Triple WOW!!!!  It's interesting, reading a piece Nic wrote back in 91-92.  You can't help but wonder what those comparisons would be like in his life today.  

I love the insights into his life like his preference in music and how he sees America, or at least back then.  He's known Jeff Levine for such a long time which makes all the sense in the world as to why Nic would place him over (up until a couple years ago) his own production company, Saturn Films.

I absolutely love this article.  Great find Lula and Lady T.  Thanks so much!!!

ON THE ROAD WITH NICOLAS CAGE

1992

On the Road With Nicolas Cage...

I've been in one place too long. I'm just sitting here in Los Angeles getting soft. Twenty-seven years old, balding, and without a shred of inspiration. My representatives tell me to stay in town, so that I can meet people for jobs. I've been doing that for a year. Petting my cat, thinking about exercise, never reading a good script. I haven't even had a decent dream in months. I keep flashing on Easy Rider. That movie made me go and buy a motorcycle. I keep thinking about Kerouac's 'On the Road'. That book made me want to discover America. I keep humming The Beatles' 'Why Don't We Do it in the Road?'. That song made me once have sex in the center of La Brea and Melrose.

The road compels me to escape, to listen to Lynyrd Skynyrd's 'Freebird' and fly. New people, Adventure, Change. I've never driven cross-country before, and I could die without ever doing IT. It's time to go.

On the Road With Nicolas Cage Los Angeles, 10:30 am.

Jeff Levine showed up at my home in a white Ford Taurus. Jeff's about 36, part dog, part bank robber, part 15-year old man. We'd traveled together before and I knew he'd be into going. The Tauurs reminded me of a pack of cigarettes I was smoking the night before. Death cigarettes. They had a skull and crossbones on a black package that read, "If you don't smoke, don't start. If you do smoke, quit." I saw the car and threw the pack away. It didn't do any good. The transmission blew out on the Harbor freeway. We were still comfortably within the 213 area code when we slit the car's wimpy throat. I got out. Jeff hit the Yellow Call Box. I noticed a bed of poppies that looked totally out of place in all that concrete. Suddenly, a Led Zeppelin song came into my head. "Alimony, alimony pays the rent". I saw Jeff on the phone gesticulating, threatening to murder. "Maybe the tow truck'd hurry if we were bleeding", he said.

I walked out to the poppies. I was dressed in my black jeans, black cowboy boots and black T-shirt. And Jeff, in his green army flak jacket, diligently smoking his cigarette, was clearly nit in the military. Would I have stopped to help us?

A vulture flew overhead. The tow-truck came. From the front seat, I spotted a sign advertising 'Truffles liqueur'. The girl in the poster was chocolate personified. I like her face.

Jeff told me he was once driving on a back road in Florida in the early Seventies when he saw a guy in a van hit something and slice it completely in half. Mansour, the tow-truck driver, said he saw as many as 15 accidents a day. "All the blood, it kind of makes you sick. There was once this mother in a station wagon with her eight-year-old daughter. She hit a pick-up truck and died of internal bleeding. The daughter was alive. She was shaking and crying. She didn't have any father, either. Yeah, it kind of makes you sick."

I thanked Mansour for the lift back to the car rental place, and Jeff came around on a gold Lincoln Town Car. He said the damn car felt like a yacht. We pulled out and hit the road. Again.

On the Road With Nicolas Cage Highway 10, Cabazon California

It looks like we're headed into rain. The clouds are gray and silver, casting a gloomy light onto the palm trees. When I woke up this morning my girlfriend, Christina, told me she had a dream. We were standing on the top of a skyscraper and we touched a cloud together. A grey cloud. I asked her how it felt. She was quiet for a moment and said, "It stung." I miss my son.

I'm listening to 'Super Freak' by Rick James as we drive past a field of white windmills, twirling to the beat. The song automatically brings me back to the frustration I felt in high school. Whenever I hear it, I get a warm knot in my throat and think about all the rejections I got from girls when I asked them to the dances. This is an important point. Had the girls in high school not minded that I didn't have a car and could only take the bus, had Suzanne not left me standing at the prom with vomit on my shoes, to take a limo with another guy to a hotel room, I might not have turned into a flagrant commitment-phoebe, that I am.

