and i was quite self-absorbed.

so much so i didnt mention that there will be another Blogger panel discussion here in Hollywood. this one is tonight! Saturday night.

the american cinema foundation seems to be hosting this shin-dig. it’s free, it’s hosted by LA’s own Cathy Seipp and stars America’s newest newspapermen, Ken Layne and Matt Welch, UCLA law professor and incredible pizza maker Eugene Volokh, Mickey Kaus who gets paid to blog, Luke Ford who swears he isnt interested in porn any more, my bro from Forbes RiShawn Biddle, Heather Havrilesky who hopefully will put a cam on her page, and the sexiest import from france since the Emmanuelle series of fine films Emmanuelle Richard.

very little can convince me to leave my house on a saturday night, but this might.

oh look it’s free.

and theres drinking afterwards.

if i can score a hot date perhaps i will make it after all.

annessa

means you

was because the marines didn’t like my haircut.

which is ironic because now my hair is shorter than theirs.

the marines aren’t really the bosses of the xbi, but they have a lot of influence because somehow they are considered the voice of reason in our opera of castaways.

my argument has always been that if the marines knew what they were talking about they’d be fbi not xbi, but since i didn’t come from the ranks of the military, or the cops, and because i was a college boy, and a poetry major at that, pretty much nobody listens to me in these matters.

so when they saw me stroll in with a shaved head, they began their whispering and i was invited into the glass meeting room in the center of the building.

nice hairdo, agent.

why, thank you.

any special reason for the change?

nope.

what inspired all of this?

nothing, really.

nothing?

well ive been thinking about dying it red for the longest time but i figured just shaving it would be way easier.

red, huh?

yeah, but i figured it would be hard to be undercover with bright red hair.

none of these answers sat well with them. so you know what they did? they grounded me.

which meant they grounded Chopper One.

funny thing about the top secret underground movements of the xbi, nothing is so very secret. later last night there was an old fashioned car chase.

where do you think this guy ran around in?

hollywood?

home of Chopper One?

they don’t call it organized crime for nothing. but here’s how they do things with the local cops. they get one guy, typically an illegal who is due to go back to whatever country he’s from. they put him in a car and let him get chased by the cops. then they get a bunch of cops and helicopters to follow him.

then they do some gnarly ass shit on the other side of town.

car chase in hollywood, some nasty shit is probably going down in long beach. but normally you don’t see car chases in hollywood because chopper one would pounce on the illegal, smash his car and then jet over to the LBC before the networks even get their birds in the air.

i was bummed out yesterday because there was a major disturbance in the balance of power, all due to my stupid hair cut.

needless to say this morning we were given some information about goings on in riverside last night at the exact same time as the car chase in west hollywood.

so guess who’s back from being grounded?

33. gunge

the subastral lilipad

ken + matt + dick =

if the new york times was better

and weekly

and surrounded by palm trees

los angeles examiner

of all the things that i love about the internet, the number one thing that i love is you.

pedro started his day at the gas station like he always did, with a quick trip to the repair bay in the back where they kept the mop and the bucket and the soap and the bong.

got everything together and cleaned the mens room and then the womans room.

then he put the mop and bucket back and flipped over the signs to read Full Serve, asked the white girl in the booth if the gas prices are right and she told them that she changed them at 5.

it was six a.m.

he filled up his water bottle with pink windshield wiper fluid, unfolded his clean blue long handtowel and tucked it into his backpocket, leaned up against a gas pump and tried to watch the sun come up but was disturbed by the bell of the day’s first motorist.

pedro worked with 7 other guys. it was an all full-serve gas station in beverly hills.

the power window zoomed down and a man who looked strangely familiar to charles bronson hissed, “super,” and handed over an american express platinum card.

black chevy tahoe. up high. no bumper stickers. no valet stubs. no jack in the box antenna ball.

pedro unscrewed the gas cap, put the hose into the side of the truck, remembered to click Super Unleaded, clicked the trigger into the lock, stepped over the hose and walked the card up to the cashier window and slid it into the slot.

the white girl saw the name on the credit card and flinched and then strained out at the tahoe at pump four.

