tony pierce.com + mary!
busblog at gmail dot com

nothing in here is true

 


   Saturday, September 14, 2002  
i was supposed to see a movie with a hot chick last night, but she stood me up.

we sorta had an agreement that said that if i didn't finish my proposal for my dream job that she wouldn't go to the movies with me. but it was sorta a joke agreement. she knows that im terrified to write the proposal and ive been procrastinating it for quite a while.

but she didn't even call or email me to tell me that we weren't gonna hang, and that made me sad, and it didn't motivate me to write last night. it just motivated me to drink alone and watch tv.

kissing motivates me.

when girls come over to my house and lift their shirts, that motivates me.

if some girls came over and said, hi tony, we're here to help you. first we're going to show your our magical boobies and then we're going to sit here while you work, that would get me to work.

some people are motivated by money or power or job titles or merchandise.

me, im very visual. and i like to kiss hot babes.

if one of those girls saw that i wasn't typing and she came over and sat on my lap and said, "god i love your writing and your style, and the way that your apartment is messy, but still cozy," and then kissed me and then went over to the couch and said, "i'll give you another kiss after you do 5 good paragraphs," i would do 5 good paragraphs.

some writers cant write with other people around.

not me.

some of the best stuff that i wrote in college was in a very busy loud crazy sexy cool newsroom where people were yelling and dancing and arguing and kissing and skateboarding and playing wiffleball and nerf basketball and drinking wine and telling lies and changing the radio stations and all that.

i forget what motivated me back then, but im sure it wasn't the cold shoulder.

anyway, im sure she didn't know all this. im not sure she knows me that well.

but now that she does, i'll let you know about the progress of .. well, everything.

speaking of which, i got some of my proposal done, and ashley is coming up here a little after midnight to tuck me in and wake up with me in the morn to watch da bears win their second straight game.

tomorrow evening is going to be interesting. you don't mind if i ramble, do you? hope not.

tomorrow evening on tv i have to choose between my beloved raiders playing the espn evening game, anna nicole smith on E! and then on the howard stern show, or the season premiere of the sopranos.

something tells me im gonna watch the raiders since the other two will be rerunned.

today bob dylan tickets went on sale for his three night stand at the wiltern theatre, a venue i see every day on my way to work.

face value of the tickets are $75-150.

the wiltern is owned by Clear Channel who owns many radio stations.

why is it that i have the feeling that lots of radio jerks are going to see bob dylan play for free and the general public are going to make up the difference by paying the ridiculous prices?

sometimes i do wish i was a millionaire.

id see a lot more shows.

okay, gotta shower. a hot blonde twenty year old girl is gonna come here and make me forget all about bob dylan and whisper sweet things in my ear which will then turn into beautiful blog entries for your asses.

nite!
 
anna didnt call me. i didnt call her either.

everyone is nervous and sketchy and superstitious and freaked out.

anna kounikova, 21, on sunday will enter just her fourth singles final in her seven-year professional career and her first shot at a WTA title since Moscow in 2000.

the only woman in anna's way will be anna.

anna smashnova, that is, the top seeded israeli who has coasted through the Shanghai Open, thumping Angelique Widjaja of Indonesia 6-1 6-1 in her semi-final match today.

kornikova didnt have it as easy, barely squeaking past Japan's Ai Sugiyama 6-4 7-5 in todays other semi final-- which set up tomorrow's anna versus anna final.

anna k. continued her winnings ways today in china when she took the court a mere few hours later with new doubles partner Janet Lee and clinched a second finals berth with a tremendous win over unranked Li Ting and Sun Tiantian 2-6, 6-4, 6-4.

so could this be a doubles and a singles tourney championship for our favorite blonde comrade?

i say yes.

too bad its not going to be on tv.

too bad it wont be on tv at 11pm tonight pacific time, not even on pay-per-view, which i would pay money to see.

wishing you luck, ms. kournikova
 
why i believe oj didn't do it

i believe oj because i want to believe oj.

like a lot of black kids in the early 70s, oj was my hero.

he had style, grace, flair, and soul.

and like lots of black people, when oj was declared not guilty, i breathed a heavy sigh of relief.

unlike a lot of people, i actually was able to watch most of the trial.

my particular job at the time, had me working the evening shift if i wanted to. and why wouldn't i want to?

i watched the whole thing on E! who had commentary during the breaks, pre- and post-coverage, and a nearly gossipy approach to the proceedings that made it more of a live action soap opera than a legal tussle. they made it easy to follow. they had all the best guests. it started around 9 or 10 in the morning and was done around 3 or 3:30. it became part of my daily routine.

as someone wanting to believe that he was not guilty, i raised my eyebrows when the LAPD couldn't account for nearly half of the blood that they collected from OJ to compare with the blood found in his bronco and at the scene and on the blood. i scratched my head when marcia chose to never include the slow chase (pictured) where oj hid in the back of the bronco and called his mother sobbing. allegedly.

and when the glove didn't fit, i had to acquit.

E! gave me a new hero: johnny cochran.

Blacks were rooting for OJ because he represented a Black man on trial. not only that, but of a Black man killing a skinny young blonde white woman. none of us wanted to believe that any of that was true.

currently i am telling myself that it was drug dealers who killed nicole after she built up a healthy habit that oj might have financed in the past, but for whatever reason had stopped paying for. this would explain why oj went on the slow speed chase with a passport, cap, fake moustache and wallet (he thought the drug dealers were going to kill him too) crying to his mother.

i don't think that oj, a guy who had never had a problem with women, infact the new E! True Hollywood Story about OJ (which gets rerun this afternoon) says that one reason that Nicole wanted a divorce was because of his infidelity. wasn't oj was dating a playboy model? how many 49 year old guys dating playboy models stab their ex-wives over a lover's quarrel? you have lover's quarrels when you're deeply in love. when you're deeply in love you don't bang other women. the prosecution cant have it both ways. not guilty.

i think that nicole didn't pay her drug tab. i think that oj once paid these tabs but once they were divorced stopped paying. maybe he would pay now and then, but this time he said no. i think the drug dealers called oj on a last ditch effort to get the money and said theyd kill her if they didn't get it. i think oj called their bluff, and lost. and when they were done, they went to the back of oj's house, knocked on kato's wall and dropped their bloody glove in his yard.

both ron and nicole was slashed across the neck. nicole, in such a way that she was nearly decapitated. those people were not stabbed in a way to be punished, they were stabbed in a way to be killed. emotional killings, i would think, would include shouts, tears, cries of grief. none of this happened. Ron was stabbed 9 times, i think, nicole 19. that's pretty efficient for a first time double murderer, if you ask me.

anyway, in the new True Hollywood Story, we hear that OJs dad just might have been gay. we hear that OJ dated a 21 year old during his last stay in California and she moved to Florida with him, she, getting an apartment in Miami.

i also learned that OJ has an income of at least $23,000 a month, which cant be touched by the courts. and he has a personal 401k for his retirement.

not a bad two hour recap of the whole thing.

they also claim that he was a ticket scalper of 49er games when he was in junior high.

and a pie stealer.
 
