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

nothing in here is true

 


   Saturday, February 08, 2003  
collected my dirty things and put most of them in the laundry hamper, then put that in the granny cart, then took a pillow case and threw the rest of the dirty clothes in, and rolled the whole thing behind me down the filthy streets of hollywood on a warm sunday afternoon.

warm if you didnt have a cold.

like i did.

so i had on cords, a thermal shirt, a flannel, and karisa's grey sweatshirt, and a cubs hat, and a frown.

passed an old man kicking a can as he walked down the street, except he wasnt kicking a can, he was kicking a pacifier.

passed a dog in a small yard, a yard that smelled of dog doo and i wondered if that particular dog's heightened sense of smell was haunting him. my sense of smell was fuct due to the cold, yet the doo cut right through.

passed four men playing poker on a fold out card table in someones front lawn. they were old men and they spoke armenian to each other and smoked cigarrettes and drank wine from water glasses beneath the shade of a cherry tree.

made it to the coin laundry. had everything with me except cough drops and you.

my favorite row of washers were ready for me. got colors in the first one, got colors in the second one. two mexicans showed up a little younger than me. one had a good little moustashe going. the other did just as he was told. he was told to put clothes in the fifth machine. hey pedro, what if i wanted to use the fifth machine i esped.

put whites in the third. put colors in the fourth. stuffed the rest of the clothes in the first and second and wished for the ins to arrive.

no such luck.

some high school girl with big juicy tits, her little sister in one hand, and nathanial hawthornes the scarlet letter in the other hand sat down next to me. i look up to see whats on tv. some spanish program. i look at the other tv and not only is that a spanish program too, but its the same one as over here.

i get up, ashamed that im undressing this high school sophomore with my eyes and walk past the winchells donut store and pass four men two whom are sitting on a parked car, two who are leaning against the store looking at every single woman who walks past, not discrimanatory against age, weight, or hair color.

theyre speaking spanish and they look at me pass and i look like a freak with all my layers but im sick and im xbi so dont fuck with me, amigos.

i poke my head into a girlie store where everything is red and pink and white for valentines day and everything is wrapped up in plastic like grandma just got a plastic wrapping machine and went crazy. even the dozen roses have plastic covering them.

grandma looks like a great-grandma and i aint got no valentine so i move on.

pass by an armenian record store. bunch of people ive never heard of, but the store has six cds of this guy, six of some lady, six of another guy. all in the window.

i dont even think the virgin megastore has six led zeppelin four cds and thats like the greatest cd of all time.

i move on to one of the many mini markets on this street. this one has a good meat department, a lousy vegetable department, and lots of minute made orange juice and apple juice so they have made a sale here.

buck thirty nine for tweny ounces of oj? sure its a rip off, but what the hell.

rappers delight is playing on his radio, still sounding as good as it did when i first heard it back in the day.

sometimes it pays to be as old as the hills.

get back to the coin laundry and theres only a few minutes left on machine #2 and then none. my favorite row of dryers are empty.

i put in a load, then el jag off puts in a load two over from me, leaving me with just three to use. i will definately need four.

when i get to the fourth i have to go clear across to the opposite end of the laundry mat.

i think about the fact that even though my dick hasnt been sucked properly in weeks, im still way ahead of the game than this guy, and let him have what he wants, which is to irritate me.

i sit down and watch a philipino woman with a tshirt of a racooon that says "no matter what happened, i didnt do it."

he's laying on his back, hands on his belly.

big titted high school girl's sister is begging for change from her older sister. the little girl is maybe 4. her sister says she only has a dime. the little girl insists "change!"

she whines and whines and girls are nicer than boys would be. eventually they both exit and soon return with a sticker from a machine down the street and the little girl is happy again.

before i know it my laundry is done and racoon lady sees another lady taking my dryers as i take my clothes out, but insists on ruining her shit by taking the one last dryer near the door, fucking up everything, its hard to explain, but, at least more than one person was being selfish.

pass a man getting out of a market with a can of beer in a brown paper bag.

i thought about one of my highschool art teachers who taught me how to look at shadows and then draw them.

i wonder if i was todays shadow as i unlocked my backdoor, pulled the granny cart into the kitchen and powered on the tv which was about to show me the all star game.

slow blog
 
today is my buddy greg's birthday he's 59. im sick as a damn dog and ive been up all night watching an academy screener of Gangs of New York which i totally loved.

clipper girl brought it over with four of her sexiest girlfriends and they all watched it at my place cuz i have such a huge

tv.

