when i was a boy i got to meet Jesse Owens, who was a friend of my grandmother.

although i believe in making it tough for a torch to get from one end of frisco to another, i dont believe in not going to olympic events out of protest.

i believe in having jesse owens go to nazi germany to win gold right there in front of hitler and his beliefs about the master race.

i believe in going to mexico city and raising the black power salute while they play the star spangled banner

i believe in beating the russians with kids because yes al michaels i believe in miracles

and miracles dont happen unless you play the game.

do i think that george bush should go to china? no, i think he should go to new orleans where people are still living in fema trailers, i think he should go to watts where gang violence is outta control, i think he should go to pakistan and find evil doer number one.

something tells me that those trips would bring more good to america than sitting in some luxury box halfway around the world.

and then i think he should go to iraq until the end of his term since he seems to have put all his chips on that number.

so go there, war president, decider, uniter, and bring back that victory you keep talking about. there will be enough americans in beijing, as there should be.

as expected it was fun and vegasy and populated with all her hot friends. and the daisy princess looked happy.

but how do i feel about it? this notion of her getting married?

i feel like the dude in sixteen candles who hears from long duck dong that molly ringwald is getting married.

married?

mallied.

married?

yes mallied!

i guess im happy for her. she deserves love. everyone does, but shes a sweet girl and probably deserves it more. and if she wants to get married she should, i guess. she never really had any great boyfriends before, and i wasnt even technically her bf, and the dude shes marrying she lived with for a while and they went through ups and downs, so thats good. at least she knows sorta what shes getting into.

i suppose i have a pretty jaded view of marriage. which is weird because almost all of my friends who have gotten married have all seemed to be happy about it, their kids are beautiful and smart and all, but theres something about the whole concept that makes close to zero sense to me.

even at my advanced age, and even though ive seen it all, almost every week an interesting woman crosses my path and my heart usually says thank you tony for not figuring out a way to end all possibilities for her to reach down your pants.

marriage seems good on paper: lover for life, companion who really knows you, partner who has your best interests at heart, sex and dinner served hot each night. but relationships dont happen on paper. they happen in the real world, and in that arena most of the people who arent my friends generally laugh and admit the fact that the sex ends after a few years of marriage.

count me in?

so what you get is someone who knows you real well who you can get fat with together?

oh, and raise kids. because thats so appealing too. the crying, the whining, the day care costs, the shielding away from the molesters, the health care costs, the tudors, the embarrassing things that they say before you can embarrass yourself on your blog – basically the complete loss of your life for a midget who can barely speak english.

obviously there must be something to the marriage, kids, getting fat path because its been going on since eden and millions of people who enter into that world seem to have absolutely nothing but great things to say about it.

was i going to marry ashley when she was 20? uh, no. was she a great girlfriend, absolutely. do i think that her marriage and future are bright? i think that ashley has a great family, great friends, i think shes smart and beautiful, and the world is her oyster. but since shes a vegetarian, i think the world is her grilled cheesed sandwich. so i think that she will continue to go against the grain, like my friends, and make something good out of this failed concept of til death do us part.

and for sure she will make a gorgeous bride.

: no cubs shirt

my drinking buddy andy sternberg bought an MLB Obama shirt before MLB shut down the site that provided said shirts.

Smoking Gun last month explained why the league shut down the site and has a nice little photo gallery of shirts/jerseys of the other baseball teams that the Obama ’08 campaign ripped off, uh, gave tribute to.

I see an old school White Sox jersey, an old school Padres(!), and above i see the Dodgers, but wheres Da Cubs?

No respect i tell ya, no respect.

btw the Cubbies are on fire, fyi.

rtie had a major meltdown and resigned from the show… it was intense! yikes!”

yes i did. i listen to howard every morning. hes one of my all time idols. i have the second stiletto, it sits next to my bed, it starts recording at 3am and it records for 6 hours.

like most stern fans, artie is my second favorite person on the show next to howard. one reason i love artie is because hes so out of control – the drinking, the overeating, the drugs, the gambling, the overwork, the falling asleep at work on the job, the grandma capprio. artie is so out of control that even though hes so beloved by fans he still feels like he needs to go to hookers to get sex.

the meltdown was classic because teddy and artie blamed each other for everything, howard tried so hard to be supportive but yet artie tried to blame howard, then teddy tried to blame howard. then artie said he loved howard and walked off.

textbook drama. textbook human nature. textbook bipolarity of artie dancing with Lisa G one minute saying how happy he is to be flying to amsterdam later that day and the next minute trying to jump over the console so he could bitchslap his lame assistant.

