she knocked on the front door. always looking good. slightly ridiculous because she loves to show off her belly at any expense. she looked around the place, saw there were no fresh flowers in the vase near the fireplace and smiled to herself. flowers meant that ashley had been there.

ready for bowling? she asked.

always. i got my golden ball and put it in my new bowling bag. wished i had new bowling shoes. but if kisses and wishes were nickles and dimes… i was losing it.

rosalita curled up next to me as i looked through my book bag for keys to the house. she smelled great. strawberry conditioner and a hint of perfume. giggly as hell but she has some class sometimes. i was glad to see her, to be honest. missed you. she said. i had seen her a week ago.

locked the front door, exited through the back. rosalita unlocked the doors with her remote and we climbed in. mmmmmm new car smell. i could get used to this. she said she was having problems with the cd player but it was okay. we talk so much there were only a few times i think we ever listened to one song all the way through. and that was only when we were singing along to it.

she told me that she just knew i was going to get the job i was applying for. i told her that it meant i might have to move. she said, please don’t move.

i told her that she would live without me. plus she would be able to visit me. she said that’s hardly a silver lining.

she said, if you had moved a year ago when you were offered that job, i would probably be with paco right now, living in his houseboat, cooking his food.

my stomach turned.

why would you do that?

he’s nice to me. he pays attention to me. millions of people the lord gave us in this town. i don’t think we’re supposed to be alone. or with people who are super average.

i did love rosalita. super average. she had her own language. wasn’t afraid of anything other than loneliness. somehow she picked good boyfriends and hardly ever had a clinker. how did she know who to say yes to when it seemed like she’d just say yes to the first one who didn’t completely blow.

drove down vermont to the ten headed west to santa monica. got off on fourth street. made it to pico.

perfectly good bowling alleys in hollywood, rosalita laughed. was that glitter in her lip gloss?

i knew she would try to renegotiate our situation since i kissed her last week. any time we had a good kiss she would ask me to be her boyfriend.

be my boyfriend, tony.

hadn’t even gotten to the alley. or the bar with its twenty ounce buds shaped like pins.

no thank you.

you can do whatever you want to me.

yeah, no thanks.

no seriously.

so i can get with you and your roommate?

ok, don’t be gross.

she parked the truck and we got out. two young black highschoolers were leaning up against the wall of a pet store. matching outfits. pearl white plain tshirts, thick gold rope chain, baggy shorts so long they were almost pants. white socks that folded at the ankle. gucci sneakers. venice beach gangsta chic. nwa 89, tough guys.

they stopped talking when i saw them whispering about rosalita. i hadn’t been to the wesssside in a while. for some gangs it’s disrespectful if you look down, it says you don’t believe that they’ll kick your ass. it says that you don’t believe they’re anything worthy of keeping your eye on. other gangs it’s disrespectful to keep eyecontact. they’ll snap back “what you looking at!” they want you to look away to prove their dominance.

i always looked at a black man in the eye.

fuck their juvenile thug games that only keep us down.

“who you lookin at brotha?”

most kids don’t have guns. flash the handle of yours and that’s all they need. it also doesn’t hurt to have a fake badge. especially nowadays when the toughguys wear sunglasses at night in a dirty parking lot with only one light. i reached to flash one point of my badge and the one guy said to the other five-oh and they both looked past me. not down.

we called it even and i opened the door to the bowling alley for my super hot latina date and we went straight to the bar where we belonged.

life is a series of tasks that you want to do and some that you think you have to do.

it wasnt a good poem, but i think i knew what the dude was trying to say.

when it was cold here in hollywood a few days ago i thought i really wanted to move somewhere warm.

today all day i procrastinated on something that i felt like i Had to do to secure my future.

and now im doing something that i want to do: write you.

the independent film channel is on. i watch a lot of tv when i procrastinate. it’s really the only time i pay attention to the tv, other than when it’s showing me the nfl, the sopranos, and the e! channel.

i watched moulin rouge twice today. purple rain twice too.

i watched and taped the raiders game. loved the sopranos. loved anna nicole. loved “the worlds greatest bathrooms” on the discovery channel.

didnt love how i wasted a perfectly good sunday.

you know how old im gonna be in two weeks?

ooooooooold.

if i was a poet from the romantic era i’d be not only dead but decomposed.

im so old ashley called and said she could drive up and hang out with me and i said, cool. then she said she couldnt and i said, thats ok, i have work to do. only old people say nonsense like that.

only old people think about stocks.

today i learned that Salon’s stock price is one penny. why does this sound like a reasonable price to me? am i missing something?

can it go any lower than a penny? wasnt it just a nickle the other day?

