to discuss the accomplishments and failures of the worlds most well spellchecked blog.

this quarter we met at the world famous pump room in chicago where we went over the chart to your left.

one man stood up and said, as you can see, the hits of the busblog have tripled since last year.

another man stood up and said, yes, but last year he was only getting 1,000 hits on average per day, which really isnt very much.

a woman rose and said that 1,000 hits a day was actually pretty good last year.

a giraffe craned its neck and belched. it sounded like he was saying bullshit.

an important looking old man did not stand up but looked at me and asked if i can explain the record-setting month that i have just experienced?

i said that like in many quarters i have no clue why more and more people are coming to my blog.

then a very nice looking woman stood up and via a powerpoint presentation showed us that this month, despite taking a week off to enjoy sxsw, due to heavy traffic induced links (and a subsequent victory) at the bloggie awards, a trio quartet of singaporian powerhouses, canadian rock star matthew good, a flattering photo essay by the inventors of blogger and audblog, and the enduring popularity of the “how to blog” post, the busblog eclipsed 100,000 page views for the first month ever.

at which point i stood up and said, i also think it has something to do with the hundreds of much much smaller blogs who link to me every day.

the giraffe sneezed, but i said, no im serious, yes its nice to have those spikes from cute chicks across the sea and from award programs and for being mentioned in big sites, but if you have a consistant and growing base of real bloggers and readers then the spikes only add to an already nice head-start.

people were falling asleep so i farted and everyone laughed.

and then i looked at the camera and i said, from the bottom of all of our hearts we here at the busblog are so grateful to everyone who has linked to this blog and everyone who has ever visited here.

thank you. thank you. and thank you.

morland + simpleton + wunderdog

the forum
inglewood, ca
3/23/05

the first time i saw motley crue was at the aragon ballroom in downtown chicago on 5/11/84, i remember because it was my buddy keef’s birthday and he was the one who got me into the crue.

shout at the devil had been out for a few months and it was instantly one of my favorite albums. maybe it was the ominious black cover with raised devil star promising some sort of occultish mystery, maybe it was the hot babes in the video, maybe it was the newfangled semi-kiss makeup and teased hair.

but it was probably the heavy guitar mixing some of the best of malcom young, judas priest, and the parade of hair metal bands that were popping up on the sunset strip like so many palm trees.

alot has changed with the crue since their debut Too Fast For Love in ’83. theyve gone from being just another poison + warrant + tesla + cinderella + ratt peer to being legit rock stars who have lived the life harder faster and livelier than pretty much any group.

teetering between laughably forgetably and atypical to downright catchy and lasting, motley crue has somehow kept it hard for all these years which is certainly saying something considering the long strange trip that theyve been on.

and so when i got the email asking if i wanted to go to the show That Night and cover it for my favorite local weekly i thought about it for a total of one second and quickly looked at my gmail to see when the email had been sent. ah four minutes! i hope they hadnt already found someone. so i wrote back with a hell yes and got a quick reply telling me that my tickets would be waiting for me at the forum club. i had made the big time. fucking a.

back in the day the forum was it, and the forum club was the little bar that only the v of the v.i.p.s would party in before and after laker games, concerts, boxing matches, etc.

all the great acts have played at the forum. hendrix, zep, nirvana, ac/dc, prince… everyone. the former home of the lakers and gretzkey’s kings is now owned by a church but every once in a while they lease it out for a rock show and that night it was the return to LA by one of their own, Motely Crue who somehow had sold out the 20,000 seat arena despite ticket prices hovering around (and above) triple digits.

we arrived, paid our $20 for parking and got into the show after some confusion and security people pointing us in the right way. strangely it was the swedish virgin who found out how we were supposed to get into the forum club as me in my iron maiden longsleeve looking like a venezualian thug wasnt getting us the right answers, but fortunately her sweet disposition and ability to overhear other journalists got us where we needed to be

and soon we were eight rows up and to the side of the stage. pretty much a perfect view of what was happening which was rock had returned to the fabulous forum. the micro miniskirts had also returned, the devil horns had returned, the leather pants and long hair and chicks in lingerie. everything had come back with a vengence and there were all those classic tunes again and everyone was smiling. the band just as much as the fans. it was a lite metal love fest. it was great.

