sweet pictures of sunday’s baby shower for the little boy who will be named Kobe, whether the parents like it or not.

the fiesta was held in my lovely attorney’s palatial estate. most of tsar was there, and speaking of them, i got to hear a demo of theirs from their upcoming triple-disc followup and i think that you people should probably start saving up for new stereo equipment today because this is what’s gonna happen when you hear these new songs.

first the rock is going to blow your speakers up.

then the pop is going to melt the crappy ass speaker wires that you’ve had since high school.

then the harmonies are going to send smoke right through that tube amp your poppa gave you as you moved from the dorms to your new apartment.

then the song writing is gonna make you cry happy tears and then sad tears and then happy tears and your cd player is gonna blow up.

have i told you that Tsar is my favorite band?

they are.

word is, the track i heard was produced by two guys whose rock pedigrees are stamped with the Hollywood seal of approval.

one of the fellas is from the glam rock band Lions and Ghosts who haunted Madame Wong’s West in Santa Monica back in the days when i couldn’t get into any of the Guns n Roses clubs on the Sunset Strip. so needless to say, when they weren’t booking country punk at MWW, i got to see glam, and i was super happy to be privy to that nonsense.

the other fella was from a punk outfit called the Nymphs famous for having their lead singer, a woman, squat down on their A&R manager’s desk and urinate.

now Ozzy may have bitten the head off a bat, but is there anything more offensive than a woman squatting to insult you?

this reporter says no.

at first listen it is obvious that these gentlemen understand both sides of the rock and glam coin that tsar flips so easily and their success is inevitable.

my good pal coulter let me hear the track and it will be my mission, dear friends to let you know everything that i learn about this quadruple disc effort that should be coming out sometime around valentine’s day.

thank you.

back to the pictures, for all you kids who think that layne and welch write excellent blogs, they do, but they excell at drunken-party sing-a-longs as this photograph illustrates to a point.

but you know party pictures, they never really capture the essense of the fiesta, they only grab the colors and the objects and the things, never the feelings. and this baby shower was full of sweet lovely feelings, and music. which pictures have yet to master quite yet either.

fckrs

was with a huge company the agency wanted to keep an eye on based in the south.

my job was to let them know if anything suspicious was going on.

lots of suspicious things were going on.

they were a dirty company from the top to the bottom.

but being young there were times that i was terrified, and the worst thing that could have happened was that the company would fire me for some reason. so not only did i have to do my job for the agency real good, but i needed to do my job for the company extra good so that i could not only stay in there but keep getting promoted so as to meet more and more people and find out more and more dirt.

that dirt would actually save american lives. i shit you not. so i took this job mighty seriously.

the thing that would scare me the most would be the company’s voice mail.

i would dial it up from a pay phone, punch in the password and hear the familiar southern belle’s voice on the other end saying, “welcome to your voice mail box…”

i was terrified that once i punched in the numbers i would get a message saying, “fly to south carolina and meet up with bob and jeff, they have a special training that they want you to set up.” which would mean, of course, that i would be murdered and never found again.

back then i didnt care so much about being killed. the Cubs werent going anywhere. but i was in love with my first live-in girlfriend and i didnt want that to ever end.

some young agents who got phone calls like that, actually did freak out and occasionally called for back-up and they would send an extra agent to shadow them, which is extremely risky because 1) it was usually a false alarm 2) it is super hard to stay undercover in small towns in the south where Everyone knows each other and 3) even if it was a real set-up, sometimes they would do that just to see what was up, and if a second agent appeared magically then the company knew their jig was up.

either way it was best to just handle your own business, keep a safe deposit box full of love letters and fed ex the key to your home address whenever you felt unsafe cuz if you did wind up dead, your girl could go through your old mail, find the key and see that you’d been thinking of her.

this company, huge as it was, was dirty but not that dirty and never was on to me, and i never had to do a thing other than watch. but i remember being scared shitless of that stupid ass voice mail message box and especially the sweet sounding woman on the tape that would say things like, ” press 7 to save your message”, “for more help press the pound button.”

apparently this weekend the xbi changed voice mail vendors out of some paranoia, i just logged in to check my messages after coming back from lunch, and guess who’s voice i heard from the past?

yes, the sweet southern lady.

i almost fell over on my chair.

my heart is still pounding.

and ive noticed that i nod a lot at work.

people seem to know me here. i dont know them. im not sure if i like that. no one knows about this blog, i don’t think, but they all say hi to me and i just smile, but recently i notice that i nod back. almost japanese style.

they address me by my first name, which would be creepier if i didn’t have a handmade sign atop my computer monitor that says my name, but it still is rather formal, don’t you think? i do.

only reason i had that thing up there, my name placard, was when this mariah carey lookalike worked here, so that she could remember my name so when i asked her out she would feel a bit more familiar with the concept.

but i snoozed, and i losed. she got fired for dropping her cover and i ended up getting her beeper number but never using it because i was distracted by a 25 yr old virgin.

