To: Tony, From: Abrasivist

Subject: A lonely cubfan speaks

I’m the only one in Cleveland here that is writhing in pain at recent Wrigley Field final scores. Although not on local television and often at work, the wonders of technology send messages to my cellphone as to what the score was of the latest loss. I would think even Pete Rose bet against the Reds going into Wrigley and doing that. I hope someone has informed Atlanta that the Cubs play all the bad teams in September so they are a lock for the wild card spot. OOPS…it’s October now. Yikes.

Now Atlanta in town for a final three games and payback on their mind for their disappointing exit from the playoffs at the hands of the Cubs last year. I predict a loss in the final game of the year will do it. As a Cub fan I would expect nothing less than the usual crescendo of hope before all is lost. It’s kind of like knowing that your plane is about to strike the side of a mountain but thinking that perhaps it’s the soft side of the mountain and all will be ok.

Will someone please take that darn goat to the ballpark?

signed,

Abrasivist

Dear Fellow Cub Fan,

i dont know whats worse, frankly, losing in the playoffs last year after being up 3-1 with wood and prior ready to rock, or not even making the wild card this year with a far superior team.

i know the good Lord loves us, but He seems to be taking this free will shit a bit too far.

last year i made a pilgramage to the Billy Goat Tavern in september to put all this away once and for all.

my mom thinks i was there to suprise her for her 50th birthday, but no, it was to make peace with the goat.

i drank a large stein of Old Style, i had a cheezebuggah, cheeps, and a frigging pepsi.

i even bought my mom a burger and a beer.

we hugged the waitstaff, we lit candles under the goat, we even put the super bowl shuffle on the jukebox to cover all our bases.

little did i know that i should have, instead, slashed the tires of one Steve Bartman. which, trust, me, i would have definately done.

i dont know what to say about this season. we were stacked. we had the best line up ive ever seen on the north side.

and that pitching staff was sick.

i cant say that the front office didnt do enough because Maddux, Ramirez, Lee, Nomah, Barrett, even Neffi fucking Perez were all key pickups. but when Borowski went down they never reacted to get a quality closer.

the cubs blew 20 games this season including the game tonight.

am i to believe that the phillies wouldnt have let 40 year old Jose Mesa loose for kyle farnsworth?

and i, sadly, will also have to put some blame on our pal dusty baker, who had the best team in baseball all year and still failed to put together any sort of serious winning streak (other than the 12 for 15 run a few weeks ago) and ultimately coming up short against the mets, pirates, and now reds.

sports illustrated needs to share some blame, naturally, for putting the cubs on the cover of their baseball preview issue.

and then theres the matter of the goat, whose owner cursed the cubs decades ago when he was not allowed to watch game 4 of the 1945 world series with his friendly pet.

if i was the ceo of tribune corp., i would give that fucking beast box seats to the entire season next year.

i would also re-sign clement cuz he looks like a goat, nomar cuz he twitches like a goat, and i would trade away maddux because we need a closer.

but now im going to go home, cry, and watch the presidential debates

and then cry a little more.

your pal,

tony

abrasivist + mass live makes the best headlines + sk smith

ok so this will be the notes for the big pitch tomorrow.

i will go to this as a shortcut to examples of things that i have done on the blog and site over the years.

please feel free to add any other busblog moments in the comments.

42 photo essays

links page

fifteen minute photo essay

best week ever + wonkette + gawker + metafilter + boing boing

interview with an escalator

2001 a year in review

summer of 2001

technorati results for tonypierce.com

auctioning a link on ebay

the day i sold my fro

interview with a skinny x model

how to blog

how to vote

this years stats

riggs bank

zack braff

woman of the year 2003

man of the year 2002

when it rains it pours.

today i have another appointment to pitch a blog idea for a big time web site.

im terrified.

seriously terrified.

i can talk about anything. but when it comes to talking about myself for a job, i freeze up and freak out. i dont know why.

its my kryptonite. call me napoleon dumbomite.

for five years i was the manufacturers rep for philips/magnavox. i traveled around most of california, oregon, and nevada telling salesmen and managers and store owners why they should sell our products more, how they could sell them faster, and i gave them tips on how things worked.

after that i worked for webtv and microsoft doing pretty much the same thing.

for all of those companies i was one of the main people at the booths of trade shows like Comdex, CES, and local events. i stood out there with my stupid polo shirt tucked into my stupid Dockers and i answered questions about our products, our company, and the competition.

i loved it.

