Hot Springs

A fly landed on my nose, and I wanted to sneeze, but I didn't dare. Muscled masseur Manoli, who had just caked my face with a slime-ball of stinking sludge, warned me not to move a muscle if I wanted this sulfurous mud pack's miraculous properties to work. It dried hard and tight after 30 minutes, turning my cheeks and lips as rigid as Agamemnon's gold death mask. My face tingled and itched as I rinsed it off, but after the burning had subsided a few minutes later, my face felt toned and purified, just as Manoli had promised.

Overanalyze stormed down the home stretch to pull away and win the $1-million Arkansas Derby on Saturday at Hot Springs, Ark. The colt, trained by Todd Pletcher , trailed with a second group for much of the race before charging ahead after the final turn in the 1 1/8-mile race. Overanalyze overcame the lead pack and held off Frac Daddy and Carve to earn Pletcher his third win in the Kentucky Derby prep race, his first since winning back-to-back Arkansas Derby races in 2000 and 2001.

Hot Springs A Novel Geoffrey Becker Tin House Books: 318 pp., $14.95 paper I call them papercut writers -- brave souls who just about make us bleed, writing on the edge of what we can stand. A reader is lulled into trotting along to the edge of darkness with characters who, gosh, officer, they seemed normal. Who are we to judge? What do we really know about other people's lives? This Bernice character in "Hot Springs," a young woman who has given up her baby for adoption and cons her boyfriend into helping her kidnap the child five years later . . . is she crazy?

COMEDY 4:20 Funny: A Very Pot Friendly Variety Show UCB Theatre, 5919 Franklin Ave., L.A. 4:20 p.m. Fri. $5 ucbtheatre.com FESTIVAL Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival Empire Polo Field, 81-800 Ave. 51, Indio Noon Fri.-Sun. Sold out coachella.com FESTIVAL Desert Daze Dillon's Roadhouse 64647 Dillon Road, Desert Hot Springs Fri-Sun. Times vary. $10 moonblockparty.org CLUB NIGHT Bacchanal with Sam Barsh Trio Del Monte Speakeasy, 52 Windward Ave., Venice 9 p.m. Sun. $5 townhousevenice.com MUSIC John Carpenter residency Los Globos, 3040 W. Sunset Blvd., L.A. 9 p.m. Mon. Free clublosglobos.com

City officials here call it the "hole from hell." It's 20 feet deep and 100 feet across and at its bottom bubbles a steaming black sulfur-laden pool. It's gobbled up roughly half the parking lot serving City Hall and the town library. At times, its fumes drift over the quaint downtown, clashing with even the boldest Zinfandels in the wine-tasting rooms that line virtually every block. "When the wind is right, it'll clear out your sinuses," said Mayor Duane Picanco as he surveyed the fenced-off chasm that is the last grim souvenir of the San Simeon earthquake of 2003.

I grew up in Hot Springs and live there now. In her story ("Southern Comforts," March 31), author Shermakaye Bass said she giggled as she passed the Howard Johnson's motel with the mural of Jesus. That's exactly what I thought as I was growing up. But in fact, the Jesus mural is attached to the church next door to the motel. I didn't realize that, though, until college. SHERRI McDONOUGH Hot Springs, Ark.

Though Stephen Hunter's new novel, "Hot Springs" (Simon & Schuster, $25, 479 pages), revolves around a factual event--in 1946, a group of returning WWII vets led by a prosecuting district attorney, ran the Mob out of that Arkansas resort town--he notes that his version is "grossly fictionalized . . . (I) write stories, not histories, and whenever stuck between the cool plot twist and the record, will choose the former." No complaints here.

Next up in the periodic Sunday jazz series at Wheeler Hot Springs is a stalwart West Coast hero of the saxophone, Red Holloway. Holloway is one of those mainstream players who issues up effortless volleys of sax improvisation, with an infectious grin that tells much of the story.

Perhaps a greater health risk in hot springs is the danger of extreme temperature changes, from tepid to scalding in minutes. In general, the pools can hold temperatures of up to 140 degrees and hotter. The hottest hot springs in Southern California is believed to be Sespe Hot Springs in the Los Padres National Forest. One longtime visitor said the water is so hot, he once boiled an egg in the pool.

Banners across Central Avenue proclaim Hot Springs the hometown of Bill Clinton. Not the President's birthplace, mind you. That distinction belongs to Hope, Ark. Hot Springs, some 55 miles southwest of Little Rock, is where young Bill spent his formative years. Unlike more isolated Arkansas towns, "The National Spa," as the resort has long billed itself, has received--and still receives--visitors from across America and around the world. By Arkansas standards, the town is quite cosmopolitan.

