Tim

Sire Records

“Kiss Me, On the Bus”

On the bus, that’s where we’re ridin’

On the bus, O.K., don’t say hi, then

Your tongue, your transfer,

your hand, your answer

On the bus, everyone’s lookin’ for it

On the bus, I am lookin’ for it

And everything ain’t O.K.

I might die before Monday (I might drive home one day?)

They’re all watchin’ us

Kiss me on the bus

Kiss me on the bus

If you knew how I felt now

You wouldn’t act so adult now

Hurry, hurry, here comes my stop

On the bus, watch our reflection

On the bus, I can’t stand no rejection

C’mon, let’s make a scene

Oh, baby, don’t be so mean

They’re all watchin’ us

Kiss me on the bus

Kiss me on the butt

is the Sunset Junction street fair held each year near the end of the summer.

last year Tsar played and Elliot Smith and some other bands whom i dont remember because this street fair goes really long into the night and the roads are closed and the freaks come out and if theres a party where they have ferris wheels, henna tattos, clowns on stilts, and chicken on a stick then im in.

plus this is a street fair in hollywood, friends. the amount of people-watching is unmatched, and that goes for any street fair in america, and ive been to them all.

this year the headlining musical acts include Sonic Youth and Mudhoney on Saturday and Sleater-Kinney and Pansy Division on Sunday. I think Mary Wells and Chaka Kahn will also be performing, but since Los Angeles only has one newspaper, and its online arm only bothered to give a one paragraph pre-write on the coolest happening this weekend, then i may have to rely on you, my good readers, to clue us all in via the suddenly barren comments section.

Sunset Junction: $6 “donation” – thats what im doing this weekend.

as a tough guy with no feelings, no heart, no pride, impenetrable, filled with insight and joie de vive with telephones ringing all night so much so that the batteries die forcing the girls to drive to the bachelor pad, use their master key and climb in bed with me in the wee hours startling me and then soothing with a gentle caress and sleep-inducing hug.

but it’s not like that all the time.

sometimes i do get hurt and i sleep alone and i don’t pick up the phone and i wake up hot chickless with a saki hangover a sore quadricep and too many radios blaring commercials with only the solace of a tall glass of pulp free minute maid and the promise of a long hot shower to the dulcet sounds of led zeppelins “your time is gonna come” flowing from the sony sports boom box and my tears like the sand of last nights softball game slide down the drain of the yellow painted bathtub collect in the sewers of hollywood and parade into the deep blue pacific where they belong.

i don’t like to be treated as second best.

especially when i was always there for you.

its not easy to live my life and ive been rejected now some half dozen times this summer and im glad its fall.

all year long i look forward to the summertime but what for when we all live in southern california where it never rains and only the pages turn on the calendar while the weather stays exactly the same.

i don’t like being said maybe to while they pretend that the maybe part of the maybe actually exists. maybe i’ll get this proposal done this week, maybe i’ll clean up my closets, maybe my dreams will come true, maybe my princess will come.

maybe is the lie that the devil whispers when you look from the stands at the cheerleader girl who may or may not have a date to the dance and at halftime you build up the courage to approach her next to the grandstands while the marching band plays and you ask her if she’ll go with you.

maybe is the lie that she tells you.

and i have no idea why i want to be seen as number one on the lineup card playing shortstop and always given the green light to steal, but i want that and i feel i have earned it and if i haven’t i will steal it back rightfully or i’ll join the yankees and make you wish you’d never dissed me.

after work west down wilshire. the 20 line is the one where the busdriver was spit on two weeks ago by a chap who then tried to climb aboard a week later. the bus driver wouldn’t let him on. driver said, don’t you remember me? you spit on me last week. rider hops atop the bicycle rack on the nose of the bus and the driver floors it. needless to say the man falls off the bike rack hits the street, bus rolls over him splitting him in half. payback is a mofo. fucked up thing is the bus driver will probably do 15-20 for murder two.

