yes, me!

usually my advice is keep writing, its bound to get better.

i studied creative writing in college and there were a lot of teachers who had a variety of different ideas on what makes a good writer.

they did agree on the idea that in order to write well you have to read a lot.

i chose to disagree with them there.

i think you need to read, but not a lot, and you need to read with a good eye on what to look for.

if youre a basketball player, you dont have to watch every player that ever lived, but it wouldnt hurt to watch a lot of basketball in general, and watch it with someone who knows the game, and see how good players adjust to certain situations.

same goes for writing. read the good people, read the popular people, read the people that everyone admires, and find out what makes them good. then write.

i think that if you read too much, you will have a hard time carving out your own style. i think that you should write twice as much if not three times as much as you read. when you read, read to learn something about the art of writing.

but when you write, do your best to try something new with each post, or story, or poem, or article.

always be risking. always stick your neck out. maybe not with how you are writing but by what topic. this post is a risk for me because you can seem incredibly pompus to give others tips on writing when you indeed are not even a paid writer.

people are always bringing up the fact that they have writers block. one of my teachers said that writers block is the world telling you to quit writing for a little while. an hour, two hours, a day.

again, i disagree. i think writers block is what happens when the devil inside of your mind convinces you that what you are writing is no good, so you dont even get a chance to get the first stuff out which will clear the way for the magic.

my solution for writers block is to write out all the things that terrify you, or write about the things that you think are dull, or write about the things you are avoiding.

two chicks came over to my house friday night. late. must have been 3 am. bars must have been closed. they were drunk and sloppy. i dont answer the door at night because i dont have a peep hole, all i have is a french window and if i stick my head into the window they will see me.

i heard them giggling and i wasnt afraid of gigglers so i stuck my head in the window.

what? i asked.

tony pierce? is that you in there? our friend told us that you lived here.

what friend?

S_____.

go away, i have venerial diseases.

god did they laugh at that one. one fell over on the other and they stumbled down the three stairs that led up to my porch. they landed on the grass. skirts up, panties, heels.

i turned off the porchlight and put the chain on the door and listened to the neighbor’s dog yap as they laughed and tried to get up only to fall overthemselves again.

i thought about letting then in since they were going to drive home if i didnt do something to stop them.

but im not all that nice, deep down.

dawn + lane + reesha

train was on time this morning. bus was on time this morning. it stopped at the wiltern for a little too long if you ask me. whatever.

on the train a super hot asian woman in a chanel suit with legs unpantyhosed spread just a little to wide with mouth open asleep clutching her coach ripoff purse had all the men looking at her.

i read slaughterhouse five cuz i love kv and even though my memory is bad all i needed to do was look at her once and all the details of this woman were etched in my head like a chisel to granite.

dark hair dark roots. just a strand of gray here and there. perfectly plucked eyebrows. nice job on the lipstick. very pale, almost geisha skin, natural. beige suit with white trim, no neglige to ruin things, beige shoes, everything matching, yellowing teeth, hint of a tounge trying to slide through the teeth. far too attractive for the morning commute filled with security guards heading west to the beach side hotels.

warm, finally in hell-a. seems like we got ripped out of our spring and our early spring, still i wore a flannel for the ride but was pleased when the woman next to me cracked open the window as we sped down wilshire.

she saw that i was reading but still she wanted to talk. she asked me if i saw survivor. i said yes. she asked if i liked it. i said yes and rang the bell. it wasnt my stop but it was obviously time to get off.

yesterday while i was watching the lakers and folding my clothes at the laundry a different woman asked me what the score was.

i wanted to say, i do not talk to strangers during the laker game or during my laundry. i said the game was over.

she asked what inning the game was in. shit you not. i pretended that i didnt know english.

que?

didnt matter. she told me that when she first moved out here from new york that she went to a dodger game and they won.

women care about the score of the game. and about how when they went to a game a certain team won.

men, we just care that we went. that we had some beers with some friends. that we saw some big fake titted woman.

fuck the score.

i ignored her and folded my leopard skin boxers.