The family man needs to be encouraged. He needs you to to tell him he can be a wild condor of thought and expression as well as a nobile father and husband. Just because he paints cheating, or writes cheating, or photographs cheating, doesn't mean he is cheating.

Enough of that. Let’s talk about what drives America, what keeps it going. I've got the answer. Two words: money and sex. Most men want sex. They need to make money to have sex. Most women want money. They need money to feather their nesting instincts, to raise a comfortable family. A rich man is as attractive to a woman as a beautiful woman is to a man - That, in a nutshell, is my interpretation of the American economy. Can you dig it? Because quite honestly, I don't. I hon't dig it. And that's all I'm going to say.

On the Road With Nicolas Cage Highway 10, Cabazon California

There are monsters on the horizon. A giant green tyrannosaurus. As a child I had seen the life-sized model dinosaurs standing alone in the California desert with tumbleweed and sand, but I had never been inside one. "There's supposed some kind of museum in the brontosaurus," I said to Jeff. "Let's check it out." Inside the belly of the beast was a collection of stuff, little of which had to do with paleontology. There was a gun display, a tortoise mandolin, and a little puppet theatre. Big scary monster outside, shy childlike soul inside. Was this symbolic of America's political theatrics?

I was noticing a statue of a Cro-Magnon man that looked a hell of a lot like Lloyd Bridges, when I met Denny. Denny runs the museum and sells souvenirs. He's got a day's growth of white beard, and I imagine he's had a few drinks, considering the red hue of his face and the beaten look in his eyes.

"Well, Mr. Bell, the man that built this dinosaur, I married one of his daughters, so he offered me a job. This is my favorite piece, the old tortoise mandolin - over a hundred years old. And that's your ball and chain there. People complain that in Georgia and North Carolina they still use the ball and chain.

I get a lot of Marines coming through here. They were gung-ho on fighting for Kuwait. It worked completely different than Vietnam. I've got a lot of friends that served in "Nam', they're crazy. A mental thing they never got rid of. I have a friend; his dream is to get on top of the Landmark Hotel and shoot everybody on the sidewalk. I call him Sarge." I believe violence is usually the result of an earlier injustice. Sarge's violence is probably the consequence of being spat on for not doing his job properly in Vietnam. Possibly one day he will show America what an efficient soldier he is and blow away a few kids in a schoolyard with an M-16. Probably be out on death row and executed for a crime that began with America's assault on him. I do not believe in the death penalty. I believe America is responsible for its own and should spend serious money on rehabilitation. The parents, not the child, are the guilty party.

On the Road With Nicolas Cage Cabazon, California 4:25pm.

I'm feeling pretty good right now, kind of invincible, like I'm in an armored car and I could just handle it. I could even take on Bruce Lee. Did you know Bruce Lee and Jimi Hendrix went to high school together? I punch Jimi Hendrix's final concert into the cassette deck. Jimi Hendrix, the father of Prince and Lenny Kravitz, the zenith of psychedelic blues, the master of aftertaste. The first time I heard him, I thought it was a wall of noise. Then, I would play it again and find a secret - something new every time. One melody high above the distortion, then another and another. I thought I was the only person who was in on this secret. It was 'our' secret, mine and Jimi's. This is greatness -to make a connection with someone you've never met.

We drove past a bar with fluorescent-colored signs, and decided to pull over. The bar was called Gabby's, and it was advertising a tribute to the 'Doors'. We walked into a starburst explosion. I was getting spotted left and right. It turned into a blur for me, and I went into tunnel vision. This is something I do when I know there will be a lot of people asking me questions. The only way to get through a night of talking about yourself without getting irate, is to mentally brace for it. Fame is not normal and it is not always fun.

This was shit-kicker bar. Jeff was growing nervous about one guy who kept shouting how ugly I was.

The owner of Gabby's asked me if I would give her my jacket, my purple velvet jacket. I loved that jacket because I love purple. I am purple. I have become that color in recent years. She had given us T-shirts and free drinks. I gave it to her. They all seemed genuinely happy that we were there.

