dear alabama

i got your email. youre way too nice. so where have you been? you sounded sorta out of wack. i hope you know im always there for you.

i wont laugh.

i took my birthday off, then i took yesterday off too.

76. David R.

yesterday i went to the beach. something i never do. i barely went to the beach when i lived a block away from it. but i miss it and yesterday i needed it.

i woke up at 9am thanks to kristin who called to tell me she was sorry that she didnt call on my birthday. then i wrote for a while, then i played ps2, then i got my shit together and then i left the house by 12:45 which is pretty good for me.

only reason i was really motivated was cuz i was on my last day of the rentacar and i wanted my moneys worth out of it.

got on the 101 in the middle of the day which is a treat cuz normally here in LA you wouldnt drive through the valley on the freeway unless you wanted to be stuck in traffic. but at 1pm theres no one there. aint no one on the 405 south either.

and best of all, aint no one at venice beach

except for a sprinkling of hotties

and all the randoms of my old neighborhood

and me.

it was super chill, ‘bama, mellow, fun, interesting, cool, perfect weather.

i walked along the boardwalk, picked up some cheap sunglasses, ate a slice of ‘za and just took pictures of random things. nothing spectacular unless you blow them up full screen, lots of funny tshirts about smoking pot – that seems to be the new big theme of venice.

its so great to be there when theres no tourists and no bogusness going on. just the locals enjoying the unseasonably warm weather. i think it was an even 80 right there.

took off my sandals and walked to the beach. then along the water. then on the sand dune. then past maybe 100 seagulls who were half buried in the warm sand, then back to the boardwalk where i talked to a guy who was selling basketball jerseys and hats. we talked about the lakers.

are there going to be enough balls to go around? will they win every game? will they all stay healthy? do they even need kobe? how deep are you when you have derek fisher as your 6th man and devon george as your 7th? everyone talks to me all the time. doesnt matter what im wearing, doesnt matter how much of a beard i have, or how much of a scumbag i look like, they talk and they like talking and i like talking with them.

strolled over to my car and someone had put a daisy in my window crack. not everyone else got one. just me.

drove over to century city. i had a free pass to the amc movies. i actually had two free passes. i may have had more. who knows anymore. took one of my passes with me just in case Lost in Translation was showing at a reasonable time. it was showing at 4:20p. i looked at my sundial and it was 4p. so i walked around the swanky wesssside mall and picked up a memory card for my PS2 and a remote for the DVD part of it.

did some window shopping at Coach like you should.

sat down and really enjoyed sofia coppola show me around a little part of tokyo.

i like her movies because just like my day, theyre carefree in pace, mellow, and subtlely deep.

the music that she picks is always so good.

choosing the jesus and mary chain near the end of the film did me so right. i love that band. i was just playing it for the cheerleader the other night if you know what i mean and it was so perfect.

yesterday was a day off that i needed so badly. i needed to remember how to truly relax.

got home in time to watch kobe return to the lakers.

ate pf chang leftovers, got a dirty phonecall from a dirty girl, passed out and woke up in the middle of the night with the front door still open and the neighbors dog licking my plate clean.

layne had warned me about those dogs.

i hope splinky gets something fast + i should be linking bloopy more often + makeout city is back

last night my true love took me

to pf changs where she liquored me up and then straight to the strip club where we sat in the back talking about girls and then she bought me a lap dance.

the stripper was a really tall romanian girl whos fake name was roxie, short for roxanne.

she asked if my girl would like to join us in the champagne room and i said yes, that i think she would.

so all three of us went back there.

i was nervous because i had heard that lap dances had been banned from la county, so i wasnt sure what was going to happen back there.

roxie asked if my girl wanted to hold my hand while she “danced” for me and i had to tell her that she wasnt my girl, she was my exgirl

after the dance roxie asked how do you do it

i said first some little kisses behind the neck…

she said no, laughed, and then nodded over at my true love who was digging into her cigarette case full of twenties.

i said, i dont know, roxie.

the whole time she was playing with my fro and she said just keep on doing what youre doing then.

just one of the very nice unexpected morsels of niceness that i received yesterday. and im so thankful, so if you will indulge me, i would like to thank some people right now before i go to the beach.

thanks so much to rene for the delicious meal, rum, coke, beer, beer, table dance, table dance, lap dance, lap dance, lap dance, beer, beer, and body shot.

and thanks for then letting us go to the strip club.

just kidding.

thanks to all my friends on the internet who linked to me yesterday and said nice things. especially splink who hardly ever links anyone, tracy who posted some classic pics from my favorite chapbook, greg who put up a picture of me looking like a total dork, sepi who complimented my archives, and kate who posted my favorite part of the wedding service sermon thing too.

romance is everything, rock writer.

thanks to all the people who called me and left messages and sent emails, especially nicolette who i havent seen in a long time and seana fitt who i havent seen in a really long time. both lovely surprises.

also super cool were the emails i got from ashley and chris c who each spent a lot of time in photoshop for my unworthy ass.

i would like to thank david r. who wrote me to wish me a happy birthday and asked what my paypal email address was he could flow to the busblog since paypal wasnt working right then through the link, and i told him that my paypal email address is paypal@tonypierce.com.

speaking of which, thanks to jason r. for his donation to the car fund

and to my mom for hers!

74. jason r.

75. mom

my mom also sent a nice big box of bittersweet newspapers from the cubs’ stretch run and playoffs, a great cubs W shirt, and a W car flag, and a fluffy cubs blanket, and a 1908 cubs hat like one i had when i was a kid.

also much thanks has to go to the good people of Blogger who sent me a blue blogger hoodie which coincidentally arrived yesterday. coincidence because any blogger who was paying for Blogger Pro got a hoodie if they filled out the form last month.

either way, kimbalina from blogger sent me nice wishes through the aim chat yesterday, and it is always nice when someone from the home office says hi, and eternal thanks goes to her and the company that she works for because probably none of you would be reading this without them. that number again: none.

ok, maybe eight.

thank you to elliot smith for putting a knife into his heart about a mile away from here, killing himself, thus taking some of the spotlight away from the anniversary of my birth. i have a bizarre relationship with public attention, so i thank you for diverting some of it away with that knife

into your heart.

thanks to fred “rerun” berry for also dying yesterday and not taking more attention away from my special day, but sharing in the glow. whats happening was one of my favorite tv shows growing up. there werent that many black shows out back then, and the ones they had were all really great. sanford & son, good times, fat albert, flip wilson, the jeffersons, whats happening, and later the cosby show were huge triumphs in breaking down ideas as to what blacks could do on tv and whether it would interest white america.

rerun epitomized the soul of a group of young black kids in the show filled with great characters.

sorry the last thing you ever did on tv was star dates.

so today, right now, im charging my camera batteries cuz im taking my rentacar to venice beach to take some pictures for you, cuz when im not making beautiful love with girls way out of my league, my favorite thing to do is take pictures and show them to you on this blog.

thanks for always being there.

your pal,

tony