because, really, what can you do?

when i was a kid i was the only black dude in school, in town, on the court, on the field… seemingly in the world.

if i could have changed anything back then, i would have turned my afro into long flowing rocker hair. mostly because a few of my friends had that and i had the polar opposite.

but as i grew up i found that my crazy hair is what made me unique. its something that people could remember me by. only problem was, i didnt like standing out in a crowd. again, because i was the only black boy in town, i had had enough of standing out… i would have done anything to blend in for a day or two.

strangely, attending uc santa barbara when i did, i was in the minority again in regards to being one of the less than 2% african americans on campus. but that wasnt the strange part, the strange part was there were a certain amount of young ladies who never dated a guy with a fro before and were sick of the long haired surfers who had broken their hearts all through high school.

so needless to say i suddenly was happy to stand out. thus i let the fro gro as big as it could.

mother nature has a weird way of fucking with the program, however and something happened in college. not only did the melatonin sloooowly start fading from my skin but my fro stopped growing so huge. infact now i have absolutely zero hair on my head and im paler than many of my white friends.

but again, these are things that i have no control over, so whatevs, right? well. sorta. as you know im 101 years old. and as you know there are young ladies out there, some of whom, really like bloggers. as in really. problem is, some of these women are really young, like barely legal. thus they have been dating barely legal men, most of whom have no idea what a beer belly is.

when i was in college i weighed 120 pounds. i had a terrible stomach disorder, probably because my entire diet consisted of soda, mcdonalds, pizza, and potato chips. my stomach basically denied anything that came near it. i carried pepto in my glove box. i drank a lot of milk to soothe what ailed me down there. and believe it or not, but the hippies at school treated my maladies with nature’s #1 herb.

and believe it or not, but it worked. my stomach mellowed, i was able to eat, and now im able to cope without any medicine whatsoever.

but now i have a huge beer gut. huge compared to the tiny bellies of the youngins who tap on my window some nights. and strangely it makes mr confident not-so-confident.

so our good friend karisa has decided to help me lose the gut. she wants me to photograph all of the meals and snacks that i eat and tell her how big the dishes were. for years she has taught me that instead of fried chicken (you know us black folk) i should eat grilled chicken. instead of classic coke i should drink water or 100% juice. and instead of driving home and jumping into my pajamas before whatever might happen that night, i should do some *real* exercise like i dont know, run around the block or ride my bike to memphis and back or something.

its hard to argue with karisa because ive known her for a while now and ive seen her only get better with age while i have only gotten balder and fatter and dumber.

therefore for the next week or so, get ready to see my diet and my weight on this blog. i cant guarantee that it will always be pretty, but it will be true, and maybe you can play along in your blogs too.

above is the salad i normally make for myself at work

its that they dont know good art

forget studying science and math and electronic engineering. throw away your physics and biology and finance books, kids with dreams of driving fancy cars should learn from history and the present. the rich will buy anything.

never lay down your crayons. learn to mix oils. get fitted for berets.

not only will women disrobe and pose for you, but the rich will fork over $25-$30 million for paintings like the one above. and the best part about all of this: you dont have to die first.

back in the day you had to go crazy, cut off your ear, paint soup cans, croak, etc., but nowadays you just have to bust. so to speak.

besides the buckets of cash and naked babes, probably the best part of being an artist is you can get away with murder. you can dress like shit, you can smell like shit, your apartment can look shitty, you can paint on walls pretty much anywhere, you can act like a mad man, and you can even be broke most of your life and people will just sigh and think youre some sort of romantic.

poor plumbers dont get that sorta love.

who doesnt wanna wear overalls and splatter paint on the floor of an eastcoast farmhouse while sipping jd? who doesnt wanna sit around a parisian flat knocking out sunflowers? and who doesnt wanna sign and number barack + hope posters and just watch the money flow in?

paint, people. fuck accounting. fuck real estate. fuck dentistry. art = life. insanity = profit. big fat naked chicks = gazillions.

it has always been that way, it will always be this way, amen.

but bathroom walls aint what they used to be

except in Kuwait and Afghanistan where reporter Steve Featherstone was able to photograph the secret words of US military personnel who scrawled their negative feelings about the president, the war, and their enemies on the walls of the latrines.