The troops coming home is a big event in the desert. The local women have been taking their shirts off and showing the soldiers their tits, and the men have been giving them cases of beer. I s this an 'American' phenomenon or does it happen everywhere? I think most men admire tits, therefore the craving is international. However, the display, I would imagine, Is strictly American.

I met an older guy named Andrew Taylor. He was drinking shots, chasing them with beer. He had a warm laugh and a smile that disarmed me instantly. He told me he was an artist and had painted all the fluorescent signs in the club.

On the Road With Nicolas Cage Cabazon, California 5pm.

Andy was the kind of guy who could go anywhere and not get hurt. Anybody who started shit with him would walk away finally, and not because Andy looked tough. He had the innocence of an old relic. There would be no point in hurting him. Andy didn't have a car, so Jeff and I gave him a ride back to his house, small mobile home with low ceilings, covered with souvenirs and miniatures.

He had a mechanical bird in a gilded that wouldn't chirp, and a cat named, Red Dog. The place smelled of burnt eggs. We sat and he showed me his portfolio.

His stuff had a certain signature. There was one painting of an apple sliced open to reveal a target with an arrow hitting the bull’s-eye. The painting was surreal, like Magritte.

"I drew that because my girlfriend at the time got me in the butt with an arrow. The bitch could really shoot."

"Why'd she do that?"

"Because I wasn't doing her dog-and-pony show," he said.

I lit up a cigarette and so did Andy. "You mean she wanted you to perform for her?" I asked.

"Yeah. She decided you have to do this, and that, And I decided I wouldn't, so she took a f***in' bow to me. Damn near shot my butt off!"

I didn't want to pry, but Had to ask. "This, this and that? Was it sex?"

"Yeah. She was off in her own deal. She was a latent murderous bitch."

"Did she ever kill anybody?" I asked.

"I know she **cked people up."

"Do you like living in Joshua tree, or do you just want to get out of here?"

His voice went down to a low whisper. "I painted myself out of town. The signs you see, 90 percent of them are mine. It's time to go."

We thanked Andy for inviting us over.

"You'd better watch yourself when you're going through Texas," he said. "Back in the Seventies, I almost got shot twice."

I knew we would be leaving California tomorrow, and Andy's words bothered me. Originally, I wanted to pick up hitchhikers, but everybody at home warned me NOT to.

"If you pick up hitch-hikers, you better take a gun," a friend told me.

But I didn't bring a gun. I don't own one. It was just the road and us.

On the Road With Nicolas Cage Route 66, Kingman, Arizona, 4:30pm

Nothing seems to be as important here as it did at home. The road combs your hair; it cleans your room; it dusts your cobwebs.

Seems like civilization out here is dying. The only things connecting these small, poor towns are decrepit shacks and gas stations, markets, and coffee shops boarded up and left to rot. There is a kind of aesthetic duality to these towns. They are beautifully lonely.

I find the vastness of this state exhilarating. The gridlock clutches of Los Angeles are becoming weaker. The tires against the road are sounding like unsyncopated music. The one constant is that yellow line. I'm melting and I want to re-form. I want to meet someone new.

On the Road With Nicolas Cage Route 66, Kingman, Arizona, 6pm.

The pastel exterior of Kingsman Club, painted with Mexican senritos and saguaro cactuses, invited us in. I made a beeline for the john, but not without spotting a tough-looking guy with a blue bandana on his head and a mustache like John Voight's in 'Runaway Train'. When I came back, Jeff was looking edgy. He has a nose for trouble. I could tell he wanted to leave, but I ordered two bourbons. The tough-looking guy kept staring. I stared back and said, 'Hi'. He didn't answer. I took another swig from the bourbon, when he I heard, 'You look like that guy in Raising Arizona.'

I didn't want to lie to those eyes that looked like black steel. "I am him."

I over heard the bartender mutter, "Bullshit."

I held out my hand to Black eyes and introduced myself. He refused to tell me his name. Maybe he was running from something.

