in the meantime heres video from my panel at sxsw

Click To Play

more here

so many stories to tell about austin, but i gotta work

i saw so many great bands last night. ps its 523am and i cant fall asleep without showing you this video.

this is robyn hitchcock doing a soft boys cover of “i wanna destroy you” along with peter buck of r.e.m.

which should be cool enough, but no, he introduced the song by saying “this is a song that im dedicating to Karl Rove”

which is why you hear the thunderous applause at the beginning of the song.

i also saw an all girl japanese high school ska band called Oreskaband who were so great that i got their cd, interviewed them, their manager, and their publicist and insisted that they play LA immediately, to which they said

how about if we play Sunday night at the Knitting Factory? to which i said, that will do.

and Matt, i checked out Daniel Johnston, but couldnt get anywhere close to him because the place was filled for him and he was swamped, but i did get a video of him doing a Wings cover, which will be on LAist in a few hours.

ok 530am, probably time to hit the hay? i hafta check out tomorrow and they were very nice and said i wont have to do that until 1pm. aragato!

playing to me, sk smith, and 98 people.

yes i know im the luckiest bastard ever.

yes i know i can die now.

yes i know you hate me. you fucking should.

but I am! last night’s highlights included meeting a girl named Mocca and then seeing Har Mar Superstar.

it’s 3pm and its time for me to hit the shower and then hit the streets. i missed Lily Allen who apparently didnt know that she was headlining the NME party and said “if i knew this was for NME i wouldnt have shown up, their editor has a tiny penis and smells”.

basart has just flown into town and is checking her out with Dan Grant of PeopleSupport, and we’re going to rage tonight. it should be the best night ever, music wise with Bob Mould, Thomas Dolby, Dengue Fever, The Fratelli’s, Catfish Haven, Sondre Lerche and oh so more, click here to see my picks.

And click here to see my pics.

And click here to see my vids.

I know im the guy who said dont ever apologize for not posting, so i wont, especially since im in the midst of music all day and all night.

i tried so hard to get to bed on time last night and at 4am my computer tapped out because even it was tired of working so all i gotta say is

busblog meetup next year in austin so all you fuckers better come

that goes to you Raymi and you Pitt and yes even you mr Good, and yes thats a call out.

and if Tsar is touring those fuckers better be here too.

the fact that i know a guy who owns a rock club in Austin and WANTS me to help him book a night next SXSW is amazing so i want my favorite artists there.

im thinking Matt Good, Tsar, The Corvids, Rocket, and the Mere Mortals.

if that happened, i could die happy.

even though i could pretty much die happy right now.

i heart you, now get outta here you knuckleheads.

got out of the hotel around 333pm and made it over to Rex from fimoculous‘s hotel room (which is the same hotel i was at last year except its now been given an $8 million overhaul and looks killer) to interview he and the hottest chick in kansas, ms ariel de la twenty-two.

because life isnt fair i just discovered that those interviews got eaten by my sometimes faulty memory card. ps its 6am right now.

then walked in the rain over to the convention center to interview some more people at the trade show but that part was closed so i hunted around for the panel discussion that was to star Hugh MacLeod of gaping void whose cartoons ive happily had on the sidebar of the busblog for quite a while now.

for some reason i expected hugh to be a curmudgeon but on the panel he was the life of the party. he lives in london and hasnt been in the US for 7 years until now.

also on the panel is Kathy Sierra who seems superdooper nice but i disagree with pretty much everything she says. beginning with “don’t say I too much in your blog” and “listen to your readers”. no offense, and everyone knows that i adore my readers so much that sometimes i literally love them, but seriously, fuck the readers. write from your heart and if they get it good and if they dont let them fucking die. but seriously shes a sweetie and pretty much the womans touch of the blogosphere.

and then to my surprise Gabe Rivera, best known for Techmeme was also on the panel. i go to his sites WeSmirch and Ballbug several times a day and loooove them. apparently if you get on Techmeme you get a gazillion hits but since neither the busblog or LAist breaks any tech news i’ll never know, and i will keep using those sites as the information treasure troves that they are.

i sat in the front row and took video for you but alas that shit got eaten by the faulty memory card too. fuck.

after the panel i approached Gabe and somehow he knew me or my blog or something, which blows my mind because this guy is super softspoken and borderline shy and i think what on earth could i have done to have this code genius know me, but the crazy thing is lots of people know me here. and they all like me. i know i can come off as a pompous s.o.b. on here and its true that people occasionally recognize me or my name, but i blow that off whenever it happens, but for it to happen here where there are Actual internet stars is quite a thrill.

i interview him in the hall where its quiet and the card ate half of that but saved half of it and i will post that later.

finally Hugh’s fans let him go and i extend my hand and say hi hugh, my name is tony pierce, may i

and Hugh gets on his knees, i shit you not, and bows to me in front of Gabe. and says Tony Pierce!

now hugh doesnt fuck around. hes the real deal. former NYC ad agency genius or PR guy or something, but he was big and then he gave it up because at some point you have to stop getting fucked in the ass by the man, and hugh turned his cartoon blog into a Technorati Top 100 hit, and simultaneously ventured into a massively successful wine business. one that saw him sell 40,000 cases last year which grew to 40,000 cases a week this year. if anyone should be bowing to anyone its me to him.

so we went over to the hilton and had a half dozen drinks with his artist buddy who will be the next governor of Michigan, and his brother-in-law who lives here in Austin. after a really great chat i interviewed him and it worked out and we said goodbye to each other but we had to take a leak so we did and then decided to grab one more drink on 6th street.