and what does it say about your company when youre selling stock for a penny and you’re still not sold out?

it would make me sad.

but now isnt there a possibilty that it would go to two cents and the dumb sap who bought 2,000 shares for $20 could double his money just like that?

i’ll tell you. this whole internet craze stock market who-ha has taught me one thing about the markets: anything is possible.

and i must say that i like this sort of market a lot better. i’ve got an etrade account. i’ve got $20. i know i probably cant get Salon at a penny, but i might be able to get it at two or three cents.

and what if something happened. something really unbelieveable like Salon started to become successful. i know. impossible. i agree with you. but what if. thats all im asking, what if.

what if Salon after a little while really gets popular and starts trading at 6 bucks 7 bucks. two thousand shares at three cents doesnt sound so bad then. and what sort of cheapskate would i look like in the eyes of my young son when he looks back at these blog enteries and says, “dad, you had a chance to get salon for two cents and you didnt do it?”

and i would crack open another beer and ignore the boy. just like always. salt in the wound, hey son?

he doesnt mean any harm, he’s just curious.

and ashley doesnt mean any harm. she just wants to be loved. just like any of us.

she calls and she calls. we never have anything to say. i ask her if she has seen her boyfriend lately. she says she doesnt have a boyfriend. then she says she loves me. then i say i love me too. then she laughs. then i laugh. then her boyfriend listening in on the phone sneezes. then i hang up. then i turn off the ringer. then she calls and calls. and my christmas lights burn out.

the window is cracked open. summer made a curtain call.

i think about how comfortable i feel with ashley. and how not comfortable i am with some other girls. and then how nearly soul-mate comfortable i feel with chris and jeanine and how do you decide which is the right level? this one girl said she was coming over to say hi and i cleaned up the house so fast. that doesnt happen when you feel comfortable, but its a good reaction. isnt it?

i feel so comfortable with chris that i tell her some of the most disgusting things you could ever imagine. with her help i have mastered the technique of saying such things in the most serious, believable tone. its quite amazing. sometimes she’ll say, pardon me, What did you just say? and i’ll repeat it.

to me, i think thats love.

but she doesnt want me.

she says she knows what shes turning down, but she can live with her decision.

and hangs up.

and the phone rings, and it’s ashley. different kind of comfortable.

the sort of comfort you get holding a loaded weapon with the safety on.

technically everythings okay, but everything aint okay.

it’s midnight now and i have to go to bed because im oooooooold and my wrists hurt from typing and surfing and trying to make the world a better place.

i will go to bed alone, wake up alone, go to work alone, come home alone and finish this thing tomorrow night as the bears face the packers from green bay.

in order to have a different life, the bad poem says, you have to do different things.

so this is the lamest entry i could think of.

and oftentimes, when i worked retail, there would be a day or a few days when the Big Boss or some vip would come and inspect the store.

they were called walk-throughs.

some walk throughs were more serious than others. but all of them meant more work, custodial type things, making sure all the price tags were up, that all the wires were hiding, that all the dead gaps were filled and that all the products worked.

it was a pain, but once the walkthrough was over, the store was a better place, and even if the review was just mediocre one, or the guy just wanted to say hi to the manager, the store benefitted simply because of the process.

theres going to be a walkthrough here this week.

big wigs that matter a lot to me.

now im not saying that people have to do anything different, or form a human pyramid, or only leave sparkling comments, or buy stuff off my birthday wishlist, or get tsar to play a show here on say october 22, or fill up my paypal bottomless pit machine, or link me on you page, or fix me up with your sister.

im just saying theres gonna be a walkthrough.

i’ll do my best to keep it real on this blog and write about the same things that i would normally write about and forget to spellcheck, and all those normal things, but if you notice a few miles off the fast ball and a foot off the curve, and i dont link kitty being really funny, now you know why.

its nearly the fourth quarter and i’m sorta wishing someone had taken a walkthrough during the raiders’ practices this week because other than the first series of downs where buffalo went three and out, the raiders d has been mia.

im getting agita.

i was thinking about making rally monkey tshirts. i think i may have thought of that idea too late though. you’d probably have to buy them today or tomorrow.

time- timing.

new sopranos are on tonight.

squeak squeak squeak.

oh, sorry, hi keiko.

squeak.

hey how’s norway?

oh squeak squeak squeak squeak super hot babes everywhere squeak squeak squeak squeak.

yeah, i once worked with a norwegian girl at the dot com. she was amazing. so sweet so nice to everyone. incredible memory. very fashionable. but pretty much just 100% all heart all the time.

squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak.

what do you think about all these people who want to get you out of the fjords and back into the deeper waters so you can get more exercise and maybe get healthier.

