Tag Archives: bree

if you eat this salad you’re gonna have a baby

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i actually got a lot done today

went with bree to a restaurant where if youre a pregnant lady and you eat the salad the odds magically increase that you will deliver the bambino within 3 and 36 hours.

bree wanted to go there because on monday theyre going to induce her and she would rather her angel come out the natural way.

she taught me a lot about being a pregnant lady. we did a little podcast. it turned out better than i expected.

when you’re unemployed you feel like a complete loser and when you do something well it has a way of surprising you.

apparently i can talk aloud in a conversation.

anyways this restaurant has an unpronounceable name, it’s on an adorable street in studio city that actually looks like it could be in the movies now that i say it.

the waiters told us that 15-20 women a day go in there for The Maternity Salad.

bree is picky and she said the salad was good. mine was meh.

they had this huge board with all the names of the Salad Babies.

she was very calm. her work gives her 6 months off to do this. which seems like a lot, but then how do you just not be around your 6 month old if you wanna receive money and benefits?

we’ll check in with her later.

best question i asked: what was your best baby shower gift?

tune in never to hear her answer because lets be real, if i wanted to do podcasts i would have been doing them by now.

came home and watched the end of the cubs game.

then did something on the howard stern group that ive been wanting to do somewhere, anywhere, for the last 10 years.

long long time ago usa today had a blog called pop candy by whitney matthewson and she did this thing where once a week she would feature one of her commentors.  most posts got like 20-100 comments, but those ones got 1,000+ because it was actually really nice to see who these people were and what they were into.

last month i did an Ask Me Anything to get the ball rolling. i knew some of these people disagreed with some of the rules that i had implemented or didn’t like how i did certain things, so i did it to let them grill me on it so that there would be a record of where i stood on things and so maybe they could understand my rationale better. funny thing was, most of them had zero interest in any of that and just wanted to ask good questions. which was fine because that AMA wasnt about me, really, it was to set the table for the weekly AMAs to come.

so i made sure to keep it as really real as i could, but also to mirror what we love about the Stern show, which is people are brutally honest, including the host. especially the host.

well it worked out because today i picked this guy who was one of my best Informants. the group gets more than 50 posts a day and it is really helpful that 3-4 dudes regularly tell me any time someone says something insane that needs my attention. in a perfect world i would make them all admins, but this system has worked out fine and despite the size (16k) most people respect the rules and are civil.

so i asked him yesterday if he was up to do an AMA and he said whats that? turned out he was perfect. he grew up on Long Island in the 80s; knows everything about the show, the staff, all the minor details, and even knows the comedian guests on the much-maligned Wrap Up Show. works in government in DC. the whole thing was shocking. and then he came out in the middle of the thing.

pop candy strikes again.

then i watched this video of David Ross, the backup catcher for the Cubs in 2016 who was the oldest player on the team so they called him Grampa Rossy.

if you remember, in the World Series, in the final game, on what everyone knew would be his final game of his career because he was retiring, he hit a crucial home run off one of their best pitchers.

the cubs digital team has taken it to higher level this year with their videos because not only is the production good but the interviews, like on this one, lead to some amazing insights.

for example: Grampa Rossy has no business hitting a home run off Andrew Miller on a rainy night in Cleveland,

but through this video we learn all this crazy ass inside baseball stuff that is what i live for

namely:

Rossy and Miller played together in Boston. when you are the catcher and he is the pitcher, you tend to learn things about him if you ever have to hit against him. Ross, like most people, knew that Miller’s money pitch was his slider – a pitch that will trail away from a right handed batter, just out of his reach.

sliders are super hard to hit so you usually just let those go by and wait for him to throw a fastball.

miller had a tell. one that probably only a catcher would know because it may hurt some catcher’s feelings.

when a catcher calls the signs, he’s not asking the pitcher “hey what do you think about a fastball?” he’s telling him “dude, let me call this game. i see what you have going. i study the hell out of these batters. here’s what we should do: fastball.”

if the pitcher disagrees with the call he will shake off the catcher and have him call another pitch. most pitchers only have 2-3 pitches so it’s not that complicated. but if a pitcher shakes off a catcher, generally the catchers don’t like that.

so Grampa Rossy noticed that every time Miller would shake off a pitch it was usually because he wanted to throw a fastball.

there it was, game 7 of the world series. all of his years of being around the league, learning weird quirks, studying batters… it was Grampa’s weird knowledge of his former pitcher that helped him know that when Andrew Miller shook off a sign with one ball and two strikes it was probably gonna be a flaming hot fastball.

and it was, and the Cubs were on their way to winning the world series.

