i believe the year was nineteen eighty four. i was dating a punk rock girl super into the cure. and poetry.
when i got to santa barbara, true blue era, i couldnt believe that people were like seriously into you. like, no shes good tony. and when people ask me why i stopped taking acid its because people would play madonna records for me and itd freak me out and bad trip me.
my only solace, and i know you wont believe me but its true, and i write about it tonight, halloween night, because they were perfect for a night like tonight.
and i listened to pms play and even though they were a very nice punk rock thrash situation, that particular night they sounded like angels
im glad youre into kabalah and yoga and living in england and all that fucked up shit, if you were living down the street coming back from the blockbuster in your sweats you wouldnt be a rock star to me. youd be pavement.
which is a no-no. i promised myself that after anna k i wasnt gonna do celebs anymore and we were having lunch at the ivy today and these fucking ‘ratzis started speaking some fucked up language and commenced to take like a gazillion pics of she and i and instead of saying wtf she just blushed.
she knows my rule. she knows all my rules. a while back i got in a fight with this one girl who complained that my rules were obnoxious and contradictory so i went through them and sure enough the lil ho was right. so i edited out the ones that were incredibly unfair, as well as the ones that were contradictory. and last night she hinted that she wanted to go steady with me and i gave her the book and she read it and i know she read it all cuz she had lots of questions today before the cameras started blowing up.
so we had planned on going to west hollywood tonight to walk around with the freaks but now im a little mad at her because rule number two is no lying and i specifically asked her when we were at midnight tacos, just meeting, what she did for a living and she didnt say im a celebrity. she said she was a student.
maybe in norway things are different, or maybe theres another word for celeb there, but her english was pretty good.
i may have to spend this evening re-evaluating things because i didnt mind that anna was super famous, it was just a lot to have to deal with because she was always worried about her looks or her career or her weight or her clothes and i was all, why dont you worry about which tree we’re gonna do it up against, or worry about which fingernail polish youre going to apply, or worry about if youre going to buy thousands of shares of Sirius or tens of thousands. worry about normal things – jeeze!
the thing about anna though was she is a gemini and geminis are like having a hundred girlfriends. one day they want to squeeze out a few kids, the next day they dont ever want to be touched again, then the next day theyre dancing on your coffee table in a short skirt.
i kept thinking, this is scandinavian trouble, which is like a lion cub. trouble in another lifetime but not this one.
but as always i was wrong and there she is lying and im sure shes gonna dress up as the sexiest witch of all time and slithered under the crack in my front door before i even get home from work, but ive dealt with that before and i resisted it.
I remember the first time I read Tony Pierce’s blog because I’d only been working on Blogger for a short time, and the fact that I hadn’t heard of him was pretty bad from a first impressions standpoint.
But my fellow Pyrate (Sutter) tipped me off, and the first post I read was about how the newspaper in Hell is so bad. When I realized that for several weeks Tony had been writing his whole blog from Hell after having been escorted there by the spectre of Kurt Cobain, I was floored. From a “getting what this whole blogging thing can really be” perspective, it was a big moment for me.
Tony’s got a new book out called Stiff which collects all of his infernal posts into a choice of awesome covers. I just finished re-reading them this weekend and I couldn’t recommend it more highly.
the problem is i stay late so i always rationalize things, but as i age i would like to be known as a reliable man, and being on time is part of that.
this was a nice weekend. i was able to kiss a pretty girl, i was able to hang out with my best friend, i was able to watch both the raiders and the bears win. i got to see my buddy jeff and his lovely family. i got to eat chicken burgers in the park. i even went to bed early last night so i could wake up early and do my little thing (that would be this) before i headed off to work.
there are many benefits to the buzznet loft, but today im going to try my hand at the Laundry Room. nothing ruins a weekend more than having to do laundry on a sunday night. so since the loft has laundry facilities i was thinking about killing two birds and omg even folding my shit afterwards.
how this administration gets away with what it does is amazing. and being an avid reader of the blogosphere gives me the twisted idea that the american public actually supports it, but its obvious that no, thats just the righty bloggers who are just o’reilly jrs who either do it because they get paid to, or because they like the attention.
but today is halloween so lets reminice a tad. back in the day, growing up outside Chicago, one had to pick his halloween costume based on the weather.
you had to figure out how to dress up and stay warm, so one day i was Jake Blues of the blues brothers cuz i could put some long johns on under my suit, one day i was a hobo cuz i could wear lots of clothes at one time,
in isla vista i dressed up as a mexican which was weird because some of the real mexican adults waved and cheered at me, i dont know why. maybe i looked like someone historic.
and the last time i dressed up was, ironically enough, at the buzznet loft when mc brown threw a halloween party way back in 2002, pictured, with the lovely moxie.
some of you are not Buzznet members, and thats cool, but that doesnt mean that you cant have your pics on Buzznet. what i would like to do is have a little busblog Halloween gallery
so heres how you can participate: email your Halloween 2005 pics to tony.tony.halloween@buzznet.com and bam they will end up in my dealie.