i even loved the hecklers. Loved the hecklers. just like how you see me handle the occassional jagoffs who try to leave negative comments in here, i handled people who tried to diss me and my company as i was making a buck.

god i loved the hecklers.

you will never have a more attentive crowd than when a heckler tries to fuck up your shit.

but pitching myself for a gig is really hard. the demons that rarely infest my head awaken. and even though i have landed a high majority of the jobs that ive interviewed for, it was a fight between the good angel inside and the bad ones.

today for example i have probably 50 ideas for how this web site should utilize a blog. i can get so deep with them, or totally surfacy.

all the demons are saying, if you keep it basic they will think its not a real thing. then the other demons are saying, if you present it as too involved, they wont go for it because they will think that its too much to do.

hecklers in the head.

so now im waiting for a confirmation of the meeting but i havent heard from them in weeks, and im getting deja vu of the last time i was justthis close to a dream job and justthatquick the lines of communications ended with no warning.

my astrology though says that good stuff is right around the corner, so thats hopeful.

UPDATE: just like that i got confirmation that the meeting will be tomorrow. if you love me, pray for me.

LA Voice called this the best personal blog in LA + blogging LA has a great list of other best of LAs

not the girl in front of me, but the guy in front of her

says to s.e. hinton, “you and mark twain got me interested in writing.”

now as you can see in this picture, im the biggest dork in america.

probably the world.

but when he said that i thought to myself, damn straight.

although when i was up there i couldnt even look at her in the eyes. i didnt watch her autograph my books. i dont even know what i was looking at.

completely starstruck like i havent been in quite some while.

i said to her, like that man said, you also inspired me to write, but i would say it was you and jd salinger.

and i asked her a lot of things, my friends.

for if you dont own your dorkiness, you will never be able to revel in the dorky rewards, like asking crazy questions to your first favorite author

a woman who while flunking out of her junior year high school creative writing class, busts with the beginings of The Outsiders, finishes it at 16, and gets published at 17

all while never leaving tulsa, oklahoma.

then reels off three more novels (that was then, this is now; rumble fish; tex) so good that they all get made into movies, two of which were directed by francis ford coppola who asked her advice while they filmed the movies.

this was the cast of The Outsiders:

Dallas Winston – Matt Dillon

Johnny Cade – Ralph Macchio

Ponyboy Curtis – C. Thomas Howell

Darrel Curtis – Patrick Swayze

Sodapop Curtis – Rob Lowe

Two-Bit Mathews – Emilio Estevez

Steve Randle – Tom Cruise

Cherry Valance – Diane Lane

Bob Sheldon – Leif Garrett

this was the cast of Rumble Fish

Rusty-James – Matt Dillon

Motorcycle Boy – Mickey Rourke

Patty – Diane Lane

Father – Dennis Hopper

Steve – Vincent Spano

Smokey – Nicolas Cage

B.J. – Christopher Penn

Benny – Tom Waits

when i got there i overheard her conversation with the book store manager.

mgr: do you have any questions before we begin?

se: do i have to read?

mgr: not if you don’t want to.

se: i would like to talk.

mgr: great, then talk.

se: oh you’ll have to shut me up. i can talk all night.

she was so nice. maybe thirty people in attendence, with a generous dose of school kids from 10yrs old to high school. parents with their kids. a few random creepy dudes like me.

and then the girl in front of me.

she was a nice asian girl who was talking to the guy ahead of me until she turned around and asked me out of the blue, “when did you read the outsiders?”

nobody, by the way, cared too much about ms. hinton’s new book, hawkes something, which is probably a perfectly good book, but the topic tonight was The Outsiders, which got so much attention i sort of felt sorry for her, but i think she understood, she answered all the questions happilly, like someone who finally wanted to set the record straight.

i told the girl, i dont know, when i was in junior high. so like 13, 14? and then i asked, how about you?

and she said smiling so brightly, yes, me too. last year.

her dad was in the next aisle staking out a good spot to take a picture of his daughter with the famous author.

he had gone to the shelves and retreived every book se had written except for the two childrens books.

and when the young girl approached the table she giggled nervously and said, sorry, and nudged the healthy stack and se geniunely said, no problem, and even signed the computer printout of the original Outsiders movie poster.

the month of libra swooped in on all of us. peace and love was in the air and i couldnt stop stuttering or smiling or beaming.

and i have studied twain.

i took two semesters at santa monica college, one at ucsb arts n lectures, and one at ucsb college of creative studies.

in my life, this woman was definately on par with twain, as far as influence. because it was her books that gave me something to identify with that no other book before it ever did.

