the 100 pics project is now underway

tony pierce blogger xbi agent your friend

as you may know i love pictures. who knows why but i do. love them.

for a while there were pictures and posters all over my apartment walls. as high as i could reach, if there was any blank space i would put something in it.

my philosophy was, what good are these pictures in a photo album when they could be right there over the toilet?

then one day i fell in love with a young lady who moved in with me briefly and asked if she could remove all of the memories of my past. it seemed like a reasonable request so i allowed it. now, years later, i am slowly putting new photos back on my walls and i love it. i love seeing all of these… things… all the time. friends, family, strangers, famous ppl, not famous people, and just great images.

so last night while driving the mean streets of downtown LA i thought, dude you’re gonna turn 100 in a few weeks! you should probably do something for such a milestone of a birthday. and you should do it on the world famous. and it should be something you aint never done before — which is a tough assignment for someone with  11,240 posts.

i concluded that every day for the next 100 days i will put up a picture that means something to me. a special picture. one that might be on my walls – or should be on my walls. and i should write about it with as much honesty as you have grown to expect from this humble url of love.

so lets start with this selfie. this one is from the buzznet days. i can tell because im using a canon rebel camera. only time i ever had that camera was when marc brown bought one or two for buzznet so they could send me out on assignment and take pics for the pic site. i was on a little roadtrip up to vancouver for a buzznet meetup party. it was thanksgivingtime. i had just spent the holiday with the truest and her family in Umpqua, OR and took some really great pics along the way.

but this one was taken in, i wanna say in the portland area at a cheap motel. i was alone. i missed the truest already but i was looking forward to hanging with chad and smelly danielly and matt good and the canadian crew. it was going to be my first time in canada i think. either the first or second time.

back then neither my beard or moustache liked to grow in and i was just starting to get gray hairs in there.

i was cold. i was alone. and the florescent light of the bathroom made me look green. i loved it.

a trip through this year via photos

here we have March 2010


echo park bbq, march 5
joey maloney, scott sterling, ali miller – one could build an empire around those three


la times, march 8
todd had cancer. the surgeon had a knife. todd now has a killer scar.


echo park, sunset blvd, march 9
always remember that the food truck revolution came directly from taco trucks like tacos arizas


westchester, march 10
the only thing better than amazing sushi, are two foul mouthed girls to enjoy it with


hollywood, march 11
the only thing better than boring one girl in yr bedroom is, wait, nevermind


austin, texas, march 13
they said paint, so i made the sun


sxsw twitter party, austin, tx, march 14
ev williams and mark milian, fantastic gents, neither of whom have the same gig now that they had then


austin, tx, march 15
can you tell im annoyed? things worked out later, in a nice way.


austin, tx, march 16
a kilt and a metal shirt = awesome. who knew?


sixth street, march 17
even though poetry been berry berry good to me, it can fend for itself if you ask me


sixth street, st paddys day
the only thing i like doing more than taking pics, its taking pics of people posing for pics


near la zona rosa, st paddys day
shepard fairey wuz here


austin, tx, march 18
hangovers have me seeing double



ifc house, march 18
if i was any closer to The Sword at this show i woulda been in the band




austin music hall, march 18
biggest surprise of the week: stp stills got it


austin, march 18
dum dum girls have a sweet sweet thing goin


austin, march 18
best texas band no one ever talks about: quiet company





stubb’s bbq, march 19
<3 courtney love cobain <3


stubbs bbq, red river, march 19
one of the legends of red river, asher garber, and the car i would later own


prague club, march 20
matt good said he hadnt been to sxsw for 15 years and it would be another 15 when hed return


runyun canyon, march 28
it was 85 degrees, you’d have gone for a hike too

matt played 10 songs tonight here in vegas.

to a crowd of about 30 people, many of whom flew in from Connecticut, Frisco, and various locales in Canada. and for a few who were big fans but had never had the chance to see him play, this was their first gig.

the gig was the living room in the huge house that ive been stayed at with matt here in the suburbs of sin city.

matt told his fans through his site that he was going to be in vegas and he was going to be playing to a few dozen people and i guess people emailed in and he gave invites to the “winners” and they all came here and oh yeah apple was here too.

and these two dudes from currentv

and your boy.

and its really sad that a lot of americans dont know about matt because seriously how many musicians of any stature let alone one who is currently #2 on amazon.ca for a record that doesnt even come out for a month, invites friends fans his favorite computer company and the press to come into his vacation and listen to what hes about to tour with on an acoustic guitar barefoot while wearing shorts?