if you have a good blog, you probably have a bad job. if you have a good web site, you probably have a dull life; if you have a good job you probably have a bad blog, and if you have a bad site you’re normal.
and i dont know about all that but i do know that this weekend has been terrific and if im asked about the weekend i start back with thursday and tsar and fall out boy and picture taking and sleeping late and friday and getting to work from home but working hard and meeting a nice girl at midnight tacos and driving her around tonight and just letting her go home just now.
so if youre ever worried that you might blog something full of shit and you think about it and you talk yourself out of blogging my advice is to look at those stellar righties on the technorati one hundred who arent the least bit nervous about being full of shit.
they just type and type and type as if nobody will ever notice that they were the biggest critics of clinton, not of his policies or his achievements but because of monica lewinski.
and so here they have a man named scooter lying gasp under oath to the american people and not about how big his dick is or who he banged but about matters of national security revolving around the outting of a cia agent.
i get interviewed all the time, i get emails every day, i get into conversations any time im at a party or introduced as someone who blogs, or recognized, and they always ask me about the power of the blogs, and lately ive been saying that if bloggers at the top dont stop being partisan echochambers and hypocrites then the blogosphere will never be known for being much more than and electric teleprompter from which the bullshit gets read.
so my friends when you are afraid that what you say isnt blogworthy just ask yourself, “will i be intentionally bullshitting the world?” and if the answer is no, then you know that what what you’ll be posting will be 100times better than the big boys and girls who get the majority of the hits.
picked her up just as the sun was setting and she showed me her condo and we went to this new italian place on hollywood blvd which was pretty much as youd expect it, not nearly as good as the old italian staple across the street
and we drove and drove and talked and stopped off for ice cream and we didnt know where to go or what to do because there werent any good movies playing or anything happening and king tut had left or we would have eaten shrooms and been dumb and she has the softest hair and i kept saying i know this sounds like a line but i have better lines than this but i really have to touch your hair again
which is the assumptive close fellas its a question but not really. youre closing the deal youre touching a sensitive part of her. in the 70s there was this book called the erogenous zones. and pretty much any part of her head is a good place to be touching and you should see how she reacts when you touch her there cuz people dont usually run around touching each others head or hair.
she blamed it on the drinking but someone had shown their hand which made everything that much more easier on yours truly which is good because sometimes everyone needs a little reassurance when youre out with a girl well out of your league and youre driving a ten year old car with a license plate holder that says my other car is the busblog.
got her back to the crib and we were sitting there on the couch as mazzy star spoke her little songs and i hadnt heard that music in a long time and i was working the angles but she wouldnt let me kisser.
pearl necklace freshly cut rocker hair everything pretty much together, except her eyeballs and her heartbeat.
she said some water please and i gave her the latest us weekly to read and i came back with a water for her a shot of rum for me and a stethescope
she said whats all this. i said we’re going to play a little game. she said ive heard of doctor and im not interested. and i said this isnt doctor, i barely got a poetry degree, youd probably kick my ass at doctor.
i said what you can do is pick one of the items on the tray but i get to pick one of the remaining ones. for example if you pick the rum i will probably pick the stethescope.
and i said i will do with the stethescope exactly what the stethescope is for, i will listen to your heart.
and she said what will you do if i pick the stethescope and i said i will drink the rum and i will bet you that your heart is beating faster than mine and if im right i get to kiss you.
and she gave a nervous laugh for i had checkmated her and people dont like to be checkmated even if its funny
what ever you do these next fourty five minutes doesnt count, as at 2am the clock goes back to 1am, thus erasing everything.
when i posted this picture on metafilter last night the very next guy said “when you win the world series you can kiss whoever you want.”
a good reader emailed me a link to ESPN.com today where Scoop Jackson beautifully wrote about the sorrow on the North Side and tried to hint at racism but its not racism, its baseball.
yes dummy the Cubs are on the predominately white North Side and the Sox are in the mostly Black South Side, but i grew up in the all-white suburbs of Hanover Park Illinois and if people chose who to root for based on race then there would have been zero Sox fans in our lily white township instead of the 50-50 split that i had to suffer through.
we cant even deal with this World Series bullshit. its like a bad dream that we will never wake up from.
and i cant even imagine all the fair weather fans who are suddenly wearing white sox caps in my beloved town.
something like this happened in the early 80s when the Sox made it to the playoffs. i forget about who or when – it was success for the Sox therefore of zero importance to my memory banks. but real Cub fans wore their colors, real Sox fans rubbed our noses in it and the fakers bought into the bandwaggon.
and then in 84 when it looked like the Cubs were going all the way we all remembered who had jumped ship and who had stayed true and there were alot of beatings going around in those days in the northwest suburbs and the most delicious went to those who had worn Sox hats and tshirts in 82 who suddenly found themselves under a Cubs hat
sure its nice that the Cubs have had some good teams but thats like having the cute girls tell you that they think youre fun. who the fuck cares about what they think, its the result, its the end result. it’s the ultimate result that you care about.
