i said i would only keep answering them if i could use it on my blog. the celebrity said that as long as i didn’t reveal who they were then it would be all good.

it was all good.

tony, you’re black, what’s your fascination with white women.

im fascinated by all women. skin color is as extraneous to me as the color of their toe nail polish.

then why all the white women on your blog?

coincidence. next week i’ll have no pictures of white women, would that make you happier?

not really.

i’ll do it anyway.

of the girls that you are dating, would you marry any of them?

wow. that’s a tough question. i wouldn’t marry any of them, not that there are that many, but i wouldn’t marry anyone any time soon. but i don’t think any of them would marry me either, so we’re even.

then why date them?

cuz they’re amazing people.

don’t you think you’re too old to be treading water by dating just to date?

its better than staying at home pulling my pud. but dating can be really fun.

sex, you mean?

no, just hanging out. being on a date. dressing up. being somewhere you normally wouldn’t. sexual tension. the great unknown. sometimes looking in the mirror seeing all these flaws and sucking it up and going for it anyhow is exactly the hurdle that some of us need in our lives. the date might not end up a huge success, but sometimes just getting out that door and going through with it is a win right there.

you rationalize a lot, don’t you?

optimism is something you have to work on, constantly. you and i are roughly the same age and yet i look a lot younger than you. i credit some of that to good genes, but i think some of it is due to the fact that i don’t dwell on bad stuff being bad. sometimes the bad stuff isn’t as bad as we originally thought.

so you revise history, then. i see.

no, think about sept. 11. when that went down i had all these weird little fears. i looked at tall buildings as possible targets. those first days everyone was scared. no one knew what was going to happen next. then the anthrax happened. then the vice president went into hiding. but now when i look back at it i see a very very small group of people who had a plan, executed it, got lucky during some very key moments, and knocked down some buildings. in retrospect it was not the end of the world that we thought it was. not for me, at least.

but our innocence as a nation is gone.

not mine.

but surely…

they had box cutters and got on some planes. very low tech. wake me when some asshole launches a nuke.

is it your spirituality that you draw from to think this way?

not that im aware of, no. i think im just logical about these things.

what are you illogical about?

my career.

in what way?

im terrified to go for what i want. and it’s silly because i could probably get it. still i procrastinate like crazy.

who’s your favorite artist?

whoever painted the night sky.

is the thousand bucks you’re raising going to your cadillac?

no.

what’s it going to, then?

it’s a secret. but it’s a good secret, i think people will like it.

i swear im such a luddite, all i can do is give you a dollar at a time, how do i give you more than a buck?

click on the big thermometer on the left and in the box that says “amount” type in the amount that you want to give me.

do you think you’ll get the thousand bucks?

no.

do you really get 500 people on your blog a day?

i get more.

and all they have to do is give you $2 each?

wow, you’re a celebrity *and* you can do math! im impressed.

i can cook too.

ordering take out isn’t cooking.

seriously, im a really good cook.

seriously, i don’t believe you.

why do you say things like that?

im just kidding. i say those things so that people will prove it. i want to taste good food.

then just ask! im so sure.

ok, are we done?

yeah, i guess so.

did you like interrogating me?

yes, you answer the questions. i never do.

why not?

i have a hard time thinking on my feet like that.

i found the secret is not to care so much about what people think. just tell the truth.

well, im a bit of an approval whore.

between me and you, i bet people would approve of you even more if they thought you were being genuine.

ok, thanks dad.

lets go drink now. come pick me up.

not tonight.

come on!

im so tired.

everyones tired. its midnight. two hours of drinking then its over.

im not even dressed.

pick me up in 15 minutes or i will tell everyone your name and your real age.

give me 20.

thanks: to andrew, ann, elle and everyone else who flowed the busblog who i may have overlooked.

back in the early ’60s, the first thing we did was try to figure out a way that we could take over the world.

as time passed we realized that we were not the ones who were going to really use the web to take over the world, we were going to use it to look at nudie pics, download free music, and show off to the world at how fucking badass we were.

along the way killer companies like netscape and webtv and progressive networks and nullsoft and zillions of others showed up and everyone got rich except me.

my dream was to work for netscape but i ended up working through a high tech temp agency for webtv as an “evangelist” of sorts. i kicked ass at that gig but the mothership did not want me to climb aboard as a permanent employee even though i had been around since day two.

the day webtv got bought by microsoft for a half billion dollars was a good day and a bad day for me because all the cool kids at webtv who had webtv stock options, i assumed, would have that transferred over to microsoft shares, etc. etc.(jealousy anger bitterness whatever.)

so the high tech temp agency renewed their contract with webtv but now their checks were being signed by microsoft and the polo shirt that i was sent had the familiar logo from the lil company that could from redmond.

and tony pierce was shilling for microsoft.

if you were lucky enough to go to comdex in the late 90s when the web was seriously gaining some steam you would have seen me right there in the middle of the gigantic microsoft booth of the convention center right next to the porsche we were giving away, surrounded by tv cameras pitching and answering questions about the new webtv box, the webtv plus.

