Gregarius » absurdity

absurdity (100 unread)

this moment

Canzone 19 There are creatures in the ...

Posted: May 27th, 2006, 11:43am PDT by alan

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Canzone 19 There are creatures in the world with such other vision that it is protected from the full sun: yet others, because the great light offends them cannot move around until the evening falls: and others with mad desire, that hope perhaps to delight in fire, because it gleams, prove the other power, that which burns: alas, and my place is with these last. I am not strong enough to gaze

The Sound of Young America

Old Guys Doin' It For Theyselves

Posted: May 27th, 2006, 10:36am PDT by Jesse Thorn

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Busta Rhymes f. Stevie Wonder (Produced by Eric Sermon and Dr. Dre) - Been Through the Storm

It's about as good as you'd hope. Not at all embarassing for anyone involved.

(via Spinemagazine)

this moment

[nt]

Posted: May 27th, 2006, 5:50am PDT by alan

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sixteen days under the sundae

let's get sandy!!!

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 1:38am PDT by Ridley Thunder

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Since I'm Rasp's Evil Twin Brother, I have known her for a while. But now that she's gone I can tell you a bunch of things about her you might not know: 1) She likes to tell people that she gives money to homeless people, but she doesn't 2) Raspberry is not her favorite fruit. It's problaby not even top 5. 3) She had black and she went back 4) Her favorite Beatle song is "Maxwell's Silver

bird on the moon

Not having figured things out...

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 9:13pm PDT

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I suppose my new home is finally a new home, after all. I've had the housewarming, all of the required "firsts," and it's just so pleasant and groovy now.

Having accomplished the transition and cultivated a bit of a new routine, I'm having time to consider myself again. I've even had a bit of anxiety unlocking that identity door, with all of the dustbunnies and unknowns which lurk behind it. The self is profundly complex, so much so that it seems to prevent itself from catching it's own tail, thus, figuring things out. Distractions must exist solely for us to prevent ourselves from getting to the bottom of things, 'cuz once there, in that frictionless utopia of Having Figured Things Out, we're done. I don't anticipate such luxury anytime soon.

I'm going to take the bike out in a minute and do the whole night-ride thing, with that sense of adventure akin to younger years of being out late, collar upturned, and rebellios tunes hummed through lips of ever growing vocabulary.

Off I go...

tonypierce.com + busblog

so guess whose summer vacation ...

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 8:15pm PDT by tony pierce

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so guess whose summer vacation just suddenly arrived?

mine.

hi tony.

hi vacation?

i didnt think i was going to have a summer vacation, and ive gotta say, i was a little jealous of a lot of bloggers out there who were all pumped that their finals were over or they were graduating, and that they were going to laze into trying to find a little job to get their parents off their back, but mostly work on hitting the sand surf and suntan oil.

why is it that may has found me unemployed two years in a row now?

because the Lord loves me? lets pretend that thats why.

who knows, its probably true.

mid october i started working at buzznet. immediately i was sent to nyc to attend the BlogOn conference with mc brown. we threw our first east coast Buzznet meetup party at Lolita in chinatown. ironically i was abducted by a couple of lolitas right after meeting jamie and his girl, and several other manhattanites, but i managed to escape in the morning. i also hung with AJ who i hadnt seen in quite a while, scott and tons of friends, hung with amy, met jeff jarvis, met my book agent, and even ate with anne ferris. and saw the daily show, thanks to jason ross.

as soon as we got back to LA we had a Los Angeles Buzznet meetup back when the office was sort of still a loft. i met so many buzznetters who i'd always admired, but never met. plus a lot of the girls from my old job at look-look showed up and i had missed them so that was killer.

that next week one of buzznet's biggest bands was playing at the wiltern. fall out boy. they were playing with panic! at the disco and motion city soundtrack. so i was sent down there to pass out flyers about buzznet and take pics of the kids in line. the kids were wonderful and now panic! is a top 40 band. i took over 100 pics.

i would have gone to the show but i had to run over to Tower on Sunset to take a bunch of pics of Tsar doing an instore. then i ate a burrito and hustled back to the strip to take a bunch more pics of tsar who rocked the roxy.

a few weeks later i was flown to vancouver, bc, canada where we had our first canadian buzznet meetup. i hung out with matt good and took tons of pics and from the best ones i made this photo essay. i met so many cool canadians it was ridiculous. i was treated like the queen. id be back.

i got back to LA in enough time to take over 100 pictures at the Doo Dah parade. and that night i went to see Juliette Lewis and the Licks play with Tsar. i took hella pics including that crazy one of juliette on the right, who i adore. tsar ruled too, fyi.

a week later i flew to chicago and for a thanksgiving Chicago Buzznet Meetup. among others i got to meet jessica and erin who partied with me and bob all night. as in All night. so fun. hi kids from oswego. hi brian and byron. the best part of the meetup was it was in the shadows of wrigley field. so rad.

the first week of december found me at the virgin at hollywood and highland for an inxs in-store. inxs was working with buzznet at the time so i got to take a bunch of pics for them for inxs.com and buzznet. it was an honor.

a few days later i shot a ton of pics of tsar at spaceland where they were just named one of the top bands in los angeles by the LA Weekly. my highlight was getting a half dozen pics of poison guitarist cc deville with rocket and tsar.

my mind is fuzzy but i think somewhere in december i helped buzznet have their biggest hit day ever, biggest hit week, and biggest day of signups. we all hugged each other and it was decided that i was the man, because i had used the guidelines given to me from the book buzzmarketing to create attention and news to our site.

to celebrate i drove up to san francisco where i hung out again with jessica and many other cool kids where we sang karaoke. by we i dont mean me. then i drove up through northern california to umpqua oregon and celebrated Christmas in Eugene. i pretty much worked every day of this so called vacation. not because i had to but because i wanted to. i loved doing what i was doing.

after Christmas i drove up through some rainbows to tacoma and actually sang karaoke with the pants who is far more beautiful in real life. the next day i drove through seattle to take pics of kurt kobains old neighborhood and his old house.

made it to vancouver again, had sushi with mr good again. turned around the next day, drove through oregon and tried to go down the 1 but there was super flooding happening. i saw a dead cow in an overflooded river. it was so sad. got stuck in southern oregon. worked from the motel. got up in the morning and took lots of pics.

got home on new years day and took pics of the rain coming down on the rose parade.

in the middle of january koganuts from virgin megastore started inviting me and buzznet to some of their secret shows. the first one was with giant drag. i took pics. i wasnt very good with the camera that we had bought. but i was there. i did what i could. a week later we were invited to the Coachella The Movie premiere. i took a bunch of pics there on the red carpet including my hero the cobrasnake.

near the end of the month i was on a date with a super hot chick when heather graham showed up to have her birthday party there. i took this picture which got linked by defamer. heather's way hotter than that but we had both been drinking for many hours at that point. me, i had been drinking for 6 hours by then. of course cobrasnake was there.

a few weeks later my true love Chris moved off to africa. i said let me take some pics. she said no. i said baby i work for a photo sharing community, i sorta have to. plus your cans look great in that shirt, i mean your eyes are so beautiful. she sneered and almost smiled. then she smiled. then she almost cried.

a few days after that, this is february by the way, i was sent to Amsterdam by the dutch government. i figured this would be a good time to have our first european buzznet meet up. i got to meet bicyclemark, the dude from americablog, justagirl and tons of other cool kids. it was cold but i took shittons of pics and even found some pics to put on buzznet that got us tens of thousands of hits. i know it may have looked like a vacation but i worked and produced and got buzznet some great attention. justagirl even got to hear me vomit. lucky babe.

two weeks after i returned i was being sent to Austin Texas for SXSW. i got to meet leah for the first time which was a thrill because we'd been reading each other since she was 15. i got to speak on two panels. i met sooooo many cool people it was retarded. i got interviewed a bunch. and me and marc saw tons of bands and took tons of pics and video. in fact almost every night i was at the red bull house, of which we were co-sponsors and i got us in the usa today blog pop candy.

i worked and partied every night till 3am almost every single night. asher was great, bunny was great, the pants, ev and robert, marc canter, dan and sara, the fajita prince, dooce and jon, halley and scoble - they were all killer. i even got to take a few hundred pics of one of our most popular Buzznet band, my chemical romance. far more pics of them than anyone on the web. plus i was blogging on the buzznet blog almost every day. oh and we got to hang with the texas roller girls, of whom i took buckets of pics.

despite all the hits i generated for buzznet, or all the kickass people i met, or attention i brought to them, probably my proudest moment were those ten days that we covered sxsw interactive and music. no other outlet covered it every day, took tons of pics, took tons of video, and wrote about it every damn day. not pitchfork, not mtv, not anyone. i was there even after it was over to see how the locals rocked. the best bands of the event? the bellrays, honkey, and the go! team.

it was there that i got sick and didnt recover until this week. exhaustion? burn-out? stress? who knows. all i do know is i got a day off when i returned and i was back at it the day after that and i wanted to be at it. i loved what we had done and coachella was right around the corner.

when i got home i took pics of Hard-Fi at the virgin private show thing. they were rad.

the next week i found myself in toronto slash waterloo for a one night only toronto buzznet meet up. i was there for 24 hours. just enough time to see toronto for the first time, catch a matt good show, and go to a strip club with pitt and chad and mikey and fil and raymi and a few others. i also got to meet the outlaw and several others who pulled me aside at the show to introduce themselves. oh canada, thanks for making me feel like a star. oh we also saw a baseball game at the dome. yes all of this in 24 hours. and we went to tim hortons.

every day for the month of april i wrote at least one pre-write about coachella in the buzznet coachella blog, i even asked fellow bloggers to run a free blogad to it and 30 of you were nice enough to do so, and then at the end of april we were there at coachella. i even blogged about that. some of the posts were silly, but the point was to do just like how we did SXSW - provide the best coverage BY FAR of any other outlet in the world. pre-writes, photos, videos, and post coverage.

buzznet was the official photosharing community for the fest. i got to do so many things but mostly i took pics and helped others upload their pictures onto buzznet. sometimes for the first time ever. it was hot. and at the end of the two day fest we had collected and uploaded nearly Four Thousand Photos. i think we had done our job.

oh and we got 128 videos, including some silly interviews i conducted with people who were camping out in the tents, the security chief, and a tour of the campground, among others.

madonna, matisyahu, kanye west, wolfmother, the yeah yeah yeahs, and cat power were my favorite bands that weekend. but the best part was working with my coworkers at buzznet: marc, lizy, mark, bree, bree's boyfriend and marks drummer. and the good people at coachella and the at&t blue room who both stoked us. there is nothing more enjoyable to me than to work with a great team of people who just work and get the job done. to me its all about results and the results of that gig mostly have to go to marc and the content team. flickr would have loved to have had our spot but coachella loves buzznet, and should.

