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they want what you have

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one of the more fascinating things about my life is at almost every turn

and i dont say this as a victim, even though it may come across that way,

but people want what i have.

and then they ruin it.

since day one people have told me how to run this blog: what to put on it, what to delete, what to change up

theyve had plenty of time to make their own blogs. do they do it? nope.

three times ive been paid money to run other peoples blogs

each time the blogs i was handed were ok, and i turned them into something way better than ok.

and then, after i leave, poof theyre gone, after others swore they wanted to improve them.

but theyre gone.

it’s almost like living in a house and no one plays the piano, but then i start playing it

and it sounds beautiful after a while. and all these people gather to listen and applaud.

then someone else takes the piano, rolls it down the street, and throws it into the grand canyon.

maybe thats my lot in life. maybe thats what satan and the lord are doing, like im Job

but instead of giving me warts all over my body and killing my family to see if i crack

they just give me notes all day and when im not looking try to murder the sand castles i build.

but the cubs won the world series, haters, i will never crack now.

i complimented someone today on their instagram

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and they said, oh i love yours too.

and i thought, how could you? it’s terrible. it’s 10% of whats in my heart. it’s nothing. it’s a sell out. it’s me not trying to lose my job(s).

it’s me trying not to make waves.

it is the worst thing a 51 year old man could do: pretend like there’s 75 years left.

on paper im past my prime. how do i know? how many creative people do you know peaked in their 50s?

sure i could be one of the first ones. sure.

suuuuuure jan.

so what do you do if you can’t do the things you could do when you were younger?

you fucking floor it. you let em have it. you live by example. you rock the casbah. you show em what youve been bottling up inside for so so so long.

the last thing you do is go the way of the talentless cowards youve been scoffing at your whole life. and yet thats exactly what i have been doing since, hell, sooooo long.

did i rock during LAist? yes. was it perfect? it was so unperfect that now looking back at it and reading the archives i wince at sooooo much of what i was writing because i was doing it too fast. i had no time to think. i had to run the whole thing, manage the people, set up the thing, market the thing, and yes, try to be the living example of the thing

so when do you have time to channel The Spirit?

hardly never.

and yet it still came.

you dont need a lot of time. you just need the desire, the trust, and the platform.

and by trust, i mean no fear.

it helped so much that my bosses had my back. it meant everything.

but heres the truth about it all, your most important boss: Love.

always has your back

will never laugh at you

has no idea what Judging is

and wants you to do all the nutty crazy and beautiful things that are growing inside of you

and wants you to spray it on the side of the wall like a firehose.

this dick trickle shit is for the sucker mcs.

quincy jones was interviewed the other day by vulture

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and it was probably the greatest interview of all time because Q has seen it all

and he’s like 85 now and he doesn’t care any more

maybe he never cared. but he sure as hell dont care now.

so he tells us that he thought the Beatles were terrible musicians

says that Marlon Brando would have sex with anything that moved

even Richard Pryor and Marvin Gaye.

he admits that u2 isnt making good music and producers these days

are only in it for the money.

but when all the gossip and nonsense was over he talked about how

Coletrane used to carry around these music theory books

and how when you aren’t making music for the right reasons

“God walks out the door”.

two south african immigrants made news today

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the first was Elon Musk who sent a rocket ship containing a Tesla car into space this morning

and then had his rocket boosters fly back to earth safely so he could use them again

and again and again.

moral of the story: surround yourself with people who believe that anything is possible

and you will create miracles.

the second was the richest man in LA, Billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong,

who might take $500 million of his $7 billion fortune to buy the best paper west of Manhattan

your Los Angeles times.

moral of that story: sometimes good things happen to good cities.

always do the right thing, Mookie.

who’s that bald head in the bottom right corner?