sometimes i get a ride to the laundry mat. sometimes karisa lets me come over to her house and do it there. lately ive just taken my granny cart which fits my hamper perfect and place a horizontal hamper ontop of that, and then i shove more clothes in two pillowcases and pull that shit down the street a few blocks to Coin Laundry.

it may look precarious to a nosy woman who doesnt know that the dodgers play baseball the lakers play basketball and i couldnt care less about her or her stories, but for me it works.

she said, you should remember to get bungy cords next time.

i wanted to step on her toe. real hard. smoosh it.

got out of there. nothing better than clean laundry all done by four pm and the lakers tying up a series.

except coming home to you.

and smelling potato pancakes as snacks frying up just for me.

kitty + azarok + sarah

to tell me that they had broken up with their dudes. one of the girls, actually, told me that she had broken up with her chick, but that chick actually liked being called a dude. long story.

anyway, my response to both of them was, come on over, let me comfort you.

and both of them, naturally, declined my generous offer.

one of them said that she didn’t want to be just another one of my women. i told her i had no women. she said ha and pointed to exhibit a, the busblog. i reminded her that nothing on the busblog was true. she said she knew half the girls i talked about on the busblog including clippergirl, to which i told her that clippergirl and i really sit around holding hands and doing very little else. to which she asked me if i was inviting her over to hold hands and very little else and i said sure come on over and we’ll play a little game called lets hold hands and see if we can do very little else.

she said she didn’t want to come over and play that game.

i said its cuz you know that you’d lose.

then the lesbian lover called not soon after. she said that she really wanted to be with a man since itd been so long.

i told her that until she found the man that she was looking for i would try to pretend to be one.

she let me know that i was indeed the type of man that she was looking for, but she wasn’t interested at that time, she just had read yesterdays entry where i disclosed that my computer was full of viruses and i could come over to her penthouse and use her computer if i wanted.

i said, i already blogged that night, that i didn’t need a computer, but i did need someone to drink with.

she said, its always about drinking with you, isnt it.

this is the glamorous life of a blogger, friends.

i said, no it isnt always about drinking, its mostly about watching sports. to which she asked me questions about love. about how she should go about finding real love this time. and i said if i knew those answers i wouldn’t be sitting around on a sunday night totally turned on and frustrated about to crack open another bottle of bacardi as my tivo paused the Survivor finale.

she asked me if my house was clean. i said yes.

she asked me if my sheets were clean. i told her that i had just done my laundry while watching the lakers. i told her that not only my sheets were clean but they were warm and downy scented.

she asked me if i loved her. i told her that i loved her perfect body and her brilliant mind.

she asked me if i would do things to her that her girlfriend wouldn’t do.

i told her that i would only do to her things that her girlfriend wouldn’t do.

she giggled and told me that she’d take a raincheck.

i knew that these girls just wanted me to beg. im too old to beg. plus part of begging demands promises, lies, white lies. i cant lie. biggest thing i wanted yesterday was just to fall asleep with a nice girl next to me.

she added that she thought that i was a little depressed and she wanted to cheer me up. easiest way to cheer up a bachelor, ladies, is to reach down their pants. crude, yes, but the truth.

truth doesn’t always hurt.

her long fingernails may have hurt a little bit.

got a second raincheck within an hour and unpaused the tivo, headed up some peas and a baked potato and watched tv alone

as the camera panned away

and pulled back

up into the sky

into the dark night

filled with twinkling little stars

and then nothingness.

omer poos + faith fools + moxie

today shes 23. her name is mary. i called her but she wasnt home.

cops once flashed the light in our car cuz we were making out.

aj called me though. shes gonna fly out here to see tsar. right on, aj!

last night welch and i went to the angels game. his dad has season tickets between first and home right above the outdoor cafe where the carrot cake is as big as a volkswagon. i told my mom this today when i called her and she said carrot cake at a ball game? i should have told her about the panda express in right field.

i took a lot of pictures but my computer has a virus so i wasnt able to upload them.

this afternoon i write you from a local internet cafe where the old man left so the kid switched from the oldies station to the modern rock station and now weezer’s dope nose is on.

come on and kick me. oh. come on and kick me.

youve got your problems.

ive got my asswipe.

a girl i would have done anything to date in highschool sent me $10 to the car fund last night.