afterwards they went home and i played grand theft auto because i was so psyched after the movie.

but now here it is 3:35am and i really wanted to go to gregs birthday party tomorrow because a hootenanny will break out and all but like i said im sick and i dont think i will get much better by tomorrow and this is the early stages of the sickness which will probably get worse which means that i am probably at the contageous stage and the last thing i would want to do is get every single one of my dear dear friends ill cuz of my dumb bus-riding ass.

but it is nice to stay up and just read peoples blogs and write and write and write.

hi blog.

hi tone.

hi cold.

hi tony.

hi blank area in the blogger post.



my man aj totally whipped out $30 and flowed it to the busblog so my hats off to him, thanks bro.

for that he gets a free mystery gift sent to his house.

i think he will like it.

i think it will be a poetry book of mine from way back when.

i think if anyone else flows $30 or more they will get one of my little out of print chapbooks of poems.

in my day i wasnt a bad poet.

infact birthday boy greg painted a portrait of me and titled it "the worlds greatest living poet."

well, greg is the worlds greatest living lots of things, and right now he's doing a pretty damn good job of raising his adorable little son, sean.

i am super happy for the way things are turning out for greg.

it doesnt seem all that long ago when he was sleeping on my couch in frisco trying to get it together and now he is living in one of the coolest, i shit you not, houses in los feliz, a house full of guitars and cool colors and old appliances, and love and love and love.

i bought him the dumbest birthday card of all, which took me a while to find, but of all people he would appreciate it. we share a love for the dumb things in life. like 99 cent store cookies, and plastic toys, and puns.

greg has influenced me in tons of ways but maybe the best way was that he showed me that not only is it ok to let the art out, but it is our responsibility.

so happy 74th birthday mi amigo. if i dont end up at your party, just know that i will be wearing a pointy birthday hat here at the beach house all day in your honor.

greg vaine, the worlds greatest rock operaist who isnt into kiddie porn.

   Friday, February 07, 2003  
Feb 6th 2003 | LOS ANGELES
From The Economist print edition


Los Angeles has lost one newspaper but is about to gain another AP

Riordan has his say

AS MAYOR of Los Angeles, and during his brief run for governor of California last year, Richard Riordan was a gift to journalists. Affable and unguarded, he spoke (and sometimes misspoke) his mind in a way that reflected his earlier years building a fortune in business, rather than the polishing efforts of spin-doctors. Now Mr Riordan wants to put $5m of his fortune towards starting a new weekly newspaper in Los Angeles.

The LA Examiner is due to start publication in June. A prototype produced last month gives a hint of what to expect. The editors, Ken Layne and Matt Welch, two experienced newspapermen who were pioneers in the online world of weblogs, have put together a colourful 52-page tabloid full of articles by an array of seasoned LA journalists and a few well-known outsiders, such as Billy Crystal. The aim, says Mr Layne, is to reflect the cultural energy of the city and, naturally, to cover local stories better than the existing media does.

This is a reference to the Los Angeles Times, the dominant local daily�and hardly a favourite with the Examiner crew. Mr Riordan griped at it throughout his time as mayor and during his failed run for governor. Messrs Layne and Welch, irritated by what they saw as the Times's lack of basic beat reporting and its mealy-mouthed approach to racial issues, started a website in 2001 devoted to daily criticism of the paper. They called it LAExaminer.com in memory of an earlier competitor, the LA Herald Examiner.


If this sounds familiar, it is because the story is distinctly similar to that of the New York Sun, a right-wing newspaper which sprang out of smartertimes.com, an anti-New York Times site. Messrs Layne and Welch insist that they are less conservative sorts than their New York peers, but the Herald Examiner is still likely to be more right-wing than the LA Times, and it is making the same pitch as the Sun for upmarket readers.

Until last October Los Angeles had two free weekly �alternative� papers, the Los Angeles Weekly and the New Times LA. They both wrote about local politics, published entertainment listings and competed for advertising, especially for movies and sex services. In October, though, the New Times group, which is based in Phoenix, Arizona, reached a deal with the Weekly's parent, Village Voice Media in New York: the New Times LA and the Village Voice's Free Times in Cleveland would both close, letting the LA Weekly and the New Times's Cleveland Scene raise advertising rates.

The news was a blow to LA readers who relished having alternative �alternatives�. But the Examiner has duly snapped up some New Times writers. Even better news came on January 27th, when the Department of Justice ordered the colluding weekly groups to pay fines and sell the assets of the closed newspapers, including the newspaper racks that sit on street corners. It will hardly hurt the Examiner to have had the leftish Weekly's parent so briskly spanked for behaving like a scheming monopolist.