still on the ride home i pulled over and barfed and told lizy that it was because i had a bad feeling that our results wouldnt be met with the love that it should. and sometimes being right will make you sick to your stomach.

when we got back i got us a mention in the usa today, defamer linked it, blogging.la linked to it.

when we got back i was tasked to start finding great content for a new project buzznet is slowly unveiling called big hombre, a blog of sorts for young men in the vein of maxim or fhm, mostly about hot babes, funny videos, and street fights and stuff. every day i was supposed to find a certain amount of content, write funny headlines, and post them. among other things that i did, when i had extra time i started giving people photography assignments in our forums. one forum discussion got over 500 posts in a few days.

all in all i was responsible for at least 13 million page views to buzznet in the seven and a half months that i was there. no one user had ever been attracted even 2.5 million hits, and that was the pretty boy bass player of the top 40 band fall out boy. i had one user account that got 9.5 million hits, another which is at 2.3 million, and my personal account went over a million hits just a few weeks ago, meaning not only had i been the only person to ever have two accounts to ever get over 2 million, but the only one to ever have three go over a million.

and to be honest, before i showed up no one even thought that anyone could get a million that quick, but one of my accounts did more than that in a week.

i took over 4,000 pictures and posted them, i wrote over 100 blog entries, i sent out over 50,000 messages to our users, and in seven months i hosted seven buzznet meetups in three different countries, most of the time at no cost to the company. i think i was a pretty decent community manager.

unfortunately not everyone saw it that way. which is why tonight im unemployed.

so my plan going forward is to try a few things. i want to send my resume to a few companies, but i cant see them saying yes. i mean the cubs will probably say, dude we already have a black manager and he sucks.

then i will probably get scared and compile a new collection of better-than-average busblog posts like what i did in How To Blog, and maybe that will sustain me for the summer, but anyone who flowed to my ipod fund knows i suck at mailing shit. in fact any one who didnt get what was promised should email me. i now have time to make good on your generosity.

and then come the fall i'll probably just start selling my ass on santa monica blvd while wearing a dress and a blonde wig at the del taco.

whatever i do, i think im gonna take a few days off from the busblog this weekend. in two years ive done on here what i did at buzznet, pretty much work every day. even when i wasnt asked to, even when nobody cared. have i even taken two days off from this blog in three years? i dont think so.

some people like to jump into things full force. im one of those weirdos. some people get freaked out by that energy. me, my best times have been when ive given 100% on things i really know about. i knew how to be successful at buzznet. that is, i knew how to make buzznet more successful. maybe i will have a shot at making some other company more successful. or maybe i will have to just try to do something myself.

right now i have no idea whats next. none. and thats not the best feeling. i know it could be, but i dont have a bunch of cash to sit on. ive gotta figure something out soon. sux. although this might be a good time to head to the desert and talk to the spirits. or to isla vista and talk to the bikini team. or to vegas and talk to the elvises. or i could sell everything in this junky house and see what it gets. and then write an autobiography and start a new slate.

i do know that you guys will be here, and that is a blessing that not too many people have, and for that im so grateful you have no idea.
princestaples centerlos angeles

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 6:45pm PDT by tony pierce

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prince
staples center
los angeles
5/26/04

dearly beloved,

if u ever want 2 get through this thing called life, make sure u go 2 a prince show at least once.

and if you go once, you'll be back.

prince popped up through the center of his stage last night at the sold-out staples center dressed in white. pure of any sin. and the definition of sexy.

an x marked the spot on the center of the arena. his gold microphone awaited him. his 8 peice band including horn section featuring james brown's legendary sax man maceo parker and blonde bombshell candy dulfer waited for him. and the screaming LA crowd who were amazingly on-time waited for him on this, the second night of an unprecidented five-night stand of los angeles's premier concert and sports venue.

home of the lakers, the grammys, the kings, and last night, of prince.

he owned it. he rocked it. he was it.

as a witness of hundreds of concerts, ive seen the best: the stones, springsteen, u2, miles davis, the jackson 5, eric clapton, van halen, tom waits, elvis costello, tsar, jane's addiction, and the beastie boys. but never have i seen one man seemingly never make a mistake, a wasted motion, or spin and twirl and pirrorette and be equal parts show-off and showman like that freaky little dude from minnesota.

and the fucker did it in heels.

he played his guitar like a kid would play a broomstick. it was an air guitar to him.

a total maestro he would throw his hand down and the drummer would accent the beat and stop.

a master controller he would tell the lighting man to bring up the lights and bring them down and the lights went up or down immediately.

when he grew tired of his guitar a well-dressed man would come out and take it from him and he pranced over to a couch on the stage and his keyboard player gave him a pillow for his feet and a blanket.

then he played bass. then he played bass with the bass player.

then he danced.

fuck did he dance.

all while throwing out classic r&b numbers like chinese stars, all written, produced, and performed by himself throughout the years.

upon entering the show the ushers handed out free copies of his new cd, musicology and one guy said to his buddy, "mick jagger never gave me anything for free."

and as much as i love mick, mick never played the guitar or wrote these sorts of songs, alone, or this sexy, or with this much funk.

what we got to be a part of last night kept us on our feet dancing for over two hours, and when he concluded with an extended encore of the title track of his best known album, purple rain no one wanted to leave.

except for the yuppies who wanted to somehow "beat" traffic. which, sadly was half the arena.

but whatever, prince had pummelled them. he had pummelled all of us.

if elvis had actually known a thing about showmanship and songwriting and guitar playing and dancing, the king would have been prince.

in my 110 years, this was the best arena concert ive ever seen.

i smiled the entire time.

zanti misfit + simpleton + xero 79

The Sound of Young America

Jordan Morris, "Boy Detective" on Tom Goes to the Mayor

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 4:34pm PDT by Jesse Thorn

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The next Sound of Young America broadcast will feature a return engagement from Tim & Eric, the creators of the wonderful Cartoon Network series Tom Goes to the Mayor. Now, many people don't know this, but former Sound of Young America co-host Jordan Morris interned on the program briefly, and his duties included wearing one of these:
I asked T&E what they thought of Jordan's performance at the show, and I offer that audio to you now...

Listen Online

Download This Clip

tonypierce.com + busblog

at the bottom of one ...

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 3:06pm PDT by tony pierce

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at the bottom of one of those pictures below, on buzznet, is a caption that says "all of these nexus men now have children except tony", and karisa asked me if i was upset about that, and i can honestly say hell to the no.

i dont even want a dog right now. shit, this blog is enough responsibility for me and i would love to have an intern plagarize me in the future. remember when the renaissance artists used to have their "students" do their shit for them? ahhh, those were the days.

thankfully i have all those reruns i can put up here when work gets too busy or the phone keeps ringing, or the girlies start blowing up the pager and the web cam.

its not that i dont love kids, i do. its not that i dont love the blog, i do. its just that theres a time and a place for everything. and right now its time for pretty much all of my friends to have kids and its time for me to start reaping the rewards of this blog.

last night a lovely young lass wanted to show me her uniform on the web cam. always one to analyze the amazing curves of my readers, i took her up on her offer.

europe, where have you been all my life?

now if i had a child, how could i have explained how daddy had his hand down his shorts while in the computer room? i mean seriously. and what would wifey say?

i mean it was hard enough to explain to the chickey that what she was doing was driving me crazy and i had to do what was natural. fortunately she not only understood but asked me if i would lower the angle of the cam so she could see what i was doing down there.

now what i find fascinating is this girl - IS A VIRGIN LIKE EVERY GIRL IVE RUN ACROSS LATELY - but was super into it. obviously not ho-ey, or slutty, and in a very cute way shy about things. she kept looking around to see if her sister would open the door but thankfully that didnt happen until the end.

and i kept thinking to myself - "this girl can see your stupid face, your hairy fat belly, and your stupid clothes... your cam isnt forgiving, your closet is a mess. and shes got that huge smile on her face. how can this be?"

and the only answer is its because of blogging. the biggest blessing of my life since the Nexus.

for fun i put a wooden spoon in my shorts and played with it so that it looked like it was my schween. i was all, mind if i take out my rock hard wood? her eyes got huge. and she typed in "go for it" and looked at the door for her sister.

i had both hands on the spoon so she couldnt see it. every now and then the head of the spoon poked out and her mouth gaped. i threw my head back and rubbed the spoon furisiously. as she was glued to her screen.

eventually i showed her the spoon and she laughed.

again, i couldnt have done that with kids bumping into me on their trikes.

well maybe I could, but i doubt my wife would like it. so yes, im very happy for my friends, and my sister, and everyone with their kids. and im also happy that i can stay up late and do the things that i like doing best. making hot girls' jaw drop.

Stuff On My Cat

Wrong place at the wrong time.

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 1:20pm PDT

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Cat: Biskit
Charlie is thrilled to be playing the Statue of Liberty.

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 1:19pm PDT

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Cats: Charlie and Raegan
I thought those were extinct....guess not.

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 1:19pm PDT

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Cat: Jack
Cat Stack shirt now available!

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 1:17pm PDT

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Don't forget to mow the lawn today.

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 1:17pm PDT

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Cat: Erin
Thanks for the kind words, Roman.

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 1:12pm PDT

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Woody rides Seymore.

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 1:11pm PDT

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Hockey!

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 1:10pm PDT

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Cat: Smokey
Tabitha hates frogs.

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 1:08pm PDT

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Blaze can't wait until Superman Returns.

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 1:07pm PDT

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this moment

Those of you who are easily distracted, ...

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 12:49pm PDT by alan

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Those of you who are easily distracted, with an inquisitive mind and a tendency towards time-wasting, displacement activities, procrastination and idle pursuits, should under no circumstances go here.
Anyone who is easily distracted and suffers ...

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 12:49pm PDT by alan

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Anyone who is easily distracted and suffers from a hunger for useless information, along with a tendency towards time-wasting, should under no circumstances go here.
[nt]

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 12:06pm PDT by alan

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sixteen days under the sundae

one last thing before i go

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 10:59am PDT by raspberry sundae

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raspberry out.

MRBFK

Life Without End

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 10:43am PDT by Bobby Farouk

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Hand me that Zola, honey. Pass me some wallpaper too. Let me put down a board to protect your half. You’ll still hear me snore but I won’t see your back. I’ll keep my jokes to myself so you don’t laugh. But hand me that Zola first.

Don’t put your pot on my stove. Take your cat off my doorstep. I’ll draw the drapes on your streetlamp. You can cry round and I’ll scream flat. I’ll say Lee and you can say Grant. But hand me that Zola first.