pedro returned to the car. he walked happily because he is so fucking positive about everything it would make you puke.

he removed the squeegee from the bin. one of the fellas had just completed his morning chore of cleaning the bins, filling them with hot soapy water and hanging them back on the islands.

just as he was about to throw the sponge edge on to the windshield he heard and then saw the driver’s side window zoom down, noticed the motion of the hand slitting the throat, as a director would if he was yelling “cut,” and pedro froze in mid motion.

unfortunately, the momentum of the squeegee produced a wad of hot soapy water which was flung directly on the center of the newly-detailed windshield.

the wipers began, two straight squirts of blue wiperfluid shot perfectly from under the hood onto the glass, went left to right once, twice and then back under. that quick. no streaks and then the water evaporated.

the driver’s window zoomed back up.

pedro returned the squeegee to the bin. checked out the truck from afar, returned to the driver’s window and pointed at the hood.

he heard it click. unlocked.

reached under, lifted it up and saw absolute perfection.

lots of computerized boxes and wires and steel and hard plastic, and all so clean.

a little man appeared out of radiator overflow reservoir and tipped his top hat at pedro. the little man was about six inches tall.

“just top off the wiper fluid,” the man said, bowed, and hopped back into the empty plastic tank.

pedro topped it off, finished up with charles bronson, and returned to the cashier booth with the signed credit card receipt.

the white girl chewing gum in the bullet proof glass booth took the receipt from pedro and smiled at him.

so he squirted a little window cleaner right above her voice box slit and returned his bottle to it’s holster, otherwise known as his back pocket.

manny wiped it off a minute later.

buffoonery

men have a hard time with emotions. for the most part we’re not suppose to show them. it’s ok until we have to be tough guys, and then it’s either bottle it up more or let it out in a horrible howl.

im lucky, i have a job where i can just yell and yell and yell. and the more times that i do it the more the people love me and the more the kids respond. this wouldn’t work in a place like, say, the nba, where the people i would be yelling at are all millionaires and half of them have their names on the sides of their sneakers, but in college athletics, where i presently am employed, i can get away with it. like i said, im lucky.

i didn’t always used to be like this.

i used to be a mellow dude. i used to just kick back and let life happen and then i found out that for the most part life likes to eat up the mellow people for lunch and the assholes are the great white sharks that roam this dirty hole.

my first wife didn’t really appreciate this change and left me pretty early into our deal.

it was too bad too because we had such an incredible sex life you wouldn’t even believe it. not only was she the prettiest girl in town but in the sack she was an animal, and at times deeply loving. for a while she was even my best friend. but something happened one day and i snapped and let her have it, verbally, and the next day i promised that i would never say those sorts of things to her again. and a month later something happened again and i wrote her the nastiest note i ever wrote anyone.

as i got older things only got worse.

im a man of dozens of successes and very little regrets and if there was one regret that i still have to this day it’s saying all the nasty things that i said to her on those two occasions because even though im happily married right now, to be honest with you, i blew it with the best girl on earth and it gnaws at me every day.

but im lucky. i can take it out on the officials and my players and the press and the necks of power forwards, and of course chairs.

but some scars never heal.

and some people never get any better.

just older and grayer.

and some, like me, just get meaner.

now normally i don’t answer these sorts of questions, but tony asked me today to list my three favorite movies of the year 2002. i don’t know what it is about that knucklehead, but i like him. not in a gay way. i don’t know, i just smile whenever i see him or get a phone call from him. so what the heck.

1. Rabbit Proof Fence

2. 25th Hour

3. Gangs of New York

oliver willis, valley girl

today would be a great day to say something nice to me.

thank you.

hi, tony. im not a lobster, im a crayfish, and im a self-reproducing female.

please just send me back to hell.

i have a bone to pick with you, mister.

skip it. just shoot me in the head. right now.

what do you do for a living, really.

im a butler.

come on, really.

im a sous chef.

here i am a self reproducing crayfish, a talking one at that, and youre going to sit there and bullshit me?

im telling you, i make some badass sous.

what you arent is a writer. and i want to know why.

probably because if i actually wrote for a living, i probably wouldnt be talking to a fucking crayfish on my blog at ten thirty at night.

