so today is 420

and an hour ago it was 420 on 420 and if i was still doing what i had done for ten years straight i would have tried to figure out a way to get home early so as to “celebrate”.

being off the pipe hasnt been a very difficult process. the very begining was rough as it was a habit as opposed to a chemical dependency. there are times when im bored and i think to myself, gee a huge bong rip would be so good right now, but because there are no huge bongloads laying about my many mansions i just go about my day and the feeling passes within minutes.

maybe it was easy for me to quit because it was on my terms and i stopped because the weed wasnt working on me any more. its a lot easier to stop something thats not giving you a high than it is to stop something thats stoking you.

has my creativity been effected? i think so. i dont feel as inspired as i used to. but big whoop, im still never wanting for things to write about, but those days of getting baked and twenty minutes later jumping up and yelling OMG I HAVE THE GREATEST IDEA! are over. which isnt to say that those so called great ideas werent simply stony falseties,

however when i interviewed the escalator i didnt have all of my wits about me if you know what i mean and the kids seemed to like that one.

the good news is i dont pass out at late movies any more, and ive lost about 15 lbs thanks to not eating so much in the wee hours. im also not drinking as much soda and im not spending hundreds of dollars on buds and worrying that i’ll get caught and kicked out of my sweet bachelor pad.

funny thing is i hadnt been sick for the last four years until this spring – after i had quit smoking blunts. and now i still have traces of the nasty bug i got after making out with the texas roller derby girls. so not only do i believe marijuana to be a medicinal herb, but it looks like it wasnt a bad preventitive aid as well.

and in a perfect world the people would rise up and remember that the government is there to represent us, and work for us, and if we say that weed should be legal then it would happen and those who didnt represent our wishes on capitol hill would be fired.

instead we walk around like stoners instead of leaders and somehow wait for them to get it together, when indeed its us who need to get the country’s act together.

w doesnt want to help those in new orleans cuz theyre black? fine, we’ll help them. and we’ll start voting for lawmakers and representatives who will help those in need.

and some of those in need are cancer patients or folks with MS or people like me who had serious eating disorders and stomach problems who found solace in the magical plant. some people really do use certain cures for the right reasons and then for the wrong reasons and are able to ween themselves from them.

and others need a little more help.

im here to say that it was a peice of cake for me to turn my back on pot even though i still love it, even though i still love the way it smells and looks and tastes, and even though i still love the way it makes me feel.

and since i know im no better than the next person, i can testify that its a safe herb for most people who arent operating heavy machinary. and it should be legalized. and taxed. and exported.

duh.

joe + heather + couch + shop isla vista + via koganuts

hey guess who’s famous!

senior dumbass! me! look ma, im part of the cover story in the LA Weekly called “L.A. People 2006 – Who we are: An introduction and index of the profiles.”

Some Los Angelinos featured include Ed Asner, Jack Black, Larry Clark, Shepard Fairey of Obey/Giant, Hal Fishman, Luke Ford my man!, Brett Gurewitz of Bad Religion, my favorite producer ever Rick Rubin, Fred Segal, Sarah Silverman, and our very own mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

How the hell did i get in that company?

Lord only knows. But i do know i wouldnt have even been considered if not for you and you and you and you and you. so gravitas.

The Blog That Refreshes
Tony Pierce

By SCOTT STERLING

“BLOGGING IS WEIRD,” ponders Tony Pierce over the phone, talking about www.tonypierce.com — equal parts diary, music magazine and “personal experiment,” as he puts it. “About a month ago, I lost my iPod. So I wrote on my blog that I needed the money to replace it. I said that if only 20 people sent in $20, I’d have enough. In less than 36 hours I had the money. The iPod I was replacing had been bought by them as well.”

Pierce’s fiercely personal blog has that kind of an impact on its growing legion of readers (around 2,000 a day at last count), which is especially rare considering that he’s “not a chick or someone just hitting you with pop culture and gossip.” Waxing eloquent on everything from the 10-year anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s suicide to his highly opinionated activities on a Coachella message board to a recent weekend spent in Toronto celebrating the birthday of his favorite blogger, Raymi (www.raymitheminx.blogspot.com) ­— paid for via a reader’s travel-agency connection — Pierce has blazed his own trails. Other popular site features include quirky interviews (such as a famous conversation with a broken escalator) and photo essays of Los Angeles, which, in Pierce’s hyper-real way, amplify the beauty, chaos and general insanity of the world around him.

It’s been five years now, and Pierce has earned his place in the blog hierarchy the old-fashioned way.

“People would try to call me out in the comments section of the page, and I just took it to ’em,” he remembers. “We would go back and forth until I’d finally squash them. It was like being an opening band that’s determined to rock you no matter what. I basically demanded the respect, and I got it.”

Crazy thing is i barely remember any of that interview since it was done via cell phone as i was rushing to work.

Speaking of which Happy 4/20!!!

rob t + matt c + isla vista

scott mcclellan was as good at being the Press Secretary

as his boss was at being President.

but to be fair, being part of the daily coverup(s) in the White House is a tough job even if you arent closeted, weak, spineless, dimwitted, slow, dull, lacking, and completely full of shit.

what this administration could have used was someone who knew how to sell an idea. they didnt need anyone any good, but they could have used someone.

luckilly for the president the press, for the exception of a very small group of actual professionals, have acted as if theyre still in shock at the amount of malarkey that gets shoveled down their throats to actually stand up and call bullshit.

david gregory does it, helen thomas does it, keith oberman does it. but thats about it. the rest of them are really no better than jeff gannon who gladly bends over for this group of charlatans, theives, bullshit artists, murderers, torturers, and drunken hunters.

therefore scotty mcclellen was all that was necessary to throw out in front of the toothless corps.

he will go down as a sorry excuse for a man. more boyish and fey than manly. i cant imagine any hair on his chest or muscle mass, let alone a set of nads. but thats typical with his associates.

he lied to our faces. he stuttered as he thought, he looked around as he spoke, he seemed to have something else on his mind like what karl rove had instructed him Not to say as opposed to what he wanted to say.

again, he wasnt much different than his boss.

catching liars at work is a pretty easy gig. you watch them repeat the safe phrases, you notice how they dont want to continue on the topic at hand, you listen as they tighten their assholes as they speak. you take a drink for each time they blink.

if he wasnt in a past life scott mcclellan would have made an excellent towel boy at at the mens sauna at an all-white country club. he would have brought a fine glass of lemonade. he would have been the boy most unlikely to fuck your daughter behind the elms on the 7th tee.

he probably got good grades, was throttled after school, and folded his underwear before putting them away.

the Lord hates liars though, but for some reason i predict that mercy will be shown on his soul for the hell that it must have been to be the epitome of the tool that he was forced to be after ari stepped down to avoid prison.

i predict scott will choose one of two paths in the near future:

a clean suicide in the bathtub of a fancy hotel in singapore after a week of drinking drugging and buggering.

or a downward spiral into madness in a small apartment in iowa as the doors play on repeat and the local chinese place is instructed to come to the door at noon and at six each day.

what we have seen is probably the worst job performance of any man since his boss, or his boss’s boss, the vice president, but fortunately for scotty in a few years nobody outside of the blogosphere or the beltway will remember his name and if he wants he can grow a moustache and be a substitute teacher in the ghettos of some urban hell in texas.

which im sure will seem like a vacation in comparison to where he just was.

personally i hope he grows a pair and writes a book about how he and karl held hands alot and discussed the irony that this administration sold out their own to get re-elected only to completely fail at everything that they attempted in the second term other than packing the court.

march on, priveldged white male who sucked at his job, march on.

a video collection of the best/worst moments of scotty’s era