"What happened to the baby? What was his name?"

"Nathan Arizona."

"Yeah, what happened to Nathan?" he asked.

"After kidnapping him? I gave him back."

"Then you married the cop?"

"Yeah, Holly Hunter."

"Why'd you marry a cop? I hate cops. Cops are assholes.

"I didn't really marry a cop. It was a movie, you know - make believe?"

He finished his beer. "You ever have a beating?"

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"I've had two beatings by a cop -almost beat me to death. I got a cracked jaw-bone. Do you know what that feels like?"

I didn't like the sound of that question, so I remained silent.

"Hey, I don't care if you're a movie star. I dig ditches. Been shoveling shit for twenty years and I'm proud. Why you talking to me anyway? I'm a Mexican."

"So?"

"I went to Vietnam. I killed babies, women too. They had grenades in their hands. Does that make me a murderer? Two of my best friends threw themselves on a bomb to protect the rest of the platoon. You're going to tell me they're not heroes? The 'Desert Stormers' wouldn't last shit in the jungle. In the desert you can see, but in the jungle you are blind."

Black eyes were getting a little hot. I heard what he was saying but I couldn't get Sarge out of my head and I didn't want to rile his temper. 'I didn't get shit when I came back. They spit on me, and these boys are getting free beer."

I offered to buy him a drink, but when they came, he wouldn't let me pay. "I got a four year old son. He laughs a lot when he seen your movie."

"I'm glad."

We sat quietly for a moment. I liked him and I wanted him to like me. Most people probably thought he was a deadbeat or a manic, maybe he was, but he had soul.

"What would you do if I blew you away?" he asked.

"Why'd you want to do that?"

He laughed a long time, then drained his glass. "You're all right", he said.

On the Road With Nicolas Cage Route 66, Seligman, Arizona, 1:11pm.

It is an odd sight, snow coming down in the desert, but it's a welcome change. That guy at the Kingman Club affected me. I suppose America is conservative and paramilitary, but what about all those other people who want an alternative? People have always needed heroes, even if they come in guise of Rambo or Clint Eastwood. But can American youth rip off the mask invincibility and see the vulnerability underneath? Can we have infected heroes, infected with faults and problems like our own?

The Beatles revolutionized rock'n'roll with songs like 'I'm a loser'. What balls! Is there a rock group today that would sing about themselves as f***-ups?

I wonder if there's a hole in the soul of my generation. We've inherited the American Dream, but where do we take it? It's not about cars and wealth. It is always been freedom, but are we free in our thoughts or are we paralyzed by our dreams of consumption? The countries arteries are coagulating into muteness, and we have to inject them with a thinner to get thoughts spurting again.

Transvestites are perhaps the only true freedom fighters left. They are fighting for the right to be different. We must hold hands across America for them.

Things are starting to get scary. We're caught in the heart of a springtime blizzard. We're driving slower now, about 40. I think Jeff should be doing 25. Everything is turning white. We're gonna have to park it.

Black Cat Bar

Older types getting drunk. Jeff walks over to the jukebox to check out the songs. He comes back with big, round eyes. "Go look at the bulletin board."

I shuffle over to read this:

'Warning: A form of tattoo called 'Blue Star' is being sold to children. It's a small sheet of white paper containing a blue star the size of a pencil eraser. Each star is soaked with LSD. There are also brightly colored tabs resembling stamps that have pictures of Superman, clowns, Mickey Mouse, and other Disney characters. This is the new way of selling acid to children. A young child can happen upon these and have a fatal trip.

On the Road With Nicolas Cage Route 40, Somewhere, Arizona, 6pm.

Conditions have gotten worse. Jeff is driving about ten miles per hour and we can't see in front of us. We're 54 miles from the nearest town. Jeff is saying we're going to die. If we have pull over and wait all night, the car could get covered with snow; we could run out of gas and won't be able to turn on the heater. We'd freeze. I turn on Rick James' '17' to make light the situation.

Camp Verde, Arizona, 6pm.