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sometimes i dont know who to be. sure you’ll say be yourself but

no, you cant be yourself. because yourself might be someone who honks at someone when they cut you off.

and then yourself might be someone who flips that person off after they slam their brakes on you.

and then yourself might be someone who, when invited to join the bad driver into a home depot parking lot

ACCEPTS THE INVITATION

in life we are sometimes lured into that very same trap and if you’re being yourself

you just might fall for it, but if you are being the person you have been trained to be

you politely pass and go on with your day.

my day started with that bad driver. it was 8am. i was driving amber to pop physique. and then i was off to the annual nominees luncheon where i was to create an Instagram Story to our 1.4 million followers.

i wasn’t able to get much sleep the night before, but there i was seriously considering being a tad late for work to remind one BMW driver that the person who they cut off, brake check, and flip off

might be a former xbi agent, who foolishly thought that if he got those plates would send enough of a message to the jerkoffs on the streets to reconsider. but no. twas i who was the fool.

did my thing at the beverly hills hilton. met some people. chatted with my old boss. didnt make a misstep.

until i returned back to the office where i had to do some extra. and it was there that your hero hit a wall.

ran outta gas. threw in the emotional towel. ran out of blood sugar.

and made some mistakes.

then on the text message machine, was short with amber, because i was trying to concentrate, and wires were crossed, so we met at the grocery store. and over paid.

 

then went to the taco house. and the lady only spoke spanish and thought i said 6 tacos when i meant 2.

so i was all, whatevs, lets give 4 to the homeless. so i drove to this gas station. amber popped out. i said give him my giant mexicoke too.

dude goes I DONT WANT YOUR DAMN TACOS, but she convinced him.

but then he got up and marched from the bus stop bench to a pay phone.

placed the bottle on top of the phone and i left him in the dust cuz i was all, that fools gonna launch that bottle at us.

and i didn’t want him to see my magnetic shields in action.

and god knows who else.

so we zoomed before it got close.

i said, just lets get home in one piece.

then amber said i got us tickets to a show in new york.

and i was all, new york city?

pace picante sauce?

and i am so tired.

sooooooooo

my man greg sent me this old Lick flier

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ive always had good friends

ive always had fast cars

ive always had a secret weapon

and ive always read the bible.

heres a trick if someone is bothering you or stalking you or acting crazy.

the crazier the better.

just like how a bullfighter fights a bull

if the bull is super feisty and wild and bucking around and is all omg i cant wait to kill you, paulie

you just wave that red curtain at him

and watch him run for it.

if someone, even a stranger, even a demonicly infused wildman on the subway

is taking up your personal space and saying the worst things with stanky breath and evil intent, heres what you can do and i do it every now and then and im telling you it works.

it works better if you have a pen, like a pocket sized Sharpie is ideal, theyre also good for signing 8×10 glossies when fans run at you at the airport,

but this will repel salesmen and gang members, suit wearing men and women asking if youd like to take a personality test, or some drunken slob at the bar who’s cornered you next to the jukebox

just reach in your pocket, pull out your pen

and if you want, write it on the palm of your hand, but i prefer a cocktail napkin

or a free postcard

or a business card of a stranger

but the hand isn’t bad

just write

john 3:16

and look them in the eye and smile.

and the bull will rush

and the crazy will flee

and the loud will silence

and you will go free.

theres two techniques to getting a fare on lyft

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you can either drive around to your favorite spots

or you can just go to your most favorite spot and wait.

usually im too hyper to wait so i just drive and drive and drive. who knows if you are actually driving to the hot spot or if you are leaving where something good was about to happen

but one thing for sure when you do that: you burn gas

another thing for sure when you do that: you increase your chances for getting into a crash.

so over the last few days ive been waiting.

i just sit there and read twitter or the news or text amber or think about taking a nap.

last night i was at my favorite spot and i got a ping on Lyft Premiere. bonus: it alerted me that it would be a “long ride” that would take 45 minutes or more.

typically on a thursday that means it is a trip to LAX, but last night i got lucky and we went to West Hills.

great guy, undercover hacker, told me all his secrets.

admitted that americans arent as good as russian or chinese hackers because we are lazy or can become lazy far quicker than our enemies because we get fat and middle class to quickly.

i said the key to success is the hustle.

he was all, you got that right comrade.

we took the 405 to the 101 in rush hour and he noted that i am ridiculously cool under the pressure of traffic.

what traffic i said as miles’ birth of cool eased out of the speakers.

he was like, is this miles? i said yep.

he said, with trane? i said, nope.

he said, oh with bird?

i said this was right inbetween that period. after parker, before coletrane. he said where did you learn that? i said every sunday i turn on jazz and read the bible for an hour.

he said how long have you been doing that for? i said since college.

he said, how long ago was that.

i said well, lets put it this way, i had a 300 baud modem at the time.

and we laughed as we drove through the western valley with its wide boulevards and shirtless denizens

on an unusually warm last night of january.

