busblog

it’s pointless to care what people think, infact id say it’s harmful.

as long as you are being good and trying to be nice and helpful and peaceful and loving

what could you possibly be doing that would cause someone to hate on you

and if they did, odds are it’s their crap that theyre projecting on you

theres not one person who doesnt have haters.

theres not one band where you couldnt find 100 people to say they suck.

we have a tiny period of time to rock out.

do not read the comments

do not feed the trolls

turn it all the way up

and delight the world with a joyful noise

since Friday i have been without my phone. my girlfriend is more uptight about that than i am.

WHAT IF THERES AN EMERGENCY she asked as we drove to Inglewood last night to get some ribs.

then i die.

have my ashes sprinkled among the ashes of Hollywood.

the day before we went to Target and she did not let me leave my phone at home in case we got seperated in the two story store in Pasadena.

now its lost somewhere in this house, locked, and trust me when i tell you last night when i gleefully told her i dont care where it was she about blew a gasket.

things i miss about my phone are minimal. i miss calling my mom when i go on long drives. i miss having it tethered via bluetooth to my car’s Alexa so i can say hey alexa play Tsar

but other than that it has been a pleasant separation and im sure my phone feels the same way about me.

but this twitter. holy moley, i had no idea.

it all happened saturday night, as per my previous post. i watched Josie get arrested and via twitter and my iMessage i was able to alert some of the people she works with. Lord knows i was not going to sit on my hands as she wa being driven to prison because of some weirdo goal to be off the grid.

but as the conversations got weirder and weirder on Twitter regarding her case, the first amendment and the plausibility of a pro journalist jumping into a law enforcement scrum like some modern day Leroy Jenkins i began seeing why i love social media so much.

often times it’s an interesting conversation, but moreso it’s debating with people who are so different both politically and otherwise that it’s eye opening that we can both be looking at the same half full glass of water and they say

not only is it half empty but because of Obama it’s undrinkable.

theres many things i should have studied at UCSB than poetry, namely: Spanish, coding, and apparently Philosophy. I flunked two courses in school, a cinema class on Buster Keaton because i refused to over analyze his slapstick comedy because i didnt want to ruin future viewings, and the philosophy of Berkeley because apparently im dumber than i look.

in that class we had one book. it was a paperback called The Philosophy of Berkeley. It was about 75 pages. I couldn’t get through 5 of them.

im someone who was able to read much of The Bible, Finnegans Wake, and The Sound and the Fury in college. while distracted by the beach, the ladies, and my real goal: writing 100+ articles for the Daily Nexus a year. but those who understand philosophy is something i really admire because it was so foreign to me.

Give me Faulkner’s crazy, trippy, stoned, drunk run on sentences and Joyce’s Ulysses (which I tried to read on shrooms) any day over philosophy.

I read Milton’s Paradise Lost as an ice cream man on summer vacation, for fun but i bombed big time with Berkeley which is why i appreciate trying to conversate with these twitter people with their American flag icons in their bio about what a good journalist can and cannot do.

and yesterday i went on twitter to see the rest of the debate AND TODAY I DID IT TOO!

partially i did it because two of my stories for Los Angeleno were published over the last few days an i want people to read them.

the first was about diversity at the Oscars and how their new rules can be easily gamed

and the other is about diversity at the LA Times and how they really should bite the bullet and let Angel Jennings have full on veto powers otherwise she will be frustrated as merely a token.

going forward i have no other excuses.

but here is the biggest problem i have with twitter: i learn s much. i follow about 1,300 people. about half of them are fully alive on the platform, tweeting out and retweeting fascinating things. news breaks and theyre on it.

who doesn’t love breaking news?

who doesnt want to talk about the president visiting california and saying that the global warming will just disappear? who doesnt want to talk about the Bears’ crazy comeback yesterday or the Cubs’ no hitter or a thousand other things?

i do i do i do!

the greatest thing about being the blog editor of the LA Times was being able to bounce from desk to desk and talk with some of the greatest writers and editors of those sections about the stories theyre working on and how we can make the ones theyve recently published get seen.

it was like going to college and being given an All Access pass to every classroom, all the star students, and all the best professors. every day i learned so much.