i got off on sepulveda, walked south past me and chris’s old apartment, past santa monica blvd, past sports club la where the beemers and escalades and turbo benzes get valeted and the stars do their pilates. next door is sportmart where i exchanged my too tight softball pants for pinstriped perfectly fitting baseball pants.

walked back to santa monica blvd, caught the big blue bus #1 (now just 75 cents) to bundy to transfer to the 14, check the little sign that tells you the times the bus will arrive, and i see that it’s past 730pm and no more busses will arrive, so i flag down a taxi and tell him “sunset and barrington” and excuse myself as i change into my baseball pants and cleats.

i don’t know what country my taxi driver is from, but when i asked him how his day is going he looks at me like thats the stupidest fucking thing i could have ever asked him, and i blow it off thinking its a 5 minute ride from santa monica blvd and bundy to the softball park in brentwood.

wrong.

mohammed decides to take a huge fucking loop around brentwood, hitting wilshire, creeping towards westwood village where i tell him to take a left on sepulveda along side the veterans cemetary making the crazy loop onto sunset.

when we finally arrive the meter says $17.25, i say, “that’s nice, but that was a $10 fare, tops” i hand him a $20 and tell him to give me $7 back. he apologizes and hands me my change.

i take a taxi about once a month. i figure i don’t pay a car payment or insurance or gas. now that i’ll never have to rent a car again to see ashley, if i ever see her again, i can “splurge” and hail a cab a few times a month and still be way ahead. but what do you do when the cabbie completely goofs while keeping the meter running?

hopefully this entry shows you what you should do. and if it worked for me, a guy with baseball pants on, im sure it will work for you.

got to the field and carlisa and her sister were there. such great people. we won our game, they both played excellently, broke a few hearts, and then they decided that they wanted to go to Rock n Roll Thai – Toi Hollywood near sunset and vine. they ask if i want to join them. accompany two super hot fun sisters for thai food and beer and saki in a restaurant that plays excellent punk rock and stays open till 2am?

sure, why not.

we shared larb, pad thai, tom kha kai (xtra spicy), killer brown rice, and some glassy noodle chicken stuff that was completely uninspired, but we drank and laughed and drank and ate and drank and talked about their new business, Pink Cookies, and carlisa said that any of my readers who want to order custom tshirts, sweatshirts, etc. just mention the busblog and she’ll give you a special rate on her already low low cost.

pink cookies is the official designer of the xbi softball team jerseys. which is why we will look so badass.

when im not on a stake out. the carpal has prevented me from being in the field which is retarded if you ask me because typing up paperwork and writing to you really isn’t helping my condition. but whatev.

the queen of fashion sensibilities, lily is a dispatcher for the xbi. she is our eyes and ears when the shit is going down. she has police radios, satellite surveillance, shes monitoring the bugs, she’s coordinating the agents, she’s organizing and communicating to a dozen people at any given time, and she does it so effortlessly its truly amazing.

she and i are both libras, and i know that i can come across as mr. cool under pressure guy, but sometimes i do get scared out there. not scared about myself cuz i don’t give a fuck, but scared about for the victims or the soon-to-be victims in some cases, and i feel that if i don’t do my job right that i will indirectly either get them killed, shot, or mutilated in some way. so she has the best way of soothing my nerves.

she’ll turn off all the crosstalk into my earpeice and just start talking about rock music.

the last time i was out there deep deeeeeeeeeeep in the shit and alone cuz my new partner was lost, fuckhead, she started whispering in my earpeice about the leader of Redd Kross steve mcdonald’s newest project of covering the White Stripes’s new record song by song.

i coughed once which means “negative” or in this case “bullshit” and she said no, no, its true, he does every song adding bass to the guitar/drum attack and he has it available for free download on the redd kross website and has called the project Redd Blood Cells, which, of course is a play on the title of the White Stripes cd which is called “White Blood Cells”…

her voice and her topics are always soothing to me. i need a bit of distraction because most of the time i am doing things that no grown man should be doing, and sometimes i have to just stop thinking about it and just do it and her stories, like that one, were inspiring to me.

