to me Tacoma looks like a college town

the pants in its funkiness and cheap housing and coffeeshops advertising socialist clubs and five record stores on one block and cats hiding underneath porches and dueling selfserve pet washing facilities and sweet college girls with replacements cds in their bookshelves,

but the kids tell me that Tacoma isn’t a college town its just super diverse, home of more African Americans than any other city in Washington and as I type to you from the jack in the box on 6th street I count one two three sistas and one two white girls, so maybe the census is correct.

last night I was taken to karaoke at Bill’s teapot or something like that. it’s a teapot looking place on the edge of town nestled in the industrial area usually home to strip clubs and meth labs, and maybe those establishments were there too but all I know was I was in the only place I would probably ever karaoke.

the stage was up high and legend has it that when Nirvana played there the owner threw kurdt off the stage because of the horrible music. which is ironic because im not sure if youre familiar with most people who sing karaoke, but Tacoma, at least last night, was not the home of the most talented upncomers.

except for my date, miss jana pants, who wore a short black skirt, festive red tights, and a homemade stenciled tshirt that said something about capitalists do it better or something.

you could write anywhere you wanted on the seats or the tables or the walls or the floor and as per usual I scribbled isla vista 93117 because that’s how you should represent.

pretty much everyone sang all the wrong songs except for ms pants, who started with London Calling, and later serenaded us with Rebel Rebel and I Want You To Want Me.

the host of the evening was a long haired dude who sat on a chair and advised the sparse crowd that if we didn’t see the song we wanted in the huge three ring binder that we should write it down anyways cuz he probably had it and knew exactly where it was.

then he busted with the 80s classic novelty hit Pac-Man Fever, which I sang along with because im a thousand years old and know everything.

jana and I drank pitchers of flat tire ale and sneaked sips of rum from her flask and she convinced me to take the stage which I did and entertained the crowd with a stirring version of eric cartman’s come sail away. I don’t think id ever karoked before and I hope never to do it again, but I was happy while I was there because they had it set up where you could barely hear yourself. thank God.

this morning we ate at a local breakfast place where I supped on country biscuits and gravy with bacon and eggs and now im prepared to snap some photos for you of this kickass village in the shadows of mt rainier and then speed through seattle on my way to vancity.

there were questions of a Buzznet meetup in Vancouver and last night I was up for it but I drank so much last night I might just soak in the hottub tonight and visit with one or two people and call it a night. I love the road but drinking without dinner is hard on a man who’s pushing 113.

but before I leave seattle I hope to take a peek at kurt kobain’s final home which I believe was in Lake Washington, and as soon as I get some free wi-fi I will see how many seconds the interweb delivers me the address.

although I love fish, I think I will pass on the famous fish market, and even though I love guitars and jimi Hendrix my inclination is to avoid the guitar statue and the rock museum. however if the real world house was open to the public I would definitely pass by the home where the black dude bitch slapped the chick with lyme disease.

that’s how sick I am.

I heart you all.

outside of portland in a starbucks

no i havent been kidnapped. anyone who knows me knows i hate starbucks, but i desperately needed to charge my computer and for some reason coffee shops dont mind if you hang out in their little corporate establishments and suck their electricity and bypass their pay-wifi for the Comfort Inn wifi across the street, so hi, my name is tony, im a blogger.

sipping some okay hot chocolate and listening to them pipe in the new stones cd. its ok. certainly the type of meloncholy day after Christmas on the road alone music that would make most people sob in their styrofoam but a shot of rum somehow made its way into my cup and watching the percentage of juice on this white notebook reach 35% only brings a bigger smile on my face.

two Oreogon state troopers have made it into the ‘bucks and i wonder if they get free joe? chocolate moca says one venti blahblahblah says the other. $3.35? theyre gonna charge these men? get out of here. are you insane? when i worked at mcdonalds you gave the coppers free whatever because you wanted them to sit around the place to protect it for free, and you also wanted them to come running if there was ever a report on their radio that the place that gives them free shit was being robbed.

but starfucks is corporate and this is why corporate rock still sucks. poor girl would probably get canned if the surveilance cam ever found out that she was giving the overpriced beanwater away.

i believe my good pal ken layne, his beautiful wife laura, and their pride n joy jesse dean are about 20 minutes away from here, and i believe that jack bog is probably even closer, but deep down im a ramblin man as hank sr so elequently sang, and if it wasnt for the fact that i get sleepy at night i would blow right through washington on my way to canada. so as i pass by, buddys i will give a friendly wave and pour out some bacardi onto the freeway for the brothas who arent with us.