54. missy

she says no one calls her missy any more. she lives in switzerland. shes the new school swiss miss.

thank you missy.

all day long i wanted to write in here, not that i had anything to say but because i have a terrible issue with habits and rituals. i have to do the same things every day or i feel like im not doing something right. its not obsessive compulsive. its just something that i like to do.

i like to write each morning. i like to write after lunch. i like to have rum with my dinner and write after that. i like hot girls lap dancing me and writing after that.

me and welch brainstormed about career opportunities with this blog and with blogger and with the great outdoors and with corporate sponsorship and with wireless technologies and i gotta tell you, i dont think anyone could do it as well as i could. plus i have experience for once in my life. i was the rep for magnavox and then webtv and then microsoft and then the dot com that i was part of.

i guess i could tone down the busblog if need be. i havent poked around bloggerpro that much but im sure i saw a Tone control in the advanced features somewhere, didnt i?

i just know that im at a crossroads in my olde age and i think all the planets are ready for what should come next and what should come next is a world tour, a mess of blog posts, a heaping handful of goodwill and some still photography, and maybe even some digital video to show off.

could it be a book? could it be a blogger goes wild? could it be a novel? could it be a tv show? could it be something that blows up in the wrong hands? could it be overthrown by a treacherous group of evil doers?

could alice in chains sound any better than in this crazy place with people playing networked video games trying to kill one another?

mark twain wrote some of his best stuff while traveling around america telling the good people about the country that they live in.

i aint saying that i have anything to do with mark twain. but i dont see anyone even trying to do anything these days other than making For Dummies books and i dont think this planet is full of dummies.

i say its time to rock.

i say its time to make a song we all want to sing in the shower.

i say the dot com explosion and then implosion taught me that theres a time bandits window that opens for some for a long time, but for others for a very short time and lucky are those who jump through it for the right reasons, for the correct agendas, and with the greatest number of positive points for all parties possible.

so happy mothers day mom, and mary and all the moms out there in the blogosphere.

thanks matt for the tickets and the ride and the great conversation and friendship and thanks pete for letting us use your angels seats.

lakers all the way,

tony

digital tavern + mad pony are safe + nocturnal angel + litwack

thats the only reason that i can figure that people link others and not me.

or maybe they think that i get enough links. or that all this so-called attention has gotten to my head. or maybe theyre ashamed to let people know that they read me. or maybe they think im dumb.

i mean, i know why certain girls dont date me, and why others stop dating me, or why some wont even talk to me.

and i can understand going to hollywood at midnight, twelve thirty, one am and not going to see the worlds greatest local band… because youre too shy. ok, no i dont understand that one. mostly because i dont even know what you look like, and i seriously dont know if youre a man or a woman because i dont trust anything that i read on the web, and even less that i read on blogs, and i recommend that you do the same.

and i can understand coming home eating a tv dinner, drinking a glass of rum and passing out as the lakers fucking romp all over the twin towers at like nine thirty only to be awaken by carson daly interviewing rebecca romaine stamos at 2 am in a sweaty lump on my couch, headache gone, fatigue of the week gone, clippergirl gone, and link gone from one of my favorite sites.

but fuck carson daly who is in vegas only to rip off howard stern who was in vegas, what, last week. and fuck carson who while in vegas asked two hot chicks how much money he would have to pay them to have a lesbian kiss – cuz isnt that from the first day of the first month of the first page out of the book of ripping off howard?

my new new years revolution is to make less sense, be less clear, be more flaccid, get less tang, eat less pie, trace less backs, kiss less necks, write less effectively and be on less blogrolls in two thousand and three out of four dentists say that i need to realise that im not eighteen any more and i have to seriously start thinking about wife kids job car house dog credit cards retirement plan rocking chair forgotten death hell ouch.

i watch the mexicans walk down the street and i drink a shot everytime i see a dad with the wife and two or three kids. always a kid in a stroller. always. call me a racist all you want fuckers. theres always a kid in a stroller and usually one in the oven. everything in this shit is true.