MUSIC The folks behind the Desert Daze festival have assembled a pretty worthy anti-Coachella in its own right. Over 11 days, local luminaries including Allah Las, Bleached and Dengue Fever join noted nationals Akron/Family, the Fresh & Onlys and dozens more in what looks to be the preeminent diversion from that other rock festival down the road. Dillon's Roadhouse, 64647 Dillon Road, Desert Hot Springs. 4 p.m. Thu.-April 22. Free. moonblockparty.org.

Joshua Tree National Park , 74485 National Park Drive., Twentynine Palms; (760) 367-5500, http://www.nps.gov/jotr. Entrance fee $15 per car for up to seven days. Crossroads Café , 61715 Twentynine Palms Highway, Joshua Tree; (760) 366-5414, http://www.crossroadscafejtree.com . Breakfast, lunch, dinner. All less than $10. Ricochet Gourmet , 61705 Twentynine Palms Highway, Joshua Tree; (760) 366-1898, http://www.ricochetjoshuatree.com . Main dishes $8-$10.

It's a dry heat - a boulder-studded, wind-raked Mojave heat, in which rock stars lie low, artists think big, marines train, weird plants jut toward the sun like beseeching biblical figures, and climbers cling to granite walls like insects stuck to flypaper, except the climbers are way happier. That's a notable thing about Joshua Tree National Park and the towns around it. While legions of Californians keep their faces to the beach, no matter the season, a certain stripe of traveler is powerless to resist the desert, especially in cooler months.

Club Mud is the longtime nickname given to Glen Ivy Hot Springs . The indoor-outdoor day spa in Corona known for its natural clay mud has a sweet birthday treat: Book a spa treatment on your birthday and get free admission for the day. The deal: The offer requires a 50-minute or longer spa treatment, such as massages (different types to choose from) that start at $99. Admission with a treatment usually costs $39 Mondays-Thursdays and $52 on weekends and holidays, so that's the savings in the birthday special.

Two Bunch Palms Resort & Spa, one of the region's oldest mineral water spas, was bought by a show biz consortium for nearly $10 million. Hollywood producers Steve Markoff, Donald Kushner and Elie Samaha bought the rambling 52-room resort in Desert Hot Springs with Westside real estate developer Gidi Cohen. The new owners said they will immediately begin an upgrade of the 270-acre property. “We are laying the groundwork for major renovations throughout the resort, including a joint venture with a widely successful spa operator and expansion to include stand-alone 3,000-square-foot villas, senior housing and a private postoperative surgery rehab facility,” Cohen said.

Exhaustion. That was how Big Bear High Coach Dave Griffiths described his physical state after his team pulled out a 56-50 victory over host Desert Hot Springs on Friday night in a football game that lasted a state-record eight overtimes. "It was just a phenomenal game, probably the best football game I've ever been involved in," Griffiths said. "I'm not sure how much longer the teams could have gone. After eight overtimes, the kids were worn out and the coaches too. " Lucas Jenkins ended the game with a short touchdown run in the eighth overtime period.

New things are bubbling up at an old favorite of many mature travelers as Murrieta Hot Springs takes on a new owner and outlook for 1988. About a 90-minute drive south from Los Angeles, the resort sits atop a hot spring spouting up from the Elsinor fault below, and has been enjoyed by everyone from early Temecula Indians to Teamster union executives. The Teamsters were only one of the many owners of the colorful and sometimes controversial 86-year-old resort.

Would it be a Winter Olympics without exotic wildlife? No, not the athletes at the Olympic village disco, real wildlife. In Albertville, France, wild boars startled many a sleepy driver late at night on the dark and snowy mountain roads. In Lillehammer, Norway, moose--the Norwegians called them elk but they really were moose--were numerous enough to pose a threat to rail traffic, and highways were posted with moose-crossing signs. Here?

Reporting from Nagano, Japan Fame is fleeting, but mountains are eternal. Or so it seems in Nagano, the mountain-ringed city in the center of Honshu, Japan's main island. Nagano had a brief brush with international fame when it hosted the 1998 Winter Olympics, but the city center has returned to its former self, a comfortably modern medium-size downtown spread out below the imposing Zenkoji Buddhist Temple. But the mountainous prefecture, or administrative region, encircling it seems ancient, with its Shinto shrines, hot springs and villages trapped in time.

A fly landed on my nose, and I wanted to sneeze, but I didn't dare. Muscled masseur Manoli, who had just caked my face with a slime-ball of stinking sludge, warned me not to move a muscle if I wanted this sulfurous mud pack's miraculous properties to work. It dried hard and tight after 30 minutes, turning my cheeks and lips as rigid as Agamemnon's gold death mask. My face tingled and itched as I rinsed it off, but after the burning had subsided a few minutes later, my face felt toned and purified, just as Manoli had promised.