and when we drove home the swedish girl said thanks for taking me to my first rock show, what will you write? and i said kiss me and i’ll tell you. she said i cant im driving.

and when we stopped at a red light she said why are you smiling and i said cuz im about to kiss you. watch out. here it comes. she said but the lights about to change. i said shhhh. kissed her, and this is what i told her.

mr miyagi keeps the sexiness coming + paul jones admits defeat to me wastes me in googlefighting + fil represents

and today is her 22nd birthday.

by america i mean south america, central america, north america and canada america, of course.

raymi writes exactly the sort of blog that id make if i was a chain smoking karaoke singing topless cussing rock star from toronto.

she had me at pffft.

people say why dont you just marry her already but im not worthy of a raymi le minx. what would i do but disappoint her. she deserves so much more than me. she deserves like the ’97-98 chicago bulls.

i dont know how her man fil does it. whats it like to stare into the sun all day. whats it like to hear symphonic music every time she opens her mouth. whats it like to see the mona lisa every time she strikes a pose.

raymi came over to my house once a very long time ago. not even the stars knew what to do so they all fell all at the same time and night was turned to day. the world kept spinning but the earth locked up and raymi got off and straightened its axis cuz it looked “gay” all crooked like that.

soon there was a knock at the door and there was a pizza boy there with beer and smokes and weed and funyuns. he would not accept our money when he saw who everything was for and raymi said thats right bitch and kicked his ass as he left. it was a love tap but after she slammed the door she pulled out the yellow bag and said who the hell ordered the funyuns.

i never admitted that it was me who ordered the funyuns. until now.

the pizza dude had left behind an ice cold two litre of coke which raymi drank straight from the bottle. i was happy to drink from it right after she did and i didnt even wipe it off. if there were such things as raymi germs i wanted them. who wouldnt.

i think she drank a lot more than i did because soon she was bouncing off the walls, getting terrifically bored with everything the minute she looked at it. it was awesome. here i was mr. entertainment and i had my blogging idol in my domicile and the game was “dont bore raymi”. so i turned on the tivo and she worked through that super fast, so i turned on my vcr and she tore through my 55 years of tape recordings, then i clicked some bill monroe on my winamp and we square danced right there in the living room accidentally knocking over bongs and water pipes and hookahs and midgets.

i wondered if she was going to get naked for me but she didnt and i was sorta relieved becuase i didnt want all my hair to turn white and i didnt want to pass out right there infront of her, which i woulda done. no seriously, i woulda.

we had a little semi battle of wills when she started ordering me around, which she seemingly likes to do. i dont mind being of service, but in america im the king of the jungle. and by america i mean my house. and theres only so many things a man can do at once. do you want the tortilla chips or do you want your crust removed from your slice. make up your mind. do you want me to find the liquid e or do you want me to dig up the new j-lo video. i only have two hands.

but raymi was great. she wanted all of it. she was very much like the lizard king, she even whispered it: we want the world and we want it

now.

so happy birthday queen of everything, princess of persia, goddess of the underground, ruler of all things considered. even though you may not know it you’ve influenced every blog ever made including this one. every day.

in a perfect world our two countries would buy us a motorhome and let us drive around the globe telling people how to do everything from line dancing to building spice racks.

we’d be bigger than howard stern

and we’d never go disco.

raymi + the + minx

today

people ask me if i miss bunny, i do. she was a sweet girl. but now shes gone and shes dead to me. until i see sweet pictures of her calling me on the phone so as to reminice about her spring break in hollywood.

ah memories.

i like bunny because shes not full of shit. you have no idea how many people who are entirely full of shit that i have to deal with here in la and online.

it’s getting regoddamneddiculous.

for example, over at jeff jarvis’s buzzmachine, a place that used to be a haven of intelligent discourse, theres a few knuckleheads who proudly claim that they dont listen to howard stern – judging him.

