Saturday, August 31, 2002
 christina is trying to get my attention by wearing the shortest skirt ever photographed on television.
shes like me, very low self esteem.
the daily pundit and this other dude were debating about why im not getting a huge sweaty pile of cash from mags or newspapers or whoever and its cuz im terrified to send anything out. christina is sitting on like three completely finished albums right now for the same reason. they're not sellout records, they're real ones. experimental to a point.
one of the dudes asked if it was possible for an unconventional writer to clean up the writing and still pack the same punch, and i say no, its not possible. but that doesn't mean it wouldn't still beat the hell out of most of the stuff you read in the paper.
you could take all the drugs out of hunter s. and it will still be wild and untamed, but the question is why would you want to do that?
isn't a newspaper or a magazine or a journal a collection of a variety of writers? are they really all supposed to sound alike?
i know when i go to the zoo i don't want to see sharks with no teeth, bears with no claws, or giraffes with brown hair so that they'd look more like the loveable beaver family.
sure i can sellout. i don't have to say fuck in everything i write. people who were worried that dennis miller was gonna swear on monday night football were complete idiots. most of america knows when its appropriate to say, "look at that hot piece of ass over there!" and when its appropriate to say, "good evening ms. Aguilera."
i would imagine that most publishable writers would know who their audience is and what would be the right time to say the right things.
as for the "cleaning up" process. i am 108 years old. soon to be 109. idealism has been beaten out of me. at this stage of my life i am happy to even be able to write things down and have people read them. if someone wants to edit my stuff, fine.
by the time most writers have gone through their fourth draft of their 50 inch pile of dreck, i have finished my 5th mini column and have already completely solved like 8 serious issues and taken at least three killer pictures. let the editors who are hung up on capitalization, run on sentences, comma splicing, and justin timberlake's ass tidy up my prose. we all have work to do. we all have a role. my job is to gather the info, write it down and move on. if they want to sand the edges, fine.
 odds are i forgot about what i wrote half way through writing it.
im not making huge sums of cash because im scared. i don't want some jackhole telling me thanks but no thanks. ive dealt with rejection my whole life, as has most people, but rejection when it comes to writing is something that i don't like. and selling out is something that is very hard for me to do too.
i know that if someone hired me i would have to write the way that they want and i think that would be tough, for as lucky as i get sometimes, its hard to walk the straight and narrow when you're interested in all the other sidestreets.
to me, writing can be a dynamically enjoyable creative process that can flirt at being art.
let the boring hacks who cant write anything else besides AP style write AP style, but please don't try to lump the rest of us into that box because you know what, if that was really the only thing that people wanted to read, then why is it that the blogosphere is so big and my hits only go up each and every month?
i know theres a place for me somewhere, and i don't think that this is the only place for me.
i do believe that in the right context i could produce a daily column for someone that wouldn't be so tonypierce-centric that would still be edgy, informative, cocky, bizarre, and humorous that people would want to read. i think i could do a decent job of interviewing real celebs and take pictures of them, dont you? of course you do.
just like theres a place on tv for britney and nelly and justin and christina And the vines, and the strokes, and bruce springsteen.. and even tom waits.
my fear is that im the replacements.
my motivation is that i don't ever want anyone to say, "God he could have really been something."
tonight i went drinking with one of the coolest girls in hollywood. she too had a pretty short skirt and extensions in her hair and we drank baileys and shot pool and i wondered how long im going to be able to pull this off.
and i tried to kisser and she said no and i said, but you're from my real hometown in illinois. ive never kissed a girl from there. she said, sure you have. i said, not in like 100 years, ive completely forgot what its like.
she said its pretty much the same.
i said, but aren't you curious? im curious. come on, its not like im attracted to you. im just being scientific, its an experiment.
and i don't know why i continue to use that line, it never works, but for some reason i use it like all the time because i Think it should work.
but kissing a girl at a bar isn't about getting them to think, its about getting them to stop thinking. and thats a tough trick when you go out with smart girls.
ok its 4:19am, might be a good time to go to bed.
big shout out to Oish who keeps turning on her friends to the busblog and i totally appreciate that. thanks teresa!
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