on july 21 in the busblog, through the years

– a tribute

2006 excerpt: my ipod is stuck on Lock mode, as in i went running last night down the streets of sunset blvd because im training for something the xbi may or may not be involved in and i put that bad boy in Lock mode and when i was done i pulled my headphones out while it was still in lock mode and as you know if you pull out your headphones it Pauses

and also as you know, once its in Lock mode youre screwed you cant do anything if it refuses to accept the slide as an Unlock. i slide it to the left, i slide it to the right, it remains locked.

but i have this iHome ipod alarm clock radio port thing. you put your ipod on it and it will play the music. so i put it on there and it will let me go to Songs. so now its playing all of the songs in my ipod which will suck when we get to the H’s for Howard Sterns as those are 3-5 hour commercial free shows.

so it has been decided that i go to the apple store to get it fixed.

last night i took clipper girl to the rock show. but the rock show didnt have my name on the list.

quelle embarrassing lemme tell you. especially when you have on a goofy hat and shorts. and a snoopy wearing a cubs shirt shirt. thinking youre the man. after a few very nice emails things with the rock show have been resolved and i wrote to the young cheerleader to invite her to tonights performance and she has yet to write back.

2003 excerpt: got a phone call this morning at six am. if you knew how ridiculously little money i make to save the world you would be flabbergasted.

there was a time when i would have to go out of my way to get flabbergasted. i would actually seek out ways to get flabbergasted.

i would do what i needed to do and then i would look around and if i could say that i was flabbergasted i wasnt flabbergasted enough.

you only truly know youre flabbergasted after the factergasted.

this morning im in an ornery mood thanks to the cell phone being dialed at six am.

this is me ornery.

grrrrr.

one reason that they like me flying chopper one is that im a fairly even keeled mother.

this is me happy.

hi.

this is me mad.

hi.

this is me flabbergasted.

uh, wtf, fellas.

2004 excerpt: in the rain the cubs beat the she said dont start off by talking about baseball, you’ll lose all the girls.

two barefoots walk into a bar. first one says, have you ever felt like nothing that you will do will matter. other one says thats not the joke, tell the joke. first one says, and the world will keep spinning and the stars will come up and spin around and go down and still nothing you do peon will matter.

other one says whispering sorta, just say your line, want me to say it for you.

the first one says, the seasons will come and go, time will pass, floods, fire, famine and still nothing that you could have done will matter.

other one says in a way thats sort of liberating

first one goes ice ages plate technotics wait what?

other one says sure if all of what we’re doing is just gonna get mushed over by nature and forgotten by sentient beings then why stress out about bullshit little things like slow people at stoplights.

first one looked at the other one

a gust of wind pushed a low-reaching dry palm of a huge palm tree up against a metal awning rattling the tin for a second and then it eased back down.

a butterfly aimed for an oak leaf and missed

somewhere a car horn sounded

somewhere an eagle was flying with a dove

and a pony walked into a bar

2002 excerpt: MAN 0F SEAS0NS: Damn Tony…I put a link up to your site and I got nothing….NOTHING!
supertsar7: i have carpel tunnel;
supertsar7: i havent put up a bunch of links yet
MAN 0F SEAS0NS: not my f-ing problem put up my link
supertsar7: whats your site?
MAN 0F SEAS0NS: Man0fSeas0ns.geocities.Com
supertsar7: hwo did you hear about me?
MAN 0F SEAS0NS: through 21Pundit steet
MAN 0F SEAS0NS: I offerred to trade Wisdom teeth with you
supertsar7: oh yeah right
supertsar7: wheres the link?
MAN 0F SEAS0NS: its on the page that has the links
MAN 0F SEAS0NS: i think its the same page with the stores on it
supertsar7: ah, ok
supertsar7: i’ll put you up in a few weeks
supertsar7: after i recover
MAN 0F SEAS0NS: f–ing westcoast lightweights
supertsar7: ok i wont link you then
supertsar7: feel free to take down my link
MAN 0F SEAS0NS: what the f? thats unamerican!
supertsar7: not really
supertsar7: we reserve the right to refuse service
supertsar7: to idiots
supertsar7: very american
MAN 0F SEAS0NS: oh…i see…its cuz Im black!
supertsar7: exactly