especially after she finishes by saying, “see if steve mcdonald has the chutzpah to add bass to a perfectly good cd, great cd, if you ask me, then you can bust down that door and save that near-death woman and her family.”

the door in question was a foot thick and no one knew what was behind it. all the kings horses and all the kings men and none of our toys could tell me if it was bad guys behind there, or her and her family, or a nice fat booby trap, or a hungry pit bull, or a one way ticket to hell via a shotgun.

but since i am here typing this to you… or am i? then i suppose you know that everything went smoothly and sometimes it is okay to underestimate your enemy because theyre uneducated punks and we’re professionals who do this shit for a living.

as i was driving everyone home, i wondered if Redd Blood Cells was just a beautiful lie because if it was not, why hadn’t i heard about it through Kate Sullivan’s Rock Blog, which i adore, since she is the number one White Stripes fan that i know? and then i remembered it might have been because she’s busy ruling the galaxy and helping add to the already potent posse over there at the LA New Times, who are seriously giving the LA Weekly a run for its money.

anywho, i like the picture of Lily above because it shows how different we are, she is very very asian, loving the sushi and coke out of the can which she prudently brings from home, and i am the undereating american who barely touches his meals chosing the store-bought sandwich and fountain drink.

later lilly leaked that lennat tipped her off about the redd blood cells dealio and deserves all the credit and none of the blame.

Sorry I am just catching up with your blog. I have been reading Weeks of your writing each day and now im all caught up. Praise Be to the Archives. 🙂

I will read books by anybody. I like to go to Border’s (do they have those in Los Angeles?) and just curl up with my decaf cap and read Jackie Collins or Tom Robbins or whatever strikes my fancey. And I must tell you Tony Pierce I do not know how you are not a published writer! Sometimes I think that you are really tuned in and sometimes I think you are so insightful and how is it that you don’t have any books out? Why do you just give it away? And please, why do you like Howard Stern? Someone as cultured and educated as you come across being surely can’t admire someone as crass and blatantly offensive as him? ugh.

But I forgive you because you make me laugh. And even though I am not 20 years old (sorry about Ashley, she is a cutiepie) I think you would find me attractive (most men do) but so few can make me laugh. You could teach my male friends a lot. You make me laugh out loud all the time. Keep up the great work. I tell anyone I can about you. I am so new to this whole “Blog” world, so forgive me if it’s “uncool” to ask these types of questions, but please explain your appreciation to HS.

Thank you for all your hard work, I hope you get discovered soon.

– Alabama (My favorite character from the movies “True Romance”.)

****

dear alabama,

i liked that movie too. and probably not for the same reasons as you, i liked whoever that chick was who played her, i liked her sorta messed up teeth.

as for howard. first off, you don’t need to apologize for asking any questions. and lots of people email me and ask me about these things so its cool.

other than his adoration of lesbians, which most men share, and his completely refreshing honesty, i like howard because i relate to him. i have never felt all that good-looking, and i love that howard can have girls like him because he’s funny. ive never understood why women like that, but it’s great to see it in action.

i also like him because he has the job that i would love to have. he gets to get on the radio and tv every day and just talk to people in his little dark cave clubhouse. and when i mean talk, he gets to dig down very very deep into their very personal lives and go for it. he never seems nervous about asking those questions. im sure he is sometimes, but he never shows it.

there used to be a time when he would just go off and yell at people who deserved it. i loved that because i could never do that. i especially like it when he yells at his boss. not even at my old job where i hired my boss could i yell at her. i love that he’s self-effacing, that he was a very loyal husband of 20(!) years, and now he’s been a loyal boyfriend for 2.5 years.

i love that he gets bands to play in his studio, that he likes trashy tv like American Idol, and that he’s a recluse in real life and just likes to hole up in his apartment after work. i can totally relate.

