no not ashley, and how dare you call her a thing. sheesh.

im talking about my old directv dish. the one i had on my front porch for so long. the one i traded in for an hd directv dish that they installed on the side of my home. the one that right now is bringing me 1080i images “live” from the beijing olympics in china.

that thing.

the thing i love almost as much as i loved ashley.

the thing i love almost as equal as i loved my true love.

the thing that i love almost as much as i love my beloved chicago cubs, who, by the way are on such a freaking tear right now its scary.

i got that dish back in like 97. my man mike hickey installed it on our apartment on haight street and soon after he and i went into business installing those dishes. for big bucks. well it was big bucks for us.

but mostly it was freedom.

me and mike drove all around the bay area installing dishes and freedom to people in big houses, little houses, mobile homes, and trailers.

later it was me and solomon doing the installs.

so fun. so crazy sometimes. and at $50 an hour cash, so worthwhile.

eventually i quit cuz i wanted to catch the dot com wave, but i always have had a warm spot in my heart for directv, it has always been a center part of my home, mostly because it delivers digital picture and sound of things cable cant give me: cubs baseball, bears football, and now tons of hd programming.

today a former chief of favorite thing has just been named publisher of my favorite job. thats right, the LA Times has a publisher.

his name is Eddy Hartenstein and you can read all about him on a certain news site.

and im sorry im just getting this up right now

time flies so quickly. its already time for people on the east coast to go home. its already time for people in TO to wash their cars before their hot dates. and its almost time for my peeps in Chicago to vacuum out their back seats before heading to the drive in.

i was just being interviewed by this lovely woman with a video camera and a tripod and some hot lights. she asked me about, what else, blogs. whats real on the busblog, whats fake. why do i do it? how did i get popular, why do girls chase me, why do companies hire me? it went on for an hour and a half. questions. answers. i was sweating even though it was at my house.

the whole time i kept thinking, yeah this is fine but can i get back to blogging now? yeah this is great but can i do Ask Tony now? sex drugs rock talk is great but can i go back to editing the unbelievably great Olympic blog now?

as i talked my phone would vibrate with each new work email and one of them was, hey Carolyn’s piece about her broken iPhone made it to the front page of Digg. as i talked my burger king chicken sandwich got colder. as i talked she read her questions from a piece of paper and i spoke to the faceless audience and i realized that im the luckiest man in the world because i have a real audience, you, and you are precious.

so thank you, you. no one would be talking to me, no one would be paying me, no one would be missing you, if it werent for you, the busblog audience of real live people who are the foundation of everything. i heart you all. i invite you to ask me the good questions and i will answer them.