the propeller stopped spinning. the monkey got stuck on his way back in.

i thought you said you wanted me to keep the hat on.

i knew she could read my mind, so i added,

fucking bitch.

she clenched her fist. i knew she didn’t like me.

“do you know my superpower, ma’am?”

“i know more about you than you know, la vista.”

then you know i feel no pain

“then explain your carpal tunnel.”

psychosomatic

“you want your fingers and arms to ache?”

theres beer everywhere, drugs, tv. all we do is try to numb our senses. theres a bar at a shoe store on hollywood blvd. what’s that all about?

“so you want to feel pain?”

i want to feel something.

the monkey’s gears were whining. i picked up the hat and put it back on my ‘fro. but before it could get comfortable, i put it on my boss’s boss’s head.

why do you hate me?

“i don’t hate you. actually i admire you. it wasn’t my idea to block you from being a superagent. i just think that sometimes you underperform.”

strangely that stung. i wasnt expecting her to hit me there just like that. that early. i didnt even know she knew me that well.

everyone slacks off. i’m there when you need me arent i?

“i know, i know. but to be honest. to be a superagent, you’ve got to be on like all the time. its a different mindset than you have right now, agent. it’s commitment, fearlessness, obedience, passion, and trust. only then can there be room for magic.”

the propeller made a slow revolution on her cap.

“the air conditioner is on, la vista.”

im not here not to be a superstar.

“then quit acting like a punk.”

she took the goofy cap off and set it back on the shelf where it belonged and walked over to a locked cage.

please God please.

“please get your mind out of the gutter, agent”

“honestly, boss, i just want to see what’s in that cage.”

“oh. okay. theres something in here i want to give you. i have an assignment that i need you to complete at noon.”

it was 11am.

“a bank is going to be robbed. a very crowded bank. we’re afraid that the perps will flub it, panic, and take hostages or kill people.”

scores of agents illegally listened in on bad guys all over the city as they talked on cell phones or held meetings in apartments. the truly stupid called each other on cordless phones, easilly monitored by police radio. meaning, even the police knew. some of those calls were from us. decoys. it wasnt nice. but it had to be that way. we had to establish ourselves with each sunrise. and reinforce the underground myth that the fbi knows a bunch, but the xbi knows everything.

“this is a pair of form-fitting earplugs. you and six other agents will be wearing them. you will all be in the bank before it gets robbed. each of you will also have one of these,” she handed me a canister that looked like what people with asthma use to clear their lungs.

“this canister emits a tone so high-pitched that it makes it terribly painful for humans to tolerate. unless you’re wearing those earplugs, you will try to cover your ears, your stomach will turn, there will be vomiting and screams of pain.

“your job, la vista, is to activate the tone, kick open the teller door, and spray paint the lenses of the two center cameras behind the tables.

“your cue will be a gunshot.”

so each agent will spray paint a pair of cameras. and one of the agents will get either the money or the perps.

“the idea is to get the money and foil the heist. but if we have to shoot one of the perps on the way out, then so be it.”

“i have to kick in a door, and spray paint two cameras.” i asked her.

“and then get on the bus,” she said.

i took the canister and thanked her for the gig.

“from the sound of the gunshot, to the activation of the disturbance, to the spraying of the cameras you have thirty seconds. then you have fifteen seconds to exit. even a slacker like you could do this.”

i gave her a sarcastic smile. God this was great.

i hope it’s a wells fargo i thought.

“it is a wells fargo,” she said. reading my mind. smiling.

fucking hate wells fargo.

1. snag me something off my wishlist, which someone did today in honor of my upcoming 109th birthday. Thank you mysterious amazon-er! today’s gift is the incredible Quick Chop! i’m learning to cook for myself but i am deathly afraid of slicing my fingers off over a handfull of carrots: now with the Quick Chop I can slice and dice with my eyes closed. GRACIAS!

