so watch out cuz they’re coming after you.

and they’re gonna soak you in good vibes and love and pleasant dreams and funny jokes and careful whispers and happinesses and bliss.

they might be named chris or mary or ben or harry. they’re sneaky and fast and if you’re not paying attention they might walk right past you just like the fishies do when you’re snorkeling in hawaii. they’re everywhere, all around you, all around me too.

people say the devil’s in the details, but even the devil was an angel who lost his way, so it’s okay.

this one angel let me kiss her the other day and it was technically just a peck but it was more than enough.

people always forget that sometimes the dumbest things can send you tumbling into a shitty mood, and what they forget is the reverse is also true. a little smile, a tiny note, the way someone says your name can totally make your day.

the angels float around pretending to be working at banks or tucked away in cubicles, but you know the ones im talking about. they’re not that good at hiding out. they’re here on vacation and a hundred years is nothing if you’re in heaven forever and who doesn’t want to spend that long being a johnny appleseed of good deeds in the bossmans favorite galaxy.

bmg just sent me five miles davis cds, norah jones and wilco and all i gotta pay is shipping and handling.

the teenage angels call me and call me and call me and then hush up when i finally answer, shy like they didnt think id ever say hello outside of a chat.

they don’t care what color my skin is or how low my fro is or how many moons ive seen come and go, they know its all about the sunsets anyway.

come out and play they say.

come over and lets let our minds wander.

come over and lez be friends.

i want a slumber party one of them told me today with just you and me and everything i was born with. and that’s not the details talking ladies and gentlemen of the jury, that’s trust, and trust is something from way up high. higher than you think.

and angels love to drink.

two of them came over tonight.

two of them held my hand tight.

two of them told me all the things i needed to hear.

and they answered the door for me while i was in the can and it was the academy with punch drunk love but i was so sleepy from all that drinking and they said take a quick nap and we’ll watch tv.

and they tucked me in all cute, kissed my forehead, and woke me up after about twenty minutes and i was refreshed and we watched it all together and they each said now write, write, tell everyone about us, no one will believe it anyway.

and i said okay.

science blog

early this morning asking me what he should say in his big speech tonight.

i said, say youre resigning.

then he said, no, quit kidding around, seriously what should i say?

i said, say saddam is a liar liar and soon his pants will be on fire.

for some reason he didnt think i was kidding around on that one because he said thank you and hung up.

i went back to bed.

i listened to howard stern for a little while and passed out.

then the phone rang again. it was the president.

he said that he was told that he couldnt use my line.

so i said, who’s wearing the pants in that house?

he paused and asked, i am?

i said, thats right, and if you want to say saddam is a liar and soon his pants will be on fire, you can.

he agreed, but apparently who ever was listening in on the extension shook their head no and he said, please lets try another tact.

i said tact?

he said, yeah.

i said, ok, say that the reason that gas prices are way up right now is because Iraq is a much more powerful nation than they appear. say that just like they control oil prices in california, they control the tea prices in china, and they are hugely responsible for the activities surrounding the attacks of 9/11 just like the saudis.

i could hear him writing because he talked while he wrote.

… just like the saudis. ok good, now what? oh wait. we cant say anything about the saudis.

why not? i asked.

he said, i dont know, but theres a big note pinned to my jacket that says, dont talk about the saudis. i keep forgetting.

so i said, just say that iraq is bad and america is good and even though saddam said on 60 minutes that he wanted to talk live on tv that he’s really a liar and his nose is gonna grow and all he’s trying to do is stall so that we accidently shoot ourselves as we’re accumulating troops in the persian gulf. and he’s stalling so he can make new bombs to blow us all to hell.

there was a pause and he asked me for another word for hell.

and i said hell is exactly the place that the enemies of america want us to be blown to. the polls say that if you ran for re-election right now you’d lose, which makes sense cuz you lost the first time, and i wouldnt vote for a man who allowed himself to get talked out of saying hell when he meant hell.

the president seemed sad. he said, you wouldnt vote for me?

i said, a real president would say “blow us all to shit.” hell is a more reasonable alternative, and anyway if you say hell people will start believing the seriousness of this fucked up shit.

