Monthly Archives: February 2020

my memory loves me

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I got a lot of really sweet notes and DMs and comments about my black history piece.

but the most surprising thing was when one of my high school friends wrote this

TP – thank you for posting this. I still remember you not coming inside my house for my graduation party 😞. I’ve told that story many times and it makes me sad. You played it “cool”, of course. You were the coolest person I know!

I had no idea what she was talking about. Why wouldn’t I have come inside her house? We didn’t live close enough for me to walk to or even bike to, so I must have borrowed my moms car to get there.

Had I not been invited in by some uptight dad? So I asked her. And she said

not invited in…you and I hung out on the driveway. I’m glad you didn’t remember it.

How could I not have remembered that?

sure I had been called the n word from time to time but seriously who hasn’t.

but to have an adult tell a high school kid he can’t come inside a pretty girl’s graduation party? you’d think that’d stick.

I was so focused on coming to LA when I was wrapping up school. my head was not in that Midwest world at all.

some of the best things happened that spring before I came here but I didn’t even notice those things either.

I went to prom with a junior who the next year would be the rose queen of roselle. a totally different girl kissed me after we went to the movies. these cheerleaders got me drunk and said the nicest things.

it was all like a dream and maybe I just didn’t let it in because I was laser focused to go West young man. so some racist dad? whatever. I had shit to do.

I had been in that house since I was tiny.

it was such a good childhood. three channels on tv, no internet, no cell phones and somehow I felt like I had everything.

other than permission to party it seems.

LOL

I wrote a thing

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Then I wrote another.

But now I feel sick. I hope it’s allergies. It might be the Corona Virus.

So I took amber to Hot & Slutty which is a shrimp and crawfish place where most of the diners are black.

Really messy delicious spicy food.

So good.

Then I got my car detailed so I could drive Uber again.

That was fine.

Then I held ambers hand and said if I go everything’s yours.

She said put that on paper! I said I have a blog.

Then we got home and I got on Facebook and saw this girl I always thought was amazing wrote that her BF is in the hospital and he truly is dying of kidney failure and I felt terrible for making death jokes.

Her nickname in college was Death because she was super goth.

In the most beautiful way.

todays the first day of Lent,

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instead of giving up something imma

write on the world famous busblog every day.

how you like that?

yesterday amber had the day off and i had to work but it was on venice beach so we went together.

she wasnt super into it, she says, because it makes her miss journalism and i make it look so easy and fun.

while it’s true that the interviewing part that she sees is fun, the transcribing hours of chit chat is def not fun.

neither is psyching yourself up to get the courage to ask strangers their deepest darkest truths.

one fellow i met looked like he could be in lynyrd skynryd. he had a camouflage MAGA hat and sunglasses.

i was all, hey lets talk about your hat.

twas a bit intimidating. let me tell you.

and maybe its what he wanted because who goes to Venice with a hat like that and think no one is gonna wanna chat you up?

there was kobe things everywhere and it made me think about Jimble Kimble about how he said he noticed that on every corner theres a kobe mural now

and while that is an exaggeration, there is a Ton of remembrances,  sorta how there were flags everywhere after 9/11

the best shirt i saw was one of kobe in the design of the jerry west NBA logo.

but instead of NBA it said RIP.

we ate a bit and went up to High which has such a great view. on our way back to the car i was all, lets go to the sand and watch the sunset.

ive always wanted to watch it from an unused lifeguard station and thats what we did.

i had flip flops on which were slippery on the ramp.

the sun was so perfect. so many ppl were out there watching it set because it was like 73 degrees.

when it was done i wanted to applaud it but even on venice beach i woulda looked like a freak

which i am.

as you know.

strangely: didnt smell a lot of weed there.

on this day in 1984, “Jump” went #1

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I first came to LA in 1984 for New Years to see Illinois play UCLA in the Rose Bowl. Don’t research the score of that game.

Two things struck me about that trip. Three really. The first was the weather was incredible. So much different than the frigid midwest. The other was the women were beautiful and they looked at me and used ESP to talk with me and compliment my raggedy afro and teenage acne.

But the thing that has stuck with me the most and I remember this clearly, was in the parking lot of our Marina Del Rey hotel, I was listening to KMET 94.7 FM and the DJ said, “now I have something very special here, and you won’t believe who it is.”

And he played “Jump.” And he was right, I did not believe that the best guitarist at the time had switched to synthesizers, which were roundly loathed in my high school.

People talk about when Dylan went electric. The audience called him Judas. Trust me when I tell you the burnouts of my school had harsher words for Eddie Van Halen smiling behind the keyboards of this tune. I hated it at first. Why hast he forsaken us? This was the peak of hair metal.

