in the LA Times

am i thrilled beyond belief? yes.

did i read the book The Lew Alcindor story 50 times in grade school? yes.

was it nearly impossible for me to keep this under my hat for the last 10 days

no. cuz im a professional.

sorta 🙂

read it, be amazed, tell yr friends.

art credit terry smith

a few weeks ago i did a roundup on the freaky lil war between the church of scientology and a global group of interneters that call themselves Anonymous

it was decided that today was the day that Anonymous was going to protest around the world. “be very wary of the 10th of February” they wrote on various web sites.

if you’ve ever been to my bachelor pad, you know that i live quite close by one of the many buildings owned by the church. and if you know me you will know that i consider them good neighbors. they have 24/7 security, they are polite, and the one time that they came knocking on my door they politely left after i asked them if they had come over to talk about the Bible.

wanna talk about Scientology? they asked. wanna talk about Jesus? i asked back.
we shook hands and went on our way.

today Anonymous came to my block and they were polite and many were well dressed, and far younger than i expected. it wouldnt surprise me, if i learned that this was many of the protesters’ first march.

because it was such a nice day today (upper 70’s), and because i heard one of the masked young men say that they were going to Hollywood Blvd., i grabbed my camera and went over there to see if things were more “heated”, because they were very mellow over by me.

for example, not even the scientologist dude who was videoing the protesters freaked out the kids

hollywood blvd is always a little trippy, which is why its my favorite street in LA. so lets see a variety of different pics of the rally:

as i said last month, although i support people’s right to protest, i also support people’s right to their own religion, no matter how wacky outsiders might think it is. because i like costumes and young people getting off their fat asses and doing Something and because i love the warm weather, i enjoyed the rallies, but i didnt like that they were protesting this church when we have far more powerful churches who are doing far more obscene things.

with that said here are the two people i enjoyed meeting the most this afternoon.

the first was a young lady with a pretty funny jacket who was kind enough to turn around when i asked for a picture.

and the other was a guy with a sign that said that he was a Scientologist and he would talk about his religion with anyone. he was super nice. very easy going.

he said that there were things about his church that he had problems with, but he still choses to be a member.

he included in the message of his sign the phrase “i do forgive” which is a polite dig at Anonymous whose motto ends with with “we do not forgive, we do not forget”. he told me that all the protesters had treated him with respect. and for the time i was there no one shouted at him and he was super mellow. he said no one from his church told him to be there, and it was pretty obvious that he was telling the truth about his experience.

then this guy tried to shove a sign in his face and sorta spoiled the mood.

whatevs, it was pretty damn interesting and im glad i got off my fat ass and took pics for you. best chants from the crowd? “boycott beck” and “save will smith”. i also liked the sign that said “xenu is my homeboy”.

from hollywood, tony p, reporting for thee

update: a video i took and some more pics here

raymi has a lot of good things going for her. shes got an award winning blog. shes hot. she has a great bf… who takes lots of pics of her… for her award winning blog.

her bff is hot. her art is hot and everyone buys all of it.

somewhere along the line raymi decided to review shitloads of food in her blog along with her normal ruling, and thats hot.

and then this week she up and gave herself bangs and now we love her that much more.

oh, and she just won the 2007 Anna Award for like the fourth time in a row.

congratulations, Raymi.

more awards to be announced later.

one of the ways to measure success in blogging is through a site called Technorati. when i was at my last job, LAist, one of my first goals was to get us into the Top 1000 since no other -Ist except Gothamist had cracked that milestone at that point.

to be in the Top 1000 means that out of over 100 million blogs, you are one of the top .001% in regards to popularity and influence.

when we did it, we tried to get to 750, then 666, then 600. i was confident we could do it because this very blog, the busblog, had made it to the low 300s just two months before i joined LAist.

after i got hired at the LA Times in December one of my goals for 2008 was to get not one, but several of our blogs in the Technorati Top 1000. it was an ambitious dream because at the time the LAT didnt even have one blog in the Top 2000, and no newspaper blog had ever been in the Top 100.

today i got an email from Andrew Malcolm (pictured above in the center) announcing that the political blog that he writes with Don Frederick (and some occasional special guests), Top of the Ticket, today made LA Times history. Heres part of his email:

Subj: Pop the Corks!

Two days shy of our eight-month anniversary, Technorati has just this hour elevated Top of the Ticket into the world’s Top 1,000 Blogs !!!

We are now 998 with a weight of 1676.

A month ago we were 2224 with a weight in the 900s.

