Joe Donnelly

Ruff Night

Joe Donnelly
It’s a heart-wrenching moan, a soul-shattering bellow; a plaintive plea in surround sound filled with the kind of tremolo and sustain an opera diva would die for. It starts almost every morning around 5 a.m. from the mutant-looking rottweiler mix that lives in the yard above and behind me. It’s......

Identity Crisis

Joe Donnelly
Photo by Jasin Boland A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, and I have to say I liked Jason Bourne a lot better when he (and we) weren’t quite sure who or what he was. When The Bourne Identity slipped relatively un-hyped into the clanging, explosive, special-effects-laden lineup of......

Surf’s Way Up

Joe Donnelly
Photo by Erik Aeder It wasn’t so long ago that surf-movie releases were strictly local events, playing short runs at now-defunct theaters in places like Hermosa Beach, Oceanside and Capitola. Now, though, surfing as a source of curiosity, entertainment and metaphor has moved into both prime time and the multiplex......

Goodbye to All That

Joe Donnelly
Illustration by Winston Smith Shortly after Bush’s dubious ascent to office, I drove my friend Dara Schlissel to LAX. She was, as she had been threatening to do, moving to Paris. Threatening isn’t the right word. Weeks prior to her departure, even before Bush was elected, her theoretical move to......

The Loneliest Road In America

Joe Donnelly
Route 50 is a capricious, two-lane highway running through the middle of Nevada and western Utah like a sclerotic artery. It has the audacity to call itself The Loneliest Road in America. Nevada, at least, has a sense of humor about Route 50 (does Utah have a sense of humor......
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X Marks the Spot

Joe Donnelly
It made perfect sense to learn about Super X Media Combine via a chance encounter with Takuji Masuda, the force behind the magazine Super X Media, at a Malibu café after a day surfing County Line. After all, Super X, a trilingual (English, Japanese, French) experimental magazine that’s part art......

The Heat Is On

Joe Donnelly
When our girl started spotting, just a few red drops here and there at first, she was confused and a bit scared. I tried to be the mensch that the situation called for. “Listen, Willa , this is perfectly natural,” I told her. “There’s nothing wrong with you. There’s nothing......

Mutt and Joe

Joe Donnelly
Mutt and Joe A beautiful day in my neighborhood begins with a cup of coffee and my dog, Max. Together we indulge in an early-morning stroll along the root-mangled sidewalks of Bronson Canyon. He sniffs. I sip. I wonder what happened to my youth; he wonders where his teeth went......

About To Break

Joe Donnelly
... Even though this crisp Friday in December is a portentous one — the day Rushmore opens for a week in New York and Los Angeles — the driver is doing his best to ignore the signs along the big journey. Audience reaction? Critical response? Backlash from the early festival......

Welcome to L.A. — Now Get Out!

Joe Donnelly
People often have indelible impressions of their first encounters with the cities they’ve decided to adopt and make home. For some up north, it could be that first breathtaking view of the Golden Gate Bridge shrouded in fog — connecting the sweeping cityscape of San Francisco with the tawny peaks......