(I put your Capote on my shelf, next to my Irish saints; I let you read Christie in my bed without a single complaint)

Slapdash the Christmas Cards, shootout the tulip bulbs; I’ll wait for your midnight sigh of relief. When you think I’ve finally gone to sleep, I’ll listen to your muttering spasms of grief. But hand me that Zola first.

this moment

Why is it more proper to relieve ...

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 5:45am PDT by alan

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Why is it more proper to relieve our hunger and thirst than to rid ourselves of melancholy? Benedict de Spinoza (1632-77)

filth from another level

culled from

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 2:49am PDT

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the short story "one day all this will be yours"
When I was younger I would hold broken glass in my hand and squeeze it until I couldn't think about anything else. Even now I can spin a carving knife into the air and catch it by the handle. In college I went to a palm reader, and she took one look and refused to say anything.
—Philipp Meyer

tonypierce.com + busblog

a few years ago

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 2:27am PDT by tony pierce

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a few years ago yesterday i admitted meeting miss spain universe

i first met miss spain universe, mar'a jesos ruiz garz-n, in a topless tapas joint in madrid in january 2000.

she didnt know the place was a topless tapas establishment either, but we both took off our shirts and cozied up to the bar.

i was there with two dozen of my closest friends to see rock group tsar.

there being spain, not the topless tapas place.

mar'a asked me if i was americano

i said, si.

she asked me if i liked my tapas

i said, si.

she asked me if i liked her cunt-

then she coughed

country

and i said

si.

she asked me if i knew more spanish than just yes and no and i said

si.

she asked me what other words i knew.

i said, burrito, taco, guacamole...

she said, we dont have those things here.

i said, si.

so we simply slowdanced to the spanish guitars and i sang her a little song that i made up there on the spot.

i sang

spanish girl
in all the world
i want a spanish girl

she doesnt know
how much i weigh in pounds
she doesnt care
that im 108, 108 years oooooold
oooooh my spanish girl.

she sighed and looked at me with eyes of a girl falling madly in love
as the twinkle lights of the disco ball rained possibilities

and the lines began to form outside the dunkin' donuts across the pallazo.

she said, i know how much pounds you weigh.

i said, what about the metric system.

she said, yes, but i know.

i said, ah.

she said, si.

and i smiled.

and i tilted my head to the exito

and she said si.

and we left into the madrid night forgetting our shirts

and not giving a muchas gracias.

art waif + the detox + sugarbaybe + top pic of amy collins

The Sound of Young America

I live in your dreams.

Posted: May 25th, 2006, 8:25pm PDT by Jesse Thorn

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From listener Josh:

Jesse you bastard!

Mere hours after I financially subscribed to your show the true nature of our relationship was shown. I had gladly clicked the Paypal subscription, and, confident in my support of public (?) podcasting/radio, happily laid down to my nightly slumber. Not long after my grey matter had entered deep REM sleep, you, Jesse Thorn, America's Radio Sweetheart, appeared in my subconscious out of nowhere like you were Tony Kushner or something. Bizarrely, however, it wasn't actually you, Jesse. It was a bald and obese version of you. Gross! You, and for some reason I, were at a radio/podcast convention, although it was more like a children's summer camp. You were setting up a TSOYA table on a grass hill as others were setting up other booths (unfortunately no Jimmy Pardo). It was altogether bizarre, though nothing much happened. Why did you choose to enter my mind? When did you get these powers?!

Suspiciously yours,

Josh
Podcast: The College Years: Birthday Party!

Posted: May 25th, 2006, 8:16pm PDT by Jesse Thorn

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On this Sound of Young America: The College Years, we celebrate Jordan's birthday with an orgiastic call-in fiesta. It's effing delightful.

Listen Online

Download This Week's Show
Subscribe in iTunes
Donate to Support The Sound
Philadelphia on Fox

Posted: May 25th, 2006, 7:14pm PDT by Jesse Thorn

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That's not the Tom Hanks film, that's It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, the F/X sitcom. The little-seen show will be running on Fox three consecutive weeks after the Family Guy, starting June 11th.

Philadelphia is sort of a little series that could... F/X picked it up after it's writer/creator/stars made a pilot with their own money and a digicam, and it ran moderately succesfully on the station last year. Hopefully this is a sign that F/X will be supporting the show more, because it's pretty dang good. It's a brighter version of the standard "rag-tag bunch of 20-something pals" sitcom, with some dark subject matter and some real chemistry in the cast. After I watched it, I felt like watching it again (and did), which is pretty rare for me when it comes to TV.

Hopefully I'll get a couple of the guys behind it on the show, I've been talking to F/X about it for a million bajillion years. This one's a sign-and-follow.

tonypierce.com + busblog

lost finale"live together, die ...

Posted: May 25th, 2006, 2:42pm PDT by tony pierce

Tags: [edit]

lost finale
"live together, die alone"
abc

millions and millions of people watched Lost last night, so for those of you who didnt, write me a nice email about how badly you want me, or if youre a dude, write your momma about how much you love her. cuz the spoilers are about to flow like rhymes from ice cube.

the instapundit's favorite writer, kurt vonnegut taught us that good stories have believable characters, but great stories introduce seemingly secondary characters that end up being central figures.

so to me, what made last nights episode, the two-hour finale so wonderful was the return of the man who was in the hatch when locke found it, desmond, and his amazing backstory.

in fact, last night made me believe that my favorite show isnt a story about Jack or Locke or even my beloved fat man Hurly, but that this is the story of desmond

who is being tested, and monitored, and fucked with, and who has the best love story.

i hate that my Black brother is such a villan and so unbelievably driven to sell out everything that he believes in for a son that he barely knows. i dont buy it. nor do i like it.

i love the crazy four-toed statue remain which immediately made me think that this is the island of buggs bunny. evil buggs. the one where everyone runs down into holes and hides and then pops up to hunt other wabbits.

i love that the preacher was right and that desmond even knows that you shouldnt fuck with spiritual men. and im glad that he who was wrong admitted it. sincerly.

im happy about who didnt die in this episode, paritucularily because i had heard rumblings about this fellow or that one dying and when it looked like someone was going to get blowed up or on fire, something even more spectacular happened other than mere death.

i loved that the sky got crazy. i loved that the aussie chick finally got her stick out of her ass. and i really loved that we learned a LOT more about "pushing the button".

although now i wonder if they can push the button ever again.

will locke fix it? will the iraqi dude help him?

and what about the boat? why would you sail that thing to where the others are? dont you think they'll just steal it?

i love that hurley is so unwanted. i love that jack and the hot babe are so uncomfortable about their getting caught in the net. and of course i love poisoned darts, but who doesnt love that shit.

my friends at work speculate that Walt's dog will have some sort of significance to the plot, and if Lost wants to hire me for a few weeks, i know i could write a pretty funny backstory episode where we learn about his dark past.

and all id ask for is $50k.

$40k if i can have access to the hot tub and laundry facilities.

SIRI shot up from 3.63 to 4.22 since i told you yesterday + marty + bicylemark + reverse vampyr

The Sound of Young America

Vote on the next TSOYA sticker!

Posted: May 25th, 2006, 10:57am PDT by Jesse Thorn

Tags: [edit]

Which will be the next Sound of Young America sticker? Only YOU can decide! Click here to vote in the MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION SINCE AMERICAN IDOL LAST NIGHT.

this moment

Ingmar Bergman site now launched in English. ...

Posted: May 25th, 2006, 10:29am PDT by alan

Tags: [edit]

Ingmar Bergman site now launched in English. There are some great things on this site if you hunt around, including videos, interviews, and images (in the Media links for individual films). I was interested to discover that, for the 1994 Göteborg Film Festival, Bergman chose his eleven (why eleven?) favourite films: The Circus (Charles Chaplin, USA 1928) Quai des Brûmes, (Marcel Carné, France

The Sound of Young America

How to do a stage combat move...

Posted: May 25th, 2006, 10:09am PDT by Jesse Thorn

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A couple of weeks ago I recorded a "one-minute how-to" on George Smyth's podcast of the same name. It was just released today, so if you'd like to learn how to do a staged hair pull, head on over there and take a listen.

sixteen days under the sundae

swim out past the breakers, watch the world die

Posted: May 25th, 2006, 9:31am PDT by raspberry sundae

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ok kids so i'm outtie-500. which is to say, work will probably be nuts as everyone realizes i'm not going to be here until tuesday, and i'm going to the constantines tonight and so probably won't be able to post again till i get back monday. i'll try and take lots of pictures, and will be thinking of you with love. in the meantime i leave you in the capable hands of my twin brother, mister ridley

Red Boldface

Boner

Posted: May 25th, 2006, 9:28am PDT by Red Boldface

Tags: [edit]

A handsome young Zen monk came to Bankei and complained: "Master, I have an uncontrollable boner. How can I master it?"

"You have something very strange," replied Bankei. "Let me see what you have."

"Just now I cannot show it to you," replied the other.

"When can you show it to me?" asked Bankei.

"It arises unexpectedly," replied the student.

"Then," concluded Bankei, "it must not be your own true nature. If it were, you could show it to me at any time. When you were born, you did not have it, and your parents did not give it to you. Think that over."

bird on the moon

Things

Posted: May 25th, 2006, 9:00am PDT

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I've been told by ancient sages that Things are busy creatures. Indeed, there have been so many Things infesting my life (they seem to follow me everywhere) that I can't move without bumping into a Thing. Things will therefore make one's life as busy as they are, leading to a sudden delay in blogcasting, if only for a day. So, today I must work diligently to clear up the Things if I'm ever going to get back on schedule. I will likely be able to post tomorrow, if I can at least clear up some of the Things presently entwined around Hermes, the trusty laptop.

Happy Thursday!

this moment

[nt]

Posted: May 25th, 2006, 8:19am PDT by alan

Tags: [edit]

MRBFK

Uncomfortable

Posted: May 25th, 2006, 5:22am PDT by Bobby Farouk

Tags: [edit]

I’ve got Wheat Chex in my eyes.

Go on. You do not.

Look. It’s Wheat Chex in my eyes.

Say. You’ve got Wheat Chex in your eyes.

I told you I had Wheat Chex in my eyes.

How’d you get Wheat Chex in your eyes?

Same way you get anything in your eyes. I got too close.

You have to get pretty close to Wheat Chex to get them in your eyes. How close were you?

Close enough.

Does it hurt?

It’s uncomfortable.

I bet it is.

How do I get it out? The normal way isn’t working.

You mean the normal way of closing your eyes and letting them water? So the Wheat Chex floats away like a Wheat Chex surfer catching a wave?

You’re not funny. Have you ever had Wheat Chex in your eyes?

Usually, I just eat the Wheat Chex. I almost never mistake Wheat Chex for a facial scrub. So no.

It’s uncomfortable. What should I do?

I’d wait. I’d give it some time.

How much time? How long?