i love how loyal he is to his co-workers. he’s been with that core group for nearly his whole career. Jackie the Jokeman left this year over a money dispute and everyone says that Jackie was asking for way way way too much. i think he was offered a million and he wanted a million and a half. some say howard gets $15 million so maybe jackie was right to be pissed, but he sure aint making a million now.

but i think the most underrated thing about howard is that he has a strange knack for making the most unlikely people into big stars, starting with Stuttering John, to Beetlejuice, to Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf, to a list of other semi-retarded people who he laughs at And with, who are now far more successful thanks to howard seeing something interesting in them. anyone can take celebrities and make them interesting, but how he does that with guys with cancer and stutters is fascinating.

i like how he has guys “evaluate” girls who say they want to be in Playboy – it’s American Idol but with bodies instead of voices. he has this guy who is much harder on the girls than Simon is on the singers. it’s funny, and its more telling, actually about what some guys think about women as opposed to showing the flaws of the aspiring models. when Ralph takes a laser pointer to a totally smoking hot girl and says, “see that right above your hip bone, that teeny little buldge, do some squats and get rid of that.” what it means to me is that ralph is insane and it also means that some guys are really that insane too. but what’s sadder is that ralph still gets lots of girls which means that lots of girls love that sort of scrutiny! psycho.

the best parts of howards interviews on celebrities is not the questions that he asks, but how the celebs answer them. some get pissed off. rarely does this happen, but its fun to watch them squirm. some just play along. like dustin hoffman just totally plays along and it was fun. some spill their guts like kelsey grammer, who i never liked until he got on howard and was totally totally honest. howard had Rosanne on and he called up Tom Arnold and they started fighting. that was classic.

he had on one of Hef’s girlfriends and was asking her about having sex with Hef and she didnt know how to lie about it which showed us all that she really wasn’t having sex with hef. do you know how great that was for me? it made me think, fucking a, if hugh hefner, who is putting this chick up in the playboy mansion, giving her all the money she wants, buying her all the clothes, taking her everywhere, cant get this girl to have sex with him, then its not so bad when i cant score a babe. infact i really like hef more that he lets her stay his girlfriend cuz it means that he really just likes watching movies with her and hanging out with her.

i also like that howard is open with his feelings. he used to get sad a lot. i never really believed that if you had a bunch of money and a good job that you liked and you were good at that you would be sad. and i think his marriage made him sad, and somehow that made me feel better about my life.

hope that answers some of the questions for you.

photo by kitty b., an outtake from her trip to Trashy Lingerie’s movie casting call.

i haven’t talked to him in a long time. im a terrible brother.

i asked him if he read my blog. he said, yeah, every day. he’s a good kid.

i asked him what he liked and what he wanted to see more of. he said he liked the anna stuff and he wanted to see more of my real life. he said he wanted to see like photo essays of an average day in my life.

i told him my life isn’t nearly as exciting as he thinks.

he said, come on, summer is over, how many girls did you sleep with this summer.

i said, one, two, three, four, five, six. but i only had sex with four.

he said, right there! write about that.

i said, no way, people wouldn’t understand. its not as easy as that. people would be confused. im still confused. plus, numbers lie.

so last night i was talking on the phone with my first girlfriend ever, mary, who ive known since i was 15. we were having a great conversation and now that she’s going through a divorce i could finally tell her that i still love her and ive always loved her, and i always will love her.

while she was married i never felt comfortable telling her that because, well, i wouldn’t want some dude saying that to my wife if i was married.

plus, i mean it in a sweet way, not in an oh my god, my life is miserable without you way.

her voice still makes me melt. and it is great to have such a great honesty with someone who was raised a mile away from me and shares lots of the same very midwestern beliefs.

in the middle of it karisa came over to return my battery charger for my camera that was left in her truck. she had just run through the hollywood hills, she had a sweatshirt on, running pants, and a longsleeve shirt tied around her waist, hair was pulled back and i have to tell you, even in that state she is incredibly beautiful. it’s amazing.