sorry kids, you cant have it both ways. go back to burning books.

who has the gall to talk about shit, let alone judge shit that they claim not to listen to?

not bunny mcintosh.

which is why i like her.

the other day i was hanging with my girl moxie who is a devout republican, so obviously we have our differences, but whats nice about her is she doesnt try to puke those beliefs all over those who dont share her ideals.

see, thats reasonable.

she also sticks to talking about things that she actually knows about. i realize thats a radical idea for some, but… whatev.

me and miss montreal watched our gov’nur in Pumping Iron last night. id never seen it. what a great documentary. arnold hasnt changed much. he was both charming and obnoxious, cocky and confident, big and bigger, dumb and dumber.

for lunch the fellas went to versailles and had it waiting for me when i landed. very few pleasant suprises better than that. food and sex is the way to a man’s heart, america. and if you cant give the one, definately have the other waiting. especially if its roast pork and rice and plantaines.

id tell you how me and miss montreal made beautiful lust last night while listening to dj noodle’s mix of jay-z’s the black album and nirvana’s unplugged in new york but larry flynt told me not to sixty nine and tell.

ken layne + raspil + gaping void + hampton 23

Now I recognize
it was always me
like a camera
set to expose

itself to a picture
or a pipe
through which the water
might run

or a chicken
dead for dinner
or a plan
inside the head

of a dead man.
Nothing so wrong
when one considered
how it all began.

It was Zukofsky’s
“Born very young into a world
already very old…”
The century was well along

when I came in
and now that it’s ending,
I realize it won’t
be long.

But couldn’t it all have been
a little nicer,
as my mother’d say. Did it
have to kill everything in sight,

did right always have to be so wrong?
I know this body is impatient.
I know I constitute only a meager voice and mind.
Yet I loved, I love.

I want no sentimentality.
I want no more than home.

– Robert Creeley (1927 – 2005)

metafilter thread + doc searls sez that in Google Fight i beat the instapundit! + brett lamb + accordian guy

died today of an apparent brain tumor.

johnny cochrane was sixty eight years old and not nearly respected as he should have been for his defense of oj simpson.

some claimed that it was the jury, or the bungling by the defense, but in this age of CourtTV rarely a trial goes by where there arent big mistakes made on both sides, but even with so many cooks in the kitchen can one find much fault with Cochrane’s defense of the Juice.

so to give the best tribute i can, i give you something i posted here last summer

top ten reasons why oj is not guilty

number ten: the columbian necktie.

it was no secret that over the last 6-8 months of her life, Nicole Brown Simpson spent more time with friends like Faye Resnick and others who were involved in the typical LA nightlife scene.

Some of those “friends” included drug dealers and hookers. Those associations, OJ claims was what led to the final 911 calls. He says he faught with Nicole because he didn’t want those type of people around his children.

Most of the stab wounds on both nicole brown and ron goldman were in and around the neck.

“Ms. Simpson’s head then was pulled back, perhaps by her blond hair, as the attacker slashed her throat from left to right. The neck position at the point of the cut can be determined by the fact that no blood flowed into her windpipe.

“The cut was vicious. The knife sliced through both carotid arteries – which provide blood to the brain – nearly cut through one jugular vein and left the second jugular vein dangling by a thread.

The cut was clean.” (USA Today, 10/18/96)

This is very similar to what the defense brought up to being the trademark fatal stab wound that is found on some victims of drug-related crimes. Specifically those where the victim owed money to a drug dealer.

The idea of the Columbian Necktie or Columbian Necklace came up several times in the OJ trial.

Mark Furhman was asked by F. Lee Bailey if he had ever heard of the Columbian Necktie

Q: NO. HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF A COLOMBIAN NECKLACE?

A: NO.

Q: YOU ARE HEARING THAT WORD FOR THE FIRST TIME TODAY?

A: NO. I KNOW WHAT A COLOMBIAN NECKTIE IS.

Q: COLOMBIAN NECKTIE. WHAT IS A COLOMBIAN NECKTIE, DETECTIVE FUHRMAN?

