she told me to quit whining about the gig, take a little time off, clean my house, and then get back to the get back.

i know better than to whine about work when my mom had to deal with sexism and racism in an industry that had very few women and even less black women. she was one of the first computer programmers back in the day and you wouldnt know it if you looked at her vcr which is somehow still blinking 12:00.

my mom said that she tried to call me last night but i was probably at karisas birthday party and then my lawyer’s baby shower.

and i was.

first i rode the bus to my xgirlfriends house who offered me her car for the weekend to get my resume together, do laundry, go to the bank, food shop, and go to these events. shes the greatest.

when i arrived at karisas she was rising from a quickie little nap. you know youre talking about a friend when you say she was rising from a nap and not she was passed out on the floor and i nearly tripped over her.

we spent some time sitting on her toilet

then some time sitting on her kitchen floor

then some time taking pictures against her will since she was too weak to fight.

when people meet karisa they think oh you just hang out with her just because shes so hot.

thats so wrong.

in LA theres a chick as hot as karisa passed out under nearly every palm tree. why do you think traffics so bad.

no, i love karisa because she is incredibly fun and usually up for whatever. on wednesday, her real birthday, her friend liz announced that soon itd be midnight and her birthday would be over, so she had to do something before her birthday ended.

someone yelled, make her steal a car.

someone else yelled, make her drink a quart of oil.

someone else yelled, make her jump in the pool.

none of these people were actually at our party, you should understand, we were just being exceptionally loud.

despite the fact that karisa didnt want to do any of these things, within minutes she returned from the pool, totally soaking wet

i wanted her to drink the oil.

yesterday i spent a lot of the afternoon with her brothers, who were exactly as cool as karisa had always claimed.

in perfect eastcoast style, they had decided that what their sister needed was an ice luge. an ice luge of course is a long block of ice that you get in east la, that you drive across town in your rentacar, that you carve a slight groove on the top, that you prop up with a ladder and a shim, that you raise up at the correct angle, that you then pour shots of booze down to the awaiting mouth below.

i ate a burger, took one, yes one shot officer, from the irrisistable ice luge, and then jetted over to my lawyer’s house, starring os who never gets mentioned which is sorta rude since he hosts this site.

kim looks just as beautiful as ever. she is less than a month away from delivering and she doesnt look like she has gained an ounce other than that gigantic round thing under her dress. seriously its like normal kim and then a ball in the middle. temendous.

tons of my friends were there. it was super fun. os and kims new pad is spectacular. the food was good and the wine was delicious. i had one glass since i was driving. f driving.

earlier i had tried to find a nice gift for the baby shower because kim has done so much for me over the years and because os has done so much for me over the year, and because theyre also super great friends who ive known since forever. me and os, for example go back, what 16 years now? crazy.

the last girl who put her tounge down my ear was seven 16 years ago

while shopping for baby shower gifts everything i liked was something that would probably scare the crap out of a baby.

i saw some cool ugly dolls, for example, but do little kids actually like these things?

instead i got them a washcloth with little ducks on the tips of the fingers, sorta like this, but not pooh, who disney sells out like a ho.

the star of the show, as always, was mr steve coulter, who cooked, cleaned, and re-introduced me to the idea of doing a podcast show with him when i found myself with some free time.

and for mothers day the lord let the cubs win

party pics + jessica + the hair club + he said probed

at the pace of one no longer owned by the clock or the man or the metronome of the living.

consider the lillies of the field he said to himself while scanning the buck menu of his favorite eatery despite having perfectly good extra cheese and extra sausage pizza cold chillin in his subzero.

i’ll have a mcchicken, small fry, and a small pop.

three bucks and a quarter. hows that gonna hurt em.

always seemingly more angels in his head than demons. the demons were the ones saying i cant even believe that you are going to eat that. do you know how much fat is in a mcchicken? do you know how old the lard is that theyre going to dip those fries in? this is the hollywood and highland mcdonalds, for all you know that grease was old hours ago.

oh and may i have a double cheeseburger with ketchup and mustard only.

four seventy four.

arturo then asked the one eyed teenage cashier for a token for the mens room so he could wash his hand. she walked over to the bucket near the door and handed him the token.