Fortunately when the full album was released it contained actual rockers like “Hot For Teacher,” “Panama” and “Top Jimmy” but even then we had an inkling that this might be the beginning of the end. How right we were.

Ironically, “1984” was my favorite record for a little while. Until I moved to L.A. that summer and I was introduced to SST records, and KROQ.

rotten tomatoes subtweets ftw

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Today in corporate tweeting:

During a rally yesterday in Colorado, Vladimir Putin’s choice for U.S. President delivered a two-hour rambling monologue

where when he wasn’t insulting a teen trying to save the planet from climate change,

he ripped into the thousands of members of The Academy of Motion Pictures who awarded “Parasite” with several Oscars including Best Picture.

“Can we get, like, ‘Gone With the Wind’ back please?” he asked,

referring to the 71 year-old Best Picture epic set on a slave plantation

during the Civil War.

Can we have more four-hour-long movies about the good old days

when black people knew their place, had no freedom,

worked for free,

were bought and sold as property

during a violent time when the nation was tragically divided

over the abhorrent racist centuries-old American practice

of human bondage,

asked the recently impeached president.

His audience, unsurprisingly, cheered.

Trump acknowledged that he hadn’t seen the Korean film about a poor family’s relationship with a rich one.

The film’s studio tweeted that it was because “he can’t read.”

referring to the fact that the widely lauded movie has subtitles.

But the subtweet of the day came from Rotten Tomatoes, the film review aggregator,

who merely listed how overwhelmingly well-received Bong Joon-ho’s film was among critics

and the worldwide film community.

That tweet was a master class in shade.

i dont know why i do the things i do to my self

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it’s like the worst game of Horse.

i do it because i know no one else will.

i get in arguments online. i take on challenges no one would. i put myself out there.

for the gram? to accept the challenge? because fuckit? because it’s punk rock? because i have something to prove?

ive got nothing to prove. and worse, ive learned that even once you prove it, it doesnt matter.

shits gonna go down the way its gonna go down so you can do whatever you were gonna do this has all be said and done before

theres an alpha and an omega and just like every video game heres how this one ends

with a flashing game over

no one celebrates your incredible Centipede game.

why would anyone praise this?

got pulled over a few months ago and told the gent that i was in a rush and it was a serious health emergency

he said he believed me but took his sweet time writing me a ticket anyway

when he gave me the ticket he asked me, “ok?”

i said no it wasnt ok, which was not the ok thing to do because he took the ticket, scratched off the original offense and scribbled in a more severe penalty

because apparently answering truthfully to the law is not really what they wanna hear.

ninjas gotta esp a fool these days.

im angry about a lot of things, most of all that im sleepy at midnight and i really wanted to write.

on my gravestone simply write

did everything wrong and ended up here.

 

ugly secret: i don’t know whats going to be successful online

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when im not kissing pretty girls, im putting things up on the internet hoping they will get seen.

is there an art to it? no.

are there people who are good at it? yes.

is their batting average super high? no.

in baseball if you fail 7 out of 10 times you become a millionaire. but if you fail 8 times out of 10 you lose your job.

in internet if you fail 80 times out of 100 nobody even notices. in fact you only have to succeed, like really succeed maybe 3 or 4 times all year to be respected. and even then you probably wont even get respect because come on, it’s the internet.

dude who sang Chocolate Rain has a million subscribers on YouTube. online popularity is as predictable and fleeting as a butterfly in a hurricane.

which brings us to the truth. ive met lots of people and ive seen them try.

and thats the root of most success no matter what it is: try.

keep experimenting. keep working at it. adjust. study the trends. be one with the rules. break the rules.

but above all i believe this: the good stuff will rise to the top. it always has and it always will. Van Gogh is the exception. but if that fucker lived today and had an Insta he’d be paying cash; first class – sitting next to Vanna White.

i also believe that we all have something to contribute. we may not all know how to paint a sunflower or sing a song but i have known too many people – and they all have something. that means you and you and you. we proved that with LAist. we see it online.

brands cannot compete with the average joe. perfect example. Jimmy Kimmel is super popular. he has a TV show on ABC. his BFF is Howard Stern. pretty much everyone loves him except for people who love Trump so much that they hate that Jimmy believes that everyone should have healthcare.

the other day he had on Chris Pratt and Tom Holland, two Marvel stars. their video clip is #16 in Trending right now on YouTube and it has amassed 1.6 million views. which is good. but again it’s Jimmy, Spider-man and Star Lord talking about Valentine’s Day *on* Valentines Day.

meanwhile there’s emma chamberlain.

emma is not a tv or movie star. she has acne. she is 18. she does not dress slutty or twerk (unless ironically) and in her latest video that she posted 5 days ago she goes over her videos of the last 2-3 years.

which is vintage/oldschool/ancient if you are 18.