Tony,

Yesterday I wanted to know more about Warren Zevon
. Clicked around the blogosphere, and found lots of people saying, "Oh, that's terrible" or "Here's my analysis of this or that Zevon lyric, and aren't I clever for noticing its hidden genius."

But I already wrote something like that myself; I mean, I read a couple, but how many can you read?

Checked the L.A. Times. Glory be! They had an actual interview with the guy, with lots of new information.

As Reynolds says (or doesn't say), Advantage, Big Media.

Nance


Dear Nance,

Any time you're looking for something Hollywood or music-related, please just drop me an email or leave a comment or ask.

The same goes for the rest of youse.

Hollywood is an incredibly small place where thousands of paths cross each day and millions of paths cross each night.

I had the great opportunity of being at a party that Warren attended this summer. ironically, it was the last LA Blogger party that was held at movie producer Brian Linse's hollywood bachelor pad. Warren and Brian are friends.

The guests of honor were Eric and Dawn Olsen. That's dawn with warren in the above photo. advantage warren.

Eric, a record producer, and author of books regarding record producing, has since formed the amazingly diverse and important Blogcritics.com, to which you can find this amalgam of offerrings about Warren's fine career.

As for the LA Times, I'm still mad at them for not mentioning my name in that story about bloggers, and I will remain mad at them until they do a feature about me and the dozen or so major bloggers who reside mere miles from their ivory tower.

and yes, i am still sticking my tounge out at them.

anyway, i rememeber that blogger party very well, because thats when i got to meet a lot of cool people whose blogs i hadn't met, but that was also the night where everyone first met moxie.

   Friday, September 13, 2002  
any time i post to metafilter i get more and more depressed.

there used to be a time when i thought that many of these people were some of the smartest people around. now i just wonder.

i know it's friday the thirteenth, but it still worries me when others just dont get it.

and strangely enough, even smart people dont understand the beauty of blogs like this one.

i dont say that in a conceited way, i say that in a stylistic way. what i think this blog represents, as chris c. (who turned me on to that LA Times story first, thanks Chris) stated one of his comments, is that it fills the gap between analyzing hard news and talking about very mundane personal trivalties.

one of the best things about blogging, in my opionion is that you can get a glimpse of a real live person and what theyre up to and how theyre living, minus their personal politics. not everyone wants to know these things, but i do. i totally love people. i love humanity. i want to know what it's like for 16 year old Nay who is being homeschooled in Orlando. i want to know what its like for thirtysomething year old flagrant to be 6 feet tall and 97 pounds and yet still jet setting.

i couldnt give a rats ass what life is like for Bob Greene, or Oprah, or Dr. Phil or Sally Jesse because in lots of ways i think those people are huge fakers who are living a life so removed from me that i couldnt identify with them or learn from them if i wanted to-- and i dont want to!

on 9/11 i was watching mtv and suchin park was on one of the phones and she was talking to a teenage girl who lived in new york and she was asking her "what is it like to be 16 and living in the wake of all this?" and i wanted to yell at the tv and say, "suchin, just get on the damn web and check out a blog, or an open diary, or live journal and it is so easy to see!"

hell, kids today tell you what theyre listening to, what theyre wearing, what their boyfriends got in a fight with them over, everything.

here we are in the Information Age and you're using a corded telephone on national tv to ask someone a mile away "what is your life like?"

and the girl on the other end said just like i said,

"uh."

where to begin.

one of the metafilter kids questioned my preminition that the LA Times will go down one day if they keep writing crappy articles like the one i will shut up about. that worried me.

in the last twenty years we have seen a lot of things fall, literally and figuratively, that we would have never expected. communism, billion dollar companies, oj, michael jackson, the berlin wall, russia, and the twin towers.

no one could have ever predicted any of that.

we've also seen in the last 20 years the rise of things that were equally unpredicatable: free music, free porn, the Internet, cheap long distance, $50,000 pick up trucks, white rappers winning grammys, and the incredibly inept bush family dominating american politics.

so in the wake of all of that is the idea that a silly newspaper in a no-newspaper town going down such a ridiculous speculation?

it isnt.

and la times, i know you read me. i see you in my referal logs. im serious when i tell you that you should hire me and my friends. but the problem is there is no such thing as the LA Times. there is no one "thing". the Times is merely a collection of perfectly fine human beings who all happen to get a paycheck signed by similar people.

the building downtown is not the Times, robert hilburn isnt the Times, the newsprint isnt the Times, the ghost of Jim Murray isnt the Times-- that paper is a collective of professional writers and artists and editors and ad people. if some new paper rolled into town offering similar money and called itself something different and everyone moved over to the new paper, the new paper would be the LA Times with a different name.

what the Times needs, and what LA needs are different people, different writers, and a different objective. the objective shouldnt be to simply put out a paper, it should be to put out the finest newspaper in the world.

as someone who has lived in LA for more than half of my life, it doesnt sit well with me that new york has what is regarded as better Anything than LA.

the LA Times can put out a better paper than the NY Times without competition. in NY if someone wants to leak something, they have a half dozen newspapers to go to. Here in LA, if they want their story to really hit the masses, they only have one.

But it rarely happens here.

And I think it's because the Times, now owned by the Chicago-based Tribune Corp. doesnt really give a fuck. unless they do something completely offensive they will continue to get subscribers and advertisers, and as long as they keep buying up the small community papers they will avoid competition. but unfortunately their product suffers and so do their readers.

thankfully, the Internet has arrived and if we want to know whats happening in LA we are no longer tied to the teet of the Times, who have been far more interested in news items outside of the 213, 310, 323 and 818 for more than a decade.

this weekend go to LABlogs.com and click around. i bet you that if you give yourself an hour, you will have a greater grasp of what is really happening here in tinsletown than if you spent an hour with our local page.

me, i will be in my computer room trying to change the world

for the better.
 
theres good news and bad news to being linked by the heaviest hitters on the blog-o-sphere.

the good news is thousands and thousands of new readers might actually check this shit out and dozens might actually get what i'm up to.

the bad news is a couple hundred might not get it at all.

my new best friend, guffzilla, didnt get it, and its not his fault. but i would like to introduce myself to him and the rest of you good people out there who don't understand my come-from and are interested.

in my opinoin there are two sorts of ways to attack bad writing: you can carpet bomb or you can surgically remove the virus.

me, i like to carpet bomb. i don't care who gets hurt, i don't care what happens to me, i don't care how out of control it looks, i don't care. i have a real job to get back to and be slightly better than mediocre at. here is one of the few places where i feel like i have the freedom to be completely mediocre.

apparently the Times feels the same about their Living section.

even though i now get tons of traffic, i still write the way i did when i got none: poorly.

do what got you the notoriety. thats one reason i keep doing the photo essays.

stick to what youre good at.

find your audience and write to them.

my audience might be varied, and i welcome everyone, but i write to girls who i want to date and girls who i sorta date and girls who i dont date any more.

