dear tony, what’s going on with Anna?

anna kournikovaTony, 

Long time reader of the busblog. Going back, wow, 10 years now. I remember checking in and reading you talk about your then-girlfriend Anna Kournakova.

What’s happening these days with her?

Is she alive? I never see her in magazines or TV?

Curious George

Dear George,

they say our tastes change every seven years or so. there was a time i didnt like broccoli or blondes or russians or sassy babes but then those things changed.

now i actually pay real money for broccoli.

anna started dating a boybander about a decade ago and he never made an honest woman out of her and she never really transitioned into becoming a bigger celebrity after she retired from pro tennis, so would she have been better off with a blogger? duh.

because beauty starts with the heart she’s still a knockout who still loves short skirts and dresses and long boots and long hair and still sends me snaps from time to time because doesnt everyone?

do i miss her? no. do i wish her well? meh. im not sure our lives are meant to just be in someone else’s shadow all the time. i think that goes for our kids our bfs/gfs or our spouses. i think we can do it all and have it all. i think some of us are meant to shine – and not just in our 20s and 30s – but all the time.

anna is a jewel who is in a little box in florida. what good is that? what a waste if you ask me. jewels shouldnt be wasted. but we all knew this was gonna happen the minute she got serious with the pretty boy. oh well.

yes theres homelessness in LA

silver lake

the other day someone took this picture of two young ladies taking a picture in front of dangerbird records

next to, what appears to be a homeless guy, sleeping on the street.

ive lived near this very spot for over 15 years and theres a few things about this picture

  1. even though there has been an influx of homeless encampments in East Hollywood / Silver Lake / Los Feliz over the last few years I have not seen many homeless ppl sleeping on Sunset in the middle of the day like this, which doesnt mean it doesn’t happen, i just havent seen it.
  2. i see people posing in front of that stupid sign all the time even though it doesnt make sense – it doesnt say pose for pictures it says think about them.
  3. yoga pants are amazing, thanks obama
  4. hats off to anyone who doesnt buy Nikes

LA has a bizarre relationship with homelessness. Santa Monica and DTLA pretty much let homeless people set up camp anywhere they want. Hollywood is doing the same. every now and then some muckity muck will raise an eyebrow and make a phone call and the people are shown the way out but theres an underpass on Alvarado beneath the 101, theres an underpass in Frog Town and there are overpasses overlooking the 110 where you see tents after tents after tents.

and yet when kind-hearted souls built little houses for the homeless to sleep in, the city took them away citing safety issues as a tent on top of a damn freeway isn’t unsafe.

i dont have any answers for homelessness in LA other than to put these people in abandoned buildings in downtown and provide job training, mental health support, food and love. if we can build billion dollar sports palaces we can buy unused buildings for americans who have fallen on hard times – many of whom are veterans.

but we can’t just shuffle our feet and hope someone else comes up with a better plan because they never do.

a to the z

i drove all night through the desert.

IMG_9329it could be symbolic if you look at things that way.

it was too quick. was it even a vacation? a long weekend? a spiritual journey to find my Chi?

parts of arizona are beautiful and fantastic.

some of it is inauthentic and artificial.

and some of it is lost and forgotten.

my room was for a handicapable person. symbolic? the pool was fantastic but hardly anyone was in it.

kids went nuts because it was big and warm and it had a little waterfall.

but it had all seen better days. i got the room off Priceline name yr own price which is still my favorite way to book hotels.

i ate in as many crappy fast food establishments as i could.

sadly i had to go to walmart in the middle of the night for something that i now forget.

seeing the cubs was fantastic but the best part was when a native american man in a KC Royals shirt came up to me to ask me about the DH rule in NL parks in spring training.

we talked for a while complimenting each others teams.

baseball teams should do a Humans of New York style deal in their instagrams. this guy would have been superb.

drank an Old Style. ate a Portillos italian beef.

drove back through the desert to get home. where its cold and drizzly.

like an entirely different world.