1.8 million views.

you and i are closer to being emma than we are Spider-man.

marketing is baloney.

SEO and *when* to post and keywords are lies.

make good content. do it a lot. be yourself. keep it real.

stare in to the unblinking eye of the void and say

hi baby.

do it all the time and good things will happen.

we have a president who doesn’t know fucking shit and he gets to do anything he wants.

in many ways thats what makes this pinball machine so beautiful and so frightening.

i love you all and i always will and i will share my secrets with you because the game changes every day so fuckit.

i hope you get everything you want in life.

and if not in life, i hope you have a day today or a night tonight that is cooler than it is shitty.

 

 

ten things i love about amber

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amber doing her hair

1. she works at a fancy hotel. her job is to make magic happen for the guests who are used to having magic happen for them.

she makes the magic happen. every day.

last month she was nominated by two departments for employee of the month. she’s only in one department so that means a totally separate dept. said, yeah our people are good, but amber was better.

2. she loves Tehachapi. no matter where we go, where we are, she says “you know, this reminds me of Tehachapi.”

sometimes i have to remind her that we are at a Wendys. doesn’t matter. she will stand by her statement.

she wants to build a small resort there. i tell her no one wants to vacation there. she says people used to say that about Alaska, now theres boats going up there all the time. Cruise ships even. actually she doesnt say that part, but i can read minds and thats what she was thinking.

3. she is a master at organizing her bills. she uses flash cards and paper clips. And a computer. she will never get a late fee. #goals

amber pink wall

4. i have had the good fortune of being lucky in love. she has never told me once to stop touching her. i think only one or two of my former girlfriends shared that trait. is this TMI? sorry. anyways, i like to touch her to make sure im not dreaming. in dreams weird things happen when you try to touch people or things. usually my hand will go right through or it will turn to sand.

5. she can cry at the drop of a dime. or a penny. or a quarter. she loves change and hates to see gravity abuse it. but seriously we can be driving down the street and we’ll talk about something and immediately her face will scrunch up and turn red and she’ll say Mario told me he would get me insulin the next time his brother goes to Mexico. and tears will appear. unlike me, she doesnt cry in movies though. weird.

6. speaking of movies. one reason i love her is she is super loud in movies. either rustling with candy or fidgeting in her chair. she picks the quietest times to do the loudest wrapper opening and i will say shush. and she will do it really slow WHICH IS WORSE but it makes me laugh inside.

7. she might be part Gemini because she can change her mind superfast. which i like because i love Geminis. so in a way it’s like having a couple girlfriends at once. which is every mans dream sorta.

amber with prince and michael

8. anyways today is her birthday. she wont let me take her out to dinner because she has a road trip planned for later this month. sorta love that too.

9. she has never once pestered me to go out to party with her. she’s on the wagon. enjoys our home. and sees very little need to do much outside these four walls other than eat Thai food or drink Starbucks. being that im a million years old, i appreciate that lack of pressure.

10. i dont think she knows anything about baseball football or basketball. but she will go to any game i get tickets to. and she will have a great time. mostly because in her head she is storing information so she can better aid her hotel guests if they ever ask something nutty like, “hows the sushi at Staples Center?” and she’ll know. angel.

had a beautiful day w/a beautiful girl

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sure I’m handsome and debonair and stylish and worldly but for the last two years I’ve worked at home

imagine living with someone who is always home? It’s annoying. Never having the place to yourself? Torture.

so since today is Amber’s birthday I treated her to a nice long drive and a picnic on the beach.

With me. The man she’s probs sick of.

Yesterday I tried to get out of the house and let her have it for herself but as soon as I finished ironing my tux and tails she hid my top hat and stated she would not reveal its whereabouts unless she could join me in my errands.

I told her I was planning to detail the car, see the new Margot Robbie movie and take a long nap in a booth at the Glendale library.

Instead we got passport photos and drive through the valley.

Today we drive through pacific palisades where they had erected this poor but meaningful statue of me. Danke.

While buying vegetable juice amber made friends with a fellow diabetic who told her so much great info. Poor girl had had it since she was 12.

we had a beautiful time and had some deep conversations which is probably the best thing you can have with me.

probably.

the grass everywhere was so green even though we only had a little rain the other night.