a long time ago when the Cubs were close to getting in the World Series people were all, are you gonna beg people for money so you can go?
i was all, nah, i’ll just sell all my baseball cards or something.
shit, now i’m gonna have to sell all my baseball
and
basketball cards now.
way back when i was in college we didn’t take a lot of pictures. back then you had to use film and get it developed and it all cost money. it was insane.
so of my whole four years at UCSB i think there are only like 9 pictures of me total.
i had two sets of friends at school, both of whom i still am very close with: my Daily Nexus friends and my hippy friends.
one Christmas the ladies of the latter group decided that we should all dress up and have a “formal” dinner before we all flew home for Christmas break. not everyone had the latest in high fashion, in fact looking at this it might appear that some of us robbed the local Goodwill, but we tried, because why not.
we were all “poor” but we always had food to eat, beer to drink, and fun to have and best of all we all shared.
often i say im the luckiest man alive and i seriously cannot even imagine how different my life would be now if i wasn’t placed in the San Nicolas dorm and instantly clicked with all of these super sweet, very fun people.
last night the Cubs clinched the division when the Giants beat the Cardinals
it was sort of anti-climatic but you know what, fine. we dont need any drama right now. we need to give the kids some at bats and rest our pitchers and get ready for the playoffs.
the playoffs, the opening act for the World Series.
last night i bought a Post Season cap and a little gift for my momma.
this is a picture from Wrigley Field where hundreds of Cub fans gathered in the wee hours to celebrate.
the Muslims have Mecca, we have 1060 W. Addison. i may not get married there – although who knows – but if i end up in ashes thats where they will be sprinkled. it’s where my heart is and clearly where all of these people’s hearts are too.
yesterday i was feeling so ill i had to take the day off of work. i didnt blog i didnt uber i barely ate. i felt so nautious i dont even know how to spell it any more. i still feel slightly pukey but im gonna go into work because tomorrow i fly to chicago to celebrate my moms 24th birthday.
one thing i did do yesterday was laundry. washed my sheets, shorts, towels, blankets. when you’re ill it’s nice to feel clean. so thank you Lord for letting me have this washer dryer finally. i think it may have sorta cured me.
i was the blog editor of the times at the time and i was trying my best to get one of our movie blogs on the map.
it was written by this excellent reporter who traveled around and got these great stories
but he wasnt a critic, he wrote about movie news, which was fine, and he’d write a few features. good features. but the web was yawning.
i was starting to learn that unless a movie blog was something super dooper special and unique like The Hero Complex
it was gonna be a struggle to get it happening.
so i thought of this great idea, i was gonna dress up in costume every week and go to the movies
and invite all of our readers to come with us and afterwards we would interview the readers
and ask them what they thought of the movie
and we would put their videos up a couple days later
and we would call the whole thing The LA Times Movie Club
well of course everyone jumped on board because it was a brilliant idea and i was making good money
so i didnt even expense the costumes or the wigs or the makeup or even the movies
and omg the entertainment editors came up to me and shook my hand and said
“tony god bless you. there are so many lonely people out there and you have
given them a way to see movies with other strangers and our fine paper. you’re amazing!”
so one day i was almost ready to go to the movies. it was robin hood. the remake with kevin costner.
and sass was in the neighborhood and she wanted to introduce me to her friend
and i was all, who cares, fine. i’ll say hi.
and in walks sass who always looks spectacular and who is this wearing a child’s tshirt as a dress
but candis marie from the east side and i was all, trust me i dont always dress like an elf.
she was all, nice tights.
and we took the picture of our shoes because rarely do i have cool shoes on.
i have been acting and feeling very very strange the last week or so
and i dont think it will be getting any better any time soon.
the cubs are going to win the world series
probably easily
and it’s already starting to freak me out because
this is not something that me or anyone younger than 109 years old has ever experienced
and this team is so good and lovable and likeable and calm and chill
and next week im flying to chicago for my annual visit and by the time i see a game at wrigley
it will be that little inbetween time after theyve clinched it
(which they’ll do tomorrow or Friday)
and before the playoffs.