2. turn the world on with your smile. and if that doesnt work, write about how to properly give yourself a brazilian bikini shave. people often ask me if i ever get lonely being a bachelor. usually i think to myself that there could be no better time to be a young-ish man, what with girls with tounge-piercings, waxings, thongs, lowrider jeans, belly shirts, trendy bi-sexuality experimentations, ecstasy parties and the sorority house down the street. and now with the internet, if you cant get enough of those things on your block, you can just click a few times on the web and find those babes online.

3. be a public servant like Santa Cruz , CA, Mayor Christopher Krohn, who handed out medical marijuana yesterday on the city hall steps in defiance to the feds who bumrushed a co-op that was growing the natty weed in order to sell it to locals who were suffering through little things like cancer, AIDS, and other terminal illnesses. why he’s not higher than #3 on this list is because he wore a suit yesterday in this picture, probably to look more mayoral. nice try, but it didnt work. better luck next time, amigo. but you are definately in the running for tonypierce.com man of the year, which was awarded last year to pop singer phil collins.

4. thank me on your sweet page next to a perky blonde and call me the inspiration for your art? wow.

5. or you can just thank me for putting up a nice picture of francis bean, a young girl who will either be the most fucked up child of all time, or the coolest most amazing person ever. my money is with the latter, which makes me an optimist. whichever, i would bet loads that she will definately not be boring.

now go fly into the night sky, little jelly beans, and do things that will metaphysically inspire our girl kate to update her bloggy blog blog, cuz its really hard to go many days without it.

week of September 19, 2002

by Rob Brezney

“The Universe is Made of Stories”

The poet Muriel Rukeyser said the universe is not composed of atoms, but of stories. The physicist Werner Heisenberg declared that the universe is made of music, not matter. And I believe that if you habitually expose yourself to inferior music and stories — even unwittingly — you could wind up living in the wrong universe. I bring this up now because it’s never been more important for you to nourish yourself with righteous tales and tunes.

i read the above, my astrology, in the LA Weekly, which serves its purpose in this town: Lynda Barry comic, Matt Groening comic, coupons for cheap lap dances, rock listings, etc. and i ordered my food at koo koo roo and went into the bathroom to wash my hands and i heard the following song and i, once again, was shocked at the accuracy of Mr. Brezney’s creepy ass insight.

Kelly Clarkson

“A Moment Like This”

What if i told you it was all meant to be?

Would you believe me? Would you agree?

Its almost that feeling that we’ve met before

so tell me that you dont think im crazy

when i tell you love has come here and now

a moment like this

some people wait a lifetime for a moment like this

some people search forever for that one special kiss

oh i cant believe its happeneing to me

some people wait a lifetime for a moment like this

Everything changes but beauty remains

something so tender i cant explain

i may be dreaming but until i awake cant we make this dream last forever?

and ill cherish all the love we share

a moment like this

some people wait a lifetime for a moment like this

some people search forever for that one special kiss

oh i cant believe its happeneing to me

some people wait a lifetime for a moment like this

could this be the greatest love of all?

i wanna know that you will catch me when i fall

so let me tell you this…

some people wait a lifetime for a moment like this..

a moment like this

some people wait a lifetime for a moment like this

some people search forever for that one special kiss

oh i cant believe its happeneing to me

some people wait a lifetime for a moment, a moment like this…

oh i cant believe its happening to me..

some people wait a lifetime for a moment like this…

call me a genius.

call me the Absolute King Of Bloggers.

keep me linked on the snoop doggy blog.

link me at the top of your link list.

call me your hero.

take a cool picture of the lake behind your house and then write me a sweet email.

write a long long long piece about several young people talking about sex.

or you can just tell the world that im amazing in the sack.

p.s. or be my canadian girlfriend

shes a good friend.

the korean laundry man speaks very little english and left me a telephone message that i swear to you only said, “you washie, uhhh mmmm, you pickie up.”

how cant you smile when you get three such messages like that?

