Or perhaps I read it on CNET and forgot.

Keeping up with the annoying topic of dreams, I just remembered that last night I was a young, naïve detective hitting the hard streets of downtown Los Angeles. My allergies were quite bad and I had kleenex stuffed up one nostril as I spoke with my captain. He was a tough nut who collected cameras which were all set up on tripods in his office, leaving a narrow path to his desk; a test to whomever visited him. Could you get to his desk without knocking one of them over? Was the collection really his?

He told me to go get the new iPhone and threw $50 (ha!) bucks my way. Next thing I know I’m doin recon in a store that is trying to sell me the new Apple phone system for corporations… Yes, Apple is going to get into phone office systems.

Oh hell they probably already have.

But hey, being a detective was fun. I’ve read too many Michael Connelly books lately. Wannberg would approve! The character Hieronymus Bosch walked the dirty streets of 1980’s Los Angeles. Connelly’s descriptions are so good I can still hear the rave music and smell the urine on every corner. Punk rock was real, ask Henry Rollins or the amazing Jack Brewer (hey I haven’t mentioned Henry in a long time! Bet I get a lot of hits. Ha!).

Dive bars still existed and war veterans were still visible; in dive bars, on the street and in your neighborhood.

Sidebar..in the middle: (Anybody who has spent any time with me in person knows I am 100% in support of our troops and veterans. I was raised to respect them and I still do.)

Los Angeles is cleaner now but the murder and mayhem just as bad if not worse, and not as visible.  With the advent of cell phones and other high-tech devices, a criminal has to be a tad smarter and they are, but it’s a lot harder to move a body without somebody seeing.

As I’ve said before, it must be harder to be a serial killer these days, unless of course you are near a mountain range, vast forest or desert. Camera phones, hidden cameras, more people on the planet and less of them hitchhiking. The geology of mountains can make cell phone signals nonexistent. I like that – Nature thumbing its nose at the not so wily human. Then again, the military can do just about anything anywhere with the neat toys they have or you can pay some extra bucks for a satellite phone. But your run of the mill serial killer can’t just pick people off the street at will, as much…in my opinion. Perhaps this is why more children seem to be disappearing rather than adults.

My days of wanting to walk the Appalachian Trail are gone. Camping even freaks me out a bit. Let’s face it, there are some scary people out there in the woods and they know the woods better than you.

I’ve gone on record about not liking the 1970’s. Since I was a child at the time, I wasn’t involved in the nasty things adults got up to in the world. I wasn’t even aware of them. I was dreaming of David Cassidy and Andy Gibb. I know, I know – but my musical tastes have matured immensely. My blog can prove it.

Anyway, what I remember most about the 70’s was divorce, destruction, mass suicides, mass murders, oil crises, plane crashes, plane high-jackings, earthquakes, hair, and an overall unease in the air. A great time to be a detective? I doubt it ever is a great time. But there was a phone booth on every single corner in Los Angeles and people were a bit nicer and less self-absorbed. Damn and bless that Steve Jobs guy.