that they really dont want to know what bloggers are like on the other side of the screen,

that even santa claus loses his charm when you remove his uniform and present him out of context.

THATS EXACTLY WHAT WE WANT TO DO! they said.

not really agreeing with me. they just always write in all caps cuz theyre dumb.

they want me to intervew a half dozen big time bloggers and find out what makes them tick, what they think makes a good blog, what advice they’d have for new bloggers

all that regular crap.

i told them that ive been interviewed a zillion times and never has it ever turned out the way that ive wanted it to, that people just cant get a good snapshot of a good blogger because good bloggers should be like good fastballs – always moving, always unpredictable, always insanely aggressive.

they were all we will pay your rent for next month if you can get us what we’re looking for.

yawn. the old tempt-me-with-money ploy. dont they know that doesnt work on some people?

so i look to you, dear readers.

if you were flipping through a sunday magazine in one of your newspapers and you saw that 5-10 influential bloggers were being interviewed, what would you want them to talk about?

what would you be interested in finding out abuot them?

do you really care what inspired them to blog? does that even matter? do we care that lance armstrong started riding ten speeds cuz his older brothers did?

do you care about design tips?

about this fake debate between blogger and moveable type?

do you care about ways to get more hits? do you even believe that its possible to follow some sort of formula to get hits?

should political bloggers be ignored because all that shit ever boils down to is red ants and black ants?

i want to write this article but i want to do it for the wrong reasons. i want to do it because i know that if i dont i will wake up one sunday and read it and say “why on earth did they pick *those* bloggers?”

and “god those are the same lame predictable questions that lead to the same lame predictable answers.”

so what questions should i ask these people if i accept this mission

and what insights are you looking for in bloggers of 2005?

raymi + brooks + luke ford + terra

my tivo was fucked so she drove me over to the dudes house.

because shes the sweetest girl ever she agreed to pick up a friend of her brothers who happened to live near my hollywood bungalow. so on the way to the tivo dudes house her brothers friend started going off on these monologues as if he had been saving it up all day.

everyone needs but a few connections, he said.

you need your computer dude, your drug dude, your mechanic, your doctor, your dentist,

and now it looks like you need your tivo dude.

i added that its also nice to have a lawyer.

the hot chick squeezed my hand.

hard.

so i also said aloud, for the record, and a stewardess kissbuddy.

she smiled.

the dude lit a little one hitter and offered it my way.

since im straight edge i shook him off.

she took a hit though and he went off on his tangents.

normally i would have been annoyed but i tuned him out and looked at this chick and she saw me looking at her and smiled and i looked in the passengers side mirror and i thought what on earth am i doing with this hot babe.

how have i gotten any of these chicks.

and look at this girl taking me to get my tivo fixed.

hollywood can get suprisingly nippy on these spring evenings but we kept the top down anyway and her brothers friend’s jibberjab got beat down from the wind.

she doesnt like public displays of affection so i put a shawl over her right leg and across the armrest and over my left leg and i held her hand

as the stars streaked across the stratosphere

and led zeppelin three massaged the speakers

our girl had never heard this classic gem.

bros bro said no way

she said yes way

shes hawaiian and only so much made it to her side of the island

the backseat said i bet you ten bucks they hire that nazi youth to be the next pope.

i was all make it twenty and youve got a bet, no way would the catholic church, in the shadow of the biggest child molestation scandal of all time, hire a nazi to be pope. they’ll get a black or a latin.

he coughed and said we voted for the kid of a nazi police chief to be governor.

i was like yeah and hows that working out for us?

and today i got into the office, saw that they were putting new wiring in chopper one,

turned on the idiot box and saw that im gonna not only have to cross paths again with that weirdo

but now i owe him twenty bucks.

albino brain chiggers + frozen toothpaste + the keeze + alecia

they will probably say things like, oh yeah that was the year that google went nuts with their maps

or that was the year that Tsar blew up

or that was the year that the Cubbies went all the way

or that was the year that the president admitted that hes totally super gay for karl rove.

but i think people are crazy if they dont look back at 2005 as being the year that video blogging hit the mainstream indirectly due to the influence of mr anti k. disestablishment

even though anti doesnt follow all the steps in the freevlog blog, it has a Lot of great tutorials on how to get your videos uploaded and hosted for free via archive.org

(anti, for all you blogspot users, has his vids hosted for free via blogger.)

currently the few vids that i have up are being hosted on archive.org, and i got a nice email from john who works at archive.org, home of the amazing Wayback Machine, and i asked him a few questions.

john was kind enough to email me back with some answers.