The Examiner plans to eschew sex-ads but still offer itself for free. This chaste, generous approach may make it hard for it to break even in three years, as it hopes. Mr Layne loyally argues that one attraction will be the voice of Mr Riordan himself, who will have a column. Another interfering proprietor? At least he dropped his original plan (possibly not altogether serious) to call the paper the Big Dick.

mssr matt welch + mssr ken layne
 
i never understood people who rode their bikes in the snow.

ive never understood people who write checks at the supermarket.

ive never understood college republicans.

ive never understood famous people who get married in their early twenties.

ive never understood the chicks who have gone down on me.

ive never understood why people get palm pilots or people who get married just because they got accidentally pregnant.

ive never understood the fascination with barbara streisand.

ive never understood bus drivers who peel out when there are people running after them obviously wanting to board the bus in the middle of the night.

ive never understood why radio will play one song over and over and over again and then nothing else by the artist ever again just because their label didnt cut a new single off the cd.

ive never understood people who have lived in america for decades but still cant speak english. at all.

ive never understood this reasonably new trend that young women have where they'll blow you but not fuck you, even if you have a condom, yet they'll swallow, even.

ive never understood women who dress up so that other women will approve of them, sounds sorta gay to me.

ive never understood catholic priests who have given up having sex even though there isnt one word in the Bible anywhere that says that priests have to be celibate.

ive never understood people who insist on emailing me even though it's obvious that i have no interest in communicating with them.

ive never understood half the girls who've liked me and half the girls who didn't like me.

but ive always understood why the tribune corp hasnt ever gotten serious about the cubs.

it's because the tribune corp is one of the most easilly identified sources of evil on this hemisphere.

what do we know
 
even though shes a sloppy mess i really love courtney. how cant you?

like most strippers, she just cant stop showing us her boobies and i think that's sweet.

thank you, courtney love for showing us your titties.

the flowage of love for the car fund is doing well right now. for that i also want to deliver up some thanks. thank you swell people!

16. sunana
17. kari
18. pete
19. gary
20. jay

i also got a sweet email from an interesting new yorker named jamie leigh.

and i got an email from jenny period who wants me to link her new blog where she says on it that she wants to meet me, but i lost the link.
oh well.

do you think i should take this car that you all chip in to get me and drive around one summer and meet everyone who flowed me?

i do.

speaking of sloppy messes, i saw that michael jackson thing last night. it made me sad for him. he's in such a strange little bubble of unreality. it makes me want to hang out with him and let him know that its okay to mess around with the ladies instead of the little boys.

everyone wanted to play a little more as kids.

theres no reason to freak out over it for the rest of your life.

questions i would have asked michael jackson if i had done the interview:

ever watch porn?

think you have one more Thriller in ya?

do you do all this stuff to your appearance and lifestyle as a reaction to your abusive father or as an f-you to him?

have you ever felt comfortable messing around with women?

do you think that janet is messed up cuz of your father too?

why do you think that the rest of the world outside of the usa love you way more than americans?

what the fuck is up with Cubs?


kari

   Thursday, February 06, 2003  
people are flocking to this fence post because they say that it looks like the Virgin Mary when you squint your eyes. im feeling a lot better today, thanks.

some of it has to do with long time fan ric from bitchen for getting me ten clams closer to my dream of being an automobile owner, some of it has to do with this flu bug getting trapped in my throat, trying to strangle me in my sleep but only falling in love with my vocal chords and giving me a delicously deep voice today making all the ladies of the house say ho.

ho ho.

also mad props to jenny period for not letting me be anything but up up up and not giving me any slack. we superheroes know that there are no sick days and that if we show even the slightest modicum of humanness like sadness, depression, or discomfort that the whole world will implode and she wont be able to get her nails done from the koreans for ten bucks.

you have no idea how your comments motivate me.

so yes, now i am back to feeling like a hundred bucks, i have a candy dish half full of cough drops that im popping like vicodin, im proudly sporting my raiders longsleeve and ive got on my true love's stretch gap jeans on that fit me nearly as well as they fit her. the only thing that fit her as well as these jeans are my dirty thoughts.

she called me last night and told her that some of her girlfriends are planning a sleep over. how cute is that? three or four super hot babes sitting around smoking, drinking, gabbing in a santa monica beach house?