so hopefully she is going to live up to her promise of going to Best Buy so i can return this mavica that ive had for a while and exchange it for a better one because i think the camera sucks. what shes gonna do is go in there with me and im gonna say, see this hot girl? look at the crappy pictures that this expensive camera takes of her. and i will take a picture, it will suck, and hopefully Best Buy will swap us out.

in the meantime, above is a picture from the His & Her Hair store on Wilshire that i walk past on my way to work each day.

didnt smoke for the third day a row.

no fucking problem.

peter flowed the busblog $2, which is real great since we’ve been shut out for the last few days. thanks peter!

Boink

Miraclo/Glass Records

“If Only You Were Lonely”

Well, I walked home from work

And I was tired as hell

Another day’s come and gone and oh well

Somewhere there’s a drink with my name on it

Well, I ordered a scotch as I bust through them doors

Spilled half on my jeans

The other half on the floor

When I saw you standing by that video game

Well, I ain’t very good

But I get practice by myself

Forgot my one line

So I just said what I felt

If only you were lonely,

If only you was lonely too,

If only you was lonely

I’d go home with you

Twenty push-ups this morning, that was half my goal

Tonight I’ll be doin’ pull-ups

On the toliet bowl

And somewhere somebody’s throwin up

Well, I broke the seal on my door

And I poured myself to bed

The whirlpool spinning around in my head

There was liquor on my breath

And you were on my mind

And I’ll be dreamin of that smile

Without a care in the world

If only you were lonely,

If only you was lonely too,

If only you was lonely

I walked out of the kitchen

I was tired as hell

Another day’s here and oh well

Somewhere there’s a smile with my name on it.

down here. my name is jacques, the headless warrior of xi’an.

two thousand years ago i was an army guy for emperor qin, a man who i think you would have liked a great deal.

very loving and friendly and a bit wacky, he wanted to honor his men and instructed the most famous sculptors to cast our bodies in terracotta making sure that our faces and bodies were exactly as they were at the time the Christ was alive.

he took those lifesized sculptures and had his men arrange them all around his tomb as if we were to protect him for eternity.

i guess no retirement plan for us, huh? hehe. yeah, ok.

in 1974 there was a terrible drought in Xi’an, the city had once been the center of culture, politics and religion but all of that had since moved over to Peking.

anyhow, two farmers, digging for water stumbled across one of the warrior sculptures and after the archeologists finished counting, they unearthed over 6,000 completely unique army men most of whom were in primo condition.

most of the scientists assumed that my head was missing due to nature and the pressure of rock and dirt over two centuries, but it’s not so. i was decapitated for being a pussy ass sally getting all heartbroken over a sweet little lass from bejing named roxanne.

i wept and wept over her for years and finally i was approached by the commander of my squadron who asked me if i was sad. i said very much. he said do you wish to die? i said the pain is terrible. he said if i chop off your head will you be happier? i said, i don’t know how worse off i could be. so he unsheathed his sword and sliced off my head and i went back to protecting the emperor.

we have many paths that are available to us, prince of bloggyland, at each step we can enter the woods or stick to the straight and narrow. the woods can be dark and lush and mysterious and dangerous. they can also contain some of the ancient treasures and lost wonders that will only be discovered by the strong and adventurous.

the woods also contain fierce beasts, quicksand, malaria, hungry hungry hippos, and vermin of enormous size and courage.

however, sometimes dumb luck can bring about grand tidings like what that dumbass farmer found and now he signs autographs and poses for pictures with australian tourists while smoking a pipe.

choose wisely. the fates have smiled on you in many ways. although i know you have the courage to tame the jungles, its my advice to stick to the beaten path as luck is your middle name and no one can turn a dunghill into a three ring bonanza of earthly delights like you can.

now move along, i think i heard roxanne’s sweet laugh.