why these women make out with me. the roads are quiet and dark and peaceful at this hour. my head throbs from over-stimulation. i still listen to the music of my youth and the fact that it sounds so much different than todays sounds makes me feel so old.

age is a good thing sometimes. like after a while you learn how to avoid arguements, you learn how to do certain things, you learn how to see warning signs. you learn when to drive home.

its a bad thing sometimes because you get sleepy faster, you daydream about the oddest things, you have a hard time with patience.

when i was younger, i remember this one time i was kissing a girl in the park. we had been drinking, but not too much. but enough. it was sunny out still so maybe we had been playing sloshball. we rolled down this hill making out. only the second time we had ever hooked up. we knew we werent in love. we knew it was just a drunken hookup. but still when i kissed her that day she caused me to see visions when i closed my eyes.

i saw a museum i had never been to. i saw baseballs hall of fame in cooperstown new york. i saw babe ruths bat and ty cobbs old glove. i saw a ball hit by hank aaron.

we reached the bottom of the hill and i opened my eyes and she was still kissing me. so pretty. way prettier than she shoulda been. same age as me but older soul, wiser, girls can be like that sometimes. and when i closed my eyes again there i was back in cooperstown looking at old bases and the first world series rings. all these things.

tonight i kissed a girl who wasnt even walking the day i saw cooperstown. and she too had my mind racing into places that i never could have imagined. i thought about how black sparrow press should create a complete collection of bukowski books. i thought that they should have two sets, one which would be the complete set of everything that would cost a ton. and another set that would be half the size, a hand selected, curated set, that would cost half a ton. the half collection would be all the classics – ham on rye, post office, women, etc.

she got on top and i thought they should ship the books in boxes that look like cases of beer. then i got on top and thought they should start making beer called bukowski and stop changing the covers of those great books and give his estate the proceeds from the beer and leave the great works alone.

i wondered what this young woman, girl really, wanted with me. she was already rich. she was already smart. she already had lots of friends on facebook. it wasnt like our conversations were all that amazing. it was like she just wanted someone to listen to music with. nakedly. and have something to do with her hands.

driving home i didnt want to stop. i didnt want to get home. it was the same feeling i had in high school in the morning. i didnt want the bus to get to the school. i wanted it to hit an ice slick and crash into a fire hydrant, burst in flames and get put out by the hydrant water and freeze all in seconds as we kids watched in safety. an odd feeling because i liked school. and i like my home.

but i just wanted to enjoy the ride, and i didnt want it to end.

we had the best music in that school bus.

and now that music plays in my car.

hilarity ensues

this is from tonight’s episode of the Late Show. apparently mccain called Dave and said he couldnt make the show because he had to rush to the airport, fly to washington, and save the economy.

but then dave found out that mccain wanted to go on katie couric’s cbs evening news.

rarely do events like this fall into place *before* the show in question actually airs, so i cant wait to see this in its entirety on a real tv. in the meantime, thank you you tubes.

A new Arts blog called Culture Monster which will cover all of the fine arts: Theatre, classical music, architecture, opera

And a new sports blog called The Fabulous Forum which will cover all sports from boxing to horse racing to the NFL and even the American League.

We now have 45 blogs in our stable of rock. And we have a few more we’re working on which will launch before the end of the year so stay tuned.

umqua oregon is on that short list. its beautiful, it’s cheap, a man can have land. i like that. i believe this guy would be one of my congressional reps. i also like that

and im glad that congress is saying wtf to the bailout. dont get me wrong, i wish i could find myself in the position where i could say, US government you should let me have 700 billion to do what i think is the right thing. but i also like our reps saying wait a second tonto. lets ALL think about all of this for a hot minute.

lol

i swear i had nothing to do with this

not even in the slightest.

but i am laughing my cheezburger off

somewhat because the predictable haters will have a little ammo to pretend that omg this is the end of the worldz

but mostly because its proof that the show must go on in regards to telling our readers whats going on in the world, and that little website (the one with the cats who cant spell very well) is a damn phenomenon and its praise is overdue.

technorati yesterday gave its State of the Blogosphere. one of the more interesting things is that technorati discovered that in the last 24 hours about 900,000 blogs posted new content. thats more competition than tv, newspapers, radio, has ever had, combined.

of that new content, the LOL cats are in the technorati top 10 (and have been there for a while) meaning that they can count the blogs that are more popular than them on two paws.

we at the Times are thrilled and still a little stunned that out of 100 million blogs we have one in the technorati top 100, meanwhile those little kitties are still mopping the floor with us no matter how much marketing, no matter how much support, no matter what we cover, no matter how great our writers are.

that frigging kitteh blog is just lulzing its way to teh banks.

good for them.

they found a niche, they hit a sweet spot, and they didnt mess it up. bravo.

not just because they keep inviting me to annenberg to speak

not just because their football team is amazing

and not just because ive always been slightly fascinated by their marching band

but check out this interesting tidbit caught by Adam Rose – former LAist sports editor and current LAT blogger of the All Things Trojan blog – the Red Hot Chili Pepper bassist Flea is a freshman at USC – studying music!

