this is the second summer in a row i cant see weird al

weird-al-yankovic-mandatory-fun-tour-review

last summer something happened and i couldnt go so i sold my tickets to ross french, known cubs fan

this summer everything was great when mr matt welch wrote me and said

pick me up at the airport, bring some sushi, we are going to a great party

there will be famous people, free drinks, and probably cheerleaders.

then he said, respond to this email asap and say yes.

so i did and i did totally forgetting that i had tix to weird al at my favorite venue

the hollywood bowl

i dont have any weird al records

but do you need any? for a while his music was on the radio constantly.

then when i lived with whalen, he held him in great honor.

if only i knew whalen’s number id offer them to him, gratis.

so i put them on ebay and did you know you can send a portion of the winnings to charity?

i looked for some non profits in isla vista or my old town in illinois but i didnt see anything good

then i checked out hollywood and there was a non profit for runaway teens.

so they will probably get $25-$50 of my winnings.

developing…

if i went to a shrink this is how it’d go

tony whats your biggest problem

its probably my blog

whats wrong with the busblog?

the problem is when i get ready to write something i always have the best intentions. i want to write something arty and weird and deep and beautiful and so sexy that women from all around the world email me and say omg tony heres me in various outfits and poses, please, lets hang out in LA at your earliest convenience. but what happens is what i write ends up being predictable and bland and not sexy and not arty and certainly not weird. its never about cool topics it’s never written with any semblance of mystery. it’s just out there. boom.

and how does this make you feel?

its like if youre about to make love to someone special, you dont just unzip your fly and clap your hands twice to turn off the lights… you get the candles going, youve got a mixtape rolling, there may even be incense. the sheets are clean, the cats have been drugged and are snoring in a closet, youve showered. trimmed your nails.

im very confused. what does this have to do with your blog journal?

when i write it theres two steps: abject procrastination followed by an unrehearsed vomit session of ideas. theres no follow up, no editing, no fact checking, no spell checking. most of the time i wont even read it afterwards out of pure disgust. my mom will say something like, great writing today! and i will have to go and see what the heck shes talking about. its the opposite of professional or passionate or arty. it’s foul. the process is wrong. the results are all luck. sometimes good sometimes bad. but never what is intended. ever.

and how does that make you feel?

i reminds me of something Ric Ocasek said a long time ago.

is he a baseball player?

no he is that tall lanky pale singer songwriter of The Cars

oh he married a model.

yes. and produced Bad Brains and Weezer’s first record and anyways he said he loves all this dark, trippy weird shit but when he gets on the guitar or at the piano all that comes out is this super poppy 80s music and the only way he can give it any edge is to just slow it down like by a million.

have you tried that?

i just told you, theres nothing to try, i kneel down at the bowl and hurl.

oh. right. got it. that’ll be a hundred bucks please.

protesters made a peace sign in Inglewood last night

peace sign on the street

all weekend there were protests around the country.

most of the time police donning riot gear approached the demonstrators in aggressive ways with night sticks and machine guns and little mini tanks.

but in LA when the protesters marched down Manchester past the 405 to Randy’s Donuts

and the cops were nowhere in the shot.

they just let the demonstration happen.

now it helped that there were lots of alternative routes for motorists to use to get around the blocked off intersection

and when the demonstration found its way onto the 405 where they blocked traffic for a few minutes, the cops arrived and moved them back to the safety of the donut intersection

and then the cops left.

with no friction, the people did what good people do: they did something beautiful and made a peace symbol.

for all the mistakes and cringeworthy moments of this weekend, this was a super sweet spontaneous image i’ll never forget.

and we have the inglewood police and their mayor, mayor butts, to thank for it.

there is politics, there’s opinion, and then there are facts

bill walton and the chickenthe first one is a game. people lie. people root for their “side”. people do things that are sometimes against the best interest of the people they live around.

then comes opinion, someone’s point of view. someone’s ideas. someone’s take.

and finally theres science. actual statistics. numbers. irrefutable evidence.

it may not be easy for everyone to be ok with the fact that black people are killed by cops at a higher rate than white people, but it is a fact that it is happening right now in the USA.

you can have an opinion about that fact, and you might be able to politicize that fact if you want, but just like how right now it’s summer and the year is 2016, cops are killing black people. period.

president obama could politicize this if he wanted to. and some presidents loved politicizing things. i suppose he could try to overreact, but the thing about this president is he does the opposite of flipping out. he’s chill. he works quietly. remember when bin laden died? it happened like a thief in the night.

i dont know who is putting the fear in some peoples minds that obama is going to invoke martial law, but the last time a president did that in a wide spread way was when honest abe did it right before the civil war. we’re having issues right now, but aint no civil war happening. even if trump wins. (which he wont)

everyone needs to chill. everyone needs to look at the facts and see what we can do about this.

but the first step is gonna be sensitive. people are going to have to ask tough questions from law enforcement and they’re going to have to look deep inside. we all know being a cop is an incredibly tough and dangerous job. but only recently are people starting to see that being a young black man isnt a cakewalk either. (or an old black man. or a black woman.)

even the NRA is having a hard time saying, “wait you shot a guy because he legally had a gun and told you about it? thats fucked up.”

crazy opinion coming at ya: theyre having a hard time saying it because theyre not used to coming to the defense of black people.

all i know is i dont know.

i dont know if the cops will ever want to look closely at their fears and how it triggers their actions

and i dont know how many black men on the edge are going to snap like that young man in texas who killed all those cops and then the cops blew him up with a robot.

what i believe is God loves us and is looking out for us.

and what i hope is he leads us down the right path

and we do the right thing once we go down it

zulieka’s unstrung

zuliekaan excerpt from her blog this morning:

I watched Freddy in the shower today; he is packed and moving out tomorrow. I think he is relieved. I watched him soap up, closely, measuring his shoulders among other features. I handed him a towel and wanted to dry him off myself, which he hates. I feel like he’s going off to a war zone. I thought I would be relieved too, but I am very sad. I don’t know what it is we are saying goodbye to–I don’t know who he is anymore. I’m sad that we once shared our dreams with each other, and then did not fight together to keep them alive.