id have rather that 1984 never happened, no bull durham, no steve garvey, no rick sutcliffe, no ron cey.
dont get my hopes up. dont give me a taste of the mountaintop unless youre going to go all the way. ask houston what its like to be second place. its not how you play the game, its how you win it as the beasties said so perfectly. and i dont ever want the cubs on the cover of SI unless the words world series champs is over a heaving mass of cubbie pinstripes.
there is so much to hate about the new world champs that i dont even want to start the list because it will never end.
it starts with eddie gadelle and winds its way through greg luzinski wearing those shorts it goes through disco demolition and jimmy piersall calling all the sox wives sluts to every time the sox beat the cubs during interleague play.
theyre worse than the yankees because they dont even try to emit hate, just their presence makes you despise them.
if there was an earthquake in the midwest id want the epicenter to be no on the pitchers mound of US Cellular but in the home team’s locker room.
i didnt even watch the game last night because i knew what would happen. i would see dick cheeney on top of my mother, id see cops outside of my house with a megaphone and a battering ram, id see a special report broadcasting that prohibition had just been overturned again: id see that the sox had swept the astros in the world series, and not only had they won, but they won convincingly – against good teams.
in 84 after the Cubs lost in the playoffs i cried and decided that it would be my duty to manage them to a world series because nobody, obviously, gave a shit about it other than me.
here it is 21 years later and im kicking myself for not following that dream. how could the Sox of all teams get the monkey off their back before the Cubs? how? they dont even have any good players! podsednick, fine. buhrle fine. but seriously, who else? a few pitchers? every team has a few pitchers. bubba sparks as the closer? a double A drunkard?
the team that just bulldozed through the best of the AL and NL would not suprise me if they only went .500 next year. but it doesnt matter, the stink of champagne and theyre being measured for rings.
its like steve bartman all over again. its like bush being reelected. its like finding out theres not only no santa claus but youre getting coal in your stocking.
me and mc brown are gonna make some fliers which is funny because pretty much every company that ive worked with has handouts of some sort and the smaller you are the more fliers you make. i like that.
today we’re going to hand out fliers outside of the Fall Out Boy show at the Wiltern before we go over to Tower Sunset and take pictures of Tsar with the new Buzznet camera.
Best Buy took a nice chunk out of the Buzznet coffers and I was up all night figuring out the thing because im sick of taking shitty pictures and i always end up in the coolest situations and i want to report back to you as perfectly as possible.
so after the Tsar instore im going to get a burrito somewhere and then head over to see Tsar at the Roxy. i was funny yesterday when Steve Jones asked Jeff on the radio who was opening and Jeff said, you know.
Best Buy is a funny place. it doesnt matter if youre buying some blank cds to steal music or a fat expensive camera to change the world, the salespeople really dont give a shit.
I say bring back commissioned salespeople. When I was a lad making my way through junior college I sold tvs and stereos on commission and it not only taught me how to sell (and therefore how to get laid), but it taught me the importance of knowing the product, and how to give great customer service.
Life is all about commission. Life is sales. Coffees for closers, fuck. See this watch? This watch is worth more than your car!
Anyways the dude should have stepped us up to the bigger camera. He should have asked qualifying questions. He should have sold us some lenses and some lens cleaner and some lens filters. He should have asked us why we were using the camera and how fucking killer our company was. He should have said if you like this camera tell your friends where you got it. He should have said when you put the pics on your crazy web site remind them that Best Buy is everywhere and Jimmy sent you.
Instead he popped his gum and went to the back, brought out the box and said if we dont like it we have to pay a 15% restocking fee to get our money back.
He should have said if you dont like it its because youre grown men using this thing somewhat commercially, and when you come back to trade up I will waive the restocking fee if you ask for me.
For even in non-commission sales you should try to build a customer base, a relationship, because as those jingle jangle bells of Christmas quickly approach do you want to deal with 25 customers a day who are gonna ask you ridiculous questions based out of a lack of trust, or do you want to deal with 35 customers who say Jimmy thanks for letting us know that the new blah blah blah is in, goddamn do i love that cam, what i need is a little buddy that attatches to the lens cap so i dont lose it – oh and a plasma tv for my boom boom room.
tomorrow is Fitzmas and if i dont kiss a pretty girl tonight Lord knows five of them are gonna come running to my house to kiss me tomorrow.
Al Franken was on Jon Stewart the other day and Jon asked him who the courageous democrats were and Al thought and thought and came up with one in North Dakota and a few more and Jon said, I’ll wait.
And only after the break did Jon tell the crowd that Al said Barrack Obama but that may have been a joke.
But whats not a joke is the original George Bush said that outting a CIA agent is treason and if you committ treason during a time of war you get executed, so I will have to agree with Al who said that he doesnt think it would be good for the country if Rove or Scooter or Cheney gets executed.