twitter is a tiny version of that. oftentimes the journalists will tell you in real time what they are working on or what their recently published stories are all about. and the best ones will answer your questions. you do not need to be a Philosophy major to chat with them because they see the half full glass of water and will talk all day with you about it.

using their real names.

using links to support their point of view.

and often the people who follow them are also interesting and educated people who also want to learn.

so why am i giving that up for even a week?

because all addictions should be put under control.

even if they are fulfilling and wonderful and incredible.

at least for me.

i had to. i was watching TV on Saturday Night. 11pm news.

when you’re not distracted by your phone and laptop you actually watch things. its crazy.

the nice lady on TV said “a radio reporter was arrested tonight in Compton…”

LA is huge but it’s also teeny tiny. I totally expected to see Claudia Peschiutta being escorted to the pokey because, like, me, she is not afraid to tell Authorities when they are wrong wrong wrong and let’s count the ways they are wrong.

the last person i thought id see on my screen was Josie Huang.

But there was Josie, screaming to the fuzz who she worked for, that she was a journalist and how this was wrong.

Shockingly on the LA Sheriff Dept’s Twitter account was a three-part tweet that claimed she “admitted” she didn’t have the “proper” press credentials AND that she had no ID.

Josie? one of the most prepared and organized reporters you’ll ever cross paths with?

we are to believe that Josie drove all the way down to compton to go to a hospital where two deputies are recovering from gunshots to the head and she didn’t bring a press pass or her work ID?

technically, there is no requirement for a press credential to practice journalism. Many in the press simply have business cards but even that is not required to be protected by the first amendment the same way you don’t need a document to speak.

press passes are typically offered to make things easier for law enforcement or other officials to determine who is press in tense situations where yelling and pointing aren’t always easy to do. or in this case its shown to hospital staff to help prove why you are there. unfortunately it doesn’t guarantee entry or access but it doesn’t hurt.

but on the sidewalk, a public sidewalk, the minute Josie identified herself to the deputies they should have respected her in the exact same way law enforcement wants to be respected when they identify themselves in situations.

secondly, she had her ID flapping from her neck, laminated, and visible, so fuck your fucking bullshit tweet. delete it.

i hate lies so much that i created this blog.

and on this blog i wrote “nothing in here is true” that way if i wanted to lie, i could and no one could say they were tricked.

the irony is on many posts the only lie is “nothing in here is true”

the Law, however should always be trusted. and their tweets should be Gospel. video proves that all three of these tweets are false.

on a day where two deputies were shot in the head at point blank range the public should be united in trying to find the shooter. instead, due to these lies and the way Josie was treated, the emotions are more complicated than they should be and respect for the LA sheriff’s dept is not 100%.

that is fucked. and it’s nobody’s fault other than the department, which currently doesn’t have the greatest track record.

is there a solution? there’s always a solution.

here a former journalist should be in charge of that twitter account. they should be paid $150k and there should be zero rush to put out information. especially if it is in regards to someone, like a journalist, who has video of the arrest and the events leading up to it, and if there are, oh I dont know, tv cameras showing reverse angles and such.

because this will only make the department look worse when the truth comes out.

but heres the problem.

we currently live in a country where the President of the United States has convinced a healthy chunk of the populace that the press is not to be trusted. also ironic since he has lied to the nation over 20,000 times from petty topics like crowd size of his inauguration to deadly things like how the coronavirus is spread.

therefore something eye opening happened when on twitter word spread of Josie’s arrest:

the majority of the public didn’t believe her.

despite the videos, despite the ACLU, journalism unions, journalism orgs, her workplace, other journalists who were there, asswipes like me… sooooo many people on twitter said nonsense like “that’ll teach her for getting in the way of deputies.” “she wanted to be The story, well she got what she wanted.”

it blew me away. which is hard to do because i have been on Twitter for a little while now.

but it taught me an incredibly important lesson.

for some idealistic reason i have always believed that if so much popular opinion is against me on Twitter, there’s something i could have done better, different, more clear that would have prevented so much negativity.

but here Josie did nothing wrong. there were multiple camera angles. things were clear. hell, we could even see the deputies trying to smash her camera to destroy the evidence that they had illegally manhandled her and interfered with HER job, not the other way around.

and yet the public saw this gold dress as a red one.