but still it’s weird. so weird.
like the pretty girl in school saying omg no tony is the prettiest.
today the cubs beat the crap outta the cardinals
our oldest player hit a home run that went about 6 and half miles.
then the first baseman, who in any other year would be the MVP
(but its gonna go to the third baseman bc he’s having and even better year)
hit two home runs like no biggie.
all in our rivals park.
i know some good people who are from st louis and i know at least one who lives there now.
lovely lovely people.
but i also know some cardinals fans who are miserable racists.
remember this is a team who fired harry caray at the peak of his career
because he fell in love with the boss’s daughter.
they ended up together forever and ever and ever.
those are the things i should focus on right now during this moment of pre-freak mode.
i will be very drunk the next month.
maybe i’ll be drunk forever.
maybe there will be another chicago fire when this goes down next month.
maybe i will climb the scoreboard and jump into the flames below
maybe i will be saved by a st. bernard with a bucket of Old Style.
maybe we will just casually sweep every team we face
and it will be very very boring.
and they will run out of beer because of a fire in st. louis
and we will all drink water and pour water on each other
and laugh and laugh and laugh in the great wet tshirt contest of 2016
and i will laugh the most because i will win
bc im so pretty.
as you may know i love pictures. who knows why but i do. love them.
for a while there were pictures and posters all over my apartment walls. as high as i could reach, if there was any blank space i would put something in it.
my philosophy was, what good are these pictures in a photo album when they could be right there over the toilet?
then one day i fell in love with a young lady who moved in with me briefly and asked if she could remove all of the memories of my past. it seemed like a reasonable request so i allowed it. now, years later, i am slowly putting new photos back on my walls and i love it. i love seeing all of these… things… all the time. friends, family, strangers, famous ppl, not famous people, and just great images.
so last night while driving the mean streets of downtown LA i thought, dude you’re gonna turn 100 in a few weeks! you should probably do something for such a milestone of a birthday. and you should do it on the world famous. and it should be something you aint never done before — which is a tough assignment for someone with 11,240 posts.
i concluded that every day for the next 100 days i will put up a picture that means something to me. a special picture. one that might be on my walls – or should be on my walls. and i should write about it with as much honesty as you have grown to expect from this humble url of love.
so lets start with this selfie. this one is from the buzznet days. i can tell because im using a canon rebel camera. only time i ever had that camera was when marc brown bought one or two for buzznet so they could send me out on assignment and take pics for the pic site. i was on a little roadtrip up to vancouver for a buzznet meetup party. it was thanksgivingtime. i had just spent the holiday with the truest and her family in Umpqua, OR and took some really great pics along the way.
but this one was taken in, i wanna say in the portland area at a cheap motel. i was alone. i missed the truest already but i was looking forward to hanging with chad and smelly danielly and matt good and the canadian crew. it was going to be my first time in canada i think. either the first or second time.
back then neither my beard or moustache liked to grow in and i was just starting to get gray hairs in there.
i was cold. i was alone. and the florescent light of the bathroom made me look green. i loved it.
if you know me you know im a lover not a fighter.
true i can fight with the best of them, but thats no why Providence gave me my superpowers
mines, and yours, were meant for poetry, not barbs, romance, not wars.
i want to use my detective skills and intellect to have greater ends than winning an internet tussle.
i want to whisper in the ear of a cheerleader, not yell at a cardinal fan on twitter.
dude came into my facebook not long ago and started blah blah blahing about some nonesense
and i keep my facebook prettymuch open to the public. because i believe in freedom. open door policy.
i’ll block you if i have to, but i dont even really like doing that. people should be allowed to say whatever theyre gonna say and if they really came to fight, shouldnt a gradate in literature from the college of creative studies mop the floor with like 98% of all trolls?
this very busblog once upon a time would have 50-60 comments on posts, not all of them were right on tony, marry me, kiss me, be my boyfriend I CAN COOK!