they never ever ever tell me that i grammar bad, probably because they know that i do this from a flying car above Hollywood on a voice activated Palm Pilot while working for an underground renegade group of overpaid former federal agents called the xbi and i should pay more attention to that.

dont be suprised that i admit to my sloppiness or that i am sloppy, be suprised that im still so much better than so many of the writers you read in big time papers.

one guy im not better than is welch who wrote about the fucked up Times piece yesterday too. he's a pro. he got into the details, he used Lexis-Nexus, he spelled everything right, he got all the facts together, he probably even had a buddy or two edit it for him.

i did just what i told you i would do: i spent 5 minutes (ok, i spent 10) and i spread my cheeks, and i let the LA Times have it.

i misspelled like crayz, i got my numbers wrong, i made mistakes, but i got the point across which ws: when the LA Times lets the interns write practice stories to test out the new software they shouldn't let the slop get in the paper. my slop is in a blog. i get paid zilch for it. their slop is on newsprint. the Times gets paid zillions for it. huge difference.

could i spellcheck this mofo? sure. do i sometimes? yes. it all depends on how much time is left on my government mandated 15 minute break at work.

but to be honest with you, guff, and all the others out there who seriously care about details in a blog, i had no idea that I would be the most-linked writer about yesterday's big topic.

i truly thought that the LA Times piece would bring out all the best writers in the blog-o-sphere for a massive gang thrash. instead you got me and welch and pretty much no one else.

wtf bros?

are we all so used to second-rate features of the Blogger phenomenon that we don't expect anything decent from the mainstream press any more?

im not used to it.

i trust welch when he says that he writes about the glaring mistakes in his local paper because he thinks that it will help make them better.

i trust him that he's sincere, but i disagree with him.

i think there are only two things that will help the LA Times: true competition, and/or my friends.

my friends would have turned my little 10 minute rant into something suitable for framing.

my friends would have said, "great start tony, but why don't you walk around the block, pump yourself up and polish the edges so that guys like guff wont be distracted by the crust on the bread... and throw in a few more zingers."

anyhow. i don't know if this explained much. but come here if you want carpet bombing. i lie in here. i make shit up. im not one to be trusted when it comes to numbers. im here just like glow in the dark condoms:

for entertainment purposes only.

my poptart just popped, so i gotta go,

love,

tony

(#16 on blogdex today, warts and all)

   Thursday, September 12, 2002  
hi mr. big shot

hi super cool tennis chickie

i see you got linked by who many consider the Biggest Blogger on Earth, Dave from the Scripting News.

i see you won again in China over Zheng Jie 6-4 7-6 to advance to the quarter finals.

it was easy.

really?

no. but i also see that you were linked today by the inventor of Blogger, Ev!

i'll wake up tomorrow and none of this will be true.

shit, do you think we're both dreaming today?

never know. yesterday Doc and Instapundit linked me and i thought that was cool. but to have these guys today... i'll stop, sorry, anna.

it's okay, you can geek out on me.

i wont, hey hows the food.

you know i hate chinese food, i just put soy sauce on the rice and munch on carrots and drink beer.

are you gonna win this tournament, anna?

i dont know, i feel pretty good. it's weird.

i'll pray for you tonight, if you want.

please do, tony.

i cant believe youve never won a pro tournament.

i know, you think just showing up to enough of them i'd just win one out of dumb luck.

maybe when God was handing out dumb luck, he passed you up and gave you a double heaping of hottness.

you sound like youre in such a good mood tony.

i am!

did the LA Times really do a story on Bloggers and not even interview one LA Blogger?

yep. didnt you click the links?

aaaaah, i never click the links. i just like to stay and read your whole thing. plus im only on a 56k modem here at this Internet cafe.

they have those out there?

yeah, well, its really a store that has computers and phones and faxes. it's hot in here. they have warm Cokes in cans and bottles of water. not plastic bottles, real glass bottles. it's really interesting but i cant wait to get out of here.

homesick?

no, just out of this Cafe - im getting a little crowd. the kids are telling me to say hi to you.

hi Chinese kids!

they are all saying "death to the LA Times and lazy puff peice journalism."

God bless the kids.

wish me luck tony, i'll need it.

good luck anna, eye of the tiger, hot babe.

byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

bye!
 
dear LA Times,

hi. you suck.

today you had a los angeles staff writer try to educate your readers on the phenomenon of Blogs.

your writer did a shitty ass job. nothing new for your paper. but today it's my turn to tell you how bad you are.

let's see if i can do this in 5 minutes, which, i imagine is how long it took your paper to throw together this mess.

okay, you write about Blogs, you're a paper in LA, you assign it to an LA writer, you interview several alleged bloggers and let me guess how many LA bloggers you interview or write about?

how about none.

instead of interviewing actual LA Bloggers, 200 of whom could have been found via LABlogs.com (#1 google result when you type in "los angeles blogs", rocket science, i know.), you choose to interview former LA Times journalist ::cough::lazyjournalism::cough:: Larry Pryor who is the director of the Annenberg Online Program at USC.

fair enough, but where's Larry's blog? oh that's right, he doesnt have one.

onlinejournalism.com, which the Annenberg students churn out is beautiful, but who reads it? no one. why? because look at the softball old "news" OJR gives us today (Yahoo went grey yesterday ... oooooh -- thanks for telling us today) the LA Times interviewed the Managing Editor of it Melissa Milios, a graduate student, but where's her personal blog? the LA Times shows a peppy picture of Annenberg's Joshua Fouts but where's his blog "Dangerous Monkey"?

oh, it's gone.

Is this a matter of those who can't do, teaching?

never.

people do read matt welch, and ken layne, and emmanuelle, and heather and moxie, and laura crane, and ben sullivan and his sister kate sullivan, and greg and molli, the mighty mc brown, hollywood producer brian linse, and even a slick motherfucker named pierce whose site got 752,009 hits last month (down from 906,344 in July).

and how can you forget LAExaminer.com which is a Blog that focuses on the ineptness of the LA Times?

why would you dare to be interesting?

we live in LA. we blog. many times a day do we blog. some of the above, most on my lil list, are even paid journalists.

why not ask paid journalists, not teachers of a crappy ass (but pretty) quasi-blog, if blogging is journalism. that is, if you want to keep asking the same dull questions about this phenomenon repeatedly like an entertainment writer sitting down with Mick Jagger and asking, "so how did you and Keith meet?"

heres some other ways to write a shitty peice of dreck that exposes you as the dinosaur that you are:

+ call Slashdot a blog.

+ use the word "blog-o-sphere" a half dozen times in the first few paragraphs and not give credit to The Daily Pundit who coined the phrase "blogopshere", but use him in the article anyway.

+ by all means reference that tech guru William Safire's column about the word "Blog" in the NYT

+ talk about the class at Berkeley that will be all about Blogging

+ dont talk about the inventor of the Blogger, Ev, who has a great blog

+ ignore the Blogfather Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit who got 200,000 hits yesterday

+ and when you put it online, make sure not to link to anyone

LA Times, you will go down.