Featherstone submitted some of the photographs of the walls to A Public Space for its January 2008 issue. And you can see more of the graffiti in this month’s Walrus magazine.

h/t MeFi

i preferred shaq but i did like how he jumped over a car here

but have you seen what that video looked like without the special effects?

meanwhile this was a pretty awesome pass

basically it was the first day of summer.

the good people of hollywood got to sleep with their windows open for the first time in a very long time. so long that even the cars were able to park all day in the shade for free.

the boys got to run around with no shirts on and the girls got to wear those micro miniskirts that seem to remain in fashion thank the lord. and the homeless pushed their worldly possessions right there down the middle of sunset.

it was so hot that coca cola sent vans of people to santee alley to give out free bottles of coke to the folks who were buying illegal dvds

and counterfeit clothes and unlawful bunnies in little plastic cages filled with rabies and soon-to-be dashed dreams. or dinner.

it was so hot that girls that you arent even making love with will call you up and say lets go to the beach and when you pick them up they dont have any beach clothes and you ask them oh are we skinny dipping and they pull out a flask of love and say maaaaaaybe and you think yes im so gonna get lucky thank you unreal heatwave of sex and you picker up in the palisades

and you drive through santa monica and you let her take pictures of palm trees out the window and you make it to venice and youre about to park and becuase shes basically anorexic shes already wasted from the rum and she says psssst

and you say que?

and she says lets just go to your casa.

and you say but my casa is messy-a

and she says lets just go to the snooty fox then

and you say baby you carry around hand sanitizer in your coach bag you dont wanna go to the snooty fox

and she pulls you close at a red light in culver city and whispers in your ear and convinces you to find the snooty fox in ten words or less.

and you drive with the top down listening to satellite radio and this girl knows every song of the big 80s station even though she was born in the middle of the much maligned era

and she asks you to drive thru the taco bell drive thru before you get to the 405 so you do as youre told and she whispers something in your ear that convinces you to get to a little more swanky hotel than the snooty fox in five words or less

and she eats her chalupa while lookin at ya

and by the time you are about to valet

shes passed out and snoring

and say what you want, but life is so not boring.

“markets are a conversation” from the groundbreaking book the cluetrain manifesto, is currently under doctor’s care. he says that hes ok, but you should still probably keep him in your prayers for a week or so.

here’s an email he sent to me and a few others this weekend that id like to share with you.

subject: A little pulmonary embolism

Hi.

Ya’ll are on a loose list of folks I am guessing hasn’t read my blog, or heard through the grapevine that last week I went to the hospital with what felt to me like muscle cramps in my rib cage, but turned out to be a pulmonary embolism, better known as a blood clot, in my right lung. I’m on blood thinners now, and will go in for more examinations this next week. The Wife was in Paris on a vacation that was to continue in Munich this next weekend when The Kid and I were scheduled to meet her (in time for me to do a bunch of work-related stuff at conferences), has returned home to hold down the fort and keep things sane as we get my ass stabilized (that is, with blood sufficiently and consistently thinned), so if I croak it will have to be from something that doesn’t involve clotting. This is a Good Thing.

I may still go to Munich, by the way. That’s the plan, although it’s a bit of a long shot. It depends on whether my clotting resistance is consistently low.

Mysteries at this point are 1) whether I have the same clotting disease my cousins have, called Factor V Leiden (which is treated with the anti-clotting medicine I am already taking); and 2) where the clot came from. We await tests on the first item and may never know the answer to the second. Sonograms of my neck and legs show clear veins. An echo-cardiogram of my heart looks excellent, as does my EKG. My heart, in fact, appears to be very healthy (consistent with tests done several months ago in Santa Barbara after a similar scare that turned out to be a false alarm.) So does pulse (62) and blood pressure (120/70).

The “PE,” as they call it, appears clearly on a CAT scan, as do a few tiny “nodules” that are probably nothing, but require that I get re-CATted in 3 months. Since I have never been a smoker, the doctors are not concerned, but they still want to monitor things, which is good.

Since the most likely source of the clot was my legs, excessive sitting (at my desk and in airplanes) is the leading suspect, in terms of lifestyle. So I have already taken to walking and riding the new bike I bought today. The Wife bought one too. We plan to become a more physically active family.

Other good news is that we are being treated by the greater Harvard medical system, which means things like getting this guy for my hematologist.

This is also the first time I’ve encountered a health care system that pushes me much harder than I push it. I get concerned calls several times a day from truly interested and caring professionals at University Health Services, from the Law School Clinic (where I showed up with my chest pains), and elsewhere.

We just got on that plan a few weeks ago. Much better than having to deal with California minimum self-employed Blue Cross, here in MA.

Anyway, I’m sure I’ll be fine, even if I now fear sitting down, which in the long run (say, more than a week) is a career-limiting attitude.

