busblog

what does this have to do with LA?

and sometimes i would say something snarky or eventually ignore them because it’s obvious that they for some reason only want you to stay in your so-called lane.

but whats interesting is, when i was at the Los Angeles Times, i never saw that once in a comment.

nobody ever asked, if youre the LA Times, why do you have bureaus all over the world?

in 2002, for example, the LA Times, NY Times, and Washington Post each had over 25 foreign bureaus.

if having a city in the name of your publication limited you to only covering the news, people, and trends of those city limits, then why did the greatest journals of our time attempt to cover the entire world when they were at the top of their game?

because context is everything.

and the world is small.

and cosmopolitan cities are influencing and being influenced by global events, politics, the arts, and technologies.

why does the NY Times cover LA as much as they can? why do they have an office here?

even they know how bad they are at it, but why do they keep trying… and failing?

because what happens in LA affects things in NY, whether they want to admit it or not.

when the NYT writes about east coasters settling down in echo park, do their readers ask WTF does this have to do with Manhattan?!?!

it has everything to do with Manhattan. or will. or has.

maybe what happens in echo park is foreshadowing what may happen to the boogie down Bronx soon.

and maybe the best way to tell that story is to have seen it happen first hand, and then thank Yahweh you wrote it down.

because that’s what journalists do. we check shit out and then write it down.

and, to me, the best writing doesn’t spell everything out for the reader, it allows them to apply it to their lives in their own way.

so when at LAist we wrote about Vegas or Frisco or when I drove around the entire country and Canada, i was (hopefully) mostly showing our audience two things

omg LA is so much better than this

or

omg LA needs some of this in our lives.

or best of all,

omg [cool city or town] is just like us? crazy!

which is what the big papers did in 2002

and still do today.

and why i did it at LAist, with great success.

thank God, Sports Illustrated developed its Swimsuit Issue

thank God, the New Yorker and the NYT doesn’t just write about New York

and thank God the brave writers at Deadspin refused to stick to sports.

what would i say today if i was running LAist and someone asked me that?

you always think of your best comebacks well after the fact,

but this is what i’d say.

i’d say, you know how on the local news. on every local news channel. ever. all around the world…

when they do the weather…

they don’t just tell you if it’s gonna rain in the city that you’re in.

they show the whole area, then the whole country

you might even see canada and mexico in there too.

they do this not because someone watching might be flying to canada and mexico

they do it because everything is connected

the storm in the ocean soon turns into rain here.

no one ever asks fritz coleman why he doesn’t just stick to LA county weather

no one.

huge mistake. sunday nights at the airport are the worst. but she was very sick and we go way back.

it was actually a good learning lesson because if anyone tells you that things are better there, that very well may be, but it’s still a disaster and i do not envy anyone flying into there over the next 5 weeks because this was just a normal sunday night and it was impossible to move during certain parts. and those parts screwed you for 20-30 minutes.

the blessing in disguise is i heard the bears collapse via radio which made it difficult to throw a tv out the window.

beautiful day and night, otherwise.

warm, bright moon. tom waits.

mexicoke.

a lot has been going on. it was a busy week. i hit a lot of dead ends.

i yelled at some people. feelings were hurt. im going to fight a ticket.

fish was made. asparagus. ended up with some korean old lady cookies.

fed the homeless. warm feelings were patched. bowled.

ive been collecting baseball cards like crazy. perhaps in part out of research.

Just Because You Can Trade a Mike Trout Card for a Tesla Doesn’t Mean You Should

work got me a podcast mic. it sounds good. it’s pretty huge. gonna need a stick.

watched some of the impeachment. watched snl. fought on the internet.

been watching my cats’ diets. went to the doc for a check up.

bought dental insurance.

organized baseball cards. got some good deals. went to walmart.

bought and installed a new, soft toilet seat.

i was impressed with myself.

wrote about some climate change activists.

you’ll see it on monday.

found out some things.

ate fish.

paid the maid.

kissed amber

goodnight.

i’d have season tickets. id wake up early for games. id take the train down dere.

id get wasted before the game at some tailgate.

id sit in my seat in the cold and the wind, and i’d be pissed most of the time.

in the summers i would see 40-50 Cubs games.

id have a house, a nice wife, probably a kid.

but id never see them between the work and the sports and the drinking.

i’d probably be dead by now.

it would have been a tasteful funeral.

it would have been from getting in a fight in the stands.

my tombstone would say

he had it coming.