I cannot wait for that day to come.

Will it be by your own hands or at the hands of others is anyone's guess.

But keep shooting yourselves in the foot by this sort of sloppy reporting and your enemies and critics will just have to sit back and enjoy the spectacle.

and the bloggers will type it all up.

the Blogger phenomenon is happening stronger in Los Angeles than in any other city in the world and you wouldnt know it if it slapped you in the face. by the way, im slapping you in the face.

meanwhile you're nothing more than a formerly beautiful woman, who is now showing her age and trying to hide the bags under her eyes as her boutique-bought hat sags along with the rest of her as she slouches towards irrelevance.

all the botox redesign will not help you.

the only thing that will help, im sorry to say, is to start hiring us.

and pay us loads and loads and loads of cash.

although most of us will work for just loads.

::update:: professional journalist and los angeles blogger Matt Welch handles this subject much more delicately in this new post, and doesnt once use the word motherfucker.

show off.
 
karisa greets me each morning with an email of love and how do i repay her? usually with tawdry tales of my previous evening, lies about my future, and exaggerations of my prowess on the softball field.

last night our team won its first game. we're now 1-1.

i didnt make many errors, i got two hits, drove in a run.

i attribute my good play to the newly applied pregame ritual of a long walk, followed by two monster tacos at jack n the box, followed by a nice visit to the mens room for a good 10 minutes.

when your mind, soul, and colon are cleared you can play softball with reckless abandon.

the aztecs taught these lessons.

after the game i took the 217 fairfax to hollywood blvd and saw a prosititute take the subway to north hollywood.

she was a beautiful black woman with long blonde braids. me and this other guy were staring at her. he more than i. i was reading some short stories by jeff noon, "pixel juice." my friend just stared at her.

he had a sweat suit on, a raiders cap tilted sideways atop a red dew rag. $200 jordans. gold rolex. pardon me, but i thought he was her pimp until she got on the northbound red line and he and i waited in the breeze for the southbound train.

he stared at her the entire time.

"you're gonna burn a hole in the back of her head," i told him.

he didnt say anything.

finally he said, "was that a woman or a man?"

"oh that was enough woman for both of us." i said. and went back to my book.

she was a woman.

today i have to do some really nasty terrible fucked up shit that will probably take all day.

so only expect a half dozen entries.

sorry.

p.s. to see ken and matt sing the song (below) click the picture of them. it's my favorite song of the year.
 


Ken & Matt

"Whatcha Namin' Dat Babeey"
Spreading Oak Records

Well, Mollie & Greg got murried
up by the Frisco bay
she was a writer and he was an artist
but somehow they both got paid

They took a little trip down the highway,
headed for the town of LA
they rented a joint by the Hubbardites,
and had barbecues all day

One afternoon they was driving,
over by the Franklin Hills
and bought a big house with a raccoon pond
and all the nice fish got killed

(bridge)
Then molli got a secret assignment
They sent her off to 'Nam
But she took a little trip to the monastery,
And the swami sang her a song

(chorus)
He said, 'Ladeeey, don't be
Lazeey,
Go back to california,
Have yourself a
Babeey

He said, 'Ladeeey, don't be
Lazeey,
Go back to california,
Have yourself a
Babeey


(verse)
Now greg he couldn't believe it,
When he heard what the mullah said,
So he hunkered down to paint in the garage,
Listening to 'love and theft'

He knew just what was coming,
He knew he was in for a chore,
And the next three years they'd be up all night,
Changing diapers and mopping the floor


(bridge)
'Cause they'd heard when yer growin' a baby,
You both get mean and weird
But she was doin' yoga and hiking up mountains,
Greg quit drinkin' beer

(chorus)
And we said, 'Ladeey, we're
Goin' crazeeey,
Just lay it on down now,
Whatcha namin' that
Babeey?

And we said, 'Greggie, we're
Goin' crazeeey,
Just lay it on down now,
Whatcha namin' that
Babeey?

(horrible end)
Is it
Charley or Jar Jar,
Pfeiffer or Thigpen,
Dweezil or Lemur
or Little baby Big Ben

Antonio
Sideshow Joe
Flippy or Ian
please not Russell Crowe

Danny or Sweet Pea,
George W. Picket,
Pablo Picasso
or Lemony Snicket?

Gumby or Theodore
Elvis or Skidmore
Homer or Moses,
Solomon or POTUS,

---

Or could it be Kobe?
Please let it be Kobe
Need a little Kobe
Give Us the Kobe!

KOBE KOBE KOBE KOBE KOBE KOBE

(c) 2002 Name Him Kobe Productions

   Wednesday, September 11, 2002  
hi anna

hi tony, how's america?

i think america is okay. its somber. sorta feels like theres ghosts everywhere. sorta feels like youre walking through really wimpy quicksand. like you'll get there, its just gonna take a while.

thats really weird. thats what china feels like.

how did you do today, baby?

won in doubles.

thats cool.

exactly, nobody cares.

i care, anna.

thats cuz youre sweet.

when are you coming home to me?

never. :P

thats cool. i mean, what?

just kidding, dorkypoo.

do you love me, anna?

very much.

how much?

a lots.

a lot a lot?

three times a lot.

do you love enrique four times a lot?

i just use enrique for sex and for his vma award tickets.

what do you use me for then?

mmmmm, im not sure. maybe nothing.

thats sweet.

oh wait, tennis coverage.

i hate you.

youre the only one who really cares about my tennis.

hmmmph!

gotcha again, tony. ;)

i hate you lots now.

will you ever forgive me?

no.

what if i made it up to you?

doubt it. i hold grudges.

what if i brought over martina and made it up to you.

i thought martina didnt like guys.

hingis! not navratilova.

whew. scared me for a second.

silly.

maybe. i bet you guys could put a smile on my face.

no problem. so is america really okay?

yeah. as long as people dont watch tv they seem pretty happy.

okay well, it's like $5 a second to use the internet here, so i gotta go.

siyanara, anna.

ha ha. wan an, tony.
 
my favorite cam girl is oish. my second favorite cam girl is nay. this is what nay wrote today:

Where were you on this day one year ago? I remember everything as though it happened yesterday. I remember what I was wearing, what I was doing, etc. I was in my World History class discussing the different stages of human evolution. I kept tugging at my shirt because I had gotten in trouble for dress code moments before. We opened our books to do the book work my teacher gave us on the changes of man from Homohabilis to Homosapean. All of a sudden my principal came onto the loud speaker saying that a plane had crashed into one of the Twin Towers and for all teachers to turn on the televisions. We kind of watched in disbelief. The bell to go to second bell rang and we all sort of scurried to third period. I went into my English class and we just sat there watching. Then, another plane crashed into the other building. Shortly after, they just both clapsed. A girl who was on my dance team ran out of the class because her uncle had been in one of the buildings.