then the president said that it wasnt really all that fucked up because his business partners and his family were back to making a shitload of money selling oil with a little less competition. he said that gas prices havent been this high since right after he took office when he raised it to make good on election promises that he made with his kin.

then the phone was yanked from his hand and a woman said that they would paypal me $10 for the car fund, and they all hung up.

tim blair

and told me that theyre going to do it again this year. she reported that with two ticks on the clock kobe hit a three point runner while being fouled for a swish, complete continuation play that the refs blew, shoulda been a four point play, instead it just ended up laker ball outta bounds.

then they kicked it around a few times real fast and it ended up in robert horry’s old hands and he nailed it from downtown with the three and the lakers barely squeaked out a win after blowing a 17 point lead to the indiana pacers.

“isiah thomas has the most ridiculous black leather sean john blazer,” mariah told me from her phone courtside and i told her that for the most part basketball coaches typically dress poorly if not embarrasingly, and she said, “then he must be a real coach.”

then she said she was coming over and i said no and she said please and i said i wanted to try writing purely stream of consciousness and she asked isnt that what you always do and i said no way, i must stop, i must pause, i must look things up, i must look at it at another angle, and she said it never seems like it and i said that that was the point.

cold as hell in the city of angels dear friends and that means that we must wear coats at night on our walks down sunset from the taqueria.

this afternoon i was warm in the midday sun while downing my koo koo roo at lunch with my buddy who stopped over to tell me that my old boss was working at a place out in the valley where many of my old compadres now earned a paycheck.

he asked me if i would consider working over there now that she is in charge of hiring and i said i didnt know. i said i liked the xbi. he said, nothing in here is true,right? i said i had no hard feelings towards her but she and i would have to have a really deep talk and she would have to be completely honest and if i sensed even a smidge of bs i would balk, cuz the truth is i trusted her with everything, and we had come a long way baby, and then poof it was over.

that year i lost my dream job and my girlfriend of 5 years and the thing that affected me the most of the two was the job because i didnt see it coming and because nobody could tell me what i did wrong. and im no victim, and when a door closes another one opens and some kick ass doors opened in that aftermath, but it made me grow up superfast. it made me learn that sometimes things just end and theres no reason and theres no bad guys and theres no victims, theres just a conclusion and a new begining.

and back then i went over the scenarios over and over trying to figure out what i coulda done differently, and im open minded like a mofo so of course i saw about, oh, a half trillion things i coulda done differently, but maybe i was just a piano player on the titanic and no matter what tune i was playing at the time, the shit was still gonna sink. sometimes things are bigger than our efforts, and in those moments you just have to conduct yourself with class and try to finish the song before the artic swallows you up.

the koo koo roo went down easy today and the conversation was all my bro’s because i was happy from nabbing some pretty terrible people early in the morning while they were sleeping, so the boss let me go home on time this evening, and tonight was a treat because i got to walk to the busstop while the sun was setting. and in those situations sometimes i take a deep breath to do an unscientific test on my health: perfect. i check my pockets for my housekeys: present. and then i walk east down wilshire looking over my shoulder for the bus as i head to the Rapid stop.

and tonight i didnt think bad thoughts about the cyclists who walked their bikes into the crowded subway cars even though theyre not allowed until after 7, i didnt read over the shoulder of the downtown business man who was flipping through the Economist way too fast, and i didnt stare at the bleached blonde korean woman who every time i see her has something see through, too tight, or in this case, too revealing, falling off her curvy frame.

i didnt read ball four which im loving. i didnt read the good book which im avoiding. i didnt write in my supersecret mini diary about my plans to do things way differently once the new Tsar record comes out.

i didnt think of work, or home, or tv, or even rosalita who would end up at my doorstep with brownies a few hours after i arrived home.

i just played breakout on my cell phone and spaced out as i was sped through the depths of los angeles.

