Author Archives: tony

what if im losing my super powers

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what if i dont have the magic inside of me any more

what if everything before this was luck like they said

what if they were all being nice in the past and i have no talent

what if my isla vista sex drugs rock intro was really just a set up to a downward spiral into misery heartache poverty and tragedy

what if the caged bird doesnt actually sing for thee, but instead is tolling a bell yearning to be set free?

what if my buckets got a hole in it

these are the thoughts that go a mile a second into the head of a writer as he simply tries to do his work, and im sure it happens to musicians and artists and ballet dancers and tuba repairmen

but i heard the best thing the other day. who said it. who said it?

whoever it was said you can have these thoughts come to you, but you have to let them all slide through. don’t give them a home in your head.

dont let them live there rent-free. move them along, little doggies. move along.

have them, hear them, note what theyre saying,

but then bring out the broom and sweep them out, make room for the new thoughts, the weirder ones, the crazier ones

the thoughts that bring about peace and love, peace and love

oh yes, it was Ringo who said it!

because ambers allergic to the cats

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for the last year i havent spent a lot of time with them, but now on this project im home a lot more

and at night she sends me off to the living room before she’s about to fall asleep

so i am out here on the couch with my music and huge tv

and these two are so happy because i pet them and scratch them and

constantly push them away from me.

it’s a weird little dance.

and because they are competitive, one waits for the other to fall asleep

and then crawls over to my lap like nbd

they are very lovable animals who have slowly started to get fat.

and even though it goes against my best nature, because i dont know how to stop feeding them

i bought an automatic feeder thing for them.

it’s their christmas gift.

i hope they dont hate me forever for it.

when i say be yourself i mean really yourself

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but then that means know who you are

and thats a far more complicated situation.

i can be the nicest person in the whole world in person

but on email or text im the worst.

if there was a job where i could just write people venomous emails, the type that make you want to throw your computer out the window after reading it, i would be the king of that world

or if i could be the sweetest greeter at the fanciest restaurant.

oh you look so lovely, welcome to Chez Frank’s. what perfume are you wearing? it’s ravishing.

but real life is a combo of the two and all the shades in between. i find myself in battles all the time. situations i never expected to be in, and yet there we are. what do i do? what do i say?

evil tony wants to come out and bust heads the way he was taught on the mean streets of suburban illinois.

but sweet tony is infused by the grace of the holy spirit. we are all children of God. perhaps everything that happens on earth is just a complicated test to see how we will perform in Heaven, if we are allowed in there in the first place. thus check thyself. else, wreckith thy own.

as luck would have it i am usually gentle with the ones i should be strong and not strong enough with the ones i should release the kracken with.

i dont have the most clear memories of receiving my super powers, but i do remember this faint voice

was it a dream?

anyway it goes on a loop in my head from time to time, quiet and then louder.

dont use this for evil, only for good.

this black dude who used to work at Facebook

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quit his job at Facebook because he said the environment there wasn’t good if you are black.

he said that security guards harassed blacks at night, that they were dissuaded from having black backchannels, and they were even asked not to do “black things” after work with each other.

i dont know the gent, and some of these accusations seem outrageous especially in northern california but who knows, maybe he’s totally telling the truth.

he even said that 2-3 times a day, every day, he noticed people clutching their wallets tighter whenever he walked past them.

am i weird that i usually left my wallet in my desk? also, why would you need a wallet if all the food is free?

but lets say he is telling the truth and it sucked being 6% of a huge company and the environment made you feel intimidated to speak up else youd lose your gig?

i think that could be fixed. and i dont think it would be hard. you just need an african-american in charge with actual power to fire people if they, indeed, tried to tell people who they could hang out with after work and what they could do.

if the culture there is so backwards that even bright young tech workers are terrified of a black man walking through a campus in menlo park then there are actual things that can be done about it and a filthy rich company like Facebook should be the ideal place to invest in that sort of shift.

clearly mark z has other fires popping up all around him, and maybe he still wants to be a major political player, but as they say, how you gonna tell me how things should be when you got problems in your own house?

could i fix the culture problem at Facebook? of course. easily. and with style. i hired hundreds of people at PeopleSupport. the crew was diverse, talented and respectful. parking sucked though.