It's sad because I haven't met one person whom didn't have some sort of connection to it. My mother knew two people on the planes from work. My dad knew two people as well. One he had gone to school with back in our small Louisiana hometown, and the other he was in the military with. It's still kind of hard for me to believe that it happened. I don't understand how some "people" (if you want to consider them that) can be so barbaric. I've seen the Daniel Pearl video, I've watched documentaries, etc. and it amazes me that a culture that is so in-depth with their religion want to murder innocent people because of their "beliefs." That's why I don't touch religion and don't like being preached to. Then I would be no different than these pathetic excuses for human life. Torture? Let them watch the explanation of Darwin's Evolution Theory while strapping tiny explosive electrodes to their body parts and show them, slowly, that maybe there aren't 14 virgins at heaven's gate waiting for them. Straight up show them 14 small missing limbs. Egh - ANGER!!!
 
i'm finding it's very difficult to try to figure out what to do on this blog today.

the macho tough guy chicagoian part of me wants to pretend that this day is just like any other. that idiots with box cutters cant change the way that i do things.

but the realist part of me has to be honest.

today i thought about what i would wear. i looked at people differently on the street. i couldnt pay attention to my book on the bus.

i got said hi to blocks away from my work by a pretty girl and instead of being weird, like normal, i just said, hi, how are you?

and meant it.

things on my blog didnt seem right so i took them down today.

entries from yesterday didnt seem right either, and i woulda taken them down too but im not sure how i could put them back tomorrow.

howard stern this morning was commercial-free and for any of you howard fans, you know what a heavenly thing that is since he usually goes 40 minutes and then you get hit by 15 minutes of straight commercials.

but howard had a hard time being funny today.

it's warm in LA today and im glad i have a softball game tonight to get some aggressions out.

i didnt see a lot of people with american flag tshirts, though they did hand out pins in the office building lobby, for people who wear those things.

i saw a lady with a red sweater, white pants and blue shoes.

i saw one or two flags on cars. not many, thankfully. i never liked those things.

my morning tv viewing was altered since Regis was pre-empted by ABC news doing what tv newspeople think is important to do: rehash the obvious.

i turned to E! who was ranking the 20 hottest single celebrity women and i was soothed...and suprised by the list.

i love that station.

it was then that i thought that i should keep on doing what i do on this thing. which is try to keep it light. try to tell all you non-hollywood residents whats going on here in southern california, and try to make you laugh, and try to make things a little happier, and try to turn you on to things that you might have missed.

so here you are:

Instapundit points us in the direction of kids art re: 9/11

the hosemonster links to samizdata who shows pictures of signs in England that will make you weep.

and dawn has a sweet picture of her little lily being cute as hell.

but what has surprised me most today, is how in the daily comic strip world, how very few strips even want to acknowledge today's infamous anniversary. i guess they're just moving on too. missed opportunity, i think. comics can be great on days like today.
 
and be excellent to one another

special guest blogger: George Carlin

"PARADOX OF OUR TIME"
One of the more embarrassing items making the internet/e-mail rounds is a sappy load of shit called "The Paradox of Our Time." The main problem I have with it is that as true as some of the expressed sentiments may be, who really gives a shit? Certainly not me.

I figured out years ago that the human species is totally fucked and has been for a long time. I also know that the sick, media-consumer culture in America continues to make this so-called problem worse. But the trick, folks, is not to give a fuck. Like me. I really don't care. I stopped worrying about all this temporal bullshit a long time ago. It's meaningless. (See the preface of "Braindroppings.")

Another problem I have with "Paradox" is that the ideas are all expressed in a sort of pseudo-spiritual, New-Age-y, "Gee-whiz-can't-we-do-better-than-this" tone of voice. It's not only bad prose and poetry, it's weak philosophy. I hope I never sound like that.

The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less. We buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness.

We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom. We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often. We've learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years to life not life to years.

We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outer space but not inner space. We've done larger things, but not better things. We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice.

We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less.

These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships. These are the days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill.

It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the stockroom. A time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to share this insight, or to just hit delete.

Remember, spend some time with your loved ones, because they are not going to be around forever. Remember, say a kind word to someone who looks up to you in awe, because that little person soon will grow up and leave your side. Remember, to give a warm hug to the one next to you, because that is the only treasure you can give with your heart and it doesn't cost a cent.

Remember, to say, "I love you" to your partner and your loved ones, but most of all mean it. A kiss and an embrace will mend hurt when it comes from deep inside of you. Remember to hold hands and cherish the moment for someday that person will not be there again.

Give time to love, give time to speak and give time to share the precious thoughts in your mind.

via Doc Searls, who was fooled like me.
 
hi, my name is george w. bush.

i'm the president of the united states of america.

i have a message to osama bin laden.

osama, im calling you out.

i want to meet with you at an agreed-upon location and i want to beat your ass.

man to man.

face to face.

i'm sick, quite frankly, of this cat and mouse kiddie game of hide and seek and i am giving you one week to stand up to me as a man and take the licking you so deserve.

if you're so badass, why don't you meet me, the american white devil, anywhere you want so i can slap that stupid look off your face.

i know you're probably thinking that this is a trap, that the armed forces of the united states, or the u.n., or the northern alliance will jump out from the bushes and capture your sorry ass, and imprison you.

but i'm hereby giving you temporary immunity. you have no excuse to decline this offer.

i swear upon my word as president, on my word as a Christian, on my word as an American citizen that your safety will be guaranteed up to your meeting with me. and if you survive the single handed texas asskicking that i will deliver on your person, i will assure your safety back into whatever dusty hole you're currently hiding in.

but the only way you'll get home is through me, osama, and only you would call that gopher hole home.

simply put, if you think you're man enough to take me, i want a piece of you and i will do whatever it takes to make this happen.

im going to grab you with my own hands and prove to you, and to the world, that even though we are both sons of millionaire oil men, there's a difference between you and i.

you are a slimy, lying, gutless, cheap-shot artist who hides behind religion and ignorance in your sick quest to have others murder innocent people under your twisted leadership.

and i am the embodiment of american vengence, and you've awaken an innocent giant who's going to kick your clueless ass into tomorrow.

we can do this in switzerland, or antarctica, or right in front of mecca for all i care.

you can have as many of your measly bodyguards around me, if it's me who you distrust, but i assure you that no one other than me will attack you.

somehow, i don't expect the same sportsmanship from you.

but i don't care, osama bin laden. this is what a leader should do.

before you have one of your goons take a sneaky sniper shot at me from 300 yards, allow me the pleasure to serve you a slice of texas justice, of american payback, if you are indeed a man.

which i doubt.

ive seen you walk on your hind legs, so you must at least be a mammal.

you have a beard, but so do many of your wives.

people refer to you as "he" so i assume you're male, but i am curious as to if you are truly a man.

you've yet to act like one.

meet me at the coliseum in rome.

noon.

next monday.

let me see who you are.

lets settle this beef you have with my country

and with freedom.

be there on time, you pathetic eyesore.

don't pretend that you didn't get this.

i'm going to be there and i'm going to be waiting for you with just my bare fists.

osama

bin laden.

scum of the desert.

creator of lies.

prove to the world that you're a man, and meet me.

noon, you dirty fake.

noon.