sometimes as i fly chopper one at night i think about all the going ons that are happening in this fair city and never has my imagination hinted to the fact that there might be a hot babe sleepover in progress as i lean the controls to the left and zoom over the pacific.

truth is much better than fiction, which is why everything in here is true.

psych.

last night i got interviewed for this blogger panel that im going to be part of in a week and a half.

im not sure if i want to publicize it here because im not down with the stalkers.

if you are on good terms with me, or if you are a fan of the blog and will be in the LA area for Valentine's weekend, or if you are a friend of mine and wish to support me in this my first attempt to appear interesting on such a panel, you can email me at panel@tonypierce.com and i will send you the top secret url of the deal that will include some high class movers and shakers in the blog world.

anyhow, talking to this woman who is organizing all of this last night made me pretty happy cuz i got to tell her how important my mom was in my life.

my mom is super smart black woman who was doing computer programming starting way back in the late sixties. i got to tell the woman that im sure that she influenced me in a very subtle way to love computers and logical thinking.

afterwards the red phone rang and i hopped in my flying car and helped solve a crime that was about to go down but didnt because the xbi was running smoothly.

just like always.

ric
 


Run-DMC

Raising Hell
Def Jam Records

"Proud To Be Black"

[Run]
You know I'm proud to be black y'all
and that's a fact y'all
And if you try to take what's mine
I take it back y'all - it's like that

Licki-licki-licki-licki-licki-licki-licki-licki-
Listen party people here's a serious song
It's right not wrong, I should say right on
I gotta tell you somethin that you all should know
It's not a mystery it's history and here's how it go
Now Hariett Tubman, was born a slave
She was a tiny black woman, when she was raised
She was livin to be givin there's a lot that she gave
There's not a slave, in this day and age
I'm proud to be

[D.M.C.]
Black, god damn, I'm tired my man
Don't worry bout what color I am
Because I'll show you how ill, this man can act
It could never be fiction cause it is all fact
And if you get in my way, I will not turn back
I'm proud of my name, my name is Darryl Mack
I'm black and I'm proud, and I'll say it out loud
I'll share my story with the whole crowd, AUUUGHH!

[Run-D.M.C.]
You know I'm proud to be black y'all
and that's a fact y'all
And if you try to take what's mine
I take it back y'all - it's like that

[Run]
DJ Run, and I run these things
You can hear it loud and clear like when the schoolbell rings
Like Martin Luther King, I will do my thing
I'll say it in a rap cause I do not sing

[D.M.C.]
D.M.C., the man, that's causin the beef
I got a message for the world so listen up it's brief
Like Malcolm X said I won't turn the right cheek
Got the strength to go the length, if you wanna start beef
Start beef!

[Run-D.M.C.]
You know I'm proud to be black y'all
and real brave y'all
And motherfucker I could never be a slave y'all
So take that!!

[Run]
We're gonna tell ya somethin put your mind in a swirl
God bless the next baby that comes in this world
The world's full of hate discrimination and sin
People judgin other people by the color of skin
I'll attack this matter, in my own way
Man, I ain't no slave, I ain't reelin no hay
Written a deposition, in any condition
Don't get in my way cause I'm full of ambition
I'm proud to be black (and I ain't takin no crap)
I'm fresh out the pack (and I'm proud to be black)
SO TAKE THAT!!

[Run-D.M.C.]
There was a man - an inventor - who invented so well
He invented a fortune - for a man named Bell
George Washington Carver, made the peanut great
Showed any man with a mind, could create
You read about Malcolm X - in the history text
Jesse Owens broke records, Ali broke necks
What's wrong with ya man? How can you be so dumb?
LIKE DR. KING SAID, WE SHALL OVERCOME!

bitchen

   Wednesday, February 05, 2003  
im not feeling so hot.

i feel like i have the beginnings of a cold, but i dont think it's that. i had the sore throat, but thats pretty much been taken care of by the Tom Kha Kai soup that my attorney brought over last night.

im just tired.

and i havent done shit about Black History Month.

and not everyone who comes to this blog wants to flow me ten bucks each so i can get a car.

and i dont have a job that floats my boat.

and radio sucks.

and the cubs didnt sign pudge.

some kid from indiana wrote some shit about why he hates blogs and it got on the internet. fuck him. go back to your state school and beat off in the bushes.

ashleys coming over tonight to drop off her key, pick up a pair of pajama bottoms, find a sole shoe she left behind, and say good bye to me for forever.

am i sad about it?

of course.

but she did some fucked up things and she did them twice. to me.

i dont like fucked up things being done to me.