ultimately i blame teddy. artie is the most generous man on the show. he gives everyone and anyone money. from jeff the drunk to strippers to fans. plus everyone knows what a fragile person he is. so if teddy is nagging him about bonuses, if hes leaning on artie to give him loans, if hes mooching in any way in regards to money – the issue that seems to have caused the most resentment from our fat radio friend – then its teddys fault, not arties.

artie is the only man youve ever heard of who felt bad for his bookie after winning tens of thousands of dollars and let his bookie off the hook.

this morning on Howard 100 News they say that the entire bachelor party of men, teddy and artie included, made it to amsterdam. they say that everyone has seemed to cool off. and tonight there will be a dinner and all parties are expected to be there.

will amsterdam with its access to any vice that artie can escape to (hookers, heroin, hash, hamburgers) spiral him down a tragic and fatal hole? probably. will this blow up scar the stern show forever? never. was it weird listening to howard be so shaken and down once artie left the show? yes.

if he doesnt die in amsterdam, do i think artie will return to the show?

probably not.

i dont think artie ever enjoyed waking up at 5am to get into the show. i dont think artie knows how to fully enjoy success. i dont think artie ever recovered from breaking up with daner. and as a fellow libra, i dont think that artie will ever be at peace with himself until he’s in a committed relationship with someone who he is deeply in love with.

artie appears to be the typical libra, no matter how successful he is, unless he is in love, hes miserable. he can sell out the universal amphitheatre, he can be the funniest guy on the most popular radio show of all time – one whose audience is about to balloon to 18 million listeners once the FCC quits cockblocking and allows Sirius and XM to merge – a guy who is even funny while hes sleeping, he can sell out carnagie hall, he can be so rich and fat and surrounded by family who loves him, he can even have just seen his football team win the super bowl, but yet without a real love affair he’s empty inside.

so yes xtx i heard it, and im sad, cuz i think arties gonna die in xxx.

because today is the last day of a 5 year run for mr eric case at Google/Blogger.

the busblog has been around for seven years this august. the entire time ive used Blogger. one reason is because i have had unbelievable support and encouragement from the people behind Blogger, from ev, to the jasons, to biz, to kimmy, and eric and many others.

my love of Blogger is basically unconditional, i have received pretty much everything because of blogger and this blog, but to be respected and taken care of by so many hard working and generous souls at Blogger only added to the already wonderful feeling about this whole thing.

eric case is pretty much the last person from the early era of Blogger to leave the blogger team at Google. he is probably the nicest guy you will ever meet, retardedly handsome, and spiritual to a point that even i will never achieve. bro’s got it all.

and after today he will have the best thing of all: freedom.

heres what he wrote on his blog last week announcing it all:

After college I spent all of 2002 backpacking around the world, logging into Internet cafes in different cities to update my weblog about the trip. In early 2003 I’d just gotten back online in Thailand after spending a month without Internet access in Burma, and I read news of Google’s acquisition of Blogger. This’ll sound way geeky, but it really felt like one of those, “Where were you when ___ happened?” moments. Overnight it legitimized and validated what a small-but-growing number of people like me were doing back then – publishing and sharing our thoughts and lives on the web.

My friend Katie was working on AdWords at the time, and I emailed her right away. “Katie — lemme know when Blogger starts hiring! It doesn’t matter what for — I just wanna work on it!” I’d been a Blogger user since 2000, and had just moved to my Aunt’s couch in Woodside after my travels wound down (meaning: I’d spent all my cash on the road). Katie invited me to lunch at Charlie’s (at the original GooglePlex), and showed me the little room in Building π where the Blogger guys were hacking away on their laptops. We bumped into Shellen in a snack room, and I interviewed with the team a few weeks later.

I joined Google in April, 2003 as a member of Blogger’s Support Team — we answered lots of email tickets, and built out a fantastic Help site. I took on additional responsibility whenever I could though – Jason Goldman asked me to help with some project management, starting with our first pass at localization. I lead the testing team when Kimmy went on leave. I made lots of mocks with Biz. I helped with several acquisitions, and liaised with Karen to help with PR’s corporate-blogging efforts. I represented Blogger and Google at several conferences around the world, speaking about the democratization of the web and our efforts to spread web publishing far and wide.

I became Blogger’s Product Manager after Goldman left Google in August, 2006. I’m rather atypical as far as Google PMs go — I studied Classics in the mid-west, and aside from the learning-by-doing I’d done thus far at Google, I had no prior experience with software engineering. I’m incredibly thankful to have been given this opportunity, and trusted with the role.