We made it out of the ice. Looks like Rick brought us good luck. We try checking into the 'Your Inspection Invited' motel, but the rooms are too cold, so we stop in a local bar called Bowlers, where I meet a 250-pound Navajo Indian. "Hey, do you know what a Fukarwe tribe is?" he asks. "Can't say that I do."

"When the Indians first came here, they said, 'Where the **ck are we?'"

I try to imagine living in this small town and can't. I have not integrated myself 100 percent into the environment, but then I never do. Sometimes I get wary of letting people know too much about me too soon. I tend to be more reserved while traveling. If I went off the wall in this town, I don't think it would be received well, especially since we've been drinking.

I know drinking is out of style, but I have learned that when I do drink, just saying to myself, 'I am sleek and self-contained’, spares many problems. If you can function like a tiger on a hunt while indulging, you deserve to utmost respect. I can't stand a sloppy drunk.

Socorro, New Mexico

I had a dream last night that I was in the African desert. Jeff and I were surrounded by hyenas. As we started walking to the car, I saw a small red ocelot sitting on the rock. She ran away, leaving her kitten. I scooped it up and brought the tiny animal into the car with me.

On the Road With Nicolas Cage Socorro, New Mexico

Otis Quick is an ex-truck driver. He was fixing the sink in our room. I was on the phone to my editor, who asked me what I thought of America. I told him that I thought the country was confused. The majority is celebrating it's 'battle' victory, while in a dark corner like Kingman, Vietnam vets bitterly remember getting spit on. "I don't think America is confused," Otis interrupted, I think we have a lot of different opinions, and that's part of what makes this country great."

I got off the phone, sensing an opportunity. 'Is there anything you'd change about the country?' I asked Otis.

"There ought to be a death penalty for drug dealers. I've got a brother in jail for selling drugs, and I wouldn't feel sorry for him if he got the death penalty. He got little kids on drugs. Big city, little town-there's killing' and drugs everywhere."

I looked at Otis. He had sad eyes.

"What are your dreams?" I asked him.

"I'm 39. I'm past my dreams. As a kid, I remembered seeing my daddy drive a truck, and that was my dream - to drive a truck. I've done that. Now my dream is to see my kids grow up with an education."

Somewhere, New Mexico 1:45 pm

We're heading south toward Alamogordo. It was close to there that the Trinity Devise was tested in 1944. That was the first thermo-nuclear explosion in history. There's the Star Wars Deli, the Rocket Laundromat, and the Atomic Welding shop. The buildings look like carcasses, and the whole place smells like burnt hair. Who are they, these Americans, who raise their children in an area where existence is predicated on the detonation of atomic bombs?

Five days on the road and I was becoming crazed. I could tell Jeff wrapped as tight as me. We stopped talking. I drove out of town down some white, gypsum-dusted roads for a couple of miles, and then in the pavement ended. We were floating in a world of soft, sculptured ice cream. This was White Sands National Monument. Having seen the birthplace of nuclear war, the shock of entering this marshmallow softness was too much. The weirdness inside of me slammed against the beauty outside.

I pointed the car to a turn-off and slid up to a white hill. Jeff and I has spent a lot of miles on the road together, and it was time to let it rip. Claustrophobia had set in.

"Let's take a walk." I barely recognized my own voice.

We hiked to the top of a dune overlooking this white world. Great place for a fight. I thought. The wind was whistling. We were alone.

Before I could turn around, Jeff clocked me. it was a cheap shot. He caught me flush on the cheekbone under my eye, but I didn't go down. I have always prided myself on my ability to take pain. I staggered back and smiled.

"Why not?" I muttered.

We went at it. I slugged Jeff in the stomach and he fell like a sack of potatoes. That was it. He was winded and the fight was over. I half wished he had a little more in him, but it was just as well. I didn't really want to hurt him. I tasted blood in my mouth. I spat out in the sand, red and white. I hate that color combination. Ever since I saw Login's Run, I have always hated red and white.

"How you doing?" I asked.

"Not too good," he croaked.

"All right."

We got back in the car, and before long it was dark again. We kept driving past prison facilities with signs on the road. They read: 'Warning: do not pick up hitchhikers. Prison area.