and not charge you three grand, prince.

i got to meet miss604 who liveblogged the event perfectly and gracefully and far better than i imagined. she took pictures and was later relived from that duty by the totally capable duane storey who had a sweet camera and was uploading them to flickr within minutes of taking the pics.

it really shows you how quickly a live event like this can be spread through the world if you have people working as a team who know what the heck theyre doing and are fans of the subject.

matt ended the show with a cover of daniel johnstons true love will find you in the end and lets add love to the end of the paragraph above. when you have people working together who are loving what theyre doing the end result is not just something good, its something beautiful.

which is what the evening was.

it started with people showing up, taking off their shoes, meeting each other, then matt emerged and went around the circle and met everyone and seemed to remember where everyone lived.

then everyone hung outside and chit chatted by the pool. now these are matt good fans, which means theyre smart, theyre mellow, and theyre sweet as hell. so basically they drank as much water as i drank beer.

eventually the group made it into the living room and matt lounged on the bad ass leather couch and strummed some tunes casually and talked to the people. we were waiting on some people who couldnt get their yet. later when the late guy arrived we found out he was a heart surgeon. so there were many predictable jokes about how the person about to get a transplant better hope that matt’s show doesnt go too far into the night.

in the middle of the show the docs beeper went off and he had to leave. thirty seconds he returned and someone joked, patient died? but the doc had just forgotten his keys or something. whoops.

matt chimed in with, didnt mike moore just make a movie about this?

the new album is called hospital music.

after the show we adjourned to the kitchen, finished off the drinks, matt signed autographs for people who brought stuff and posed in pics with them and then they went home.

everyone was glowing.

one of the guys outside said to me, that was the best show ive ever been to.

i was all, yep, and it was some dudes house.

and then a convertible packed with fans sped off into the desert night.

matt good in vegas playing to fans

photos by duane storey

one day i’ll die.

and when i do and youre not dead, dont cry for me, because ive lived a life. and it was a good life.

and it was brimming over with young bare titties.

friday night i laid down on my couch at eleven pm because i know any time i lay on my couch after eight pm i will pass out. but murphys law, because i had to wake up at 3:30am to get to LAX at 4:30am to catch my 6am flight i had a hard time falling asleep on my couch, in my bed, anywhere.

luckilly when youre as old as i am you dont need a lot of sleep and when i woke up at 3:15am i was refreshed and ready to go. a half hour later i checked my email for a last time before i hit the road and i saw something fascinating in my gmail, i saw Chris Spooney was online.

baby, i typed.

Tony? OMG! she typed back. and indeed it was my true love in Africa who had made her way to the capital of Uganda to check her email and yep that was her on gmail chat with me. so Google, thank you, that was 15 of the greatest minutes that id had in a long long time.

sped to LAX, parked in long term parking, made it through the gauntlet that is getting onto an international air flight these days. and at noon pacific, three pm ontario time there i was for the first time ever in Toronto canada.

i was met by General Pitt, Colonel Chad, and 19 yr old Mikey from buffalo. we all packed into Pitt’s sportscar and zoomed through toronto to have a pint at a croatian bar to meet Pitt’s fiance, the outlaw bitch.

my oh my was she lovely. as were the beers. i forget what i had but it was dark and strong and smooth. precisely what i needed at noon-ish after a long flight. we also had french fries and brichotto. an hour later we were in waterloo.

we ordered pizzas and pitt got beer as i took a shower and we partied and then went to the matt good show in kitchner.

raymi and fil met us at the door and slid us past the bouncers and ticket people untouched and sheparded us to the backstage/sidestage area. matt had just started and the beers kept making their way backstage to us. we politely drank them all. so many of them.

someone stuck their head through the curtains and raymi tapped me on the shoulder and it was a nice young man who said he had read me over all these years and just wanted to shake my hand. hi canada.

i took some pictures but they didnt really turn out. matt told long funny stories, the kids looked at him in awe and sang along with his every word. more beers arrived and were drunk. the kids shouted out requests and matt obliged to all of them except for the easiest “Show us your ass.” if only i had packed my donkey costume.

matt’s opening act, melissa joined him on stage for a beautiful version of NIN’s “hurt” for an encore, and then matt did four more tunes for the encore. it was lovely. afterwards dozens of people lined up to get his autograph on his tourbus and matt was very generous to them.

