ichiro suzuki and albert pujols (pictured) are the two best players in baseball. this year they were the top vote-getters in their respective leagues. tomorrow they will play against each other in the annual major league baseball all star game which will be held in what could be the worst stadium in baseball, bank one us cellular field, formerly the new comiskey in the south side of chicago.

if i traveled around the country i would want to get one day jobs. id like to be a short order cook one day, a waiter the next, a bartender the next, an airport luggage handler, a mcdonalds drive thru cashier, a swanky hotel conceirge, a waterboy, a chauffer, a bell hop, a caberet barker, a seven eleven graveyard shift cashier, a long shoreman, a wedding dj, a girls gone wild cameraman, a technical director of a tv show, a bailiff, the reader of the gospel at a southern baptist church, an organ grinder, a candlestick maker, a baker, a butcher, a pizza man, a 911 operator, a singer of the national anthem, the guy who plays the cds of anthem rock at the basketball game, a substitute teacher, a hot dog vender at a bus stop, a blackjack dealer on an indian reservation, a home plate umpire, a taxi cab driver, a herse driver, a subway sandwich artist, a subway car driver, talk show host, coal miner, fine diner.

voice over talent.

i would also like to do some volunteering.

like at the playboy mansion.

for the winter.

i could sleep above the garage.

walk around with my laptop and blog inconspiculously.

maybe the chefs can teach me to cook.

and hef can teach me to rock.

and the gardeners can teach me to garden.

and the ladies can teach me about the ladies.

tomorrow you should watch ichiro suzuki and albert pujols who you how baseball should be played.

its my favorite.

its the all star game.

noah glass + kate sullivan + 6urn7 10v3

and dip into the mailbag. lets see what the kids are saying today.

Subject: i linked you

Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003

hey there, i was reading through some posts etc. on your site and found it really enjoyable.

there isn’t many sites are just based on pure content and i admire that, my site used to be but since then its more of a whorey operation, looking for the big hits the cheaper way (though absolutely failing to succeed – I’ll go back to it once there’s an audience).

I found your link on a link of lameking.net, who is another site that has great posts.

so anyway i noticed you wanted to be told if you were linked so i thought i’d send you this, i’m not expecting any payback for it, just have a lot of free time.

Mike

——

Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 22:44:15 GMT+01:00

Subject: my adoration…

Hi Tony,

I love your blog. I found the busblog a few months ago – I was directed your way by JimmyT (The Joint), so you can blame him for my tony-lurve!

I check out your blog everday. Your photo essays rock, too. You’re the man, tony! Unfortunately I can’t come and stalk you as I live in England, but it’s the thought that counts, right? 😉

Just wanted to let you know that I’m reading and lovin’.

Kate

XXXX

——–

From: “the lost one”

Subject: great site. thank you.

To: blog@tonypierce.com

hey – while i am not linking to you, i want you to know i thoroughly enjoy your site. it looks like you enjoy the hell out of doing it. it shows.

my blog is in transition. but when it grows up, it wants to be like yours.

right now, it just plain sucks.

take care,

the lost one

http://vita.blogeye.com

———

From: nice girl

To: bloggy@tonypierce.com

Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2003 13:48:29 -0600

I don’t know why I feel inclined to tell you this, but I had a dream about you last night. I can’t really remember it all that well, but I know that I talked to you, heard your voice. Your voice was very clear, and had a very fine resolution to it (for lack of a better way to describe it.)

Anyway, I also wanted to thank you for commenting the other day. It’s flattering to know that you’ve even seen my site. A lot of times I come to your site first for inspiration before I post. You definitely have a unique voice, and a unique way of expressing your views. So thanks for being my muse from time to time.