it did not help that the Sheriff Dept shit in the punchbowl with its tweets. despite the fact that this is a department who just recently was exposed for incredibly bad behavior. there are members of the public who will always take the side of the law over the press even if the video is right in front of them and there are jerks like me who will confront them on twitter telling them that they are wrong wrong wrong.

plugging back in for a day taught me just another reason why i should unplug for a week.

my beloved social channels are infested with pollution that in many ways is man made.

and its good to rehab for a while and get that gunk out of your system before diving headfirst back into it for the rest of this year.

the skies of LA look like the water in the bowl after youve had a rough night

and you coulda sworn you flushed but when you toss the TP in there

you see this golden brown reminder that booze just aint your thing

and bacon wrapped hotdogs have a time and a place

hi, my name is tony.

i am on vacation for 10 days. and i am at the beginning of a lil experiment.

last night at 6:30pm i turned off my phone and put it in ambers purse.

the goal was not to turn it back on until my mommas birthday a week from sunday.

but it only lasted an hour because i needed to call her to tell her i wasnt dead.

and also to fill her in on my plan.

somewhere along the line i also have chosen to cut my social media use down by a good 96%

im still the founder and co-moderator of the greatest Howard Stern Facebook group around

and i dont want to burden the other two moderators with my vacation, so i will be dipping back into that page a few times a day.

its been less than 24 hours and naturally at first i wanted to see what my FB page thought of my plan

a few people said something super dumb that normally i would have retorted

but thats all part of the problem.

for being such a laid back person, at my heart i am a bit of a controler, a secret alpha

and definitely an astrological cardinal sign

i feel more comfortable leading than following unless i have someone incredible to support

but if you say something stupid on my facebook wall, for example, i will school you

because obviously nobody else has.

ive noticed that i am spending more time reading the newspaper and reading reddit.

in fact ive already been guilded this week on reddit for something i found and thats nice.

whats not nice is i like wishing people happy birthday on facebook and i have no idea who im slighting

but i hope they understand.

cutting off the phone and social is not something im doing because

OMG ITS TAKING SO MUCH TIME AWAY FROM MY WIFE AND KIDS

or because its evil or spying on me or sucking away my creativity.

the web and social have put bread on my table, beautiful women in my life and given me most of my real life post-college friendships.

ive been able to work several Oscars, buy a Benz, and live a reasonable life.

if anyone loves it and knows it and enjoys the daily give n take of it all, it’s me.

but only until now have i been able to take a break, driver 8.

every other job had me tethered.

i once had a job where i was  forced to work seven days a week.

i even asked the HR director one day if it was legal. years and years with no real days off?

the response: you’re staff, and thats the nature of your gig.

which was baloney. but what can you do.

theres something about emotionally and mentally not having to worry about being responsible for shit for a few days.

where you can truly unplug.

it’s been about 22 hours. and already i have some good ideas bubbling that probably wouldnta been there.

im watching more tv, and by that i mean youtube.

and im focused when i watch because i dont have that “second screen” to distract me.

my attention span is returning.

but the only real issue is the air quality. i cant really go outside.

no one can.

the smoke and soot and smog and crud are everywhere.

i wanted to go to Palm Springs for a few days and not do shit by a pool

but even that oasis is closed.

fine.

maybe i’ll blog more often.

every day is a struggle.

every day mortality looks you in the face and laughs.

the clock begins ticking as soon as you enter this crazy maze, but Life in The Era of Rona is weird and gets weirder every day.

people get mad, people fuck up, people do dumb things, people fight and lash out at Death and now the skies are blood red or brown or black.

like my heart.

i asked for a vacation and i got a vacation. i told my boss i wanted a few days off and she said take the whole week. i cashed out my 401k not long ago and now i want to go on a western road trip and sleep by the pool.

at first i wanted to go to Palm Springs but the smoke is so bad here and its floating over there. soon it will kill all the birds and the bees and the grass and the trees.

so Santa Barbara? Mexico? Arizona? Vegas? who knows, who cares. we are all gonna die and if we survive everyones gonna vote for the wrong man and russia is gonna take over and imma have to do the Kremlin’s twitter so we may as well party now while we can.

Alexa: where is it safe to drive to?