15 + 16 + 17 + 18 + 19 + 20 + 21 + 22 + 23

has slowly started getting interested in the blogger revolution.

he’s so competitive against me it’s crazy.

he’s never been very interested in writing, or journalism, or expressing his feelings, but i think he likes the idea that i make up most of the stuff that i write in here and for the most part i get away with it.

what i think he feels is totally liberating is the fact that i dont even think twice about spell checking, grammar checking, proofreading, or even looking twice at what i write before i hit Post.

he calls me the laziest writer he’s ever sat next to.

i try to explain to him that we only have two government-mandated 15 minute breaks, and that barely gives me enough time to find the pictures to go next to whatever i want to write down, and he puts his hand up makes the world’s tiniest violin movement with his thumb and forefinger and looks back down at his keyboard and tells me im lazy.

i cant wait till he starts his blog.

today he asked me if i have ever been on the Blogs of Note on blogger.com and i had to tell him no.

he asked me why i havent ever been listed on there and i told him it was probably because i use four-letter words sometimes.

then he clicked around some of the more recent Blogs of Note and asked me why Dave Barry, who barely writes anything, and who is brand damn new got to be a Blog of Note and i told him i didnt know and didnt care.

then i told him i couldnt care less about Dave Barry or his weak blog and he looked up from what i was doing and stared at me like i had just uttered some sort of blasphemy.

all i want to do is fight crime.

all i want to do is do my job and go home and write to you.

then i want to watch a little tv, do my curls, get a good night’s sleep, and go back to work and give it my all.

sometimes i wonder if people know how hard i work and how much i care about what i do.

flying chopper one isnt as easy as i make it look, and writing a majority of this blog in under 15 minutes a pop takes concentration and clarity that i really dont have.

the fact that i even get ten readers a day, never mind 100 times that baffles me more than anything and im sure one day it will all come crashing down, and you know what i will do when that happens? nothing. not a damn thing. i will keep on plugging away because im in this thing for the long haul.

or until someone says, we see so much potential in what you can do, heres a bag full of moolah and a hearty handshake, quit your blog and write one for us.

and if you cant dream in cyberspace, my friends, where can you dream?

matt + emmanuelle + katie sierra

and as you also know, anna kournikova and i are best of friends.

not lovers, not ex lovers, not neighbors, not co-workers, just really super friends.

so when the news came out the other day that she had been secretly married to that famous russian hockey player, old whatshisname, i wasnt surprised in the slightest. for years that was a secret that she and i shared. and he shared it too.

im really good at keeping secrets.

especially if i have good motivation to do so.

anna and i motivate each other in different ways. anna loves being mentioned on the busblog and put into photo essays on the web site, and basically given any attention whatsoever on these web pages. so if theres something that i would like for her to do, or something that she needs to get done, i will offer to put her picture on here as a reward, and if she does something incredibly spectacular, i will give her a photo essay.

most of the time if she wants to motivate me into doing something she will either offer to cook me a nice meal, flow me some concert tickets so i can impress a special someone, and sometimes she even offers to give me a kiss.

she used to offer to give me money, but money doesnt usually get me to do stuff. but nice kisses do. psycho, i know, but whatever works.

the other night anna wanted me to catch a bus over to west hollywood because she was terrified after seeing a screener copy of the Ring.

it was sunday, there were two all-new simpson’s scheduled to be on. plus anna nicole, plus michael essany. so i said no.

then she offered to make me a nice meal.

still i said no.

then she said she’d kiss me for three minutes straight.

after about a minute i couldnt take much more and i had to have her stop or i was gonna fall over.

so last night she reminded me that i had two minutes in the bank and she was willing to offer me three more if i did something that she knew i was super scared to do, and this morning i did it.

so ha!

37. Kat

bunsen

and the conductor said there were some technical difficulties ahead of us and it wouldnt be a very long delay, which means there will be a very long delay.

pretty much the only thing that can go wrong on a subway line is either the train in front of us is stuck, or the swtiching systems are malfunctioning. at 8:30am either one of these things means for you to get the hell out of the train and up to the surface where you can catch a bus.

the 754 vermont express arrived and i saw a bus half filled with people with ashes on their foreheads and i thought to myself, ah, it’s ash wednesday. hi ash wednesday.

even though i was raised Catholic i still have no idea what the ashes and Jesus are all supposed to mean, but i do remember that ash wednesday means that it’s the first day of Lent and you’re supposed to give up something for 40 days and 40 nights.

when i was a kid i used to give up stuff like M&Ms and watching Benny Hill at night.

this year i was thinking about giving up being a dumbass, but i’ll never make it 40 nights of that.

so this year i will give up smoking.