Difficult to say. My experience with Wheat Chex in the eyes is limited. Very limited.

I’m telling you, it’s uncomfortable.

But it doesn’t hurt?

It’s uncomfortable. I don’t want to say it hurts.

That’s an important distinction, the difference between discomfort and pain.

You wouldn’t think it so funny if the Wheat Chex were in your eyes.

I’ll give you that one. I wouldn’t. This is one of those rare instances where I wouldn’t want to be you.

You mean you usually wish you were me?

I’m just trying to make you feel better.

Stuff On My Cat

A night of babysitting gone horribly wrong...

Posted: May 25th, 2006, 3:30am PDT

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Cat: George
The last photo of Snickers before being eaten alive.

Posted: May 25th, 2006, 3:30am PDT

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tonypierce.com + busblog

Lost was amazing. Idol was great and ...

Posted: May 25th, 2006, 3:29am PDT by tony pierce

Tags: [edit]

Lost was amazing. Idol was great and Prince stole the show
however, theres nothing better than three gay guys on stage on national tv

video of prince and the twins + crazy car crash + white dude dominates at hoops in venice beach

Stuff On My Cat

What a pleasant surprise, it's Tom!

Posted: May 25th, 2006, 3:28am PDT

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Tom seen here staring at the SOMC logo.
Cat Stack shirt now available!

Posted: May 25th, 2006, 3:26am PDT

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Kali finally settles the score with the ball of yarn.

Posted: May 25th, 2006, 3:26am PDT

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Cat: Kali
Quazar works in the collections department.

Posted: May 25th, 2006, 3:24am PDT

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Enzo the cat seen here winning big.

Posted: May 25th, 2006, 3:24am PDT

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Cat: Enzo
Studying hard or hardly studying?

Posted: May 25th, 2006, 3:22am PDT

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Cat: Hex
Who needs a coffee table these days?

Posted: May 25th, 2006, 3:21am PDT

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Cat: Mabel
Patsy pounced on Martellis after she wouldn't change the channel.

Posted: May 25th, 2006, 3:20am PDT

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sixteen days under the sundae

old and fat

Posted: May 24th, 2006, 1:25am PDT by raspberry sundae

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oh i'm SO not ready for this trip this weekend... the kiddo lost his birth certificate, so i paid to express a new one and it hasn't arrived.. we need to get it so he can get across the border.... oh i'm so stressed out. i have a list of things i need to get to bring with me, and i am going to see the constantines tomorrow night, so i headed out to london drugs to pick up some stuff. i

bird on the moon

Sexual ornaments grow out of all proportion

Posted: May 24th, 2006, 8:38pm PDT

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The male obsession with size appears to be universal, according to a new survey of animal species where males use ornamental body parts to attract females. The study showed that sexual ornaments such as antlers or a peacock's feathery display become disproportionately large as body size increases.

Most body parts grow proportionally with the rest of the body as individuals of a species become larger, although scientists have long known that visual cues of reproductive prowess are a special case.

Now, in the largest survey to date, James Brown at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, US, and his colleagues have examined the proportions of 284 ornament-bearing species to see whether the tendency was truly universal. They found that in virtually every case, ornament size grew by roughly the square of the overall growth rate.

The Sound of Young America

Fundraising Update

Posted: May 24th, 2006, 5:29pm PDT by Jesse Thorn

Tags: [edit]

We now have 32 financial subscribers supporting the program on a monthly basis. Their donations total about $150 every single month for the show. We've also received several one-time donations.

These donations have paid our hosting costs the past two months. They've also paid for the equipment, postage, and most of the materials for the big Maximum Fun Club mailing that went out to everyone who filled out the listener survey late last year. I just ordered some postcards, and I'm working on a new batch of stickers and hopefully, soon, a banner for events. T-Shirts are on the horizon, though how soon they come is slightly dependent on my personal financial stability.

A few folks have asked me why I chose to ask for financial "subscriptions" rather than one-time checks. The reason is this: I'm not a fundraiser. A pro tries to get folks in at the bottom, then ratchet their contributions up every year or so. Because I work full-time, produce the show, host it, edit it, support the website and write the blog, I don't have time right now to do that. So I offer these subscriptions that renew themselves (you can cancel at any time), and the subscriptions give the show relatively steady income that I can count on when I'm, you know, spending it.

As this income continues to grow, I'll be using some of it to pay for things that I should have been doing all along, had I not been so (personally) broke. These include attending conventions (both radio and podcasting) to promote the show, the aformentioned shirts, perhaps some events here in the Bay Area or elsewhere, and so on. And, depending on my job situation, pay for me.

So there you have it. If you have any feelings about any of this, please share it, either by email (splangy@splangy.com) or in the comments. If you haven't donated, but you'd like to, why not do so now?

bird on the moon

Losing language, losing culture

Posted: May 24th, 2006, 4:30pm PDT

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The way you talk identifies the group you belong to, says David Lightfoot, dean of Georgetown Universitys Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and a professor of linguistics. A language essentially disappears because people choose at some level of consciousness to adopt another groups language its an act of allegiance to one culture and a rejection of another culture.

But more than the rejection of a culture, the death of a language can be a step toward the death of the culture it expresses and embodies. Encoded in Middle Chulym, and in every language, are clues to how people livedkinship systems, economies, livelihood, and leisure. Language conveys evidence of cultural phenomena, says Lightfoot. If a language disappears then the cultural evidence disappears also, because it was only embedded in the language.

Nearly 3,500 of the worlds languages are at risk of extinction in one lifetimeroughly half the worlds total. And theres little stopping the dissolution of the Turkic language that originated on the upper reaches of the Chulym River in the district of Tomsk. In a community of 426, only thirty-five elders are fluent speakers. The rest speak Russian only. Its a moribund language, says Harrison. [via mefi]

The Sound of Young America

Ellen: The Musical

Posted: May 24th, 2006, 3:37pm PDT by Jesse Thorn

Tags: [edit]

Today's "Ellen" is a full-length musical, starring Jack Black, According to Eban Schletter, the composer/lyricist. Also featured are Kristin Chenoweth (Broadway star, also was on West Wing), Karen Kilgariff (Girls' Guitar Club), Crissy Guerrero, Laura Milligan & Tracy DeNisis (from Dave Foley's show "The Tribute"), Olivia Olson (from Love Actually) and Jack Sheldon (the voice of much of Schoolhouse Rocks).

Check your local listings. Somebody should computer-tape this.

(Edit: Brian M. Palmer informs the world that someone has)

Sexy Results!

he might be no romeo

Posted: May 24th, 2006, 2:35pm PDT by Ian

Tags: [edit]

Episodes of "Entourage" are pretty much interchangeable when it comes to being my favorite, but the Bar Mitzvah episode sticks out in particular. For one thing, there's the fact that it's pretty much being made into its own movie (by the by, judging by the title of this article, Bob Strauss obviously has never seen "PCU"). And secondly, for a show that retains plausability by the thinnest of margins, this episode hovers closer to the edge than ever.

First off, there's the whole matter of Sloan stopping short of giving E a pack of Trojans and saying "meet me in Room 112." Not since George Costanza has there been a guy getting ass further out of his league than Eric. And secondly, we have DJ Quik as the guest master of ceremonies, surrounded by 13-year old white girls, spinning Tony Yayo album cuts. Proud moment indeed.

But is it really that unbelievable? Earlier today in Kroger, I heard the "Let's Hear It For The Boy" jam which is always jarring when heard anywhere outside of a Bar Mitzvah. Like "Get Ready For This," it's one of those songs that seems so anachronistic that it's hard to imagine a time when it was actually new. But the bigger issue is that they're not making Bar Mitzvah introduction music anymore, so as time goes on, songs like these may very well be forgotten and we'll be left with nothing but "Groupie Love" or Grandpa Munchie or whatever.

But not only will we probably never hear a song with its sentiment ever again (much like the case with Joe Public's "Live And Learn"), "Let's Hear It For The Boy" and its ilk constitute what has to be the least influential music of all time. I'm talking about "music" in a sense to mean "a popular genre that can be defined." It's one thing to say nothing was influenced by one-hit novelty wonders like Lou Bega and Right Said Fred (actually, "My Humps" is nothing if not a remake of that song's essence). But if you look at stuff like the Pointer Sisters and whatnot, I can't help but think that it's completely relegated to the dustbin of history. Just about every single genre of music, no matter how bad, always comes back in vogue. '80s synth-pop, hair metal, hippie psychedelia, swing, ol skool hip-hop, boy bands, girl bands, rap-metal, etc. They all influenced somebody. R&B of today and tomorrow will likely always take cues from Motown and modern day "baby makin' music." Luther Vandross may be consuming Krispy Kreme hamburgers in the great Zebra Lounge in the sky, but there's always gonna be someone with a name like Donell Jones doing something in that vein. But when was the last time you heard something as uptempo as "I'm So Excited" on R&B radio? Name me one song that retains any of "Let's Hear It For The Boy" or "She Works Hard For The Money"'s sonic blueprint.

Granted, the you could argue that "She Works Hard For The Money" and "I'm So Excited" have thematic influence on something like "A Woman's Work" or "Freak Like Me," but "Let's Hear It For The Boy"? You have to stretch that a bit to fit into the lineage of "Whatta Man," but "Let's Hear For It The Boy" lacks the sort of raunch that is requisite to a tribute for Treach. So in the end, the least influential song in the least influential genre of all time: "Let's Hear It For The Boy."

tonypierce.com + busblog

i feel dirty even typing ...

Posted: May 24th, 2006, 2:33pm PDT by tony pierce

Tags: [edit]

i feel dirty even typing this. but fine, i'll admit it. i watched American Idol last night.

and i watched it a little last week too.

i tuned in because they suckered me into it. their shit worked. i wanted to see how that gray haired no talent schmuck could have beat out all my nubian princesses and that rocker and is poised to beat the pretty little teengirl whose mama is a voice teacher.

to be honest i dont get it. how the fuck is the soul patrol gonna be your next american idol?

i dont think simon can understand it either which is why he tried to sabatoge the upset-in-the-making by crowing him the Idol last night, thus creating the reverse-psychology backlash that will spill over to the voting.

dont get me wrong, im not crazy about the chickie either. she does nothing for me. and Somewhere Over the Rainbow? wasnt that done way better by that gay dude in Star Search like twenty years ago? wanna impress me, do Rainbow Connection or that angry kelly clarkson tune that she did at the grammys.

but last week when they showed how elliot had 33% and soul patrol had 33% and chickie had 33% i knew that whatever dude made the cut would win

because anyone who would vote for eliot over the babe or gray hair over the babe in the semi finals would vote for the dude over the babe in the finals.

my theory about bro is all the dads who watch american idol with their teen daughters see a little of themselves in the bozo. they see a guy who cant dance or sing up on that stage like hes got a stick in his ass and they root him on out of narcisism. plus they know they'll never bang that chick. thats the sort of girl who never puts out, always does her homework, and wont even let the high school quarterback get his pinky stinky at prom - but will let him pay for the limo and the lobster and the tickets and the flowers and the etc etc. whore.

america should be ashamed of themselves.

look what the eurohttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifs are doing over in europe. theyve got an american idol competition too. its called the eurovision blah blah blah. you know who won over there? some Gwar ripoff with a shitty song. but at least they look like Gwar.

im never gonna buy a taylor hicks cd. im never going to buy a kristin mcphee record. the only thing im gonna buy is playboy when she poses in there in five years, which is why everyone says Fox is the real winner of this second rate talent show, but the real winner is hugh hefner because you know the Girls of American Idol is gonna be a best seller.

i hope mandesa gets the centerfold.