suddenly there was a long line of gentlemen of all sorts waiting for the bathroom so he decided not to wash his hands.

the demons were all wtf bro

the angels whispered just dont touch anything with your hands.

arturo sat next to the front door and watched the parade of characters who walked in and out of the mcdonalds and the star of the show it turned out was the mexican security dude of the mcdonalds who was incredibly busy.

first a group of brightly colored drunk and stoned white dudes with dreadlocks talking as if they were african americans walked into the establishment, one of whom carried a small cd boombox which was playing at an audible level.

the problem was, it wasnt playing classical music.

ive always said that if wiggers and thugs wanted to freak people out theyd start blasting either cool jazz or classical and adopt british accents instead of street jive.

its all a front anyway.

arturo just liked the colors of their outfits.

the security guard told the gentleman with the radio that hed have to dine elsewhere.

then a lanky fellow with a good sized afro creeped behind me and started opening the garbage can lid for people who were throwing out their leftovers.

the man would take their trays and the people would give them to him and then when they left he’d take their leftovers out of the garbage and back on the tray and he’d eat it.

arturos mcchicken had done him well and it was only half eaten. the fries, sadly were as the demons assumed, heavily oiled, and cold and heavy in his stomach

the double cheeseburger would be fine in the hands of this obviously hungrier and desperate man

so arturo turned around to offer the gentleman the untouched delicacy but he was being escorted outside by the security guard who educated him to the standing of eating from garbagecans are in the echelon of things one likes to view while consuming happy meals.

but arturo thought, it shows you the seductive nature of this style of food, for if a man has no shame in eating from the waste bins of restaurants, why would be pick this waste bin, and not, say, the equally accessible steak house right down the block who’s menus prices begin at double digits, even for a hamburger.

and in the morning arturo rose from his bed, kissed the hawaiian daydream of his life on the forehead and watched her skip away through his garden and to her recently arrived and waiting limo,

microwaved his partially eaten leftover doublecheeseburger ketchup and mustard only for one minute

turned on the noon news

and thought this is the most disgusting thing ive ever put in my mouth ever

and ate it.

butterfly karma + isou + oak park mastermind + flagrant

thank you everyone who has supported me through this shocking period of time in my life. one of the hidden treasures of having a blog – of any size – is the virtual community that forms.

over the years i hope i have given back to you at least as much as what ive received. it’s out of that give/take that i write to you on a sunny day when all i want to do is go outside and walk around and try to figure out whats next for me.

i have totally appreciated all the kind words that some of you have put on your blogs and websites, however i still have lots of good friends at E! and i learned a lot there, so i would appreciate it if we took it easy on the e-bashing.

something that i have learned in my 20 years in LA is, its a tiny tiny place. only fools burn bridges because no matter what part of town you’re in youre bound to run across someone from one of your past lives. not that anyone should need an excuse to be decent and professional, and not that im all that interested in going back to television for my next gig, but im just sayin.

there are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people who work behind the scenes of tv production and even though we could all write volumes of interesting stories about the politics and dramas and quirks of this business that we call show, you really dont see much of it because there is a professionalism that runs through this industry that keeps it all together.

that is the part that i was ignorant to before i worked here, but is the part that i hold closest to me now that im out.

a show like anna nicole’s might give one the impression that all you need is a camera and a mic and a Suburban and you just let anna be anna, but there are so many people behind the scenes to make something like that a “reality”, you have no idea. not to say that its staged, just the opposite. simply the logistics required to make a show happen are staggerring and when you see those credits roll realize that there are thousands of people who never make it into the credits who helped that show happen too.

the same goes for the howard stern e! show, which i was lucky enough to hang out with on nearly a daily basis. stuart and al are listed as “producers” in the credits but if you knew the craziness that they have to deal with after the show gets delivered from NY to LA … it’s fascinating.

and secret.

and i was so lucky to be able to hang out with people who put together my favorite show.

so when people say mean things about E! theyre saying them about people who i love and shows that i tivo.

some people at E! made fun of me that i actually cared about the programming and that i actually watched all of the shows. but thats me. i wont work for a company unless i believe in it.