squeak squeak squeak squeak, #$%@!

totally bro.

squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak?

ah pretty good. it’s getting a little better, but you know carpal, the more im at the computer the worse it gets. so i haven’t been able to do any photo essays or really write any longer things, just little blog entries here and there. i miss the interns. they would totally be stoking me right now.

squeak squeak squeak.

well, if you can pull yourself away from the norweigian babes, i’d love to have you intern for me.

squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak.

see, that’s why i love you, keiko, you ask nothing from me. i think that’s why everyone loves you. who cares if you’re going to die because you love people so much? that’s sorta how Jesus went down.

oy vey. squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak.

ooops sorry, i didn’t know.

squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak.

i know i know, i do that all the time. im really not very conscientious. you’re right, i do project a lot.

squeak squeak squeak squeak?

i think the Twins are going to beat the A’s and then i think the Angels are going to beat the Twins.

squeak squeak squeak rally monkeys!

totally! people talk so much shit about orange county and angels fans and disney, but you’re right, how perfect that the fans, the real fans, came up with a super grass roots mascot and symbol of the team that had absolutely nothing to do with any of the disney merch and turned it into a more powerful voodoo doll than that stupid atlanta tomahawk or even the terrible towel.

squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak?

she’s pretty good. looking good. feeling good. i want to see her all the time, but it doesn’t always work out that way.

well, squeak squeak squeak squeak, antonio.

right back at ‘cha, willy.

squeak squeak!

always, bro.

t’s one of my favorite movies, but shhhh, dont tell anyone.

i love drew, i love that “dark angel” chick who’s in it, but theres this scene where david arquette is asked by his teen girlfriend “what do you want to be when you grow up?” david is secretly undercover at this highschool and has really already grown up, but he answers her perfectly.

“a ballplayer.” he replies with a cowboy hat on, nodding his head to the dumb pop music playing in the background.

she says, “no, but what happens if you dont get it?”

i want to be a blogger when i grow up.

i want to be as in touch as the instapundit, and as good of a writer as ken and matt, i want to be as outrageous as kitty and dawn and reverse cowgirl, i want to be as sexy as nerve, but i want to be able to be read in a totally pg-13 locale.

i want everything.

anyone who read the “funniest joke of all time,” last week now knows that if you try to be all things to all people youre just going to be mediocre to all people. that wasnt the funniest joke of all time, it just was slightly amusing to tons of people.

kind of like marmaduke.

marmaduke is one of my heroes because whoever made that strip learned how to fill a niche and stay way below the radar.

karisa is my friend because she doesnt let me stay below the radar. she says i should be kicking major butt like all the time. she would be very disappointed if i made a marmaduke, she would want a blooms county, a calvin and hobbs, a far side.

i would be happy just to be out there.

or here.

i get disappointed in so called journalists who write about blogging and blogs and continue to miss the most obvious point of them all. blogging has allowed writers, real writers, and real artists, and real photographers, and real musicians the opportunity to create whatever it is that they want and give it to their audience immediately.

when weezer had new tunes they released them on their web site months before they would ever appear on their new record.

nothing is stopping writers and photographers and artists from doing that.

all blogging is is the technology that allows ideas to be published on the web.

simple as that might be, i want to be blogging forever.

and to get paid for it?

why shouldnt that be someone’s goal?

keith gets to play guitar every night and look like a muppet.

okay theres a knock at the door. hopefully its the houseboy with more mint leaves for the mohicas.

we talked for a few minutes and then the cell phone reception gave out.

she was poolside.

i know because she called me back a minute later. we barely got to say hi and happy birthday and the connection dropped again.

i tried to call her back. hi.

then dead.

an hour later she called back. she had changed hotels.

she was at the mondrian now.

im looking at a beautiful view, tony.

you must come over.

i asked why did you leave the standard.

she said, that place is a dump.

hmmm. it was the fourth inning now. the game was tied.

i told her i might consider coming over. she said we have pretty girls here. i said, do you have a tv? she said its a suite, of course we do.

i said is the angel game on?

she laughed and handed the phone over to the glamorous simone. jewlery designer to the stars.

why are you ignoring my phone calls sweetie?

i said, i was on vacation.

come over here and i’ll make some mohitas.

i did have rum. all i would need is some sugar and mint leaves. two limes maybe. i always liked the mondrian. skybar. that pool. but what do you wear?

simone asked if she could pick me up in her convertible. i told her that it wasnt necessary. that i lived right next to sunset. quick subway ride to highland, walk to sunset, pick up the bus. twenty minutes, tops.

she said, youre coming?

i said, maybe. sounds great.