SIRI is at 3.63 + gilliam + video of guns n roses live last week

bird on the moon

Greenhouse gas-temperature feedback mechanism may raise warming beyond previous estimates

Posted: May 24th, 2006, 12:28pm PDT

Tags: [edit]

...The authors focused especially on relatively recent climatic anomaly known as the "Little Ice Age." During this period (about 1550-1850), immortalized in many paintings of frozen landscapes in Northern Europe, Earth was substantially colder than it is now. This, scientists have concluded, was due largely to reduced solar activity, and just as during true ice ages, the atmospheric carbon level dropped during the Little Ice Age. The authors used this information to estimate how sensitive the carbon dioxide concentration is to temperature, which allowed them to calculate how much the climate-carbon dioxide feedbacks will affect future global warming.

As Marten Scheffer explains, "Although there are still significant uncertainties, our simple data-based approach is consistent with the latest climate-carbon cycle models, which suggest that global warming will be accelerated by the effects of climate change on the rate of carbon dioxide increase. In view of our findings, estimates of future warming that ignore these effects may have to be raised by about 50 percent. We have, in fact, been conservative on several points. For instance, we do not account for the greenhouse effect of methane, which is also known to increase in warm periods."

The Sound of Young America

Are Germans funny?

Posted: May 24th, 2006, 12:17pm PDT by Jesse Thorn

Tags: [edit]

There's a great piece in the Guardian with a theory about why English-language comedy doesn't translate to German. To paraphrase briefly, it's largely a matter of sentence structure. The strict structure of German, and it's rigorous specificity, make it difficult to give sentences and language double-meanings and "reveals." The author describes how, when translating a show about standup comedy into German, his German partners wanted to transpose it into a theatrical, caberet context:
...this instinct to formalise a genre of comedy we accept as inherently informal is not indivisible from the limitations the German language imposes on conventional British comedy structures. The flexibility of the English language allows us to imagine that we are an inherently witty nation, when in fact we just have a vocabulary and a grammar that allow for endlessly amusing confusions of meanings.
There are also some great German jokes, like this one:
Tabea Rudolph, 26, Stuttgart

There are problems in the woods. The animals of the forest are always drunk, so the fox decides to ban alcohol. The following day, the fox spies a rabbit hanging out of a tree, clearly wasted. The fox ticks him off, and carries on his way. But the next day he sees the rabbit drunk again, and gives him a final warning. The next day, the fox does his rounds and there's no sign of the rabbit, but he notices a straw sticking out of a stream. Wondering what it is, the fox scoops it out, only to find a very drunk rabbit on the other end of it. "How many times do I have to tell you that animals of the forest aren't allowed alcohol?" says the Fox. "We fishes don't give a toss what the animals of the forest aren't allowed to do," says the rabbit.

Link

Sexy Results!

reppin' the t-dot

Posted: May 24th, 2006, 11:40am PDT by Ian

Tags: [edit]

'Nother review up yesterday: checkit...

In my latest rant about why obviously subpar MC's are getting shine in '06, I compared it to the NBA Draft. Some years, the #1 is LeBron, but some years the #1 is K-Mart. And some years, K-Mart seems like a sensible choice, because the guys behind him are Stro Show, Darius Miles, Marcus Fizer, Mike Miller, DerMarr Johnson and Chris Mihm. Really, check out the 2000 draft some time. You could really make the argument that Mark Madsen would be on the All-Rookie team.

Anyways, the draft is upon us now and the question is whether Toronto is better off having the #1 pick. Before we begin, there's nothing that pisses me off in draft contexts more than teams that get ragged on for "taking a guy too early." There are squads with obvious needs at point guard, and yet, they won't take Marcus Williams or whatnot because he's "not worthy" of something like the #2 pick and its attendant prestige. Dude, if it's the guy you want, fucking take him unless you somehow think he'll be around in the second round. Yeah, you should try to trade down, but I'm fairly certain it's harder to get a deal done than it looks. If Toronto really wants Brandon Roy, by all means, trade picks with the Trail Blazers straight up for a ham sandwich or something.

The problem with them getting the first pick is that in all likelihood, they'll get a guy that will make them good enough to avoid having a decent shot at Greg Oden next year. On the one hand, there's the school of thought that they're fucked. I would imagine that most teams are in it to win a championship, but out of the four major sports, the NBA is the most top-heavy. Almost every year, the best team wins it all. In other sports, you can win a championship if one or two guys step it up to a superhuman level. That's true in the NBA as well, but it's always a guy who was The Fucking Man beforehand. There's a big difference between "The Fucking Man" and a guy who's merely an All-Star. Think if the Rockets had Brad Daugherty instead of Hakeem Olajuwon, if the Lakers had Eddie Jones and Dikembe Mutombo instead of Kobe and Shaq, if the Spurs had Jamal Magloire instead of Tim Duncan. You think there'd be such a thing as Big Shot Rob?

Think back to the teams that have brought home trophies over the past couple of decades. There aren't a whole lot of them. You have to put a Hall of Famer on the court and sometimes, you might need two. The Pistons proved an exception to this rule, but then again, they beat a fundamentally fucked-up Laker team. I mean, it would be a stunning accomplishment if Megan and I were to beat Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf in doubles' tennis. But if I found out that they were getting divorced the next day, it wouldn't be quite the same.

And this year, there is no guy who's "The Fucking Man." Perhaps Adam Morrison comes close, since I'm a firm believer in picking guys who lit it up in college rather than a dude who can't even crack 20 minutes per game in a Euro league. Really, is it that fucking bad that he ended up crying after they lost to UCLA? I'd be more worried about how LaMarcus Aldridge got completely shut down against LSU. Maybe his bawling showed he isn't ready for the NBA after all since I'm convinced that close to 75% of all teams couldn't care less whether they win or lose.

But in reality, I think Toronto couldn't have picked a better year to win the lottery when there isn't a stone-cold #1. Everyone's on David Stern's dick, but he's made some colossally dumb moves. And the only thing dumber than putting a team in Toronto was putting one in Vancouver. Sure, Toronto is a bigger city than something like Sacramento, Portland or San Antonio; but for those cities, the NBA's the only game in town. Guys like Kardinal Offishall and whatnot will try to tell you that the T-Dot is "the New York City of Canada," which makes it, in essence, Salt Lake City. I'm not saying it's like the SLC culturally, just in the NBA sense that the only guys they'll ever get to play for them are dudes they drafted, white guys and Euros. Maybe this will all change under Bryan Colangelo, but when was the last time someone left the Raptors a satisfied customer?

Bosh and Villanueva are good parts, but they play pretty much the same position. And I'm not sure how long you can keep them around for; this is purely conjecture, but don't you think that if the Hawks and Knicks respectively offered them the same amount of money on the reup, they'd both leave? Thus, if you're gonna have a situation where you've got the #1 pick, it might as well be in a draft where the two choices for #1 are an Italian and a white guy who voluntarily played basketball in Spokane. It usually takes a couple of years to become The Fucking Man and a few more to get the pieces you need to surround them. At least there's a good chance that Bagnani and Morrison will stick around and become either a piece or The Fucking Man themselves. Remember the lessons of Steve Francis when it comes to playing in Canada; I doubt he'd pull the same shit if he was about to get drafted by the Supersonics.

In other white guy news, Jones on the NBA shows us why blogs exist with his 15 Worst White Ballers in NBA History post.

Also, I'd remiss to not mention how That Fucking Guy is pretty much just a distillation of Wheelhouse's breakdown on what it takes to win an NBA championship.

this moment

Love Love means to learn to look ...

Posted: May 24th, 2006, 11:00am PDT by alan

Tags: [edit]

Love

Love means to learn to look at yourself

The way one looks at distant things

For you are only one thing among many.

And whoever sees that way heals his heart,

Without knowing it, from various ills—

A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.

Then he wants to use himself and things

So that they stand in the glow of ripeness.

It doesn’t matter whether he knows what he serves:

Who serves best doesn’t always understand.

Czeslaw Milosz

sixteen days under the sundae

no sinister blade will poison us

Posted: May 24th, 2006, 10:29am PDT by raspberry sundae

Tags: [edit]

i feel as though i need to apologize with you. i feel as though i've not been pulling my weight around here these days - my posts have been uninspiring and there has not been nearly enough photography. well, until the last couple of days, anyway, 'cause i think i've been back to normal lately. this morning i was staring at my little bloggity trying to figure out what was going on, and why i've

bird on the moon

Web inventor warns of 'dark' net

Posted: May 24th, 2006, 8:22am PDT

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The web should remain neutral and resist attempts to fragment it into different services, web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee has said. Recent attempts in the US to try to charge for different levels of online access web were not "part of the internet model," he said in Edinburgh. He warned that if the US decided to go ahead with a two-tier internet, the network would enter "a dark period".

Sir Tim was speaking at the start of a conference on the future of the web. "What's very important from my point of view is that there is one web," he said. "Anyone that tries to chop it into two will find that their piece looks very boring."

MRBFK

Even an Old Habit Can Die Young

Posted: May 24th, 2006, 7:46am PDT by Bobby Farouk

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You have to wonder about the person that reads two hundred books a year. He must have a housekeeper. A cook and a gardener. Someone to put out the trash Monday mornings, shovel snow in the winter, mow grass in the summer. A guy for getting the tires changed on the car. Hired hands and good neighbors; local folk to do the necessary things.

I used to read fifty books a year. Now I can’t finish one. There are about twelve in progress. I pile them up on the bed. The wife rolls over in the night and says, It’s a little crowded here.

It’s a bed, I say. It’s always a little crowded.

I don’t tell her about the old girlfriend with whom I shared a single bed for over six months. I guess that was love. We saved on our heating bill. I was younger then. Before people learned how to snore. No bed was too small.

Fifty books is no big deal. Counting is silly anyway.

The pile had been closer to twenty-five books about a month ago. I said, This is ridiculous.