Q. How are you guys able to afford to host all these videos and the bandwidth? Are you owned by a huge corporation, or funded by a big foundation or something?

A. Most of our funding comes from foundations and companies that help with technology. Even the smallest donna always welcome

As a gift to the commons, we try to keep the costs down – free or cheap hw/sw/services, and a tiny staff of good people plus some great volunteers. We even incubated a company to make the cheapest storage clusters.

Q. Should people who use your service provide a courtesy link back to
archive.org?

A. I don’t think we care much about courtesy links. If it suits your style then sure whatever.

Two things that do matter are to keep your metadata clean as this is your collection we are storing/serving, and use links that will last forever.

good link
http://www.archive.org/download/BunnyMcIntoshinIslaVista/bunny_in_iv.avi

bad link
http://www.movies14.archive.org/1/movies/
BunnyMcIntoshinIslaVista/bunny_in_iv.avi

movies14/1 is a 250GB disk in a redbox made by Capricorn. They work great, but someday it will fail or retire and the primary locale for your item will migrate like a snake shedding.

Q. Is there a maximum amount of videos that you guys allow from each person?

A. Contribute whatever you got. We buy disks by the pallet. Though I’ve only got a few upload servers online. Shread em.

Q. Other than Anti, are there any other bloggers who are posting new vids once a day?

A. I have no idea who posts or what they post, others tend to the contributors, but our web crawls are larger than all uploads.

Q. Someone left me a comment that Google is now hosting videos. Is that competition if youre both free? Should we be loyal to you guys because of the incredible Wayback Machine or does it even matter?

A. Google is a friend. Ultimately they need to profit on contributors, we don’t.

sk smith likes cruddy! yay! + jeff jarvis mentioned me on tv! yay! + seliot at play

wearing striped socks, a puffy minishirt and two necklaces equipped with crosses.

she and big tanky had just become ordained ministers.

to celebrate we were to eat thai food because tanky likes side dishes.

palms thai was packed because elvis was in the building, and toi on vine was closed for some reason, so we ended up at rock n roll toi on sunset where it turned out that we didnt have any side dishes what so ever, unless you count some hot cuban girl who showed up just in time for the after meal beer.

she was scheduled to meet her movie star friends in silverlake around 10pm so we said hey we were gonna head that way ourselves, how about we have a drink and a quick peek at some stippers over at cheetahs?

because she is a wonderful woman she thought that was the greatest idea in the world. which of course it was and not only did she come with us to the other side of hollywood but she spent all night with us there.

which was interesting because unbeknownst to us, hollywood had recently passed some legistlation making it illegal to show your ta tas in a strip club enviornment, especially one like cheetahs which makes a very good living selling alcohol.

because i had gotten a few beers in me at toi and because i had bunny tanky and the cuban girl to keep me entertained, not to mention the pleasant company of hewhocannotbenamed who i didnt know was hewhocannotbenamed because nobody told me, i didnt notice that the strippers werent actually stripping until about a half hour into the drinking.

it didnt matter. tons of strippers strolled by our booth and flirted with the girls even though i was the one totally willing to infuse their dying business with some hard earned support visa vee a lap dance or three.

oddly my andrew jacksons and i were completely secondary to these strippers who felt up all the girls at the table, who allowed themselves to be felt up by the girls at the tables, and who refused when i offered to buy them a few drinks.

all they wanted to do was hang out with the hot bloggers and practice their booty shaking moves. including a braces-bedecked young black girl who swore she was born in ’84 but looked 14.

i was all, if i get a lap dance from her am i a pediphile? and everyone said oh hell yes, and a gay one.

so me and a famous tv star played a game of pool and talked about these recent ordinances and hopefully he has some pull down at city hall.

when i got back to the booth there were new chicks talking with the ladies and they were laughing and drinking and not at all trying to hustle people for lap dances or anything, they just wanted to party and have a good time.

finally i said, you girls are just dying to get naked for us, arent you?

oh my god yes, they said. falling out of their hot outfits.

who do i write to help you, i asked, but they didnt know. youd think strippers would know who’s keeping them from making money but strangely they dont. odder still, all of them are still showing up to work. we got there around 9:30p and it was pretty empty but by 10:30p the place was packed and not too many people seemed to mind either that they werent getting naked.

which tells you that even in east hollywood sometimes just having sexy chicks walking around half naked and grinding around is quite nice.

and theres nothing like seeing two strippers sitting down at one of those sit down ms pacman games with their legs crossed drinking champagne next to an atm.

bunny mcintosh + big tanky + hewhocannotbenamed + more pics

the Double Down Saloon
Las Vegas
4/8/05

by Jarret Keene
Las Vegas City Life

Two a.m. on a weekend night at the Double Down Saloon isn’t the most comfortable place on Earth.