A: CUTTING SOMEBODY’S THROAT.

Q: DID YOU EVER HEAR IT CALLED A NECKLACE?

A: NO.

Q: THAT INCLUDES CUTTING THE THROAT SO SEVERELY THAT BOTH THE CAROTID ARTERIES ARE SEVERED, CORRECT?

A: I DON’T KNOW ABOUT THAT, BUT I JUST HEARD THE TERM.

Q: WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THEY ARE SEVERED? DO YOU KNOW FROM YOUR TRAINING?

A: WELL, THE PERSON WILL BLEED PROFUSELY AND DIE.

Q: THE BLOOD PRESSURE DROPS TO ZERO AND DEATH OCCURS ALMOST IMMEDIATELY; ISN’T THAT SO?

A: I WOULD ASSUME SO.

Q: IF YOUR THROAT IS CUT THAT SEVERELY WHILE YOU ARE STANDING AND SOMEBODY IS HOLDING YOUR HEAD, YOU WOULD BE DEAD BEFORE YOU HIT THE GROUND, WOULDN’T YOU?

A: (NO AUDIBLE RESPONSE.)

Q: IF YOU KNOW?

A: I WOULD HAVE TO SPECULATE. I COULDN’T TELL YOU THAT, SIR.

read the rest here

heres how you know when you can shut down my feeding tube: when i can no longer blog.

ive been blogging in one way or another since i was a lad. we just didnt know that it was blogging, but it was.

when i got into school i would rarely pay attention.

i would write little stories for the ladies in the house to read and tell me how clever i was.

i would draw pictures next to my stories.

i would integrate current events into the fiction,

and of course it would end in a perfectly iambic couplet.

all the girlies said ho

ho ho

and now nothings any different except i dont have to draw crazy pictures and i dont have to fold my stories into little squares and pass them along.

so if the day ever comes when im hooked up to some crazy machinery and i cant type or i cant tell little tall tales then accidentally trip over my juice.

dont listen to the born-agains. if anything remind them that good Christians go to the promised land. the better place. the world of milk and honey (even though im not all that crazy about honey).

if they try to cockblock you remind them that i hated most born agains for being phony and for trying to use their faith as power when it should only be a reminder that we’re Loved and there is hope for us.

period.

believing in a higher being doesnt mean that you Know more than the next person, or that you are better than anyone, all it should mean is that you’re buying this stuff about the man upstairs.

and if the man upstairs looks down on this big blue marble and doesnt see tony pierce writing little procrastination pieces for the lovelies then something is definately wrong in denmark.

and thats when my brief candle should be blown out out

and bury my dirty bones in isla vista
so that i may hear the rattle of skateboards
and smell the smoke of burnt couches
and so i can hear frustrated students
slam down their beers and yell
fuck iambic couplets

does every canadian girl rule completely?

which isnt all that rare. and the other night i got like ten hours of sleep so youd think itd even up, but it didnt.

usually i can totally rally and pull it off but this three hours was fuct cuz it should have been four hours but this week ive got the xbi cell phone which means if there are any disturbances in the area i get my ass woken up and even though its warm right now last night was super windy and it was nice to set my electric blanket at 3:30a as i was brushing my teeth and as i was saying my prayers i could hear the thermostat click meaning it was toasty. and it twas.

not as toasty as if there were twin runaway catholic girl runaways in my queen sized waterbed, but it was toasty nevertheless and all of the comforter was as mick jagger sang mine all mine.

the downside is the cell phone was mine all mine this morning. it rang three times before the cock crowed. and within a half hour i had the shit handled but then it was too late. a man cant just lay in bed for a half hour switching from npr to howard stern and not be extremely pissed off.

i remembered the good old days where if this had happened and i was entertaining, the young lady would do things to me that i would never dare repeat in this blog. and when she was done she would ask me if i felt better and i would say something witty and offer to make her some coffee.

