money is the weirdest thing.

pretty sure that’s why the Bible is against it.

you could chase after it all your life, do all these weird things youd never do to get it

then decades after youre dead, all your shit is worth 1,000x more

and the shit hasn’t changed.

if anything theres more art for people to buy,

some might even say Better things to buy

but nope, they want your old thing which was a picture you blew up

and colorized.

be good is what the bible says to do instead of chase money

help the poor is what it says

help your neighbors.

be cool.

and yet, when push comes to shove there we go applying to work for companies

who dont really want the real tony pierce

they want some picture they can blow up

and colorize.

how is anything possible?

how is it that this is even alive?

how is it that im even alive?

do you know the things ive done that i havent written in here?

10 years ago next month i nearly died in vegas, like seriously

and i Believe that life is a nice combo of Free Will and Divine Intervention

i think if God or the angels see that we are doing the right thing or our hearts are good and we make THE WORST CHOICE,

he will look out for us.

and if we are smart we will never make that mistake again.

but i also think God wants us to try things. he wants us to stretch out of our comfort zone.

i believe this for a few reasons: first because it feels good, second because thats how we grow, and third because nearly every great story in the Bible is about people stretching.

and then they are rewarded.

when Abraham listened and nearly sacrificed Isaac, when Noah did the outrageousness by trusting and building a giant ark, when (a disguised) Joseph asked his brothers to go get his younger brother… then theres the disciples who dropped what they were doing to follow Jesus.

they all were rewarded for making those out of the ordinary choices, and in doing so they were leading by example.

none of those things were on the Content Calendar, which is why i dont believe in the Content Calendar.

to me the Content Calendar is for trying to look organized for someone else.

because you dont feel confident in your own job.

trust yourself.

and if you dont feel confident then think about why you are listening to the radio station in your head that’s not playing your favorite songs.

i like to hear those old standards “tony you fucking rule” and “tony omg yes!”

all those sad songs about how im too this or not enough that are wickety wickety wack as kris kross used to say.

im here to be a better version than i was last year, which hopefully was better than the year before

and the only way to do that is to

upgrade.

and that starts in the mind.

a while back i was not allowed to do the job that i was qualified for, in part because the gatekeeper said

i was “too wild west”

it shocked me a little because i have been fighting my whole life to keep my beating heart inside my body

and try to fit in.

meanwhile ive worked around people who had no problem yelling non-pc names at others and doing crazy things.

and watched as they thrived.

fine.

but when this person told me that all i could say was, but my results were wildly good.

and the person could not disagree.

today i was watching church, because, duh, most crazy people like me love the bible. and the sunday school pastor was trying to describe John the Baptist to the kids. she said he was a bit odd in that he wore shirts made of camel hair and ate grasshoppers and bees.

“but when Jesus wanted to get baptized, people thought, who was holy enough to do it?” and voila they thought about how Jesus and John were related and when John was still in his mommas womb, he lept when he heard Mary talk about Jesus.

he was Jesus’s hype man in utero.

often the PR machine, the biggest fan, the fanatic, is not going to be the one who is cool calm and collected

he or she is going to be the one living the dream, talking that talk, walking that walk, truly enraptured in the spirit.

let the CEO or the accountants sit on their hands, but if you’re lucky enough to have someone so committed to what you or your company is all about that they’ll literally lose their head for you

then let that person do his damn thing.

in Jesus’ case it was to baptise him.

and if you remember, when John lived up to his name and baptized Jesus, “Heaven was opened and [Jesus] saw the spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. Then a voice said from heaven, ‘This is my own dear son with whom I am pleased.’”

Sometimes the weirdo is exactly the man for the job.

any other time ive been unemployed i’ve had the cushion of an unemployment check. i don’t have that safety net right now.

i’m also no spring chicken on paper. perhaps 2x the age of those who i am competing against who probably will settle for 1/2 the salary that i feel i deserve.

why do i deserve a good fee? because i produce 5x the miracles of the others.

blogs existed at the LA Times before i showed up, but they sure seemed to flourish while i was there. luck? was it lucky when i was placed on the politics blog and moved the needle from a half million to a million to two million to three million over a matter of months?

LAist was around before i got hired but when i left we were quadrupling the LA Times’ best blog despite the fact that I had a $500 budget a month (and no deadlines).

the Academy had social for years before i came on board, and magically the increases there were in the thousands of percentages. when the social media giants were invited to the Oscars, somehow i ran circles around them. live. alone. unfettered. the joke was they were gonna steal me away.

if you bring 4 people to an event and i outperform all of them, aren’t i 4x more valuable? don’t i deserve 2x what they command?

but not everyone sees it that way. some things, i assume they think, cannot be measured so easily. and often that is indeed the case. but other things have metrics and like shakira’s hips, they seldom lie.

i am not saying that i haven’t been lucky. i have. in huge ways.

i was lucky to be available to run LAist when Gothamist was able to finally pay an EIC.

i was lucky that outgoing EIC carolyn kellogg was so generous to me and handed over the keys professionally and with love. i was lucky that the staff i inherited were not just ready to rock at a higher intensity, but did so FOR FREE for YEARS with enthusiasm and creativity and vigor and style and insight and love and love and love.

i was lucky that my buddy matt welch was leaving the Times when i wanted to work there and knew who i should write. and i was lucky that i was writing to Meredith Artley, who is one of the secret angels of digital journalism. sent from above. walking amongst us. and who you can expect to see if you make it to the pearly gates. who taught me what class and empathy and professionalism are all about. and i was lucky to work with a staff who was rightfully suspicious about blogs and the emerging digital culture but were also ready to make that tough transition away from the comfort zone of their print-first mentality.

