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fascinating watching the GOP lose their minds right now

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im with racist donald trumpthey pretend theyre the party of lincoln but we all know thats a lie.

theyre the party of the one percent.

they dont want to tax those who could actually pay tax

they want to blow up whoever disagrees with them

and right now they wanna blow up their own nominee.

why? because he is too much like them.

he is the Uber GOP: he has no real ideas, he has no love for what is truly lovable about this country, and the only reason he is where he is is because of the banks.

just like them.

but unlike them he says what is in his head. unlike him he can’t hide his racism and ignorance and spite.

and why should he? letting his id run the show has made him richer than he could have ever dreamed of being, and famous, and gotten him yuuuuuge ratings on tv.

if it aint broke!

but the GOP leaders are clearly used to holding the strings over their boys and girls. how do we know this? because they’re freaking out that they cant tell trump what to do and say. they yearn for Mitt even though Mitt lost and Mitt proved that Obamacare worked. doesnt matter, he would jump when they told him to.

trump aint jumping for anyone except for that drunk Bart Simpson in his head who says cowabunga every time he sees a pretty girl or a Muslim.

they say politics is about power. but the GOP are showing it’s also about control. sadly control is an illusion and the party who brought the world w, mcain, palin, mitt, lying ted, little marco, that lady from hp, herman cain, paul ryan, and smart glasses rick perry probably wishes that their whole job right now was to go back to trying to scare the masses about terrorism, abortion huts, and death panels

because theyre about to lose the white house, and probs both houses of congress.

this is the party that has owned talk radio, owns all the biggest corporations, went to the best schools, know all the right people, but has never had an agenda that benefitted the middle class. so they will lose (again) and their biggest nightmare is about to come true

hillary clinton is going to appoint four supreme court justices.

and the world will not implode

and america will say why did people ever vote republican?

and someone will say, same reason people used to use Internet Explorer:

it came with the system

today is michele’s birthday, shes 24

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michelethe best things ive learned ive learned from women.

and the least likely things ive learned, i learned from my girlfriends

i have been extremely lucky with love.

these women have all been super smart, and thankfully patient, but most of all, genius

michele lived in malibu. i loved her family and fortunately they loved me right back. i tell these stories every year because i like to remember them.

the drive was always so long to get out there but it was always worth it. we talked a lot, she and i. we were so young. people worry but they shouldnt. some kids just like to talk with their gf/bf. hold hands and watch movies.

its weird that now i work right across the street from our favorite movie theatre: this little indie place that specialized in foreign films. i lived in inglewood at the time. i would drive to zuma, hang with her family and we would drive into hollywood and watch a movie, then id drive her home. then id drive back to inglewood.

it was a lot of driving. i was 20. what did i care. i loved her. what wasnt there to love? dark hair, red lips, blue eyes, pale skin and the most beautiful words from the most concerned mind. she was from another world. i was from the dirt. she was from the heavens.

she would see a whale in the sea and cry. shed stand by the railing and it would swim and she would see an entire novel. a mini series. she would weep during the sad parts and bawl during the happy parts. and it all took place in seconds. i didnt even look at the whale because there was a damn movie happening in her face. the weirdest and most beautiful movie. she’d apologize for crying and i’d apologize for not crying.

she taught me about poetry and journalism and the rest of my life has been about

well, not about whales.

not yet. that is.

Dear Associated Press,

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bernieFor years you and the rest of the news media has hyped this election.

Barack Obama was barely into his second term when you and your cohorts were speculating what would happen during this election and who would win.

You can’t tell millions of people the day before their state’s elections that their vote doesn’t matter and think they’ll listen.

Why would you do that anyway?

If you wanted to write something interesting the day before the election that youve been hyping for years, you should have written about why people should always vote and all the weird things that have happened through the years when people actually voted.

Instead you wrote what you did and now millions of Hillary supporters may stay at home because they think their vote doesn’t matter.

And all the Bernie supporters will vote and the numbers will be far more interesting than even Nate Silver is predicting.