in her q & a she talked about how she starts with the characters first. like, no brainer. like that one of her characters in her new book is a gemini on the capricorn cusp

“he likes to travel, but once he gets to where he loves, he will stay.”

one kid asked her if she liked a particular web site where people can write sequels or prequels or short stories based around their favorite books

and se lit up and knew about the web site, said she loved it, and said how great it was that the outsiders had over 900 different stories posted on that site.

the kids said, is it true that this one character from this one novel makes an appearance in this other novel, but with a different name?

and she said yes, and gave the names.

and another kid said why did you have that other character from the one novel get in that other novel.

and she said, she wanted people to know that it was all taking place in the same town, so she gave him “a walk on.”

seriously prepared kids. i was impressed.

and when i got home i was so on top of the world that i sang a little song for a dirty girl across town.

which reminds me of the best part of the whole night.

se hinton raised up her new book, and said, this is not a kids book. if you’re a kid i want your parents to read it first. i dont need any trouble.

and when i was able to ask her one final question i said

do you do these things very often?

and she said, hardly ever.

and i said, well thank you so much for doing it tonight.

but i did not shake her hand, which was the only thing i wanted to do

i wanted to touch a real writers hands.

tiffany + a halo opposite the sun + kitty bukkake

dumb_me: hi rockr

karisa: tony!

karisa: did you have a nice evening?

dumb_me: i think so

dumb_me: that was so long ago

karisa: haha- yes it was!

karisa: i had a funny evening!

dumb_me: how so?

karisa: well my roomie called me and she had 2 tickets to some ‘women rock’ show.

karisa: we didn’t know who was in it- but we went anyway.

karisa: at the wiltern.

dumb_me: damn!

dumb_me: i passed that yesterday

karisa: it ended up being blondie, kelly clarkson, en vogue & shirley manson.

karisa: with vivica a. fox as the mc

dumb_me: yes!

karisa: no!

karisa: blondie was so bad.

dumb_me: no!

karisa: she looked like hilary clinton from where we were sitting- but in a really trashy outfit.

karisa: it was for a taping- so it was slow & boring.

karisa: and it was SO hot in there!

karisa: it was funny all around though.

dumb_me: how was en vogue?

dumb_me: do they still got it?

karisa: there were only 3 of them- but yes, they do!

dumb_me: was kelly clarkson any good?

karisa: she is a good singer.

dumb_me: was it hot in there cuz of all the lights?

karisa: last time i was there it was insanely hot too.

dumb_me: it wasnt super hot when we saw zwan

dumb_me: i wonder what the deal is.

dumb_me: clearchannel owns the wiltern, maybe theyre being stingy with the a/c

karisa: last time i went it was hot too.

karisa: over 1/2 the audience left b/c it was so hot up there.

dumb_me: what show was that for?

dumb_me: flogging molly?

karisa: dropkick murphy’s.

karisa: floggin molly is playing next month though.

dumb_me: was vivica foxy?

karisa: well i saw her in the press line when i was walking in and he had SO much make-up on- but she was hosting a television special, so i am sure that was why.

karisa: she did a great job hosting though and changed her outfits a lot.

karisa: i was praying blondie would follow her lead.

karisa: no such luck.

dumb_me: was shirley manson good?

dumb_me: did she do any cover tunes?

karisa: i only saw her do a duet w/blondie- like i said- i didn’t stay for the whole thing.

karisa: she looked good though- she looked like a rail next to blondie- and she looked about 20 from where i was sitting.

karisa: poor blondie.

karisa: she dances like someone’s mother too.

dumb_me: yikes

karisa: she should just rock-out w/a microphone stand.

karisa: i feel bad talking shit- b/c i loved blondie.

karisa: but whoa.

october is breast cancer awareness month + WomenRock + breast cancer research foundation

a suprisingly large amount of young people read the busblog

and because of that i sometimes feel a bit of responsibility to point out potholes in the road of life that ive occassionally fallen into, and i would like to prevent any of them from making the same mistakes.

todays lesson is from the book of Loyalty.

a long long time ago there was a guy named Johnny Carson. he was so much the king of late night that no one even dared compete against him. yes there were clowns who came and went named arsenio and chevy but today history looks back at them as the talentless schmoes that they were then.

similarily history looks at Johnny as a guy with class, style, and a brand of dry humor that entertained america for 31 years on the Tonight Show.

Carson’s only flaw was in being paranoid that if David Letterman took over the show that everyone would forget about those 31 years.