she says shes sorry, but shes not. she has a new man now. she wont be sorry till shes alone. then she wont be sorry about what she should be sorry about. she'll just be sad.

and alone.

one of these days i'll find the girl of my dreams.

one of these days everything will work out.

today just isnt that day

katie hall
 
rolled off rosalita, showered and walked out the door early for once, but then realized i hadnt taken a leak. whatever. i just wanted to get out of there. she and i werent getting along much any more and it would probably be the last time i would be on top of that sweet tan ass.

even though she swore she wasnt getting any from anyone else, you could tell she was full of it. suddenly more confident and far less clutchy. not as desperate when she would call me up and ask if i would walk the two blocks to her house, and not so upset on the times that i would say no.

i said no the other night cuz i was working on my lawyers website, i said no last friday cuz i was going to vegas, i said yes last night at one am cuz it was cold and i was out of firewood. but this morning looking at her dirty mirror and eyeing a second toothbrush i was hit with a wave of disappointment that she felt she couldnt be honest with me, or at least cool.

didnt even walk a block when i passed a group of well dressed church members huddled in a circle with their pussy ass styrofoam coffees and their suits, one of them, a tall one, broke rank and approached me, i saw he had eyed me the moment i slammed rosalitas door.

hi neighbor! interested in joining us for a meeting this evening?

gonna talk about Jesus? i asked.

he hesitated.

no thanks, then.

we allow all religions in our church he said.

pot smoking rum drinking devil music cranking Christians?

one of the suit wearers smiled.

whats the purpose of the drinking and the drugs? the tall one said.

i fucking hate alpha males.

whats the purpose of the coffee? whats the purpose of the suits? whats the purpose of any of us standing here in the fucking cold at eight am instead of sleeping or fucking or eating or reading the paper next to a big titted panamanian.

one of the women in the group couldnt restrain her mouth from gaping open.

she wore one of those little bow ties for women as if she was on a praire somewhere. the smoke from her menthol escaped through her nose.

you sound like you really need our church. the tall dude said.

i need a lot of things i said, but if your church isnt talking about Jesus then i dont want anything to do with it.

thats pretty close-minded of you. he said and smiled and looked at his buddies.

ever taken it in the ass, pal?

the smile vanished.

no, i cant say i have.

see, now we're both closeminded, mr. namecaller. drink more coffee. read the Bible.

i walked past them.

i heard him whisper something to his group and they laughed.

i stopped and turned around. no motherfuckers with suits were going to laugh at me.

what did you say?

he turned around.

i said, what did you say, fuck.

never be afraid of a fight with church people. you'll never lose. and if you do lose youre a punk and you deserve it.

i didnt say anything.

thats right you didnt say anything. and they didnt laugh at anything.

i looked him from his toes to his head and said, and they were talking to nobody.

and looked at him in the eyes.

nobody.

and a better man would have whipped it out and taken that leak right there, but i was now late for my fucking bus.

katie hall

   Tuesday, February 04, 2003  
sometimes you just have to touch it.

fuckit if its toxic.

clippergirl came over last night tipsy from tanguery late late like two am. i had just finished a web site for my beautiful and amazing young attorney. not really finished but definitely phase one had been completed and i felt good about it.

parts were even funny. those will have to be taken out, of course, but maybe we can do something interesting with it.

clippergirl laid on my couch in some superstretch denim jeans that fit her like theyd been tailored. often im amazed at the things that i get to see live and in person and if i could take pictures every day for you, one every hour, then i think youd understand when sometimes i think that the angels all like to huddle above me and just toss unbelievable things at me and see if they can get me to show any form of real emotion what so ever.

i snap my fingers when im super into it while gambling.

that's pretty wild, i suppose.

anyhow she was laying there just playing with the tassels of her wild west vest and i asked her about guys with tongue piercings.

have you ever kissed a guy with a tongue pierce?

yes. three guys.

what was it like?

the first time was amazing, the second one was okay and the third one after a while i was all, can you just take that out?

then i asked her if oral was better and she said no.

i said, doesn't it add to the stimulation?

she said, the tongue can stimulate just fine.

jay z was on winamp.

she didn't care that i had dishes that were melting in its own stink.

she didn't care that there was a pink box sitting on a chair in the corner with one big slice left of chocolate mousse cake and two forks stuck in it.

she didn't care that they were out of tequila, that rum would do the trick.

now sahara hotnights was on the winamp.

