This photo was taken on New Year's Day 1987
in Hot Springs, Arkansas. We'd spent a pretty
surreal New Year's Eve -- among other things,
a midget in a diaper, top hat and "Happy New
Year" sash sat atop the piano and sang Auld
Lang Syne -- in the lounge of the Majestic Hotel,
a pleasant old establishment that's been around
for over a hundred years now. (And to paraphrase
Bob Dylan's famous remark about the '60s, "if you
remember New Year's Eve 1986-87 in the lounge
of the Majestic Hotel, you weren't there".) The next
morning -- still wearing my festive New Year's hat --
I climbed behind the wheel of a rented Ryder truck,
posed for this shot, and we headed west to California.