is that something that i would want to spend my energies on right now? no.

right now im working on a secret project and wondering why my tax man hasn’t called me back.

even i have a problems in my own house right now.

i am the most basic bitch

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i still have cable tv. i still miss my mtv. even though i listen to jazz on sundays i couldnt tell you four miles davis records let alone four white piano players.

i try but i am Joe Sixpack who fortunately moved to LA at the right time otherwise id have 2.4 kids and a four bedroom 3 bath house with a messy garage in suburbia right now, id be fatter and balder and seeing possibilities with Mitt.

but like i said the Lord nudged me west and opened my mind so you can all get inside

when i landed on this coast in the mid 80s, one young woman after another told me i was on the wrong path;  that i was steering into sexism and stupidism and lazyism, and god bless them for calling bullshit because my dude friends sure as hell never told me those things.

so here we are in the future i never expected. a world without mtv. dumbest president ever, voted on by the most gullible 60 million plus some russian bots. only music can tame this wild beast so after seeing this glorious write up in my favorite paper, i told the gf that i bought tickets, in cleveland, to listen to classical music in that gorgeous setting.

she was all, fuck yeah.

until i learned that the stones are playing that same night here in LA. what to do? the Stones are olllllld. there can’t be that many more chances to see Keef and Mick bouncing around. they want my money and i want to give it to them.

do you know how many times i say Siri, play Some Girls?

all the times. do you know i devoured keiths book? how much i love how they took black music and immersed themselves in it and washed it behind their ears and let it seep into their nooks and crannies and marinated in it album after album in the early days and then, as if it was like magic, 1967 appeared and out came the perfect swirl of brit pop, american r ‘n b, and lsd. her satanic majesty’s secret sauce.  the perfect storm. the storm before the storm because boom boom boom one classic after another.

will this tour be a celebration of experimentation and exploitation?

no. it too is living in the future they never thought would exist: selling out stadiums in their mid 70s.

but everything is possible in this brave new world so when i said baby the Cleveland show i wanna go to is the same day as the Stones show, what do we do?

she said, “lets go to Cleveland, ive already seen the Stones. And you have too, several times.”

and my mind was blown because once again a delightful woman had gently advised me that i buy in to the hype time and again. i am the most basic of bitches. the most gullible of guppies. i am Joe Sixpack, quietly being led to the slaughter.

amber enjoys filling my schedule with outings

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i explain to her that i am working on something

that quite literally may save another person’s life.

and she’ll say, so you *don’t* wanna go to the HBO Holiday party?

you don’t wanna have thanksgiving with firefighters who could have died

you dont wanna go to the dirtiest fashion show of all

you dont wanna take in a twisted art show?

you dont wanna go to roaring 20s bash at a high class haunted hotel?

i tried to tell her a long time ago that i am older than i feel

i have traveled through time back and forth and theres very little under the sun that i have not seen

plus i love wearing pajamas and rarely get invited somewhere where thats the dress code

the one exception is Bree invited us to her place for a Sunday morning pajama party brunch.

i think that because shes pregnant she’s not crazy with the limited amount of clothing options that she has, and she wants a party, thus PJs

only problem is Da Bears play on Sunday mornings and i might be jumping up and down in front of a TV. so lets hope they move it to a night game and then everyone can win.

amber has the perfect onesie.

i’m a weirdo, i like to see movies at the movie theater

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i have three giant tvs in my tiny apartment

i have surround sound systems and sound bars and sub woofers

i have a beautiful girlfriend who prances around in exotic outfits.

but almost every week theres a movie out there that i want to see and i want to see it in the theater with the latest sound

and in comfortable chairs that i would never be able to afford

and eat popcorn and drink coke and listen to how the audience reacts and then hear them afterwards say this or that.

i always learn something when i go to the movies.

when moviepass dropped their prices down to $10 a month last year i got one for my mom, amber and myself. but because amber has an outrageous schedule, we hardly ever went.

now that moviepass is dunzo (basically) (even though theyre still charging me for something) i sucked it up and bought the AMC theaters $20 a month pass which is good for any movie even the IMAX and 3D ones.

so yesterday i went and saw Ralph Breaks The Internet in 3D.