when i started at e! they had aisha tyler doing talk soup, jules and kmetko on the news, brooke burke hosting wild on, and joan and melissa on the red carpet. totally dynamite lineup that ended with howard at night.

i loved all of those shows and being able to walk down the hallway and be greeted by a huge smile and a hello from one of the amazon goddesses like jules or aisha was a thrill. almost as exciting as the warm warm warm greetings that id get when id visit the studio from Tom Mac the kickass stage manager who would say toooooony! the same way that the Cheers gang would welcome Norm. the whole studio crew would join in to welcome me and if a black man could blush i blushed every time.

hopefully things will work out between me and my former company and i will be able to go back there as a visitor and take pictures of my former cohorts and tell nice sweet stories from my unusual perspective. several people at E! have worked there over 15 years and are some of the most down-to-earth mellow wonderful people you’ll ever meet anywhere.

i always wanted to do something in television, i interned at mtv when i was younger, but this experience at E! showed me what it’s really like and i’m better for it.

so again, thank you all for the love and support you showed me this week. next week we’ll go back to our regularily scheduled adventures of riding the bus, kissing girls way out of my league, and butchering the english language.

i hope you all have a great weekend.

but before i go let me answer a few questions that have come up in my comments over the last few days

no i wasnt fired for blogging. my last job was in HR, i was very aware of when one could take breaks and when one couldnt and i educated everyone around me as to what i was doing when on my break.

i was also not fired for blogging “too much”. the archives of the busblog are to your left. most days i have three posts. one was usually written on my first 15 minute break, one was usually written during lunch and one was usually written when i came home from work. so many people think that this is “a lot” of blogging. i dont think it is. the Instapundit posts upwards to 30 times a day. he and i may have our differences regarding several things, but i will always respect him for his dedication and his work ethic. in comparison to glenn, i am a slacker.

i was also not fired for taking a day off on monday. not that its anyone’s business, but that day was a planned and approved Personal Day meant for me to recover from coachella. i had originally expected to go both Sat and Sunday, but i only went Sat but since my day off had been approved and i had gone 5 months without burning a personal day, i figured i’d use it. one of the very nice things about E! was they gave you a healthy amount of vacation, sick, and personal days.

i was also not fired for writing about sex in my blog. basically bloggers have a few constitutional rights that they should think about. the first ammendment is mighty strong, and one’s personal life, as long as it’s legal is usually off-limits to employers unless the employee is in a specialized job like a pilot or a doctor or someone. i was very careful never to write about my work, and therefore writting about what i did off the clock was never of issue to them. and it helps that i have that disclaimer calling all of this fiction, which it is, right.

i did not have sexual relations with joan rivers.

but i will finally say publicly that i think it was a mistake to let her go. i think shes a genius and a pioneer. and a freaking icon on the red carpet. how many cable networks have icons working for them at ginormous events like the oscars? ive always thought that she was hilarious and to be able to hear her jokes off screen was a treat.

why didnt i write for eonline? i applied at eonline several times. im a huge fan of theirs and im still shocked that it isnt the number-one no-brainer initial destination for entertainment news and gossip on the web. i know that they get decent numbers but in the blogosphere i dont see them getting linked very often. i gave them several proposals as to what i thought would help them but they were not accepted. in the real world noone is falling over themselves to have me write for them. lets hope that changes one day.

will i put ads up on this blog while i find a new job?

sadly i think that would be wise. hopefully you’ll still respect me in the morning.

will ads change what is written in the busblog?

absolutely not.

will i continue to write more “real” stories about my real life?

i dont know. probably not. my life is usually too weird to be believed, and marking everything as fiction protects the innocent and not-so-innocent.

has being rejected from grad school and fired i mean laid off crushed my spirit?

i am a chicago cub fan. i have dealt with rejection and misery and sadness my whole life. just the other day the cubs were up with two games left to play with wood and prior on the mound and they figured out a way to blow the lead and lose the playoffs to the team that ended up winning the world series.

this is nothing compared to that.

and that is nothing compared to real tragedies that happen to people and families around the world.

im am now going to walk around hollywood and take pictures for you.