Congrats to everyone. We need a cake or something. (And a blinking star by the blog’s listing on the homepage. 🙂 )

a lot of people told me a lot of things before i started working with the Times. and id be lying if i told you that all of it was positive. but i can tell you this – Andy Malcolm has been an absolute joy to work with. he and i have emailed each other almost every day since even before i officially was hired on, and not only that but he has taken pretty much all of my little tiny bits of advice and done miracles with it.

bro works all day, all night, weekends, wee hours… hes not the slightest bit afraid to experiment in writing styles, subject matters, or marketing directions. when we first met in person we talked for hours and i showed him a few things and he said “every week teach me something new.” my man is 64 years old – not even twentysomethings have asked me to teach them every week, but andy has, and that eagerness to succeed is clearly one of his biggest strengths.

once i showed him Technorati he was obsessed. not just the list, but who was on it and what they were doing. he became, like me, a student of blogs and trends. he was already a veteran journalist, political expert, and fine writer, but now he’s an online force that simply wont be stopped.

added to that his partner Don Frederick in DC, contributer Scott Martelle, and web deputy Diana Swartz (pictured above, right), Top of the Ticket has just begun to rock. can Top of the Ticket hit the Top 500 by the end of the year? duh. can we get there before Summer?

whats the phrase? oh yeah – yes we can.

congrats Andy, Don, Diana, Scott and everyone else on the team!

lesson: one of the coolest things in the world is an educated brotha.

dont sleep…

the new LA Times owner came to our office yesterday but i was busy trying to put out fires. everyone who went loved it. earlier in the day he wrote us an email saying that his fifty cent salary confused some because how would you get that salary into 26 payments. so sarcastically said he would get a committee together and figure out a way to get a two cent raise. ha. apparently he hates the red tape that he sees stifling the tribune corp. he hates the meetings, hates the navel gazing, hates the bureaucracy. save us sam.

apparently during the speech someone approached him with a quarter to give him a 50% raise – and he took it! shamelessly. beautifully. like a rich man is probably used to doing. all while dropping a wide assortment of f-bombs, and jokes, and no-nonsense strategies.

then he went to our big printing facility on olympic blvd. the veteran pressman and blogger ed padget was there and captured it on video (above) and uploaded the first 9 minutes of sam’s speech. if more of it becomes available i’ll post that too. but watching this makes me wish i had seen sam in person cuz he seems like my sorta guy.

the gentleman in the front row is our publisher david hiller.

i wish i could explain why. i wish i could just write everything that i feel right now and why and because of who, and everything.

and even though nothing in here is true, nobody cares.

what i want you to know is this. i love blogging. i love my job. i love you, my readers. i love pretty much everything.

i love that its quiet right now in my office and cohort is out sick and doesnt have to deal with me right now in the state im in.

i love that i have a half hour to get back into a mindset to rock. i love that i will be going to sxsw to learn and meet new people and hang with cool people and omg write for my employer about the newest bands from all over the world.

i love that me and karisa had sushi last night and kept ordering more and more and drank saki and beer and ate more and caught up and smiled and laughed.

i love that my house is a mess and soon my maid will show up and clean it all up.

i love that my man matt welch, against all odds, spent a huge chunk of last year researching and writing a book about John McCain. and now he will probably sell a gazillion books because everyones gonna wanna know all the dirt on the republican nominee and matt wrote it all down in a funny and informative manner.

i love that im healthy. i love that im starting to eat right. i love that my mom got sent home from work today because the snow was starting to pile up in chicago.

i love that shaq is baq in the western conference. i love that the cubs havent made any stupid moves this winter. i love that i have a corner of a kleenex in my nose because i got a bloody nose from blowing it too much and now people probably think im a coke addict.

i love that i have a half bottle of warm coke on my desk. i love that i have my own office. i love that im wearing a cowboy shirt. i love that i get to type and type and type to you and most of you will read it.

i love that ashley and i are friends again and i have a package for her but its too big for the box and its sitting here on one of my many drawers in my office that i dont use. i love that im practically paperless.

i love that im feeling better.

Just saying hi. Hoping everything with your new job is still going well…. You ceased your “raving” about it on your blog, so I hope it’s still okay….

xoxo,
me

dear me,

hi baby. thanks for writing. first of all lemme tell you how great your blog is. i read it all the time and not only is it always a treat, but its so much better than so many other blogs out there.

its sexy and funny and disgusting and real and quirky and sometimes drunken and beautiful and weird.

you continue to amaze me because youve done things that all bloggers should strive for: you have found your own voice and you have rocked it. so kudos!

as for my job. i fucking love my job. it is such a dream come true and almost every day the dream gets better and better and better.

its almost like having a new girlfriend where at first you cant believe that the prettiest girl in school actually knows you, let alone wants to make out.

when that happens all you wanna do is write about it.

but then things get hotter and heavier and you go to pick her up to take her to the movies and you put your hand on her thigh as you drive and she puts your hand under her hemline and you feel something, whats that, omg garters? and you never make it to the movies. and you realize that the cutest girl in school is sorta a closet freak. either that or she totally loves you. or maybe both.

but its so new and you’ve been around the block a little yourself so you know to keep most of all of this under your hat, publicly at least. like maybe you’ll tell some of your boys, and she’ll tell some of her girls. but you dont tell everyone, not at first at least, cuz its crazy beautiful and its not like youre the type that believes in the lame concept of jinxing things

but there is a time and a place for everything.

and on monday you should come back to the busblog because she said that i can say something about our relationship or whatever this is then. but its something you will never believe and you will totally be blown away by, and maybe even a little proud but you shouldnt be proud, just happy, cuz its rad as hell.

k?

love you back,

tony

mostly cuz it was Super Tuesday, one would be sick of politics

but thanks to the kids over at Fark, here are some funny Obama pics

and an oldie of the clintons:

btw, the LA Times have some cool kids of their own doing some sweet election Java magic:

who’s winning in your county + primary tracker

i love my job and just wait till Monday for a special treat