im seriously thinking about getting a website called shouldiseeitin3D.com because who knows unless you see it.

i really liked the movie but no you dont need to see it in 3D. if anything it’s distracting because its blurry and it takes away from the really good animation.

since you can see 3 movies a week on this plan i might go to another movie tomorrow after church and then sneak into Ralph afterwards to rewatch the second half.

heres the lesson i learned yesterday: tim burton, sara silverman, even johnny depp – weird and creatively wild people. probably wouldn’t pass a drug test. have definitely seen some shit, if not been the ring leader to some shit.

and yet they have made a fortune off Disney and vice versa.

why? because every story needs Edge.

and if you can package that edge in such a way, then it fits perfectly into the Disney formula.

lesson: you are not too weird to sell out and get rich, and it might not even be a sell out.

because the world is bizarre, turns out amber is related to a fire captain

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and because LA is a small town that just looks big on tv, the captain in question lives in thousand oaks

where we went yesterday for thanksgiving

and out of all the people who he wanted to talk and talk and talk to

was me.

and yes yes yes did i have questions.

was it hot?

duh.

was it smokey?

yep.

whats the deal with using prisoners?

inmates volunteer to assist, probably because they just want to be outside and useful instead of locked up all day. but we keep them away from homes and cars, they’re not a threat to other people.

is it true that even if they fight all these fires, they can’t get jobs as firefighters once they pay their debt to society?

yes that’s true, but they can’t be cops either, or even mailmen. it’s just the rules. think about it though, your house is wide open, do you want a guy in prison for theft looking at your wallet in your unlocked house?

how many hours straight did you and your crew work.

about 30.

how many casualties were there in the LA fires?

about 4.

why was the paradise fire so much more deadly?

it was way faster. the wind. and in a more wooded community.

there were other firefighters at this thanksgiving. they told me that they received thanks from people like Vin Scully, Angels Manager Mike Scioscia, Tony Dow from Leave it to Beaver, and Dave Grohl who cooked BBQ for the boys.

despite just finishing fighting the largest fire in southern california history, all of them were in good spirits, attentive to their kids and wives, and down to talk about anything. we watched very little football.

the captain had to eat his Rams tickets a few weeks prior because the fire broke out with little time for him to sell them.

but that wasn’t his biggest fear.

he said that being a fireman, you know youre probably gonna get lung cancer. you inhale all kinds of industrial and bizarre shit. and lots of it. all the time. for years.

and just as quickly the discussion turned to looters, which he had a story about, and how the kid was caught.

it was a lively, fascinating, very warm evening and we drove the slow way home, still smelling the ash of Thousand Oaks on our way back to the Valley.

ran into two young men outside of Target last night

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they said

we’re college students doing a survey about religion, are you a reader of the Bible?

yes, yes i am.

we want to ask you about the Holy Mother. You are aware of the Holy Father, God, and we are His children. If you have the Father and the children, we are here to ask you, “what’s missing”?

i said, absolutely nothing.

they were all, ????

i said, when i was a student, like you two, i asked my mother for an unabridged dictionary. this was in the days before the Internet. dark days when one needed books, volumes of reference materials like thesauruses and dictionaries.

i said, ma, can you get me an unabridged dictionary, one that has at least 300,000 words?

and when the book came in the mail it was not unabridged. it was fully bridged my brothers.

and with it came this note.

she wrote, i love you, son with all of my heart, here are 65,000 words, when you have mastered those, let me know and i will get you a book with 65,000 more. xoxoxox your mom.

and it taught me a valuable lesson, my fellow seekers of Truth, she taught me that often when we think we need more more more we actually need to learn about what it is we have.

i do not think we have mastered our relationship with God, The Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

perhaps there is a Holy Mother. perhaps there is a Holy step sister and a Holy Uncle.

but i think the reason that it’s only the Father that the Good Book is focused on, is because that’s more than enough for humans to chew on right now.

don’t forget, when it was just Adam, Eve, God, the snake and the tree, Adam ate from the tree even though he watched God turn his rib into a woman right before his eyes.

until we have mastered our relationship with God and our fellow man, we need not be distracted by other things.

now go tell that to your teacher.