If you say so, the wife said, from under the pile.

I put half of them back on the shelves, or in piles under the bed.

I bet you left the bookmarks in them, the wife said.

What’s your point? I said.

You get my point, she said. You know what my point is.

I did. I did get her point.

Stuff On My Cat

The reason for the season.

Posted: May 24th, 2006, 4:31am PDT

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Cats: Raegan and Charlie
Paper cranes.

Posted: May 24th, 2006, 4:30am PDT

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Cat: Beanie
George is militant about his flea protection.

Posted: May 24th, 2006, 4:29am PDT

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Cat Stack shirt now available!

Posted: May 24th, 2006, 4:28am PDT

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Nicholas sure drinks a lot of milk.

Posted: May 24th, 2006, 4:27am PDT

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Homework breaks are fun.

Posted: May 24th, 2006, 4:27am PDT

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Cat: Snowball
It's time for an intervention...

Posted: May 24th, 2006, 4:26am PDT

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Smokey plays host to the Monsters Inc. friends.

Posted: May 24th, 2006, 4:24am PDT

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The view is much better from up here.

Posted: May 24th, 2006, 4:23am PDT

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Cat: Maya
Oolong tribute brought to you by Aya and Angus

Posted: May 24th, 2006, 4:20am PDT

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tonypierce.com + busblog

im an emotional wreck. in ...

Posted: May 24th, 2006, 4:09am PDT by tony pierce

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im an emotional wreck. in two weeks ive met a cheerleader and a stewardess. and ive fallen for both of them. and theyve both left me. and now i feel empty and worthless and hollow and incomplete.

not in a sad way just in a way i once discussed with the guitar player of my favorite band in college. he knew a lot about astrology and his sign was the water bearer. and he said that after a performance it was like he had let all the water out of his bucket.

he said a good show was like carrying a huge bucket miles and miles and then up a really big hill and giving it to all the thirsty people. and that was a great feeling, you know, of stoking those people. but then he said he felt really crappy. and empty. not buddhist empty which is what you shoot for, but out of gas empty like you totally forgot to fill up when the red light came on empty.

like starving in the middle of the night 139am empty.

we didnt have a lot of talks but i remember that one.

never did i think as a little kid that i would feel crappy after being with one hot babe after another. but sometimes, kids, you will. and its at those times that you have to remember that the devil exists and hes trying to fuck up your good thing. hes trying to harsh your mellow. hes trying to make you not enjoy your little glow.

hes trying to drag you down to his level.

the thing about fairy tales is after the young prince gets his blowjob from the princess that he just saved, the story is over and they live happily ever after. which we know is bullshit. and why i will never read my children ridiculous lies.

for what would happen next would be the prince might get all paranoid and wonder, whats this stewardess really like when shes not laid over in LA all tipsy and happy cuz its warm and sunny and clear? the prince might even wonder if she was bullshitting when she said she got that hot little pussy checked out just last week. and then if he chose to trust her, he might get all weirded out and wonder if she meant it when she said she'll call him the next time shes in LA.

i dont know one person who ever lived happily ever after.

maybe marilyn manson. but his records started to suck as soon as he dumped rose. nobody wants that.

its almost memorial day and i would like to take another road trip somewhere but i aint got nowhere to road trip to. plus i want to save my money for the next step for the busblog. so i think im gonna stay home this weekend. ive been a good boy so far this year and kept to my new years resolution of reading at least one chapter from the bible every sunday. and maybe thats why ive been blessed with some sweet girls who have crossed my path.

i havent gotten very far in the bible but thats not the point, the point is to just read and read slow and get every drop. this week i read about sarah and abraham and how sarah was barren and abraham was old and sarah said fine you can "go into" my maidservant and see what you can do about getting us a kid, and after abraham went into her he knocked the chick, hagar, up. and then the hagar got all haughty with sarah and sorta wanted to raise lil ishmael herself. sarah got pissed and chased hagar into the desert. there an angel told her to relax, that everything would be fine, but she had to return to sarah and submit to her. aka hand over the boy.

i had remembered that story but i forgot about a small detail. hagar was an egyptian. aka Black! meaning a progeny of abraham - one of the most important patriarchs of judiasm, christianity and islam - sired a son who was a half black kid. and it was his first born. take that shelbyville!

i dont know what it means, but i do know that whenever im emotional, something that rarely happens in my life, however its been happening more now that im off the pipe, its always nice to slip into the bible and see what other people had to deal with, drama wise. and it chills me out, because my problems are miniscule compared to having to try to appease my wife whose jealous and angry that the hot egyptian chick is waving her finger around and has one hand on her hip talking about oh no you didnt say that my son is your son now.

and the cubs lost in the ninth today

and the zancau was dry today

but its gorgeous in la and im the luckiest old man since abe and kerry wood pitched well and prior is coming back and this time last year i dont think i had even gotten laid once yet. im so far ahead of the game. thats how you beat the devil. he can be beat. its not a game that you win over long periods of time you just have to beat him before you get up out of your chair. so now that hes beat, i can go wash this stewardess off me.

even though i dont wanna. even though she has some of her hair in my sink and normally i hate hair of any sort anywhere but she was different and i sorta like it there but thats living in the past. where the devil wants you. naked titty angels are in the future so keep walking to the light. to the light. keep walking to the good stuff.

kitty bukkake + paxgitmo + upholstered apocalypse + crunkness

Never Underestimate the Power of Stupid People in Large Groups

In the morning can you believe that ...

Posted: May 23rd, 2006, 1:53am PDT

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In the morning can you believe that we're going to be dead and then what? What?! Death?... Formally known as disintegration. Disintegrate, dissolve. Evaporate. Holy moly. What does holiness mean? I bet it has something to do with Jesus. I bet my lucky stars and my rosary beads. Tomorrow we will feel the weight of our decisions and tonight we're just trying to see tomorrow. It's a little ironic. I remember I felt smart in school when I knew what irony meant. Competition is ridiculous. Nobody can be you. They can be a better astronaut but they can't ride the clouds the way you do, number 553 space cadet. You've got finesse. They want potential and leaders. Possibly both glued together in a cheap imitation of siamese twins. I'm great at arts and crafts but after a bit of lapsed time my seventh deadly sin of choice throws it across the room and watches awe-struck as every single thing I've ever constructed shatters in a magnificent rebellion of inadequacy and fickle confusion. Or is it confused fickles, or freckles? I enjoy my freckles the way a pretty girl enjoys her face, mostly she just forgets that it is there or, likewise, that it is pretty but when people compliment her for a product of nature, God, her parents but in no way herself, she smiles and feels good about the sciences, and then indirectly herself, for a few moments.
$Permalink for 'Never_Underestimate_the_Power_of_Stupid_People_in_Large_Groups/2006/05/23/Miller_Dwan_and_other_infractions.'$
Miller Dwan and other infractions.

Posted: May 23rd, 2006, 1:20am PDT

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"He loves Jesus in the real way that exists outside of the bumper sticker. He's a tortured soul though. That's why I like him."

Futures lie unturned.
Mornings grasp for meaning,
purpose undeveloped and not
promised.
The dew that resides
upon the rock on which you sit
slides you across its
slope.
Falling,
grasping,
hoping for friction until
it greets you.

I bet, if you understood your head would explode.

tonypierce.com + busblog

two years ago today i ...

Posted: May 23rd, 2006, 1:19am PDT by tony pierce

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two years ago today i wrote about Blogger Burnout

Tyler Cowen has an interesting post about "blogging burnout" that the instapundit linked today which i whole-heartedly agree with.

so many people think they're these great writers, or they aspire to be great writers, or they think theyre intellectual, or they think they know something about politics, sex, sport, music, or debate, and when it comes time to rock the mic day after day they fall flat on their face.

some complain that they dont want to "give it away for free" on the web but those people are making excuses for even whores come home and have real sex after they clock out. so f the lying liars who are probably procrastinating pros when they do get paid to steal my ideas.

the interenet and the web and blogging is ideal for the real writer and the real reader. i would argue that the real writer is also a great reader, and theres nothing better to read than the web, so i would partially disagree with mr. cowen when he writes that blogging cuts into his time reading, because i assume he is saying it cuts into his book-reading time, which i would argue is being replaced with web-reading, which is also reading. but what do i know.

heres one reason i will probably never experience blogger burnout.

cuz i know that there are no rules on the web other than dont be dull.

which means you can type things like this:

i am in the best fucking mood right now and its only eight fifty eight am on sunday morning.

7. The "Master Bloggers," whoever you think those may be, are strange in the first place. mr. cowen writes. and i would tend to agree. although i dont get enough hits to consider myself a master blogger, i admit to being strange in the first place. and prolific is just a polite way to say obsessive in the same way reclusive is a nice way to say shut-in, the same way eccentric is just a spin on saying rich 'n' crazy. although no one ever calls james brown, mike tyson, or michael jackson eccentric so maybe it doesnt apply if youre black (or were black).

heres when you will experience "blogger burnout":

1. when your internal dialogue gets hijacked by your concerns about what your readers will think.
2. when you are afraid to write down what you are truly thinking about at that moment.
3. when you believe the lie that some people just arent capable of good writing.
4. when you believe the lie that there is a certain way that you "should" write anything.
5. when you get more involved in punctuation, spelling, or aestetics than saying what you want to say.
6. when you get caught up in traffic, hits, popularity, readers, and/or fame.
7. when you believe the lie that what you think doesnt matter.
8. when you believe the lie that what youre about to say has been said before and/or written down better.
9. when you forget that most ideas can be expressed in less than 15 minutes.
10. when you dont set aside a little bit of time each day to update your blog.

if your blog feels more like a "have to" instead of a "get to" youre writing about the wrong things.

perhaps the only thing going through your mind is the hottie at work who you want to bang, but you fucked up and you told this person about your blog, and therefore you are experiencing writers block because you cant think of anything else to say or think about.

its at this time that you should thank blogger.com for allowing unlimited amounts of free blogs.

i suggest that you set up a new blog called www.iwannabonethisonehottie.blogspot.com and get it off your chest.

and dont be suprised that once you get it all out over there, then you will return to your original blog re-focused and ready to rock, and lo and behold not only are you cured of the lie that is blogger burnout, but just the opposite, now you have two rockin blogs, and the newer one is probably better, cuz its more honest.

krista + weed doesnt lead to lung cancer + sk smith + evil china doll

sixteen days under the sundae

allow me to retort

Posted: May 23rd, 2006, 11:16pm PDT by raspberry sundae

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ok so the other day ridley offered some advice to women posting online dating profiles, and i felt as though i should respond in kind. i know his profile is good, 'cause i screened it for him before i let him put it up. hey, what are older, less evil sisters for? 1) learn how to spell. the letter zed has not, does not, and will not, replace(d) the letter ess. unless you are jay-z, of course, in

bird on the moon

Mishlove and Herbert: CONSCIOUSNESS AND QUANTUM REALITY

Posted: May 23rd, 2006, 8:54pm PDT

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MISHLOVE: Now, Bell's theorem, as I understand it, goes back even prior to Bell -- to Einstein, and Einstein's disagreement with quantum physics, back in the early days. He made his classic statement, "God doesn't play dice with the universe," at a time when Einstein himself felt he disagreed with quantum physics, as I understand it. He felt that if quantum physics were true, it would have these horrendous implications which it now turns out are true.

