apparently someone saw me getting picked up from work by ashley the other day in her brand new car and was wondering if i still liked riding the bus.

while it’s true that its nice being picked up and driven to work by a cute girl in her new ride, just like dreams those moments are fleeting. but i am still quite a fan of the mta here in los angeles. and i know i might bitch from time to time at the people who scoot all the way to the middle of the bus to stand rightnexttome even though theres lots of standing room in the back or in the front, or complain about the gang members who bring their bikes onto the subway at 745am when you’re not supposed to have ANY bikes on the subway between 6-9am, or gripe about the surley busdrivers who dont say hello or goodbye or how the hell are ya and stop too fast at corners or speed away too fast as people are running towards them, i still love the bus.

someone else writes in and asks about ashley’s latest diary entry which she posted yesterday all about her first love, rocko. “Why is your woman writing about this guy when she’s still wit you?”

okay, it’s a fact that ashley did write that piece in my computer room, on my new computer chair, with my new ergonomic keyboard tray, while drinking Diet Coke that i bought, and eating food that i bought, after buying no doubt tickets with my credit card, after being completely satisfied by my big ten inch .. record that plays the blues …

where was i? what was the question? am i jealous? no im not jealous.

if a young girl comes to your house and you wine her and dine her and take her to movies and get thatclose to introducing her to her alltime hero and treating her nice and touching her the way that she loves and waking the neighbors and etc. and if once you leave the house she writes about some other guy, just take it as feedback, and get back to saving the world.

cant please everyone.

another gentlemen writes in to ask how i can choose just one office hottie to have a lil crush on out of all the beautiful ivy league grads who work at the xbi?

easy. after 108 years i know exactly what i like. i also have a superpower where i can see people’s hearts. this came in handy when i was a recruiter for the dot com. some fellas undress a woman with their eyes, i look for that something special and usually i can find it. sometimes it’s not so sweet, sometimes its way sweeter than you’d expect.

i happen to sit at a desk where the ladies just parade by and a few of them have the most beautiful hearts.

“please explain #65: i think oj didnt do it”

1. the glove didnt fit 2. a man dating a playboy playmate doesnt repeatedly stab his exwife over a fit of “lover’s rage” 3. mark furman claims he jumped over OJ’s gate to make sure that OJ was ok (something im sure he does for every exhusband of dead wives that he stumbles across in LA county) and suddenly finds a bloody glove… that didnt fit

“I’m sorry but for #79 (“loves… williams”), I honestly don’t know if you mean Anson Williams or Clarence Williams III. Or somebody else.”

i mean Dr. William Carlos Williams of “the red wheelbarrow” fame.

“The Red Wheelbarrow”

so much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens.

“how can you watch the howard stern show for an hour everyday, without having cable for 6 years?”

i have DirecTV

and finally, as per the very important matter of my favorite beer, i claim Sam Adams, to which a curious reader asks, “What happened to Old Style?”

Old Style was the beer of my youth. it’s only sold in the midwest. i love it still, but since i have lived in California for a very long time, it’s about time for me to live in the present and claim a brew that i can enjoy on this side of the mississippi, my dark ale, sam.

sweet pictures of sunday’s baby shower for the little boy who will be named Kobe, whether the parents like it or not.

the fiesta was held in my lovely attorney’s palatial estate. most of tsar was there, and speaking of them, i got to hear a demo of theirs from their upcoming triple-disc followup and i think that you people should probably start saving up for new stereo equipment today because this is what’s gonna happen when you hear these new songs.

first the rock is going to blow your speakers up.

then the pop is going to melt the crappy ass speaker wires that you’ve had since high school.

then the harmonies are going to send smoke right through that tube amp your poppa gave you as you moved from the dorms to your new apartment.

then the song writing is gonna make you cry happy tears and then sad tears and then happy tears and your cd player is gonna blow up.

have i told you that Tsar is my favorite band?

they are.

word is, the track i heard was produced by two guys whose rock pedigrees are stamped with the Hollywood seal of approval.

one of the fellas is from the glam rock band Lions and Ghosts who haunted Madame Wong’s West in Santa Monica back in the days when i couldn’t get into any of the Guns n Roses clubs on the Sunset Strip. so needless to say, when they weren’t booking country punk at MWW, i got to see glam, and i was super happy to be privy to that nonsense.

the other fella was from a punk outfit called the Nymphs famous for having their lead singer, a woman, squat down on their A&R manager’s desk and urinate.

now Ozzy may have bitten the head off a bat, but is there anything more offensive than a woman squatting to insult you?

this reporter says no.

at first listen it is obvious that these gentlemen understand both sides of the rock and glam coin that tsar flips so easily and their success is inevitable.

my good pal coulter let me hear the track and it will be my mission, dear friends to let you know everything that i learn about this quadruple disc effort that should be coming out sometime around valentine’s day.