then we all went back to our hotel rooms. we were partying very nicely. pitt was being launched across one bed to the other. hockey night was on the tv. tsar was on the music machine. but then midnight struck and i remembered that i had told my readers to meet us at the Stinky Dog. so we got cabs. actually Gwen and her dude drove two of us and the rest piled into a cab.

we got to the Dog which was far fancier than i expected. first thing the doorman asked me was if i was planning on keeping my toque on. i said uh yes? he told me that i wouldnt be wearing it, that they had a dress code. we walked in and almost everyone was already drunk, dressed up, and sorta yuppish. it was a huge place. before i could order a very tall drink to forget that i had found the only yuppies in waterloo i was being told that little mikey wasnt being allowed into the Dog because even though Canada is 19+, the club of yuppies had decided to keep the hat wearing crowd out and the 21- kids out too.

so we caught another cab and asked him to take us to a fun place that was 19+, we were dropped off at a fun place that had bowling downstairs and video games and french fries etc but upon further review it had decided to close early pissing off everyone. now it was 1am and we only had an hour to drink.

everyone was mad. we were there for raymis birthday. but we were all mostly boys so i asked fil if raymi would be upset if we ended up at a strip club. he said no, but i should ask her. i asked her and she had no problem with it. so we asked the cabbie if he knew of a nearby strip club and he said The Doll House and it was 15 minutes away. we climbed in and got another cab to follow behind with the rest of our party and at 1:15a we piled into the Doll House to drink with the naked ladies of Kitchner.

interesting to say the least. it wasnt a very big club but it was loud and lively. the girls were all shapes and sizes. the beers were reasonable and there were just as many female patrons as male.

because time was short, after my first beer i went to the atm to get some lap dancing money but the machine didnt recognize my american debit card. very quickly i had a $60 loan from my pallies and i picked out a very skinny girl in an extremely skanky outfit. fredricks of hollywood turned his nose at this fishnet contraption.

the Doll House has a funny rule that in order to get a lap dance you first have to buy a $20 drink. then you can give the girl another $20 per dance. i ordered a baileys as thats what i drink after 1:30am. we went into the back and she sat on my lap and palmed my bald head as we waited for our song to begin.

“you have good friends,” she said. admitting to having seen them give me money.

“i have the greatest friends in the world,” i told her and added that i woke up in LA and there i was with a half naked girl on my lap who was about to show me her cootchie. she kissed my head and got up. she took an axl rose hankercheif out of her purse and placed it over my crotch and started to dance to the music.

it was terrible music, whatever it was, but the little girl could dance. almost immediately her clothes were off and she was skinnier than i thought. i told her so and she said that she really could stand to gain 10 lbs but she has a very bad tummy, i told her that i did too when i was her age and she spread her vagina lips and said that she can barely eat anything without getting sickly. her lips were quite pliable. far more than necessary. she showed me her clitorus and i blew it a kiss.

she laughed and turned around to show me her boney ass. i drank from my bottle of beer and examined it. very clean. very well groomed. the things the women of this hemisphere do to make themselves look the way they do. i said hi to it too and she touched her knees with her nose and i complimented her flexibility.

she got on my lap and took the beer from my hand and placed it on a little shelf and then took my hands and put them on her body. you can touch the girls in canada i asked? oui she said. i apologized for my cold beer hand and she said, no worries, the better to make my nipples hard, and she placed my hands on her breasts.

oh canada. and in a perfect world she would have just laid there on my lap and let me cup her boobies as i smelled her long hair but she had a dance to perform and my sex need to rub up against something so she did and it did and she put her nose on my buldge and then her chin and what does it say about a man who would have just been happy talking and holding for 15 minutes instead of whatever she was doing to me? gay you say, not really id argue. sometimes you just want to look into someones eyes as she sits her bare ass on your hand.

when i got back to our table chad was destroying everyone at arm wrestling and mikey was holding his own at raymi who refused to admit defeat even challenging the poor boy to left-handed arm wrestling even though he was a lefty. raymi looked spectacular, by the way, no wonder girls are jealous of her.

when the place closed we waited outside in the bitter cold for a cab. i talked to a few girls and made some friends, and the boys they were with became my new enemies and one of them squirted ketchup on my pants but i deserved it, i was overstepping the ladies generosity by handing out my business card and telling tales of hollywood. how does a wigger from waterloo with a white yankees hat on sideways and gold earings and white pants compete with a blogger who will steal your girlfriend at the doll house parkinglot in three minutes and have her naked in ten minutes. even with ketchup on his shit.