HERBERT: Yes, Einstein was never comfortable with quantum theory, and he basically had three gripes with it. The one gripe was that quantum theory is a probabilistic theory. It just describes things like the world is essentially random and governed only by general laws that give the odds for things to happen, but within these odds anything can happen -- that God plays dice. Einstein didn't like that, but he could have lived with that. The second aspect that Einstein didn't like was the thinglessness, this fuzzy ambiguity -- that the world isn't made of things, it's not made of objects. It was put by Paul Davies -- the notion that somehow big things are made of little things. Quantum theory doesn't describe the world that way. Big things aren't made of little things; they're made of entities whose attributes aren't there when you don't look, but become there when you do look. Now, that sounds very, very strange.

MISHLOVE: Like an illusion.

HERBERT: Like an illusion, yes.

MISHLOVE: Or the Hindu concept of Maya, something like that.

HERBERT: That's right. The world exists when we don't look at it in some strange state that is indescribable. Then when we look at it, it becomes absolutely ordinary, as though someone were trying to pull something over our eyes
-- the world is an illusion. Einstein didn't like that. He felt that the big things were made of little things, as the classical physicists thought.

MISHLOVE: The Newtonian view of billiard-ball-like particles -- that if you could only understand the momentum and position of each one, you could predict everything in the universe.

HERBERT: Everything in the universe, yes, a comfortable sort of view.

MISHLOVE: You mentioned three things that Einstein objected to; then there must be one more.

HERBERT: Well, the third thing is this interconnectedness. Einstein said the world cannot be like this, because this interconnectedness goes faster than light. With this quantum interconnectedness, two objects could come together, meet, and then each go into the universe, and they would still be connected. Instantaneously one would know what the fate of the other one was. Einstein said, now that can never be; that's like voodoo -- in fact, he used the word -- it's like telepathy, he said; he said it's spooky, it's ghostlike. Almost his last words in his biography were, "On this I absolutely stand firm. The world is not like this."

The Sound of Young America

Will Franken - "Best Alternative to Psychadelic Drugs"

Posted: May 23rd, 2006, 8:50pm PDT by Jesse Thorn

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Will Franken was recently voted "Best Comedian" in the San Francisco Weekly and "Best Alternative to Psychadelic Drugs" in the San Francisco Bay Guardian. He performs a remarkable blend of solo theater, standup, and sketch comedy, seemlessly transitioning between characters like a funny version of Robin Williams.

I spoke with Will this weekend -- he'll be performing in Los Angeles tonight at Comedy Death Ray with Sarah Silverman, among others, and tommorow (Wednesday) he performs solo at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater. Tickets for the latter show are a mere $5. He's also performing June 21st at the Marsh Theater in San Francisco. More info here.

Download the Interview (includes two live sketches from Will)

Listen Online

this moment

- You will do foolish things, but ...

Posted: May 23rd, 2006, 4:48pm PDT by alan

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- You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.

- No temptation can ever be measured by the value of its object.

- The true traveller is he who goes on foot, and even then, he sits down much of the time.

- Voluptuaries, consumed by their senses, always begin by flinging themselves with a great display of frenzy into an abyss. But they survive, they come to the surface again. And they develop a routine of the abyss: 'It’s four o’clock ... At five I have my abyss.'

- Never touch a butterfly's wing with your finger.

Colette

bird on the moon

Brain imaging sheds new light on decision making

Posted: May 23rd, 2006, 4:47pm PDT

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Researchers are investigating connections between pictures created by functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, and their depictions of unfairness in the brain to further illuminate the neurological basis of moral decision-making.

Colin Camerer is a business economics professor at the California Institute of Technology and an expert on behavioral game theory, a specialty within the field of behavioral economics. He is using experimental evidence to show how people react to examples of fairness and how that influences their behavior in situations described by a mathematical model of analysis called game theory.

Pictures of your brain on unfairness, culled by Camerer as part of his research, represent one of the most striking neuroscientific findings about game theory, he said.

In the experiment that produced the brain images, people played an ultimatum game. In this version of the game, a proposer offers a portion of $10 to a responder for example, $5 for each player. If the responder accepts it, the players each get their proposed share of the $10. If the responder refuses, neither player wins anything.

The test subject whose results were pictured in the fMRI scans added an unusual twist to the game. In some trials, the responder had the photograph and the name of a hidden proposer with whom he played the game. In other cases, the responder was shown a picture of a computer and told that the computer would be the hidden proposer.

Red Boldface

Just Go Fuck Yourself

Posted: May 23rd, 2006, 3:26pm PDT by Red Boldface

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Gasan was sitting at the bedside of Tekisui three days

before his teacher’s passing. Tekisui had already

chosen Gasan as his successor.

A temple had recently burned down and Gasan was

rebuilding it. Tekisui asked him: “What are you going

to do when the temple is rebuilt?”

“When you’re better we want you to speak there,” said

Gasan.

“Suppose I die before then?” “Then we’ll find somebody

else,” replied Gasan.

“Suppose you can’t get anybody?” said Tekisui.

Gasan answered loudly: “Don’t ask such stupid

questions. Just go fuck yourself.”

bird on the moon

Confessions of a Darwinist

Posted: May 23rd, 2006, 12:46pm PDT

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I take being called anti-Darwinian very personally. It has always hurt, for I have always thought of myself as more or less a knee-jerk neo-Darwinian, someone who thinks the basic mechanism underlying evolutionary change, including the origin, modification, and maintenance of adaptations, resides squarely in the domain of natural selection. And I have always felt that, with one or two major exceptions, my version of how the evolutionary process works lines up very well with Darwins. Take natural selection, for example: I see natural selection just as Darwin originally didas the statistical effect that relative success in the economic sphere (obtaining energy resources, warding off predators and disease, etc.) has on an organisms success in reproducing. This conservative view contrasts strongly with the modern tendency to see natural selection as a matter of competition among genes to leave copies of themselves to the next generationa position I take to be hopelessly teleological, obfuscating the real interactive dynamics of economic and reproductive organismic behavior driving the evolutionary process.

The Sound of Young America

The dogged pursuit of banality

Posted: May 23rd, 2006, 12:11pm PDT by Jesse Thorn

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Dear New York Times,

Is the dark side of Ryan Seacrest really that Jay Leno makes jokes about him being gay?

Or is it that he represents everything that's wrong with American entertainment?

Love,
Jesse

Link
Elephant Larry in New York

Posted: May 23rd, 2006, 11:41am PDT by Jesse Thorn

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The Apiary has a great recap of Elephant Larry's new show in New York City. Seen above: "One enticing sketch involved the character of Gargamel in the midst of a Smurf-induced postmodern breakdown. 'Who am I really?,' Gargamel wonders aloud, while cycling through the cloudy nostalgia of the cartoons of our youth."

this moment

[nt]

Posted: May 23rd, 2006, 11:27am PDT by alan

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The Sound of Young America

This American Life Podcast

Posted: May 23rd, 2006, 11:09am PDT by Jesse Thorn

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I encourage you to purchase This American Life from Audible.com. But you could also check out this page. If you wanted.

Don't ever say I wasn't looking out for you.

bird on the moon

Culture Soup: The Case for Contamination

Posted: May 23rd, 2006, 8:29am PDT

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Im seated, with my mother, on a palace veranda, cooled by a breeze from the royal garden. Before us, on a dais, is an empty throne, its arms and legs embossed with polished brass, the back and seat covered in black-and-gold silk. In front of the steps to the dais, there are two columns of people, mostly men, facing one another, seated on carved wooden stools, the cloths they wear wrapped around their chests, leaving their shoulders bare. There is a quiet buzz of conversation. Outside in the garden, peacocks screech. At last, the lowing of a rams horn announces the arrival of the king of Asante, its tones sounding his honorific kotokohene or porcupine chief. (Each quill of the porcupine, according to custom, signifies a warrior ready to kill and to die for the kingdom.) Everyone stands until the king has settled on the throne. Then, when we sit, a chorus sings songs in praise of him, which are interspersed with the playing of a flute. It is a Wednesday festival day in Kumasi, the town in Ghana where I grew up.

Unless youre one of a few million Ghanaians, this will probably seem a relatively unfamiliar world, perhaps even an exotic one. You might suppose that this festival belongs quaintly to an African past. But before the king arrived, people were taking calls on cellphones, and among those passing the time in quiet conversation were a dozen men in suits, representatives of an insurance company. And the meetings in the office next to the veranda are about contemporary issues: HIV/Aids, the educational needs of 21st-century children, the teaching of science and technology at the local university. When my turn comes to be presented, the king asks me about Princeton, where I teach. I ask him when hell next be in the States. In a few weeks, he says. Hes got a meeting with the head of the World Bank.

Anywhere you travel in the world today as always you can find ceremonies like these, many of them rooted in centuries-old traditions. But you will also find everywhere and this is something new many intimate connections with places far away: Washington, Moscow, Mexico City, Beijing. Across the street from us, when we were growing up, there was a large house occupied by a number of families, among them a vast family of boys; one, about my age, was a good friend. He lives in London. His brother lives in Japan, where his wife is from. They have another brother who has been in Spain for a while and a couple more brothers who, last I heard, were in the United States. Some of them still live in Kumasi, one or two in Accra, Ghanas capital. Eddie, who lives in Japan, speaks his wifes language now. He has to. But he was never very comfortable in English, the language of our government and our schools. When he phones me from time to time, he prefers to speak Asante-Twi.

MRBFK

On and On

Posted: May 23rd, 2006, 6:20am PDT by Bobby Farouk

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Everybody knows rain. You say the word and they know what you mean. You don’t need cats and dogs, buckets, and arks clogging your sentences.

It rains a few days and you tell yourself rain is necessary. You say, Well we didn’t have much snow over winter so now we need rain.

After a few more days of rain you say, I guess it’s going to rain.

You get used to rain. Then, going into the third week of rain, you get unused to it. You start worrying about water that has run out of places to go.

This is rain, you say.

This is rain, the wife says.

This can stop any time now.

The house is not going to wash away.

That’s a probability not a fact, you say.