You can cut the cigarette smoke with a knife. The guys’ toilet is unmentionable. There’s even a kid wearing a spiked Mohawk. (Damn, that’s a lot of Mom’s hairspray.)

Worse: On April 8, opening bands the Livends (Texas gothabilly) and the Wastrels (San Diego hardcore) performed the most miserably irritating sets I’ve heard in the 15 years I’ve been attending punk shows. Dudes, quit prolonging the inevitable; jump right into flipping burgers or withdrawing from your trust funds. You suck, no matter what your girlfriends tell you.

After the out-of-towners, Vegas punk trio the Pervz went on. I’ve heard they’re about to sign a deal with an independent label. This is likely true, as the Pervz are polished, good-looking and demonstrate a considerable amount of energy. Too bad their music lacks emotion, passion and intelligence.

Tsar, on the other hand, is an L.A.-based quartet that specializes in punked-out, hell-for-leather power-pop. The band’s music sounds like James Williamson-era Stooges covering Cheap Trick after ingesting a shitload of speed.

Tsar absolutely tore the fucking roof off the Double Down, so much so that I don’t think the audience even knew what was happening. Songs like “Band, Girls, Money” and “Straight” hit like a gale-force hurricane filled with razorblades, causing me to pledge that whenever some hipster praises the lame butt-rocking of The Darkness I’m gonna flay him with a copy of Tsar’s upcoming (June 7) release on TVT Records.

The next night, Tsar set fire to Matteo’s Underground Lounge in Boulder City. Lanky frontman Jeff Whalen, wearing a T-shirt that reads, “I Have the Pussy So I Make the Rules,” played to an audience of 40. You wouldn’t have known it from watching him. The guy put his heart into every note, riff and pissed-off lyric.

That night was also Poizen Ivy’s birthday party, and the SinCitySounds.com mistress had the great taste to bring Tsar to Vegas for these shows. For that, she gets a big sloppy one from this music writer.

thanks to aaron clemens for that heads up! + ashley meets jay and drew + anti

i forgot to tell you that the whole time we were talking we were eating this sticky carmel stuff that we were sitting on.

it didnt smell that gross and it tasted ok and we were both starving like crazy and i could hear him eating it so i started eating it too.

most people dont know this about me but my stomach is pretty crazy. kurt used to have the same problem, before he blew his fool head off.

my stomach will hurt like a bitch if i put anything in there that it doesnt agree with, but as i have grown older it has gotten better.

i think it has to do with this natural herb that i was prescribed back in college.

i forget what its called.

anyway now if i eat something that doesnt agree with me it will either shoot right through me and come out one end, or i’ll get super sick and puke it up immediately.

this carmel stuff didnt make me puke or the other thing, but i started seeing weird colors and thinking bizarre thoughts.

everything had to be tied together in some way.

my line of thinking normally wanders any old which way but after i had a few handfulls of this almost peanut buttery gunk i was trippin pretty hard.

i heard kurt snoring somewhere over there and i figured we were dead anyway so what the hell.

then it felt like the walls were getting closer.

then it felt like someone turned up the heat up in this piece.

then it felt like someone turned up the air conditioner full blast.

then i saw little sparkely stars in the blackness.

then i could swear that i heard someone saying my name.

then i could swear that i could hear an angel and God talking about how disappointed they were in me.

then i could swear that i could hear the angel say that they could reassign my soul to the body of a lightskinned black man who would grow up and work for the secret angel-led undercover crime fighting unit called the xbi.

then i could swear that the good Lord said that He didnt think that i had what it took.

then i could swear that the angel said that they would make it so that i wouldnt be able to feel any pain because i really would still be dead.

then i heard the good Lord chuckle.

then i heard the angel chuckle.

then they both started laughing.

then they either high- or low-fived, it was dark, i couldnt see shit but weird colors.

