of Lake Minnetonka?

practice

practice

practice

so now you can see my crib like i do

magic couch de stopwatch

gg allin gov arnold and kurdt mountain of old electronics

microwave nook of no damn good

toilet sink tub, the triathlon of triumph

dont let JaG’s sheets fool you, this is where the magic unhappens

i hope you remembered that.

because a guy who took a top ten blog and then doubled its traffic to record highs was axed today

so that a guy who has never done such a thing can take a shot at the wheel.

sometimes i say to my self, that nick denton, he crazy.

the Canadian edition

my man Kris Krug is shooting all things Olympics at the Olympics in BC.

the other day he found himself in the way of a line of over-eager police.

at about 1:17 in the video you will see him (gray sweat shirt, black cap) talking to a cop, turning his back on him, and getting hit/pushed with a shield anyway!

if i have one plea of Canada: please do not act like who you see in America.

the REASON we love Canada is because it is DIFFERENT than the USA.

if youre going to just be USA North we’re going to have to absorb you/take you over/and install George W as king of you.

i dont even think W wants that.

i hope you did too

vday really should be abolished because i think more people get super bummed out than are happy. when you think about it, if youre in love, every day is a happy day, and if youre single you really dont need a FULL DAY to remind yourself that youre not where you probably wanna be.

my truest was my vday date (and vice versa).
she made me a tin of homemade chocolate

she also suggested that we have a little fun

turned out she meant go kart racing fun!

little known fact: little kids CANNOT DRIVE WELL AT ALL!

fine with me cuz someone smelled sake and beer on our breaths and we were booted

so we jetted to a secret hideout and thanked Jah for one another. awwwww

after we went to maggianos and had such great food and even better dessert

hmmmm.

crazy thing about jeanine, is even though we only lived together in sin for a few years, i have probably told more stories of our love than any other person.

others have been inspiring, but something about this girl made it ok to write about and be creative about and share with the world.

maybe its because thats how jeanine is. she may have started out quiet and shy and locked up, but santa barbara and then prague and then frisco opened her up

in a major way.

and perhaps being all bottled up for most of her youth made her realize that thats not the path. so the last thing shed wanna do is stifle people around her from writing about the days of our lives.

for like sands in the hourglass, every moment tells a story.

this is probably my favorite picture of jeanine. we were in maui.

i had just gotten fired at Sears. backstory: i was a recent college graduate and i had decided to stay in Isla Vista to wait for jeanine to graduate ucsb. so i got a job at Sears selling tvs, i was the top salesman, but id ask to leave every day at noon because i sold so much by noon that it was “enough” commission for me, and i just wanted to go home to jeanine. and/or go fishing.

so my boss decided to “do me a favor” and fire me from Sears. when i told him i had this trip to maui planned and paid for, he said, oh im sorry, do you wanna wait till you come back, work for a few weeks, then i will let you go after a few weeks?

i said, nah, i’m gonna be depressed. may as well be depressed in maui with my girlfriend.

when we got there all i wanted to do was stay in the room and be naked and drunk. but jeanine wanted to go out and, you know, see the beautiful environs of freakin hawaii!

i reluctantly agreed and one morning she woke me up super early and said come on we’re gonna drive up the super huge volcano called halakalalala. i was mr grumpy mcgrumpster the whole trip up that crazy mountain and when we got to the top, the place looked nothing like how i ever imagined itd look.

it looked like the damn moon.

and jeanine looked so happy.

and beautiful.

and fresh is the only word i can ever think of.

and i said i love you bay bay, which is what we called each other.

and she said i love you the bay bay, which is what she called me

and i said {way too dirty for a nice birthday rememberence}

which was an inside joke

an incredibly nerdy one because thats what the Bohica dorms wrote on their shirts one year and got in trouble with the university

and i said lets make love right here on top of this lunar landscape in front of God and everyone.

and i fiddled with my bathing suit which is all i wore in hawaii and flopped off my flip flops and she laughed and the japanese tourists aimed their camera lenses toward me

and this cow approached.

totally ruining the mood.

later she would take photos of the cow, and all the cows friends.

and much later we would eat one of that cows relatives.

ah memories.

shes gonna be ten million years old.

which means we’ve known each other 9 million years.

jeanine was not the type of person i thought id know and be close to for 9 million years. she was soooo shy when i met her. her hair was so long. and over her eyes.

shed wear mens suit jackets over tshirts and jeans. everything baggy. everything covered. everything closed off.

isla vista had opened me up to the sun, and for some reason it didnt do anything for her – till we met.

i first read her school district stories in the paper, then i saw her, then i said hi, then we chit chatted. for some reason dating for me at ucsb was simply hi wanna go out and 10 times outta 10, unless you were named stacy sullivan, the girl would say hell yes tony pierce. so even this little closed up freaky quiet girl said yes.