You think of all the things that could happen if the brook gets too high. It becomes a matter of degrees. Some degrees are less bad than others.

All that water. It is very close to home.

A thud. You hear a thud. From the brook. From within the sound of very fast, very high water comes a thud. Like a shouting man with loud gas. A boulder has knocked against another. A boulder the weight of your car has said, I think I’ll go over here now.

That is some kind of water.

The wife is correct. The house will not wash away. None of the bad things you can imagine will happen. Still, when you go to sleep - after that last check on the brook - you wonder if it’s a good idea.

tonypierce.com + busblog

me and raymi share way more ...

Posted: May 23rd, 2006, 4:21am PDT by tony pierce

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me and raymi share way more things in common than we probably know. one of them is i get super jealous. the other is we both think raymis the best.

the other day she got interviewed by a toronto web site.

she answered the questions super well, but you know me, i cant let someone get interviewed without being interviewed too. so here goes. may i recommend that you all join in.

Describe your blog in 10 words or less.

fucking killer.

Why did you start your blog? Blogiversary?

i wanted to see if a loser without a car could get some fine hollywood pussy without a sweet ride without a good job and without any money. i wanted to see if there were any women left who would get naked for a man simply for his ideas and how he expressed them. i wanted to see if the freaks still came out at night. i wanted to see if i still had it.

How long have you lived in Toronto?

ive lived in los angeles since i got kicked out of high school as a freshman, and got accepted into community college in santa monica. 1984. the year after the last girl i made out with was born. yes, blogging rules.

What's the funniest/strangest thing that has happened to you in Toronto? Did you blog about it?

the strangest thing that ever happened to me in LA actually happened in West LA when i got to jam with rivers cuomo at the amhearst house and he wanted to play nirvana songs all night. of course i blogged about it. it was the greatest moment of my life, that year.

What are some of the changes in Toronto that you have seen in your lifetime?

i hate changes. but LA changes all the time. i hate that rhino records is no longer. i love ameoba, but couldnt we have had both? i hate that there are no more drive ins. i hate that madame wongs west is gone. i hate that the wiskey is a pit now. i hate that knac is gone. i dont like kroq any more. i dont like that i have to pay for howard stern, although its the best money that i spend. im not crazy about 3rd Street promenade. im not crazy about the fact that hollywood is getting so expensive. and i miss the anti club.

What era, day or event in Toronto's history would you like to re-live and why?

the rodney king riots. i was in santa barbara at the time working at sears. actually the first day, the day they were voted not guilty i was at dodger stadium with the famous record producer taavi mote who engineered beverly hills cop. but the next day they rioted pretty hard and i watched it up in plush santa barbara in supersafe sears and i saw a guy rolling a big screen down Sunset from a Silo store and i wished i was behind him rolling a bigger screen. no justice, no peace.

Who's your favourite Torontonian?

raymi, pit, fil. but my favorite Los Angelinos are my friends, n.w.a, and janes addiction

Can we believe everything you post on your blog?

i sorta wish you wouldnt. people believe way too much from the interweb. they should only believe the smiles of pretty girls during intimate moments. and dogs. everything else is a bullshit convention sponsored by fear.

Has blogging changed you or enhanced a personality trait?

heres another way im like raymi. fucker, blogging hasnt changed us, we've changed blogging. now gimme money or show me your tits.

Do you have a favourite post from your blog?

oh but theyre are so many. this will be my 4053rd post just on the busblog. so i will give you the best .1% or my favourites, at least

1. how to blog

2. how to leave a comment

3. a few more disclaimers that I would have liked to have seen in Glenn's disclaimer

4. yesterday i had to go to jury duty

Have you had your 15 minutes yet?

15 minutes? ive had a few hours are you kidding me? i was the luckiest man ever before this blogging shit, now im the super luckiest of all times, and its only gotten better. im bound to absolutely nobody. i can do whatever i want or say whatever i want. political bloggers cant do that. im not married im not in a relationship i have no kids i have no mortgage i have no car payment. the only thing i probably couldnt do on my blog is get a flickr account, but who the fuck would want that? and if i did id say its for research or because i feel bad for yahoo. im still young enough to get it hard in seconds and im old enough to know how to bring it - unless the chick is smoking hot :cough: ... the la weekly this spring named me along with guys like rick rubin and sara silverman and luke ford as one of the top 100 los angelinos of interest. i have no business in those circles. thats 15 minutes right there. this year isnt even half way through and i got sent to amsterdam, i got sent to austin, i got sent to vancouver, i got sent to coachella. those were each 15 minutes. ive had days. and im telling you, the best is right around the corner. im calling my shot right now, and it'll be off the glass. just watch.

Ever met a stranger who already knew you through your blog? How was that?

many. its the best. if i had nipples that could get errect, they would have. it's the best ever. fuck guitar lessons, kids, learn how to type shit up.

Lose any friends or muck something up because of a post?

most of my friends are writers, so no i havent lost any friends. i have mucked shit up from time to time, but nothing serious. im pretty good at seperating real life from what gets portrayed as real life on this thing.

Who are your fav bloggers?

heres ten off the top of my head: raymi, xtx, jessica, erin, raspberry, lindsay, flagrant, zulieka, the pants, chad, pitt, sweaty, leah, fil, goldenfiddle, and gorilla mask

What's happening in Toronto right now that the rest of us should be watching?

i'll tell you whats not happening in LA right now. theres not a crowd of Clipper fans waiting at the airport for their team to come home from Phoenix, which shows you how cold hearted this city is for their teams. its win it all or go home. its rough. that team was super good. it should have beaten phoenix but gave it too many chances and steve nash, mvp, doesnt need too many chances to beat you.

You have the opportunity to gather with 5 of your regular readers - who are they, where do you meet and what do you talk about?

lets just say theyre all female, theyre all bi, theyre all drunk, i have eaten viagra and we're in a whipped cream factory during memorial day weekend. you know who you are. and there will be many competitions.

Have you ever had a question you wanted to ask random people throughout the world?

not one general one. usually i just want to tell them that i think theyre super rad. the more i travel the more i fall in love with people.

If your blog were a food, what food would it be?

a hostess suzy q. totally a fake food. but delicious.

If you could gather all of the bloggers of the world together into one room and tell them one thing, what would it be?

ladies, lube up. gentlemen, this is how its done.

Anything else you'd like to add...

white sox suck.

the queen of france
dear britney,you shouldnt ...

Posted: May 23rd, 2006, 2:59am PDT by tony pierce

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dear britney,

you shouldnt be crying. but i know why you are.

its cuz life isnt fair.

trust me, as a cub fan i understand how life isnt fair.

youre supposed to be on top of the world. youre rich, youre famous, youve got a cute little kiddo, youve got tons of fans.

i know it sucks that your man is a loser. i know you dont wanna divorce your babys daddy. i know you wanna drive your own car and carry your own son.

but baby none of this is working out.

i know youre worried that if someone else carries your baby you'll look like a bad mom but you know what, fuck those people.

heres what you need to do and the first thing is hire me. i'll work for you for $50k a year cuz thats all i need. i dont even need that. i'll work for you for $40k if you let me use your hot tub a few times a week. and the laundry facilities.

i will be your new driver. you need one. im a great driver. ive never had an accident. ive also lived in LA for a gazillion years.

as your driver i will also be your voice of reason because clearly whoever is supposed to be that for you has laringitious. or however you spell it. theyre fucking up.

if i see you are about to go out to street with little baby sean on your hip i will say baby, i mean britney, put that Bjorn on Byourself, Beyotch. its why it was bjinvented.

if i see that you wont wear it and you have a drink in your hand i will carry it for you until we get into the car. then i will put you in the back seat and i will hand you the drink and i will wait until everyones strapped in and then i will pull away from the curb and drive at a reasonable pace.

we wont run from the 'ratzi. theyre annoying but all they want is your picture. in fact you and i will start a little web site where we will take a picture of you and the boy three times a day. we will flood the market with britney pics and theirs wont be worth as much. hell, we will have picture day at your house a few times a month where sick and poor kids come over and take hundreds of pics

ok maybe not sick kids since youre pregnant, but fans, nice fans, young fans and their moms.

we will also not have you go to the grocery store any more for awhile. i know you like going to the ralphs in malibu but you know what, no more of that. i will get your groceries. i know you want a normal life but who are you fucking kidding? you dont have a normal life. normal people arent worth millions. normal people dont have photographers chasing them around. normal people dont have tony pierce as their driver.

why do you wanna live in malibu anyways? theres only one grocery store out there. theres only one major road. youre sorta trapped out there. you wanna be punk rock? move to compton. i'll still be your driver, and i bet you a buck that you'll have far less paparatzi hanging out front of your house if you lived on Compton Blvd.

when you slipped the other day you said, "thats why i want a gun." you wont need a gun if you lived in Compton. your neighbors would take care of the riff raff. trust me.

now regarding kfed. im not a fan of divorce. i believe that marriage is something that you have till death do you part. so heres what we do. again, we move everyone to Compton. kfed too. one day when he goes to the studio or whereever the fuck he goes, we change the code for the gate. then we let the neighbors take care of the scrawny wigger.

till death do you part-y.

im not saying that compton is a violent place. im just saying that if something happened to the ratzi or kevin, nobody would question it. then you and i and the babies drive back up to malibu and you give me a little raise and let me drive you around for a few more years.

dont worry im not secretly hitting on you. it just breaks my heart to see you cry.

references available upon request,

tony

seamus + david + mlah + ben

Stuff On My Cat

Friends don't let friends get stacked alone.

Posted: May 23rd, 2006, 2:47am PDT

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Cats: Bob and Ron
Well done, Gigi...well done.

Posted: May 23rd, 2006, 2:45am PDT

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Leroy the cat slips into a diabetic coma.

Posted: May 23rd, 2006, 2:44am PDT

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Cat Stack shirt now available!

Posted: May 23rd, 2006, 2:43am PDT

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I will grant you three wishes...

Posted: May 23rd, 2006, 2:42am PDT

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Cat: Georgina
Smokey spends his nights hustling others in Texas hold 'em

Posted: May 23rd, 2006, 2:41am PDT

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The best way to get around the house.

Posted: May 23rd, 2006, 2:40am PDT

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Cat: Sister, Dog: Gizmo

aesthetic →

Gregarius » absurdity

Feeds

absurdity (100 unread)

Posted: May 27th, 2006, 11:43am PDT by alan

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Posted: May 27th, 2006, 10:36am PDT by Jesse Thorn

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Posted: May 26th, 2006, 10:43am PDT by Bobby Farouk

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Posted: May 26th, 2006, 2:27am PDT by tony pierce

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Posted: May 25th, 2006, 8:19am PDT by alan

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Posted: May 25th, 2006, 5:22am PDT by Bobby Farouk