Oh that was your intent all along?

All right then.

See you at the polls tomorrow.

ten years ago today i became the editor of LAist

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bbq LAist

thats right, on 6/6/06

Jake and Jen accepted the recommendation from outgoing LAist boss, Carolyn Kellogg,

and made me the first paid full time editor of the LA blog.

the first thing we did was have a big party at the Good Luck

where we drank and i begged everyone i knew to write for me

for free and make this thing bigger than ever

the pants tony pierce and big tanky

and they did it.

all these people, many who i had never met before, worked and wrote and

took pictures and interviewed people and went to games and shows

and covered LA in a beautiful way

jimmy and andy

and here was my secret. i let them be themselves.

it was the only way. it was the best way.

it was the way that helped us increase our audience by 1,500x in a year and a half.

when i started we had a staff of about 10. the same as blogging.la, our rival.

weirdly there were other local blogs that got more traffic than us.

but that wasnt the case after a year. after a year we were the most popular.

by a lot.

sarah and ali

we had anti reviewing weed, we had girls writing about video games

we had girls writing about dating in LA, we had so much news coverage it was crazy

we had Koga and Joey Maloney, who i had found on Flickr, suddenly taking great pictures for us

we built relationships with the concert venues, and promoters

with the Dodgers, with other blogs, but most importantly we built a great bond with LAlaist stats

it was more of an agreement. the deal was we were gonna write some great stuff, maybe 20 stories a day

and they better say nice things about us in the comments

or i was gonna get in those comments and tell em to go to hell.

it was a full court press. sxsw

heres the story and if you dont like it imma get you.

the other secret to the success was jake and jen let me be me

when they saw me telling people what part of hell they could visit and what family member they would find there,

they didn’t tell me to knock it off.

when i said after four months that i wanted to drive around the US and compare it to LA, they said fine, as long as you keep growing the site.

when i said i wanted to go to SXSW and have a party and a battle of the bands, they said, fine as long as you keep growing the site.

when i said i wanted to have bbqs at my house instead of treating the staff to drinks at a bar, they said, fine do whatever you want as long as it doesnt get us sued.

and they stuck to their word

i will always be so grateful of them for giving me that level of freedom with their baby.

their LA baby.

their baby that spun off the LA Beat and helped launch the careers of soooo many great writers and editors

i had a lot of fears ten years ago. i had a lot of confidence because this blog had done well and i had been fully trained at the Daily Nexus, but i was afraid that if i failed i would screw it up for all the other editors and writers who would (hopefully) follow me.

and once i went to the Times and we started forming LA Now, I was worried that LAist would be crushed.

fortunately none of my fears came true. fortunately LAist is its own thing and it has grown into something so unique and so vital to the LA scene that nothing will be able to crush it.

images-3so on this day, the tenth anniversary of Jake and Jen hiring me, i want to thank them of course for taking that chance.

i also want to, of course, thank Carolyn Kellogg for approaching me after the Blogging While Black panel at the 2006 SXSW and floating the trial balloon past me. Carolyn has done pretty well on her own, by the way, she is now the Books Editor at the LA Times.

and mostly i want to thank all of the people who contributed during my time there. it was a voluntary thing. they were doing it mostly because they wanted to write and be part of something. they wanted to talk about their neighborhoods. they wanted to eat Thai Food, they wanted to talk to bands and filmmakers,

and yes, they wanted to tell us what stanky green was out there and what we should look for.

it was a sprint that turned into a marathon. i barely left my house. i barely took a break. and in retrospect it’s probably the thing i’m most proud of in my life. images-1

but heres one thing i want to share.

when i got the gig, the first thing i did was drive to Las Vegas.

i got a nice hotel room, i brought a bunch of books and my laptop

and i wrote down all the best laid plans i could think of.

i ordered room service and just wrote and wrote and wrote plans and ideas and strategies and i spent like 15 minutes at the pool and then i went back up to the room and planned more. but heres what i learned from that experience: plans are crazy.