but these arent the good old days these are the last days of the awkward middle period. the reason i was up all night is the same reason i went to sleep early on sunday. im in the midst of the begining of writing a book. an adult book. an xxx novel, of which ive been commissioned. easiest thing ever, no? no.

the demons are holding a convention in my head. its the craziest thing ever. man do they go off in there telling me things like,

you know theyre just gonna turn this into a porno, or several pornos, you know youre going to burn in hell for this, you know this isnt the reason that the Lord gave you whatever weirdo talents that you have. you realize that noone is going to treat this novel as anything more than pulp for old men and kids to yank off to, you know this isnt going to lead anywhere, you know you’ll get thrown right out of grad school if you get into grad school and they find out about this.

you know sonny i. lavista is the worst pen name of all.

they tag each other when they run out of bullshit to say and another demon takes over.

you know everyone knows your style. your fake ee bukowski holden caufield gobbley goop.

you know you cant write a novel, youve got ADD, you can barely write a blog post without being distracted in six different ways.

tag

you know that not even bukowksi wrote a xxx novel, he only wrote xxx stories and those he destroyed when he became famous.

which is a lie

the novel is set in southern illinios right around the civil war. an escaped slave thinks hes made it to canada but he got lost and has been running around in circles and finds a nice young woman whose father and brother have been fighting for the north. she gives the slave shelter and assures him that he is not in canada but he doesnt believe her because hes been lied by The Man his whole life.

she explains that she is not the man and from the sillohutte of the candlelight behind him she sees that it is he who is the man. oh yes. it is he.

he doesnt understand so they switch places in the log cabin and stands where he was standing and there he can see that thanks to the candle and her thin night gown that he can see that indeed she is very much a woman. and then realizes that she could see that he … well…

and then theres much loving. much forbidden loving. until theres a knock at the door. its the pizza man. the slave has never seen pizza before and assumes that it is the native dish of canada and as he eats the pie, the pizza boy accepts his tip from the young woman, who

you call yourself a writer? the demons yell.

its a bad deal. yes its a bad novel. nothing good will come of it. except for the money. the barrels of money. so instead of writing it i click around the web and see what everyone else is up to. but so few are up to anything, so i look at my stats, i play blogshares, i play fantasy hoops which im in the playoffs in all but one of my eight leagues, i make trades in my fantasy baseball, i answer some very nice emails and some very suggestive emails and i thank my lucky stars

and last night i did that so late at night that if i had written one page per hour i would have had a chapter done. but instead i had watched the bachelor and accomplished very little.

and now im groggy and hungry and hankering for a slice of extra cheese.

im going to the post office later today, if you want to order How To Blog, it’s $18 + $5 s/h, just email me and i will send you an invoice

lori + is you is + r&r nigga + 10:51am

abc
mondays

i seriously dont believe it.

the bachelor doesnt suck this year.

after years of wondering why men dont want to watch pretty boys get their way with hoards of hot women on a tv gameshow, this season they gave america charlie o’connell, b-list nobody jerry o’connell’s brother.

who is charlie o’connell? fuck if i know. but hes not jerry o’connell’s better looking or smarter brother, thats for damn sure.

and thats why this year it doesnt suck.

sure hes tall and vaguely resembles his brother, but hes got a big deep goofy voice and hes easilly distracted by cheerleaders, fake tits, and blondes, and its obvious.

so obvious that right in the middle of a date, one of the women said seacrest out and split.

it doesnt take a rocket scientist to understand that handsome rocket scientists getting swooned over isnt fun for non rocket scientist non male models to watch

and these millionaire dudes arent being good to these bachlorettes either. so why not charlie o’donnell who is better than average looking, bastard, but isnt getting nba cheerleader strange, or getting faught over by models.

yes, these women are falling in love and then fighting over him.

its awesome.

theyre cheating, theyre snapping at each other, theyre dissing each other while holding roses.

for a dude who lives in his brothers house.

everyone knows that porn features some of the fugliest men that help you focus on the women

this years bachelor makes it very easy to focus on the ladies

which is great,

cuz all those bitches crazy.

its hot.

bunny suicides + via rhodester + perfect pear