Letterman was good, but he wasn’t going to make people forget about Johnny. But LA, i can tell you first hand, egos are everything. pettiness and fear run the entertainment biz.

and if johnny didnt want letterman to have his dream job, even from retirement johnny’s influence would be enough to prevent dave from his dream job. why? because people can suck sometimes.

only thing worse than johnny c-blocking dave is jay leno swooping in and taking the job.

and that is because dave had jay on the late show 40 times when jay was a nobody. dave and jay were friends and dave was doing everything he could to help out his buddy.

when jay saw his chance at getting the tonight show, a real man, a real friend, would have said no. a man with a conscious or an ounce of goodness in him would have said, “i cant fuck over the guy who put me on national tv 40 times.”

but jay leno is a selfish, talentless opportunist, solely interested in his own future. disloyal and disrespectful to the one man who deserves the tonight show and who earned it.

leno has had 12 long years to right this wrong in a gentlemanly manner. of course it would involve humility, creativity, respect and trust; traits that he’s never shown dave in the past, so it’s no surprise he hasnt shown them recently.

what jay should have done was step down 8-9 years ago after he had already made a name for himself. like a man. like a good man. he could have worked out a deal with dave to get a producer title and a cut of the show. he could have gotten a development deal for a different show, and hit the road doing the 150 stand up dates that he currently does and retained his status as a millionaire

but nobody would be calling him an unwatchable unfunny selfish scumbag disloyal to the man who helped him rise from mediocraty.

by announcing that he’s going to hold on to his painfully unoriginal show for 5 more years and then hand it over to conan is the final kick in daves pants, and not really all that cool to conan.

wtf has jay done all these years? what has he introduced to latenight tv that he didnt steal from dave or johnny or even howard stern? the correct answer is not a damn thing.

so why c-block conan for five years?

loyalty is the easiest thing an animal can be. even dogs do it naturally.

so the lesson, my young readers, is, if even pets are kicking your ass at something, you are way off track.

psychotic normalcy + denver ruminations + raymi the fox

lets blame the moon.

nothing went right tonight. i dont say that as a oh woe is me, but just like a fact for the record.

are hearts being hardened?

as a fan of bukowski, thats the last of the whining, now on with the story.

big titted girl from across town called me up thirty minutes ago while i was passed out on the couch wanting to know if i would like to come over.

no baby, why dont you come over here.

she likes me to call myself daddy.

as in daddys had a hard day.

of course it’s lame but whattya gonna do.

but baby wants to play she says and fake pouts, fake sniffles, and whines come see me, sure that it’s sexy.

shes got two convertibles and a ford escape in her driveway and yet wants me to take a cab to the wesssside.

i used to have these weird little standoffs with my true love, i had them with ashley, i had them with miss montreal, and anna kournikova.

93. crid

maybe i should just realize that im never going to win this game. if a woman wants you in her bed, even if it means waking up, showering, getting clothes for the next day in a bag, calling a cab and being mr fabulous till streetlights flicker off, then thats what youve gotta do.

lord knows they wont wanna come over to your place

use their key

see you snoring with one leg still on the coffee table

toes peeking out from under a towel

tv flashing badnews baseball scores

instant message boxes blinking by the dozen.

lord knows they wont just make things easy and give a guy a reason to believe.

so now im showered shaved cleaned up the way she wants. not feeling all so independent and punk rock the way id like to be portrayed on my beloved internet.

waiting for the cabbie to call from the gates at the end of the driveway.

wondering why it’s so easy to write when you have a deadline of fifteen minutes, but cant write a word when theres no gun to your head.

wondering why the cubs can win so many games but get shelled at home versus the whoeverthefucks.

wondering why i spend so much time wondering and so little time in the arms of big titted and not so big titted girls across town who better have some good music ready for when daddy pulls up

under a full moon

after a day when nothings gone right.

except for feeling strangely refreshed after that little nap.

435 + woody allen calls the president comical + sk smith is superpsyched + jarrett thinks fondly of ashley

another busblog exclusive + a letter from raymi

im going to write this off the top of my head to you tony and you are goin to put it up at lick or on your blog and revamp it if you want but you told me you loved me especially for my writingness.

as the world has noticed raymi has been on hiatus, building her mysteries and going a little, uh, manic. the real world is a scarey place for a hermit but then you eventually go oh yeh, that’s the world and that’s me and i am in it, right, i remember.

i get driven around everywhere or i walk and i’m hyper and i am sad and i am happy and then i am angry but in the end i am forgiving of whatever garbage happened, and then i take the blame for it and go you idiot you put yourself in that situation, look at you now.

