and reveals his secret to getting a job with the LA Times

Simon Owens: How did you become an opinion editor for the Los Angeles Times? Is there any interesting story behind it?

Matt Welch: The funny thing is that I still don’t really know the answer to your question. I was perfectly happy at Reason magazine, among many other reasons because they actively encourage staffers to write for other publications. So I made the conscious effort to A) write for the Times as much as possible, and B) try to convince them, in my way, to take me on as one of their 10 regular columnists.

In the process of writing a half-dozen columns, and attempting to understand the impenetrable bureaucracy on Spring Street, I met with various editors three or four times. At one of those last meetings, I finally hooked up with Andres Martinez, who had recently replaced Michael Kinsley, and with whom I share a good friend and ex-colleague, the incomparable John Allison of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (who worked on my paper in Prague). John had been chatting Andres & I up about each other for a year, but we’d always managed to miss each other … finally we met up, the conversation turned to the section, and broader ideas….

And before you know it they offered me a three-month “visiting fellowship” to sit on their editorial board. I figured I’d be open to it, even though the prospect of writing editorials full-time struck me as pretty weird, personally. Somewhere in there they asked if I’d be interested in having a full-time job on the board, and I said no.

Not long after, they described a new position that didn’t yet exist, where I’d sit on the board & write editorials, but also edit the things, and also write the occasional op-ed, and also solicit & edit op-eds … and also help work on their website. Sounded kind of complicated and open-ended, so I was immediately intrigued…. And I very much liked Andres and his #2 Michael Newman, and liked the general change of direction the section had taken the previous 1-2 years … and the price was nice, so I said yes.

Not a very interesting story, I agree. I guess the coolest part for me was that it was the first time in my memory that my extended work in the obscurity of Central European English-language newspapering actually helped me. When I first returned from there, and applied for jobs everywhere (including the L.A. Times), they all just kind of shook their heads sadly, or looked at me with irritable bewilderment. But now my Prague connection finally paid off!

read the entire interview here.

every. southpark. ever.

hmmmm

John Hopkins Discovers that People Enjoy Illegal Mushrooms

More than 60 percent of volunteers given capsules of psilocybin derived from mushrooms said they had a “full mystical experience.”

“Many of the volunteers in our study reported, in one way or another, a direct, personal experience of the “beyond,” said Roland Griffiths, a professor of Neuroscience and Psychiatry and Behavioral Biology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore who led the study.

A third said the experience was the single most spiritually significant of their lifetimes. Many likened it to the birth of their first child or the death of a parent.

And the effects lingered.

rest of the article is here

Wall Street Journal article here

here i was gonna write this super sad thing about how now that anna broke up with enrique she should want to hang out with me but she doesnt and isnt that sad. and how i must have gotten fuglier over the years because my inbox used to contain way more nudes. or maybe its my writings no good any more.

and then i was gonna write how you cant listen to those voices. that those are devil hymns. that the reason the lord made stereo stores and huge speakers and head phones and ipods and surround sound and sub woofers was so that we could drown out the bad songs of evil.

evil is thinking 113 is too old for a girl like anna kournikova.

evil is thinking that the busblog has lost a step.

evil is thinking that all the other writing one does doesnt matter even if somehow its now paying the rent.

evil is putting off reading the good book on the sabbath until 6am and then only reading the minimal amount. you really shouldnt wear the bare minimum of flair.

evil is thinking you cant take a weekend off to rest the bones and the head and the schween.

sweetness is when a new girl from somewhere says youre hotter than my bf.

and then gives you her phone number.

so why are all the good girls in canada. with boyfriends

eh?

she said why dont you drive here and we can have a walk in the park with walkie talkies. i said walkie talkies. she said yea because if we walked too close id push you in the bushes and do stuff with you in there.

i said send me your underwear.

she said when i get some, sure.

good things girls are also the cure.

encantada + buy a date with jessica biel + LA City Nerd featured me

four years ago today i was trying to break up with a teenage girl

which couldn’t be further from the truth.

ashley, baby, sweetheart, of course i love you. i love you so much im typing to you despite having terrible carpel tunnel. my wrist looks like that giraffe. im only going to post one thing today and this is it. of course i love you ashley.

sometimes love means letting go. don’t ask me to explain it because im not sure i totally understand it.

but i do understand the benefit of laying on your back with someone your own age, relatively, holding hands, discovering new music and old gems. ashley you’re twenty. im 108. you need to find a guy who’s also twenty.

you two need to listen to led zep until the sun comes up, pink floyd, skynyrd, the doors, the dead’s american beauty, the clash, the police, motorhead, the ramones, the talking heads, santana, bob marley, dylan, ac/dc, van halen, boston, dio, sabbath, priest, maiden, yes, classic rock. and not the greatest hits, but the full albums completely.

you need to be going to college and read shakespeare, hopkins, faulkner, hemingway, milton, joyce, dickinson, twain, tennyson, vonnegut, tolstoy, yes, classic rock.

don’t be fooled by guys who have great sex with you. the sex will always be great.

don’t be fooled by guys who can write well. it just means that when they’re mad at you you’ll get the most hateful terrible emails. you deserve better.

don’t be fooled by guys who are terribly handsome, or charming, or cool as a cucumber in a bowl of hot sauce. those guys, especially in LA are a dime a dozen.

