ask me anything dealie to the Corinthians

Hey Tony, When will Flagrant come back? I really miss her.

ah flagrant. anorexism herself. and whatever swedish finnish dutch name that she also goes by that ive forgotten because remembering the sweet paranoia from that blog is so bittersweet.

flagrant whose blog won the Anna Award several years in a row has been nothing but a blank space on the internet for going on a year and a half now.

maybe she sees it as a clean white space, thus an improvement on the web. but i wouldnt.

her daily struggles with weight and beauty and money and privacy and dealing with this world despite knowing that as The Wire said “if you dont play you cant lose” were fascinating and eloquent.

she always surprised us with her extreme measures and measured tones.

she never bored us. she never obeyed the rules.

often shed delete things or change things so as to cover her tracks or take back some gifts and it was beguiling and added to the mystery.

she doesnt even tweet that much any more.

my guess is she either married that one doctor she was with or a new one. and he tolerates her demands and provides her with the comfort that she so wanted.

and now they travel the world and she shoots beautiful photographs and all is well and as we all know: great life, bad blog.

because the reverse is bittersweetly also the case.

the first is going to be the “remember when this blog ruled the earth?”

remember when the busblog would write about politics and everything was awesome and people would come streaming over here to watch me rant and rage and fight? remember when some commentors were all “omg tony you went too far. i love you but please dont ever go There again.” and id write three more posts immediately going There each time and planting my freak flag There?

imagine what an old school busblogger wouldnt have done about a dude named weiner rockin the mic on the house floor pointing his finger at republicans who want to pretend that they dont wanna give 9/11 first responders health benefits.

weiner.

sigh.

and this blog chronicled that sunny disposition.

it made no sense because at the time i was barely making ends meet, i had no real reason to think that things would work out but god did they ever. i had everything i really wanted.

in a very short period of time this blog will have its 9th birthday. it seems like such a tiny birthday but man has there been a lot of water under that bridge.

the wine, the women, the song.

the last thing i want to turn this into is the whine, the bitching, and the blues but i have a bizarre knack for seeing into the future and its very hard for me to see any light at the end of this tunnel.

they say that unless libras are madly in love it doesnt matter if we are on the cover of Time and Newsweek, we will be miserable. i think thats an exaggeration, and i definitely have a lot of love in my life, but i can tell you first hand that it doesnt matter what i’ve done with my career, i still have all the same highs and lows that i had when i had zero career.

this week interviewing bruce willis and having all of that go so smoothly i felt on top of the world, but monday i had the mondays and here we are at friday and somehow i have the mondays too.

what on earth is wrong with me? what is the answer? all i want to do today is read bukowski and try to decipher some of his genius formula and attempt to channel that into something creative but its now time to shower and make magic for the man.

satisfaction a young lady once told me is appreciating whats in front of you and ignoring what is not.

so i lifted my shirt and said enjoy the glory then baby.

and then we were both asked to leave the cathedral.

my newspaper delivered daily

and my rock stars crazy

and its all because im no longer the mayor of the LA Times.

see that screen shot from this morning? i have 100 checkins for my work.

meanwhile every time i check in, foursquare tells me that the “mayor” of the Times is a guy who hasn’t even been in our building 100 times.

how am i supposed to feel about that?

truth of the matter is i dont care who the mayor of any of these places is, and its very nice that foursquare is currently saying that our mayor is a lovely and hardworking young gentleman fresh outta college.

but what worries me is, if they cant figure out something simple like 100 is more than 20 then what are they really doing with all that amazing personal information that i give them several times a day like

where i am

what im doing

who im with

what im buying

what im eating

what im drinking

people i love and would die for dont know all those minute details

yet these faceless Anybody’s are constantly compiling not just my personal deets but everyone who uses their stuff. so what are the doing with it? and what are they telling people about it?

if you cant even get the easiest part of the “game” right, then what are you doing with the more sensitive stuff that’s not so easy?

a lot of social media and hell even blogging is a trust game with strangers.

and for the most part most of the people have been pretty cool with each other.

but at some point someone is going to feel stupid for sharing such information with people they know nothing about.

i think i have reached that point with foursquare.

and while we were waiting to be introduced to the talent, we found ourselves in the same room as a big tall handsome tv news personality.

one of the things i like to do is make up stuff when people ask how karisa and i met. particularly when shes dressed like she was last night.

“i answered an ad on Craigslist.”

“her family played against mine on Family Feud, hosted by that dude from Home Improvement”

“i met her on the bus on the way here.”

