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heres another lesson i learned in college

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we were in the dorms. but that night we drove up into the santa barbara mountains and dropped acid.

i have had a blessed life and yes i am grateful.

even though i barely knew these people, for some reason we all trusted each other magically.

decades later we are still extremely close.

in the morning we ate more. it was liquid lsd someone had used an eyedropper to poison graham crackers left over from the smores we never made the night before.

we took an early morning hike.

none of this made sense to me: sleeping in the dirt, hiking around for no reason, doing hallucinogens.

at that point in my life i was extremely literal and a bit of an analysis, and i would typically overthink before trying new things.

these hippies yanked me out of that comfort zone quickly and i could just sense that they knew what they were doing.

in reality they were 17 and 18 and none of us truly knew what we were doing, but it felt different then.

as we hiked someone said watch out for the poison oak.

i grew up in the suburbs in illinois. cul de sacs. courtyards. houses that all looked the same.

wtf did poison oak look like? of note: this was pure lsd. untainted. from the lsd plant or factory or rain cloud, who knows, but it was neither “speedy” nor something else, they said, but extremely visual.

despite being just 830am, the colors were vivid green in those hills. and omg the tye died shirts they were wearing were a show all unto itself.

i could barely walk from the panic of stepping into this poison oak.

soon everything looked like it.

is that it? is that it? i asked.

yes. they said. yes.

then why are you going through it?

LOL we’re kidding. keep up.

can you guys do me a favor and dont kid for a few minutes, im nervous.

at some point one of the hippy girls said hold my hand, i’m not trippin as hard as you are. i’ll show you the way.

but even holding hands felt weird and i let go.

then she said something i have taken with me forever.

look around, tony. look up at the sky. look at those trees. look at cindy and rob and chris and joe. listen to them laugh. listen to the birds. can you hear the tall grass in the wind?

then she said, if you want to spend all day today

looking for poison

go ahead

but theres way more

not poison out here

focus on what you want.

and to this day i still dont know what poison oak or poison ivy looks like

but i have seen some beautiful

magical

unreal things since.

on one hand i wanna give up on the hear in LA website

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and only do as little as possible on it

and focus everything on the podcast.

but then i think, isn’t web shit my biggest strength?

isnt that what would help me beat the Obama / Springsteen podcast?

and then i think

yeah,

yeah thats it.

A WEBSITE. A KILLER WEBSITE is what will help me compete with the coolest POTUS ever

and the boss.

i swear to you i havent smoked weed in a while.

so anyways, thats why i may keep the web site lean and mean and not the stumbling block its been since we started this gangsta shit.

RIP Tybie Kirtman, Advertising Chief of the notorious Daily Nexus

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Tybie Kirtman

She sold the ads, smoked the Camels, and stayed out of our way, which had to be hard.

How hard? Once I produced a 12-page special section in the paper, just on where to get fucked up on campus and in IV. It was mostly about shrooms and LSD. Fryday Magazine. She didn’t bat an eye. She sold the ads for it.

And that was just me! There were literally hundreds of us who passed through those doors during her decades there trying to push the limits to see if the sky would fall. It never fell.

Just the opposite.

Only once did Tybie, pictured, take me aside. I used the phrase “sorority tart” once in a column and she said, “you’re better than that Tony.”

I asked “’tart’ bothers you? I began a piece ‘Fuck fuck fuck’ the other day and ‘tart’ bothers you?”

She said, “that other piece was art. It was poetry. ‘Tart’ is something any Bozo would type. You’re special.”

I’m misting up thinking about her. She gave us all the freedom. The most valuable gift you could bestow a young person.

Without her finding creative ways to finance our paper – a freaking daily paper with no adult supervision – we would have had to study or some shit.

St Peter is hearing some great stories tonight.

-30-

53 days ago i submitted an invoice

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in fairness it was a second invoice.

the first one was 71 days ago.

when you write an invoice on December 1 you think, ah what nice Christmas gifts I’ll be able to buy my family with that money.

a few weeks later I wrote a different invoice for 19 days of December and submitted that one as well.

that was 53 days ago.

neither have turned into monies.