can you blame me?

it’s good to have an office hottie who keeps you brushing your hair before you come into work, who you can think about as you’re rifling through clean clothes in the morn, who makes you think twice about that Maui tshirt of the fish with pink sunglasses and i have one of those girls here and i still haven’t found a way to introduce myself to her yet but the placard is up so that phys– wholely shit, she just walked through the door!

told you my mind was going.

i don’t know what is happening with the planets or the stars or even if its just the Lord above who likes to give me a hard time with my emotions but he’s sure pushing my buttons right now and i guess i have it coming because i have been so detached from my emotions for a lot of this year and the only times ive allowed myself to actually *feel* i got snapped in the nose by the evil belt of Cruelty but its all good, im a LaVista and we have strong noses.

i didn’t nod to my future girlfriend i smiled a non-tooth smile and played it cool.

what about ashley you might ask?

hmmm, what about ashley?

shes looking better than ever. i don’t know if shes eating a thing down there behind the orange curtain, cuz she looks thin and tanned and blonder and a tad older in a good way. she has that jennifer jason leigh schoolgirl confidence that i was waiting for, but it isn’t working in my favor. i was hoping it would be like the michelle pfiefer way in the first or second Batman, i never can remember these things, where catwoman gets superclose to batman and says something sassy and then says “meow.”

i wouldn’t mind some of that.

id know where to take it.

and there is something to be said for the fact that ashley and i do know how to communicate in certain situations.

expertly.

when i was a lad the bill russell davey lopes steve garvey ron cey infield got better and better and with steve yeager behind the plate not many players got cheap infield hits but there was a period of time in 77 i believe it was when you could see those guys start to gel defensively (their bats were always good) and gel might be the best way to describe the daisy princess and i in certain matters best left unspoken.

back in 77 i woulda thought that that woulda been enough for a boy and a girl but its snot. not even close.

its warm today in los angeles. theres a brush fire in glendale which from this side of the hill looks much worse.

and all appearances look way different from the other side

especially within these cold walls

of the xbi.

the silicon chip inside her head

gets switched to overload

and nobody’s gonna go to school today

she’s gonna make them stay at home

daddy doesn’t understand it

he always said she was good as gold

and he can see

no reasons

’cause there are

no reasons

what reasons do you need to be showed

tell me why

i dont like mondays

tell me why

i dont like mondays

tell me why

i dont like mondays

i want to shoot the whole day down

The Telex machine is kept so clean

And it types to a waiting world

And Mother feels so shocked

Father’s world is rocked

And their thoughts turn to their own little girl

Sweet 16 ain’t it peachy keen

No, it ain’t so neat to admit defeat

They can see no reasons

‘Cause there are no reasons

What reason do you need, oh-h-h

{Refrain}

Down, down, shoot it all down

And all the playing’s stopped in the playground now

She wants to play with her toys a while

And school’s out early and soon we’ll be learning

And the lesson today is how to die

And then the bullhorn crackles

And the captain tackles

With the problems and the how’s and why’s

And he can see no reasons

‘Cause there are no reasons

What reason do you need to die, die, oh-h-h

And the silicon chip inside her head

Gets switched to overload

Oh, and nobody’s gonna go to school today

She’s going to make them stay at home

And Daddy doesn’t understand it

He always said she was as good as gold

And he can see no reason

‘Cause there are no reasons

What reason do you need to be showed

and already this day sucks. how does that happen?

woke up late. found out that i cant go to the angels/a’s game with my bro matt. didnt get to make my sandwich this morning for my lunchie.

these are the bummers in my life, not heartbreaking ones, but things that just fuck up the start of the week.

here we are going into the week of 9/11 and i gotta say that i dont want to see any specials, any memorials, anything. we have all been thinking about this shit all year. the terrorists win if we keep obsessing.

its like a guy getting called out in the first inning on an outside slider and letting it fuck up his whole game.

it was fucked up. it sucks. it’s over. if bush was a man he’d find the culprit. but hes an incompetent pussyass. so lets move on.

ashley and i saw my big fat greek wedding this weekend and i thought it was just ok.

seriously, what was the big deal about that movie?

it was cute. thats it.

why did the handsome perfect guy like the sweet 30 year old greek girl? simple question. she was way more funny in her narratives than she was in their dialogue. what would interest him in her? her family?

whatever. it wasnt a waste of money. the crowd seemed to like it. it reminded me of chicago. coulda been worse.

before the movie me and ashley went to poquito mas which is a burrito place on the sunset strip. we like to go there because drew barrymore has been spotted eating there.

so ashley was too shy to ask the lady who works there, so i said, “hey does drew barrymore really eat here?”

the lady said, “oh yeah.”

i said, “you know her right?”

she said, “yeah.”

i said, “when was the last time she was here?”

she said, “about an hour ago.”

ashley started to cry.

shes a sweet girl.

has a great tan.

for some reason she wants to hang out with me again.

so i guess im not so unlucky after all.