you can plan all you want but theres nothing like getting in the middle of it all and experimenting and vibbing off of your writers and seeing what the audience responds to and seeing how your staff reacts during crazy situations.

maybe the best idea we had was the Neighborhood Project. no way did i think that up in June in Vegas a decade ago.

so in retrospect heres what i should have done in Vegas a decade ago: ate, drank, and slept by the pool.

because i got very little sleep during my time at LAist. which was perfectly fine with me.

after i finish the bible this time through i may put it down

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whatas you know i read the bible every sunday for an hour

it’s a deal i cut with the Lord that instead of going to church every sunday, i would read the bible for that hour, especially since that was always my favorite part of church

i became upset that they didnt spend more time on the gospel and instead wasted all this time with the ritual and ceremony and handshaking and money giving

and singing badly and the kneeling and the getting up and the sitting down

here you have a dude who is so into religion that he has given away all of his money, agreed not to have any sex or family

and the one big facetime he has with the public, 90 percent of it is scripted and a repeat of the week before.

i say let him talk. and i say let him talk about what it is in that bible that changed his life. and if he has seriously thrown away all of the earthly obstacles, then what he will say will be clear and honest and

maybe even a little inspiring.

but theres none of that. and if it is theres a motive. there should only be one motive: truth

so i read the bible every sunday, pretty much without fail, for like 15-20 years now.

hard to keep track, cuz really, whos counting.

anyways it isnt the joy it used to be. i know whats gonna happen. im not into it.chicago trib

you should be into something if youre trying to do it for holy reasons.

so i decided i will spend that time reading regular books.

i have a house full of incredible regular books, the kind i used to read in college

in isla vista, the most distracting place in the world.

how does anyone study there?

i used to think that i would give the college of creative studies a million if i ever won the lottery,

but even with a brand new building

yes in my world it only cost a million dollars to build

a sweetass building

but now im thinking i will just give it to robyn directly because

how do kids pay attention to anything in that world

how did i? and i read so much.

answer: there was no internet.

last night matt welch was in town because he was one of the guests in bill mahers hbo show, real time

i texted him and said if theres an afterparty let a brotha know

afterparty was in the courtyard of the boutique beverly hills hotel where everyone speaks french

fortunately for all of us i dabble in the francais

so i was all, matt welch, voila? and i pointed

they were all, oui!

and i was like merci baby

the bible is about heartbreak and mistrust.

its about anger and confusion and

Screen Shot 2016-06-04 at 12.34.40 PMmost of all,

disobedience,

for no good reason other than knuckleheadness.

after a while it gets depressing.

i took a lyft over to le hotel so i could drink

and it turned out hbo was paying for the drinks

so me basart and welch sat around and they asked me who i was gonna be voting for on tuesday

and i said willie wilson

and matt spit out his champaign and said

the speedy kc royal who swiped 668 stolen bases over his 19 year career?

and i said, yes and no

and i told them that i saw dr. wilson’s name on my sample ballot and i went to his website

and then his facebook page

and now im gonna vote for him.

and we toasted to our new friend

dr willie wilson from chicago

who never stole shit.

ali

ive lived in hollywood for fifteen years and never been to paramount

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IMG_0053

some of my favorite movies and tv shows were made here like

The Brady Bunch

M*A*S*H*

Taxi

Cheers

Forrest Gump

Family Ties

Happy Days

Mork & Mindy

Sunset Blvd

Psycho

Rear Window

Vertigo

Duck Soup

Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Chinatown

The Godfather

Citizen Kane

Grease

Coming to America

Flashdance

IMG_0054The Bad News Bears

Airplane

Beverly Hills Cop

Iron Man

and endless others

and for some reason i’d never been there.

yesterday someone said that we really needed about 30 to 50 Baby Trombones

and someone else said he thought he saw some at Paramount

no one wanted to go because the place is huge, where would you find them,

and how weird would people think you are if you asked them?