problem with being ahead of your time is its just as bad as being behind the times. fella named steve dahl was howard stern well before howard stern was howard stern and steve was number one in chicago and got fired all over and did song parodies and even brian wilson co-wrote tunes with him but steve never got a tv deal. oh wait. yes he did. steve got everything howard got. but not for as long because nobody was ready for it. none of those in power understood how to market it. so how on earth would a newspaper or magazine or even big time website understand why you would want to hire a so called stream of conscious blogger to write a daily column where he would say

fuck the president. are you people kidding me?

in my day columnists were either slice of life bullshit bob greene middle of the road lets talk about my newborn and the beatles, or they were mike royko defending the rights of the vets and their card game that got broken up by the rookie cop.

but royko still was based in politics and sports which no offense, dont get me wrong, fuck you if you get me wrong, but it’s easy. sports and politics is easy and you know it. letting a guy say fuck this or fuck that isnt so easy, even if his name is royko but especially if his name is blonty pierce.

truth is i know that i will never write for the la times. just like i know a helicopter cant fly unless you let it make noise. just like how i know a plane cant take off unless its allowed to speed down a runway. just like how i know i will never get to go down on this blonde at work until i tell her shit anything other than durrrrrr.

the velvet underground were ahead of their time and why not be the velvet underground because twenty thirty years later you can put that shit in and tap the bottle and twist the cap and everything goes down smooth. maybe even smoother. why not be ahead of the game like the replacements since part of the thrill was being in on something that just wasnt going to make it to the moon cuz its only nineteen fifty and you can take my hand, you can take my whole heart too, but some things just were not meant to be.

im not just talking about me.

la fucking times barely knows which way to wipe its ass. im retarded even to want to work with that sort of mentality – again. where people look at your ac/dc tshirt and think youre too punk rock. where people look at your afro and think youre too “out there”, where people look at your website and think that it automatically means that you know how to fix their fucking computers.

i know how to fix a whole lot of things slow pokes but your pentium one is not one of them.

this girl had met me once and we went out the other day and we got to her penthouse on wilshire in westwood and she slipped into something a little more comfortable before i had even taken off my hat. before the sound of the front door closing had even registered. before i had a chance to say something dumb. and that girl understood that in order to get to the good part you have to speed read through all the bullshit and everything that leads up to the climax. and that girl understood that the climax isnt the end of everything.

and that girl understood that her nakedness was just the very beginning. that she liked being naked. and she liked being touched. and she liked spending all night making out and doing all the things that the fcc wont let adults see on directv even though this is two thousand three even though its just sexy even though we pay money to the hole which is run by behind the times motherfuckers like colin powells sellout son.

and ive been with girls who understood all this too and maybe they could see the future and maybe they knew that hours of messing around is fine, just not with me. and i can deal with that too because some people should be people you work with and some people should be friends and some people should be sexy friends and some people should be your wife and some people should be people you read on the internet.

every day.

just like some people were born to fuck and some were meant to type fuck

just like some people are just dumb fucks.

just like some people are just dumb

fucks

and since those are the people who matter then thats the people i’ll be

karisa sent me the sweetest, nicest long email. renee called me as soon as i got home. and as i was taking my pre-tsar power nap i was awaken by the soft little knock of clippergirl replete with kneepads and hot pie.

i wasnt depressed yesterday, sweet souls.

nothing in here is true.

if im depressed, the last place i will corrupt will be this beautiful playground.

mayor richard riordan in one of his interviews about the la newspaper that he wants to form on the backs of my pals ken and matt said that he wanted a paper that would tell the good news as well as the bad.

easiest thing in the world to do, in my opinion, is to spew out negative crap, or find dirt on dirty people. or bitch. or whine. or vent.

yesterday i just didnt want to go to work. i wanted anything other than to have to get up in a copter and seek out the bad in my fair city. even if all i was going to do was rub it out.

sometimes you feel like youre a rat catcher or a cockroach exterminator. someone calls you about a smell and you go to where they smell it and you smell around and you say ah ha theres the rat and you flush it out and then you capture it.