D–

——

Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 06:30:31 -0700 (PDT)

From: “Pam”

Subject: your blog, what else

To: blog@tonypierce.com

hey, tony 🙂

your blog still manages to overwhelm me everyday.

i work in a newspaper and a couple of weeks ago, i printed out “just words” and posted it on my computer table. i don’t know if that’s okay with you, i’ve been feeling guilty about it and that’s why i wrote to tell you. if you want me to take it down, i will. anyway, as a result of that, other people from my office have started reading your blog too 🙂

you seemed to be down in your last post – but i know that won’t last. because if it did, you wouldn’t be tony pierce, you would just be like the rest of us.

take care.

keep knocking us down with your powerful words.

🙂

pam

with anyone. but especially with my friends. probably cuz im no good at it. and probably cuz we never do it.

but sometimes someone has to call bullshit and often times its me. and often times the other party says my bad, but sometimes they dont and it makes me so mad i want to cry. but i dont know how to cry any more. the xbi took care of that years ago.

i feel feminine when i fight. i hate that. im not a victim but when im upset its usually because i feel victimized or i feel like theres something that i want that was implied or down right promised that didnt come true and when i get the reason why and its bullshit i get all twisted inside because i smell a rat and i hate smelling rats.

but worst of all i hate feeling lesserthan cuz i always feel lesserthan. i just dont like it in my face and so obvious.

i kick ass at pinball though, so back off.

the other day someone said that the greatest living short story writer was in the house and the greatest living poet was talking to him. the fellow was talking about me and pat whalen. which is true. but being the greatest living poet, in my opinion is like being the greatest living hairdresser. its like a thanks, but no thanks.

ashley says that i cant ever be pleased, and shes right, but shes wrong.

its easy to please me.

just follow my dreams, be my friend.

dont make me feel less than.

drink with me when im out.

dont make me feel like a girl.

tell me nice things.

and break up with your boyfriends and molest me with your hot girlfriends as slayer cranks.

raymi + buffoonery + azarok

kids usually have the right ideas. i have to keep remembering that.

i think as time goes on i will start putting in here excerpts of my high school diary. back then we needed a chisel and a hammer to write down our ideas, and sometimes we had to use the skulls of past meals, but the words were laid down, the thoughts were documented.

i find that i follow a lot of the morals today that i promised myself to do back in the day. back when i had star wars stickers staring at me from my bunk bed. one thing i promised was that i wouldnt have sex with anyone who i didnt love. ive strayed from that a tad, but for the most part i understand why i said that and i still agree with it.

strangely i thought that i would lose my virginity to a prostitute. this is where idealism fucks shit up. it was my teenage belief that prostitutes knew more about the love-making process and as long as i made sure that they showered first, then they would be the correct teacher to send me on my way into manhood.

fortunately i didnt follow up on that idea.

i also didnt become the baseball player or baseball manager that i thought i would be.

and today as i got off the bus and back into the office, i wondered if i really wanted to be a superhero any more.

i questioned a lot of things on the bus as i read Moneyball and watched two very affectionate mexican people hold each other and kiss and hug and kiss and hug.

the man was shorter than the woman and he had one arm around her and the other arm on her leg. she was making a cellular phone call. they both had a lot of gold jewlery on. they both appeared to be in their late thirties. the passion they had for each other made me think the worst things:

is she his mistress? is this forbidden love? are they always like this? are they newlyweds?

he had a gold wedding band, and she had a ring on the right finger too, and a diamond on it.

they hugged all the way down wilshire and he never touched her in an innappropriate place and for the most part she looked forward and smiled while he worked on her neck and spoke spanish oh so quietly in her ear.

it was true lust, possibly love. it was early in the morning. they were riding the bus together to work. i couldnt think of anything more romantic. i hated that i had to go to work. i hated that i had to worry about work. i hated that we still havent found the missing xbi agent and that all of our secrets were about to be revelead or had probably already been revealed.

i hated a lot of things on this beautiful morning in the city of angels but i didnt hate that moment.

and i dont hate you.