 

couldnt sleep last night – nervous about a phone call i was having today

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was it a job interview? not really. more like a pitch. but i didnt know it was gonna be a pitch. i thought it was gonna be something else. i didnt know what it was going to be. i knew it was gonna be a phone call.

maybe. hopefully. then it turned out it was. which was good. three people on the call. had only known one. other two i had only read about and heard of.

my voice gets really high when im nervous. had no reason to be nervous. only people who are lying should be nervous. this was not a lie. it was the biggest truth ever. it was basically: heres this thing i want to make for you that probably wont pay off immediately but not far down the road mama mia will you think this was genius.

and i gotta say there werent a lot of hard questions. some good ones. some right on the money. i was asked if i knew of this other thing, and i had known of that other thing, so hopefully they saw i wasnt a total dummy.

but its sorta like this. in baseball you can hit the ball hard 3-4 times in the game. and still make outs because it goes right to center, or right in the 3rd baseman’s glove. or just a little foul. you did everything right but it just wasnt your night.

i feel that way about spring. i have had the best opportunities, with the coolest people, and we are communicating clearly, but it just doesn’t sing.

also i didnt figure out the name for it until just now — the great rock n roll census.

it’s nobodys fault. there’s no hard feelings. no ill will. it’s just: thank you next. so tomorrow im going to do the unspeakable. im going to start a podcast.

since i slept so poorly last night and had a headache after the call i took a little nap. and during the nap i had a dream. in the dream i just took the bus and got off the bus somewhere where no other typical podcaster would ever get off the bus. dangerous? you bet. but who cares, the cubs won the world series. and i saw it.

so i get off the bus and walk down the street and ask some kids, hey what are you doing over there? and either they run away, stab me, or tell me. that’s a .333 chance of something good, which would get you in the hall of fame in baseball. so thats one category: hey what are you doing?

the other is: hey what goes on over here? other day i was in glendale. i was in the library reading but i really wanted to go outside and smoke a joint because i was getting depressed. so i went out to the library to the adjoining park. there were what appeared to be semi retired gang members there playing classic rock on an old school boom box.

because im 239874 years old i knew every song coming out of that boom box, but i didnt have enough weed to share with the entire posse so i just kept walking over to the far end of the park. when out of no where a security guard went over to the gentleman and caused them to raise their voices at him.

if i had been more prepared, i would have walked over and said, he what goes on over here and stuck my microphone out so you could all hear.

another category would be: hows biz? where i walk down random streets and talk to small business owners about the state of the economy, the history of their establishment, and can i have a taste of that thing over there?

the way i look at it, i could probably wake up at noon and be done interviewing people by 4. edit that audio, make corresponding blog posts by 6-7 and probably get a few thousand people to chip in a couple bucks a month for what i would call LA IS OK.

heres how i figure it. a man of my age and education should be making six figures by now. that’s like 8,500 a month. if i could get 4,250 paying subscribers to flow $2 a month, boom, done.

granted thats more than read the busblog every month now that blogs are dead. but you know me, ive never had a hard time getting an audience when i want one. and like ive just laid out, i’ll be in danger, i’ll be educating people, i’ll be showing off the greatest city in the world, and there will probably be music.

tomorrow i will start with a pregnant person i know (pictured) who is due to have her first baby any day now. she wants me to take her to this salad place known to induce some women right there on the spot. so what better to Christian a pod than water breaking? or if we get lucky i’ll have to speed her to the hospital. have no fear, the tape will be rolling.

i had quite a full day yesterday

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it started off early because karisa and i wanted to go to the Obey / Giant sample sale down in the OC.

the sale started at 9am so on friday she said, lets go early how early you wanna get there? i tolder as early as possible. she said that she gets up at 8am, which she knew would be tough for me to match since i usually dont wake until 11am thanks to my beautiful job which im about to hand over.

sigh.

so i said i better get used to waking up early so i will meet you at your beach house around 9:30am. she said, no way. i said way, and the deal was on.