then the angels started errupting. then it was 5-2 angels. then it was 6-2 angels.

what would i wear?

but i also missed out on the peaches + they will know us by the trail of the deal + queens of the stone age triple bill and i’ll also miss hanging out with meesh and simone at the standard with its upside down sign.

this hardly ever happens to me. especially in the month of libra. the month of love, fairness, and beautiful magic.

speaking of … how about those angels?

welch asked me to do a photo essay about his team and i could and i would use a bunch of lyman bostock and rod carew and bobby grich pictures, not forgetting my man bobby bonds, but the angels dont need it and my carpal is cilling me.

a pretty sexy girl said that if i get the gig that im gonna try to grab next week she’ll find out where i live and do the christina aguilera dance for me.

i told her that i didnt know if i could handle that.

im just a man.

and here i am writing you super deep undercover fighting the good fight thinking about how the rocket fizzled in new york how petitte and now mussina were tamed and how the angels are going to knock out the boys from the bronx in less than twenty four hours.

some people are soulmates. some team own others. the angels own the yankees. i wouldnta believed it till i seen it, but look at them, they couldnt care less about these big name arms, or even jeff weaver or el duque. theyre not intimidated by giambi or jeter. these angels actually seem inspired by the crazy rally monkeys and never say die.

totally inspiring.

made me pick up the phone and propose a good dozen times to my exgirlfriend chris.

“you know we’re meant for each other, baby.”

no, no we’re not.

“just you and me, baby. let me ruin your life till death do we part.”

no thank you. but thank you.

shes got a nasty flu. had to cancel her trip to frisco where she was gonna be in a wedding.

“why dont you call your boyfriend to bring you over some oj and some soup?”

who?

“bro.”

oh him, he’s just a booty call boy. you cant ask your booty call to help you when youre sick. thats what a boyfriend does. she laughed, but it was interrupted by a cough. but she finished it off with a “silly.”

then she explained that booty calls also dont help you move, they dont go to formal events with you, and they also dont stroll the aisles of target along side you.

i really do love that girl.

she asked me if the pitchers ever get “in trouble” with the manager after he takes them out of the game.

i told her that i wanted to get her in trouble.

she denied me for the twentieth time in the phone call and i finally let her go.

no movement in the stakeout target.

it was going to be a long long friday night.

kim is a great friend.

she knows her rock music so well that before she was my laywer i wanted to kiss her. women should learn that lesson: if you have a record collection that is truly diverse, rocking, punk rock, soulful, and countrified in the right ways, the boys will want you big time.

nothing worse than going to a girls house and seeing three cds on the shelf and a cat. especially when the cds are cat steven’s greatest hits, james taylor’s greatest hits, and aretha franklin’s greatest hits.

kim has tons of great cds and her cat is named after the guitar player in KISS.

you’d wanna kiss her too.

cute as a button and sex-say with that lil southern drawl that slides out when you least expect it, kim met up with the kids while they were in prauge. i think thats how the story goes. kim went out there with ken b. who shes been romantically associated with since the dodgers left brooklyn.

it was ken’s birthday last week when i was on vacation and im sorry that i wasnt able to slobber all over him, so lets make it up with more love for kim, shall we?

k.

she has a kickass grownup hollywood hills mansion that she lets us all party in. it has a hot tub and plate glass and grey walls and a dynomite kitchen. proof that when looking for a new pad, try to find one that was recently owned by two arty gay guys. always up for a good movie, fine with wine, and blessed with a sense of fashion and a true love of college hoops, kim didnt go to ucsb, but she fits into our small group of friends like shes known us all forever.

what sorta law does she practice? entertainment law?

what firm does she work for?

she left the big firm a few years ago to start her own with just one partner and they’re kicking ass. seriously.

i never had a better lawyer in my life and thats no lie.

tomorrow this southern belle turns 24 and i really hope we all get together and raise a glass to our sweetheart from carolina who has only gotten finer.

happy birthday!

paolo is a king among kings who only dates the hottest women.

permasmile, a huge dog, and the love of the lakers and skateboarding, our pal paolo also worked at the ucsb daily nexus with matt, and amy, and tsar, and tsar’s brother, and stacy teas (who i owe an email to) and hell, half of the cool kids in los feliz and the tri counties.

paolos art is larger than life and rich and colorful and dreamy and massively underrated.

if youre in LA and not accompanying meesh to the queens of the stoneage gig at the palladium, perhaps you might want to jump on the subway and head downtown to check out what i promise you will be an entertaining evening of great art and fine music.

and if you miss out on rick royale who will be playing, you’ve truly missed out. so dont coulter.

yours truly might even be there unless meesh convinces me otherwise.