Monthly Archives: June 2021

of the many things i learned from Amber was this

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Amber was really good at editing videos and putting them on YouTube

i was amazed because she learned almost over night and did it on my iPad!

so yesterday i heard our buddy Ken Layne on a podcast and i was bored from waiting for my life to begin, so i took a little one-minute chunk to see if i could make a funny little video of it

and i did.

and he loved it.

which means i do too.

it only took me an hour to do.

but more importantly it taught me that this is what i should do for all of my podcasts in the future: find a good chunk, add some funny pictures, and post it on the youtubes.

being praised by Henry Fuhrmann is better than winning a Pulitzer

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Henry has seen it all in his decades at the LA Times. He worked in various offices around LA and saw it all from the inside out.

If he had not embraced The Web the way he had, there would have been no way our success would have happened.

I knew I was in trouble when I landed at KPCC and asked where the copy editors were. As Henry tweeted, when I was first at the LAT there were 100 of them. At KPCC there were zero. That never changed. Finances. They considered it a luxury.

When you drive your car do you consider your brakes a luxury?

The man who would successfully push me out at the Times also didn’t believe in the copy desk. He created a blog that would publish first and have copy come in afterwards. I said why would you do that? He said he wanted to be at the cutting edge of Google Trends. I said great you get your headline on the top of Google News and what’s gonna happen when people click and it’s a mess? He said, no one will notice.

But that’s the funny thing about big time digital news from a big time news org: they notice the errors way more than the successes.

I am glad that guy is no longer in my universe.

Likewise, I feel blessed that Henry even knows my name.

had a good chat with the therapist

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she told me she liked my idea for the podcast but was worried about its ability to make money

i said you and me both, gurl.

but then i said, ive been in jobs where the companies were in financial peril and i hung in there

the entire time i was at the LA Times they were in bankruptcy plus Chicago was trying to destroy it plus all these other entities were trying to hurt it.

this is nothing new.

whats new is i will have a smidge more control over the outcome

i wont have to have things approved

do you know how insulting i took it to have certain things approved in my life?

i was all, didnt you hire me because im the expert of this shit?

havent you seen me turn loaves and fishes into mcribs?

we got this.

and then when i did it, months later i had to do the whole approval process over again.

maybe its how i show up in the world.

maybe its because i dont speak the way they want or say the things they want

or ESP the things they wanna silently hear.

doesnt matter any more.

they’re doing their thing and i wish them well, i honestly do.

but as soon as i get this damn tape recorder which is in DTLA right now waiting for the UPS man to bring it to me

imma start living my life.

got my car outta the shop (not pictured)

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i dont have a lot of money. i dont even have a job. but sometimes you have to invest in your car.

for a year i have been broke and for a year my car has needed to get work done on it.

brakes, oil, you know: little things

but i met a guy by the river and i did a little favor for him, so i paid off a chunk of my apple card

and then put a grand back on it fixing my car up.

youve gotta be careful going into a shop and just omg paying for what they say is wrong

but this place is different. ive known the son for two years and his dad who has owned it for nearly 40 years. he’s going to be retiring soon. it’s a small place that usually works on very expensive Benzes like the $80k classic in the picture above.

apparently someone accidentally put diesel in that one.

when i asked how many miles that 57 year old car had

the guy said, no one knows because the odometers back then were only 5 digits.

when i got in my car it drove like it was brand new.

i can drive it to you.

 

it was a good day already at 10am

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woke up on time. got the car to the shop. the dude was great.

walked over to the jack in the box. sat down in there. ate an egg and bacon croissant

drank juice.

watched two people parked in their tesla watch netflix on the car’s giant ipad.

listened to a man talk on the phone in spanish.

listened to how twitter went through one rough patch after another

like an expensive plane trying to get through the turbulence and into the clear air above the clouds

it was warm but not too.

got over to hollywood n highland and walked around dave and busters

why not

theyve got some wild machines i may have to try out one day.

poked my head into hot topic because thats my boo

remembered there was a kobe mural

then i noticed there were these little signs on the ground to show you how to get there

got up to the fourth floor and there was these

two barriers stopping you from getting to where the mural was

i also saw a kid in a wheel chair with his mom

they were waiting for the elevator to take them back down

there was nothing else up there on the fourth floor

and this kid had a lakers jersey, lakers flags

and his chair was purple and gold

i said, if i move those barriers would you want to go see the mural?

his mom said we came so far to see this

yes!

so i moved the barrier

looked around

motioned them in

and they got their picture

and i got mine

may was really good, blogging wise

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my goal each month is to post at least one thing a day and in may i went over.

i think part of the reason i was productive is because i wasn’t worried about the Medium blog any more, and i was sorta working for this thing, and it filled me with creative ideas, of which i gave to the thing, but i also gave to this thing.

and now that energy is spilling over to the forthcoming podcast which i will start working on this week.

today i have to wake up before 10am to go to the benz repair shop to get some things worked on that i shoulda gotten done a year(!) ago but covid.

hopefully he doesnt find a million things. and also hopefully i can fall asleep soon so i can wake up early.

i am eating creamed spinach and generic minestrone soup.

for all of 2021 i have cooked for myself. it’s a little bit of a miracle. the creamed spinach is probably a ripoff because it was $6 for two bags. you put a bag in the microwave for five minutes and out comes a good sized serving of Popeye’s favorite.

do you know i love you? i do.

the last time i had a colonoscopy the dude was all, for a guy who eats fast food as much as you claim, you are super clean in there, but one thing youve gotta do: more green leafy vegetables. and i asked, is creamed spinach ok? he said yes but take it easy on the cream.

the soup is generic low salt like old men eat. i get low salt because they say the only reason people like certain soups is because it has lots of salt in it. so this is how i judge canned soups. if it can taste good without cheating, then cool. sometimes i’ll add chicken or peas or beans to make it a real meal. sometimes i’ll air fry a thick slice of bread.

but tonight i just nuked that spinach and called it a night.

this has been a very weird first half of a year.

things have already happened that i did not expect at all.

im very curious if this podcast will make things even weirder but weird good, for the back half of this

please let it be so, God.