Nowhere, Tony, nowhere.

then thats where we’re going.

typically we have pleasant phone calls and everythings cool

but today she told me something incredibly disturbing.

she told me that she is going to go to my sisters house to tutor her grandchild.

i said have they discovered the cure to the contagious disease that kills senior citizens, especially minorities are the most at risk?

i had literally just posted on LosAngeleno a tweet that said

250k Angelenos this year have contracted a disease that has no cure. 

the person who implored me to be safe my whole life was telling me that she was planning on going to a home filled with people, including children,

one of whom just happens to be ill and has no idea what the malady is.

when i objected my mother accused me of being on drugs.

I AM THE MOST HONEST MAN OF ALL TIME. YOU RAISED ME TO BE THAT. IN COLLEGE I WOULD CALL YOU WHILE I WAS ON DRUGS AND TOLD YOU I WAS ON DRUGS I AM NOT ON DRUGS RIGHT NOW. IF ANYONE IS, IT’S THE PERSON SAYING SHE IS GOING TO A HOME WHERE GOD KNOWS WHERE ANYONE HAS BEEN.

it was a disaster of a phone call.

and who knows maybe my mom wants to wrap it up. who am i to stand in her way. my whole family is filled with strong black women. nearly all of them college educated going back to my great great grandmother. a rarity for our race.

she knows what she is doing.

i would be devastated without my mother.

the one reason i am as incredible and thoughtful and open minded and sensitive to the needs of women in the workplace is because of what she taught me and what i saw her go through as a single black woman in a corporate hq.

the last person i would ever want to grow up to be is someone who had done my mother wrong.

also i had a pair of grandmothers who would literally beat my ass if i was anything less than gentlemanly.

i am sure its hard to sit in the house and watch trump every day and read the Daily Kos and stare out at the window watching the leaves turn brown. but thats the struggle we all have right now.

WELL YOU GO OUT ALL THE TIME she said.

and i do. and i wear gloves. and i sanitize everything. constantly. and im in and out. and i use apple pay from my iphone. i dont touch shit and if i do i set it on fire and set my hands on fire too

and i rise from the ashes.

i dont know what these people are doing at my sisters house. i dont know who their friends are, what sort of situation is going over there. for pete sake my niece had 3 jobs last month, tell me how that is not a risky maneuver right there.

dont you think i want to go out into the world and interview people?

dont you think i want to go to every neighborhood in LA and pull back the curtain?

dont you think i want to take a road trip around the country and talk with every single person and take their picture and hug them and kiss their babies and pet their dogs and eat on their porch swings and pee in their snowbanks?

but this is not the time.

this is the time to sit in the house.

just like in the omega man.

just like in the bible.

just like in the end times.

i was so mad i drove and drove through the night in the valley and people were outside bars dining on the sidewalk, way too many of them

everyone taunting fate.

every one just exhausted of the fear and the invisibleness of it all

every one just borderline suicidal because blooming onions and a margarita are just too irresistible on the last night of summer

and i will not go to any funerals of people who die when i tell them not to die.

 

 

i also love every single person alive.

i once had a girlfriend who in a fight said, IT DOESNT EVEN MATTER THAT YOURE MAD AT ME BECAUSE IN 100 YEARS YOU WILL FORGIVE ME JUST LIKE YOU FORGIVE EVERYONE BECAUSE EVEN THOUGH YOU ARE TWICE AS OLD AS ME YOU ARE 88 TIMES LESS MATURE AND YOU DONT EVEN KNOW WHAT LOVE IS BECAUSE EVERYTHING TO YOU IS LOVE

and later she did something that made me stop loving her for a little while

but she was right, i have returned to loving her.

i am the sunshine that rises in the morning.

do i hold some grudges though? oh yes.

are they all justified?

weirdly, no.

because im a caveman i like to go outside with just my pajama bottoms on, sometimes barefoot,

it’s 111 degrees right now at 9pm in LA. but the sky is tremendous. ill take a pic.

so i walk outside, down my little alley and someone is on the stairs in the back

i was startled but i noticed she was a bigger woman

and in the shadows.

so i said hi like nbd its hollywood this happens every night

she said hi

afterwards i came inside and told amber.

then i said if you wanna give her some water and some of my flaming hot cheetos, be my guest.

so she did.