but karisa says that i need a break, a much deserved vacation, that you, faithful readers, have flowed my way. next week i will be in the tropical dutch island of aruba. my original plan was to write this blog from the sandy beaches but karisa sez that my art needs to rest. that too much has gone on since my last vacation, and i should just chill till the next episode. and after my last post slamming a site that i don’t even know, i am starting to believe her.

ashley is a great quasi-girlfriend. she would make a perfect regular girlfriend if i was only 100 years younger, but for the most part we are really spectacular together in all things lovey-doveyish.

chris is a perfect ex-girlfriend. we still hold hands and call each other several times a week, and email each other and confide in one another, and are best friends forever.

but karisa is my motivator and best advice giver. i dont know how this happened, but it did happen and its good. rarely does she tell me what to do, but when she does i think about it and disagree and then usually warm up to the idea and when i follow through with it, alls good.

so last night when i told her my plan of updating from the beach she scowled and said rest your sweet hands. enjoy the beach. pick up on the bikini girls. if you must write, write long hand. she said, “you have blogger pro, figure out how it can update your site automatically using the best stuff from your archives. i’ll even help you if you want.”

karisa is secretly a computer genius, though she’ll be the first to deny it.

so i do apologize to all of the kids on metafilter, and technoerotica, my future employer the la times, and whoever else i have flamed in one way or another or given a dirty look to.

monday was the jewish day of atonement and next week will be mine.

i will plunge into the healing waters of the carribian and enjoy the company of my family and hope that my old college pals don’t wreck my hollywood mansion.

i am so grateful to all of you who flowed the busblog the $700 that got me in the friendly skies, and im super grateful to my brother-in-law who got me first class upgrades. im not grateful to best buy who has not returned my digital camera yet, but maybe that means i should take a complete break from that too.

for some people like me, its hard to fully let go and fully relax and fully just zone out for a few days. maybe its cuz i think that i relax and zone out daily.

but fighting crime on the mean streets of LA will twist your perception, and im open to believing that things might not be as they seem.

similarly, karisa, a speed reader bookworm, has fully become a one-woman promotion machine for the well-reviewed novel “white oleander“. she says don’t let the Oprah Book Club seal get in your way, that its the best book shes read all year. she says i should take that on the plane with me and read it on the beach and drink tropical drinks and bond with my two month old niece.

hopefully i will listen to my good pals advice.

although there are a handful of sparkling exceptions, typically the rule holds true that if you have a beautifully designed blog that’s (c) copyrighted, theres usually nothing at all to steal.

technoerotica.net is gorgeous, but perhaps should stick to speculating about james brown’s testicles, bitching about people who use cell phones while they drive, and providing handy links to coffee enemas, and leave serious issues like what the LA Times covers in their California Living section to me and my buddy welch.

insinuating that our gripes were largely narcissistic, technoerotica is conducting a cute little poll asking its readers if matt and i would have changed our tune if we had been mentioned in last week’s times feature on blogs.

truth is, as anyone who had bothered to read our posts would have surmised, we would have been happier if ANY los angeles blogger would have been mentioned, or interviewed, or photographed, or consulted.

apologists to the embarrassing article claim that the times approached academics purposely, arguing that there would have been greater benefit to interviewing the professors and former journalists than the actual bloggers who are actually living the trend.

may i respectfully type: poppycock.

in the wake of 9/11, real journalists were interviewing Taliban spokespeople. would the times instead choose to talk to a poli-sci prof at usc than a taliban prisoner, if, God forbid, one of osama’s buddies decided to do some more fucked up shit? maybe i shouldn’t ask such questions. im scared what their answer might be.

perhaps a better rhetorical question would be: do the times interview college softball coaches when they want to do a story about the dodgers?

technoerotica’s readers also make me scratch my head. ive gotten exactly three referals from yesterday’s post, yet over 100 people have voted in the poll. so either technoerotica is talking about old news that all of its readers have already researched and formed opinions, or its poll takers couldn’t care less about the long and detailed complaints that welch and i have.