i believed in that box then, and i believe in that box now. im bummed that gates & company decided to ignore it, but with the advent of digital tv, perhaps they will put the steve perlman-designed Solo chip inside those tvs and Ultimate TV will someday simply be a feature that you’ll see listed on the Circuit City description cards like the ones that currently boast features like “Stereo” or “Comb Filter”.

back in the days of marc brown and netscape 2.0, microsoft didn’t even have a fucking browser. and when they did finally get one it sucked. we were all very very happy to use this punk rock netscape software that was distributed free (a novelty at the time) that somehow always had a step or two on their sleeping giant of a competitor.

yes, it was politics, but it was more like supporting the underdog.

fuck nike when you can sport pumas.

today is all different. theres no more competition. microsoft is huge, aol/time warner is huge, i suppose Opera and Linux are the underdogs, but im too old to keep fighting these losing battles, i’ll leave those to the true geeks, the ones who like to spend all night turning their X-Boxes into mp3 servers. me, ive got skirts to chase and opportunities to squander.

people write in and tell me that my page doesn’t load on Mozilla on a Mac or that it looks like shit on a linux box and i appreciate the feedback but really people, since the marc brown days i have always been fully committed to making my page look good on my computer and my computer only – which is work enough, trust me.

maybe one day i can form a posse of mac loyalists and netscape users, and aol hackers who want to tweak what i do and make it more palatable to the wide spectrum of variables out there, but shit man, i got three pornos that are due tonight yet to be duped before i go to softball practice, and you want me to worry about mozilla?

fuck aol fuck microshaft fuck them all, but mostly fuck aol and here’s why.

they are a company who had a great thing with netscape and they squashed it. i am as loyal as can be and they never took the magic that was behind that browser and helped use it to radiate the rest of that company. all aol has ever done is lie.

back in the day with one aol account you got 5 screen names so when they said they had a million users, they really only had 200,000 users who each had 5 screen names. what they were secretly saying is, “we have a million spam addresses that we are willing to sell to every smut peddler who is willing to meet our price.”

im shocked that they’ve basically been able to take something free like the Internet and charge people for being lazy ignorant asswipes who are willing to pay top dollar so that the three people who have their email address will always know where to forward the chain letters.

aol time warner is huge as fuck and yet where’s AOL DSL? wheres AOL TV? wheres the AOL channel on tv? we’re more than halfway through 2002, motherfucking backstreet boy is about to fly to the moon, and AOL is still hustling dial-up through mailing cds to people?

die.

aol has never graduated itself as being anything more than the web with training wheels and lucky for them most of their users are satisfied – or not dissatisfied enough to switch. it reminds me of all my high school friends from illinois who visit me in the winter and say, “God, California is awesome,” and then fly back to the snow and shit and pay the same rent that i pay and suffer and age and die in their own filth.

the internet is no mystery. im a fucking poetry major. i show all of you sites like leah’s and nay’s and chelle’s because i can not put it to you any simpler than to say that little girls are kicking your ass in major ways. you, who figured out life enough to buy a house, and land a great job, and raise kids. you, who can fix cars and bake lasagna and read tolstoy. if these strawberry shortcake super nintendo loving barely teen girls can figure out all sorts of java html and photoshop tricks while twirling their hair, then why cant you?

i know you have stories to tell. i know you have an arty way to show it. i know the music’s inside you.

i don’t use netscape because it is the rotting corpse of an unfulfilled promise demolished by white men in white suits who took something brilliant on one coast and rubbed shit all over it on the other coast and its existence only causes trouble and brings about sad memories.

the beauty of those early days of the web was the result of thousands of people trying new things and exploring the ends of cyberspace.

i invite each of you to come with us now and return to those magical days of yesteryear when grad students obsessed with sumo wrestling and bookmarking neato sites goofed off and created “yahoo!”

allen greenspan, death himself, and all the other talking heads on cable news networks who never loved computers anyway may tell you that those days of glory are history but as always they are so so wrong.

those days may be behind us but theyre not forgotten and its not too late to use them as springboards into the future, which is where you should be aiming.

aol and netscape and mozilla and greenspan are behind us, it’s time to soar into infinity.

and you might start by making that dumbass meter turn red.

so i feel pretty cool.

leah (pictured, center), you might remember is, what 15, 16 something like that, kicking ass and taking names in texas. formerly of canada, now writing about 30 words a day, basically showing off that she barely has to write a thing and still averages 700 hits a day.

lil dose of reality for you, people.

got a little link love from mark over at swannie’s blog who says he likes my new blog header but feels let down that im busting with the IE and not the Netscape.