thank you.

back to the pictures, for all you kids who think that layne and welch write excellent blogs, they do, but they excell at drunken-party sing-a-longs as this photograph illustrates to a point.

but you know party pictures, they never really capture the essense of the fiesta, they only grab the colors and the objects and the things, never the feelings. and this baby shower was full of sweet lovely feelings, and music. which pictures have yet to master quite yet either.

fckrs

was with a huge company the agency wanted to keep an eye on based in the south.

my job was to let them know if anything suspicious was going on.

lots of suspicious things were going on.

they were a dirty company from the top to the bottom.

but being young there were times that i was terrified, and the worst thing that could have happened was that the company would fire me for some reason. so not only did i have to do my job for the agency real good, but i needed to do my job for the company extra good so that i could not only stay in there but keep getting promoted so as to meet more and more people and find out more and more dirt.

that dirt would actually save american lives. i shit you not. so i took this job mighty seriously.

the thing that would scare me the most would be the company’s voice mail.

i would dial it up from a pay phone, punch in the password and hear the familiar southern belle’s voice on the other end saying, “welcome to your voice mail box…”

i was terrified that once i punched in the numbers i would get a message saying, “fly to south carolina and meet up with bob and jeff, they have a special training that they want you to set up.” which would mean, of course, that i would be murdered and never found again.

back then i didnt care so much about being killed. the Cubs werent going anywhere. but i was in love with my first live-in girlfriend and i didnt want that to ever end.

some young agents who got phone calls like that, actually did freak out and occasionally called for back-up and they would send an extra agent to shadow them, which is extremely risky because 1) it was usually a false alarm 2) it is super hard to stay undercover in small towns in the south where Everyone knows each other and 3) even if it was a real set-up, sometimes they would do that just to see what was up, and if a second agent appeared magically then the company knew their jig was up.

either way it was best to just handle your own business, keep a safe deposit box full of love letters and fed ex the key to your home address whenever you felt unsafe cuz if you did wind up dead, your girl could go through your old mail, find the key and see that you’d been thinking of her.

this company, huge as it was, was dirty but not that dirty and never was on to me, and i never had to do a thing other than watch. but i remember being scared shitless of that stupid ass voice mail message box and especially the sweet sounding woman on the tape that would say things like, ” press 7 to save your message”, “for more help press the pound button.”

apparently this weekend the xbi changed voice mail vendors out of some paranoia, i just logged in to check my messages after coming back from lunch, and guess who’s voice i heard from the past?

yes, the sweet southern lady.

i almost fell over on my chair.

my heart is still pounding.

and ive noticed that i nod a lot at work.

people seem to know me here. i dont know them. im not sure if i like that. no one knows about this blog, i don’t think, but they all say hi to me and i just smile, but recently i notice that i nod back. almost japanese style.

they address me by my first name, which would be creepier if i didn’t have a handmade sign atop my computer monitor that says my name, but it still is rather formal, don’t you think? i do.

only reason i had that thing up there, my name placard, was when this mariah carey lookalike worked here, so that she could remember my name so when i asked her out she would feel a bit more familiar with the concept.

but i snoozed, and i losed. she got fired for dropping her cover and i ended up getting her beeper number but never using it because i was distracted by a 25 yr old virgin.

can you blame me?

it’s good to have an office hottie who keeps you brushing your hair before you come into work, who you can think about as you’re rifling through clean clothes in the morn, who makes you think twice about that Maui tshirt of the fish with pink sunglasses and i have one of those girls here and i still haven’t found a way to introduce myself to her yet but the placard is up so that phys– wholely shit, she just walked through the door!

told you my mind was going.

i don’t know what is happening with the planets or the stars or even if its just the Lord above who likes to give me a hard time with my emotions but he’s sure pushing my buttons right now and i guess i have it coming because i have been so detached from my emotions for a lot of this year and the only times ive allowed myself to actually *feel* i got snapped in the nose by the evil belt of Cruelty but its all good, im a LaVista and we have strong noses.

i didn’t nod to my future girlfriend i smiled a non-tooth smile and played it cool.

what about ashley you might ask?

hmmm, what about ashley?

shes looking better than ever. i don’t know if shes eating a thing down there behind the orange curtain, cuz she looks thin and tanned and blonder and a tad older in a good way. she has that jennifer jason leigh schoolgirl confidence that i was waiting for, but it isn’t working in my favor. i was hoping it would be like the michelle pfiefer way in the first or second Batman, i never can remember these things, where catwoman gets superclose to batman and says something sassy and then says “meow.”

i wouldn’t mind some of that.

id know where to take it.

and there is something to be said for the fact that ashley and i do know how to communicate in certain situations.

expertly.