i dont smoke all that much, just a little when i drink, or if im stressed out, or if a bunch of people around me are.

still, it’s a bad habit and i think it would be good for me to see if i can pull it off for the next month. sometimes it’s good to keep your hobbies in check from turning into habits.

i also see ash wednesday as being something that people could start doing that they havent done in a while. and i can think of two things that i would like to do for the next 40 days.

i would like to do 100 curls every other day for the next 40 days. and i would like to run a total of 6 miles a week. currently im running 0 miles a week and doing maybe 50 curls a week.

teengirl the other day was feeling up my arms and saying that im way more buff in person than i am in my blog but i think she was just trying to butter me up. she even had me flex. it was funny.

i would also like to read a page from the Bible every day for 40 days.

lets see if i can keep these goals.

but the real question is, what are you giving up for Lent?

stiff drinks

yes. would i like courtside knicks seats? yes.

would i like for her to wear knee highs on our date courtside at madison square garden?

yes, please.

be careful what you dream for, dreamers.

got home late tonight after an afternoon of eating king cake cuz it was mardi gras to five messages on my machine.

called back my buddy ray who told me about this chick he met at deep.

deep is the trendy club on the corner of hollywood and vine.

first i said, what the hell were you doing at deep?

he said, never mind, i met this chick who was super hot.

i asked him if she was asian. ray loves asian girls.

he said yes. then he asked me to stop interrupting him.

then he told me that he talked to her for a while at the club, got her number and then started calling her, and they talked every day for a week, but hadnt yet gotten a date together because she lives in san diego.

so tony, she says to me, i wanna do x with you on our first date. it would break the ice.

i said, yeah, i bet x would break the ice.

he said, but i dont want to do x with her on the first date, i just want to hang out with her and maybe make out a little and thats it.

i said, then do that.

he said, but how great would doing x on a first date would be with a girl like her!

ray’s as old as i am. old. so i said, dude, you dont need any x to have a great time with that girl. just being on a date with a new person should be fun.

he said, yeah, it will be fun, whenever it happens. but still, how much more fun would it be like how she proposed.

then i talked to another friend who called me to ask me if his landlord could ask him to remove his satellite dish from his front porch, even though its been there for years.

i told him that i wasnt any damn lawyer.

then i saw latoya jackson on larry king.

then i wrote this to procrastinate.

then i saw fred durst on howard stern talking about how he really did have sex with brittany spears.

then i called ray back and i said we should only be dating girls that make us feel as crazy inside as britney made fred feel.

he asked, how crazy did britney make fred feel?

i said, crazy enough to get on tv and say, i swear to you all i did her, and i totally miss her.

last day of my life

which is great because i know i dont deserve it, but i need it to keep this thing going.

positive reinforcement doesn’t work for everyone, but it’s my fuel, which is just another reason that this blog fits me so perfectly, and why even your visits to this site lift my spirits, even if im already in a good mood.

the other night i was at a beautiful young lady’s house. a woman who i admired from afar for quite some time. and sometimes we would exchange messages via carrier pigeon and i just thought they were flights of fancy. nothing serious. so i was over at her house last week, one of those big places in the middle of town over by moxie’s house.

a whole neighborhood of american homes with big oaks in the front lawn, brick garages, mexican maids with overcoats and sneakers who’d walk to the busstop in clumps.

and this nice woman, who is a very private person in many ways because of her fame and fortune, opened up a book that she has diligently kept over the last three years, and she, for no reason at all, we weren’t drunk, or anything, just watching tv, she opened up this book and there was a line at the bottom of each page that said, “person who made your day:” and several times over the years she had put in my name or wrote that this very blog made her smile.

you have no idea how much that meant to me. we walk around and think that what we do or who we are doesn’t have a rippling effect on others even though we know how much others make an effect on us.

for some reason i just consider myself a ghost that can float in and out of neighborhoods and through cyberspace and what i do and say doesn’t influence shit, even though i know it does, if ever so subtlety. of course it does. even the smallest fly can completely distract a theatre of movie goers if he lands on the wrong spot on the screen.

anyhow, she affected me when she shared her private little book, and for that i am forever thankful.

just like i am to all the people who write me, and for all the girls who want to go on dates with me, and for all the big time publications who want to hire me.