2005 excerpt: its hot as heck in LA today and im in my hollywood bungalow trying to get my podcast crud working for you. if you only knew the brilliant minds that are trying to help me youd be hella impressed.

we’ve got steven j hawkings on speakerphone, weve got carl sagans head in a jar, ive got hopi indians chanting infront of my home, we’re looking for virgins to sacrifice, and ive got abe vigoda on his way back from the grocery store with twelve packs of Orange Crush cuz meg ryan and tom hanks are on the way over to jump into the big woo

2002 exceprt: took ashley to see austin powers. drove down sunset through west hollywood turned left at rodeo drive and then right on santa monica to century city.

some ass changed the name of the century city mall to westfield mall.

westfield mall?

the dot com that i worked at had its start in century city right there on avenue of the stars. we would eat lunch in the swanky outdoor mall every afternoon. that was in the summer of ’98. an eternity ago, to me.

it’s 840pm and two of the showings are sold out. somehow they create a 930pm show and we buy tickets and hang out in the bretannos where chris got drew barrymore’s autograph for ashley. she also got one for me.

ashley (pictured, above right) gets very excited when she realizes that drew was in the same place that she is at. very excited.

get popcorn, two large sodas and a bag of sour gummi bears. $15. back in 98 a week before i got the job at the dot com i had a date with a girl where i invited her to my house to drink the only coke that was in our fridge. $15 would have lasted me a week.

spill some of the popcorn at the door while trying to show the 36 year old usher my stub, he yells, tania! tania! i say, dont worry about it. he says, you dont want a new popcorn? no. no thanks.

as i get older i start falling asleep easier. eating, drinking, smoking, snacking, and holding ashleys hand in the theatre with a pleasant movie on made me very very drowsy. in a good way. “austin powers in goldmember” is a good solid movie. totally fun. very funny. sexy. predictable. a touch offensive. and head and shoulders better than 98% of what you can see at the movies nowadays.

mike myers is in top form. beyonce isnt bad, and mini me steals the show, again.

we take the ten home, stopping off at mcdonalds for an oreo mcflurry.

we get into the house.

turn on the slow jams.

pre-busblog 1997 excerpt: five years ago matt and emmanuelle got married. tons of people were there. it was in the middle of france in a summer vacation town called joncy. white cows walked right down the middle of the street speaking french.

first me and chris flew into amsterdam and decompressed there for a few days. everyone says that traveling to europe in the summer is so expensive and uncomfortable and crowded and terrible but in the middle of july all the dutch take their vacations and head to greece or the south of france or anaheim so my favorite european town was nearly empty and strange. it was raining a little too.

didn’t matter. if anything it made it better. even though our marriott had a pizza hut underneath it, it wasn’t what id consider amsterdamian, so i dont recommend it.

after a few days we took a train to my second favorite european town, paris. paris was cool. by the time we got there though the only restaurant open was one of those chic ones where you eat on the outside in front of the restaurant judging people who walk on the sidewalk. i think all they had left was lobster and shrimp and tasty wine and strawberries and chocolat mousee. after a romantic stroll free of parisians who were also in greece, we retreated to our filthy room with charming view and agreed that even the dirtiest of streets of paris are still much more magical than the best streets of the mission of frisco where we were living at the time, happily.

only scary part about paris was the fact that no one knew where joncy was.

it may have had to something to do with my special brand of french.

eventually we got on the tgv – the french bullet train. once again we found ourselves free of any bothersome europeans. and you may ask yourself, “why is tony so upset about our cousins to the east?”

i’ll tell you why, because as long as americans have been coming to europe we have been asking for cold cokes. if europeans wanted spit on their waffles, after a while we would just know to include spit on your waffles when you came over here.

give us cold cokes!

a few more stories around the LAT that you may have missed this week

the photo above of Alie Ward, left, of Metromix about to be licked by the $5 Guy’s little doggie outside the Secret Headquarters thursday night was good, but the lede for her story about the Baker Lofts was even better: “Do you think she’s on ecstasy, or just really nice?”