   Tuesday, September 10, 2002  
remember when ashley put something in my drink last week to make me fall in love with her? well now im starting to think that there wasnt anything in my drink after all, but it was the drink itself!

im starting to think that she made me gulp down our old pal Absinthe!

why? because i have had the most vivid dream lately!!!

perhaps you dont know me very well, but i have been able to live quite a carefree life, some might say, because i do not have to worry about the burdomesome dreamstate, which, i theorize, is the reason why i look years and years younger than men half my age.

quick story.

me and ashley were at the Old Spaghetti Factory and our server looks at my afro and says, "yo, bro, my lil brother has hair like yours. how old are you?"

i lied, "24." then asked him to guess ashley's age.

"25?"

we laughed. then i asked the dude his age and he said 36! omg did i ever laugh at the whole scene. what was this guy saying? that i looked younger than 20 year old ashley?

sometimes its true. and especially since he knew who was in charge of tipping.

anywho i think the less you dream the less you age. and i dont dream hardly at all. i dont care what anyone says. those studies dont apply to me.

three nights in a row, however, i have been attacked by dreams. one hit me mere seconds as i fell asleep on ashley's shoulder. she said, wake up youre missing Glitter! and i was able to tell her this long detailed dream that i had just been victimized to.

she said, no way you were asleep for maybe 30 seconds.

so last night i went to sleep around 10:30pm, got way too much sleep, in order to get all those dreams that had obviously accrued from backorder, out of my system.

maybe the rest of humanity needs these images, i dont.

my imagination during waking life does me plenty. plus i live in a dreamworld anyway.

with that said, if those varmits return tonight, i am going to write them down and share them with you.

maybe.

in the meantime for those of you who live in LA, Dylan tickets go on sale this weekend for the Wiltern shows.

p.s. one example of living a dream, is having your favorite rock critic say that she gets bummed when she sees that you havent updated your blog.
 
just saved this lady and this man had some help from my partner. didnt even scuff my shoes it was so easy and she was being wheeled away to the abulance. her man was still in shock not saying a word.

she said to me and my partner that we were her heroes.

i just smiled and told her that it was all a work of God and she started crying.

i dont say that sort of stuff to people who dont wear crucifixes. im not a dick.

me and him were flying back to the office and i started thinking about heroes and how we dont even really pick our heroes any more. theyre presented to us in a lineup of fakers and the good ones stand out and we want to identify with them but lots of times we're too young or dumb or freaked out to know any better and sometimes we just want them to live up to that superman rating we give them even though we know deep down that its probably pretty impossible do maintain.

i thought it was an easy deal but my partner kept asking me how many times ive been called a hero out on the field. and i said lots. and he said him too. i said how many times in the office and he said none. i said once.

he said by who?

i said by the captain.

he said, youre shitting me.

i said, really, once i saw his phone was ringing so i picked it up and it was his wife and she was frantically looking for him and i said that he was just getting back from Subway and he'd call her as soon as he got back.

my partner asked, "where was he?"

i said, where do you think he was.

he said, "oh."

so cap came back a few minutes later and i said, i think your cell phone is off, he said, what makes you think that, i said, because your wife called and i picked up and told her that you were getting us sandwiches.

and the cap turned red and looked at his cell phone, and indeed he had forgotten to turn it back on.

and he said, "sonny, youre my hero." he sounded like a little kid.

my partner laughed.

i said, yeah but the funny part was when he told his wife he just got back from Togo's and she said, "i thought you went out to Subway"?

"that dude is such an ass," my partner said.

"he's just making due with what he's got," i said.

"look at all those pools," my partner said.

and there were a lot of them down there.

and none were ours.
 
caption this, please

 
on days like today when i have to show up to work in a suit and tie, because i have to go to court, or because i have to go deep undercover, or because i have to lurk in the shadows, or stake out someone in beverly hills, or drive a fancy car, or drink in the corners of a swanky cafe, or pick up a debutante's mamma and flirt with the chamber maid, or fly the friendly skies first classe, or eat crepes, or beat the shit out of a badfella in the mens room of santa anita, before i head out to the greater los angeles metropolis i make sure to get my shoes shined, a task lost on the nike generation, but one that i appreciate for it slows us down on our quick step through life.

being black i like to have my shoes polished by a white man but i talk to the black man.

"your girl just won in china," he says to me. i tip them both $5 and a cuban cigar, before the shine.

try it.

"what girl is that?" i ask.

"anna coppacabana." he says and flashes a gold incisor.

"ah, yes," i say, "she won easily 6-1, 6-4 over Mireille Dittmann," i tell my friends.

the white guy does his magic. he overworks himself, but its all part of the show. there will be no streaks, no marks, no flaws. but i'll take care of that.

"Dittmann," my brotha asks me, "German?"

"Australian." i correct.

"doesn't sound Australian, but if you say so. he knows these things," he tells the white guy.

me and the Black shoe shine guy are both sitting on the tall chairs. i have a uniform on, he has a uniform on. both our shoes look great. both our hairdos look great. both our wallets are fat. both our guns are loaded.

"why is she playing in China anyway?" he asks me after whistling a little dixieland riff.

"she's making a comeback." i say. "she'll play anywhere she can right now."

"Bejing?" he asks. i shake him off.

"Hong Kong?" he asks. i frown.

"Shanghai," he asks and i smile.

i get up. i dont look at my shoes. these men are pros. im on no power trip. within an hour i will have fucked up the shine in one way or another. might even do it by getting out of the flying car. it's warm outside in los angeles, again, today.

i think about taking off my bulletproof vest before i head out.

and remember i have that plane ticket that all you all hooked me up with

so i leave it on.

emmanuelle has audio and photographic evidence of the famed baby shower of lil Kobe.

sara educates us on the sadness of bazooms.

and this just in: greg has Video of ken and matt singing the baby tune! ah, technology.
 
i get a lot of email from you kids and its great cuz you have a lot of good questions. apparently someone saw me getting picked up from work by ashley the other day in her brand new car and was wondering if i still liked riding the bus.

while it's true that its nice being picked up and driven to work by a cute girl in her new ride, just like dreams those moments are fleeting. but i am still quite a fan of the mta here in los angeles. and i know i might bitch from time to time at the people who scoot all the way to the middle of the bus to stand rightnexttome even though theres lots of standing room in the back or in the front, or complain about the gang members who bring their bikes onto the subway at 745am when you're not supposed to have ANY bikes on the subway between 6-9am, or gripe about the surley busdrivers who dont say hello or goodbye or how the hell are ya and stop too fast at corners or speed away too fast as people are running towards them, i still love the bus.

someone else writes in and asks about ashley's latest diary entry which she posted yesterday all about her first love, rocko. "Why is your woman writing about this guy when she's still wit you?"

okay, it's a fact that ashley did write that piece in my computer room, on my new computer chair, with my new ergonomic keyboard tray, while drinking Diet Coke that i bought, and eating food that i bought, after buying no doubt tickets with my credit card, after being completely satisfied by my big ten inch .. record that plays the blues ...
where was i? what was the question? am i jealous? no im not jealous.

if a young girl comes to your house and you wine her and dine her and take her to movies and get thatclose to introducing her to her alltime hero and treating her nice and touching her the way that she loves and waking the neighbors and etc. and if once you leave the house she writes about some other guy, just take it as feedback, and get back to saving the world.

cant please everyone.

another gentlemen writes in to ask how i can choose just one office hottie to have a lil crush on out of all the beautiful ivy league grads who work at the xbi?

easy. after 108 years i know exactly what i like. i also have a superpower where i can see people's hearts. this came in handy when i was a recruiter for the dot com. some fellas undress a woman with their eyes, i look for that something special and usually i can find it. sometimes it's not so sweet, sometimes its way sweeter than you'd expect.

i happen to sit at a desk where the ladies just parade by and a few of them have the most beautiful hearts.