So I’ll soon be getting a stand-up desk and a much better chair for my sit-down desk.

Anyway, that’s the news. Love to all,

Doc/Dave/David

here are some posts that Doc wrote over the last week regarding the deal at hand

you might remember doc searls from such busblog posts as

– Live From the Blogosphere, Ev Williams announces Blogger being Sold to Google
– Doc at SXSW 2006 with Dooce, her husband, and Henry Copeland of BlogAds
– Doc calls me “the best blogger ever”

so i really appreciate him doing an interview with me for the LA Times blog Web Scout

here was one of my favorite back-and-forths that we had during our 50 minute google chat:

Web Scout: Why on earth do you think Denton would sell Wonkette in the middle of a presidential race?

Ken: It’s a good time for the site to make a move, when everything’s about politics. But Gawker’s ad people just aren’t going to move to D.C. and sell political ads for one site when they’re selling 200-plus million impressions for gadgets and consumer things. So if we’re going to do well, we need ad people who understand political blogs and an agency that sells a ton of political advertising.

Web Scout: Denton says that he has a hard time selling ads for the three blogs it is selling off, not just yours, so wouldn’t an intelligent man then fire his sales team instead of the blogs?

Ken: Well, if any of those blogs were doing the kind of traffic Gizmodo does, then yes. I mean, in a way it’s going back to the whole ideal of the news blog: One or two people do the editorial, BlogAds sells the inventory, and you kind of omit the whole “publisher” part of the model. It’s the Matt Drudge/Perez Hilton/Fark way of doing the Internet, which of course is the way I like to work, at home, with my cocktails and e-mail. And necktie and jacket — I always put on my tie before I go to my office. Must have workplace dignity.

Web Scout: What is your drink of choice nowadays?

Ken: For live-blogging, it’s Jameson on the rocks. Otherwise, bordeaux and pinot noir.

Web Scout: Nothing American? Now I see your ways. OK, now according to Technorati, Wonkette is ranked #63, meaning there are only 62 blogs more popular than your site in the whole world. How is it that Denton seems to think that Wonkette, Idolator and Gridskipper combined only account for 3% of Gawker Media’s traffic? Could that be true?

Ken: There is a Coppola claret that we like a lot, and buy by the case. It’s from California.

Web Scout: Good save. And Sofia can really stomp a grape, I hear.

Ken: It is true, the traffic figures. Now, Wonkette is one of the very top politics blogs. We did 6 million pages last month — another record — and 1.2 million unique visitors. We’re a very big politics site, no doubt. But it’s also true that Gawker sites did 200-plus million views last month. And there’s your 3%.

Obviously, I like political news to be subsidized by fluff. This is why whatever half-naked tart of the month is on the cover of Vanity Fair, but inside you get these great news features and investigations and political rants. I don’t mind that situation. But the truth is that fewer publishers/broadcasters in any medium are willing to subsidize news and politics. Tribune Co. doesn’t want to do it, the TV networks don’t want to do it.

read the whole thing here and dont miss the part where i asked if Nick Denton sold Wonkette because he was afraid of dissing a black or a woman if one of them became president

prince, roger waters, the breeders, and gogol bordello out in indio for coachella are pretty much all i need from a music festival,

but perry farrell seems to have done some crazy ass overachieving, cuz look at this nonsense that he put together for lolla this year – a sample:

Radiohead
Rage Against the Machine
Nine Inch Nails
Kanye West
Wilco
The Raconteurs
Louis XIV
Love and Rockets
Gnarls Barkley
Bloc Party
The Black Keys
Broken Social Scene
Lupe Fiasco
Flogging Molly
Mark Ronson
Cat Power
The National
G. Love & Special Sauce
Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings
Brand New
Gogol Bordello
Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks
Dierks Bentley
Blues Traveler
CSS
Battles
Butch Walker
Mates of State
Brazilian Girls
Chromeo
Duffy
The Kills
The Postelles
Rogue Wave
The Go! Team
Yeasayer
Grizzly Bear
We Go To 11
MGMT
Santogold
Black Kids
Black Lips
Dr. Dog
The Ting Tings
Kid Sister
The Cool Kids
What Made Milwaukee Famous
Does It Offend You, Yeah?
The Whigs
The Octopus Project

never have i wanted to return to chicago in august so badly but i think bro just talked me into it. if only to see kanye, kid sister, and the cool kids in grant park. and i could crash at my mommas house. and maybe see a cubs game? and drink old style? oh the possibilities.

complete lineup on the lollapalooza site