busblog

did you see them? there was winona and dorothy, spiderman and heidi, anna nicole and bobby trendy, there were sluts and pimps, 80s chicks and 60s mods.

everyone drove their silver shifters to the lava lounge on labrea last night to take in the dulcet sounds of americas number one rock group tsar.

and no one left disappointed.

basart and my attorney and shannon and this girl who works at the beverly hills starbucks met at el compadre for flaming moes and burritos pre show, then i picked up karisa and we jetted to the show and found tsar backstage drinking krystal and complaining because their m&m’s hadn’t been sorted.

the boys looked terrific and were gracious hosts as the backstage area slowly filled with the likes of moxie, ted danson, tv’s ed bagley jr., and jeweler to the stars, my exgirl jeanine.

moxie, by the way looked radiant, dressed in black, skin so elegantly pale that her blond locks glistened in comparasion under the stars of the backstage smoking area. is there anything cooler than a single girl arriving in a porsche and tossing the keys to the valet after they have opened the door?

perhaps.

the lava lounge isn’t built for rock history and im sure in the future people will look back at all hallows eve and say “how on earth did the mighty Tsar play such a teensy place like this?”

if any of you are old enough to remember the classic alex cox film Repo Man, theres a scene where the Circle Jerks are squeezed on a tiny stage in a small bar. crank up the heat, put witch hats on os and ali and jeanine and paolo and you might get the gist.

the lovely simone was there in a shirt that was ripped in all the right places and i wanted to look closer but no matter what i do theres still a catholic boy stuck in me so i blushed and ordered a pair of kamikazes for karisa and i.

many men dressed as ugly women bobbed their heads to the new tunes. i even saw a guy who dressed like the white stripes but did not look as good as i will look for he did the white shirt red pants thing which is way too easy. mine will be all red.

dylan was there trying to hide behind glasses and a fake beard but disguises don’t mean nothing we know who’s inside.

tsar played old tunes fast tunes, slow tunes.

because the lava lounge isn’t used to rock shows they made the boys keep it down which was like weird. i found myself uncomfortable hearing all the lyrics. as clever as they were i wanted more guitars, more noise, more feedback. more curtain less wizard. whalen was showing all his secrets and there are so many more sonic youth notes in a dan kern solo that were trapped in the marshall half stack restrained at 2 that all we heard were the major ones, which did the trick and impressed starbucks girl but so much depends on the red rockbarrell filled with fuck for the chickens.

give me decibels or give me death.

this was nearly an mtv unplugged event but i’ll take anything i can from these fine young fellows who i am proud to call my friends.

we all left drunk and happy and satisfied but wanting.

heidi walked outside, pulled a marlboro from behind a pigtail and dug around her bag and a pudgy spiderman tapped her shoulder and lit her up and we all drifted back to our mansions and penthouse suites happy little pollywogs, warm, buzzed, and giggly.

anorexorcism

and in came a bunch of fan mail. i took them down because the service i was using was having problems and that, in turn led to my page loading very slow.

thanks for hanging in there with me.

and thanks for writing all the nice letters.

lately i have been receiving a lot of love from the college girl demographic.

one young lady likes to write me erotic emails. you know who you are, and i love you.

thank you.

thank you so much.

thank you from the bottom of my heart.

if i was the wind i would find you and kiss you.

but i am ten times your age so i will just thank you in my blog.

another 18 yr old from usc wrote me to tell me that if i got the job from the la times that she would be my intern.

i told her that the la times would never hire me and even if they did she should intern for a real writer.

she replied with a photo of a girl, who, if it is her, is a knockout, and a message telling me “i don’t want to be an intern for someone else. i want to be an intern for you.”

oddly, i could use an intern. she could fact check my ass. copy edit. go through the email. give me story ideas that i could riff from. and find me pictures of our president trying to use binoculars, which are tricky devices.

and all the old posts in the archives are missing pictures. i would love an intern to put those pictures on my server so that they’d stay up forever. or in the meantime put new pictures up in their place.

ah, luxury.

but what would an intern want from me?

my knowledge?

i interned at mtv a long time ago. i worked for chris connelly’s movie show. he was super nice. i drove him somewhere because he didnt have a drivers liscense. i still dont think he does. i did learn a lot at mtv. i learned that you work your ass off over there.

the bush picture that is above was sent to me by a young girl who’s going to OU. is that oklahoma? i think so. who knows? i cant find that picture anywhere on Reuters. i suppose thats the liberal media again, suppressing a picture of our president being a dumbass. thank you kristin.

all reuters has of that day is the picture on the left.

busblog coming through for your asses, thanks to readers like you.

