some interesting things about the charles barkley dui

– even drunk charles barkley doesnt bs. when asked how many drinks he had he admitted “a couple”
– it took just 34 minutes for the cop to pull him over, take him to the jail, and draw blood from him.
– there was a gun in the car that he didnt seem to mention to the arresting officer and when it was found, they impounded it, and sir charles was simply told it was impounded. “Officer Bukowski contacted me at the command post and told me he found a handgun in the vehicle. I instructed him to impound it for safekeeping. I told Mr. Barkley that it was impounded and instructed him how to retrieve it.” No blood, no foul?
– he was allowed to keep his cell phone with him during the whole ordeal
– after he was cited in jail he was “released to a taxi”
– he did it all for the nookie
– and he tried to make the cop admit how hot the woman was: “He told me that he ran the stop sign because he was in a hurry to pick up the girl I saw get in the passenger seat. He asked me to admit that she was ‘hot’.”

read the entire police report on the smoking gun, however i cant wait till they release the digital audio that the cop says the entire thing was recorded.

a quick look around my open tabs

– Wrigley Field looks sorta crazy with a hockey rink in the middle of the outfield

– Krista got her hair did

– Charles Barkley popped with a DUI in Scottsdale, seems to admit that he did it

– Leah probably had the Best Year Ever

– the mighty Doc Searls gave me a shout out while talking about the improvements in Media – thanks Doc!

– JaG is quite colorful today

– Ashley took a lot of Christmas pictures

– In Black culture it’s tradition to have black eyed peas on New Years Day, heres a recipe

– Four Canadian girls whose RSS feeds im all about: Sass, Raymi, Keira-Anne, Gage

she said how many

i said you shouldnt ask those sorts of things

taylor swift
“white horse”
fearless

but, i said, i will tell you the songs that came out in 2008 that i liked the most

she said bleh

i was all

matt good
“im a window”
live at massey hall

weezer
“The Greatest Man That Ever Lived (Variations on a Shaker Hymn)”
the red album

ting tings
“thats not my name”
we started nothing

the teenagers
“feeling better”
the teenagers

mariah carey
“touch my body”
e=mc2

pussycat dolls
“when i grow up”
doll domination

she cut me off there.

its a christmas tree with presents below it

didnt have an ask tony on friday for religious reasons. and also b/c there was only one really good question which i will answer here

Dear Tony, my youtube videos freeze in Firefox. My other videos freeze too (FunnyOrDie.com, Break.com). Sometimes I hear sound, sometimes it stops playing after 3 seconds. Help!! -AB

What youve got is some bad java. you will be fine in three easy steps

1. Download this here Flash uninstaller
2. Download this here Flash installer
3. Close Firefox
4. Run the uninstaller
5. Run the installer
6. Restart

and today the joshes asked me if i had seen this in jeff jarvis’s buzzmachine:

LA Times followup

Russ Stanton, editor of the LA Times, sent email following up on questions I had confirming the much-discussed report below that its web revenue is now sufficient to meet its entire editorial payroll. “Given where we were five years ago,” he email, “I don’t think anyone thought that would ever happen. But that day is here.”

Can I hear an amen?

Stanton does some bragging about the Times’ web life and given this milestone, let’s grant him the moment as Neilsen Net Ratings says it passed USA Today and the Washington Post in uniques with, according to internal numbers, 138 million page views in November, up more than 70% in a year, and 24 million uniques, up 125%.

Secret sauce?

There are two primary reasons for these sharp increases: We have added some outstanding web talent over the past two years, including latimes.com editor Meredith Artley, blogging guru Tony Pierce and database specialist Ben Welsh, who is part of a new 10-person team of interactive and data experts supplementing our print report with terrific online material (more on that in a minute). And our printside reporting and editing staffs have embraced the future like never before.

Nice to see a shoutout for longtime blogging comrade Pierce and for blogging itself:

One of the most visible measures of our success is our blog network. When I became innovation editor in January 2007, only four of our 49 blogs were produced by our staff, and those blogs accounted for only 2% of our site’s total monthly traffic. Today, we have more than 40 blogs, all but six of which are produced by our staff, led by Top of the Ticket, our presidential campaign/politics effort started by Andrew Malcolm and Don Frederick. Technorati now ranks Ticket in the top 60 blogs on the internet. At last count, about half our newsgathering staff — more than 300 professionals — are contributing to our blogs. In several of our traditional print sections (California, Sports, Books, Health, Travel), the entire staff is participating in that section’s main blog. That, in turn, has been acknowledged and valued by our readers. Today, our blogs account for 16% of our total monthly page views.

i hadnt. i was on vacation. but now that ive read it, i now understand all the commotion at all the la-based blogs about us being second only to the new york times last month in unique readers, and now the revelation that advertising on our site can pay all the salaries of our editorial staff, both print and online.

the web is paying for the people.

but heres the interesting thing. all of those newsgatherers who are just learning to blog – they get really good at it, really fast. just wait for whats next.