The 45-year-old is listed as an “undergraduate visitor” in USC’s Thornton School of Music. Balzary probably has a leg up on most of his classmates, considering he founded the Silverlake Conservatory of Music and, oh, yeah … is a rock icon. While he’s on campus several times per week, don’t expect any dorm sightings — Flea’s a commuter student.

Besides collaborating with legendary artists like Jane’s Addiction, Nirvana, and Alanis Morisette, Balzary has appeared in The Big Lebowski, My Own Private Idaho, and one of the Back to the Future movies. His latest “appearance” was at USC’s football practice — he stopped by after class because he heard a commotion. The Trojans were playing simulated crowd noise to mimic their upcoming road trip to Oregon State, and the practice field is adjacent to the music school.

Adam also runs the Times’ UCLA blog, so when Jimmy Page enrolls over there expect to hear it on What’s Bruin first.

a shy guy at the college named after me hearts Naiomi but he was too shy to say hi

and some flirting in the lbc that lead to a boston brotha who didnt do nothing

proof that LA isnt all about stoned surfers, movie stars, and guys who ride the bus and blog for you

but first this old clip where he makes fun of religion

in his sunday column for the chicago sun-times (i wonder if it made it in print) the author of Your Movie Sucks presented questions and answers in regards to Creationsim. here are some examples:

Q. Were there ice ages lasting millions of years?

A. No, but a recent and catastrophic Ice Epoch.

Q. Did the Colorado River carve out the mile-deep Grand Canyon over eons?

A. It was the result of Ice Epochs, the Great Flood and other catastrophes within the last 64 to 100 centuries.

Q. Was there a Noah, and did he have an Ark?

A. Certainly. There are many unverified reports of a massive wooden vessel on Mount Ararat. The Arc contained eight people, from whom we are all descended. It also contained two of each kind of animal. Since living species were obviously not created through an evolutionary process, every surviving land-based mammal species (about 5,400) had both ancestors on the Arc.

Q: What about dinosaurs?

A. They walked the earth at the same time as man, but were wiped out by the Flood, whose turbulence buried their bones in non-sequential sediments.

rarely will i link to the sun-times, as they seem to favor the white sox, but this column is amazing, to say the least.

as she celebrates today, the first day of fall

she begins:

it’s true, fall is my favourite season, i have written many things in my journal about it, all gay, all true. it makes me feel sad and dreamy and sentimental, it’s the shortest season which makes it SO INTENSE. it’s the best time of year for fashion and no i don’t mean your fashion, i mean my fashion, which consists of the same bag lady sweater i’ve had crinkling up on my hanger for years, stupid jeans that don’t fit right, and toques, omg toques.

later she makes love to us with her ears

my fall soundtrack consists of led zeppelin and that’s it, zeppelin and longboarding in oakville and my grandma’s house and riding into town or walking into town at nite taking a different route every time and then meeting up with fil at a pub and staring at him like that woman who lied about being kidnapped or whatever that story was about.

and then brings it home:

i was pretty thin when i met fil which made crazy fall outfits ten times easier, when you have long hair and a big mouth you can essentially wear any old tickle trunk outfit – it’s v hard to pull that off in the heat of summer but i give you props for wearing a scarf and a t-shirt when it’s 28 degrees and when i say props i mean silently guffawing my head off.

fall is for lovers, sears catalogue lovers, THAT is fall.

theres more. because shes raymi theres lots of photos, including an inappropriate gift for a young girl who looks alot like our long lost ettienne.

sad to say raymster, LA has fall, but only in theory.

in search for Main Street USA

Our biggest columnist found a lot of things in the video above, including a jaywalking moose.

At the airport I’d asked for a mid-size car, and they gave me an SUV. Now it was becoming clear why: A Camry wouldn’t have a fighting chance against a moose.

Maybe it was a sign that I wasn’t welcome in Palin country and should go back home to California. But just six years after she was mayor of Wasilla, a town of fewer than 10,000 residents, Palin could become vice president of the United States. I wanted to get a better sense of her by seeing the place that launched her onto the world stage.

The scenery on the drive to Wasilla is stunning, with jagged snow-capped peaks and dense birch forests. But if you travel this way, do not make the mistake of thinking you’re about to enter a quaint mountain village.

Some towns have character. Some have a sense of place.

And then there is Wasilla, which greets visitors with Wal-mart, Target, Lowe’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Carl’s Jr., McDonald’s and Taco Bell.

They paved paradise, and all they’ve got to show for it is chalupas and discount tube socks.

read the whole thing, as they say.