God bless you all, each and every one of you.

once i saw Morrissey get hugged by his number one fan who had sat in line for days to be the first in line for a book signing or some nonsense. and this guy was like 500 pounds, and might have been a woman, but no, it was a man. and i thought to myself that you really shouldn’t do what you do so that people will fall in love with you because it will always end up being the wrong people who will obsess over you.

if you want raymi to lust you, you’ll just get the ward boys to write about you every day.

if you want the mad pony girls to pay attention to you, they might, but they’ll murder you in cold blood when you’re not looking.

when you try to get hired by the LA Times, all you’ll get is a write up in their special thursday issue.

better off just writing and living for yourselves, ive learned.

and if you’re not going to do that, live for a very rich exswimsuit model who has a huge indoor pool and makes the best dip.

the ward

i keep telling all you kids you can be anything you want.

where does he even get his shirts?

guy at work cut out this picture and wrote next to it

cheezburga

cheezburga

cheezburga.

people laughed and pointed.

mastermind.

went down to the first floor today to say hello to the fellas.

shook everyones hands, sat down on a chair, shot the shit.

after about fifteen minutes, some curly haired kid shows up and asks, wheres the chair that needs to be fixed?

guy named tom says, the one tony’s sitting on, the one with the sign that says broken, do not sit.

everyone got a pretty good laugh off that one.

i find myself procrastinating the silliest things.

different eighteen year old girl, jealous of the first one wrote me a very interesting email asking what she has to do to be my favorite.

i said, convince me that going out with you will be better for you and i than if, say, i just stayed at home and watched regis on tivo.

she wrote one simple sentence that convinced me.

one word, actually.

this is while im bald, people of the world.

not even bald, sickly looking.

my hair is growing in monkish. horseshoe first, then the top.

i look nearly as old as i am.

but the girls dont care. hardly any of them do. not everybody has to like you. a dozen’ll do.

jeanine picked me up after work and we sped down wilshire on our way to midnight tacos with the top down. she ordered in spanish, i had to give up after pollo burrito.

we watched that dumbass married by america and both ate every bit of our gigantic three dollar burritos, and i sat back in the couch and she stepped outside for a smoke.

and when she came back she walked over to my computer and on the instant messenger screen it simply said

satiable

austin city sk + reno ken + nyc amy

and christina and mandy moore and kelly osbourne and carson daly will look like in about 15 years and then i just laugh and laugh and laugh cuz theyre all doomed.

i remember when madonna humped her wedding dress at one of the first mtv video award shows and she was so beautiful back then, not to say shes not beautiful now, but i dont think any of us would have figured that she would be at the place that shes at now. whereever that place is.

and Lord knows none of us expected me being in the place where i am now, fighting crime, writing you, going out with girls so young that they just laugh and laugh when i pass by places like the LA Collesium and say, “i saw the Stones play there with Guns N Roses opening in ’87,” and then i ask them why shes laughing and she’ll say it was cuz she was only four in ’87.

and i wonder why girls like that would want to be going out with me, and then i look in the mirror and i remember.

chicks love flying cars.

weather man said a few days ago that today would be the day where everyone would want to call in sick, but the LA weatherman is always wrong, probably because they dont have any real practice. turned out Sunday was the beautiful day and today is overcast with a visibility of only 5 miles up here in chopper one, which is too bad because if i had known that, and if i had known that karisa was going to invite me over to do laundry at her hollywood hills mansion that i would have done something outdoorsy instead of watching movies with her on her watersofa.

technically i went over to her house last night to duct tape her sofa in the spots where her mischivious cats did their worst. that couch is great when its not slowly leaking on you and we laid on it like hippies while i did my laundry and she detoxed.

next door her punk rock neighbors were having weiner dog races on a damp slip n slide, which is a pretty unique event to witness.

everything is a drinking game with karisa, even when shes trying to be good, but it was hard to resist betting a shot on the black dog who was usually great out of the gates, but then started slipping and then, of course, sliding, letting the brown weiner dog, the older of the two, trot to clear victory.

i wanted to fly a kite, any kind of a kite, but preferably a box kite in the gentle breeze, but thought of it too late as we watched the sun set over the mountains.

katie hall