xoxoxo
tony

plastic + dude man phat + pip

today because yesterday was karisas birthday and saturday is my lawyers baby shower and sunday is the lords day.

nothing in this is true neither.

she has the sweetest face

i’ll say why are you here

and she’ll say because youre great

and many of you have written very nice things to me and have said that something good is right around the corner but something good was right there,

slippin off her flip flops,

pretending to care what was on tv,

which rhymes with just waiting for me.

and here it is 452am. sterns on live from new york. shes snoozing on the couch wearing just a pink leapord print bikini bottom.

shut up.

i could look at that girl all day.

sometimes she would be ready to leave and id ask if i could just look at her for a quick minute and id use the entire sixty seconds to soak it in.

her snores sound like if mushrooms had motors

hawaiian and so sweet

i caller hello kitty with titties.

and i dont agree with those who say that something better is waiting for me because thats what people said when the dot com got rid of me and karisa and everyone else

unless they meant this chick

who i dont deserve

and who doesnt even mind when the beck cd keeps repeating and repeating and repeating.

this homestand’s 7th Inning singers at wrigley field:

Friday- May 6th – Scott Sanderson
Saturday- May 7th – Will Ferrell & Mike Ditka
Sunday- May 8th – Jim Belushi
Monday- May 9th – TBA
Tuesday- May 10th – George Wendt
Wednesday- May 11th – Gary Sinise

cubs blog + earth-info + bojack + volume2

for all of these years, a new dilema arises,

the busblog has been rolling pretty much as long as i worked at E!, so the other day when i was let go, i looked at this blog and thought, maybe the busblog should end now too.

as i have alluded in previous interviews, the busblog started when i was a closed caption editor for the e and style networks.

how it worked was, the shows would get sent to us on tape, one of the two transcribers would watch the tapes and use a court reporting machine to turn the show into a script. the script got sent to one of us closed caption editors who would break up the dialogue into little chunks that would appear on screen at the right time.

believe it or not, this wasnt a very easy job. not only was there a strict way of breaking up the text, but it had to be grammatical, it had to be spelled right, and it couldnt hang on the screen for too long or too short.

a half hour show would take a full day to edit, an hour show would usually take two days. but something like howard stern, a half hour show, i could do twice as fast because it just scrolled up – you didnt have to place it around the screen.

at that time we had four other captioners and none of them liked to do Howard’s because theyd get grossed out. me, i have always been a huge fan and one day i came up with this great idea of being The howard stern captioner who would knock out the rerun show before lunch and then do the new episode after lunch.

my boss thought it was a good idea but she never got around to giving it to me, instead she made everyone do everything regardless of what we liked. so i learned a lot about fashion from the style shows that i had to caption and i learned alot about the structure of shows like true hollywood stories whose 2hr shows would take nearly a week to complete.

right before i was going to remind my boss about our little idea about being the Howard captioner, i had a little sit down with my boss’s boss. he said that it was obvious that i wasnt meant to be a closed caption editor. he said that my boss showed him that on every show i would have one or two grammar mistakes and one or two spelling mistakes. i told him that i knew that i wasnt perfect, but that most people watching Wild On Barbados probably didnt care all that much when i would put a semi-colon next to the Wooooo! instead of a double dash.

he told me to watch my back and to get it together or else i would be looking for new work elsewhere.

right around this time i started getting carpal tunnel and i realized that it was due to the repetitiveness of pausing the vhs tape, editing the line or two, playing the vhs tape and then pausing it again, and then moving the mouse to the right part of the screen to edit the next line.

so what i did was, about every now and then i would get up, go to the break room, fill up my water bottle, go back to my desk and write a few paragraphs in this new thing called Blogger. sometimes i would write during my lunch break.

i already had a website, but i couldnt update it from work. Blogger was great because i could write whatever i need to say, post it, and be back editing captions in minutes. eventually i started writing little stories about being a superhero which helped me shake off all of the negative feedback that i would receive every time i finished editing a show.

at first just writing something good was enough, but soon i started getting very nice comments from strangers who would tell me that i was a good writer and that theyd be back. time went on and the popularity of the busblog grew. unfortunately my popularity as a closed caption editor was dipping steadily even though we had one guy who was regularily worse than me, and another guy who would disappear for hours and hours at a time.