two forty four am and he thought that he really oughtta go to sleep and then he thought that it pretty much sucks that he's tied to job that he cant stay up all night if he wanted to with a pretty girl with boots and bows in her hair who walked back into the front room with a pitcher of coke, a bottle of rum, and two clear glass tumblers and a box of wheat thins.

he had some cheese that he wasn't sure if she had seen, but there it was under her arm and she waited for him to clear a spot on the coffee table jay z was back on it was getting close to three in the morning. he could do this. the cheese was soft cuz he had just picked it up for no reason. he had no idea she was coming over. sometimes he forgot that he had a terrific life and even though he had a great weekend he thought his week would find him alone and lonely and stressed out over making the web site look decent.

but no. once again he was wrong. wrong as always. wrong as sin. wrong as george bush giving people who own suvs a huge tax break.

everything was going to be all right.

just like always.

just like it'll always be.

just like it's meant to be.

and the new neighbors next door had their bullshit turned up just a little too loud, but that didn't bother us.

and their dog barking and barking and barking, mostly at crickets or wolves or any number of the wild life that you can find up in these hills didn't bother us either.

and soon it was three thirty.

and then it was four.

an unseasonably warm evening we were having, i even had a window open which blew the candle around frantically casting dancing shadows across the framed drawing of jimi hendrix over the fireplace.

air was on and i asked her what she wished she was doing right that minute other than what she was doing right then and she said

i wish i was floating in an overheated pool with one hand

dangling in the almost hot water.

katie hall

   Monday, February 03, 2003  
the wind was blowing about forty five miles an hour through baker where we were filling up at chevron at two dollars and three cents a gallon. i was waiting for chris to come back from the mini market and waking up from a really tasty nap when i saw a little brown bird zip through the gale and then stop right on the top post of a chain link fence that slowly collected plastic bags and dirty tumbleweeds.

a few of his buddies hauled ass at him and landed within the fence and just as quickly they darted off, all three of them. maybe to florida.

if they were smart.

the crows weren't doing as well, they were a much bigger target and not as nimble in the torrent of hate.

one found a lamp post, dirty from bird crap. the smooth aluminum top wasn't much to get a good grab on with his claws, but he faced the wind and tucked his huge black wings behind him and just took it.

his pals glided over the desolate plains, trying to hover by simply allowing the wind to push its beleaguered open old wings, but after a few seconds it just blew the damn birds back a good twenty yards and the crows retreated into the dust where they fucking belonged.

chris came back with diet vanilla coke for her and a regular red label coke for me.

she also returned with a hersheys chocolate bar for me and several tootsie pops for her.

i believe she also had some now or laters tucked away, privately, but there are no secrets on the road, nor should there be.

we pulled out of the chevron and got back on the fifteen but some fucker rear ended a lexus so the traffic was backed up for miles on the two lane highway, the only road back to hollywood.

me and chris crept through the desert and plotted peoples deaths, not forgetting our own, of course.

chris is the glue that holds together one of the last dot coms in america.

perfect in nearly every way.

embarrassed that i couldn't even get fourteen people last week to flow me ten bucks so i could buy a car, i tried to dazzle her with a money making scheme so that she'd lust me again.

i told her, it would be a magazine directed squarely at high school kids and it would be called

high

magazine. she said she didn't like the name because it reminded her of high times and i said precisely.

i said teens don't want anything that's actually meant for them

what they want is something that's underground, mysterious, and over their parents heads.

there would be columns on sex drugs and rock, of course, packaged sexy, but not dirty and accompanied with text that might be considered surprisingly conservative.

"high magazine does not condone sexual relations between teens. use high school to learn how to kiss, you filthy little tramps."

written across the bare midriff of my girlfriend christina aguilera, who we were listening to off the hot hits radio station barely coming in.

but since teens have sex, and not even the coolest magazine could get in the way of a willing cheerleader and a pimply faced sophomore, each issue of high will come with a condom, ribbed, for her pleasure.

there would be a centerfold each month that would have a fold out of the student of the month.

now the student of the month, many months would be nerds who got to go to the dance with some hot piece of ass, or the kid who invented something ridiculously amazing. but sometimes it would have a picture of some big burnout who got the first B of his 6 year high school career.

those things should be celebrated.

there would be a big science fair special issue, and obviously one for prom, and a back to jail double issue. there would be columns like "sixteen books you should read before you turn sixteen" by brad pitt, and "why n*sync is evil" by courtney love.

there would be recipes on how to make homemade doritos, reasons that raving is really something you should wait to do till college (because maybe it might be dead by then), and pages and pages of tiny pictures of kids' braces.