in today’s Campaign ’08 section, Kate Linthicum asks the excellent question “why do we vote on Tuesdays?” she interviews Jacob Soboroff of Why Tuesday who not only answers the question but in the piece we learn that most lawmakers don’t know the answer which is, “It turns out that Congress chose Tuesday for a voting day in 1845 to make the process easier for citizens of an agrarian society. Back then, farmers needed to vote on a day that wouldn’t interfere with the three-day Sabbath or Wednesday, which was market day.”

regular Soundboard contributer August Brown has a nice long piece about LA punkers No Age in the Calender section today. apparently the duo are at a crossroads of breaking through to the mainstream but trying to do so without the cost of their punk rock – or Vegan – sensibilities: “We played a show for Fuel TV, and they didn’t tell us that the show was sponsored by Snickers,” Randall said. “So 10 seconds before we played, I found a marker and wrote ‘Go Vegan’ on the back of my guitar. If they’re going to try to force Snickers down your throat, here’s something different.” Brown also noted that the kids on the MTV message board who became aware of the band thanks to Fall Out Boy Pete Wentz’s new MTV show are torn by the originality of the boys and their original video concepts: “I don’t understand it, but it’s cool” and “I feel stupid because of this video. It is really messed up. Please stop showing it on MTV.”

the hero complex has been on fire this weekend thanks in part to Geoff Boucher‘s coverage of The Dark Knight’s record-breaking opening weekend. but i hope his feature on Milwaukie Oregon, home of Hell Boy, and also a little publishing company called Dark Horse which puts out tons of sweet ass comics that are slowly taking over the world. meanwhile Dark Horse is slowly employing the whole town: “Dark Horse is a pop-culture content company that has grown so steadily over the last 20 years that it currently occupies six separate storefronts along Main Street, and with 150 employees, it’s now one of the top five employers in the town of 21,000. Dark Horse made its mark as an upstart, indie publisher of comic books, but now its ventures go well beyond that, which is why its founder, Mike Richardson, hops a flight to Los Angeles every week to tend to Hollywood pursuits.”

adam rose goes to the Laker Girls tryouts

and shoots a photo essay

laker girl wannabes at the laker girl tryouts

i dont wanna say that the busblog‘s groundbreaking photo essays were even the slightest bit influential on photo essays at LAist. i dont want to float the idea out there that when Adam Rose was Sports Editor of LAist before he got picked up by the LA Times months before i got the call up that he learned a few things from yr boy, but if he did, perhaps todays photo essay from heaven the laker girl tryouts is a lil bit of evidence.

regardless, adam, who now ferociously writes both the usc and ucla blogs for the Times, busted beautifully last night and inspired these comments over on the Laker blog where he guest blogged for the kam bros:

– Dang, there are things better to look at than Kwame’s calves.
– Now that is some journalism that I can really get behind. Thank you
– GREATEST. POST. EVER.
– Adam Rose, You’ve just made the greatest post in Lakers blog history.

and then the inevitable:

– When does Kobe get to pick the one he cheats with? Is that later in the process?

see the whole deal here

photo by Adam Rose, used with permission

mi amigos matt and emmanuelle are showing off baby dora

on flickr

matt emailed this morning with the Subject of: Did you people say you wanted to see pictures of the Frog-American child?

Hi, everybody!

This is where they (and other such things) live, and will continue to be added onto until God kills the Internet: http://www.flickr.com/photos/welchek/.

Feel free to pass around to Friends & Family who aren’t cc’ed above.

We are happy and healthy here on Day 13, with the French grandparents doing a very generous job of keeping us fed and sane and outside the foul DC summertime conditions. Even the rats are keeping a low profile….

Thanks to all of you for your kind wishes and direct assistances, and we’ll start posting appalling photos of the child in a pink Angels onesie before you know it!

Love,
Matt

some highlights:



one, two, three – dawwwwwwwwwww

leave well wishes on emmanuelle and/or matt‘s blog