i’m right. michael jordan has called it quits – for the season, at least. unfortunately the domino effect has already begun. one of my best friends here called me up last night and told me she’s thinking about calling it quits here in the city of angels, and move back home to chicago to be closer to her family and friends and snow and humidity.

i cant say i blame her. LA isnt for everyone, even those, like her, who have shown the whip to the this thoroughbred and used it a few times. it’s definately not the mid west, or the east, or the dirty south, and it certainly isnt home. it took me leaving and coming back a few times to really look at this place as more than just a pretty layover, and it wasnt until i had a good two dozen or so friends and a half dozen former addresses that i realized that i wasn’t just passing through here.

i didnt tell her this, but i dont recommend her moving back home just yet.

before any hot chick decides to pack it in, heres a few things that they should experience before they go back to whereever they’ll grow old and wither:

– drink, smoke, induldge, experience, do what you have to do and then contemplate it all as you watch the dawn break while sitting on the cliffs off del playa in the terribly magical hamlet called isla vista.

– camp and catch one elf in the romantic forrests of big sur – and try not to fall in love with whoever brung ya on the drive home.

– dance with hef and his girlfriends at not only Las Palmas on a wednesday night, but at the mansion when the lakers are in town – i mean on a weekend.

– crash at least one hollywood party in the malibu colony. invites are for wusses, and producers.

– ski mammoth in the day, and skinny dip zuma that night.

– learn at least three new dance moves at a south central house party, not just any one, but one that includes paid go go girls.

– get your picture taken with robert downey jr. at a palm springs hotel hours before he violates his probation.

– and no girl can say that she’s truly experienced life in LA unless they’ve gotten to pass the guitar at one of greg’s classic all night hootenanny’s, followed by breakfast at the pantry, a trip to the hollywood farmer’s market, and mimosas at my house while burning through a half dozen rolls of film to send to hef for no other reason than to say thanks for putting us on the list the other night.

has closed. the little known ride-the-bike-thru-the-bike-lane-slowly scam has bit the filthy tijiuana dirt, the border patrol announced citing, of all things, safety concerns based from the september 11 terrorist attacks. but who are they kidding?

instead of spending thousands of dollars in cramped sometimes dangerous means of transportation, up to 2,000 people a day have been coming to america via pedal power equipped with nothing more than a smile and perhaps a nice jogging suit so as to not raise suspicion.

unlike automobiles and trucks and motorcycles which were subject to an actual stop at the border, a series of questions to answer, and a brief (or lengthy) search, cyclists wishing to use the bike lane merely had to ride at a mellow and chilled pace, with, at best, a quick stop to flash a driver’s licence – especially on the days that the press is taking pictures.

adios sweet bike lane, and damn you, purveyors of evil, watch how the ripples of your actions continue to dash the dreams of the innocent and unaware.

if it weren’t for my new nightly ritual of klos and jim ladd’s familiar record collection of lennon, morrison, floyd, jagger, ozzy and jimi, it would have slipped my mind that i was paid a mighty compliment by a man who does an enormous amount of blogging, reading the web, and watching baseball. He has a nice link to Layne, so why have I never heard of thefatguy.com?

Speaking of the man who left me his apartment, who knew that our Ken is still Google’s #1 Ken after nearly a month? How did I miss that post?

Me, I’m #26 with a bullet. The Tony Awards is #1, show offs. And then some guys like Tony Hawk, Tony Bennet, Tony Roma, and my favorite, Tony Stone graphics, which I hardly go to because when i do i just want to steal and steal and steal.

Normally I wouldn’t aspire to even make the top ten with that sort of competition, but the number two tony is a guy in a band that ive never heard of, Tony Levin. How is Tony Levin number two behind the Tony’s and ahead of Tony Hawk, Tony Roma, and me?

meanwhile matt welch is about to leapfrog matt haughey, the inventor of metafilter, which i have grown to love, and stands proud at a very respectable #7, on the same page, and if you ask me, in striking distance of a man who rarely even gets called matt, whom you wont ever see linked here because i dont link bathroom walls.