Day 13 - Muhammad, tell us more...

If you know me you know that I'm an Ali fanatic. I read, watch, and listen to anything even remotely related to the Greatest, so it's only right that I make my pilgrimage to his birth city. What a superb site for the Muhammad Ali Center, which aims to teach children to dream big and pursue their goals to the finish line. Very noble indeed.

The exhibits, mostly fight interviews and such, were a treat overall, but they withheld his bad underpants. I'm may be a big fan, but I believe the unfiltered truth should be told about Ali. Although the museum disclosed that Ali didn't throw away his Olympic metal in the Ohio River after getting ejected from a dinner liked he'd claimed for years, but other exagerations and blemishes were left unspoken.

What I mean to say is that some of his most famous quotes like, "I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong. They never called me a 'nigger'," were spoon fed to him by Elijah Mohammad's people. He also turned his back on Malcolm X, a good friend, when X began talking about Elija's transgressions.

Muhammad Ali preached a lot about the uniqueness of women and how respect was owned to each and every one of them yet he flouted mistresses many times with several of his wives. I could go on and on but I won't. I'll just mention Joe Frazier. The man was so ill treated by Ali that even I shudder. Ali called him Uncle Tom, made fun of his dark complexion & his nose, and mockingly bandied about a rubber gorilla. While Ali later admitted that he went too far with his taunts, he never formally apologized to Frazier.

A frank discussion of these issues would make kids realize what not to do. A little openness would also humanize Muhammad Ali, who is a legend - but a flawed one.

Day 12 - Squatter dilemma

Louisville, Kentucky:

Just had my first meal of the day at the Waffle House adjacent to my motel. I can't tell you if the food was good because my eyes were too busy drinking the inhabitants of the restaurant. There was the haggard waitress, shirt and apron stained like my windshield after a rain of insects. The cook could stand to eat himself with his emaciated body and curved back. Then there was me, non-white with pustules on my face after breaking out in recent days, and a woman who trudged in five minutes after I did. The customer was bleached blonde but bordering on the yellow on some parts. The left side of her face was an angry purple, blue, and pink. She'd been beaten.

I was at the saddest place on earth. You know the famous image of Elvis, Monroe, Dean, etc. hanging out at a diner. Well there we were, the polar opposite of the poster. I've taken pains not to photograph scenes of poverty and distress in my Southern journey. I don't want to present them like Depression pictures so people can say, "Oooh! Check out how the other half lives."

I'd surely like to. I'd taken enough of that kind of pictures in the countries I'd been to and felt ashamed afterward. The farthest thing from my mind is to depict certain people as pathetic, poor, ill, whathaveyou. I'm not a photojournalist. I'm nothing. We all know how inequality razes our country. We all know that blacks and Latinos get the worse end of it. But for me to take their picture just to have something controversial later to talk about with friends, then traveling through the South would leave me guilty.

I'd like for people to show their bruises on their own terms.

This whiskey is 60 years old

EzraPounded is gearing up for some quality Kentucky time tomorrow. She called to tell me that her motel's Wi-Fi connection is down, and the management claims it will be fixed "shortly." How long and how many times do you think they've made that promise?

I came across this bottle of Biltmore Bourbon ("Made Exclusively for the Biltmore Hotel, Los Angeles, California") when I wandered the lobby of the Pacific Center after a late night run through Downtown Los Angeles. It's displayed behind glass along with metal doodads from the past.