im a non-fucking crayfish.

you’re annoying.

you are what you eat, i suppose.

what do you eat, anyway?

shit.

what are you talking about?

im a bottom dweller, holmes. a janitor of the sea floor.

ok, gross.

exactly, now if i had anything other than shit-plucking claws, dont you think i would do something other than what i have been doomed to do each day?

like had what?

like had HANDS, asshole. if i had hands, i wouldn’t eat fish turds each day. i would eat sandwiches. tostadas!

you’d probably need a bigger mouth though, too.

go ahead and rub it in, why dont you?

sorry, crayfish.

my point is, you have hands, not claws.

yeaaaah….?

so dont eat shit for a living.

instapundit

these things didnt happen to me before i began blogging. let me think, did it? no, it definately didnt.

and shes young, america, youn-ung.

probably too young.

funny thing is, so much that we boys do in life is so that beautiful young girls will pay attention to us and want us to see them naked. it’s why i took saxophone lessons in grade school, and why i dress so damn fly.

still, theres something inside me that says for me not to go for it.

i think deep down im a scientist stuck in the body of a slacker.

i am very interested in so many things and i like to see how they work. once i was tangled up with a pretty girl and all i wanted to do was trace the outline of her leg with my finger. it was the closest i felt comfortable getting to her. some girls i just want to kiss. some i just want to look at from across the room.

young girls couldnt possibly understand this behavoir.

hell, i barely understand it.

plus the idea of human guinea pigs isnt a very popular one, but it’s not like i mean any harm by it.

to me everything is an experiment. everything is fiddling with something to see how it reacts, see how it works, see how i work. timothy leary said he didnt do drugs to see what drugs did, he did them to see what his brain was about. lots of times either im trying to figure out what my heart is about, or my brain, or other people’s hearts.

you can learn alot about people by kissing them or by trying to sell them something.

try it.

im sure quite a few of the women that ive been involved with were experimenting, in one way or another with me, and when they were done with me, they dumped me like a heavy bag of laundry. my feelings were a little bruised at first, but when i got my senses together i realized that i just got to spend two amazing nights with a firey redhead direct from dublin. why on earth would i consider that a bad thing?

it does become a bad thing when feelings get involved and the catch 22 of kissing is that feelings are bound to get worked up, which they should.

which is why i just sit at home most days working on my web page, alone, on the other end of an aol chat window where some of the hottest women in north america say some of the sweetest things and show me all the things i could have if i merely hopped in my flying car and zoomed away.

last night i worked on indexing a bunch more photo essays.

nobody got hurt.

in other news, this chick just writes whenever the hell she damn well pleases, doesnt she?

little did i know it would give me so much material for witty comebacks.

why did you cut off your hair?

1. bored

2. got in a fight with a skinhead.

3. to protest the war.

4. cuz i was sick of girls lusting me for my ‘fro.

5. i wanted to look more mexican

6. cuz i hate the attention that my afro gave me.

7. why should cancer patients have all the fun?

8. cuz its trendy.

9. cuts a whole ten minutes off my morning routine.

10. cuz this one chick said she’d do me.

11. cuz my barber was in a hurry.

12. cuz i wanted to make you smile.

13. cuz im not dorky enough.

14. trying to keep it real.

15. i told myself that when i turned 100 i would do it and i flaked.

16. the girls now cant stop looking at me.

17. cuz George Bush would never do it.

18. to protest the Tribune’s unfair treatment of the Cubs

19. wanted to see if the ladies would want to feel my head if i did.

20. tired of sex

funny thing happened last night. businessman came near the elevator, suit, tie, briefcase. couldnt have been dressed any better.

he sees me in the far elevator and takes a step towards it, then sees my shaved head and stops in his tracks and presses the button of a different elevator.

very interesting.

i liked it.

of course i waved him into my elevator and kept the door open for him.

until he got close and then the doors hit him as he walked in.

f the man.

got home and totally enjoyed the lakers double overtime victory over the rockets despite not having shaq.

mark madsen, the ming stopper. who knew?

31. brett lamb

32. blackmask online

how to be hip