at 10am mikey pitt chad and i checked out of the motel and were driving into toronto listening to alan cross’s ongoing history of modern rock. because it was the anniversary of kurdt’s death he was doing two hours of that. it was good. real good. we were one minute late dropping mikey off at the bus station so we ate lunch at the mall downtown and got him on another bus and had a few hours to kill.

so the choice was go up the CN Tower or catch the Blue Jays game already in progress. we had heard tell of $2 tickets in the nosebleeds but for some reason the Tampa Bay game was not one of those special days so we forked over $9 and watched the aces Roy Halliday vs Steve Kazmir. there were probably 20k people in attendence because apparently when theres hockey still aboot noone goes to watch baseball in the dome.

it was so quiet in there you could hear the farts of the players even way up in the sky like we were sitting. when the wave came it felt like a gentle breeze. you could hear the heater click on. when someone in the hotel rooms above the centerfield wall stuck popcorn in the microwave you could hear the ding when it was ready. to liven things up they hired break dancers to perform ontop of the dugout roof. i hurled a discarded plastic bottle at one of them but by the time it reached the roof of the dugout the inning had already started. but still we could see fine.

the pitching duel turned into a 6-3 victory for the visitors which was fine with me since Kazmir is on half of my fantasy teams.

then we went to tim hortens for some donuts. funny thing about toronto, theres a tim hortens for every stop light in town. i played a little game where id hold my breath and wouldnt exhale until we passed three tim hortens. it wasnt much of a game.

adn then before we knew it i was back at pearson airport. and then i was in the plane and then i was watching porn on my ipod and then i was asleep. and now im in LA. and now i miss canada which looked a lot like wisconsin. and yes i could live in toronto no problem eh. and yes i had the best 24 hour road trip ever. and may i thank mr pitt for making it happen.

chad + gwen + the outlaw + little mike

straight outta compton

crazy motherfucker named ice cube. in a band called niggas with attitudes. when im called off, i got a sawed off. squeeze the trigger and bodies are hauled off. you too boy if you fuck wit me. the police are gonna have to get me. off your ass, thats how im going out, for the punk motherfuckers thats showin out, niggaz start to mumble, they wanna rumble, mix em and cook em in a pot like gumbo, goin off on a motherfucka like that, with a gat thats pointed at yo ass, so give up smooth, aint no tellin when im down for the jack move…

its 832am and this is my last communiquee from sparkling bc. i must say im a little sad to be leaving canada today. and every morning when i wake up theres usually a song in my head that has absolutely nothing to do with how i feel. maybe my brain is singing me nwa because it knows that im going back to the city of angels later today, home of ice cube, home of dre, home of nwa, home of pretty much everything i love.

but when i was in nyc i fell in love with that little up n coming burg and now im in love with this quaint village, and who knows, when i go back to the city i grew up in in three weeks i will probably fall in love with chicago as well.

in my wildest dreams i would drive around like john madden in a chauferred tour bus and just go city to city and hang out there until i was bored and meet all of you and write and sample the food and drink the booze and kiss the girls and take pictures and fall in love in every area code just like ive done here.

last night matt and jenny and their two friends from vegas and i went to a restaurant owned by an iron chef. it looked super cool inside with orange padded walls and dark red seats and furry chandeleirs and hot girls in little black dresses and smiles. somehow the prices werent outrageous, they were what youd expect for a nice meal out. jennys a fashion model so of course she was decked out, as were the nice people from vegas, but matt suprised us all with wearing a shirt tie and jacket.

because i keep it real i had the eazy-e sheepskin lining flannel over my other flannel but the soft vancouverites didnt say whose that murder rapper that keeps you dancin, with a crime record like charles manson, ak 47 is the tool, dont make me act a motherfuckin fool… they said its matt good eh. and i was barely recognized, just like i like.

the iron chef knows how to do it. im being told we were at feeni’s. people had tar tar, people had spagatini, my asian girlfriend with the poofy miniskirt had a burger n fries, and matt had pigeon but it was all presented so beautifully that i was really curious how this dude woulda made red beans and rice with collard greens and chitlins – itd probably look like nothing youve ever seen which is why once everyone has buzznet strips on the sides of their blogs – cough cough – that means you – i will take my riches and begin johnny appleseeding soulfood around the great white north, europe, and the central coast of california – my real home.