one day my bosses boss said that there was an opening in the Scheduling department that he wanted me to interview for. he said Scheduling was far more fast-paced and incredibly difficult but i would be in the center of studio production because i would be hiring all of the freelance camera dudes, utility, teleprompter, tape, video controllers, ads, tds, directors, and audio dudes.

it seemed very exciting and a nice change of pace, especially since he was hinting that if i didnt move out of captioning i would probably get canned.

i walked about 1000 feet from my captioning cubicle, interviewed for the gig and a few months later i was transferred to Scheduling and hired to be the Studio Scheduler.

everything seemed amazingly fast paced. phones were ringing nonstop, all of the people in the department were talking to each other in a very quick manner, everyone was serious and Everyone said, youre going to hate it, you will probably quit, and you will most definately get an ulcer.

when i heard that i laughed and this very tall, goth looking dude who i would later find out was actually a very cool dude named Matt looked at me and said, this place will wipe that smile right off your face.

even my new boss told me that what i was in store for was going to be hellish and very few people can keep up with the pace.

two days into the job i was across the street at the la brea tar pits nearly in tears. matt was right, they had wiped the smile off my face.

when i got back to my desk i realized i had died and gone to hell.

and that day i started the first of the kurt cobain stories.

so working at e! has inspired and influenced this blog far more than most people know, and even though i obviously got the hang of working in Scheduling, in a sick bizarre way, the hellishness of my last job, and the dullness of my captioning job completely motivated me to write and escape and funnel all of the pent up engergies and creative juices into a positive thing.

sometimes it wouldnt manifest itself until i got home and wrote, but sometimes it would come out during one of my two government mandated 15 minute breaks, or sometimes it came out during my lunch hour. but i would be a liar if i didnt acknowledge that working where i worked, doing what i had to do, had a lot to do with what youve read on this page over all these years.

and thats why the other day i wanted to end this thing and start something new, called something different. because the busblog started in a moment of boredom, and could have ended because of a day of deceit.

but if i have learned one thing while in television production its the very famous line that youve heard a million times.

the show must go on.

so on we will go.

xTx + radiohumper + britcoal + matt good

is the fact that today is our pal karisas birthday.

karisa who is one of my best friends ever.

in a perfect world she and i would live in a town where they made television programs, for if we did, i would produce a show called the karisa j show where in each episode we’d make karisa cook something, fix something, build something, and interview some one.

if the style network had any viewers it would be perfect there, but now im thinking mtv.

only problem is karisa isnt interested in being a star. publicly, that is.

tonight i would have loved to take her out for a delicious steak dinner at her favorite place, arnie mortons in beverly hills, but considering the circumstances it wouldnt be prudent. therefore i think i will walk over to the armenian butcher shop and see what theyve got fresh-like and grill up a few steaks.

the karisa show would also have to have a Book Minute because karisa loves books. i keep telling her that the karisa book club would dominate all over the oprah book club because who the hell ever wanted to read what oprah was reading?

ive met some multitalented freaks before but none as purely nice and fun as todays birthday girl

on a personal note, thank you for everyone who has written and called and commented, your nice words have made all of this much more tolerable and the epiotome of bittersweet.

join us now in reliving some of the moments where karisa starred in the busblog

her 79th birthday

jean skirt night pool party

karisa dissing the angels

karisa’s 80th birthday and the photo essay

karisa and kerrie

upsidedown drinking

karisas 44th birthday

me and karisa at the xbi christmas party

a pre christmas email

a trip to isla vista

a trip to the sunset junction 2004

we often do laundry

sunset junction street fair 2003

they called it a “layoff” but everyone else in my dept still has a job
and i had more seniority than all of them combined

even though i know it was an unfair termination and i will get to sue and win
im still shocked, and im sad, and i want to cry.