i love traveling so much, and i love meeting people, and i love typing on this bad boy on my lap outside a best western and i love being run out by a motel owner in his overalls, but i really love sitting here in this foreign coffee shop as cute girls walk in with rolled up jeans and say hi to their friends behind the counter, but best of all i love typing on this table because the keys want to tell this tale and its a long one and a good one, one of gmail accounts filled to the brim with Christmas greetings and topless pictures of women who i dont know.

thank you women who i dont know.

you might be fakes, those pics might be of your friends or sisters, or xxx images you found on xxx sites and youre just pretending. some of you have held up my book(s) next to your most intimate of areas and you i truly love because… well… because you know me so well.

this afternoon i peed on a tree next to Duck Stadium and hopefully soon i will pee in Washington for the first time ever, the state where Kurdt lived, our 48th state, our forgotten province. yes its the home of bill gates and ichiro but its also the birthplace of jimi hendrix the true king of rock n roll.

42% says the number on the upper right, and now 43% i tried to call my momma last night to wish her a merry Christmas but her cell phone was turned off. then this morn she wrote me an email saying call back call back that she had just gotten to the phone a tad late and technology can be your friend but it can also be a jealous mistress, damn you phones that dont know that its tony pierce the third on the other line. damn you voice mail. damn you lack of esp for the commonfolk.

i got a lot of gifts yesterday, lots of candy, some pajamas, some games, but the best gift was being able to sit next to the fire with my best friend christina spurnikova under a blanket and whisper and laugh and tell each other that we’re the coolest kids on the planet and deny it but deep down know that no matter where she travels to next year, namely uganda, or where i travel to next year, namely every fucking place i possibly can, we will be in each others hearts and thoughts and fantasies when we wake up a tad ornery.

well, i admitted that part. and then we threw a dab of gasoline on the log and watched the flames roar and i kissed her cheek and she fell asleep on my shoulder and we woke up to the sounds of embers fizzing out and i carried her to her bed and i went to my bed and now we are apart, again, as usual, as is fate.

and this time when i come to vancity im gonna try some of that bc green shit. you betcha.

small island girl + ben allbright + susan + smelly

once again i write you from outside a best western

today we are on the outskirts of eugene oregon where gasoline is 2.39 and the dudes pump for you.

the roads are clear and dry and the birds flutter around fat because the ground is so moist that the worms walk around and tip their tophats to their brothers right before they get swooped down upon by a lazy but alert blackbird.

i had to say good-bye to chris and her family today. i asked one of the little boys if he had gotten everything that he wanted for Christmas and he nearly broke our hearts when he said, no, he didnt get a hug from tony.

awwwww.

i said get used to life not being fair pallie, and left without granting him his wish.

jk.

the plan was to leave early and turn left at Aberdeen and loop around and spend the night in tacoma but it looks like aberdeen might have to wait until the next trip cuz its so far out in the middle of nowhere and im so unprepared i dont even know what kurdt did there other than learn how to play guitar and be homeless.

chris’s brotherinlaw said he lived there for a summer and i said so whats there and he said nothin so im thinking about taking a pass on it unless someone tells me that theres something there that i cant miss.

tomorrow night it looks like i will be staying in downtown vancouver on granville at one of the swanky hotels there. i forget which one and my travel agent intern is still drunk on pennyroyal tea so hopefully she will email me tomorrow before i make my way there so i can get it together.

i explained to my hosts this morning over french toast that i havent written very well after being laid off from E! and sitting in the front seat of this old toyota watching the trucks pass and the drizzle tap on the tin roof only inspires me to say it beats sitting in my closet in hollywood, but its still not shakespeare.

so perhaps this leg of the trip will lead me to some barrooom brawls or some shootouts at the border, but unfortunately the most exciting thing that has happened so far is finding some free wifi to tell you how beautiful this country is, or in todays case trying to show you a double rainbow i got to capture at a truck stop.

i understand the bears are bound for the super bowl and that makes me happy, but since my mac tells me that my battery’s only at 40% i should probably make like a one of these gorgeous trees and leave.

much love from the side of route 99,

copernacus

because we ate Christmas dinner at lunchtime

and because we’ve been nibbling on cookies and candies and pies and treats all day, not to mention drinking and laughing and filling the kids heads with nonsense about Santa having no love for Yankee fans, i write to you tonight from the laundry room of Chris’s parent’s house while nibbling from a piping hot grilled cheese sandwich with a special guest star ingrediant of chicken.

chris and her dad are playing acey-duecy and chris’s mom is watching the food network and im trying to figure out how to sneak William Hung’s Hung For The Holidays into a boombox when nobodys looking for he entertained us all very well last night on our trip to eugene.

this is a wholesome family where pa knows how to fix anything and mom knows how to cook amazingly and understands the ins and outs of all the neighbors here in this rural town.

how rural is it? so rural that when the Umpqua Dairy put out a full page color spread in the local paper with pictures of all of its employees, it showed smiling faces from Roseburg, Coos Bay, Grants Pass, and Klamath Falls… thats right Umpqua is so tiny that even the Umpqua Dairy has no presence in Umpqua proper.