we passed a blues bar that sounded beautiful and drank and then walked down the street and kept walking and eventually made it to the gingerman bar where we got more beers and then more cool internet people showed up and it turned out to be the party of the night. hot babes were there, the inventor of word press was there, a dude from yahoo was there who said he had read the busblog for years, and soooo many very very very cool people were there and damnit did i have a great great great great time and if heaven exists it would be very much like this – where super cool strangers whose work you use every day somehow know you and want to talk to you and are so smart and so damn nice and the beer is free and you can go two days on two slices of pizza and not get the shits.

i know youre happy that im not drunk blogging from sxsw. i know it upsets you to think that your boy is an alcoholic, let alone an alcoholic drug taker. but as bukowski said alcoholics are just losers who havent drunk enough. or did i say that? who knows.

anyways i thought youd get a kick out of the fact that the Houston Chronicle was in the audience of the panel that i was on and taped some of our discussion and made this very special tape of us passing the bottle of Jack Daniel’s down the table.

what had happened was we were totally excited to be on the panel so we showed up in the green room a bit earlier than we were supposed to, so after a few minutes of realizing that the green room wasnt stocked with the normal things: bagels, cheese n crackers, booze, etc., someone came across the idea that we should have a drink every time someone spoke.

problem was we didnt have anything to drink. so because you raised your boy right i offered to go get a bottle of Jack. so i left the hall and walked down the road and went under the freeway to the liquor store on the other side of the freeway and came back with a bottle of jack and it was decided that we would keep the bottle in the bag to add to its humor.

and sure enough throughout the hour-long discussion every time someone was done speaking they took a swig.

if you pay close attention to the first few seconds you will see me nod to lynne d. johnson, web guru of Vibe.com and Spin.com that it was her turn to drink and sure enough she did and then passed the bottle over to nick douglas formerly of valleywag and huffington post, and now over at look shiny and blogebrity.

nick is quite young and very skinny and at the end of the panel he was wasted, a state that was exaggerated when the adorable glenda bautista of technorati punched him in the chest a few minutes before the panel was over.

it was a friendly punch but a solid one, probably too solid, and possibly enhanced due to the fact that glenda had downed quite a few shots as well.

yes mom everything here has included booze. lots of it. and most of it free. but as your boy is showing you, even though its, oh look at that, 4:20am, this gaucho is typing coherently despite being treated to free drinks from parties thrown by yahoo, lifehacker, good magazine, and someone else whose name escapes me.

i am having a swell time and next year im going to just ask that i dont have to work during these 10 days because work is totally getting in the way of the fun. but thankfully it hasnt gotten in the way of the drinking.

ucsb forever.

its 426am daylight savings time here in Austin. which means my body thinks its only 126am which means im wide awake.

it also means i gotta get my ass to sleep.

im loving sxsw. i want to come here every year for the rest of my livelong life. i have met so many cool people and only one not so cool person but sk said that maybe she had to take a dump.

i saw ev, i saw the old rocketboom chick, i saw scoble, the other night i hung out with Ariel from shakewellbeforeuse.com – ive been having an awesome time.

one thing that i have noticed is that even though the hits of the busblog were cut in half since spending most of my attentions on LAist, just as many people if not more, have come up to me to introduce themselves. which is a thrill and probably the reason i love it here so much.

yesterday at the only panel that im speaking at this year, we had a fun little inside game, where every time someone spoke we had to take a swig of JD and then pass the bottle. our panel was called How To Rawk SXSW and it was like tips for enjoying yourself and getting the most out of the festivals and if you ask me we did it perfectly.

next year i want a lot of my canadian blogger friends to join me. theres so much drinking and eating and rocking and having fun that i want them to experience this.

plus its hot as hell here. ive been in shorts non stop and here i am in my room with my shirt off looking so sexy.

i also got to meet tucker max and interview him after his panel which was super fun. its always good when you get someone who has no filter who doesnt give a fuck and who will talk about anything. turns out hes even more of an asshole when he speaks in public than when he writes – but in a good way, in a funny way, sorta like in a comedian way. but mostly in a toughlove brutally honest way. he got tons of laughs in his panel “how to turn your blog into a book”, which obviously i was interested in.

all in all a great day two and im ready for more so i must go to sleep.

my laist post about the panel + Wired’s post about the panel (good pic of my beard)

im here. im bearded. im not going anywhere.

actually im about to take a shower, shave my head, and catch a cab downtown.

hotels are so booked here in Austin that i think im in oklahoma. remind me to fire my travel agent.

the lovely sk smith was kind enough to ditch work early yesterday to pick me up at the airport. we got some beers, walked her dog, and then drank with dan at this fancy mexican restaurant. then we drank back at their house. notice a pattern?

needless to say this might be the only non-drunk blog that you’ll get from me in the next 10 days. if we’re lucky.

the sad difference is last year my hotel was right in the action and i could stumble home and start drunk blogging before passing out. now im about a 10 minute cab ride from the madness and im worried that will mean that i might drink in the day, cab home for a cat nap and not wake up properly to take a cab back for the evening action.

maybe i will get lucky and bring home someone who will keep an eye on the time for me.

today im speaking on a panel called How to Rawk. its the only panel im doing because the Blogging While Black panel isnt happening this year for some reason. sigh. but the good news is im done with panels on the first day and my only other required attendance will be Sunday’s LAist party at Room 710 and then i can just be as free as a freaking bird.

wish me luck!