can you believe it?

strangely it’s basically an environmental piece about the shwag bags and how sorta ungreen they all are. but its also about how green certain things have evolved lately at sxsw.

earlier i wrote a piece about advertisements on US Air’s tray tables.

but the big story of the day was the audience revolt at the sxsw keynote aka the Facebook panel because there was a kissass moderator tossing softballs to Zuckerberg and the kids in the audience wanted to know Answers damnit!

apparently it was fascinating.

“Of all the interviews I have ever had the opportunity to sit in on, this one takes the cake for being the worst.” – All Facebook dot com

valleywags liveblogging of the “disaster”.

i am in austin and i have heard that the kareem electronic billboards are up.

this is all very exciting. almost as exciting as being in this beautiful city for the 4th straight year for sxsw, my favorite week of the year.

last night i flew in and was greeted at the airport by my bros dan and ken, and the lovely sk smith. we ate and drank at casino de blahblah out in the back in the cold. it was lovely and delicious.

our waitress was beautiful and had super long hair. she was funny and subtle and kept asking us if we smelled any weed being smoked.

i asked her if she wanted a hit if we could find the alleged culprit but she said it would distract her if she puffed anything. so i couldnt figure out her curiosity. isnt this austin? werent the kids just trying to keep it real weird?

got to the hotel which is right in the heat of things and our first order of business was to try to extend my reservation from ending on Tues to ending next Saturday.
(sadly in a tragic round of miscommunication the LAT travel agent only was able to book me into the Hilton here for a few days and then i was booked out in the outskirts of austin for the remainder of the fest).

the front desk girl’s name was Carisa. i told her that some of my best friends were named that. at first i thought she hated all my jokes, but as i pressed her it was revealed she was secretly loving them. even the teen next to her in the braces was laughing. as was the blonde manager on duty.

“youre a writer”? Carisa asked, apparently judgmentally.

sorta? i hedged.

“thats my dream job.” she said, and granted me the stay here that i wanted, right in the middle of everything, in the best hotel for sxswing, on the coolest floor, with the best view.

i did a little jig, asked the ladies if they ever got guests doing jigs for them, they said no, so i did another one.

your boy’s back, austin!

old school pic of me – check
housesitter has keys being delivered – check
maid should be finished by now – check
car filled with gas – check
itinerary printing out – check
pocket full of business cards – check
basart picking me up at the airport to drink with sara and dan – check

friday questions from you for Ask Tony Questions Day – check?

wrote this great piece

about how our Mayor, for some reason, isn’t interested in being interviewed by the gentleman.

mr lopez, seeing that mayor tony had been spending a lot of time outside the city campaigning for hillary clinton, noticed that mr villaraigosa had gone to texas to help the senator get out the vote. so steve flew to texas, rented a car once there, and drove around from event to event trying to get a sit down with our mayor.

at first he was a step behind the ever-active mayor, but eventually he found him giving a speech at an event and waited for his moment to pop the question about the overdue interview.

I had wondered whether, when I finally got together with Villaraigosa, he would argue that he hasn’t really been out of Los Angeles all that much. But I soon realized I had nothing to worry about. The mayor told the crowd he’d left Los Angeles to go to “Iowa four times, New Hampshire for five days.” And people have wondered, he added, “why I went to Nevada as many times as I did.”

And the answer?

“This is the most important election of my lifetime,” he said, and whether the issue is health insurance for children or getting out of Iraq, Hillary is the answer. “This is where the rubber hits the road, and you all are the rubber.”

Maybe it’s a line better reserved for a rally at a Goodyear plant.

As he left the room, I leaned in to the mayor and said:

“What’s a poor Angeleno have to do to get an interview with you?”

The mayor was a little surprised, I’d say, but gracious enough. I told him I’d come a long way and wondered if we might get together later in the day.

the mayor’s aide said he would try to pencil steve in to the mayor’s busy lone star schedule.

unfortunately, in the wake of one cold shoulder after another (the final involving the mayor escaping to a nightclub in a supersized SUV), our trusty columnist flew home without his interview.

if you recall, last month the Times started advertising on electronic billboards all over the city.

if the mayor wasn’t in a night club, back at Nobu with Robert Di Nero (like he was earlier this week for the opening of the LA Nobu), or off to Pennsylvania to stump for the former first lady,

perhaps he saw this message on one of the numerous electronic billboards in LA.

but i know you wanna see these old college pics

as you know i had an amazing time in college. i had two sets of friends, my Daily Nexus friends (matt welch, jeanine, amy collins, aj, todd francis, tsar, greg mcilvane, and pretty much everyone in mass media today), and my hippie friends of Thirsty Thursdays.

i loved each of them equally and im still very close to both groups, now some 234953 years later.

both groups are getting back together this summer for reunions because we all havent seen each other in a long time. the Thirsty friends created this Yahoo Group and started uploading pics, so lets just go through a few of them super quick cuz im seriously almost crying cuz i love these so much.

i am so old that the grateful dead were still around when we were in college. yes they were on their last legs, but they were strong last legs. i wasnt super crazy about The Dead but i went to a few shows got experienced, and if theres one thing im grateful of my Thirsty friends is turning me on to the Dead because i love music so much and there really was only one Dead scene, and it was like no other ever before or since.

my friends had a hippie van and drove all over the West seeing shows. many weekends i would hold down the fort back in Isla Vista and get woken up in the wee hours and while they unpacked and tell me stories and we’d drink wine and lay around in blankets and slowly fall asleep as the sun rose. it was super beautiful.