at 9am i tolder i was up, showered, and had pockets full of cash to give to shepard fairey and his subversive elves and at 10am there was me and karisa at the manhattan beach starbucks getting some lo fat breakfast and listening to the new steve aoki cd on our way to the OC.

at 11am we found ourselves in the longest line that ive ever been in to buy clothes.

let me tell you a little something about me and clothes. we dont get along. i do my best to get by on items my mom buys me for christmas and birthdays, and clothes of any style find their way on anyone other than me.

the rare exception are the weirdo threads by the good people of obey giant.

last year and the year before i made my way to the sample sale and all was well, but for some reason this year every one knew about the sale and they told two friends and so on and so on.

after 10 minutes the line hadnt moved so i said karisa, fuck. this. shit. and she said we’re here, where else are we gonna go? i said anywhere except this non moving line. but she said, maybe youre just hungry, go get some tacos over at that roach coach and we’ll see if the line moved at all. so i did as instructed and when i returned the line had moved a little.

two dudes came out of the exit door and i said, bros, when did you get here? they said, we got here at 6am. may i remind you it was 11:15am when i asked them that question. i looked at karisa. then they said, but our line was waaaay longer than yours, you probably only have a 2 hour wait.

now again i hate clothes. i love obey and i love karisa. i hate the OC but i hate lines even more. i love tacos. but i love karisa and never get to see her. but i hate clothes. why am i here? but karisa and i can talk up a storm about anything so the two hours went by pretty quickly and the one saving grace was the kids in line were all dressed really cool, and many of them were of the college aged variety and quite attractive. so if one had to be in a two hour line, this was the one to be in, and next to karisa didnt suck either.

sadly it was a three hour line.

when we got in the place had been picked through pretty well, and the prices had increased since last year. $20 tshirts that went for $5 last year were $8 if you bought 4, and there werent really any big jackets or pants. and there was only one skull cap for my sensitive bald head.

still somehow i managed to blow $160 because as i said i hate clothes, so if once a year i stock up then i can have that last for a good long while.

when i got home i went to this art show. it was supposed to be the most offensive christmas art show in hollywood, but maybe my tastes have dulled over the years but it wasnt all that offensive. it was funny. it was good. but not as offensive as i wanted. still i said hi to the curator. took tons of pics that will be on LAist tomorrow, and got out of there.

then i went to my former cohort bree’s 25th birthday. bree and i worked at buzznet together. when i first worked there there was only 4-5 people. after i got hired they hired 3 more younger kids to do a variety of things. all 3 of them are still there including bree. i hadnt seen her in a long time. the party was at the Cha Cha in silver lake next to a really great record store.

i met some of her friends who were really nice, i said hi to one of the original buzznetters, Steve, and said hi to a few other current buzzneters including their PR lady who kept mum regarding a partnership of sorts between one of my favorite music blogs Stereogum and buzznet. why keep mum over something good? dont ask me, but buzznet never made a lot of sense to me, but of course i was fired from there so clearly my brand of thinking and theres were often at odds. whatevs. it was nice to see everyone and since i had never been to the cha cha, it was nice to check it out out.

afterwards bree and i ate fish tacos in the cold outside at King Taco and had such a nice conversation that i thought about it all night.

last week i was on the phone seemingly all week. people were calling me non stop about my new job, people were emailing me, chatting, everything. yes i was very happy to talk to everyone, yes it was terribly exciting, but for a year and a half i had pretty much stayed to myself and only talked to people via email and IM. to actually use my voice for 7 days straight was a bit much.

which is ironic because yesterday chatting with karisa all day in the parking lot of Obey, and then later that night in deep personal conversations with everyone at the bar and the taco stand… i dont know. it was sorta powerful. and then today my bro Kemp came over and we talked about black colleges and bill cosby and dave chappell, the good talks just kept going.

it made me hope that my conversations at the newspaper will be equally thought provoking and actually meaningful cuz isnt that what its about – being surrounded by smart people talking about smart things? it is for me.

it made me grateful that i have good friends, and it reminded me that im not so much a loner in this dark world. there are others who might not look anything like me, but theyre more like me than they think.

ps happy birthday bree. i dont know if you read the busblog but if you do, thanks for inviting me to yr party!