it’s also nice to see the sales dept get really good at selling the web really fast. educating longtime advertisers about this new thing isn’t easy. especially since it is changing so quickly and because the definitions of things like “blog” are so varied and inconsistent. so kudos to sales for making it happen.

and of course it’s nice to be recognized with my boss meredith who provides a space to make it all happen. she hired as my fellow cubfan, ben and i on the same day. ben, who has teamed up with those newsgatherers and other cool kids, has launched an amazing array of useful and interesting projects like

Mexico Under Seige, California’s War Dead, California Schools Guide, Where the boys and girls are

and of course the LA Top Dog Database

all of the projects, most of which were done by the triple threat of Ben, Eric Ulken, and flash and graphics wiz Sean Connelley, can be seen here.

i had the best conversation with karisa

i was telling her the story about the young lady who told me that she never wanted to see me again.

“how about never” i believe was the response to my earnest invitation.

this young lady and i have the best dinners.

i was going to ask her if maybe since our dinners are the best parts of our times together maybe all we should do together is have dinners.

none of the before or after,

just the looking into the eyes.

the scanning of the dinner threads

the ordering, the waiting

the nibbling

then the gorging.

its la so no desert.

karisa said the root of the problem is lack of trust. and without that

theres nothing.

and of course shes right. as always.

but what is wrong with me that when i hear how about never

that just sounds like the greatest challenge.

pic of keira-anne via keira-anne

Slacker

written and directed by richard linkletter in 1991
total budget: $23,000

linketter of course also wrote and directed dazed and confused (1993), which as great as it was, only grossed $8 million while in theatres.

he also directed the underrated subUrbia in 1996, the classic School of Rock in 2003, the completely underrated remake of the Bad News Bears in 2005 somewhat in part due to the writing team from Bad Santa, and the sobering Fast Food Nation in 2006.

slacker, post punk meets alterna grunge before the hipsters figured out irony, remains as the art school experiment gone good. negativland with visuals.

and somehow its available for free online. legally. (if youre in the US)

this is why they (should) hate us.

h/t rex

there are no taco stands in italy

the au pair told me

we were eating taco bell and chipotle around the huge kitchen island.

any drive thrus, i asked her.

i dont think so. yes mcdonalds i think.

so i asked her the word for crazy in italian

Pazzo she said.

it will be called Pazzo Taccos i said. hard tacos like taco bell, deep fried tacos like Jack in the Box, soft tacos like Midnight Tacos, old school burritos like el faralito in the mish, and spicy burritos like chipotle.

kids eat free.

you make your money off the beer anyways.

i said how are the bars in milan?

she said, oh i dont drink at bars.

i said it will be called Suburbs.

with the instant fortune we will make handing out $4 tacos and $10 burritos we will lease some run down property like an abandoned gas station on the corner of the street, we will tear it down and build a typical suburban home.

in the kitchen is the bar, as well as one downstairs in the basement where the bands often play. in the context of the old world, a tan and sand painted american suburban home right in the middle of the block will be shocking and always packed.

but, i said, it will be better than the actual suburbs because it will have

no kids allowed.

and thats where i lost the au pair.

however later she made cupcakes.

what is Christmas all about

it’s about being in another time zone, with your family, with high school friends, in a guest room watching deal or no deal with the wind bloooooooowing onto the storm windows saying “but I want to watch deal or no deal with you!”

Christmas is about eating and eating and eating without worrying what karisa will think and then listing it all on yr blog: fish, Chinese food starring many shrimp and fried dishes, bacon and grits breakfasts, turkey and mashed potatoes and collard greens, deep dish pizza from ginos east, veal, chipotle beef burrito, many Old Style beers, a few Stellas,home made cupcakes, regular cokes, spiral ham, turkey sandwiches. Chocolates.

Christmas is about playing wii wiith the children one child of whom hates lose so much that when Santa brings new games the boy says uncle tony you play and he watched and takes copious mental notes in regards to mario cart.

Christmas is about being allergic to the new cats but not so allergic that it means more than just sniffling.

Christmas is about getting free tickets to Monday Night Football between da bears and the Wisconsin Women from people who are leaving Soldier Field before halftime because it’s the coldest game ever played there on the lakefront.

Christmas is about being at Woodfield Mall (once the largest mall in the us) on Christmas Eve with your lovely mother and being waited on by the most patient men in Apple Store history as the mall is trying to close.

Christmas is about getting a drunken phone call from Karisa who reports that she and her twentysomething sister were drinking at her brothers bar on Christmas night and the ladies started playing a game of let me slap you ok but only if I can slap you too. Karisa being the triathlete superwoman won immediately and her sister protested the violent loss and the crowd was all omg eastcoast westcoast and there were tears and Karisa ended up Not sleeping at her sisters house that night.

Christmas is about apologies and hangovers the next morning.

But mostly Christmas is about blogging from a phone for the handful of loyal readers who are in equally odd places on this holy holiday. God bless.