everything.

my momma, my sweet momma, wants me to take a family vacation with her and my sister

and the niece and nephew. and the brother n law.

the puppies from christmas wanna come. they havent grown up or nothin.

the italian au pere from florida wants to come too. as does the new one from brazil.

anna kournikova is thinking about heading out there for it.

marla collins, the former ball girl for the cubs, she knows everyone, shes gonna be there.

and i even think the grateful dead are going to put together a show right there on the beach while we are gonna be out there.

but me, i dont wanna go. can you believe that? sure i wanna see my mom. love her. and the rest of em. except for the puppies. i dont trust puppies. back when i spent some time in hell we came back to earth disguised as puppies because everyone always projects all this unrealistic hope on puppies that it was easy to be evil in their bodies.

but i have things to do here in hollywood. we’re up to something at work. something big. something potentially huge. something that could change things for the good. something that could make us bigger and deffer.

i know yesterday i said i need to go down in the basement and stew a little, but hawaii aint gonna make me stew. my little friends sure as hell arent gonna get me angry. theyre gonna all make me feel like everythings gonna be ok. thats not gonna work for me right now. i gotta feel the edge of doom for these petals to flare out.

a flower blooms when it thinks its gonna die.

a horse runs faster when hes shown the whip.

rdio is playing the Flaming Lips and Henry Rollins reinventing Dark Side

i have 100% changed my opinion of this thing. i love it.

i want it.

i must have it.

it’s everything. and its only $5 a month unless you also wanna play it on your phone and then its $10 a month.

and god it sounds great.

i talk alot. i misspell a lot. i can beat almost anyone at any arguement not because im smarter than anyone but because to me arguements are like MMA cage bouts. im the weirdo who will try to pull your eyeball out and scream when you try to rip my rib out and be all good fight when its over no matter who wins. no one wins. no one ever wins around me in those situations.

but one thing im good for is telling the kids about the new things. and one of the things that im into right now is something that someone who is on an higher path than me turned me onto. Rdio. its not in beta. its so new its in alpha, my favorite rascal.

what it is in a nutshell is every album, online, for a monthly fee. not sure what that will be right now. maybe $25 a month? $20? is unlimited music worth 2 cds a month? i think so.

Rdio is a new music service, where you discover new and old favorite songs through your friends and other people with great taste in music. Rdio works on the web and on your iPhone, BlackBerry and Android devices. Subscribe for unlimited music.

the other day the dude who set me up with a free trial account wrote me and said, “noticed you havent played around with Rdio much?”

truth is i get a lot of free music and i buy the rest. but here i am at a cheerleaders house and my computer is broke and i dont really wanna play the music in my iphone so i figured tonight ok lets see if this is any good. so i looked for this 12 inch single from Soul Asylum.

the kids dont know about 12 inch singles, but in the old days DJs used to get their remixes on 12 inches. but better than that the “alt” bands would put their lame ass single on one side and theyd have some b-sides on the flip side. Soul Asylum had an A-side of “Cartoon” from their “Hang Time” album which should have been a huge radio hit but radio has always stunk. however on the flip side they had this really long medley of songs performed live called “James at 16” because it was 16 songs melded together. like Prince the ladder to Terrance Trent D’Arby to god knows who else. anyways i gave away all my records a long time ago and i always judge websites like Napster to now Rdio by whether or not they have James at 16.

Looks like Rdio is really great. ive been listening to records i hear about but would not buy. like right now im listening to, and enjoying Ke$ha and now wishing that i hadnt missed her opening for Rihana. so this is interesting.

but there is no James at 16. probs because Rdio doesnt do 12 inches or weirdo rare ass stuff. but it certainly fills a need. for example lets say youre stuck at your uncles house and all he has is the web. well, then he really does have millions of songs, at yr disposal.

so yeah, friends are great. and i dont deserve em.

hes 24.

we met in the basement of Keeneyville School in kindergarten.

my mom says that i was super outgoing and insane and bob was really quiet and intellectual so they put us together to see if our traits would rub off on each other.

we were pretty inseparable until high school when i discovered girls. but the other truth was he was always a little better athlete than me, so he played varsity sports and i was in the band.

while we were kids we played a lot of sports, collected baseball cards, and watched the cubs a lot. bob’s dad was an inventor in his spare time. he created these golf balls that had weights on one side so they would roll in a goofy way. it was perfect for mini golf tournaments cuz even the drunk people might win.

bob is now a hot shot in the world’s finest microphone company. he still collects baseball cards and other deals on memoroboblia.com.

recently we had a grade school reunion and it was great to see him and he gushed to our friends about how he re-discovered me through the busblog which is another reason this site has been priceless to me.