i also got an email from my former editor amy.

now some people think that i cannot be edited. that is so not true. if i respect someone i actually love being edited. im not 21 any more. i appreciate a second pair of eyes. a different point of view. an educated collaborator. i enjoy the editing process. im not attatched to anything that i write.

amy has mucho experience in the newspaper biz and even worked for abcnews.com. she says that i have what it takes and she said that i shoulda linked to the times yesterday so they could see how much traffic i get.

times, i get about 600-1,000 readers a day.

dont be impressed or not impressed by traffic. if i wrote about the middle east all day i’d have twice as many readers. if i put porn on here i’d get 6 times the readers. the first photo essay that i did of anna kournikova got more hits than all of my photo essays put together because it was a discussion of anna’s alleged nude pictures in penthouse magazine.

it was a good photo essay, as good as any of the others. but it had naked pics. so guess what. all of the horny guys from around the world linked to it on their sites and on their message boards, and blogs, and sent emails to each other linking to it.

i got 2 million hits in 2 days. 3 million in 4 days. in fact if you type in “anna kournikova nude” into google my sixth month old photo essay is currently holding steady at number four on the list.

those hits don’t mean that i was a good writer. it means that everyone wanted to see if penthouse really had nude pics of tennis’s sexiest female player.

be impressed that a blog of a guy with no money no car no girlfriend and a thankless job can get a thousand people a day to his blog despite the fact that he interviews escalators and kisses no one’s ass on the blogosphere.

im impressed by that thousand. im impressed that people will read something that isnt xrated or news-related, or scandelous, and probably not even true.

i want the times or whoever wants me to be their blogger to hire me because i write well and i have an imagination and the ability to bust a rhyme or tell a good joke in the middle of a narritive. i want them to hire me because i’m not like everyone else and because i can see this city in a different way, a positive way.

perhaps i still have a bit of the 21 year idealism in me. sue me.

amy also sent me a book yesterday called It’s Not Carpal Syndrome. i know what i have is repetitive stress. and not from writing this blog but from doing the job that i will soon be transfered away.

but whatever it is is killing me right now.

so thanks for all your cards and letters and books.

thanks for saying that you’d be part of a letter-writing campaign on my behalf.

thanks for telling me all your secrets and telling me that you’d work for me for free.

right now i just want you to be happy in your lives and keep reading my page.

i dont want to convince anyone of anything. i would prefer them to make their decisions on their own.

happy halloween,

tony

hbo3

jam master jay?

yup yup.

but, aren’t you dead?

gone but not forgotten, my young brotha.

yeah, me and karisa were driving to the tsar show last night and we heard it on the news.

we all go sometimes, yesterday was my day. it’s all good.

wow, jam master jay, you’re sure taking this well.

bro, i’m cold chillin in heaven right now. i just had a tequila sunrise with jimi hendrix.

but you were in the studio making a new record!

lets keep it real. no one really cared about us after “raising hell.”

i bought “tougher than leather.”

and when was the last time you listened to it?

good point.

we were the kings of rap. then the beastie boys came up, cool j, then gangsta rap and we were through. at least we had our day in the sun, and people know who made the first crossover: dmc.

“walk this way” was brilliant.

gotta give it up to rick rubin and aerosmith for that too, you know.

some would say that that collaboration is what helped aerosmith’s comeback.

we both helped each other. we needed a big hit, we loved their records. it was a perfect match. sorta like you and this blog.

what’s heaven like, jay?

great music everywhere. you get to fly. everything’s edible. you dont have to poop. that blew me away. no pooping, unless you want to, but you dont really need to. when you do it turns into a fruit cake and sinks down to earth.

really?

lots of good pinball machines. swimming pools. movie stars.

do they play rap up there.

okay, theres a big escalator. then you get off it and theres a big tram. then theres a ski lift. then theres a helicopter ride. then theres a flying bus. then theres a 747. and on the way up you get to meet people from lots of other worlds. planets other than earth. the whole time youre singing cuz you’re going to heaven and everyone knows it. and the weirdest thing happens. you can remember all the lyrics to all the songs you’ve ever heard. and when people recognized me, everyone started singing run-dmc tunes.

with no shoe strings in em

i did not win em

i bought em off the Ave with the tags still in em

i like to sport em

that’s why I bought em

a sucker tried to steal em

so I caught em

and I thwart em

and I walk down the street and I bop to the beat

with Lee on my legs and adidas on my feet

we’ll miss you jam master jay.

no you wont. our music will live forever.

say hi to kurt cobain for me.

he’s right here, we’re playing ms. pacman. they have cocktail angels that give you free quarters for the machines. kurt is throwing you the peace sign.

okay, well so long, jam master jay.

up here you dont say that.

what do you say?

aloha.

aloha, jay.

aloha, tony.

kool keith

Kick off shoes jump on the jock

Listen to the Jam Master as he starts to rock

His name is Jay and he’s on his way

To be the best DJ in the US of A

J a y are the letters of his name

Cutting and scratching are the aspects of his game

So check out the Master as he cuts these jams

And look at us with the mics in our hands

Then take a count 1 2 3

Jam Master Jay Run D.M.C.