rarely is it pretty. rarely are you happy that you found it. rarely is the mess that theyve been making for months or years enjoyable to dig through.

im the most positive person that i know and it affects me, so you should see how it affects the rest of the guys around here. guys who were never upbeat or optimistic one day last year, or the year before that, or ever.

these are the cast-offs, the unloved, the misfits, the loners. anarchists with guns. criminals who roam the streets undercover chasing other criminals.

i dont want to be around some of them any more than i want to be around the real crooks.

but then i get into the office and i have my morning meeting with my team and we joke around and that comraderie makes it worth it all.

and i end up not wanting to be a bum on the 21 looking like george bush whose best slice of luck will be getting a bus transfer twenty five minutes into the ride.

i end up wanting to be the superhero that many of you already are.

then i climb into chopper one, ask the crew to pop in janes addiction idiots rule, turn the engine over, and we’re off.

dont cry for me islavista.

but when i fly over, feel free to show me your tits.

kate + welch + emmanuelle + layne

and coulter, drummer of my favorite band, tsar, peered over his sunglasses and said, what sort of secret show is this?

as is normal for lots of bands who want to try out new material without the pressure of appeasing their fans, secret shows are in many cases good ideas. unless the secret gets let out. and all your friends arrive with giddy anticipation.

we were only one marc brown away from capacity when the quartet took the stage poised to unleash a dozen new high powered rock assaults onto the mostly virgin crowd. yes, tsars best friends were there, but most of the audience had no clue.

until it was too late.

ive had a lot of favorite bands over the years: ac/dc, iron maiden, the police, the replacements, led zeppelin, janes addiction, the wonderfuls, thee mystakes, the beastie boys, but never has one of my favorite bands become more aggressive and powerful and spiteful as theyve aged. the key word last night was rock. rock motherfuckers rock.

the hot girls had to back off, even their tattooed boyfriends couldnt get too close to the blast coming from the stage which was furious, friends. there were no ballads. there were no la la las, there was no phone call from the governor.

tsar’s new tunes are thick and mighty and raw and sped up. you feel like you’ve been up all night on crank and a cute girl knocks on your door with some pure shit and your mind melts and you quickly tumble through the rabbit hole only to be greeted by… a trumpet, a gong, a timpani? no its the dual guitar attack of whalen and kern and kern only gets better on lead guitar and whalen wails in approval.

rock, motherfuckers. the kind that even midnight cant harness. a spit in the eye of the dance clubs blocks away with lines around the corner of trendies in their fendis. a poke in the eye at alleged rock radio with their incubus and suckubus and linkin puke and so ons. and a kiss on the cheek to everyone in attendence.

i have the best friends in the world and some of them are in the best band in the galaxy and if you dont believe me then youre wrong.

on the drive home my ears were ringing and the smiles shared between matt emmanuelle and i were big and bright as we sped through the streets that have names but dont matter for tsar had come and rocked our little worlds without even trying very hard. as if they had done it all in second gear. as if theyd done it left handed.

as great as last night was i will be expecting even more when tsar plays a real show on saturday may 17 at spaceland in silverrock.

tell your friends.

warn your enemies.

circa 1977 + leah + jesse walker + no left turn unstoned

we used to rollerskate a lot. from what i remember we rollerskated at least once a night during the week and also on friday nights and if we were really sick about it saturday nights too.

one particular cheerleader was cute, had great hair, but she was really shy. even back then i knew that she was probably getting her ass beat at home from her old man or something along those lines and it made me sad cuz she was a sweet girl and i had a full on raging crush on her. it was her who first got me interested in cheerleaders, and crimefighting. fyi.

because i was too scared to approach her as anything other than a friend friend, i set her up with one of my buddies who was kind of a burnout and not all that good with the ladies. well they got together and totally hit it off and instantly became boyfriend and girlfriend.

my friend who we will call Jeff morphed into a high school stud nearly over night, as can happen when youre 14-15 and finally getting some tail on the regular. cheerleader tail automatically makes you cooler on paper, but grateful constant willing and vengeful cheerleader tail can make you grow a foot in height and a mile in priceless reputation.