when i was a lad the bill russell davey lopes steve garvey ron cey infield got better and better and with steve yeager behind the plate not many players got cheap infield hits but there was a period of time in 77 i believe it was when you could see those guys start to gel defensively (their bats were always good) and gel might be the best way to describe the daisy princess and i in certain matters best left unspoken.

back in 77 i woulda thought that that woulda been enough for a boy and a girl but its snot. not even close.

its warm today in los angeles. theres a brush fire in glendale which from this side of the hill looks much worse.

and all appearances look way different from the other side

especially within these cold walls

of the xbi.

the silicon chip inside her head

gets switched to overload

and nobody’s gonna go to school today

she’s gonna make them stay at home

daddy doesn’t understand it

he always said she was good as gold

and he can see

no reasons

’cause there are

no reasons

what reasons do you need to be showed

tell me why

i dont like mondays

tell me why

i dont like mondays

tell me why

i dont like mondays

i want to shoot the whole day down

The Telex machine is kept so clean

And it types to a waiting world

And Mother feels so shocked

Father’s world is rocked

And their thoughts turn to their own little girl

Sweet 16 ain’t it peachy keen

No, it ain’t so neat to admit defeat

They can see no reasons

‘Cause there are no reasons

What reason do you need, oh-h-h

{Refrain}

Down, down, shoot it all down

And all the playing’s stopped in the playground now

She wants to play with her toys a while

And school’s out early and soon we’ll be learning

And the lesson today is how to die

And then the bullhorn crackles

And the captain tackles

With the problems and the how’s and why’s

And he can see no reasons

‘Cause there are no reasons

What reason do you need to die, die, oh-h-h

And the silicon chip inside her head

Gets switched to overload

Oh, and nobody’s gonna go to school today

She’s going to make them stay at home

And Daddy doesn’t understand it

He always said she was as good as gold

And he can see no reason

‘Cause there are no reasons

What reason do you need to be showed

and already this day sucks. how does that happen?

woke up late. found out that i cant go to the angels/a’s game with my bro matt. didnt get to make my sandwich this morning for my lunchie.

these are the bummers in my life, not heartbreaking ones, but things that just fuck up the start of the week.

here we are going into the week of 9/11 and i gotta say that i dont want to see any specials, any memorials, anything. we have all been thinking about this shit all year. the terrorists win if we keep obsessing.

its like a guy getting called out in the first inning on an outside slider and letting it fuck up his whole game.

it was fucked up. it sucks. it’s over. if bush was a man he’d find the culprit. but hes an incompetent pussyass. so lets move on.

ashley and i saw my big fat greek wedding this weekend and i thought it was just ok.

seriously, what was the big deal about that movie?

it was cute. thats it.

why did the handsome perfect guy like the sweet 30 year old greek girl? simple question. she was way more funny in her narratives than she was in their dialogue. what would interest him in her? her family?

whatever. it wasnt a waste of money. the crowd seemed to like it. it reminded me of chicago. coulda been worse.

before the movie me and ashley went to poquito mas which is a burrito place on the sunset strip. we like to go there because drew barrymore has been spotted eating there.

so ashley was too shy to ask the lady who works there, so i said, “hey does drew barrymore really eat here?”

the lady said, “oh yeah.”

i said, “you know her right?”

she said, “yeah.”

i said, “when was the last time she was here?”

she said, “about an hour ago.”

ashley started to cry.

shes a sweet girl.

has a great tan.

for some reason she wants to hang out with me again.

so i guess im not so unlucky after all.

and the bears are starting where they left off. ruling.

super sweet come from behind win over the mighty vikes who are way better than you’d think, but it didnt matter. da bears caught em napping with help from my man marty booker, the a train and that monster of the midway defense.

im a dork when it comes to football.

ashley is putting gel in her hair calling her dad and now her roommate.

i dont know whats going on with her, you probably shouldnt even ask.

my satelite dish isnt working too well so i moved this huge palm tree thats in its way. my sexy neighbor just looked at where it one stood with disapproving eyes.

whatev.

soon im gonna have to ask the gay guy upstairs if i can get his roof access and put the dish up there.

this is what you get when you want to find out the truth about me. told ya, its not so sexy.

tonight im gonna take ashley back to poquito mas which is a burrito place that drew barrymore eats at all the time. then we’re gonna go see My Big Ass Greek Wedding cuz everyone likes it and i bet that it’ll be good.

had a great time yesterday at Greg and Molli’s baby shower.

normally im not a big fan of baby showers but all of our friends were there and our friends are way different than what you’d normally run in to at your typical baby shower.

there were three different types of pallello. is that how you spell it? no. im sure.

one was veggie, one was chicken, one was seafood.

then bassart made all this garlic shrimp. then there were meat and chese plates and lots of french bread. not to mention all the wine and beer and mexican wine, whatever that is, with the pulp in it.