“I was a little shocked to see that it is IE, not Mozilla. I thought this guy was down with the geeks :P” mark writes.

geeks, let me educate you a little. its no longer 1997. netscape got bought by aol. aol is no friend of the geek. aol is no friend of anyone other than steve case and now aol is no longer a friend of steve case.

aol is the friend of the garbage man who gets paid bonuses for all the tossed out 1000 Hour Free cds that, if recycled, could build condos for all the homeless in hollywood.

aol bought time/warner and basically ruined them in the process.

just like their software does on my computer.

just like their software has always done on all of your computers.

download netscape, you’re downloading aol and you’re downloading trouble. so, no thanks.

and since i use windows 2000, ie is all up in there good and tight, so i don’t even bother with fighting it, so it’s there, so i use it. sue me.

ashley likes to come over and change all my settings and turn my tool bars pink and when i was thinking about what sort of blog header i should use i figured i would let people see what i see when i go on the innernet and there you have it.

anyway, hope this lets you know, swannie, that i still have love for the nerds but i have more love for my 400 MHz P2 wonderbox and i will do anything to protect it from enemies foreign or domestic and atop that list, above all the virus makers from manila, is a o hell, not so cleverly disguised as mozilla.

mass has ended.

rock in peace.

no offense to you, but my favorite blogger is the tiny little penis. rabbit. heather. i miss her. i miss her a lot. alot a lot.

what’s going on with her?

i understand that you two are neighbors. i understand that for layne’s wedding she was there with her ex-boyfriend. i understand that you went to a party with karisa that was next door to heather’s house and all holy heck broke out and all the ladies in the house said hey. hey hey.

in fact i hear tell that pretty much every party that you’ve been to in the last six months when heather showed up all the ladies and gentlemen swarmed her and were delightfully entertained by her drunken war stories of love, lust and intrigue. i love you tony, but i hear that at these parties you hold her ashtray and fill up her long island ice teas when she snaps her fingers.

is any of this true?

but tony, tell us, where the heck is heather and is it nice where shes at?

lonely in louisville

Dear Lonely,

how many of times do i have to say it? Good web site, dull life. Great blog, dull job.

heather, the rabbit, is a vivacious witty sexy young brilliant professional writer based in hollywood. she has a handsome boyfriend and tons of friends. all this psycho-babble where she tries to pretend to be crazy is crazy. shes a hot child in the city and shes squeezing life’s juicy lemon until there isn’t none left.

she writes all those articles for salon and maxim and mother jones and high times and shes also writing a book.

its true that when i see her at a party i know that i better get used to holding up one of the walls because all the cool kids are going to recognize her and stand in awe as she holds court. but it’s cool, i like to hear what she has to say too. oh that’s right, shes also on npr all the time.

so why should she even keep up something lame and nerdy like a friggin blog?

do you really think that someone as hip and happening as heather needs a daily unpaid outlet to spill her guts or let loose her endless creativity and soulful knowledge? hell no. in fact, its my belief that the only reason she even kept the blog was as a public service to those of us who don’t read salon or high times except in the waiting room of the dentist office.

they’ve got dentist offices in louisville, don’t they?

besides, just because we need heather doesn’t mean that she needs us.

and like i said, she is writing a book so back off and let the writer write. don’t make her use up all her special goodness on this disposable medium of the click click blog.

anyway, shes just a girl, what else did you expect?

kisses,

tony

every morning i listen and every evening i watch. i love howard stern and i love robin quivers.

when i first saw howard on tv and i saw robin there, i didn’t get it. but now i couldn’t imagine it any different. robin balances out the show real nice.

sometimes when she is sick or out or whatever, the howard stern show is really too much of a frat house. robin keeps it in order, she laughs, she often has better jokes than most of the fellas, she knows who the stars are, she watches all the movies and tv shows, she knows the current events, she’s perfect.

in her book, “Quivers: A Life” she describes being molested as a child and all the pain that it brought her and all the anger she once had. and what i love about her and the show, whenever the gang has a chance to kid robin about it, they do. it’s brutal. but it’s almost fair since they grill their guests just as hard. robin is not only a survivor, she’s a role model now because she has been able to take such a heinous inexcusable act and now looks it in the face and laughs at it.

unreal.

what’s also awesome about robin is her relationship with howard. these are two people who truly love each other. im sure they have a difference of opinions at times, but you’d never know it. ive never heard or seen them fight, ive never heard or seen them talk badly of each other, and they’ve certainly never argued with each other. its crazy. they’ve been together for almost 20 years and never a fight? howard fights with everyone: his mom, wife, boss, coworkers, kids, sister, friends, listeners, guests, but never robin. he adores her and listens to her.

they also have a great little ploy going that is subtle and beautiful. if howard has a guest on who is a little apprehensive about something, howard will say something like, “tell robin your story.” or “lift your shirt and show robin what you’re talking about.” classic.

so here’s to you, robin quivers. you really don’t look 50, and you’re a hero to many. including me.

quick facts about robin that you might not know:

she was in the army, she was a nurse, she’s never been married, her hero is muhammad ali, she met howard in washington dc when she was assigned to do the news for him, she has a condo in manhattan, he loves animals and owns a horse!

this post is dedicated to ann s. who flowed the busblog a buck, gracias, ann!