I imagine there is a truck behind us and a car in front, closing the gap on us, forcing us to the side of the road. I pull over. I hear a beer bottle break and "Yee-hah" from some inbred hick. "Oh, shit" I say to myself. Through the windshield I can see a fellow with a red face. He is wearing a plaid shirt and a baseball cap, and he is walking toward me. He is holding a hunting rifle and flashing a toothless smile. "Lookee what we got here!" he says.

Jeff's eyes are as wide as coffee saucers. We are both shaking. I have a vision of the shotgun against my temple and the sound of ten tons of bricks falling from a 12-story building and exploding. Everything red. I don't want to die. I survey my options. Give them the car, but they'll shoot me anyway. Run into the desert, and I'm a moving target. I decide to step on the gas and run the redneck over.

I come out of my dream state and notice we are approaching Texas.

On the Road With Nicolas Cage Austin, Texas

I am not a demon. I am a lizard, a shark, and a heat- seeking panther. I am one watt above darkness. I am a glow-in-the-dark rollercoaster. I am a hard-on. I want to be John Denver on acid playing the accordion; I want to drink Jack Daniel's while driving my corvette off the Grand Canyon. I am the frog you never kissed. I am a sinner looking for some peace. I believe in the sword that gives life. I am a family man and a bachelor. I don't believe in God but I'm afraid of him. So I'll pray. It's eight o'clock and it's Saturday night. I've checked into a hotel, tipped the bellboy, and gotten a shoeshine. I'm back in the big city. Jeff and I walk down East Sixth Street to a club called Maggie Maes. I've been here once before when I was shooting an awful movie called, 'Firebirds', and met a few great guys who were training to fly Apache helicopters for the role, Chief Warrant Officer E. J. Mikeska and Bill Lee. They brought me here, and though it's been a couple of years, I was hoping I might run into them again.

"Dazed and confused" is playing as we enter Maggie Maes. People are buying me drinks. One is called a Jell-O shot, which is strawberry Jell-O made with vodka, rum and whiskey. I am starting to feel flushed and just a little dizzy. On the way out of the club, chanting, "I am sleek and self contained," I run into the pilots I mentioned earlier. We were all pretty astonished to see each other.

They were throwing a going-away party for some of their fellow soldiers. Somehow I find myself in a limousine and wind up at the Yellow Rose. If you want to see the finest burlesque, it here. So is the 82nd Airborne, a group of jet-fighter pilots just back from Saudi Arabia. One of the guys, the one with the Silver Star asks me to sign an autograph. I feel silly, considering he is the real thing. I introduce the jet-fighter pilots to the attack-helicopter pilots. At once I witness friendly rivalry. I sincerely admire this group of guys, but I know I could never be one of them. We look and dress and talk differently, and I know we think differently. I could never enlist in the military. I cannot be one voice in a group that sounds the same.

In a lot of ways, the military speaks for my generation. This was true, too, during Kerouac's time, after the Korean War. The Beatniks came up in opposition to Eisenhower's constipation, and even now, back in LA; coffee houses are opening, trying to re-kindle the beatnik flame. But these things have already been done, and their points have already been made.

So where is the alternative generation for the Nineties? I have a theory. Back in LA there is this super-fringe group called Modern Primitives. They experiment with adorning the sexual organs and other body parts with rings and tattoos. There is a club called Club f*** that caters to them. I've seen women with their tongues pierced, love slaves into sadomasochism, and homosexuals, most of whom have some kind of fetish like vinyl or leather.

This group is not the future. But there's something about their spirit that dances a wild Locomotion. They are sexual outlaws it strict times, playing close to the fire, not worrying about getting burned. They are full-throttle anarchists with their bodies, but still they demand their rites.

AND, dig this, if you must put a label on me, which I know you can't do, even if you tried super hard, I suppose I'd be a kind of modern primitive because I believe in rites. This culture has no other ritual other than the bar mitzvah that initiates us into manhood. I got tattooed when I became a man. I needed one instinctively. I didn't know why, but, on reflection, I knew I was leaving the nest. I wanted to claim my body, but enough of that.

