Interim memo

 

This column was published in the Weekly the week of 9–15 July. The column speaks for itself, nothing very unusual. But. In the letter column we get our first glimpse of someone who signed himself “Jon Douglas West” of Burbank. You’ll read the letter immediately following this column. Something about it piqued my curiosity. It wasn’t the ordinary bugfuck pseudo-punk posturing of the plastic pinheads who responded to my manner but seldom to what I was talking about. “Jon Douglas West” interested me peculiarly. I did a little checking, mostly because he said he was in the phone book and suggested I come to Burbank to kick his ass. Well…No such person was in the phone book. Not in Burbank, not in Pasadena, not in any of the Valley directories, in Hollywood or L.A. proper. Um-hm, I thought. A li’l duplicity here. So I did some checking. DMV, tax records, utility records, real estate title deeds…I went the route. No Jon Douglas West. Then, when later I mentioned Mr. West, a number of letters began appearing in the Weekly, all written on the same typewriter, but with different names, some of them female. Curiouser and curiouser. So I took it as one of my little projects to locate the entity who was hiding behind the nom-de-plume Jon Douglas West. More on this later.

 

Letters reprinted with permission from the L.A. Weekly