finally, the poll should have been worded: “Would Pierce and Welch express a different view had any LA blogs been mentioned in Tawa’s article?” for as it is currently worded, i was inclined to press Yes along with the majority of voters, because the glaring fault with the story is they completely ignored all LA Bloggers, not just me and welch.

has this dead horse been beaten enough?

maybe i should create a poll.

instead of such nonsense, i posted a new photo essay instead, created by a special guest star.

welch hailed my car chase channel idea which is scary because that’s just the tip of the iceberg for that channel – i didn’t even get into the split screen, and drinking games for each time the perp breaks a law or bumps a car.

but the best idea i have for television is actually something that i hope Eric Neel or Welch have discussed in the last week or so (accept my apologies, i was buying jewels for my mom). but i want baseball to return to letting its division archrivals end the season by playing head-to-head games against each other.

by end, i mean schedule the Giants and Dodgers, Angels and A’s, Yankees and Red Sox, etc. to play the very last games of the season against themselves instead of this nonsense that’s going on right now.

not too long ago, i think right before Interleague began, you could always count on the Dodgers and the Giants playing against each other and one team playing spoiler against the other. Don’t you remember Joe Morgan hitting a homer for the Giants against the Dodgers to knock them out of playoff contention? That’s the stuff rivalries are all about. Think how wonderful these killer series’ that are going on right now would be if they were the last games of the year?

Don’t you remember the 78 Yankees and Red Sox and how they played against each other during the final run and it ended in a tie, and Bucky Dent hit a homer in Fenway? Isn’t that how it went?

Why would MLB want the Dodgers to end their season against the Padres? Sure they’re physically close, but there has never been a Dodger/Padre rivalry. The Giants/Dodgers thing has been going on since before Vin Scully– and that’s a long time, kids. Similarly, who thinks that the Mariners and Angels have any sort of rivalry?

College football always has the USC/UCLA, Oklahoma/Nebraska, Army/Navy matchup to conclude the regular season, and baseball had that too, until my old pal, Uncle Bill decided to tinker with the national pasttime again.

Best idea you’re going to read from this blog is the plea to the powers that be to bring back the final weeks of baseball to what they were: incredibly interesting.

In the meantime, feel free to use the comments section to tell me how smart i am and how much you’ve liked my blog the last few weeks.

on comedy central while eating my chinese leftovers at my desk for lunch when my boss’s boss, this super dooper hot black woman who looks like a young whitney crossed with a younger vanessa williams, tapped me on the shoulder.

sonny, come with me. she ordered.

trailed her as she made her way to the elevators. everyone knows her. looked like everyone had some business with her.

“we never got that approval from IT,” someone shouted at her.

“tell em to call Phil.” she’d yell back.

“the houston guy says that he doesnt want to do it for under a thousand,” some complete babe smiled at her.

“tell him it’s three hundred or we’ll get it from mexico.”

i loved this woman. and she did it in heels!

we got on the elevator, she put her key in, turned it and pressed a button that ive pressed before. B2. second basement. property room. otherwise known as the evidence room. at the xbi we dont really have “evidence,” we dont really go to court as xbi agents. we just have stuff that we’ve collected over the years that we use to get either more stuff or people or use as bribes or blackmail, extortion, etc.

ding. door opened. she smiled at the two guys who opened the door for her. that led down a little hall with a thick door and a tiny window. we could hear a phone ring in there. then the door opened. two more guys opened the door and had us each sign a sheet that hadnt been signed in two days. names id never seen before. when i handed back the pen, i was given a pair of rubber gloves and i snickered.

“one joke, sonny, and these two gentlemen will hold you as i pummel you,” she said. thats when they snickered.

i thought to myself, “you dont have to have them hold me down, baby.”

“i heard that,” she said. and tapped her esp earpiece.

creeped out, i started humming “hot in herrre.” by nelly, bitch.

stepped into one of the many evidence rooms. was instructed not to touch anything, a beanie with a propellor on the top cuaght my eye and i put it on as i followed her down the aisle.

she turned around and i prentended everything was fine.