He’s Jam Master Jay the big beat blaster

He gets better cause he knows he has to

In ’84 he’ll be a little faster

And only practice makes a real Jam Master

We’re live as can be but we’re not singing the blues

We got to tell all y’all the good news

The good news is that there is a crew

Not 5, not 4, not 3, just 2

2 MC’s who are claiming the fame

And all other things won’t be the same

Beacause it’s about time for a brand new group

Run-D.M.C. to put you up on the scoop

We make the fly girls scream in ecstacy

We rock the freshest rhymes at a party

We put all the fellas in a daze

It’s everyone that we amaze

And we got the master of a disco scratch

There’s not a break that he can’t catch

Jam Master Jay that is his name

And all wild DJ’s he will tame

Behind the turntables is where he stands

Then there is the movement of his hands

So when asked who’s the best, y’all should say:

“Run-D.M.C. and Jam Master Jay”

Jam Master Jay is the one in charge

It’s up to him to rock beats that are truly large

He is the master of the scratch and cut

So move your arms, so move your legs

So won’t you move your butt

We’re not talking ground, we’re not talking sky

We’re not talking low, we’re not talking high

We’re not talking big, we’re not talking small

We want all of the people on off the wall

We’re not talking night, we’re not talking day

But we’re talking bout Jam Master Jay

- originally on the self titled debut “Run-DMC”

hi, tony pierce!

well, today is your first real game in the nba, how does it feel?

pretty trippy.

okay, so you’re 7’5″ hows the weather up there.

[ silence ]

did you hear my question?

no the soundwaves didnt reach me yet. see, i’m that tall.

now, i’ve got a picture of philly guard Aaron McKie trying to drive the lane on you. How tall is Aaron?

i dont know, i think maybe 6’5″.

thats what a guy looks like who’s only a foot shorter than you?

think about it, you’re 5’10″, tone, ever meet a guy who’s really 6’10″? they’re huge.

what do you mean “really”?

come on, everyone knows that the nba stretches the truth about their 7-footers. Howard Stern is 6’6″ and Magic Johnson is supposed to be 6’9″, but when Howard was a guest on Magic’s old talk show, Howard looked a little taller than Magic.

so youre saying Magic is really just 6’6″?

maybe shorter.

and you’re really 7’5″?

yup. we dont lie in China.

about height.

about anything. it’s dishonorable.

don’t make me bring up taiwan. or tibet. or sweatshops.

bring up anything you want. i dont care.

ok, that dude from Yan Can Cook. i hear his accent is fake.

it’s television, who cares, he cooks his ass off, most the time just using chopsticks.

well i have no gripes with the chinese. i once dated a girl from china. very sweet.

i once dated a girl from hollywood. very sour. get it? sweet and sour. now im the comedian.

who’s your favorite hollywood movie star?

jackie chan.

who’s your favorite metal band?

loudness.

who’s your favorite comedian.

eddie murphy.

really?

no, wait, jackie chan.

how old are you?

22.

ever kiss an american girl?

not yet.

ever kiss a Black girl?

not yet.

want to?

if she’s nice, sure.

what do you think about Shaq?

i respect him but i will have to destroy him.

i hear you dont have any defensive skills.

i hear you’re not really 109.

touche.

okay i gotta go count my millions.

all right, thanks Yao for your time.

no prob, tony. i love your blog. i hope you interview me later.

are you kidding? the readers might see more of you here than they saw of anna kournikova.

wow. thanks, bro. by the way, the weather? it’s rainy.