“Jeff” started to feather his hair, listen to zeppelin, and chainsmoke and before that next year was over he was in the top ten of cool dudes in my school.

fortunately he didnt forget me and what i had done for him, and fortunately she didnt forget what id done for her either and one day we were all rollerskating and it was a couples only skate and she asked me if i wanted to skate.

i saw Jeff playing defender so i took her up on her offer and we first held hands and then i skated backwards when she asked me if i knew how, and she put her hands on my hips. that move, at that age, people, in our town, was a big deal. fortunately the lights were low, lionel richie was being played on the turntable, and the mirrorball was spraying little droplets of light everywhere, so not many people could see us.

thanks for being such a great friend, she told me.

no problem i said.

jeff is the best guy, she told me.

i wanted to ask her if they were having sex, but courage was never my strong suit in highschool. it still haunts me.

we just skated around, and when the song ended we rolled over to the wall and she kissed me on the cheek.

best kiss on the cheek i ever had.

until the other night.

halfway there + lauren + a shot in the arm

bum in the back of the bus today looking like a black george bush, bald, im even jealous of him cuz he gets to take the 21 down to santa monica beach this morning and i dont. and just as i thought that he walks up to the front of the bus, a good twenty minutes into the ride and asks for a transfer and he gets one.

you’re not supposed to get a transfer like that. you can only get one right when you pay your fare. he pulled up his pants a little and hopped back to the back of the bus with me and the drunken mexican cuz he knew his good luck.

i was jealous of the drunken mexican this morning too. one because he was drunk and i couldnt be. two because he got to ride the 21 down to santa monica beach today and i had to come in to work. c because he got to crack open a can of beer as the bus was putting on the air brakes and everyone must have heard that thing opening but nobody knew it was a beer since it was cleverly disguised with a little brown paper bag. i didn’t look at him out of jealousy until i almost got to my stop and then i noticed that he had todays new york post. how does he get todays new york post! that shit cost a buck out here.

im jealous of anyone who has a date this weekend. im jealous of everyone in corvettes. im jealous of everyone who actually gets respected in their chosen professions. im jealous of anyone who has a viable career.

im jealous of the guy who pawed my true love last night. a guy who doesn’t share any of her beliefs be them politics or rock music. its the politics that steams me up the most. even the fortune teller told her that this wasnt the man for her but she doesn’t care. none of you girls care. only girls who want me are the ones who know im the wrong man for them and they keep on paying attention to me even though the sign says closed.

my heart is a flower, its wilting though. they say that some flowers will bloom when theres no water. this flower gets pissed off and sometimes that coloration is beautiful but right now its just weepy and sad and chris taught me that if you prick a droopy tulip or gerber near the top of the stalk it will prop itself right back up, but this stalk knows that trick and just needs a little sip, not a prick. definitely not a prick.

tomorrow night i want to get with this girl i used to do. dont be so surprised, i want to get with every girl i used to do. even though the wind in the willows whisper to keep moving forward, little tone keeps saying lets go back. how far back. way back. and i wouldn’t mind the new ones but the new ones lie. and they keep lying. only place you can lie is in your blog, new ones. and even though the old ones lie too, theyre familiar lies that we’ve heard before. i’ll be back at a reasonable time. god i love you tony. god you’re so big. god you’re so great.

and tick tock it dont stop. even the sun isnt sure about rising this morning. even the heart isnt sure about beating tonight. met a girl yesterday who looks like that chick who played frida, but minus the unibrow and minus the ed norton boyfriend. she was telling me all this great stuff and then she told me about something that she heard in church last sunday and i asked her what church she was at and she told me and i said shit i used to go to that church all the time. but it was cold yesterday and she just had dranken an iced coffee and wanted to end our little meet and greet before i could ask her on a date this weekend.

how about a little saturday night mass, hot chick, i was about to ask her. only i would ask a girl to church on a first date. and only i would think that theres absolutely nothing wrong with going for it after ice cream and movies and drinks. and only i would get said yes to. unfortunately only i would let opportunities slip away like sand in the hourglass, these are the los angeles times.

killer mart + chris howell + izzy wizzy