April, 2008 marks five years for me at Google, and it’s time to move on

during the time that Blogger was acquired by Google there were some very rough times with the software. every now and then i would have to write an email to find out what was up. even though there were millions of people using blogger i was always able to contact someone at the company who would be very nice to me and keep me informed with what i could expect.

over the last few years blogger has been pretty much flawless. so when i chatted with eric it was only really for happy reasons. at sxsw last month we had some really great conversations about meditation and relationships and music. it was awesome. and in a few weeks we will be at coachella with some of his friends and one of my friends. it should be a great, long weekend. one that he deserves.

and yes, the busblog will buy him more than a few rounds because this thing youre reading here would not be the same if it wasnt for guys like eric case – one of the many angels who busted ass behind the scenes to make this blogosphere happen.

my job, my friends, my apartment that had a garage a washer dryer a dishwasher and a fireplace, and i ended up back in LA.

why did i leave the bay area and all of those nice things? in part because i felt that “the city” was soft.

which it was, and still is.

dont get me wrong, the people are super nice, the food is great, the views are pretty. but what it does is turn everyone into lotus eaters. the fact that tech booms there is simply due to the fact that thats where the nerds get paid. if nerds got paid that well in montana then silicon valley would be in butte.

it took me working three jobs at the same time in SF to feel the energy and liveliness that i get from the buzz i feel driving anywhere in LA. but thats me, definitely part of the minority.

with that said i was very happy to see frisco get turned into Tienanmen Square when the gd torch got paraded through fishermans warf yesterday. it was nice to see the hippies and the asians and the kids put down their bongs and actually embarrass the mayor and the olympic committe and all the other dunderheads who forgot that frisco isnt soft in one area: whining and bitching over principles.

these fools will block traffic on friday nights for their lameass what-white-people-like critical mass “demonstrations”, they’ll fill the polo grounds to help free tibet, and they’ll line the streets for their gay parades, even though their city is more friendly toward all of those causes than the rest of the world.

these people will even moan when you call it frisco. which is why i do it at every chance that i can get.

will they protest and boo something of importance like Barry Bonds bastardizing the home run record, or the decline of one of the greatest sports franchises the 9ers? no. on those subjects they sip their chablis and hush up.

but bring em an olympic torch, the symbol of international sport, and they will try to rip it from your hands simply based on the fact of where the games are to be held. that they will call in sick to work about.

not $4 gas prices
not an endless war based on lies
not torture in gitmo

but a torch

id say blow me, frisco, but im pretty sure theyd take me up on it.

and aspiring journalists who came to the Times, ate some food, sat down, and listened to four of us talk about the paper and online and etc.

i went to the thing not because i thought i was gonna give a speech but thats how they get you, they tell you theres gonna be free food and drink, you look around and theres 35 young ladies and 3 dudes, then someone taps you on the shoulder and says, wanna say a few words? and you put down your pasta and say, who me?

i asked the kids how many of em had blogs. about half of them rose their hands. i asked them how many wanted to write for a living and almost all of them rose their hands. so i said blog. i said blog twice a day. i said if you think you really wanna be a pro writer to blog three times a day.

i said the reason why is cuz one day you might actually get the job of your dreams and unlike their faves like maureen o’dowd and the like, real writers in the year 2008, especially young ones, write. i said you might come into the office and they look at you and say, can you make it to LAX to interview the CEO of Virgin and review the Donnas playing right there in the terminal and do it with a flute of bubbly in your hand, and can you speed back to the office and write about something else, and help fix this person’s HTML and help fix Typepad, and help resize photos in a web based photo application thats not Photoshop and can you handle it all before it gets dark?

i said if you blog several times a day when youre young you can write those pieces in the middle of all that beautiful chaos. but first you have to practice at home writing about the things youre passionate about.

i said write when you come home from the club drunk. i said write when youre sad cuz your dude just broke yr heart. i said write when youre mad write when your glad write when you believe you dont have shit to say. all of thats practice. all of that is so that you can knock out one piece after another when youre getting paid to do it. but you hafta do it when youre young. cuz if you cant do it when youre young you will make up some lameass bullshit when youre not young and then you’ll realize you probably werent a writer in the first place.

and i dont know exactly how i was describing these things but the ladies laughed and questions were asked and people laughed more. afterwards people were all tony you were great. it was amazing. for some reason i have the shortest memory and the lowest self esteem because way back in the day i used to give sales training seminars in buttfuck california in the basements of Montgomery Ward before the store opened and i would be able to get those people to laugh. and for some reason i forgot that i could still do that.

we talked about perez hilton and our #1 blogger at the Times, andy malcolm, we talked about why they shouldnt worry about hits and why they shouldnt worry about being popular. because none of that shit matters. all that matters is theyre writing several times a day. all that matters is that even if they dont wanna be writers one day God gave rock and roll to you and she gave you the internet to write about it. so bust bitches.