and i bet you i banned less than a dozen people during that heyday. you just blogged, fought, and moved on.
but theres this guy today who i wanna ban but
well
he went to UCSB.
how am i gonna ban a Gaucho?
i may need to take him aside and say dude, either you’re Candid Camera 3000 or you seriously need to take your malarkey somewhere else because you’re disrespecting our school.
earlier today i was so sick i had to go home. on the way i bought old school Pepto Bismol.
did some work on my sickbed, still had a headache, drank some more pepto
had the cubs on the laptop and football on TV1 and fell asleep AGAIN
woke up and the Cubs were throwing a no hitter.
believe me when i tell you i think that totally cured me.
cubs magic number is now three.
super weird. might have to see a doc. might have to get a pregnancy test. i knew i shoulda used a condom.
as the day goes on things get better. except when it starts late in the day, then it gets worse.
i mean if you look at my belly theres clearly a baby in there.
never kicks though. lazy baby. sleepy baby.
maybe the baby is reading.
WHERE DID YOU GET THAT BOOK, BABY?
so last night i ordered chinese via Uber Eats from one of my favorite Beverly Hills chinese joints.
no way would they deliver to me normally but for some reason they full on deliver when you do it through Eats even though it costs the same.
now how does that work?
i felt bad for the driver who seriously had to go 1/2 hour to get me my sauce on side chinese food
so i tipped him $5 but even that didnt seem like enough so i gave him a big kiss and squeezed his ass.
and i told him, the Lord loves you more than you know.
i offered him my cats but they were hiding behind the couch.
i ordered chinese because thats the way i like to eat my carrots and broccoli the most.
sauteed in chinese spices and gravies and weirdnesses
the beef from this joint, China Wok, has the same texture as the shrimp.
i dont eat a lot of beef. but when i do its either because of happy family fried rice
or when im getting a super dodger dog at the game.
maybe that baby isnt a baby but its a giant tumor and thats why i have morning sickness.
if i die i loved you more than you know.
the football team played a game that had started at 11am for some reason.
no one knew why because they were playing Utah State so at the best the good people of Utah only had to turn on the tv at noon.
11am was way too early for my passengers, white ones, black ones, asians, they all said that they set their alarms to wake up
but failed and just slept in.
we bonded.
what sort of country do we live in where a man has to set an alarm to wake up to watch a football game being played literally in my backyard?
SERIOUSLY they said.
in one ride i had four guys all from china. they were going to the grocery store. had only been here for a month.
can you imagine? only been in america a month and you are living in south central and going to USC
multiple culture shocks all happening at the same time.
they were all roommates.
they lived in a luxury apartment complex for usc students. im curious, so i asked them,
hey how much do you pay?
one of them said $850.
i said per room?
they said, no we share a 2BD, so it’s $850 each.
i said, thats $3,400 a month?
you can buy a house for that.
they just laughed and nodded and repeated me.
picked up all these black girls. so i turned on the black girl station.
drake comes on and one of them starts singing to it.
i was all, drake is playing at the forum, why arent you pretty girls there?
they were like, tickets are $200!
i said, thats what men are for.
they said, aint no men up in here.
just trifling little boys.
and much later did it occur to me that i should have given them the chinese boys’ number.
im about to have a big birthday. i dont even know what im gonna do. but i will give thanks because im thankful.
ive met some of the most amazing people in the world.
ive kissed some of the greatest young ladies ever made.
the things ive dranken and eaten and seen and participated in.
youd never think a scrawny kid from the burbs in illinois would have had quite a life
but it happened. and a lot of it happened thanks to writing and blogging and
going outside and seeing what happens.
but the secret to all of it was
other people.
and that is why i am so grateful.
no one can fly on their own.
everyone has to lift each other.
everyone has to figure things out first and then the coolness comes.
people built the roads, literally, people invented the framework
people accept you and give you access and share secrets and work with you
hopefully all for the same reason:
to continue the improvements of everything.
so thank you for everyone for either literally helping
or being a great inspiration
neither of which should be underestimated.
gracias, madre.