if its true i will be particularily happy for the publisher jake dobkin and the executive editor jen chung because during an extremely important part of my life they were the best bosses i could have dreamed for.

they gave me unreal freedom, tons of patience, and rock solid tips they embodied themselves.

i was the first LA editor they ever gave full time money to. they took a big risk on me. i was a solo blogger who had most recently been booted by a startup. how did that qualify me to lead a large group of bloggers in a group blog?

but they hung in there while i combatted negative commentors as if they were roaches, they endured all forms of my weird and sometimes childish blogger experimentation (including drunken semi political rants in the wee hours), and stuck by me as i tried everything i possibly could to push the envelope and be different than everyone from the Times to… Gothamist.

the partnership – shortlived in retrospect – a mere year and a half – was hugely successful. LAist was the 2nd most popular Ist compared to the mothership for most of my tenure and contributor after contributor was plucked off into paying gigs in journalism or blogging, last of all me to my dream job.

no way could i have made the leap to where i am now without them. simply put, they know what theyre doing, theyre rarely wrong with who they hire, and they work their butts off.

although i did most of my dealings with jake, i wonder about the future of jen. to me shes the worlds greatest blogger. she effortlessly doles out 7-10 posts a day, every day, with links, and insight, and typos (its blogging, chill), and speed, and timeliness. i can totally understand the passion when its your baby, but how on earth can that continue when youre working for the man?

if i was cablevision id buy the company for the millions, but id also make jake and jen vps of digital media of some sort. if youre interested in a blog network, double down and retain those brains to do more than just hand over the keys.

with the ipad right around the corner, blogs are just going to be more vital to the daily/hourly/minute-by-minute quest for More Information. who better than these two to help guide cablevision down the right path in delivering news and creating community with little overhead?

too many times have we seen companies like microsoft buy webtv and do nothing with that technological head start. likewise how much better is blogger many years after google purchased it? the $5 million pricetag for the Gothamist sites is a good start and gets a nice foothold in several important cities around the world, but that investment dies on the vine without the minds that made it happen.

others are also talking about this good news for the Gothamist leaders

Laura Rich – Buying the Company for the Blogger

Reuters – Blogonomics: The Gothamist sale

Business Insider – Nick Denton Is An Out-Of-Touch Scrooge For Downplaying Gothamist’s Big Sale

The Awl – Gawker Kingpin Explains Gothamist Sale

NY Times: Cablevision Unit Is Said to Be Interested in Acquiring Gothamist

so many people this month told me they want to kill themselves.

and i hope each and every one of them saw tonights Lost

because in it we are reminded that things are often not what they appear to be

and even concrete perceptions of simple concepts like good and bad

love and hate

and life and death

can often be jumbled inside the temporary turmoil of our circumstance.

Lost was my favorite show for so long and yet this year I nearly gave up on it.

like a fool.

today showed me that i am not even close to being the patient man i need to be.

in this instant gratification world where feedback comes quickly and steadily,

we forget that nature doesnt give a g damn about our pithy beliefs regarding control and time.

sometimes you have to just sit there and take it.

because the sun will rise tomorrow.

and a new day will dawn.

a better one than today.

Tony, I luv you but no way did Karissa run that marathon. Pics or it didn’t happen.

there you go, Anon, now get a gmail addy like the rest of the world.

and start trusting the blog where nothing in it is true.

especially our pal karisa who finished it in just Four Hours and Seven Minutes

which placed her 2,963 out of 25,000 runners.

amazing.

i get uncomfortable sitting in a movie for two hours

i cant imagine running through the streets of LA for twice that time.

bravo to all.

i always dismissed him as one of those guys that only chicks would be into.

you know what i mean.

once again my closemindedness has proved me foolish. cuz this use of Chat Roulette is shear genius.

(heads up: contains some adult language)

i was so exhausted

when i got on the plane i wasnt feeling well.

while i was on the plane i felt horrible. all i wanted to do was sleep.

i bought one of those ridiculous neck things because i wanted to sleep. didnt work.

i smuggled a roll of TP in my pocket and blew throughout the flight.

very sweet man next to me endured it. he had flown to Texas to hunt. deer mostly.

loved venison burgers, he told me.

i put my headphones on and turned the tv channels. god bless jet blue

for a minute i wondered if the xbi was involved

because at that moment i would have done just about anything to ease the pain.

so intense. so irritating. so dire.

my whole body was trying to get rid of something: my eyes were welling up, my nose, my throat, i had to pee, i had to exeunt, i wanted to say something,

but what.

stop.

help.

land.

was the last off the plane cuz i couldnt get up.

lurched over i saw my truest at the curb.

when i hugged her it was like hugging yr mom. so comforting. so sweet.

everything

was

going to be all right.

she had come early cuz shes an angel. and parked. and waited.

even though i was afraid i was gonna barf it all up i asked her to take me to soul food.

the line wasnt long but it wasnt moving. have you ever wondered why its so easy for you to do things at the ATM or grocery line or post office but it takes the two people in front of you FOREVER to figure it out.

smothered chicken, collard greens, mac n cheese, candied yams please.

how hards that? i think i even asked omg one question: do you have any breasts?

cuz its funny.

so why does everyone else have like 20 questions. or the 1 question they know will stop the presses?

nose was so stuffed up that i couldnt smell the food in the car as we drove back up the 405.

hours later i was feeling 88 percent better.

because of love

and soul food.

maybe not in that order.

but probably

that the main line in the chorus of “Bastards of Young” is not what we’ve all been singing along to for more than 20 years

Westerberg: “It took years for someone to pick up on the fact that the chorus is “Wait on the sons of no one,” not “We are the sons of no one.” I didn’t even know that – I wrote it and forgot it. A writer named Bob Mehr had to point that out to me. I actually took it from a chapter in the Bible.”

SPIN: Whoa And that might be the most famous line you’ve ever written.

Armstrong: I can’t wait to tell my friend Jason – we always play Replacements trivia. I’m so winning this one. (page 53, April 2010, Spin)

(for the record, i cannot find that so called bible chapter anywhere in the bible.)

later Billie Joe asks Paul why they never created a side project together and Paul says its the same reason John Fogerty and Alex Chilton never had one – because they do pretty much the same type of music.

It was some years back, the last time I saw Alex Chilton. We miraculously bumped into each other one autumn evening in New York, he in a Memphis Minnie T-shirt, with take-out Thai, en route to his hotel. He invited me along to watch the World Series on TV, and I immediately discarded whatever flimsy obligation I may have had. We watched baseball, talked and laughed, especially about his current residence — he was living in, get this, a tent in Tennessee.

Because we were musicians, our talk inevitably turned toward women, and Al, ever the Southern gentleman, was having a hard time between bites communicating to me the difficulty in … you see, the difficulty in (me taking my last swig that didn’t end up on the wall, as I boldly supplied the punch line) “… in asking a young lady if she’d like to come back to your tent?” We both darn near died there in a fit of laughter.

Yeah, December boys got it bad, as “September Gurls” notes. The great Alex Chilton is gone — folk troubadour, blues shouter, master singer, songwriter and guitarist. Someone should write a tune about him. Then again, nah, that would be impossible. Or just plain stupid.

read the whole thing here