"please explain #65: i think oj didnt do it"

1. the glove didnt fit 2. a man dating a playboy playmate doesnt repeatedly stab his exwife over a fit of "lover's rage" 3. mark furman claims he jumped over OJ's gate to make sure that OJ was ok (something im sure he does for every exhusband of dead wives that he stumbles across in LA county) and suddenly finds a bloody glove... that didnt fit

"I'm sorry but for #79 ("loves... williams"), I honestly don't know if you mean Anson Williams or Clarence Williams III. Or somebody else."

i mean Dr. William Carlos Williams of "the red wheelbarrow" fame.

"The Red Wheelbarrow"

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

"how can you watch the howard stern show for an hour everyday, without having cable for 6 years?"

i have DirecTV

and finally, as per the very important matter of my favorite beer, i claim Sam Adams, to which a curious reader asks, "What happened to Old Style?"

Old Style was the beer of my youth. it's only sold in the midwest. i love it still, but since i have lived in California for a very long time, it's about time for me to live in the present and claim a brew that i can enjoy on this side of the mississippi, my dark ale, sam.

   Monday, September 09, 2002  
mc brown took some sweet pictures of sunday's baby shower for the little boy who will be named Kobe, whether the parents like it or not.

the fiesta was held in my lovely attorney's palatial estate. most of tsar was there, and speaking of them, i got to hear a demo of theirs from their upcoming triple-disc followup and i think that you people should probably start saving up for new stereo equipment today because this is what's gonna happen when you hear these new songs.

first the rock is going to blow your speakers up.

then the pop is going to melt the crappy ass speaker wires that you've had since high school.

then the harmonies are going to send smoke right through that tube amp your poppa gave you as you moved from the dorms to your new apartment.

then the song writing is gonna make you cry happy tears and then sad tears and then happy tears and your cd player is gonna blow up.

have i told you that Tsar is my favorite band?

they are.

word is, the track i heard was produced by two guys whose rock pedigrees are stamped with the Hollywood seal of approval.

one of the fellas is from the glam rock band Lions and Ghosts who haunted Madame Wong's West in Santa Monica back in the days when i couldn't get into any of the Guns n Roses clubs on the Sunset Strip. so needless to say, when they weren't booking country punk at MWW, i got to see glam, and i was super happy to be privy to that nonsense.

the other fella was from a punk outfit called the Nymphs famous for having their lead singer, a woman, squat down on their A&R manager's desk and urinate.

now Ozzy may have bitten the head off a bat, but is there anything more offensive than a woman squatting to insult you?

this reporter says no.

at first listen it is obvious that these gentlemen understand both sides of the rock and glam coin that tsar flips so easily and their success is inevitable.

my good pal coulter let me hear the track and it will be my mission, dear friends to let you know everything that i learn about this quadruple disc effort that should be coming out sometime around valentine's day.

thank you.

back to the pictures, for all you kids who think that layne and welch write excellent blogs, they do, but they excell at drunken-party sing-a-longs as this photograph illustrates to a point.

but you know party pictures, they never really capture the essense of the fiesta, they only grab the colors and the objects and the things, never the feelings. and this baby shower was full of sweet lovely feelings, and music. which pictures have yet to master quite yet either.

fckrs
 
first job i ever got out of college was with a huge company the agency wanted to keep an eye on based in the south.

my job was to let them know if anything suspicious was going on.

lots of suspicious things were going on.

they were a dirty company from the top to the bottom.

but being young there were times that i was terrified, and the worst thing that could have happened was that the company would fire me for some reason. so not only did i have to do my job for the agency real good, but i needed to do my job for the company extra good so that i could not only stay in there but keep getting promoted so as to meet more and more people and find out more and more dirt.

that dirt would actually save american lives. i shit you not. so i took this job mighty seriously.

the thing that would scare me the most would be the company's voice mail.

i would dial it up from a pay phone, punch in the password and hear the familiar southern belle's voice on the other end saying, "welcome to your voice mail box..."

i was terrified that once i punched in the numbers i would get a message saying, "fly to south carolina and meet up with bob and jeff, they have a special training that they want you to set up." which would mean, of course, that i would be murdered and never found again.

back then i didnt care so much about being killed. the Cubs werent going anywhere. but i was in love with my first live-in girlfriend and i didnt want that to ever end.

some young agents who got phone calls like that, actually did freak out and occasionally called for back-up and they would send an extra agent to shadow them, which is extremely risky because 1) it was usually a false alarm 2) it is super hard to stay undercover in small towns in the south where Everyone knows each other and 3) even if it was a real set-up, sometimes they would do that just to see what was up, and if a second agent appeared magically then the company knew their jig was up.

either way it was best to just handle your own business, keep a safe deposit box full of love letters and fed ex the key to your home address whenever you felt unsafe cuz if you did wind up dead, your girl could go through your old mail, find the key and see that you'd been thinking of her.

this company, huge as it was, was dirty but not that dirty and never was on to me, and i never had to do a thing other than watch. but i remember being scared shitless of that stupid ass voice mail message box and especially the sweet sounding woman on the tape that would say things like, " press 7 to save your message", "for more help press the pound button."

apparently this weekend the xbi changed voice mail vendors out of some paranoia, i just logged in to check my messages after coming back from lunch, and guess who's voice i heard from the past?

yes, the sweet southern lady.

i almost fell over on my chair.

my heart is still pounding.
 
ive started to lose my mind and ive noticed that i nod a lot at work.

people seem to know me here. i dont know them. im not sure if i like that. no one knows about this blog, i don't think, but they all say hi to me and i just smile, but recently i notice that i nod back. almost japanese style.

they address me by my first name, which would be creepier if i didn't have a handmade sign atop my computer monitor that says my name, but it still is rather formal, don't you think? i do.

only reason i had that thing up there, my name placard, was when this mariah carey lookalike worked here, so that she could remember my name so when i asked her out she would feel a bit more familiar with the concept.

but i snoozed, and i losed. she got fired for dropping her cover and i ended up getting her beeper number but never using it because i was distracted by a 25 yr old virgin.

