i love dares

today a fantastic woman dared me to write FIFTEEN PAGES of something cohesive

and i do owe someone who paid me a few hundred dollars to write something long

about the time i helped build a company and hired most of its people

but ive hesitated doing it because the true story involves

sex

sadness

and life changing change

but it also sets me up as the victim

and i dont ever want to portray myself as that because

well, fuck that.

theres enough victim stories in the Top 40.

probs the best song to come out this year was by that teen Olivia Rodrigo

one reason i love the Good Book so much is, despite everyone being victims pretty much

including God

Jesus is not one.

Even when his disciples wuss out on him and run away and refuse to say yeah He’s my boy

He does his thing, comes back and tells everyone, no it’s cool

just be super cool

im out,

but just be super cool people.

thats a way harder song to sing which is why Christian music blows so bad and it took Black folks to invent Gospel to put some zip into it.

can i write 15 pages, of course.

even if you are like me with ADD or whatever it is

you just write

one page a day.

 

ive got some decisions to make

for once it’s not about the xbi or women or cars or helicopters or what i do in my spare time or what i dont do in my spare time or the cubs or rock music or religion or blogging or politics.

weird thing happened to me when i turned 50, i started paying attention to time. how its fleeting. whats really important and how people relate to me.

it’s sorta weird that you can live here for so long and some people don’t really respect what youve done here and what youve made and in some cases what youve made for them.

but on the other hand, sometimes theyre trying to prove their value. theyre trying to impress on you that theyve been around the sun a few times too and theyve got something to offer and theyve got some ideas. and sure i wanna see other peoples ideas. the whole LAist experiment was to get 30-40 people together and have them tell their stories and look at LA through their lens and write down what they see.

that experiment worked beautifully. even though they don’t work that way any more.

maybe my journey is to do things, be successful, and then watch the next wave sorta ignore it and do theirs. maybe my challenge is to see how i can handle that.

at the times we built 30-40 blogs, broke all sorts of records, and then my boss tore em down on his way out. i dont think i handled that very well. i was respectful, but maybe thats not the right choice. would you just allow someone to burn down the skyscraper you just built?

my friend amy has been on my case. she’s usually right about things.