then i got punched in the nose and i passed out.

jim gilliam + ben loves music + leah + what the fukc

that blogging from the strange thick heavy wet darkness isnt so easy.

in fact the fact that one could blog from this place should be considered some sort of modern miracle.

in fact the fact that i have been blogging in secret from an internet cafe in the pits of Hell should be regarded as spectacular to say the least, but i guess i shouldnt be suprised when not everyone shares my beliefs.

so me and kurt sat around in the humid nothingness talking to each other about punk rock, poetry and the decline of major league baseball in the minds of the average american.

then he told me that he had to ask me some questions about life on earth since he’s been gone.

is music any better?

nope.

is rock any better?

hell no.

how about tv?

tv’s pretty good. they have a lot of reality shows now.

like Cops?

weirder than that.

what was the best thing that you’ve seen on tv in the last 10 years?

they had this thing called The Glutton Bowl, where they had people eating brains and balls and mayonaise…

what sort of balls?

cow balls.

oh shit, i thought you meant like tennis balls or ping pong balls.

nah, cow balls.

cooked?

i think so.

how much mayonaise?

bowls and bowls. they made them eat sticks of butter too.

incredible.

yep.

and brilliant.

oh yeah.

what did they win once they ate all that?

i dont remember.

hmmm. i miss earth, tony.

it’s never dull.

well, tv certainly isnt.

sheepshirts + 1051 toronto + BG5000 + hottest scenes on tv, thanks pmrc!

tonight 4/15
henry rollins, mccabes
dave brubeck quartet, usc
blind boys of alabama, house of blues
jennifer gentle, ameoba (free)
q and not u, troubadour
velvet revolver, santa barabara bowl
maze, universal ampitheatre
jada pinkett, viper room

tomorrow 4/16
henry rollins, mccabes
dinosaur jr, spaceland
the killers + tegan and sara, wiltern
ernie watts, boston court
maze, universal ampitheatre
the drifters + the shirelles + the coasters + the platters, reseda high
mama sutra, little pedro’s
billy vera and the beaters, cozy’s

sunday 4/17
kenny rankin, boston court
lori carson, mccabes
taj mahal, malibu inn
benchwarmer, viper room

monday 4/18
queens of the stone age, henry fonda
kitty carlisle, geffen playhouse
civet, troubador (free)
viva k, echo (free)

tuesday 4/19
atomic sherpas, taix lounge

wednesday 420
desmond dekker + the untouchables, vault 350
minibar, viper room
peter himmelman, cinema bar
clit 45, troubadour

thursday 4/21
vanessa williams, universal
vhs or beta, el rey
mingus big band, royce hall
bastard sons of johnny cash, viper room
matt costa, tangier
fuck bunny, king king

lane mcfadden + kevin the lawyer + monique + black feminism dot org

kurt cobain had flown down into the pits of hell, rescued me, and now we sat in utter darkness.

nearly nothingness.

are we still in hell?

no.

are we in Heaven?

no.

are we ok?

no.

do you know whats going on?

yes.

are you going to tell me?

no.

do i have to figure it out?

no.

do you think i can figure it out?

no.

it was a thick darkness. like gravity was heavier.

and still somewhat liquidy.

like you were underwater

but not that heavy.

like if you were a slow fish.

are we in limbo?

no.

did rock and roll just save my soul?

tonecluster + chokey chicken + fragments of a dream + abrasivist

someone slipped into my cave and tapped me on the shoulder.

suddenly i heard alarms go off and terrible bashing sounds.

then an earthquake.

i was pulled up by the hair and began soaring.

all i could see was blonde hair dyed with red.

he held me in one arm and flew while shooting a shotgun at the demons that came at us from all angles.

one gruesome creature ripped at a wing and got it good.

we fell.

we landed on a molten lava flow and i saw it was kurt,

he reloaded his shotgun and stood in front of me and picked off one guy

after another.

heads popped off like plastic champagne corks.

infact what was freaky was that kurt only aimed at the heads and hit nearly every one with each shot.

when he ran out of bullets he shot a stream of webbing from his wrist,

picked me up and swatted the second round of demons with a strat that he wore against his back.

we soared higher and higher,

he bit the top off of what looked to be a hand grenade and dropped it

and within a second,

less than a second even,

it exploded

and the energy lifted us up fast

and soon we were in

absolute darkness.

splink + raymi + track n field + keeping it real