can you blame me?

it's good to have an office hottie who keeps you brushing your hair before you come into work, who you can think about as you're rifling through clean clothes in the morn, who makes you think twice about that Maui tshirt of the fish with pink sunglasses and i have one of those girls here and i still haven't found a way to introduce myself to her yet but the placard is up so that phys-- wholely shit, she just walked through the door!

told you my mind was going.

i don't know what is happening with the planets or the stars or even if its just the Lord above who likes to give me a hard time with my emotions but he's sure pushing my buttons right now and i guess i have it coming because i have been so detached from my emotions for a lot of this year and the only times ive allowed myself to actually *feel* i got snapped in the nose by the evil belt of Cruelty but its all good, im a LaVista and we have strong noses.

i didn't nod to my future girlfriend i smiled a non-tooth smile and played it cool.

what about ashley you might ask?

hmmm, what about ashley?

shes looking better than ever. i don't know if shes eating a thing down there behind the orange curtain, cuz she looks thin and tanned and blonder and a tad older in a good way. she has that jennifer jason leigh schoolgirl confidence that i was waiting for, but it isn't working in my favor. i was hoping it would be like the michelle pfiefer way in the first or second Batman, i never can remember these things, where catwoman gets superclose to batman and says something sassy and then says "meow."

i wouldn't mind some of that.

id know where to take it.

and there is something to be said for the fact that ashley and i do know how to communicate in certain situations.

expertly.

when i was a lad the bill russell davey lopes steve garvey ron cey infield got better and better and with steve yeager behind the plate not many players got cheap infield hits but there was a period of time in 77 i believe it was when you could see those guys start to gel defensively (their bats were always good) and gel might be the best way to describe the daisy princess and i in certain matters best left unspoken.

back in 77 i woulda thought that that woulda been enough for a boy and a girl but its snot. not even close.

its warm today in los angeles. theres a brush fire in glendale which from this side of the hill looks much worse.

and all appearances look way different from the other side

especially within these cold walls

of the xbi.
 


The Boomtown Rats

Great Songs of Indifference
"I Don't Like Mondays"

the silicon chip inside her head
gets switched to overload
and nobody's gonna go to school today
she's gonna make them stay at home
daddy doesn't understand it
he always said she was good as gold
and he can see
no reasons
'cause there are
no reasons
what reasons do you need to be showed

tell me why
i dont like mondays
tell me why
i dont like mondays
tell me why
i dont like mondays
i want to shoot the whole day down

The Telex machine is kept so clean
And it types to a waiting world
And Mother feels so shocked
Father's world is rocked
And their thoughts turn to their own little girl
Sweet 16 ain't it peachy keen
No, it ain't so neat to admit defeat
They can see no reasons
'Cause there are no reasons
What reason do you need, oh-h-h

{Refrain}
Down, down, shoot it all down

And all the playing's stopped in the playground now
She wants to play with her toys a while
And school's out early and soon we'll be learning
And the lesson today is how to die
And then the bullhorn crackles
And the captain tackles
With the problems and the how's and why's
And he can see no reasons
'Cause there are no reasons
What reason do you need to die, die, oh-h-h

And the silicon chip inside her head
Gets switched to overload
Oh, and nobody's gonna go to school today
She's going to make them stay at home
And Daddy doesn't understand it
He always said she was as good as gold
And he can see no reason
'Cause there are no reasons
What reason do you need to be showed
 
it's not even ten am and already this day sucks. how does that happen?

woke up late. found out that i cant go to the angels/a's game with my bro matt. didnt get to make my sandwich this morning for my lunchie.

these are the bummers in my life, not heartbreaking ones, but things that just fuck up the start of the week.

here we are going into the week of 9/11 and i gotta say that i dont want to see any specials, any memorials, anything. we have all been thinking about this shit all year. the terrorists win if we keep obsessing.

its like a guy getting called out in the first inning on an outside slider and letting it fuck up his whole game.

it was fucked up. it sucks. it's over. if bush was a man he'd find the culprit. but hes an incompetent pussyass. so lets move on.

ashley and i saw my big fat greek wedding this weekend and i thought it was just ok.

seriously, what was the big deal about that movie?

it was cute. thats it.

why did the handsome perfect guy like the sweet 30 year old greek girl? simple question. she was way more funny in her narratives than she was in their dialogue. what would interest him in her? her family?

whatever. it wasnt a waste of money. the crowd seemed to like it. it reminded me of chicago. coulda been worse.

before the movie me and ashley went to poquito mas which is a burrito place on the sunset strip. we like to go there because drew barrymore has been spotted eating there.

so ashley was too shy to ask the lady who works there, so i said, "hey does drew barrymore really eat here?"

the lady said, "oh yeah."

i said, "you know her right?"

she said, "yeah."

i said, "when was the last time she was here?"

she said, "about an hour ago."

ashley started to cry.

shes a sweet girl.

has a great tan.

for some reason she wants to hang out with me again.

so i guess im not so unlucky after all.

   Sunday, September 08, 2002  
football is back and the bears are starting where they left off. ruling.

super sweet come from behind win over the mighty vikes who are way better than you'd think, but it didnt matter. da bears caught em napping with help from my man marty booker, the a train and that monster of the midway defense.

im a dork when it comes to football.

ashley is putting gel in her hair calling her dad and now her roommate.

i dont know whats going on with her, you probably shouldnt even ask.

my satelite dish isnt working too well so i moved this huge palm tree thats in its way. my sexy neighbor just looked at where it one stood with disapproving eyes.

whatev.

soon im gonna have to ask the gay guy upstairs if i can get his roof access and put the dish up there.

this is what you get when you want to find out the truth about me. told ya, its not so sexy.

tonight im gonna take ashley back to poquito mas which is a burrito place that drew barrymore eats at all the time. then we're gonna go see My Big Ass Greek Wedding cuz everyone likes it and i bet that it'll be good.

had a great time yesterday at Greg and Molli's baby shower.

normally im not a big fan of baby showers but all of our friends were there and our friends are way different than what you'd normally run in to at your typical baby shower.

there were three different types of pallello. is that how you spell it? no. im sure.

one was veggie, one was chicken, one was seafood.

then bassart made all this garlic shrimp. then there were meat and chese plates and lots of french bread. not to mention all the wine and beer and mexican wine, whatever that is, with the pulp in it.

all the girls looked great. we were all saying that we really are a clan of lost boys cuz none of us look our age. and all the girls looked super hot. then there was cake. then there were gifts then ken and matt sang a song about molli and greg that was sooooo funny you wouldnt even believe it. then greg sang a bluegrass song that was super funny. then molli and greg sang and it was sweet. then rick royale sang with jeanine. then matt. man, it was fun.

then kim lifted the hot tub cover and all the girls broke out the bikinis and there were like 5 hot chicks in the hot tub and they all had bikinis and none of the boys were going in there and the skies of hollywood were clear and the stars twinkled down upon us and chris drove me home stopping off at Zankau chicken and we watched a rerun of SNL and drifted off to sleep.