Jesus said repent

but thats such an old school word, people rarely use it any more

but they should

it means to feel or express sincere regret or remorse about one’s wrongdoing

the keyword is sincere.

i have done some fucked up shitty things in my half century on this crust.

i am sincerely uptight about them.

a few of them hurt me to my core.

if i ever saw a shrink, those few would come out in the first few meetings because they are in my head all the time.

and i am so sorry about them. it is so out of my character. it is not me.

i have seen people exhibit the worst parts of their makeup and the good book describes it as being inhabited by demons.

which again is an old school concept but one that i think should be taken seriously.

when one is inhabited, we dont strike out at the person but at the demons. and what are demons? souls that have lost their way. Milton says Satan was someone who couldn’t make a heaven of hell, so has decided to make a hell out of heaven. and tell me that that isn’t whats going on when someone we like or love starts acting a fool or saying some fucked up nonsense.

or worse: doing terrible things.

there was a time i wanted to be a judge but over time i see how complicated life is. not everything is good or bad, right or wrong. imagine someone does a rolling stop at a stop sign, are they truly criminals? were lives really in danger? but the law says sit there for a few beats. those beats are important we have decided. so what should be done to the rolling not-really stoppers?

i say it depends.

i say in most things we should be saying that shit depends on other shit, therefore, lets hear whats going on.

but heres the thing about the Lord. he doesnt need any trial. he doesnt need for you to dress up and comb your hair and pay a sweet talking lawyer to figure out the loopholes into this or that

the Lord can see your heart.

for a while i thought i could see hearts too, but either i was just lucky in the past or that gift has moved on to others.

these days i just assume the best and when bad appears i try to make due.

maybe there are other paths, i honestly don’t know.

we’re through the looking glass people.

we just have to trust in the Big Fella in the sky.

which might be what we shoulda been doing all along.

i give less of a fuck, but in a good way

i ask better questions

i know my limits

i feel like i have better priorities than before

im more tolerant of cats and foreign foods

i waste time smarter

i hate almost all new music

i’m bored of so many things

no matter how little i eat, my belly still clings to me

i get tired easily

ladies dont wink at me as much as they used to

blogging has all but died

my ESP is fading away

im hate regular tv, terrestrial radio, and oyster bars

i am less and less tolerant of people who hate the poor

im probably going to hell.

 

all weekend i was checking the prices on stub hub because i knew it wasn’t going to be sold out and i knew there were speculators out there and even Ticketmassah started selling floor seats for $40 so i knew there were gonna be some deep discounts as the hours approached showtime

and sure enough after amber was done at the fairfax flea market, i picked her up, checked the web and nabbed two tickets for $47 total.

they were supposed to be up in the rafters but it was pretty easy to get into some lower level good seats as the whole place was at half capacity.

amber was as amazed as i had been. theres something about hearing all of those voices singing so loudly. also whoever is behind the scenes mixing it does a great job. is a powerfully beautiful thing happening there.

kanye changed up a lot of things. he replaced the cheesy white preacher with a older black minister from georgia. the frocks were now blue instead of white, and the entire set list changed.

it went on for two hours and that was more than enough for amber. which is fine. we walked the mile or so to our car, drove around the hood looking for the Popeyes chicken sandwich which had made it’s triumphant return. went to a few stores, huge lines.

then as we were on speaker phone with mom we saw that the one on Western and MLK wasn’t bad. a half hour later there was a chicken sandwich in my belly. and a half hour later my stomach had completed its journey.

when that, and the two jack in the box tacos, the only food id ingested all day, exited my body felt incredible.

and that, my friends, is why blogging is dead.

ps when amber went to the bathroom at the popeyes a homeless guy had just been in there smoking crack and when she came to the table to report this to me, i asked, did you inhale real good? cuz thats a free high.

and the ladies next to us laughed.

on the way home we listened to Bob Dylan’s Saved and compared and contrasted the bard’s born-again phase with Ye’s and they are surprisingly similar. the difference is Kanye’s is full blown while Dylan’s is not nearly as immersive in its entirety.

bears lost.

i learned a lot. mostly that we are in good hands. also, those hands wont have a chance to save us if we dont save us first.

then i learned about this japanese grocery store in DTLA that has really good pre-made sushi for cheap.

we watched little kids annoy pigeons with their toy helicopters

we watched a couple of gay guys have a romantic lunch sharing a beer and feeding edamame to each other.

then we went to the movies and saw a really good biopic about Harriet Tubman

i wish it was better. something was missing. maybe the cinematography? i cant put my finger on it.

theres fires burning all around us. proof that sprawl hasn’t completely done its dirty work.

theres still wilderness, which is nice, but now its charred, for many reasons.

a couple of recycling places caught fire, hard to believe that just naturally occurred.

i wonder about God, when he looks down on us, does he cry sometimes?

like can he just not help to?

then today around noon, a 15 minute rain shower just happened out of the blue.

and i was all, me too, angels.

moi aussi.

traffic was bad, issues occurred, it was crowded, but the thing was i was comfortable

why?

because i was dressed up as a guy in his pajamas and robe and slippers who was with a sexy lady.

amber was the sexy lady.

she had a slinky dress, clear heels, and this fuzz faux fur i got her in vegas.

we went to universal city walk because amber suspected that people would be dressed up there

and she was right.

and there were kids, some of whom did not speak english or who were scared of me

because i also smelled like i had gotten high in the car upon entering the joint

which may or may not be extremely true

we were early so we had time to stroll about and we passed this michael myers guy

and then the super cheesy angel wings that have been all around the city for years now

so of course they have one at this tourist trap

and i saw michael was just roaming around so i circled back

and asked him if he would pose for a picture

he grunted. walked over to it. waited his turn. and click.

and when i asked him if he wanted me to text him a copy

he just fist bumped me.

and they were haggard

rough

and

then he was gone into the shadows.