what would i like to do with my life?

well, if i cant get my dream job, i suppose i will work for the la times, get married, get a mini van, and sell out.

im almost 111 years old.

why am i fighting the inevitable any more?

theres worse things in life than coaching softball on saturdays and fighting traffic to make a school play.

its so weird how those of us who could have the american dream turn our backs on it and try to change the world instead.

in the long run how much more important is identifying the failures of the right (who harp on the misdeeds of Joe Wilson and Sandy Berger while ignoring the misdeeds of the President who is hiding 28 pages of the 9/11 report and Robert Novak who blew the cover of an undercover CIA agent) than raising good strong healthy moral kids?

and going to PTA meetings

and hosting bible study in the garage.

not like anyone cares about fair and balanced coverage in blogs anyhow.

plus, ive always wanted a dog.

a nice big old english sheepdog named Angus who would be too lazy to do much more than eat drink and sleep.

ive always wanted a big backyard with a treeswing and a hot tub.

im sure the la times could provide that to me.

and its not like the world is reaching out to america to be changed.

only problem is im going to have to wear a suit. which in this summer’s heat doesnt seem very fun. even if i look damn good in suits.

but its cool.

only thing im not crazy about is having to work for Tribune Corp.

however after all these years at the XBI, nothing could be worse.

one thing i promise i wont be doing is putting a My Child Is an Honor Student sticker on the back of our Astrovan.

and i probably wont blog.

but first i would have to find a wife, i suppose.

or stickier, putting up blog ads.

or something.

michele malkin + cynthia rockwell + souptree

do you know that tsar is playing tonight?

they are about 10:30pm at Spaceland.

dylan’s band, Shapes of Race Cars will play a little before 10pm, and i feel bad cuz i dont think ive ever seen them.

then Tsar returns to the spaceland stage, which theyve owned since they came out in 1999.

this time they will be playing with a new drummer.

i dont know his name.

i did hear him last night on KXLU and it was impressive, but it could have been college radio trickery.

speaking of college radio trickery, our old pal AJ will be in attendence tonight. and i cant wait to see her.

in other news, anna kournikova and i are officially over.

i know most of you wrote us off a while back, but we’ve been keeping in touch on the dl, and yesterday i legally recognized her union with her man.

we were eating in some trendy place in los feliz and i got it. she loves me, but she doesnt Love me. she wants enrique, the pretty boy, the dude who will do all the little girlie things that i wont do with her, like walk in the park and hang out at her place, and blah blah blah.

needless to say i got it. im done. i hope she and her man live happilly ever after. and i hope he takes care of that shit cuz its good.

and when she drove me home i was a little sad.

so i said, can i feel you up one last time.

she said, over the shirt?

i said, yeah.

so she undid her seat belt and i gave them one last squeeze, and that was it.

trueboy + amy + this is a thing that is happening

people ask me all the time

jack nicholsen about how i do my photo essays.

heres how i do them. briefly.

first i have my own server/host situation. you will need to host your own stuff unless you’re incredibly clever, but i imagine if you were so clever you’d host your own stuff.

you can get hosted in a variety of places for under $10/month. my man Os charges $20/month but his solution is twice as good as most, and you hardly (if ever) see the busblog go down. to me thats worth a $100 tip each year.

next, i use two programs: Dreamweaver and Photoshop.

Photoshop allows me to tweak the pictures. Because I’m lazy and untalented, all I ever really use in Photoshop nowadays is Auto Levels and Auto Contrast. sometimes to cheat i will blur things in the background or i will darken areas that i want to write over.

sometimes i will use Paint Dabs or something dumb to make it look “arty“. It rarely works.

sometimes i just want to totally parody something, and if i take my time, it will sorta work.

dont get distracted/intimidated by photoshop, sometimes the simple ones are the best.

But the main reason I use Photoshop with every picture is to cut down the image size so it will load faster.

Mostly, the photos are usually untouched. Not because im such a badass photographer but because I am lazy and I havent ever learned how to properly use Photoshop.

The other program I use is Dreamweaver. I know an elementary amount of HTML, but when I use Dreamweaver, i use the “Design” portion only. Sometimes I will use “Design & Code” if i cant figure out why something isnt working. But mostly I do the WYSIWYG.

I only do a few things on Dreamweaver: my favorite is the three column table. I know all the cool kids use CSS and turn their noses on Tables, but im an old man and I know what works for me. And until they can beat my ass with their fancy code they should just chill.

my obey page is the classic three column table. it allows you to put text on different sides of an image.

if you dont use a table, you end up having to cheat like on this page. on that page you can put text on the left side of the sign, but to get something on the right side you have to go down a few lines and then align right.

again im sure CSS has solutions to all of this, but i dont have the time.

Dreamweaver is also my FTP. After I have figured out what picture I’m going to use, and I have typed my text into the code, I FTP the page over to my server using Dreamweaver.

Then I put a picture into photoshop, shrink it or crop it so that it will look nice on the blog, and then I link that picture to the photo essay.

Again, nothing that I am doing is new. I have been doing photoessays for years. I use old programs and old versions of those programs.

i do like it when people mimic my style and give me props when they do photo essays.

imitation is the highest form of flattery, and i am often quite flattered.