gweilo diaries + the mighty doc searls + rabbit blog

and amy and leibowitz and others will write books about the daily nexus, the mesopotania of modern writing. and when they do they will point to patrick w. whalen (pictured) who i believe was sports editor his freshman year and then editor-in-cheif his sophomore year.

it was during pat’s sophomore year that i got the courage to write to him and tell him how much i loved reading my college paper and how i wanted to write for it. i included a terrible record review, some poems, and an opinion column.

i believe pat used it to sop up a knocked over milwaukee’s best and he never called me back. i believe i ended up coming into the nexus to meet him weeks later and he said, oh yes, yes, i was just about to call you. i love what you wrote.

all hogwash. but it doesnt matter. destiny has its own timetable and all of us were meant to be together and all of us will be together forever.

the educated will tell the real stories and include the facts and figures. but all i know is pat was my hero. he was the figure and the figurehead. the example and the exception. the eye and the hurricane.

amy followed him and had the impossible job of replacing him, but she did it. despite all the childish behavoir around it, sexism and whatnot. being the ringleader of adolescent genius isnt a task id assign even the brightest people, but amy still steered the ship to victory and while i raise my glass to pat today, please dont anyone think that i dont raise my other glass to amy as well.

i have many heroes from that era and they couldnt be more different and they are all beautiful and pure and have hearts of gold.

the other day at spaceland pat told me the most wonderful things. he praised me for my writing. he told me secret things, personal things that made me beam because i respect him so. in a perfect world we would all get back together and reshape american journalism and reintroduce the concept of rocking out with ones cock out. we would expose the evil doers and love the lovely.

when i tell people about pat i tell them that at the time he was the best writer in a office of best writers. and they ask is he still the best writer and i dont know because he doesnt have a blog, which is good because if he did none of you would be reading this.

pat was the singer of the first isla vista band that i was ever in, the reluctant surgeons. you had jeff whalen on guitar, max on guitar, welch on bass, me on drums, and i think someone was playing trumpet or some shit. we practiced one day in someones living room and a drunk guy came in and took off his shirt and danced for us as we played jumping jack flash.

pat was there with me when his best friend fired me at 3 in the morning after i had busted my ass.

pat was there with me when his best friend banned me during the persian gulf war when i said that i couldnt be responsible for editing any more damn war stories, because that war was killing me. that i wanted to fall in love with jeanine, who i was totally in love with.

pat was there when i rose from the dead and interviewed the chancellor of the university for the nexus’s fake competition in a three part exclusive where i was able to ask all the things that the nexus would have loved to ask but they were the nexus and she wasnt talking to us, but she would talk to me, and answered every damn question i had… whatever.

pat was there when i won the award for best art’s section despite not being entered by the guy who fired and banned me, pat entered me, pat picked out the sections for me, and it was pat who smiled big (like all of us) when i got my award, dressed in a dress, and it was pat who repeatedly yelled “irony of ironies!” as i brought home our first award for that section ever.

he has raised probably the happiest young son that ive ever seen who pat claims is now even happier.

he is single-handedly responsible for the czech republic being one of the newer members of the UN.

he inspires not only me, but his brother jeff, who fronts the rock group tsar, who idolizes pat even more than i do.

pat was the first one to put his tounge down my ear at my first nexus office party, to which i pushed him away in disgust, but then realized later that the wet willie only meant that i was baptised into the family.

people ask why all of us are so close and why we will always be so close and all i can do is say that somethings are meant to be and theres nothing you can do to fight it or change it or alter it.

you cant move away to foreign lands, you cant go off and get married, you cant go off and have real lives, you cant escape it. its there. we’re all blood brothers and blood sisters joined by spit, sealed with a kiss. the gods at mt. olympus look up to something and its called the nexus.

and thor stands above them all.

and may i say, it was a pleasure and an honor to hang out with him these past two weekends.

my best to you, my friend.

i’ll see you at the guns n roses reunion tour at the collesium.

marc brown is always there + amy + dougie