Drain, Oregon laughs at how wee Umpqua is.

so this wholesome family in this little town has tony pierce staying with them over the holidays so what do you think they have to put up with but stories of how great howard stern is and some of his groundbreaking accomplishments including the time when wendy the retard and gary the retard conferenced called with mr. carver the KKK dude from georgia.

poor souls. and of course i blab about all of this in the red santa hat that they just gave me and the reindeer pajama pants i had just gotten as their daughter is being harrassed for not making any Black santa claus cookies.

where the brothas at? i ask her. just cause Santas from the northside means that he’s a white man? uptown’s where the brothas stay. boycot sals famous until theres some brothas on the wall!

and then i got distracted by da bears winning another game against brett favrah something i can get very used to, i popped a half dozen brandy balls and passed out.

when i awoke we watched the simpsons and the family guy and laughed.

merry Christmas!!!

Merry Christmas Babies!

its’ 10am here in umpqua and the little nephews are speeding around dangerous foggy rainy curves to grandmas house here in the woods.

last night we went up to their house in Eugene and ate some traditional potato leek soup and ate a triple decker cheeseball shaped like frosty the snow man. and then we took a walk through the neighborhood to…

the graveyard!

we went there to sing Christmas carols of all things. ah eugene.

because its a hippie town they didnt roam the streets singing for the shut-ins and elderly, they stood right there in the cemetary and passed out singing sheets and candles and one guy yelled out #21 Silent Night! and someone started and everyone joined in.

by the end of silent night there were probably a hundred men women and children in the cemetary singing along so when someone yelled out #5 We Wish You A Merry Christmas you could hear people saying What? and people having to repeat it.

of course the women sang far better than the men, so the men just shut up after a few songs and looked at all the pretty faces lit up by candlelight.

when we got to #9 O Little Town of Bethlehem everything was going perfect until we were about to make it to the second verse when some woman yelled out THIRD VERSE so we could bypass the offensive second verse which talked about Jesus being the Lord, etc.

because my mother raised me right i held in the boomingly loud W T F that was itching to blast out.

hippies.

eventually it became a battle between those who wanted to sing the sweet religious Christmas songs and those who wanted to sing the poppy secular Frosty and Rudolph Christmas songs out there in the cemetery.

blows were about to start flying between the respective camps until some jackhole yelled out #24 The Twelve Days of Christmas… because noone wanted to sing that one he attracted the entire of the ire of both the religious and the satanic and i believe the dirty looks aced him right there and he was struck dead and fell into an awaiting open grave and was buried before we made it to the eight lords a leaping.

one of Chris’s nephews kept looking up into the night sky twinkling with stars. i think i see something red in the sky he whispered to me. its commies, i whispered back, we have too many national guards in iraq.

then he said uncle tony i think i hear sleigh bells. i said thats the pockets of the wealthy who got tax breaks this year, theyre walking to the banks to enjoy their spoils.

and right at the end What Child is This we heard the familiar HO HO HO and whattya know St. Nick appeared behind a gravestone accompanied by a set of foxy young female elves who spread out a velvet rope adorned with tinsel and said gather round kids i have some gifts for some of you!

the kids nearly fell over, but the smart ones ran forward to the rope.

turns out all the parents dropped off gifts the night before at “the north pole” and santa read off the names and handed the kids their gifts out there in the dark and i gotta say even though id like to take the Santa out of Christmas, it was pretty damn cool.

especially when Santa said, i kid you not, “thanks to the Bush administration ive wiretapped all your homes so i know who has been naughty and nice.”

one of the best parts was when the littlest nephew hadnt yet received his gift from Santa and there were only 4-5 presents left and i said, Tristan are you sure you were nice and not naughty? and he said, i i i dont know.

and just then Santa called out his name and Tristan said here i am santa here i am!

and he got his gift from the fat old man and we ran home and they ripped open their gifts and inside was just what they wanted… FLOAM!

the kids have just arrived so let me wish you all a Merry Christmas. i’m very lucky to know all of you virtually and literally and i hope that you are all having as much fun where you are as im having where i am.

and thank you to everyone who sent me emails and comments and all the well wishes. i’d reciprocate but i have very limited access.