[ spits on me ]

keep your hands up on defense.

will do! but hey, no comments? what gives?

oh, YACCS is having technical difficulties, so i took down the comments till they get their stuff together.

should we email you if we have love to give to you?

yes, please.

hope the Times hires you soon.

me too!

bye Yao Ming, rookie of the year candidate.

hahaha, adios tony pierce, big dork of the year winner.

intricate plot

hi, my name is tony pierce.

i would like to be your first full time blogger.

since the dawn of mankind humans have wanted to tell the story of their lives.

i’m no different.

like you, i grew up in chicago, moved to la, and took over.

i moved here a little earlier than you did, i came out here the day after my high school graduation and got my first job at a mcdonalds in santa monica.

i went to santa monica college, met a punk rock girl from malibu and lost my virginity in ventura.

i transferred to uc santa barbara and got a degree in literature from the college of creative studies.

there i worked for the college paper, the daily nexus, which, like you, had no real competition. i learned a lot.

our paper won every award that a college paper could win while i was there. i even won best arts and entertainment editor, beating schools like usc, ucla, and uc berkeley– schools that had journalism programs and advisors.

the nexus didnt have any of those things. it was magical.

after college many of my friends moved out to prague and started a newspaper. my only regret in life is that i didnt go out there with them. instead i stayed in santa barbara with my girlfriend and landed a job with a $50 billion international tech company who i represented.

after that i worked for the start up, webtv.

they got bought by microsoft, who i stayed on with but then quit to sell hot dogs, garlic fries and chablis for the san francisco giants.

after that i moved back to LA and hired 400+ people for an internet start up in westwood and when the dot com boom boomed i started editing for the tv network that i am currently employed at.

the whole time ive been writing and writing and figuring out this world wide web craze, and now i am starting to get noticed in the world of blogging.

all blogging is is a way for normal people to easily express themselves on the web without a lot of fancy software.

typically, serious bloggers update their page several times a day. like a columnist who just writes and writes and writes.

i don’t know what the philosophy of the Times is, but i know that i would have loved to read Royko several times a day, and at night, and on the weekends even if he just wrote a little blurb on a sunday night saying “i just watched the sopranos. wtf was that?”

wouldn’t you?

let rosenberg get into the details of tv. sometimes it’s nice just to have your average guy on the street give his two cents.

i think i would make a great guy on the street.

my idea for the Times Blog is to have a page on latimes.com where i would update several times a day and once or twice at night and let the people of the world know what life is really like in LA.

on the bus today a man with a walker recognized a man and they said

hey buddy.

oh, hey man

see that laker game last night?

yeah, they lost huh.

well they don’t have much of a team. shaq is hurt and foxy is suspended from that fight.

what about that new guy.

yeah, with the funny name, where’s he from, europe?

no, africa.

all this was going on while i was sitting next to a transvestite who was flipping through a trade school work book titled “Introduction of Computers and Microsoft Windows”

i looked over her shoulder to see how much i knew about computers and windows.

the first paragraph said “a computer can be broken up into four parts, external hardware, internal hardware, input devices, and output devices.”

she had this part of a sentence underlined “software, otherwise known as programs…”

we were driving south down fairfax right past santa monica blvd.

i love normal life. i also love the myth of hollywood. i would like to write about everyday life, but also cover the movie premieres, the sporting events, the rock clubs, the beaches, television. everything.

i’d probably write about everything except politics. is that okay?

okay, my fifteen minute break is almost over. so let me wrap this up.

times, i love you. i know my friends are critical of you. i am critical of you sometimes, but i want to make a truce. i say if you hire someone like me you will bridge the gap that just might be out there between the “mainstream media” and the world of blogging.

a few months ago i challenged the web to link me on 100 different sites. i gave the world a month to do it. i got 100 links in three weeks. then this summer i asked for money. the readers gave me enough money to fly to aruba and back.

imagine the traffic i could generate if i had a real blog on a real newspaper’s website. and imagine what would happen if readers from around the world finally had a chance to see los angeles, the city of their dreams, through a tiny little window of happiness and love.

and sarcasm.

and celebrity interviews.

and photo essays.

via a young single man who takes a bus to work who finally was given a break by his hometown paper.

i bet you in a month i could get 1,000 links and the entire web will be abuzz from the groundbreaking move the LA Times made by signing up one of the web’s most loved and innovative and creative bloggers.

if you want to see news blogs, you can see them on the wall street journal dot com, slate, salon, msnbc.com has six blogs, and fox news used bloggers for a daily online column (even though the writing was good, it wasn’t a good idea cuz you never knew who you’d get.)

i don’t want to do a news blog. i want to do an LA blog that focuses on life in LA.

i don’t think that any one could write one better than me. maybe welch could or layne could or rabbit could or amy could or ben or kate, but none of them could do the photo essays like me, none of them could write about dating in hollywood like me, and none of them ride the subway.

so i win.