what you need is a nerdy guy who’d do anything for you. who would leave you presents at your door and make web sites for you in your image: beautiful and grand, lyrical and edgy. you need a geek who would wait years for you, secretly, despite his own welfare. you need someone who wont make fun of the bad music kids these days love.

instead of trolling the skate parks and beaches, you should sit outside a cyber cafe or an engineering department, browse through the aisles of fry’s electronics, become a member of the battery club at radio shack.

go geek, not greek.

your whole life you’re going to be pursued and eventually conquered and dominated by a variety of well-meaning men, take this opportunity to turn the tables and you be the one who does the corruption. and trust me when i tell you that you’ve got all the tools.

go to tower records and smile at the boys with the dyed hair and the unoriginal punk rock wear, but give your number to the guy in the back wearing the weezer tshirt who would never think that in a million years you’d say hi to him.

then get his number, tell him to ride his scooter over, kiss his neck, watch him shake, get him stoned, put in jane’s addiction, and go where the music takes you.

i hafta write about santa barbara because as well as la observed is covering it, and to be honest, id have to say that la observed is covering the santa barbara news press meltdown better than pretty much everyone including the santa barbara independent who keep getting all the good shit tossed into their lap.

what makes observeds coverage better is kevins daily, hourly, wheneverly he needs to be. as doc said, poor news-press is behind an olde school paid wall, the independent is just weekly with a few updates on the angry poodle, and the la times for some reason didnt even send a reporter up there on friday and used AP.

frickin LAist woulda had a reporter up there if he wasnt being smothered with teenage angst friday morning which had to be restrained and disciplined.

repeatedly.

can you believe the fucking miss universeys havent written me back? whose a brotha gotta finger to get a little attention up in this shit?

just wait till next year my advisors keep saying but i dont think even they realize how much i love the miss universe pageant and its a trump production and its here in la. what if next year its in frisco. this shit is right in our backyard.

upper crust last night was disappointing. but fun. my arms, i thought, were getting better thanks to a few days of icy hot, but holding the huge glasses of beer at spaceland totally freaked out both of my arms. imagine the horror of having – having – to put down your beer at a rock show.

i switched to smaller pbrs.

this afternoon once she had demonstrated her fuller understanding of ladylike behavior we watched my fair brady which took a while because casa busblog doesnt have air conditioning and its butthot today. so first she was all, hey lets open the windows and all of the cool air ran outside fast and was replaced by osmosis. which today is butthot we’ve estabished.

so then it was all oooh shut the windows which trapped the heat so we experimented with different doors being opened, windows shut, windows half open, and a fan aimed at her cooch.

for two years ive had 100 otter pops in my freezer and today a dramatic dent has been made.

and watching peter brady get pulled away in a limo with his model fiance is exactly the destinies that all the bradys should have because that show was the best.

1. When did you first start blogging?

i started blogging in august of 2001. after 9/11 it seemed like a lot of people jumped in and i rode that wave to whatever this is that we’ve got now.

2. What was your first site?

my first site was something i made in 1996 called Lick. it was an offshoot of something i was working on with marc brown called Buzznet, before it was Buzznet as you know it now. it was a webzine then and i wanted something a little more, lets say, real. after that i made a site for my audio/video installation company, and after that i secured the tonypierce.com url and i was writing on that for years before i started blogging.

3. What has been your favorite post?

“How To Blog” has done me right so far.

4. What do you think separates you from other bloggers?

a few things. ive done it almost every day now for five years. ive gotten a few very cool jobs directly because of my blog including my current one as editor of LAist. ive been able to get “things” from my blog, and ive even been able to get lovin from the blog. and money, and trips, and lots of attention, which is rare for a) a man b)a non-political blogger c) a blogger who mostly writes about himself

i also hardly ever whine.

5. What do you do for fun outside of “blogging”?

chase girls way out of my league. and then catch them.

6. Does blogging provide you your sole source of income? If not, what
else do you do?

yes.

7. Where do you live? for how long? where do you want to live?

ive lived in LA on-and-off since 1984, mostly on. ive lived in East Hollywood for the last five years. im very happy here. the only other place i would consider living is somewhere with a hot tub or Isla Vista which i hope to one day help turn into a city and then run for its mayor.

sk smith + moxie + nay

i cant just expect to walk into the gig at LAist and think that people like the Miss Universe Pageant are just going to let me show up and start doing my thing like it aint no thing.

Barney Brantingham worked for 46 years at the Santa Barbara News-Press, im sure it took a few tries to get the Miss Universe people to pay attention to him. I mean, hell, today is the end of my first month on the job.

and what have we learned?

hmmm.

already knew there was a God. but this ensures it.

learned that sleep is important.

learned that its probably a good idea to have a white board, too bad it took a month to figure that out.

its important to double check set times for bands. it’s also important to save all receipts because this shit needs to be written off.

ok back to Santa Barbara. apparently the newspaper over there is freaking out. youd think that all us former nexites would just swoop in and take it over and make it better.

but theres a reason that Barney Brantingham quit this month after 46 years. life must suck at that job.

now my last job found me vomiting every day for a week, i was sick for months, my electrolites were low. but i didnt quit. something must have been hella bad for all those editors at the newspress to say fuckit.

last night the Nexus got the scoop which was sweet since they arent even putting out papers right now.

so kudos Nexus! do a beer bong on me.

xoxoxox
tp