“take that off immediately, agent.” she said.

“take what off?”

“thats a Lying Hat.” she warned.

“then it’s worthless cuz ive never told a lie in my life.” i said.

and the propellor started to spin and a tiny toy monkey appeared from within the propellor’s center, did a little jig, and just as quickly, retreated back into the cap.

“im here to ask you your advice on this new item,” she said. i kept the cap on. i wanted her to love me.

“this,” she said, “is 2-minute Acid.”

“LSD?”

“yes.” she said. “it works for two minutes and wears off.”

“i dont think theres any use for that.” i said.

my propellor spun and the monkey appeared and began breakdancing, finished with a headspin and sunk back into the cap.

“you’re going to wear out the batteries.” she said.

i took off the cap and she said, “no, no, no. leave it on. you look cute in it.”

so i left it on.

“Seasame Street” in South Africa has finally introduced the much-speculated muppet with HIV.

Kami is 5 years old, likes nature, telling stories and collecting stuff, and if things weren’t rough enough for her, SS South Africa has also found it important to make her an orphan.

“We are living in a society that is very stigmatizing and discriminatory,” said Musa Njoko, an AIDS activist, to the Miami Herald. The introduction of Kami “is going to create a culture of acceptance.”

and as cheesy as it sounds, if i had a little kid, i would give it a stuffed Kami. why not? i would hug Magic Johnson. hell, we should all be hugging Magic Johnson, that guy’s HIV just seemed to make him healthier. ive never seen a more healthy sick person in my life.

4.7 million South Africans – one in nine – are HIV-positive, more people than in any other country in the world.

more from the Miami Herald story:

At the unveiling, Kami, who has a mop of brown hair and wears a vest, wanders onto Sesame Street and wonders nervously if residents will want to play with her.

She needn’t have worried. The other Muppets enthusiastically welcome Kami.

Kami, whose name means acceptance in the Tswana language, will teach viewers about coping with illness and loss. The character will be introduced to South African audiences when the second season of “Takalani Sesame” begins Sept. 30.

let’s hope one in nine americans dont have to come down with HIV before we start to teach our children about safe sex and other ways to avoid contracting this serious disease.

Mellow Gold

Geffen Records

“Beercan”

Alcohol on my hands

I got plans

To ditch myself and get outside

Dancing women

Throwing plates

Decapitating their laughing dates

Swirling chickens caught in flight

Out of focus

Much too bright

Coming down

Shiny teeth

Game show suckers trying to breath

But I got a drug and I got the bug

And I got something better than love

How you like me now

Pretty good

Going on, feeling strong

I quit my job blowing leaves

Telephone bills up my sleeves

Choking like a one man dustbowl

Freedom rock slimeball

Talking in code

We went down

Lit up the shack

Grab me a beer out of the sack

Everybody bent over twice

Painting the walls throwing some dice

Leaping up into the air getting juiced up beyond belief

And they were singing like this

Winos throwing Frisbees at the sun

Put my soul between a bun

Now I’m hungry now I’m drunk

Now I’m running like a flaming pig

Oh yeah

Scraping off the attitude

Old man eating all my food

Don’t be kind

Don’t be rude

Just shake your boots and let it all get loose

Oh yeah

My goodness

Fluffy clouds

Jumping rainbows

Fluffy clouds

I’m sad

Jumping rainbows

Asoft and snuggly place

Fluffy clouds

I’m sad and unhappy

Winos throwing Frisbees at the sun

Put my soul between a bun

Now I’m horny now I’m drunk

Now I’m running like a flaming pig

Oh yeah, I like it like that

Oh that is cold

Somebody put a flame-thrower on that

Oh my goodness

Take me down to the depot

Buddy put me down on the bus

Oh yeah

I like it like that

Somebody bring me a plate of sassafrass