Bob has two children, both named after great Cubbies.

happy birthday, General Manager! This is the year!

sends in this old school Andre Dawson clip

bob sez:

This clip is so awesome for so many reasons:

1) Dan Roan’s shirt
2) Jim Essian soup-cooler
3) Andre Dawson going nuts
4) Young Lou Piniella
5) Rob Dibble throwing a ball at baserunner Doug Dascenzo
6) Bleacher Bums doing their thang

Enjoy!

and of course bob is right. long live the Hawk!

when people ask who i like better the beatles or the stones i scoff.

theres no competition.

theres only one band that matters out of that pairing and id argue that some of it has to do with showmanship, since rock n roll is part spectacle.

and sorry lads but playing on top of a building doesnt cut it.

even if it was a tie, the winner would go to the lead man, in which case you have to give it to the stones because seriously who’s a better front man than mick jagger?

hes right up there with elvis, james brown, michael jackson, and prince – even though he cant sing better or dance better than any of them.

in fact Because of that, id call him the greatest star in rock

next to jimi.

happy birthday anyway, old man.

hi tony baloney full of macaroni. i dont know why im so tired today, my computers broke this weekend and i watched hella tv and got lots of rest for once in my life but here i am fully experiencing the Mondays and maybe this is why people take summer vacations. all i know is im not the man i used to be. i used to have so much life i used to have so many dreams i used to be able to rage against the machine and the machine would stop what it was doing and say damnit tony maybe you have a point and nowadays i rage and the machine just laughs and says oh yr so cute tony and flicks me away. is this why people just do the same old same old raise kids die trajectory? is this why people buy so many honda civics? is this why people sell out? i dont wanna sell out. im gen x inside and out. i know i dont look it any more with this button down shirt. i know ive been wearing blue and brown and working on the clampdown but when genx sells out genx cobains. and i dont wanna go out like that.

yesterday the truest had an outta town guest. someone shes know for 20 years. someone who has MS but who hasnt let that get her down. shes traveled the world. lived in 25 different apartments in 20 years. we went to this Tibetan restaruant and this young lady was able to tell us all about the foods first hand from when she was in india. thats the path we should be on. we should be telling life what its gonna be not the reverse. sometimes i think i should kill my tv. sometimes im glad when my internet doesnt work. blasphemy, i know. sometimes i like it when there is no tap tap tap on my window from some doe eyed busblog fan. sometimes i like to be alone.

sometimes i need to go to the basement and get mad.

and emerge focused.

maybe i need to do that at the end of the summer. maybe i need to take a two week road trip around the nation. maybe i need to stick my toe into the atlantic. maybe i need to kiss a girl somewhere. maybe i need to just head into the desert like jim morrisson and speak to the ancients. maybe i need to shave my head and hitchhike through mexico. maybe i need to start a punk band called the walking man of silverlake.

who killed himself, fyi. in one of the weirdest ways ive ever heard of, he slipped into his hot tub and put the lid over himself and drowned. now news reports say that he had been investigated for giving pills to any druggie in town and that he was under investigation because a patient died. and again, thats not how i wanna go out, and i bet thats not what this doc thought he wanted to go out like neither.

heres how i wanna go out. old. and i want sharks to tear me apart.

i wanna die fighting.

not quitting.

shes 24

we first met during my roadtrip around the world. it was toronto. it was karaoke.

she had a very jealous boyfriend at the time who even through the parked car knew that there was something special between us so he pouted and waited and steamed and jealousized the various different ways that i would steal his girl from his unworthy clutches.

it was true i wanted her. but when i met her i felt oh so unworthy. she was cool she was hot she was so nice. i withered in her presence and was barely able to put together reasonable sentences.

fortunately the music was so loud she couldnt hear me stammer and before we knew it there he was at the door of the establishment telling her it was time to come home.

this past new year we were reunited. this time there was no boyfriend. instead there were lesbians, a hot tub, many large dogs, and a hilariously disgusting friend named Paulie.

we soaked in the tub as the large flakes floated down on us as we sported clockwork orange makeup and reminisced about her air hockey prowess.

for some reason the boys of TO dont see the loveliness of miss c the way i do and she swears that if she ever moves to LA that i would be her california boyfriend.

in the meantime i follow her on facebook and watch her master the fine art of cake making and wonder what the hell is wrong with the gentlemen of the great white north that the path to her front door isnt lined with proper suitors and the skies arent filled with airplanes with signs being dragged behind them professing lines of love.

maybe it means she does have to head south west, young lady.

in the meantime happy birthday carrie cakes, inventor of the two cakes one cup delight that has spread across canada like a bad flu.

xoxoxoxo

yes i know im lucky

rage hasnt played LA in 10 years.

this is going to be awesome and i love conor oberst and the mystic valley band a lot. its a weird combination, but why not something sweet and mellow before the napalm explosion of rock.

back in my day if some kid ran onto the field, MLB security would have put down their footlongs and gladly, if not viciously, pursued the drunken yahoo.

the result would have been violent, painful, and memorable.

but this crew at Baltimore’s Camden Yard seemed more intent on containing the youthful trespasser than cracking skulls.

is this the kinder, gentler world that the republicans promised us oh so long ago?

im not sure i approve.