everything.

my momma, my sweet momma, wants me to take a family vacation with her and my sister

and the niece and nephew. and the brother n law.

the puppies from christmas wanna come. they havent grown up or nothin.

the italian au pere from florida wants to come too. as does the new one from brazil.

anna kournikova is thinking about heading out there for it.

marla collins, the former ball girl for the cubs, she knows everyone, shes gonna be there.

and i even think the grateful dead are going to put together a show right there on the beach while we are gonna be out there.

but me, i dont wanna go. can you believe that? sure i wanna see my mom. love her. and the rest of em. except for the puppies. i dont trust puppies. back when i spent some time in hell we came back to earth disguised as puppies because everyone always projects all this unrealistic hope on puppies that it was easy to be evil in their bodies.

but i have things to do here in hollywood. we’re up to something at work. something big. something potentially huge. something that could change things for the good. something that could make us bigger and deffer.

i know yesterday i said i need to go down in the basement and stew a little, but hawaii aint gonna make me stew. my little friends sure as hell arent gonna get me angry. theyre gonna all make me feel like everythings gonna be ok. thats not gonna work for me right now. i gotta feel the edge of doom for these petals to flare out.

a flower blooms when it thinks its gonna die.

a horse runs faster when hes shown the whip.

rdio is playing the Flaming Lips and Henry Rollins reinventing Dark Side

i have 100% changed my opinion of this thing. i love it.

i want it.

i must have it.

it’s everything. and its only $5 a month unless you also wanna play it on your phone and then its $10 a month.

and god it sounds great.

i talk alot. i misspell a lot. i can beat almost anyone at any arguement not because im smarter than anyone but because to me arguements are like MMA cage bouts. im the weirdo who will try to pull your eyeball out and scream when you try to rip my rib out and be all good fight when its over no matter who wins. no one wins. no one ever wins around me in those situations.

but one thing im good for is telling the kids about the new things. and one of the things that im into right now is something that someone who is on an higher path than me turned me onto. Rdio. its not in beta. its so new its in alpha, my favorite rascal.

what it is in a nutshell is every album, online, for a monthly fee. not sure what that will be right now. maybe $25 a month? $20? is unlimited music worth 2 cds a month? i think so.

Rdio is a new music service, where you discover new and old favorite songs through your friends and other people with great taste in music. Rdio works on the web and on your iPhone, BlackBerry and Android devices. Subscribe for unlimited music.

the other day the dude who set me up with a free trial account wrote me and said, “noticed you havent played around with Rdio much?”

truth is i get a lot of free music and i buy the rest. but here i am at a cheerleaders house and my computer is broke and i dont really wanna play the music in my iphone so i figured tonight ok lets see if this is any good. so i looked for this 12 inch single from Soul Asylum.

the kids dont know about 12 inch singles, but in the old days DJs used to get their remixes on 12 inches. but better than that the “alt” bands would put their lame ass single on one side and theyd have some b-sides on the flip side. Soul Asylum had an A-side of “Cartoon” from their “Hang Time” album which should have been a huge radio hit but radio has always stunk. however on the flip side they had this really long medley of songs performed live called “James at 16” because it was 16 songs melded together. like Prince the ladder to Terrance Trent D’Arby to god knows who else. anyways i gave away all my records a long time ago and i always judge websites like Napster to now Rdio by whether or not they have James at 16.

Looks like Rdio is really great. ive been listening to records i hear about but would not buy. like right now im listening to, and enjoying Ke$ha and now wishing that i hadnt missed her opening for Rihana. so this is interesting.

but there is no James at 16. probs because Rdio doesnt do 12 inches or weirdo rare ass stuff. but it certainly fills a need. for example lets say youre stuck at your uncles house and all he has is the web. well, then he really does have millions of songs, at yr disposal.

so yeah, friends are great. and i dont deserve em.

hes 24.

we met in the basement of Keeneyville School in kindergarten.

my mom says that i was super outgoing and insane and bob was really quiet and intellectual so they put us together to see if our traits would rub off on each other.

we were pretty inseparable until high school when i discovered girls. but the other truth was he was always a little better athlete than me, so he played varsity sports and i was in the band.

while we were kids we played a lot of sports, collected baseball cards, and watched the cubs a lot. bob’s dad was an inventor in his spare time. he created these golf balls that had weights on one side so they would roll in a goofy way. it was perfect for mini golf tournaments cuz even the drunk people might win.

bob is now a hot shot in the world’s finest microphone company. he still collects baseball cards and other deals on memoroboblia.com.

recently we had a grade school reunion and it was great to see him and he gushed to our friends about how he re-discovered me through the busblog which is another reason this site has been priceless to me.

Bob has two children, both named after great Cubbies.

happy birthday, General Manager! This is the year!

sends in this old school Andre Dawson clip

bob sez:

This clip is so awesome for so many reasons:

1) Dan Roan’s shirt
2) Jim Essian soup-cooler
3) Andre Dawson going nuts
4) Young Lou Piniella
5) Rob Dibble throwing a ball at baserunner Doug Dascenzo
6) Bleacher Bums doing their thang

Enjoy!

and of course bob is right. long live the Hawk!