none of us had much money. in fact many days id wake up with a little more than a dollar and be amazed when id fall asleep at night thinking: i ate, drank so much, smoked so much, kissed girls, had a great time, and still had change in my pocket. music filled the days and night. in fact when i got my first financial aid check i bought a great cd player for like $500. then i starved for most of the rest of the quarter.

i didnt date as many girls as i wanted to. but during one little point in time my second year in college i had a little run where i had a date with a different young lady every night for a week. one of my favorite people to go out with was this girl amy, above. she had the most beautiful eyes, and this great style, and this very unique voice. some of my friends teased me by calling her Hi because she said it in such a cute way as we would pass each other.

the weird thing about amy was, far as i could tell, we were attracted to each other but when we went in to kiss each other some bizarro force field got in there and it was almost exactly like two magnets of the same polarity: theyd get close but the closer they got the harder it was to touch. we had many dates and hardly anything ever happened, but i loved being around her. she was such an odd mystery and this picture blows my mind cuz i remember that night so perfectly.

here we are with bill and his girlfriend karen. bill is such a talented artist. i had him design the cover of Friday Magazine for me when i was editor of that magazine. bill would get so wasted that he would mumble and we called it Bill Speak. he loved REM almost as much as he loved the Dead. and he was one of the few kids from chicago. karen had an amazing body. not that i know that first hand. or anything.

there was a stretch of time when i think i was drunk or buzzed every day for about a year. alcoholics? no, gauchos.

i have never seen this picture before, that i remember. but its so symbolic. the beautiful blonde the finger is pointing to is Ann who was sorta my girlfriend one summer. i had a terrible relationship with her because i had a crush on her roommate uzi. but uzi was taken and ann had great taste in music and was super close to callie, my roommate. however it was the first time i experienced what people meant by The Thrill of the Chase. because ann liked me, i was turned off, and almost any picture you see of me with her i have that pissed off look on my face. like, fuck her for liking me. how dare she! people are so dumb, we chase the ones who hate us and hate the ones who love us. bottom right is greg vaine who now fronts the beautiful band the hollow trees.

our group was so close that right before we all had to go home for christmas we had an impromptu dress up christmas party. hippies dressed up looks like the most rag tagged group of kids ever. theres a better pic of that night somewhere, but whatever.

hey here it is! hi people!

its hard to say which of our friends has turned out the most successful. pretty much everyone had done well. but the one person im the most happy about is my old roommate chris who has had successful businesses, has two great kids, a wife who he proposed to in the amazon, an amazing house in venice, and laker season tickets.

he also taught me how to skateboard and was part of many of my most memorable experiences on dp and above it. ive been quite blessed in my life. but one thing thats different with me since those days:

i no longer wear a swatch.

is because life is way complicated

for years when i thought about the LA Times i thought of this stodgy old crusty institution where the dudes wore top hats, sported handlebar mustaches, and busted with the monocles even if they didnt need em.

but the truth of the times is that depending on what part of the building youre in you will either see people in suits, people in dress shirts and jeans, or people in jeans and tshirts. likewise the interior decoration is totally different on the 2nd floor which is ultra modern to the 3rd floor which is classic and olde to the 5th floor which looks like a dot com to the 6th floor which is classy old.

the one bond is everyones a pro and everyone wants the same thing – success for the paper – and by the paper i mean the actual papers (we have several) and the online ventures. of course when youre talking about 1,000 people you probably have 1,000 points of view as to how to achieve success, but thats totally normal.

last month the LA Times’ most popular blog, Top of the Ticket, broke a new LAT record by attracting 1,648,673 page views. meanwhile the LA Times dot com site reached a milestone in February. despite the short month we broke 100 million page views.

my boss meredith gave a little speech, everyone smiled, and champagne was popped… but it was a little bittersweet because, like pretty much every paper in the nation, we are all going through an extremely emotional period in the history of newspaper journalism. nearly every paper youve ever heard of has recently had to cut its staff – some drastically.

so although we clicked our plastic cups to celebrate yesterday we also clicked them to honor those who stepped down this week and those who will be asked to go in the coming weeks. trust me when i say that many of us wanted to drink that bubbly and keep drinking for hours, for many reasons – happy and sad- but it was election night and the show had to go on,

and many had to stay in the office putting out the paper.

and by the paper i mean all the papers and web sites.

i love my job and the people i get to work for and with.

and today was a pretty rad day as well.

i get to talk to people who were actually There

randy harvey covered the lakers in the 80s and was There when Marvin sang the star spangled banner better than anyone ever before the NBA All Star Game

he said he was 30 feet away from Marvin and the chills were even bigger in person than what people like me felt thousands of miles away via television

i dare you not to get chills even via youtube

or that texas voters were intelligent

Former TV judge wins congressional primary

03/05/2008

Associated Press

A lawyer who dispensed Texas justice on television stamped out his Democratic competition in the U.S. House District 10 primary election.

Larry Joe Doherty defeated international consultant Dan Grant on Tuesday and now heads to a general election matchup with Republican Rep. Mike McCaul. McCaul’s district stretches from Austin to Houston, with several rural counties in between.

Doherty is a Houston lawyer who sues other lawyers for malpractice. He starred in the television show “Texas Justice” where he delivered rulings in real cases with a Texas drawl.

McCaul is seeking election to a third term.

stolen Escalade in East LA

interesting ending