the condoms would stir up enough controversy to make it an overnight success but the snotty attitude and older brother tone of all-knowningness zero bullshit would distance it from the others.

oh, that's right, there are no others.

theres tiger beat and teen beat or jane or us or people or teen people, but all of those are about celebs, not about the real kids.

and none of those talk about recycling, or teen pregnancy, or why weed should be legal (but illegal for teens), or why teenage girls who spend more than five minutes on makeup are wasting their time.

chris liked the idea of the magazine but still didn't like the name.

i told her, kids need to have something that they can like so much they would want to buy the tshirt, a name that is optimistic and happy but a little bit naughty and defiant.

every person ends up having to go to blah blah high

finally theres something decent to read on the bus.

evhead
 
me and chris went to vegas this weekend.

normally im not one to leave my house over the weekend for anything, even a trip to my second favorite city, but when my true love asks i answer.

some people get a little confused about this relationship that my ex and i have and i can understand, so let me clear some things up.

yes i love her like no other, but that doesnt mean that im not capable of loving others. in fact that idea couldn't be further from the truth.

but we get along so well that it's very hard for me not to propose to her about every 10 minutes. there's no one i feel more comfortable with. there's no one who i laugh more with. there's no one ive spent more time with in my life.

but one way that ive realized that you can judge friendships is: how fast after a fight can you make up? chris and i can fight at 9:05pm and make up at 9:06pm and be laughing before the tears dry. it's pretty amazing.

i can push every single one of her buttons, and discover new buttons and whale on those for awhile and not only does she take it but she runs with it, we both do. we can talk about the most sensitive issues and dig deep into them analyzing our biggest fears and saddest moments and most embarrassing actions and we'll just hold hands never judging working everything out and all it does is make our friendship stronger.

she has never called me when i haven't picked up the phone.

so we went to vegas, she had a wedding to go to. she told me that if i drove out there with her that i wouldn't have to go to the wedding. she knows im not a big fan of weddings.

early saturday morning we drove out in her brand new used car which was luxurious and spacious.

i had burned a van halen greatest hits cd, as well as cds from the new foo fighters and zwan.

we trudged through the foos and enjoyed zwan, but oddly the van halen sounded so damn good it was a little bit sad, i also mixed in a few david lee roth solo tunes that are still holding up quite nicely despite being close to 20 years old.

we checked into new york new york which i had never stayed at before. really nice rooms, well decorated, clean, good bathroom, really nice towels of all things, great view of the statue of liberty.

eventually we made it down to the gambling floor where chris immediately beat up on the nickle slots. nickle slots have come a long way and theres something about chris and her family-- they friggin own the nickle machines and can turn nickles into folding bills in a matter of minutes. its really something to see.

this weekend's victim was a slot called The Price Is Right.

me, i didnt have any luck with the slots, nickles, quarters or dollar ones, so i went across the bridge to the Excalibur to find my old pal the Odysee black jack machine.

apparently it was happy to see me too and quickly shook me down for all of my money, all except for $10 that i chose to put on the Nets at they took on the Pistons. i couldnt figure out why the Pistons were favored by 8 points until seconds after i placed my $10 wager and remembered that Jason Kidd was injured. still, could the Pistons cover the spread and win?

yes, by 15.

i have never ever ever won at gambling on sports in sin city. it's so pathetic.

after the wedding chris and i walked down to Paris and gorged on the buffet. crab legs, shrimp, lamb, veal. walked out of there and met up with her friends miraculously and it hurt to cross the street to beliago where chris took their nickel slots for a quick $28.

quick way to tell that you are at the belliago and no other casino? the women dress a whole lot better, they travel in pairs, and theyre looking for filthy rich dudes, desperately, and theres a lot of plastic surgery going on. still, i like that place even if the cocktail waitresses wont flow us with the ameretto sours cuz we're camped out in front of the 5 cent price is right machines.

whatever, ho, at least i dont have to show my boobs to earn a living.

truth is, its cheaper to just buy your drinks in vegas cuz it takes them forever to get you your "free" drinks and you wind up losing way more than you'd ever spend on a drink.

chris and i stumbled back to the room, me down tens of millions, her up about two billion. i got naked slid into bed just in time to see the last few minutes of Your Big Break, she re-applied her blush and went downstairs for another raid of NY NYs vault.

when we checked out in the morn i noticed one thing that didnt sit very well with me at new york new york: they were selling a lot of NYPD/FDNY tshirts, hats, etc and i looked hard but couldnt find anywhere that said that said that the money was going to the victims of 9/11 which made me wonder if nyny wasnt sorta taking advantage of the sudden popularity in those tshirts.

if so its tacky as hell, bros. get it together.

we drove out of town and made one last stop at Bufallo Bill's at the state line and chris put a buck in a nickle machine and out came $7 just like that so we ate the lunch buffett called Miss Ashley's and called it a weekend.

i love chris so much and i really love Las Vegas.

