not only did i find heaven in sxsw, a place i vow to go back to each and every year from now on until it gets ruined. which is inevitable because everything dies baby thats a fact but everything that dies some day comes back put your makeup on fix your hair up pretty and meet me tonight in atlantic city.

last night i fixed my hair up pretty and met ms jenn sherry at music plus tv and she interviewed me for an hour and we played videos for the kids and ive gotta say it was pretty much the closest thing ive ever felt to being the most comfortable of all time, and the the closest thing to heaven outside of sxsw.

we sat on a couch, the cameras were locked on us, the dude switched cameras from another room, were were totally alone in a big studio – bigger than E!’s – and it was sooooo quiet that it was perfect. only later near the end of our hour when people from the next show were making noise and distracting me did i feel like it wasnt just me and jenn talking about music in a vacuum.

it was awesome being in that vacuum. fuck studio audiences.

but this studio. it was my dream studio. they had different little mini-sets at each corner. then other sets on each wall. so basically 9 sets under one roof. and they had a stage for a band in one of the corners. jenn told me they have several bands a week that get taped there.

what incredible world is this?

i have always thought how strange it was that there are all these bands who come through LA every day and they probbaly wouldnt mind playing a few songs in front of some tv cameras. it looks like MusicPlus TV is getting some of those bands, but they could get better names if only those bands knew about it.

i told her they should do like an American Bandstand show there.

maybe we could cohost it.

afterwards i took her to dinner and things went so well that we had drinks at the bigfoot lounge and met these kids who were funny. asking us really silly questions about how to hit on girls. jenn said one thing and i told them no shes wrong do the complete opposite. abc always be closing, etc.

they left, we kept drinking, and then they came back an hour or two later. the guy asking the lamest questions we notice all of a sudden has a girl next to him. but next to her is a second guy.

i was all jenn check it out.

so the chick is asian, skinny, has a slip dress on, really short dress. legs all sweet lookin. you know. and shes in the middle of these two guys. sometimes it looks like both dudes are talking to her at the same time, one in one ear one in the other.

then it looks like one dude has his arm on her, then the other guy does, then they both do!

finally the guy who we were giving advice to starts making out with her. the other guy sees it, looks away, drinks, but doesnt move, eventually AS THEY ARE KISSING the non-kissing guy tries to start talking to her.

no matter how much our guy and the chick make out right there at the bar the loser guy stays there and tries to find a way in. at one point our guy sees us watching and commenting and gives us the thumbs up as hes kissing her!

then one of his buddies goes over to the bar to try to distract the loser guy. they talk for a while but then the loser guy – who is way drunk at this point – turns around to the making out couple and tries again to talk with her.

finally we just invite him over to our table and i tell him to pose with jenn.

click.

music plus tv, 8pm pacific, 11pm eastrnnnn

and i doubt i would have heard her speak if she wasnt on the same panel as mr hugh macleod, but im glad i got to hear her speak because if i hadnt i wouldnt have understood why shes taking things so seriously.

if you dont know, kathy sierra is big time blogger, technorati top 50 blogger who lives in solitude in the mountains, and writes a very sweet blog about how to keep your readers and customers, etc.

i disagreed with pretty much everything that she said in the parts of the panel in which she spoke, but bottomline is shes in the technorati top 50 and im nowhere close.

one of the things she said to do is make it all about her readers and very little about her. me, i think thats the antithesis to blogging, but what shes saying, really, is dont make this all about navel gazing.

i had a conversation with someone at sxsw that i loved because we were talking about using “i” a lot and the person was complimenting me for taking it easy with it, but i told her that every time i use it im painfully aware of it because it goes against everything ive been taught, outside of Diary Writing class.

anyways Kathy (not pictured) got some really ugly comments and blog posts written about her and she felt threatened by the death threats that may have been encouraged by some meanspirited blogs. kathy got one of the authors of the blog to co-write a joint statement, but kathy still isnt sure what she wants to do in regards to blogging.

from out of the dust has come a few posts, one suggesting a bloggers code of conduct and another suggesting a seal of approval.

for a country that runs around talking about how free we are here, i sure hear a lot of americans trying to figure out new ways to put on blogging.

dumb fuckers.

now i know things are very different for a bearded, bald, black man living in hollywood feeling safe and an attractive white woman living on a ranch in colorado. if someone tells me to fuck off and die in my comments i have an easier time blowing it off than a woman might.

but still i think that if comments bother you, you should pull an instapundit and just get rid of em. theyre not for everyone.

i only get a fraction of the traffic that kathy gets and ive loved all the sweet things that people have said about me in the comments of this blog over the years. and im sure its possible that one day the negative ones will outweigh the positive ones and force me to tap out, but i dont think that day will come.

however i dont know what its like to get a gazillion hits, and its obvious that when new readers who just bop in to a blog get their way in the comments, they can often be crude, rude, and stupid, and have forgotten about the blog before the blogger can even begin to get pissed off at the dumbass comments. but if i was getting a gazillion hits, id expect a few dozen jagoffs a day and write em off.

or if things get super bad, just hire some kid to moderate the comments. there are ways to cherry pick only the good news. i use the giant brick walls around me technique. problem with that is its a great defense but its hard for the good stuff to get in and stay there. which is why the girls who come over with the i heart tony tshirts usually get treated xtra special.

my advice to the huge majority of us who will never be top 50 bloggers, write from your heart, do your own thing, dont be full of shit, accept comments, dont let the sweet nudes give you a big head, and dont let the mean anonymous bullshit ruin your day.

i have no advice for ginormous bloggers because i dont know what thats like. thankfully.

happy tenth anniversary, blogging.