i live in this little bubble of a town and it’s like the canadian hamptons and stuff but i dig it it learns me good but scares me a bit. i have a global mind, you know, and i miss my friends and foes all over the place, my heart is the size of a hot air balloon.

blogging made me paranoid, being a micro-celeb made me neurotic, sadness made me promiscuous, confidence made me scream at people and happiness made me cry.

i just wanted you to know that i am ok and i plan to get better and i am looking forward to fall, even winter and hopefully i’ll have a mini-vacation to los fagalus and possibly make amends with the police dept. of manhattan beach, heh.

i think people in my town think that i am a witch ‘cos of my long black hair and how i walk around talking to myself, well i did there for a bit, but only in my backyard and yes my neighbours have decided to fuck off and move. the property taxes have gone way up ‘cos of all the monster homes.

oh and everyone longboards now, tho i am still the only gurl and i have anti to thank for that and whitey for busticating his leg and being traumatised and i have weed to thank for the courage to bomb around like a crazyhorse.

can you make this make sense and if there are typos, highlight them and leave ’em.

– raymi the agnostic teacher preacher leacher

ps. ya ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

pps. i’m single and it’s ok.

raymi + when raymi met bunny on lick + about raymi

what do you do when your favorite blogger

wont talk to you? not because she doesnt like you, but because shes terribly shy?

i can understand where shes coming from. certain things make me terribly shy too. especially when people want to befriend me due to my blog. cuz everyone knows that nothing in here is true so therefore the man they want to meet doesnt exist.

+ + +

my lawyer says i need an agent. she said, how is Danger Mouse getting booked at a killer web conference with true pioneers like Marc Andreessen, Laurence Lessig, and Jerry Yang, and i’m not?

maybe they dont need someone who actually writes every day on the web at these web fests?

+ + +

“I like it [L.A.] much better than I used to, probably because I like New York much less. As New York has gotten duller and duller, L.A. seems less awful. I doubt very much that L.A. has become less awful, it’s just that in contrast to New York it seems less awful. You never have to have human contact here; there are very few actual humans to have contact with.”

– Fran Lebowitz via lablogs

+ + +

Shocker of the Day:

Dolly Parton had fake bazooms?

Shocker of the Day #2:

After all these years she is having them removed!

Shocker of the Day #3:

This info was provided by the buzzmachine!

+ + +

Comedy Central claims that the viewers of the emmy-winning Daily Show, infact, are *not* “stoned slackers” as that vaunted journalist Bill O’Reilly claimed last week while interrogating interviewing Jon Stewart.

Neilson Research concluded that viewers of the Daily Show were actually more likely to have a college education than viewers of The Factor, AP reports today.

well, duh.

No report yet on how many viewers of The Factor still believe that Iraq was behind 9/11, believe in the Easter Bunny, or still think that Michael Moore hates america.

me, i heart america.

and i really heart the UK for writing this:

How Bush’s grandfather helped Hitler’s rise to power

+ + +

“When will corporate blogging be recognised as a desirable skill?”

a wonderful article that is now on Corante, and if the wonderful woman who i have an interview with this week really does read my blog, i hope she reads this article.

+ + +

Tsar plays Friday night at the Scene in Glendale!

+ + +

Bush’s hometown paper supports Kerry. if the president read newspapers he would be real mad.

s.e. hinton got me into reading.

j.d. salinger got me into writing. college scarred me from writing stories by convincing me i sucked.

and blogging got me back into it.

so now that we’re full-circle, look at who’s coming out of the past and back into my life?

the woman who started it all, S.E. Hinton is going to be reading from and signing her new book in brentwood tomorrow, so blogging.la tells us.

now im a little weary because blogging.la also told me to go to the lobster.fest and we all know how that little fiasco wound up.

S.E., author of such classics like The Outsiders; That Was Then, This Is Now; Rumble Fish, and Tex, apparently has just come out with her first non-teen novel Hawkes Harbor which amazon calls “a dark, funny, scary, suspenseful tale that will entertain mainstream and adventure/horror readers alike.”

Would S.E. mind if L.L. called her return a comeback? It’s been 20 years since she’s released anything.

All I know is I want to go but i already rsvp’ed to go to the LA Press Club’s celebration of tsarfan and reason editor Brian Doherty’s fine book (which i even read) This Is Burning Man.

get drunk with my friends at a swanky beverly hills press club event or be a fanboy to the woman who began this sickness that i have with reading and writing – and then drink with karisa afterward?

what would ponyboy do?

brian doherty reviews the classic Smile cd + hit and run + i cant wait to vote