$69 fare + $5 tip.

you’ll never feel at home in LA unless you keep moving

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LA is huge.

imagine the biggest place you’ve ever been in and quadruple it.

that will just be the Valley, which you need to know if you are really to get LA.

then quadruple it again and you’ve got South Central,

which is where the secret soul of LA is. the actual heartbeat.

the fakers fly right over south central via overpasses or freeways , but if you live here long enough

and if you start meeting the right people you will go to a house party off Crenshaw

you will get your haircut on Florence,

you might even find yourself at a sample sale near Carson.

LA goes all the way to Long Beach and inside the weirdest dead ends of downtown.

everyone hikes Runyon, but if i was the failing New York Times and their laughing stock of an LA bureau here’s what i would do:

there is a stretch of LA from Santa Monica to DTLA thats as wide as Pico to the south to Sunset to the north.

i would refuse to run any stories from that stretch an zero from downtown.

i’d also ignore anything happening in the upper crust of Malibu, Manhattan and Redondo Beaches.

why? because unless we are talking about crime, 90% of so-called news and features by the mainstream press happen in that narrow band.

the Pulitzer Prize winning Jonathan Gold is beloved in LA because he uses the entire canvas, not just the same beaten path

he ventures, he explores, he speaks Spanish, he talks to people of all skin colors and religious beliefs.

LA is the home of more religions than any other city in the world.

it is the 2nd largest Spanish speaking city on the planet.

if all of your sources and all of your stories are about white folk, if all of your touchstones and goals and ideals are based in Caucasian ideals of the 1960s

then you aren’t really telling the story of LA of today.

i once dated a girl from canada who was blown away that so many billboards and handmade fliers were in Spanish

and how many brown skinned people there were on the streets

and Asians

and Jews.

she said, this isn’t what it looked like in “Clueless”.

if you truly want to cover this city, and most of all, if you really want to love this city, you have to move out of West Hollywood

you have to break up with your boyfriend,

you have to stop taking taxis

and most of all you should start driving for Lyft.

then you will start to see the real story that is this beautiful city of angels.

because sometimes you meet people and they are even better

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they say dont meet your idols

i sat backstage with my favorite band the replacements when i was in college

i got to meet elvis costello that one time in frisco

and then of course now i work in the land of stars

and there are these screenings where they talk afterwards

at the times i had kareem abdul jabbar as one of our bloggers.

the thing about your heroes or my heroes or stars or people you look up to is

they might have a bad day the day you meet them

or they might be in the best mood in the world and have always wanted to meet you.

its a roll of the dice and if things dont mesh for that instant

that doesnt mean that theyre terrible people.

i took a job in frisco, working for the giants selling peanuts and beer

for the sole reason to discover if Barry Bonds was an asshole or not.

in many ways i am a scientist.

and the message i have for you is this

meet everyone.

dear tony, how would you market a microphone?

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Hi Tony, 

I appreciate your patience with me, but I really think you’d be a great podcaster. You seem to know everyone in LA, and our company would sponsor your show if you mentioned our microphones (which we would provide, gratis). 

But since you repeatedly decline, can you help brainstorm with us? We are having difficulty branding our mics – and it’s a very competitive market that we are in.

Regards,

Mike

whaddup, Mike,

podcasting is fine, but i’m not sure it’s for me. when i was at KPCC, i saw how difficult audio editing is, and to, me, great podcasting involves great editing – but it also requires fantastic content. i think you are thinking too inside-the-box by focusing on podcasters. think bigger. think Chappelle.

there are two places where lots of people see people rock the mic: musicians and comedians. bands have all these layers you have to deal with: the label, management, all of their existing sponsors, and who knows what else.

but comedians — there may be an opening there. and for sure there’s no branding between them and their sole tool: the mic.

here’s what i recommend. make a mic with a solid blue line that wraps around the shaft right under the meshy part (sorry I don’t know the terms). make another one with a red line.

send the sketches of the blue mic to Comedy Central and the red one to Netflix. tell them the truth, that when people see a guy like Chappelle on youtube, there’s no way to know if he is doing something from a CC special or a Netflix special unless they’re super fans.

BUT if people start seeing that blue line on a mic after a while they might start connecting the dots that “oh, that means Comedy Central”. likewise the red one would mean Netflix.

then you put out ads that say something like, “there’s a fine line between clever and stupid” under all these pics of comedians holding your blue or red mics (depending on which company understands that you are ALSO helping them brand their network).

yours in rock,

tony