and not just because its about college girls in various versions of catholic school outfits fighting crime, specifically a lesbian villain who has never lost a fight. but its a great movie, and it has a great soundtrack which includes the original version of “Another Girl, Another Planet” by the Only Ones.

notice below how when the Replacements covered it, Westerberg smoothed out the bridge a little so as to make it a little less rickety when you cross. and yes this is one of my favorite replacement songs ever.

most notably the Vivid Video one on showtime. Debbie Does Dallas Again or something. its like a behind the scenes look at them making not just one debbie does dallas remake but two. one is your typical dumb porno, the other is alt-porn with like some bondage and some squirting probably and clothes bought at hot topic instead of strippers r us.

the tudors were on tonight and i knew she would be watching it and who knows she might even be reading this blog and if she is well, good, she should. its still the busblog. king of beers.

something i like to do on the holidays is get a couple of meals at the Pantry and give em to some homeless dudes. today i was headed over there and i couldnt get across figueroa because they were having some easter parade. who the hell has easter parades in LA?

downtown, i’ll tell you, LA’s vacant lot.

i know theyre fixing it up but still. it feels like something that used to be something but is now just a place for kids to fuck around in and for junkies to get high. i went to one of the traffic cops and said i was trying to get to the pantry and he said, then you have a problem. so i went to the bbq king but had to speed home to attend two live fantasy drafts so the homeless lose again.

even on easter.

holiest of holiest days.

its 420am, so technically its today, monday. so today is opening day for the dodgers, but more importantly its opening day for the cubs. which means a day off. but it will be a working day off because im going to get all my taxes together because i am having them done tomorrow.

strangely being a pro blogger involves a lot of write offs, so tomorrow i have to do something that i hate doing – going back in time by looking at pretty much everything that i spent with my debt credit card last year.

i hate the past. most of the past. even last year.

especially last year.

except of course for landing this job. the perfect one. and driving around the country

and kissing all those girls

and seeing all those bands.

now that i put it that way i still dont wanna look back.

the cubs were in last place

i was fired.

girls rebelled en masse

i was sued by my landlord

i was vomiting a lot,

and i was on my way to losing 2/3rds of the busblog audience.

needless to say im in favor of the flat tax.

april is emotional enough.

i hope you had a happy Easter

i could marry you. or visit you in jail. or officiate your funeral. but i probably wont do any of those things.

im a pretty bad ordained minister.

i would preach that easter is the day that the Lord said and for my last trick…

i would tell everyone that easter is the day that we begin to learn what it means by if you had the faith of a mustard seed you could move a mountain.

i dated a girl who told me that maybe there isnt a football team in LA so i wouldnt be distracted on sundays.

her vagina had no odor whatsoever.

angels, i tell you. all around us.

some people see police in the shadows. or narcs. or murderers. i see sluts.

i see people who have an extra bag of weed on em that theyd feel a lot better without.

and i know you have seen them too.

i would tell people, after the football games had ended, that the world is tilted over because we have too much greatness, too much sexy, too much love. but we dont have enough faith which is why we cant move the mountains to balance out the love.

i wouldnt have altar boys.

id have robots.

and i wouldnt have a collection plate.

because for some reason i dont remember Jesus ever asking for money from people in church of all places.

so its 420am on Easter morn. Lent was over 4 hours and 20 minutes ago. how do i know? because i went to jack in the box 4 hours ago and got a chicken bacon sandwich, two tacos, a coke, And curly fries.

bitch.

are we in april already?

Azreal Darkskies was nice enough to interview me for poetry month even though i havent written a poem in several thousand years.

but he has a link to an mp3 by the balancing act, one of my all time favorite LA bands who are so superunknown it’s actually amazing. amazing because it makes you wonder how many other really great bands are just waiting out there for you to discover them, like digging just below the surface of your backyard and finding dinosaur bones.

or in this case gold.

What does Tony Pierce define as poetry?

Words magically turned to art.

Any form or meter or structure you’re fond of?

sometimes you just rip off each others clothes and knock over things and bang the hell out of each other like animals. sometimes youre gentle and slow and soft and caring and you whisper sweet things and bang hard at the end. sometimes you just slip a blanket over her skirt on the crowded plane sneak a hand under the blanket and just barely move one finger. meter and structure should fit the scene and the
mood.

Do you think poetry isn’t as respected a medium as it should be?

poetry is respected. the modern poet however is justly ridiculed.

What’re your thoughts on words?

they’re one of the few great equalizers. a huge dick being another.

read the rest of the interview here, and it includes one of my favorite baseball poems, and not just because it involves a dude from the white sox getting punched in the face.

we took the subway and walked what seemed like ten blocks. i guess i wouldnta noticed if i wasnt with a girl. the strange part was walking there i liked her and walking back i didnt.

which didnt mean that i wouldnt have protected her any less if anything crossed our path. to the death. to the pain! but i did walk a little bit apart from her.

we stopped off at the subway sandwich place where they have several different kinds of breads.

she said, my friend told me that im a “solid 8”. can you believe that?

the girl is stunning, but so is a computer monitor when you first get it out of the box. soon it becomes just a computer monitor.

she said again, can you believe that?

i was all, well, there are no tens.

shocked she said, thats what he said.

and ive gotta deduct a half point for not being the slightest bit lesbianic and a half point for not being into anal. which makes you an 8 before we even really get started.

i took a bite out of my footlong. ive been getting footlongs lately. they still cut it in half for you though.

when i looked up i got the sneaking suspicion that i had offended my date. her mouth was wide open and she hadnt even touched her side salad.

aparantly no one had ever even joked about her being less than a ten, which she was, despite her radical heterosexual leanings. the anal could be worked on.

no baby, youre a ten. have no fear. i just dont think i can date a yankee fan.

and later we split a bowl of soup.