Happy Birthday Jesus!

more pics of Christmas eve here

i know youre gonna get bored of what i have to write but

i have to write it. people get a little confused when i say how much i love central oregon. i dont blame em. yes ive lived in california for over twenty years, and most of that time has been spent either in the metropolis of los angeles or san francisco. and even though isla vista is my adoptive birthplace, the kids there worry me with their terrible taste in music and their affinity to the greek system.

so when it comes to a place where i could raise a family and farm and fish and lean more towards hemingway than bukowski and brew up my own rum and shoot at things that shouldnt be in my back yard, i think of umpqua, my home away from home.

youre pretty much on your own out here. if theres a bump in the night you cant call the sherriff cuz the sherriff is an hour away. if your electricity goes out you better have a generator or youre sol. if lightening hits one of your mamoth trees and your chain saw isnt strong enough for one of the branches that are as big as trunk you better hope your neighbor shows up with a ginormous buzz saw.

its a land of true self reliance. its the american way and the american dream all wrapped up in one green bow.

i walked down to the river last night and i was greeted with the sounds and sights of creatures that i hadnt seen or heard of in a long time. a little mole poked his head out of a brown mound. a deer looked at me from across the river and kept an eye on me as he sipped from the waters. a hawk flew above me and circled like he was trying to poop on me, and because it was turning nighttime the frogs were starting to sing their songs of sexual healing out in the marshes.

i saw probably ten different types of grasses and mosses. i saw probably eight different kinds of birds. a moth flew by as big as a bat and a dead body floated by in the river quickly obviously a crystal-head whod gone nuts and slipped into the freezing waters.

ah america how i love you.

so people have asked and i dont know when i will get on the computer again so i will answer. the plan for the rest of the trip is unclear but if the weather stays dry i will celebrate christmas eve tonight in eugene, then we will open presents here in umpqua tomorrow, then the day after Christmas i will make my way to Aberdeen to visit the bridge of Kurt Kobain and if the offer is still good crash at casa de pants in Tacoma. then i hope to meet up with the kids of vancouver tuesday night. then back to oregon wednesday night, frisco thursday night and LA friday night.

all times and dates subject to change due to weather and drinking and general malfeasance.

now i must jump in the shower since chris is making burbon balls and the cats are meowing at the tv as it appears an nfl referee pulled his groin during a football game.

i was just handed a homemade clotchkee, a czech creation made from vanilla ice cream.

ive said it before, and i hope i never stop saying it, im the luckiest man alive.

happy Christmas EVE!

thanks for the gas money Jeneane! + michele + binsk + sheila

im in umpqua oregon!

one of my all time favorite places in the world.

its about an hour west of the 5 freeway, waaaaaayyy out in the country in central oregon.

people who have never been to oregon ask, what about all the rain – isnt it depressing? but it doesnt rain here much. in fact yesterday when it was raining all over northern cali and oregon it barely rained here at all.

theres deer running through the back yard trying to eat the flowers, theres wild turkeys running through the front yard trying not to get eaten for Christmas, theres frogs at night ribbitting in the river trying to get laid and theres steelhead swimmin in the river wondering when im gonna catch em and fry em up in the frying pan.

but mostly theres trees and gorgeous clouds and weeds and tall grasses and white cows and white poeple and kids cooking up crystal meth in their garages and clean air and wood burning stoves and i love it i love it i love it.

here a man can buy a house for a reasonable price and pump water out of a well and cut down a tree and warm his home all year.

theres no sales tax theres no traffic theres no smog theres no dsl so you have to get your internet through the satelite dish.

but i dont care i want to move here.

ive always wanted to move here.

i want to move here and buy a large plot of land and make a baseball field in the backyard and grow medical marijuana for the cancer victims and other terminally ill people.

i want to move here and teach my kids how to woodwork and ironwork and html their shit.

its probably 50 degrees here but it feels like 70.

theres a hot tub thats calling my name. theres a washer dryer that wants to clean my clothes theres a toilet seat that needs some attention.

we went to wal*mart today and it was a zoo, so we went to the roseburg mall and the hottest booth there was the airbrushing lady who was on fire with her designs.

i love it here and i want to move here but i have to meet a gal who wants to live in the woods with me and populate our five acres.

and go out back and milk the goat.

more pics here