barack obama came to the LA Times yesterday

he spoke to some vips and later he shook hands with some employees by the Globe entrance of our building. its the fancy entrance.

most people go through the Spring Street entrance, but i use the Globe entrance for two reasons: 1) the elevator dumps off closer to my office, and 2) its old fashionedy and killer and it will give you the chills in a nice way if you let it.

yesterday my bros from Current.tv came by to have lunch with me. Max and Jason. theyre “the face” of the Al Gore cable station. Jason kept freaking out at certain front pages that are framed and nailed to the wall. inside i freaked out when i looked at them too. fucking history, etc. its nice to see other people respect shit the way i do. and be amazed. especially in LA where theres plenty of history, you just have to have it pointed out to you. unless its nailed to the wall, of course.

we ate at the cafeteria at the Times which i eat at every day. great food. they had stir fry because they are talent and probably have to watch their girlish figures. i had the leg of lamb because the other day i saw Fast Food Nation – which i loved – but now i have a hard time ordering beef. i’ll probably get over it. just not any time soon.

right now its about midnight. i have some homework to do because i was so busy at work today. i met so many cool people. i keep meeting great people. my boss and her staff are amazing. have i told you that? everyones not just smart – theyre wise. i have so many meetings. everyone wants to have lunch meetings with me, but a man can only eat so much leg of lamb. and why is the leg the only thing they wanna serve off the poor lamb?

i drink either apple juice or orange juice with all my meals. a little classic coke for my afternoon snack as a pickmeup cuz i always get drowsy around 3pm. i never napped when i worked for LAist but for some reason i always wanna take a nap at this gig. and not cuz im bored. just the opposite. im so not bored. but man i wanna nap.

i dont wanna call her my assistant cuz i dont feel super comfortable with that, but she and i always think of little business opportunities that the Times could use, that we could do, if we ever get fired. one is a little Post Office where we would charge an extra $2 for every transaction. $2 because you can walk across the street to City Hall if you wanna go to the real Post Office, but who wants to leave the building? not us.

the other is we would start a pet-sitting business. its a lot easier than child care cuz with kids you sorta have to pay attention to them. with pets you could seriously get some good tv watching in and would the pets care? probably not. they just want you to pet them during the commercials.

and so yesterday we figured a nap room would be nice. $5 for a 15-minute power nap. why charge the $5? cuz someone has to wake you dont they? plus we would change the sheets and pillowcases after each use. sure its not good for the environment – that much laundering of sheets, etc, but in the long run, rested humans are more productive and will probably not fall asleep at the wheel on the way home and kill people, etc.

also we think there should be a dry cleaner service on the premises. i know that they have it at the Fox lot. which is where i got the idea. but i would like it to include regular laundry too. $20 for three loads. $25 for four. our motto would be “isnt it worth $25 to have clean clothes and your saturday free?”

a pretty girl said hi to me. two actually. that was better than just missing barack.

way better