:)

email me, please. im serious.

p.s. yes i do plan on changing the world.

but in a sweet way that everyone, like my mom, would be proud of.

p.p.s. no one pps’s enough these days. anyhow, even if you see a diamond in the rough here it’s still a diamond. bukowski basically starved for decades while he lived in LA. i dont want to be like that. anyway. think diamond in the rough. or maybe just think diamond.

p.p.p.s. i dont think ive seen a ppps since highschool. told ya, innovative.

los angeles times

in hollywood. super close to hollywood blvd. super close to where jeanine’s uncle used to be an ob/gyn for hollywood prosititutes in a strip mall. super close to hollywood high.

its tsar’s double super secret rock tour:

Thurs Oct 31 Capitol Garage, Sacramento, CA

Fri Nov 1 Stork Club, Oakland, CA

Sat Nov 2 Plant 51, San Jose, CA

Sun Nov 3 Red Devil Lounge, San Francisco, CA

Sat Nov 9 Lucky’s, Bakersfield, CA

are they the greatest unheard band in america?

yes.

are they the coolest unheard most rockingly band in the universe.

you betcha.

if you see tsar in concert will a sunbeam come down from the heavens and blind you and convert you and you “get it” immediately and you tap your little foot and want to kiss a girl on the cheek?

‘fraid so.

time to get it together, people. and northern california, we are sorry that we took the world series away from you so in return we give you our most precious sons this weekend to rock your little worlds.

dont miss em.

jeff solomon

my prediction? pain.

thanks, tony.

what are you going to do for your birthday today, baby?

i’m gonna sit in the beverly hills courthouse and keep my mouth shut.

gonna steal anything?

nope.

what if something shiny catches your eye?

nope, no stealing today. dont hafta anyway.

whys that?

because today is the day everyone gives me something.

what do you want for your birthday, winona ryder?

i want a sexy 109-year-old man to give me a shoulder rub.

is that all?

then i want him to give me a foot massage while kitaro plays.

hmmm, it’s your birthday. anything else?

then he can wash my feet in a bucket of oranges and water and flowers.

thats it?

then i’d like him to kiss my feet with short little caresses and tell me im beautiful.

you are beautiful.

[whispers] no say that at the end, and mean it.

but i do mean it.

you do?

yes.

aw tony, you’re the best.

you can steal anything of mine you want winona.

if i did, would you promise to search me?

is today really your birthday?

yes.

then, yes, i would search you.

gotta look hard.

okay.

amy

and if i had the power to apologize for it i would.

disneyland is not the place one begins a victory parade that snakes its way through anaheim, but this is what happens when a mouse owns a team, and this is what happens when no one buys it from them before they win the championship.

it’s a blight to humanity. it’s another black eye to baseball. it’s repulsive. it’s girlie. it’s soft. it’s weak.

it has nothing to do with baseball, a game that is played by men on grass with metal cleats and wooden bats.

it’s okay to be bandwagon fans of the angels and lifelong enemies of disney corp.

the angels do play in anaheim, home of disneyland, which is owned by disney who owns damn near everything in anaheim, which is why it’s such a beautiful city.

disney owns The Anaheim Pond where the second leg of the parade went through. It owns Edison Field where the celebration congregated.

It even owns my favorite rock group Tsar.

hurts me to type that. even if it wasn’t for the carpal.

to parade the world champs through a theme park diminishes the achievement to a level of fiction, not fairy tale. another smiling face to throw confetti at like they were dwarves, clowns, or cartoon renderings of fake heroes.

call me dramatic but david eckstein, all 5’6″ of him, is a flesh and blood rendering of a real hero. nearly traded to the white sox, told all his life he wasn’t enough, was the spark plug and emotional leader of your anaheim angels.

he deserves better than to be seen alongside the likes of Goofy.

disney, im sure, are selling rally monkeys in their theme parks, but that trophy isn’t theirs. disney didn’t dig into their vault and spend massive amounts on free agents last winter. they treated the angels like a step child and now they want to bask in the glory of the ball, and because why again? because they let jeff edmonds go?

the x factor wasn’t the multibillion dollar ownership who has controlling interest in abc tv, espn, touchstone films, miramax, buena vista, and many others.

the x factor was a monkey.

body language might mean something in the rest of the world, but in southern california it’s all about what you wear on your body. when michael eisner accepted the world series trophy while sporting an old school mickey mouse tshirt, he couldnt have said it any better.

the back of his tshirt should have said, “no matter what you do, angels, you’re unloved, unwanted, and currently a cute plaything for the house of mouse. thank you for the free publicity, but you will be sold to the highest bidder like a beanie baby on ebay.”

maybe the back of the tshirt did say that, which is why mike had a blazer on.

far be it from me to rain on the victory parade. the angel fans deserve their day in the sun, which is why i’m glad that the big Ed is far enough out of the shadow of the magik kingdumb.

up yours