afterwards one of the three dudes in the room started asking me about making money on the web and how to get ads and i was all, didnt i tell you to forget about those things? didnt i tell you that of the 100 million blogs even 1% of them dont make money? he said yeah but im a business major and i was all dude youre in a building for artists, not get rich quick schemes. this is the fourth estate. this is a special part of town. money is not the motivator here, the truth is. and art. theres an art in writing and photography and illustration and reporting and editing and working as a team.

and he said but isnt this a bad place to be in la? arent newspapers dying? and i said my friend, whats going on with the housing market? whats going on with magazines laying off people, whats going on with tv news cutting jobs? what youre seeing is a recession. we’re losing a war where we’ve funneled a trillion dollars (a number that may triple) and then flushed it down the can, do you really think an economy can do that and nothing at all is effected? i said have you been to canada? have you seen how the dollar used to be worth more than the looney and then it was even steven and now you gotta pay more than a buck to get one of their bucks? i said, you think just newspapers are going through rough times? its called 2008 my friend. no ones safe. so write.

and i got home and i opened up the $5 subway from the sweaty bag. and i saw that the Travel blog had published my piece about the Donnas and i gotta say it looks soooo good up there, but its so sad that the pics are so tiny on that blog. i think 350 pixels wide, which is teeney if you ask me.

but word is The Guide is gonna be relaunched very soon and later the blogs on The Guide and if everything works out those columns will be broadened so we can bust with bigger pics. until then heres some pics that didnt make the post, but for those of you who wanna see what it was all about, click here, and make sure to click the video over there so you can see the Donnas’ entrance and entire first song.

ps because there was hella backlight action i had to move to the side so bear with me. i didnt video three times a day when i was young.

& 1 blog had the scoop 4 u

friday we celebrated the birthday of sarah a. who just turned 24. shes half persian half mexican and all hottie. in a very weird coincidence every single one of her friends is hotter than the next and they all arrived at the edison right next door to my work friday to drink and look cute.

sarahs mom and dad and cousin also showed up and everyone was so funny and cool. we drank and drank and ate. later we made it to the 4100 club near my house and drank there too. i was majorly hung over on saturday. but one thing that happened on friday was something id never experienced before.

there i was first with sarah (pictured in black), her friend mary (pictured above with the thigh high stockings), and her friend lindsay.

we all shared a bottle of bubbly and waited for her parents to arrive. first her mom showed up and then one hot babe after another. for a while it was me and 8 smokin hot chicks. i wasnt real sure what to do. is there anything to do? just drink and talk dummy. in fact in a situation like that you might just wanna keep your mouth shut and drink. smile some.

eventually sarahs dad showed up and a few of my bros from work, but basically the ratio of super cool babes who were also somehow rich and law students or something bizarre was a gazillion to one. but then my bros wanted to bail. i was all, gentlemen, where are you gonna go where the ladies are radder than this? still they hemmed and hawed and bailed on me. only guy who stayed was my buddy andy, the news editor of LAist, and clearly no fool.

we ate tacos together.

the next day sarahs friend dalia moved to jordan. but first all the girls threw a goodbye party for her.

bye dalia.

if you dont know duanes storey you should ask him cuz its fascinating and tragic and in the end triumphant. some of it involves expensive camera equipment, computer technology, and one of the best views of downtown vancougar youve ever seen

some of it involves getting beaten up by punks next to a 7-11 for no apparent reason whatsoever.

and of course some of it involves being so drunk on nude years that he pulled a My Life As A Dog but instead of not being able to drink milk outta a glass he had difficulties with chinese food while sitting on his bed.

in a room that we all crashed.

and partied in every night.

even though i had a better room.

ah duane.

photos by duane via flickr

if i lived in toronto id be out all night with the likes of raymi and fil and pitt and christie and alison. if i lived in vancity id be drunk each night with chad and keira and miss 604 and duane. but fortunately i live here in hollywood where i can type to you at 10:30pm from my office at the la times.

while thinking of how i forgot to write something like this for duane yesterday.

duane has talent up the ying yang. he tried to show it to me but i dont like to look up dudes’ yings. duane has a very kind heart and excellent taste in wine women and song.

soon his webmaster skillz will be put to the test because a secret tony pierce blog will be launched on one of his servers and if he thinks he has the strength this very blog, the busblog as well as tonypierce.com might just end up in his capable hands.

duane is a canadian gentleman. the sort that you can reach out to if, say, you lost your wallet in a foreign land and despite staying on the fancy floor of the fancy hotel the concierge wont let you cash a cheque with them even if you have a fancy business card. but duane will loan you the cash no probs no questions axed. and then he will lend you more. at a very low interest rate.

and for that reason we thank duane for being duane and wish him a belated birthday from america.