At the end of the night, I bring the party back to my hotel and find myself paying for every room on my credit card. This is NOT very slick and self-contained of me.

On the Road With Nicolas Cage New Orleans, Louisiana

I came out here about six years ago because I wanted to experience the Mardi Gras I saw at the end of Easy Rider. Instead, I saw streets of shorthaired preppies high on crack, making noise and starting fights, fight, a man being served up blows jobs from different guys on the street. I saw naked women everywhere. It did not seem like the Mardi gras in Easy Rider. But that was the Sixties and the drugs are different now. I admire New Orleans because it demands you drink and have sex, and still manages to function as a city. Somehow its soul only becomes more beautiful the more debauched it gets.

Our last night on the road begins at the Tropical Isle Bar, where we have some 'hand grenades', drinks totally made from 109-proof Gem Clear grain alcohol. I do not recommend them. "This is real Dennis Hopper courage juice, "Jeff says. From the other end of joint I hear some barfly grunt, "What the world needs now is a malfunction."

At around 4:15am, we hit the Dungeon, a bar that looks like Aleister Crowley's inner sanctum. There is a devil's head behind the bar that moves every time I turn away. I'm not sure if I'm seeing things or if the head moves mechanically.

Before long, we meet a local named Buddy. He looks like the kinda guy who would drive a stretch magenta '74 Cadillac and wear sunglasses in his bathtub. "You ever understand a woman, you've gone nuts," is the first thing he says.

The girl-tending bar is Erin. She's a photographer and she looks slightly out of place. "Why'd you move to New Orleans?" I ask.

"For the horror," she replies.

Some girls from another club we've visited earlier come in. One was named Lisa Marie. She had the face of an angel, a smile of sin.

This is the only city I know where you can drink non-stop. There is no law here at two o’clock, which tells you to cool it. The effects are mind-bending and a little devastating. I can only think that if I lived in New Orleans I would probably die. I want to get out. I've had enough of this. I want to go home before I blow up.

I desperately want to be with my son. Christ, why is life so complicated? Why can't I just be married and have it work? The whole country is pro-family, there is a baby boom, and there are movies left and right about marriage. Am I the wrong man for the role?

I want simplicity, tradition. I want to be married; yet I'm terrified of divorce.

The following morning I found an old fortune-teller shop in the French Quarter. I thought I might find a kernel of wisdom with which to end my trip. My prophet looked nothing like what I had expected. She was a hippie throwback who wouldn't allow herself to touch money with her own hands. She believed in animal rights and had a pet wolf that confided was her brother. When she read my palms, she told me that there were too many people pulling at me from each side. "You must be more confident in your own opinions. Do not listen to these people. No need to be with water. Go to the water."

We went to Cafe du Monde for breakfast. We had the famous beignets and chicory coffee. Then we went for a walk down Decatur Street to the Aquarium. I just wanted to look at something beautiful. I needed this.

On the Road With Nicolas Cage Los Angeles, Calif

Jeff and I leave the car in New Orleans and fly home. I'm tired, and images of the road softly flicker in my head.

I hope Andre Taylor has found some new signs to paint. Maybe I'll offer him a job painting in my son's room, if he really wants to get out off 29 Palms. I can see Black Eyes' smile when he said, "You're all right." That one moment made me feel like I had received an outlaw's degree, a degree that says I'm still one of them, still human. That I'm not opposed to stealing, if I need to feed my family.

These people are not to be classified into some art-house movement. There is no movement on the road, no Beatniks, no Hippies, no Punks, no Modern Primitives - no neat labels. I don't think Kerouac was looking for a label. His journey was about finding passion for life and doing things your way. When you get out into America you can see that. Maybe that's better.

I disconnected my phone and drifted off to sleep. That night, I dreamt I was back at White Sands National Monument. A beautiful blonde girl was **cking me in the sand. There were hyenas surrounding us. At the moment of climax the blonde took a gun from behind a rock and blew my head off. I didn't die. I turned into a hyena and starting laughing. I joined my animal brothers and ran into the desert leaving her. We were laughing as we ran