the food was great, but the star of the night was the port. matt, we kidded, is so knowledgeable that if you were ever on who wants to be a millionaire you should have him as your lifeline. jenny joked that the rumor was that mark mcgrath asked his manager who should be his lifeline when he appeared on celeb millionaire and his manager said matt no question, and i believe it. he quizzed the young waiter about the year of the port and the waiter said ah we have three and matt was all is it blah blah blah and the waiter hemmed and hawwed and finnaly just brought out all three bottles that they had there and he examined the brands and said we will take this unmarked mysterious bottle, and let me tell you something about tea totallers and mormons and non drinkers, i feel sorry for you because part of life my pretties is kissing exotic girls smoking foreign brands of weed and when youre in rome drinking austrailian port. it was killer.

because i went to school in isla vista my tolerance of alcohol is what it should be: ridiculously high, so after i ordered a shot of bacardi, neat, midmeal, which raised eyebrows for some reason, and politely sipped it, i was more than ready for the afterdinner port, and as the fates would have it, it was ready for me. it slowdanced beautifully down my throat like a casual tourist and the mist of aftertaste billowed back up to remind me of what was. and like creeper pot after a few minutes the buzz came subtely and strongly and it was delicous. after half a glass i was tipsey and after a full glass the volume of my voice had raised a notch and my smile had grown a good half inch.

and that is probably why the good book does not advise against drinking, just drinking to excess.

we all drove back to the good’s for more rum and port and played with the dogs and talked about jet blue because the woman from vegas is a flight attendant, and before i knew it the night was over and i was going to write something but instead i just read a million blogs and the heaviness hit me and i was asleep before i could shut off the laptop and thats the way i like to fall asleep – passed out with a warm feeling in my head and a goofy smile on my face.

this morning i woke with eazy e dre dre and yella dancing like sugarplums through my inner ear and mc ice cube’s rhymes in my heart which if youre a dream doctor you know that means good things, or in my case great things.

and i hope before i leave today i will be able to pick up a nice canada sweatshirt or canada scarf or vancouver miniskirted asian girl to take back with me because ive left my heart in vancity. and as i leave believe im stompin but when i come back boy im comin straight outta compton.

pitt + jenny lee + reena + jenny + matt good

bob and i drove around hollywood

yesterday, taking in the sights. it was very nice.

a cuban beauty met us at the beverly center for pf changs but before we got there i was spotted on rodeo drive.

a polite cyclist saw me in the passenger’s side and said, tony pierce?

we conversed at the stop light and afterwards bob said, getting recognized on rodeo drive in beverly hills by adoring fans, tell me more about this blogging.

i’ll tell you about it. i’ll tell you that its 10:22am sunday morning and my computer is still in the shop and im typing to you from an internet cafe.

if bob only knew that the cyclist was a friend of karisas and not an adorning fan, however the fans represented yesterday via my po box.

someone sent me windows xp and an awesome ep of one of their friends’ band, one dude sent me some cubs baseball cards from the early 70s, and one dude copy and pasted all these semi-published and unpublished jd salinger stories grabbed some pictures of karisa and created a one-off book using the printers at the copy shop that he works at and mailed me a book called “twenty stories.”

amazing.

last night i was up till 4am reading it. reading is a lost art in my house when the computer is present. im totally addicted. clipper girls cousin is quitting smoking cigarettes and talks about how hard it is. i cant imagine trying to quit the computer. even when i had carpal tunnel it was hard to slow down, though i did.

also in the mailbox were a boatload of matthew good cds. i never had heard his music and emailed his record label to inquire which ones i should consider and they sent me the whole catalogue. expect reviews shortly. but upon first listen of the latest cd i hear a whisper of matthew sweet, but harder edged. which is nice. sweet always seemed to be whining about something.

its gorgeous here in hollywood. seventies? perfect weather for watching snow-covered football fields.

i hope your favorite team wins.

unless youre from new england.

🙂

was i sleep deprived or was snl not so shitty last night? afterwards i got a super late night tap at the door and it was the academy who had forgotten to send me films to consider for the oscars.

tonight’s screening was james l. brooks’s Spanglish starring adam sandler and a penelope cruise lookalike.

the first 2/3rds of the movie was really great. but then tia leone got on my nerves and the plot fell apart.

my biggest problem was that all of the characters were so flat. people were just so extreme. the crazy people were super crazy and the angels were angels. james l should know better than that. and im now officially sick of adam sandler being anything other than obnoxious or stony.

just because he could pull off being perfect and charming in the wedding singer doesnt mean that you need to keep doing it in mr deeds, 50 first dates, and now spanglish. bring back the edge.

ban sidhe + radical georgia moderate + flagrant should start an s&l