It’s been a while since I’ve lost my mind in Venice Beach, but even longer since I had ridden along the entirety of the bike-path. Six years, to be exact. Back in those days, I was crashing at my brother’s boardwalk pad — a glaringly pink building in the dirty heart of it all. We were writing a screenplay about getting lost in Italy that never came to fruition – like so many other hopes and dreams before and since.

The U.S. had just invaded Iraq and the Shit Show was getting underway, that much was certain. Fast-forward to the last days of the new millennium’s first decade, and I am riding along the main nerve of Venice, where weird electricity is transported from one end of the West Side to the other. My red Dynasty 10-speed cruiser has been adorned with a comfy new seat that doesn’t entirely use my balls as a punching-bag, and I am therefore able to endure such a journey.

Deep inhale. Taking in the strange and sexy sights. Winding along the snaking path. Ride the snake. I am wearing sunglasses, still recovering from a night at a downtown pirate-bar where I listened to Jake La Botz wail the blues and drank Bacardi & Cokes like they were going out of style. Now I am trying to sweat it out, breathe in the Pacific, and soak up some vitamin D in the form of sunshine. L.A. is never shy about handing out the vitamin D. I follow my brother (whose bike necessitates a Tetanus-shot just for looking at it) and am careful to dodge overachieving roller-bladers… Tour de France snobs with their silly pants and shaved legs… wandering, naked Mexican children… and new couples hogging the route as they stare dreamily into each other’s eyes… Tricky territory, Venice. A single wrong move, and you could end up bleeding into the sand, unable to remember the last five seconds of your life.

We had jumped on the path as far south as Marina Del Rey and now shoot under the Santa Monica Pier all the way up to the south edge of Malibu. It is here, at the end of a parking lot adjacent to PCH, that the real-estate begins to take on an overtly elitist tone that prevents lowly Mar Vistians such as ourselves from going any further. No sir. For the next “27 miles of scenic beauty” (Malibu slogan) the beach is private — sliced and diced by million-dollar knives for the rich and famous. If we carried on any further, we would surely be eviscerated by these very knives.

It’s on a bathroom-break for my brother on the way back that I call Bonnie. She had made a large batch of pot-brownies recently that sounded too good to pass up, comprised of a species known as “Velvet Elvis”.

“Hound Dog Elvis, or Suspicious Minds Elvis?” I ask Bonnie over the phone.

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Well, Hound Dog Elvis is young, lean and potent as hell… Suspicious Minds Elvis would be fatter and slower, and much more mellow. So which is it?”

“Suspicious Minds Elvis. How’s that sound?”

“Terrific. Meet you at the Drum Circle in 45 minutes.”

In most other cities, the Venice Beach Drum Circle would be sedated and quarantined for further study, but in Los Angeles, it has been an eclectic musical tradition since the Beat Generation of the 50′s. The premise hasn’t changed that much since then. Aging hippies, tattooed hipsters, Mexican gangsters, Rastafarian voodoo men and sexual gypsies alike congregate on the wide stretch of sand as if it were their own church. And if you are on HALF the cocktail of drugs and alcohol that some of this melting-pot tribe is on, it is still a transcendental experience — if not entirely religious. A total Shit Show set to the beat of a hundred drums, all pounding with random fury as the sun sinks into the cold Pacific and the mystery of night takes over… Yeah. This is our backyard.

Sun-burnt riff-raff lay face-down in the sand. Some of them have to be poked with a stick to make sure they still have a pulse. Their intoxication has peaked, and they are simply re-charging their batteries. Eventually, they randomly spring to life like zombies and continue to drink and stumble and smoke and scream and fall down all over again. A Mexican gangster, with the mandatory shaved head / mustache / plain white t-shirt and baggy denim shorts, asks one of these seemingly lifeless burn-outs if he is “Okay?” He gently nudges the man and repeats his question. The man stirs and lifts a red face with a sandy beard, one bloodshot eye cracks OPEN. He mumbles something exposing missing teeth and passes out again. The Mexican gangster shrugs, raises a conch and blows into it — making the shell bellow like a primal call on some strange island.

My brother is busy pounding his own animal skin with determined hands. This is a place he has come to for several years now, and he has since become a part of its mutant DNA. While waiting for Bonnie to arrive, I scribble some bad poetry into a small notebook – recalling thoughts and feelings no one will ever care about — when I find myself cast in someone’s shadow. When I look up it is not Bonnie or Elvis, but a young, blonde train-wreck of a runaway. She must be early 20’s, although age is hard to determine due to the explosive acne covering her face. She smiles, waves and mumbles hello. I take a deep breath and force a smile, knowing that she is too far gone to realize I want nothing to do with her.

“Watcha doing?” she asks me, greasy blonde locks dusted with sand covering her bloody eyes.

“Plotting world domination. You?”

Her spastic laugh would sound perfectly natural in a mental ward-hallway. She kneels – more like, collapses – next to me and has the audacity to lay her head across my lap. From this perspective, I can fully appreciate her violent acne, her yellow teeth, and whatever that green crust is painted around her eyes. If she bites me, I think to myself, I am sure to become just like her.

She shakes her head from side to side in my lap, “No you’re not! I don’t believe you!”

“Sure I am. I’m drafting up the plan as we speak in this little notebook.”

“How are you gonna take over the world? Huh?”

“Why should I tell you? You’ll find out soon enough,” I inform her with a grim tone. “Now I’d love to sit and chat all day, but I am expecting The King to show up any minute now and we have some important business to take care of.”

“The King? You mean, Michael Jackson?” she slurs.

“Not the King of Pop. The King. Elvis.”

“Ohhhh…” she thinks she understands, “Isn’t he, like, dead or something?”

“Yeah. Or something. It was nice meeting you.”

I swing my legs away, letting her head drop rudely to the sand. She abruptly stands up and teeters from the effort, swaying, unable to focus.

“Fine! Whatever. I was just trying to be nice.”

She stumbles back to a circle of tweeker runaways, a motley crew of youth that veered off the tracks in a permanent way. A cardboard sign declares, “AT LEAST WE’RE NOT YOUR KIDS”.