways written short pieces—newspaper and magazine articles, essays, blog posts, poems, short stories, and the like. 

I always knew I wanted to publish a book sometime in my future, but I wasn't sure if I could actually write something that... long. And besides, I haven't been able to figure out what the story would be—and where the story would end. 

But then in 2022, I answered a call for help put out by The Los Angeles Breakfast Club: It wanted to publish a history book for its 2025 centennial, and it was looking for writers to pitch in. 

The club was lucky enough to have a few published authors among its ranks—including me, but also those who'd actually written books before. But in the end, those writers had other things going on in their lives and careers. And I was the last man standing, as it were.

It was really the perfect scenario for me: I would be brought on to make the words, but I would be part of a team that would also include Club Historian Rachel Skytt, who would handle most of the heavy lifting when it came to research and crafting the overall narrative of the book. 

With someone else to outline the book and each of its individual sections, I didn't have to worry so much about structure—something I'm not really trained on doing when it comes to long-form writing—and could just focus on wordsmithing. 

The only original research I'd really have to do—besides some fact-checking and contextualizing based on what was going on in the world and in Los Angeles in the early- to mid-20th century—would be to interview current members who'd been around long enough to remember the club when it was hanging on by a thin strand of bacon fat.

Photo Essay: LA's Underdog Basketball Team Gets a Billion-Dollar Dome

There have been lots of new stadiums and arenas popping up all over—and the Los Angeles-adjacent city of Inglewood is home to two of them. 

I already toured SoFi Stadium in 2021, shortly after it opened. And now it was time to tour its neighbor, the $1.8-billion Intuit Dome.*

It opened in August 2024 as the new home to the Los Angeles Clippers, the NBA team that used to have the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena all to themselves (and later shared the Staples Center with the team that usually overshadows them, the LA Lakers).