to everyone who i was lucky enough to work with at E!
i will miss you, i learned a lot from all of you,
and i hope that if we dont keep in touch the normal ways
you’ll pop onto the busblog from time to time

my old lunch buddy + my old desk + when ll cool j played my work

i know you dont know who bauhaus is, and thats one reason why you were cool with us leaving the show right after weezer threw his black glasses into the crowd,

but peter murphy apparently took the stage by being lowered from the rafters and he sang all of Bella Legosi’s Dead completely upsidedown to the adoration of every wannabe vampire in the crowd, which as you remember, there were plenty of hiding behind parisols during the afternoon and melting in the warm sunshine of palm springs

i know you dont know an awful lot about rocknroll, but singing while acting like a caught bat is pretty rockn

i also heard that the chemical brothers had a light show going on in the raver tent that should have had a warning sign declaring it unfit for people on hallucinegons because reportedly it just wasnt some flashing lights on either side of the turntables, it wasnt just a police car light on a riser, it wasnt just a smoke machine under the gogo cage,

from what my sources tell me the back wall was a screen where some incredible graphics were being projected and then at the perfect time the entirety of the tent was flooded with stained glass effects making one instantly believe that they were no longer simply attendees at a show but lab rats whose senses were being monitored for over stimulation.

and we thought the traffic-free car ride was nice.

teenage fanclub via an ipod being pumped through a stock car stereo was what you and i were listening to when spoon took the stage and singlehandedly raised it up and spun it on their finger like a basketball, occassionally spinning it to keep up the momentum and once they were bored they grabbed the stage and smashed it into the the mountains to the south.

all of this while we were contemplating a fosters freeze at the el pollo loco.

this is what i promise you, cute girl who let me drive her car,

next year if you dont have a boyfriend or a fiancee, i will take you to palm springs on friday night, we will make sweet love all night and rise early for the entire saturday show, we will drive back to the hotel and make nasty dirty love and pass out, sunday we will attend church service and go to the second night of rock, and afterwards we will recap the experience in the comfort of a hot tub, then we will sleep tangled like monkeys and drive home happily monday morning at noonish.

what we did this weekend wasnt bad, it was good for a dry run, but next year it needs to be done right.

especially since tsar will probably be there.

save ferris + raymi + vortexia + christie

shes not going to be 25 as i recently reported on this blog. yes, this blog that states quite clearly that nothing in here is true.

she is not going to be 26 or 27.

shes not going to be 23 or 24.

shes not going to be 32 or 42.

shes going to be 30. 30 years old.

its so easy when you see someone you respect mildly freak out, to say oh its cool its cool everything is gonna be ok, youve got a perfect life, youve got a great truck, a good man, a perfect cat, a great apartment, cool friends on both coasts, and a killer bod with eyes that can get you pretty much anything you want at any time

which is why i dont look at her in her eyes for fears that she will ask me for something that im not so willing to give up, like my virginity.

but i remember turning 30 last year and it was a nightmare for me.

if it wasnt for all that capt morgans and those cheerleaders dressed as catholic girls then i probably woulda jumped off the golden gate bridge.

age does matter, but numbers matter even more. they represent something that maybe used to mean something but nowadays dont mean anything at all.

when our parents were 30 most of them had at least one kid but probably two, they had a mortgage, they had been married for a while and their television probably only got two stations clearly.

now we have hundreds of stations that come in clearly PLUS we dont have the financial and parental burdons of that previous generation. we’ve done it right. shit. in many ways we’ve got it made.

the sad part for karisa is that shes never had a kickass perfect idealio job that totally matched up her myriad of skillz and then compensated her properly. she and i worked together many moons ago and we saw people walk around us making mad green and we would laugh at each other as they passed by and sometimes we’d commiserate and id say its just like what led zep says, your time is gonna come.

sadly our time is taking its time so we have to hang out in hollywood drinking and waiting on that bus to unending success. i have to say that im lucky to have someone like karisa to wait with. and my other friends of course. but karisa is a special friend because she didnt go to school with me, she knew me when i was nothing and stayed friends with me when i lost all that i had.

and when we finally start living the lives of trapped people stuck in their high paying gigs, tied down with car payments and mortgages and IRA accounts, drowning in diapers and private school tuitions, we can always remember when the worst thing in our lives was the numbers attatched to our names.

and im glad that shes finally 30 cuz ive been calling her 30 for at least 3 years now.

too beautiful + keanuholic + sk smith + golden fiddle