“my toilet was clogged, i called Rotor Rooter, and she knocked on my door.”

“we’re undercover agents for a secret arm of the CIA called the XBI. shes my decoy. look, i have your wallet.”

last night i gave this guy a new one, “shes my kid’s second grade teacher and im trying to improve his grade.”

sometimes the fiction is better than the truth.

yesterday he stopped by Facebook’s HQ and accapellaed them parts of new songs from his forthcoming cd “good ass job”

this is what happens when he loses the voice box tricks and cheesy synths – hes back to being the kayne who took over the world not that long ago.

glad to see chi town represented so well again.

everything.

my momma, my sweet momma, wants me to take a family vacation with her and my sister

and the niece and nephew. and the brother n law.

the puppies from christmas wanna come. they havent grown up or nothin.

the italian au pere from florida wants to come too. as does the new one from brazil.

anna kournikova is thinking about heading out there for it.

marla collins, the former ball girl for the cubs, she knows everyone, shes gonna be there.

and i even think the grateful dead are going to put together a show right there on the beach while we are gonna be out there.

but me, i dont wanna go. can you believe that? sure i wanna see my mom. love her. and the rest of em. except for the puppies. i dont trust puppies. back when i spent some time in hell we came back to earth disguised as puppies because everyone always projects all this unrealistic hope on puppies that it was easy to be evil in their bodies.

but i have things to do here in hollywood. we’re up to something at work. something big. something potentially huge. something that could change things for the good. something that could make us bigger and deffer.

i know yesterday i said i need to go down in the basement and stew a little, but hawaii aint gonna make me stew. my little friends sure as hell arent gonna get me angry. theyre gonna all make me feel like everythings gonna be ok. thats not gonna work for me right now. i gotta feel the edge of doom for these petals to flare out.

a flower blooms when it thinks its gonna die.

a horse runs faster when hes shown the whip.

rdio is playing the Flaming Lips and Henry Rollins reinventing Dark Side

i have 100% changed my opinion of this thing. i love it.

i want it.

i must have it.

it’s everything. and its only $5 a month unless you also wanna play it on your phone and then its $10 a month.

and god it sounds great.

i talk alot. i misspell a lot. i can beat almost anyone at any arguement not because im smarter than anyone but because to me arguements are like MMA cage bouts. im the weirdo who will try to pull your eyeball out and scream when you try to rip my rib out and be all good fight when its over no matter who wins. no one wins. no one ever wins around me in those situations.

but one thing im good for is telling the kids about the new things. and one of the things that im into right now is something that someone who is on an higher path than me turned me onto. Rdio. its not in beta. its so new its in alpha, my favorite rascal.

what it is in a nutshell is every album, online, for a monthly fee. not sure what that will be right now. maybe $25 a month? $20? is unlimited music worth 2 cds a month? i think so.

Rdio is a new music service, where you discover new and old favorite songs through your friends and other people with great taste in music. Rdio works on the web and on your iPhone, BlackBerry and Android devices. Subscribe for unlimited music.

the other day the dude who set me up with a free trial account wrote me and said, “noticed you havent played around with Rdio much?”

truth is i get a lot of free music and i buy the rest. but here i am at a cheerleaders house and my computer is broke and i dont really wanna play the music in my iphone so i figured tonight ok lets see if this is any good. so i looked for this 12 inch single from Soul Asylum.

the kids dont know about 12 inch singles, but in the old days DJs used to get their remixes on 12 inches. but better than that the “alt” bands would put their lame ass single on one side and theyd have some b-sides on the flip side. Soul Asylum had an A-side of “Cartoon” from their “Hang Time” album which should have been a huge radio hit but radio has always stunk. however on the flip side they had this really long medley of songs performed live called “James at 16” because it was 16 songs melded together. like Prince the ladder to Terrance Trent D’Arby to god knows who else. anyways i gave away all my records a long time ago and i always judge websites like Napster to now Rdio by whether or not they have James at 16.

Looks like Rdio is really great. ive been listening to records i hear about but would not buy. like right now im listening to, and enjoying Ke$ha and now wishing that i hadnt missed her opening for Rihana. so this is interesting.

but there is no James at 16. probs because Rdio doesnt do 12 inches or weirdo rare ass stuff. but it certainly fills a need. for example lets say youre stuck at your uncles house and all he has is the web. well, then he really does have millions of songs, at yr disposal.

so yeah, friends are great. and i dont deserve em.