all the girls looked great. we were all saying that we really are a clan of lost boys cuz none of us look our age. and all the girls looked super hot. then there was cake. then there were gifts then ken and matt sang a song about molli and greg that was sooooo funny you wouldnt even believe it. then greg sang a bluegrass song that was super funny. then molli and greg sang and it was sweet. then rick royale sang with jeanine. then matt. man, it was fun.

then kim lifted the hot tub cover and all the girls broke out the bikinis and there were like 5 hot chicks in the hot tub and they all had bikinis and none of the boys were going in there and the skies of hollywood were clear and the stars twinkled down upon us and chris drove me home stopping off at Zankau chicken and we watched a rerun of SNL and drifted off to sleep.

i can relate to him.

most the times when i go out with hot chicks i feel like a freak.

i feel like nothing that i wear looks cool.

i feel like my nose looks fucked up and my makeup is on wrong.

i feel like no matter what the girl is dressed like, shes always a hundred times hotter and more together than i ever will be.

i feel like im still putting out big hits and some of your favorite stuff is from me, but it’s not enough.

i feel like i could dance or sing better than anyone and people would just clap and say, so, thats what we expected. please bring on jimmy fallon now, hes cute. talentless, but cute.

one day michael jackson will get tired of this nonsense that gets heaped on him and either he will just go away like people say that they want him to do, or he’ll shoot himself, or he’ll just die.

or maybe he will come out with the best album ever.

again.

but odds are he’ll just shoot himself.

and no one will be surprised.

and then everyone will say they loved him

secretly

and the kids will all cry

and maybe some will feel embarrased

and the scumbags will dig up more dirty shit

like thats a hard thing to do

about any of us.

your pal,

elvis

and here i am typing to you back at the assignment desk. no long undercover. no longer being denied. no longer sad oh so sad and lonely. hi.

it was very hard to pull myself out of bed this morn and im even typing slow.

c a n y o u t e l l ?

i think ashley put something in my drink because in approximately an hour after she served me my fruit punch soda i was feeling a slight boost of euphoria followed by intense sensations on my skin, slight perspiration, and the desire to chew things and have things in my mouth. first i wanted to eat something, then i wanted to poop, then i wanted to take a shower, then i just wanted to walk.

walking was good.

holding her hand was really good. we walked over to the market and suddenly i was very very friendly. like way more than normal. i introduced ashley to the proprietor of the liquor store. his name is mangie. hi mangie, this is ashley. hi ashlely, i have seen your boyfriend here a lot.

i said, next time you see him, spit in his gatorade.

we all laughed.

mangie has a nice store next to a poker room where the fellas wear turbans and smoke out of big hookas. the women talk at a separate table.

he hired a local man who has missing teeth, a big tummy, and something wrong with his leg, but hes the security man although he has no uniform. he laughed at my joke even though i don’t think he got it.

then mangie’s landlord walked in. wasn’t satisfied with the rent check for that month.

“we changed banks.”

“what did you change banks for?”

“we didn’t like the other bank, but that check is good.”

“yeah, we’ll see about that.”

we picked up a few cans of whipped cream, bubble gum, diet cokes, and more water. i felt like i was in love. the air felt great. the weather last night around here was perfect. its been perfect for a while. at night.

got home, i just wanted to get out of my clothes. i had long black nylon sweat pants with a design running down the leg. i call them my ozzy pants. they would look better on ozzy though. i tried to explain this to ashley who was chewing on her sweet tarts. i guess we got sweet tarts at mangie’s too. sorry. she said i don’t really care for ozzy.

so i took off my shirt and put on bark at the moon and sang into a wooden spoon. she laughed. everyone was laughing last night. my neighbor has a dog. a big dog. we can have dogs in our apartments. the dog saw me jumping around pouring buckets of water on the crowd. hopping like a freaky toad and the dog started barking.

“rocky!” his owner yelled through her screen. “cut it out!”

rocky gave one more good bark and sat down but really wanted to come through my screen window. wagged his tail, readjusted. hyper. like he had to pee. but he didn’t have to pee. he wanted to eat my head off. not this time, rocky. ya fuck.

the roadies gave me a new bucket and i lunged at the window about to drench the poor beast. he flinched, but all that came out was confetti.

ashley and rocky both gasped.

fooled you again, mothafuckas. i said and broke into “fool in the rain,” led zep. started dancing around like an old man.

god were people laughing.

rocky just laid down and watched.

i think he was laughing a little too.

its all good.

when i fell asleep i was out immediately. too fast to even pray to the Lord and tell him thanks for all my blessings.

thanks for all my blessings, Lord.

and thanks to annessa for flowing $15 into the camera fund, and to greg b. for adding $5.

thanks kids!