The truth is, the separation is going to be easier for him, and even beneficial. He will be relieved of my corrosive criticism. Everyone thinks I’ll be just fine except they are worried that I’m going to be totally broke. My ten-year-old daughter said “Mom, how are you going to pay rent without Dad? I think you’re being naive.”

there was a time when i proudly said how all of my friends who got married were still married. then this one got divorced then that one then over the last couple years a bunch of them split up.

at first i thought that we, many of whom were raised in divorced homes, had figured it out.

but as it turns out, two people, who are hopefully continuing to grow, sometimes grow apart.

i suppose it’s normal to feel a bit like a failure when the happily ever after doesnt come true but in what part of our lives has forever-ever really been forever-ever?

remember when they told us that CDs could never get damaged?

i change my mind a half dozen times on a variety of things while driving from work to home every night: what im going to eat, what im going to drink, what im gonna watch on tv, which playmate im going to woo, which cubs hat im going to wear to bed.

how on earth did we ever expect two people, with equally changeable minds to change in unison?

the only way it would have worked would have been if the pair got married at 18, had kids at 21 and died at 39.

sadly we live a little longer than that these days.

i have seen people i never thought would ever even fight get divorced

and i have seen people who i never thought would last a second date stick together.

life is a crazy random illogical always surprising series of WTFs that sometimes ends with a warm body in your bed forever who you dont hate.

if you can sprinkle some love in there too

then you are the luckiest person on your block.

something tells me that zulieka will soon be filthy with men

who will gladly offer to dole some WTFs her way.

lets hope she chooses to write about it.

if i get shot and killed by a cop and it is on video

Screen Shot 2016-07-06 at 10.12.26 PMand if it shows that i wasnt doing anything wrong

either i was selling cds or cigarettes

or i was stopped because my taillight was out

even though my taillight was not out.

and if in the video two cops are on top of me

and one of them yells

GUN!

(which is the new n-word)

and if they then shoot me and i die

and if they pull a gun out of my pocket

and if having a gun in your pocket is legal

and reasonable when you consider how dangerous it is for a black man to remain alive these days

and if the cops dont even have to stand trial for my untimely death,

do me this favor.

do not remember me.

do not have a riot in my name.

do not have protests, and debates, and insist that the chief of police or any of the police be forced to resign.

if the police, in no way, have to admit that they were wrong to kill me,

do me this favor,

and you have to because this is my wish

get me a simple headstone

and on it, inscribe these words

black lives dont matter.

and thats all.

because thats what they are telling us every day and every night

from minnesota to baton rouge.

from st. louis to baltimore

from new york to los angeles.

if our lives dont matter, neither do our names.

so leave mine out of it.

today is National Kissing Day, so let’s rejoice

me jeanine and welch kissingmy first kiss: Angela Romano in 6th grade after a fortuitious spin the bottle turn. We went into the bathroom, turned off the lights, and bumped heads. We turned back on the lights, repositioned, turned off the lights and whammo! my life was changed forever.

a couple of summers later i kissed sisters. first Diane at the pool then her sister Heather at a party about a week later. when it rains it pours.

my first time kissing a girlfriend was mary. i needed to build up courage so i waited for something good to play on the car radio. when Tom Petty’s “Breakdown” came on, it was game on.

girls ive kissed in mexico: two – jeanine (pictured) and the truest, maybe a decade apart.

girls ive kissed in europe: two – the dutch girl and the truest. one in holland the other in several countries.

girls i kissed in college: maybe 20 of them?

girls i kissed in college while high off cough syrup while rolling down a hill: kelly o’mara at anisq’Oyo’ Park

kissed a chinese girl? yes: in frisco

kissed a japanese girl? yes: Linda, in IV

kissed a korean girl? yes: in LA

kissed an indian girl? yes: in frisco

kissed a black girl and a white girl? yes: oh Canada!

kissed nine girls in the same night? isla vista baby!

kissed a girl in the car and then told her she was bad at kissing? yes, twice

kissed a jewish girl? oh yea

kissed a redhead? come on of course!

first time a girl bit my tongue on purpose: myra

kissed a girl with a tongue pierce? san diego

kissed a girl i later regretted?

no ragrets

 

there was a time when the cubs could barely justify one all star

kunta

yesterday it was announced that they would be sending SEVEN Cubs to San Dieger

next week for the All Star Game:

their entire infield, their center fielder

and their two best pitchers.

in a perfect world id be going too, but tickets are ridiculously expensive.

and also i hate san diego and i hope if falls into the sea.

and also they are making the players wear uniforms reminiscent of the 1984 Padres

which is on top of my list of reasons for hating san diego

and hoping it sinks into a sweaty goob of magma.

but still i would love to go to the game but

i will instead watch it on tv

like a proper american

without having to leave my humble abode.

(still sorta hoping for magma)

happy birthday, America

Happy birthday to my favorite country
a place where a man born to an African man and a midwestern woman
can go to Harvard, run for president, become president
and despite unprecedented Congressional cockblocking and cowardice,
miraculously pull a nation from a deliberating recession,
while killing tyrants, ending wars,
making the nation freer, healthier, and more prosperous
with style and eloquence.
As a Cub fan I look the other way when I remember he’s a Sox fan.
One day I hope his detractors can look the other way
when they remember
he’s not like them.
yours in rock,
busblog