A little weird, but it works.

Vanilla Mood has tons of stuff on YouTube, including a version of “Like a Rolling Stone” and “Superstition.”

No, I’m not kidding.

I’ve been following this story for a few days. There’s an area on Cleghorn Road that includes old Route 66 near Cajon Junction, Calif., that’s been known for some time as a hangout for men looking for anonymous gay sex.

Of course, when you have a place known for illicit activity, it’s going to become a haven for more serious crimes, like robbery and drug-dealing.

Now there’s been a homicide. The body of a guy was found near the Mother Road, believed to have been killed by suspected serial killer John Wayne Thomson, who was apprehended a few days ago.

Now the sheriff’s department is cracking down on the area, reports the Victorville Daily Press, and netting lots of arrests. I’m glad it’s happening; action was overdue.

I know a few roadies who explore the Cajon Pass alignment of old Route 66. I want them to be aware of what’s going on. The police presence is going to be heightened there for while.

Tony Pierce of LAist, a Web site about Los Angeles, embarked on a Route 66 road trip from his home base.

It sounds like he got ripped off by his auto mechanic, though. After an oil change and other small repairs that totaled $250 before his trip started, the oil light came on somewhere in the Arizona desert in the middle of the night. Then the gas light came on.

But Tony was rescued by Fred, a teenager at a Mobil station.

Bro crawled under the car, let the plug out to show us that there was maybe a quarter cup of oil in the car, tightened it up real good and poured in three quarts of the good stuff.

Route 66 somehow had let us drive miles and miles and miles in the pitch black Arizona desert with no gas and no oil.

The magic had already begun and we had barely broken into the Tootsie Rolls.

And if things couldn’t get weirder, St. Fred refused a tip, a beer, a candy bar, or anything. But he did give us his MySpace address so that we could be “friends.” At that point we realized we just may have hallucinated the whole thing. Or we were in store for a wild road trip which had started off with a (near) bang.

I don’t think he hallucinated it, though. Tony videotaped part of his conversation with Fred.

Believe it or not, I hear stories like that on the Mother Road all the time.

UPDATE: I’ve fixed it so comments are allowed in the system now. WordPress was doing some system upgrades when I was writing the post, and some funky things were happening at the time.