so i volunteered as tribute and it was super hot.  and bigger than i thought it would be.

there were bikes and golf carts everywhere. but none said busblog on them. so i walked, and walked and walked.

did i mention how hot it was today?

while it was fascinating walking down the “New York Street”, because im a weirdo,

i liked seeing the empty stages better.

they were giant and they were totally barren inside.

my imagine ran wild.

outside each of the stages they had a little plaque listing all of the movies and tv shows that had been filmed in there.

every stage had an impressive plaque. IMG_0051

i walked past the bungalows with the execs,

i strolled past the writers rooms, editing, costumes, set design

and then i saw it

just sitting there on a loading dock

and just as many as what we were looking for

but i hadnt been there very long so i kept walking around

heres the funny thing

if you live in LA, especially hollywood or the west side, you’re gonna see a celebrity from time to time.

you might even find yourself interacting with them because, you know,

stars, theyre just like us.

i walked around freaking paramount

for maybe two hours

and i didnt see one star.

as far as i know

but heres the funny thing

i turned the corner and there was the kogi truck

and i nearly fainted out of true love.

then i heard gun shots

and i snapped right out of it

but then i saw a sign

simulated gunfire

so i sat down to chill

it was hot

 

 

Tribune changes its name to tronc

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tronc

as you know i grew up reading the Chicago Tribune

it’s a major reason i wanted to be a writer and go into journalism.

never did i think that i would ever become either of those things, but it happened.

during my time at the Tribune-owned LA Times i had lots of ideas.

most of them were rejected either directly or indirectly by “Chicago” aka Tribune.

little did i know that all i had to say was

yo, you should change the name of the company to tronc.

so the lesson i learned yesterday was

keep being creative, keep pitching ideas, shake off the rejections

one day they’ll say yes

tronc yeah they will

billionaire thinks we are probs characters in an advanced civ’s video game

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fire

yes really

non billionaire thinks if this was a video game
a) we’d have better cars
b) we’d be boning way more often
c) we’d all be dressing like Prince
d) there’d be more fire
e) far fewer people would be starving and walking to get water
f) dinosaurs would roam hawaii
g) we’d read a lot less
h) hockey and Aussie Rules Football would be more popular
i) intellectuals would be murdered more often
j) Fox would be the #1 tv network
k) Playboy playmates would make up half of Congress
l) Farmers Markets wouldnt exist
m) PBS wouldn’t exist
n) hipsters would make better music
o) we’d have jetpacks
p) weed would have been legal decades ago
q) Coldplay would be in jail
r) 9/11 would happen all the time
s) Russia would have more dominance
t) there would be no pollution in China
u) Bo Jackson would still be playing sports
v) radio would be better
w) MTV would have never gone the way of the Dingo
x) MDMA would be legal
y) more babies would end up in zoos
z) freeways would look a lot cooler

today is my niece Kyla’s birthday, she’s 14

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6568011329_4619410ffc_b

kyla is a gemini.

often shes a sweet angel. but i hear reports that she’s not always that way.

but who can blame her, really, her favorite uncle is far away and she’s in a cold city

and a giant house, with every toy, animal, human, and christmas tree a teenage girl could ever want.

when i was her age i had a tv with three channels and an etch-a-sketch.

we had a rotary phone and an AM radio.

this chick’s got a PS4 AND an XBox One.

she didnt like her brother so they adopted a baby sister for her.

imagine that YOUR OWN BABY!

the pool in the backyard is jacked up to 92 degrees. there are flat screen tvs in every room.

and whenever she wants she can just “log on” to her computer (or phone or tablet or robot screen) and she can read the worlds greatest busblog.

when i was her age i was drawing detailed maps on three ring binder paper so i could stand on a chair and drop a freshly sharpened pencil down upon my little world and see who the “bomb” destroyed.

kyla has snapchat and instagram and minecraft and

“books”

i hope she knows how lucky she has it.

and how lucky we are to have her.

happy birthday kyla jo!