Visit VirtualVenice.info Venice, California gave up its status as a city seventy years ago and still became one of the worlds most stubbornly independent communities. Acknowledged as a unique urban environment, Venice is the seaside playpen where trends are born, a tourist magnet rivaled only by Disneyland, and a microcosm of everything thats good and bad about America. Half the stars of movies and music have lived there at some stage of their careers. Probably more film footage exists of the Venice boardwalk than of any other stretch of real estate. Millions of people have seen innumerable images of Venice on TV and in movies, and visited the boardwalk, and wondered how it would be to live in such a crazy place, and even wished they dared to throw caution to the winds and move to Edge City. Most books about Venice have been pictorial, poetic, or scholarly. Call Someplace Paradise is a kaleidoscopic collection of observations from the viewpoint of an inhabitant over more than half a decade, 1978-84. Unlike the sociologists and bureaucrats who came from afar to scrutinize Venice, I had the advantage of living there. Venice is a place where its worth knowing what went on there in any period, the kind of place that lives in legend, an American Shangri-la. In many peoples minds its the epitome of hip. Interest in Venice will only increase when its Centennial comes up in 2005. Call Someplace Paradise is for anyone who lives there now, or used to, or ever wanted to, or might some day. Its for people from other countries, curious about life in this almost anarchistic milieu; for futurologists, sociologists, urbanologists, economists, aging hippies, and libertarians. It covers Venice shrines, institutions, historical sites and monuments: the Gas House, the pier, the Venice Beachhead, Tony Bills 73 Market Street studio, the canals, A Change of Hobbit, the street where part of A Touch of Evil was filmed, Beyond Illusions bookstore, the place where Jim Morrison made a film, the Fox Venice Theatre, the cultural centers Beyond Baroque and SPARC. Some of the local characters and celebrities in Call Someplace Paradise: Swami X; Susan Moscowitz the Doll Lady of Venice, beatnik painter Robert Farrington, LA Fine Arts Squad muralist John Wehrle, rollerskater/guitarist/Sufi Harry Perry, Alky Bob, Uncle Bill, Jingles, Ananda the drama queen, the guy with a bullet in his spine, Hare Krishnas, landlords who give free enterprise a bad name, Greenie the stalker, Beach Boy Dennis Wilson, silent film star Mary Miles Minter, Ernie the poor little rich boy, the grocery cart bounty hunter, sex surrogate Joan Silverthorn, the Circle Man, the ubiquitous religious graffiti nut, and a ton of other weird folk, substance abusers, professional oddballs, buskers, con artists, deadbeats, grifters and street people. Here are some other things in Call Someplace Paradise: the boardwalk and beach, vendors versus the law, skaters versus the law, the powerful senior citizens lobby, living at the beach whether in buildings or tents, famous rent strikes, murals, Tuum Est addiction recovery center, stolen art work, cafe life, John Lennons Birthday, the Hare Krishna Parade, the Kite Festival, the gentrification juggernaut, Survival Sunday, Francisco and His Cosmic Beam, gruesome hot tub deaths, drum circles, Zendiks, improv groups, body decoration, the heritage of the Beats, the archetypically senseless murder of a convenience store clerk, readings by well-known poets and aspiring nobodies. Venice has been called the Center of the Universe, the Last Resort, the living future of contemporary American history, the living national monument to the achievement of the American dream, and the worlds largest outdoor outpatient clinic. The Sixties started there sooner than most anywhere else, and then di

There are beastly forces in Belize. Forces that are actively involved in making paradise impossible. On the Nervous Edge of an Impossible Paradise is a collection of seven stories about local lives in the fictional village of Wallaceville. They turn rogue in the face of runaway forces that take the form and figure of a Belize beast-time, which can appear as a comic mishap, social ruin, tragic excess, or wild guesses. Inciting the affective politics of life in the region, this fable of emergence evokes the unnerving uncertainties of life in the tourist state of Belize.

Two years after earning a business degree with honors from the University of Colorado, Trent Newcomer decides to abandon his corporate job, sell his car, and travel around the globe with nothing more than what he can fit in a small backpack. His goal is simple: experience all that the world has to offer so he can then be satisfied with settling down to a normal life. Over the next year and a half, the adventures that find Newcomer and the people he encounters teach him more about the world and his own place in it than he could have ever imagined. From having a gun pulled on him in Vietnam and being jumped by a gang of men while trying to change money on Kenya's black market to experiencing more near-death bus rides than he can count, Newcomer soon discovers that the journey itself is much more meaningful than checking items off a to-do list. Part travelogue and part memoir, The Call of the World is a candid and insightful account of the challenges and joys of backpacking solo around the globe, as well as one young man's journey of personal discovery. The Call of the World has been recognized as a Medalist (Travel Essay) in the 2009 Independent Publisher Book Awards, as well as a Finalist (Travel/Travel Guide) in the 2009 Next Generation Indie Book Awards.

The American Dream and Dreams Deferred: A Dialectical Fairy Tale shows how rival interpretations of the Dream reveal the dialectical tensions therein. Exploring often neglected voices, literatures, and histories, Carlton D. Floyd and Thomas Ehrlich Reifer highlight moments when the American Dream appears both simultaneously possible and out of reach. In so doing, the authors invite readers to make a new collective dream of a better future, on socially just, multicultural, and ecologically sustainable foundations.

Timothy P. Duane documents the impact of rapid population growth on the culture, economy, and ecology of the Sierra Nevada since the late 1960s. He also recommends innovative policies for mitigating the negative effects of future population growth in this spectacular but threatened region, as well as throughout the rural West.

There are those among us hunters, who revel in the minimalistic pursuit of wild animals, using the most rudimentary of tools, and seeking out the whole of the experience, up close and personal, and as intimately involved with our prey as we possibly can be. This experience rewards us with the greatest sense of accomplishment and challenge, and connects us directly with our forefathers and ancient pasts. It, too, cements our admiration and awe for the wild places and animals we share this journey with along the way. Classic Bowhunting is our vehicle in this journey... a completely different pathway of regression, rather than the technological domination over mother nature and our inadequacies in seeking and taking our prey. This acceptance of the challenges, enhances our immersion and participation into the wild and natural world, and replenishes our spirit. Enjoy adventures with real "stick and string" appeal, in some of the wildest country in North America.

This has been offered to the reader as if to say that from the very outset, any study of Revelation that is done or offered without the direct application of Jesus? teaching, specifically His sermon on the Mount of Olives, is incomplete at best. The argument that God conclusively broadened His redemptive purpose beginning with the Jewish people then spread to all races, as promised in Matthew 28:19, rings true in Revelation when understood in the context of what Jesus taught. What's more, the development of temple-based worship into a simpler spiritual-based worship as expected in John 4:21-24 is equally difficult to ignore from what appears to have been fulfilled in the prophecy of Revelation as predicted by Jesus in His Mount of Olives sermon.