when she got back she was all your cheetos were a hit!

about a half hour later amber goes, the cops and the fire dept are in our alley.

we listened through the window. the woman had a fever of 106.

they were worried she had COVID so they put her on a stretcher and into an ambulance

amber and i were both a little shocked at the quick developments.

did my flaming hot cheetos do something to her?

who called the fuzz?

half of our building isnt around.

was it the quiet ones????

later we went to the grocery store.

i wanted some fritos and noticed there was a great discount if you bought 5.

i was a little nervous to have that many because i didnt wanna pig out on them

and ruin this sports illustrated cover look i got going

but i loaded up the cart with 5 of them.

got some water but then amber got a couple of jugs.

we drive back and we spot one of our favorite homeless guys.

once upon a time he told us he always could use water.

so i gave him a jug and a bag of cheetos.

then at the next stoplight were two of ambers favorites.

i put water and chips in a waldorf astoria bag

one for one guy, another for the guy next to him.

as i handed it to him he says

youre an angel from heaven.

when i get into the car, ambers crying.

i said, all of this cost us like $2 a guy, this is nothing.

she said

but you ARE an angel from heaven.

but you know how i feel?

i feel like i have maybe a 50/50 chance to get in there.

i pick fights on twitter. i procrastinate like crazy. i dont treat my body as a temple. i judge. i dont honor my mother and father

if i honored my mother properly half of the stuff in this blog wouldnt even be in here.

you have no idea how close i have been lately to erase this blog from the world and just start over

great flood

but God said afterwards that he wished he hadnt have done the great flood.

so there you have it.

she also likes to talk about her timeshare, probably because she knows that its complexities drive me nuts because it makes me feel dumb.

many moons ago she got a timeshare in Palm Springs.

and like a bratty kid i whined PALM SPRINGS SOOOO BORING!

fast forward to three weeks ago and nearly every day i have been scouring the web for a desert getaway.

my favorite resort out just re-opened and it’s charging $800 for a weekend stay.

and even though i am in no way that financially stable to blow $800 on two days of snoozing under a palm tree next to a pool i have no intention of dipping into,

i keep looking at that price to see if i could will it to shrink.

i paid $400 a month to live in a closet in Isla Vista in a huge house next to the beach.

people would say you pay $400 for THIS?

and i would walk them up to our second floor deck and say, no, i pay $400 for that.

and gesture at the pacific whose waves would crash one after another to the sound of

toe

knee

 

toe

 

knee

 

the purpose of life is to live it.

to wring it out at the end of the day,

put it on a hook

 

sleep the sleep of the just

 

and strap it on the next day.

 

but you do need that rest.

 

you do need to recharge.

 

some things are priceless.

 

and other things cost $800

 

plus food.

is it a test?

is dumbass ashton kutcher gonna jump outta a taco truck?

is Dateline going to fall from the sky?

are the strings coated with COVID?

are the angels in the Heavens debating the morals between Christians and non-believers and one of them says, oh here comes a Christian, Gabriel, set a perfectly sweet guitar in his path and see what he does

but thats tony pierce, Gabriel says

other angel cuts him off, just do it Gabe. jeeeze!

Gabriel says but but

other angel glares at him and points at his watch DO IT

and i walked by it, investigated it. took exactly three photos of it and moved on.

angels laughed

other angel huffed

Gabriel sighed and says, tony only plays electric guitars

i had terrible writers block last month.

i just coudnt get it together.

i struggled harder than i have — ever. just too much was going on. like all the time. finally i snapped out of it.

how?

i just let that gunk flow through me and waited. and finally it was gone. and i was able to get back to writing.

but if that makes you think i wasnt concerned AF, youd be wrong. fortunately i was able to eek these out:

Why My Girlfriend Doesn’t Want to Eat in a Parking Garage in Glendale

Why Not Just Party if the Cops — and Everyone Else — Are Doing it?

Picking a Psychiatrist’s Brain About Kanye, Racism, and the Rise of Karens

Twitter Sounds Off on Kamala Harris’ VP Nomination

Uber and Lyft Poised to Hit Cancel on California Like the Losers They Are

Who Is That Masked Man Offering Me Pizza?

The Buck Stops Here: NBA, WNBA, MLS and some MLB Games Postponed