and yes i was lucky that the academy digital was being run by josh spector who knew me via LAist and i was lucky that during that time at LAist i didn’t reply to one of his emails glibly. i was lucky that the day that my former LA Times colleague Veronique de Turenne told me of the Academy job opening, I applied and Josh dmed me via Twitter and said, is this Tony from LAist? yes. yes! all of that was luck.

but the results weren’t.

the results were monster numbers that i have gotten almost everywhere else i’ve been.

i got those results not because im the smartest guy in the room or the best dressed. but because im intensely competitive. and it comes to being a Cub fan during the 108-year drought. seriously.

the Cubs were my life and as long as they sucked, my life sucked. ive had the greatest friends, coolest girlfriends, but there was a giant hole in my heart due to the Cubs sucking year after year. and the only way i could fill a little of that was to find a scoreboard in life — any — and spin those numbers like a defective pinball machine.

a hollow goal, perhaps, but i do admit it was a decent band-aid at times.

right now it’s Sunday. i am reading John 8-11 and Jesus is being grilled by all these people and he’s trying to defend himself and any time he checkmates them with an answer they look to get rocks to stone him. I am the furthest thing from Jesus, but I love the Bible because how relatable is that?

who among us doesn’t feel that when we are on the defense and we think we have replied with the Truth, there’s always a few in the crowd who say, kill him for that! what i love about the Good Book is, here’s a book that’s supposed to be about Faith and Love and Possibilities and yet even the Son of Man, the embodiment of God on Earth, had a hard time talking to people so that they understood.

as the kids say: SAME!

the bible also says don’t worry, consider the lilies of the field. so i will keep knocking on doors and submitting resumes and hopefully soon someone will say

wait, is this really LAist Tony? you really want to work with us?

that is the luck i need right now.

Here’s what I think about National Coming Out Day

I have had gay co-workers, teachers, bosses, and friends.

On average they treated me with respect and taught me some great lessons.

I’ve heard that 10% of the population is gay.

If that’s true, I’ll say this: I wish more were, because the ones I know are fantastic and I’m grateful that they were (and are) in my life.

Now about the Bible, which I also love, which I think confuses casual readers regarding this topic.

While it’s true that early in the book there are references to this and that,

later in the book comes a man named Jesus.

And after Jesus has experienced life on Earth as a real man, He said this, he said

I have a New Commandment: love one another, like I’ve loved you.

And since Jesus was not homophobic, I think, like with most good books,

we should pay more attention to how it ends than how it begins.

Because it is in mimicking the growth of others to the light

that we become enlightened.

but it was also Sunday during the NFL season which meant all that mattered was one thing, and that is the Chicago Bears.

i know i know im working on a secret project

and the Repubs are trying to steamroll their naughty frat boy through the supreme court process

but morrissey announced that joan jett would be opening for him at his show in LA Live

and the Cubs beat the Sox

and these Cocoa Pebbles are delicious

and i did so much laundry

and yesterday i watched this insane kirk douglas movie where he played this crazy reporter out in the desert and this guy was stuck in a mine and kirk coulda saved him right away but he wanted the story to go on and on

and all these people showed up and there was a carnival and food and the train started stopping there

and old kirk started saying super nice things about the sherriff so in return the sheriff blocked the other reporters from doing things and eventually just made kirk a deputy

there is so much evil in the world. the bible tells us this too.

so much evil in there that the good book says things like

and then Ezekanazl was born and he did what was evil in the eyes of the Lord, as his father had done.

even back then. the good old days. the days before all the minorities showed up and ruined things by working for super cheap (or free) and accepting the scraps as if they were gold. even then people in power were being super selfish and mean to the less fortunate.

and every time a beggar asks me for money i think, am i being tested? and then i think, shit, they’re being tested and thats one i would fail: try to live in LA while being stinky and homeless and jobless and undereducated.

oh it was crazy out there, all right.

i read a bunch of Job and i dont know which way to go with it. he’s right to be pissed off, and his friends are right to tell him to trust God, but mama mia, theres another test i would fail and fail and fail.

once upon a time someone tried to take stuff away from me and i tried to reason with him but then it appeared that people wanted him to take things from me and i was all, am i the crazy one then?

so old Job must have thought, wait, i didnt do shit wrong, now my family dead, i got these bumps all over my face and my friends are saying i need to just put myself in time out. wtf is happening?

and the bible says, tonight wasn’t crazy, every day is crazy.

when politicians start using the bible to explain why they are doing sinful things, it’s time for everyone to start reading the Good Book so they can put these lying liars in their place.

yesterday the Atty General and then the Press Secretary attempted to use the Bible to explain why this administration is ripping babies from their mothers as they are seeking asylum in the so called Greatest Country in the World.

these self proclaimed Conservative Christians – a term that is contradictory in every imaginable sense – turn a blind eye to the origin story of Jesus, who as soon as he was born had to haul ass out of Israel and into Africa because the King wanted to kill him because he was a threat to his administration.

A days-old Jesus was seeking refuge. A stranger in a strange land. And that experience he used as an example in his teachings about other refugees. He even reminded the Jews that they were once immigrants in Egypt when there was a famine in Israel.

FUCKING BE COOL TO EACH OTHER is the overwhelming theme of Jesus’s teachings.

love your neighbor

love your enemy

love the poor just like you love yourself.

reading the bible without paying attention to Jesus’s life and teachings is like listening to Van Halen without paying attention to the guitar.

the guitar, sorry Michael Anthony, is what Van Halen is all about.

Jesus, the Prince of Peace, is what Christianity is all about.

He healed the sick, he didn’t lock em up.

He fed the hungry, he didn’t kick them back to King Herod to get killed.

He solved problems, he didn’t wipe his hands to them.

I know there’s worse evil in the world, but this DC, GOP evil is something i never expected in 2018.