Sin City, i will be seeing you again super soon!

another fine mess
 
Subj: Re: the subject is jenifrrrrrrrrrrrrrs
Date: 94-06-10 10:07:31 EDT
From: Jenny677
To: GauchoTony

you flatter me its cute.

renee is not comin-- boo hoo hoo.

i never dissed j-nine. i just said she didnt look like the type of girl id expect you to be with, just like you would say if you saw the pictures of my boys, except davy and brandon.

pictures are weird-- theyre never what you expect.

did you see the backbeat band? i forgot about my little infatuation with dave grohl. if you wanna make me orgasmically happy youd send me an xgirl shirt but its probably not in sf so forget it.

thurston had one on last night.

glad you dug my letter- it twas not nice, rather morbid.

we got each others mail on the same day. neato.

i gotta dry my hair and watch happy days.

cant believe ill be hanging alone again this weekend.

with the happiness in my life ever cease?

turn real for me.

jen

brett lamb
 
Dear Tony,

Unfortunately, I just read your review of Adaptation. I say unfortunate because I usually agree with your musings on pop culture, in general.

It's an odd feeling when you reach a point reading someone that you basically go there to read what they've written because it�s easy, nice and comforting to know that you agree with what's there.

Another oddity surrounding this film and my life is my best friend, D.C. trade policy geek, hated it too. Which was disappointing because he, like you, fancies himself a writer. Which I think you both are.

Anyway, to get to my refutation... Adaptation was wonderful, as a film and as a script. First, you called the characters flat and said Streep and Cage were wasted. That's total bullshit. Cage's performance was outstanding and very under appreciated. During the "trick photography" moments when the brothers were side my side you could easily tell the twins apart just by looking at them. Cage completely transformed himself into these two characters. They were a beautiful living Yin Yang, an extension of
their time en utero, that pulled and pushed and symbiotically made the other tick.

And the fact that Cage pulled it off was impressive. Mind you, Cage�s last great acting performance, Las Vegas was followed by the Rock. The touching scene in the forest worked, too. I thought it was very ballsy to put a dramatic moment between two characters in the midst of a third act that had seemingly spiraled out of control.

And Streep, sorry Tony but have you ever seen Streep look more beautiful, fuck it, Sexier! than in this movie? I love the intellectually/professionally confident woman who gives in to her girlish romantic fantasies and lives a forbidden life. How could you say she was wasted? She was totally sexed up, sniffing coke (or whatever) and running
through a swamp with a gun. She cried, she wrote, she contemplated being trapped in a life that's a lie and you called it "wasted." God she was hot!

I've never thought she was hot before Adaptation.

Second, you attacked the believability of the film. I'm not going to spend much time on this. But I will say, you should know better than to discredited a film's believability in order to give it a negative review. Since when does a film have to be realistic to be good?

Third, lets talk about what this film is about and what Kaufman used to tell the story. If you're looking for originality, look at the timeline's structure. Awesome. I loved seeing the events happen and then seeing Charlie work them out into his story. The constant back and forth in time was very smooth and made me feel like we were all developing the story together.

It�s a little tricky on the mind because even though we've already seen events in the script take place its fun to go along with Kaufman and put them down for the first time. Making two stories out of one and weaving it within and around itself was masterful. But what was Kaufman meditating on (when he wasn�t jacking off). The fear of the "Hollywood ending."(not the Woody Allen story). The Hollywood style that plagues the artist in all of us. The goal to create something original and not compromised is a promised land most artists set out for each time they wake up.

And, I believe, Kaufman achieved this goal by exposing the ridiculousness of the movie industry, his own paranoia and life's smaller hardships by telling the first two acts in the artist's voice and by switching into a �Hollywood� voice at the end. "You want your fucking cars chases, gun shots and blood?" Kaufman seemingly asks, "fine, I'll deliver," he responds. Once they kidnapped Charlie the movie loses all sense of rationality. And when Donald flies out the window, the movie may seem to follow but it doesn't.

Step back from the madness and remember what Charlie railed against during the whole process.

Respectfully,

Vincent

oish