busblog

almost every day i think i am the luckiest man alive

rock never got any better than this

and i got to see so much of the last good stuff

and i am so grateful.

it is so hard for me to believe that nobody could ever make mtv profitable again.

that station influenced so much of the pop charts in radio across the world.

now that there is no one to tell them what to program they are lost

they have no clue how to help develop artists

and they are victims of technology

because instead of steering innovation

they are trying to react to it in the dumbest ways.

if a nirvana knocked on their door today they wouldn’t have

one good idea to honor it

and help it blossom.

it’s weird how much of what is happening today is things going in the wrong direction

today the GOP majority supreme court said its ok for employers

to steal from employees

today interview magazine said they’re folding shop

today they said the new rams football stadium is gonna cost $4 billion.

and today the guy at the tire shop said my stem is gonna cost $125 to replace.

all i know is i ate some delicious curry with a pretty girl

as prince and then the gap band played over the sound system

and soon summer’ll be here.

what i loved about this is the Bishop from Chicago included verses from the Old and New Testaments

Dr. King

and Teilhard de Chardin

you’re lucky in a normal sermon if the preacher even mentions a line in the good book.

this guy touched them all and tipped his hat to the crowd.

lovely.

it wasn’t good.

amber, who is sweet about everything, even looked at me about 90 minutes in and was like wtf

they played a few hits, but the rest of the show was new songs, and old songs that no one liked even back then.

and i like MLK, i mean who doesnt, but must we hear Pride in the Name of Love every time U2 throws a party?

the stage was cool and they moved around the stadium a ton, so those of us in the back corner were very happy

but still.

and to top it off, Ticketmaster gave us an email before the show saying Doors Open at 6:30pm, and U2 starts at 8pm sharp.

we got there at 8:11pm terrified that we had missed some, but we hadn’t.

so we went to get some food and drink, i was surprised at how some of the bars had no lines.

i was like, yo can i get a diet coke for the lady and 8 shots of rum for me?

dude was all, yes, but we are closed until the band starts.

i was like hmmm, weird, but whatevs, whats a few minutes.

fuckers didnt go on till 9pm.

and then gave us weak sauce.

U2 has delivered the magic every time I ever saw them play.

zero magic last night. super disappointing.

this is what happens when youre rich and idealistic and you think you can get away with not playing Streets Have No Name or With or Without You.

you cant.

even Dylan plays Blowin in the Wind every show.

even Dylan.

ive seen em

they look like us

dress like us

they even drive around

poorly, but still.

they say things

and i listen.

they write

little notes

scratchy like.

other day i

saw one of them

scribble something

ball it up

toss it.

and write more

on a new paper.

for some reason i looked

at the balled up piece.

a car drove by.

a bird cawed.

i unballed it

it said

we’re not alone.

oscar levant was a concert pianist who was so beloved at one point he was the highest paid pianist in the world

he was also so funny and smart that he he wrote books and was a regular guest on all the talk shows and game shows of the time.

BUT

he had incredibly low self esteem.

George Gershwin, who was writing music at that time, said Oscar, I love you, please be my friend.

so they became friends and any time Gershwin wrote something new and handed it to Oscar

Oscar would play it in a more beautiful way than George ever imagined.

but still Oscar thought George was full of shit whenever he praised him.

im not very good, he thought to himself.

in fact im close to terrible.

so he got involved with drugs. bad drugs. the baddest drug of them all: heroin.

but it was codenamed Demerol.

and it ate at his beautiful brain.

all of his celebrity friends marveled at him, his sense of humor, his quick wit, his vocabulary and his neurosis

but they always assumed his instability was either a complicated put on

or something that he could keep in check.

he couldn’t.

he was assigned to one mental institute after another. until he finally died in one.

penniless.

and alone.

i think Jonah Hill would be perfect.

but maybe John Legend would be more perfect because it would be cool to have the piano playing be real and believable.

“The most disrespected woman in America, is the black woman. The most un-protected person in America is the black woman. The most neglected person in America, is the black woman.” – Malcom X, 5/5/62, Los Angeles

my mom was queen of her school, entered college at 16, and yet her family was so poor they couldn’t afford melanin.

after earning a masters, having two kids and getting divorced all in a matter of 5 years, she became one of the first computer programmers

because back then men thought computers were like typewriters, so let one of the girls in the typing pool figure it out.

oh she figured it out.

my mom raised me and my sister pretty much alone. no immediate relatives were near by. we were the only black people in a huge suburban community so she was isolated in so many ways. and yet both of her kids went to college, on her back, because she persisted.

it is a quiet, even-keeled, magically locked-in confidence that i also see in Beyonce, Michelle Obama, and the sun. she is reliable and together and organized and elegant. now more than ever.

the only time i have ever seen her seriously flustered was a few years ago when we were walking the two short blocks from the Loews hotel in Hollywood to the Oscars red carpet, and it began raining.

black women do not like getting their hair wet.

especially in a formal affair.

my mom was raised in the deep south in the 1950s by a mother who, like many other black women, taught their black babies what the stereotypes were and how to be the opposite. the idea was, if they thought blacks were messy or “raggedy” or ignorant, then we had to be clean and sharp dressed and smarter than they could ever expect.

and when it came to being a lady, the bar was set even higher. thus looking drenched from the sudden rain burst was an instant nightmare.