our first two dates were out of stinky IV. downtown santa barbara was only 15-20 minutes away but it couldnt have been any more different than the most densely populated one square mile of IV. we went to the Rose Cafe which was a nice enough restaurant. we ate, talked, and there was zero chemistry.

but we went for it a second time. i got free tickets to see The Never Ending Story Part II. i was the arts editor of the paper. notice the perks. the movie was terrible and the date was worse. jeanine had a force field around her. it was impeneterrible.

you dont understand. i was at my peak. i was way funnier then than now. i was alive. id do anything. id try anything. i was taller, i was tanner, and my fro had the ability to block the sun and heal the sick. surely i could melt the ice cold exterior of any co-ed, and at least get a conversation going with her, but with jeanine, i got nothing.

until one day it rained. i have no idea why, but i knew jeanine played the guitar. and one day it rained and i called her and i asked her if she could come over and teach me some guitar chords and she did, and her wall fell down, and her heart came shooting out of her eyes and her spirit spiraled around us in that crazy small bedroom, and i was all i wanna f that spirit! or at least make out with it. NOW.

i didnt learn one chord that day but i realized that she needed to be drugged.

luckilly for me, she knew it too. her dad was a famous doctor, her brothers were no stranger to the dark side of the moon as they had grown up rich in LA, and jeanine was definately sick of being stuck in her rut.

she asked for lsd and i knew a kid who knew a kid and bing bam boom there she was tripping hard and staring up at the ceiling and there i was sober, holding her hand, letting her know that i was there to protect her and wait on her hand and foot and keep her safe. and all she could say was i need to reach out i need to get out i need to come out.

so we walked around, her pupils as large as manholes, and we listened to a band, and we sat by the ocean, and we went back to my place, and she spilled her guts, and i dont even know if she knew i was even right there with her for most of it, but at some point she kept repeating i need to reach out. and i said are you trying to say you want to kiss? and she said she didnt know. so i said lemme just give you the tiniest of all pecks.

and the world changed cuz she said ok.

happy birthday sweet california girl. born not that long ago about 9 blocks away from where ive been living for the last 9 years. i cannot express how happy i am that we’ve not only remained friends, but stayed close. you are so important to me and my life and have always been there and have always inspired me.

and if i ever do learn how to play guitar, i hope you will be the one who teaches me.

not only is Dan Neil a great writer, but so funny.

you know youre funny when you can make people laugh without saying a word:

dan’s even funny while peacing out

From: Neil, Dan
Sent: Thursday, February 11, 2010 2:54 PM
Subject: Dan Neil on the bounce

Friends, colleagues, brothers and sisters,

In the past week or so people have come up to me and said words to the effect: “The Journal, huh? Sinking ship and all that?” And I just want to slam their heads in a car door.

I absolutely love this newspaper and I am immensely proud of my association with it. People who talk {expletive} about the LA Times to me are going to find me in their grille in a major way.

Maybe you don’t know this story. In November 2002 I had just come through an awful divorce (we pronounce that DEE-vorce in North Carolina). I was sitting heartbroken and alone in a villa in the south of France, on some godforsaken travel assignment, contemplating the taste of gunpowder. Nobody knew where I was. The phone rang. It was former editor John Carroll, who had somehow tracked me down. He wanted me to come to Los Angeles and be the paper’s car critic.

Well, I said to him, as it happens my schedule has just opened up.

It was the beginning of the most wonderful professional experience of my life, the most fun, the most satisfying, the most intellectually challenging. This placed saved me. It made me.

It’s been a rough few years here, mainly because of the jackasses in Chicago who own us. To them I say, with as much gusto as I can muster in an email, {expletive} you.

On a happier note, there’s not a person in this building I do not like, if not love. The paper has more greatness ahead of it, and I’ll be watching from the east coast and rooting you on.

If you are able and inclined, there’s a beer call at Redwood tomorrow, around 5 pm. Hope to see you there.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Dan Neil
-30-

“-30” is an old school journalism mark that used to mean “end of story”. nowadays, sadly, in newsrooms around the country it means someone is retiring, taking a buyout, or being let go. it’s nice that in this case it simply means a pulitzer prize winner is being lured away by deeper pockets and a situation which would allow him to be on tv.

easily one of my favorite writers at the paper, his presence will be sorely missed.

this is a live feed of the Hollywood sign, apparently being “hacked” by Tsar

who are celebrating the birthday of their bass player Jeff “Solly” Solomon

happy 24th birthday King of Judah!

update: the reason for the sign hijacking turned out not to be for the Tsar axewielder, but for some completely unTsar related cause all together.

plus it turns out that Solly is a Gemini, and isnt expecting a birthday till near summer.

photo by Eazylanish