with no umbrella in sight, my mom’s anger reached the heavens and she looked up with pursed lips

and it stopped.

until the mother of the busblog had safely entered the event.

i have many many things to be thankful for in my ridiculously blessed life, but at the top of the list is to have my mom as my mom.

the vast majority of questions that i have gotten recently are about attaining things. material objects, dreams, jobs, etc

and the answer is ridiculously simple: persist.

as we know from video games, nearly all of your opponents will be dumb, slow, and eventually predictable.

only at the end of the level will you be challenged with a person or a scenario where you might fail a few times (or more than a few times) before you succeed.

learn from these battles and look for the patterns.

if the giant slaps you twice with his left hand before going for his crossbow, then stop what you are doing on the second slap and dive at him when he reaches back.

same with life. note what your reactions are to things and how those become unhelpful to that particular move. maybe you are the one who is tipping off his patterns.

if you want the attention of a pretty girl, for example, and you find that you keep needing to have your lawyer pay them off so they doesn’t rat you out to the press

maybe getting a new lawyer isn’t the answer.

we all want to get as many points in this video game as we can, but we also should do it in as cool a way as possible.

the first time i actually wanted to be someone else was when i was at the roller rink watching this one dude dominate on Defender while smoking a cigarette while on roller skates. he was probably 14 . he played with ease. he was not reacting to the onslaught he was dancing within the patterns.

he knew not to shake the machine by yanking the controls because his beer would spill.

study what it is that you want.

be cool about it.

dont quit and dont spill yr beer.

they havent floated up to the good place and they get tangled in tree branches

heart strings, rooftops, bangs, fishing caps

and dreams.

because they’re dead but haven’t risen they think the whole trip is over and ends poorly

but they haven’t seen the other side.

they still think Bin Laden is on the run.

they still believe OJ is guilty.

for all they know rock is doing perfectly well.

we have two jobs. one is to usher the spirits to the next Mario Bros level.

the other is to live by example.

on the playground where i grew up in the mean streets of the suburbs

if one kid nailed a 3 pointer then all of us started making shots way down town.

and if another kid dunked, then we all believed we could too.

after all, we all chewed the same gum, wore the same Cons, and kissed the same girls.

so of course we could all dunk.

which is why to this day you dont wanna see me driving the lane cuz yr gonna be in my poster.

living by example is the greatest lesson Pete Rose ever gave us. if a slow, stocky, hick, with no college degree can knock more hits than any other person in baseball history

then OF COURSE those of us with video technology, Jamesian statistics and some talent can make it to the 3,000 hit club, but alas so few do.

why?

because so few do.

we are monkeys. we have to see the 100th monkey wash his hands before we do. we have to see the reality tv star ascend to the white house before we believe it can be done.

and now we have to watch the right people do the right thing to truly drain the swamp.

the ghosts must be removed from the machine.

and then the machine needs to be turned into a computer chip.

and placed in a lock box

of love.

i have no memory of what happened this weekend

i just know that amber was sick, the cats napped on the foot of the bed

the workers wrecked my shower and we had to put plastic on the walls to keep it from ruining what the workers had done

i got a new toaster oven and burned my remaining bagels

drove downtown a few times

met a former NSA and CIA director and he said whats up mr XBI

saw my buddy matt and i drank Francis Ford Coppola’s wine

watched the Sopranos pilot listened to U2 because i bought us U2 tickets

drove to AAA this morning bright and early to pay $320 for car registration

lady goes oh we dont take credit cards (!) so i go wheres a Chase? she says a few blocks

it was like 6 blocks past every boystown bar and restaurant on Santa Monica Blvd

it was 69 degrees

the zipcode of where i walked is 90069

got back a little sweaty and she gave me my sticker and im all oh yeah

im tired but in a good way. im old in a new way. i watched donald glover (pictured, right) on SNL while amber snoozed then this morning we watched his new video which disturbed her.

shes very sensitive.

im not sure shes gonna make it through all the Sopranos but i hope she does.

i have a good life. she makes good food. very healthy. i may live after all. we have 2 mile walks and then uber pool home. when we do she tells the driver that im a driver and we talk and she puts it on instagram story.

im hungry for big things.

friday i interviewed the genius behind the special effects of star wars. he was really nice to me

and after it published he all caps wrote me with HIGH PRAISE.

after i published my Star Wars feature for Star Wars Day, the subject, the man behind so many of the best special effects in so many of my favorite films wrote me and said i “nailed it”

got a former Newsweek Editor who is also the former Executive Editor of Random House to make a funny video for me on the spot

got to ask a famous talk show host about this weed vape pen and he said basically meh LOL

spoke for about 5 minutes straight with the former CIA director and asked him what its like to tell the president to his face something that he probably wont like (he said it is uncomfortable, but it’s your duty)

drank two glasses of delicious wine

chatted with my buddy Matt for a little while so said it was me who introduced the nexus to the wonderfuls which created tsar and many of our lifelong friendships

he also said that during the battle of the bad, his band the long haired leaping gnomes were playing and in front of the stage two people who he had never seen before were wrestling in the dirt and those people it turned out where dan and coulter from the wonderfuls

ate a half of a delicious donut

drove home with all the windows rolled down because summer has finally arrived

thank you lord!

for everything!