2021 was not a great year for me financially and those two invoices were the 2nd and 3rd that have not been paid as of yet.

in total i am owed over $10,000 for work in 2021. hard to believe.

of the replies I have received when i inquired about remittance:

fuck you tony

and

you’re an asshole.

being raised in a community as a young man where i was the only Black kid in many situations, trust me when i tell you, name calling does not affect me.

i know who i am.

but those who i owe do not want to hear sob stories or “they called me an asshole and said it’s coming, what can i do?”

after 53 days is it really coming?

is it in one of those ships off long beach, polluting the air, waiting for a truck to get it at the dock and deliver it to my home.

the one i pay rent on.

who has a landlord who will say, “oh you’ll tell me when it comes? thank heavens.”

in the college of creative studies when they were teaching us how to write fiction they said, “when you write interesting characters think about their motivations. think about whats going in their heads. why do they say the things they do, why do they not say things.”

what could go through someone’s head when they know its been 53 days since the Second invoice?

and why aren’t they saying, “i’m sorry, tony. you’re not an asshole for asking. i am an asshole for not making this happen in a timely, professional way”?

54.

 

a few times a year i suck it up and my housekeeper comes

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so i skedaddle

today i went to venice beach, which has been near and dear to me since i first moved here in the early 1700s.

it’s weird, im weird, we get each other.

i haven’t smoked weed in a while so smelling the second hand smoke was so nice.

there were a lot of aromas i smelt, but did not dealt.

one was the scent of da club. not sure how that wafted, but it did.

on the way over i stopped off at this japanese market place called Mitsuwa and picked up a Bento Box

ate it while i watched 5×5 street ball on the venice courts

they were so bad i was thinking about going out there but ive had my day

these seagulls were hovering around me because someone left a half a plate of french fries but i was too near them so they hovered, squawking at each other

be cool, hes leaving, I SAID BE COOL

but i wasnt leaving.

drank my water, watched them play. there was a young lady out there. she wasnt bad. they didnt talk trash to her. but they did put their worst guy on her.

so many mistakes.

one guy could dunk.

gave $5 to this dude who plays the piano. he smelled of piss. like real bad. hes homeless.

tunes his piano and plays really fast, missing lots of notes, adding a few to even it out.

hes half deaf.

hung out with this south american dude who sells dollar cokes

we bumped fists. somehow he remembered me from the last time i was there, months ago.

had this awesome flashback when i passed the post office that it used to be a safeway in the ’80s.

LA has been so good to me, you have no idea.

me.

stranger in a strange land.

me. fucking nobody with three cents to my name.

driving home took forever. west side. like what are people doing?

ohio, santa monica, wilshire. all jammed even at 4pm. no way around it. nearly got on the 10. next time i’ll try my luck with olympic. west siders dont wanna go through the hood so maybe Adams.

on the way in i had to write a piece for Los Angeleno.

they hit me up last night about a piece about Angelenos nominated for the Oscars.

right up my alley. i was honored theyd even think of me.

so i drove to Culver City and asked Waze where the nearest public library was.

turned out it was 3 blocks away. such a nice little library. everything was clean and nice.

but then one little girl kept repeating the same phrase over and over in the childrens section.

i was trying to do my magic AND I WAS SOMEHOW but this lil angel kept with her bullshit

i turned around to give her the evil eye but neither her hot mom nor she picked up on it.

how am i gonna fertilize an egg if i cant put up with that, i thought?

she soon left and i got back to my masterpiece.

then a different little girl ran over to this wooden kitchen and opened and slammed the doors over and over and over

why is there a kitchen in a library? i wanted to say as loud as humanly possible.

but childhood is precious so i kept my trap shut as this 2 year old banged away as her mom browsed her phone.

the old man sleeping in the chair next to me did not wake up.

the librarians, of which there were far too many for this little place did not shush her.

i was clearly the asshole, once again.

but heres the crazy thing, i got my work done.

i wanted out of there, i wanted to be at the beach, i wanted this assignment behind me, i wanted food, i wanted the boardwalk.

it was a great motivation. and im telling you i knocked that article out faster than i have done in a very very long time.

maybe ever.

weed is not the reason im a professional writer.

the angels who whisper funny jokes in my ears are.

and they wanted to go soak in the 75 degree temps on 2/10/22 too.

a rival stern group suspended me

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i deserved it

do i come right out and bash the people who bash the king of all media?

no, but you don’t have to be a genius to see what im up to when i debunk nonsense online.

why do i waste so much time doing it?

at the world famous Daily Nexus, I had very few bosses. mostly because they made me an editor of different desks pretty quickly, which is normal in college since theres so much turnover and so few people willing to dedicate their lives to the paper

but one of my bosses was Dougie Gyro

i reached out to him the other day about the design of the Hear in LA website that has gotten me to stop my momentum

i am really struggling with it because i am no design expert and i am desperately trying to make it look like something i am not: elegantly professional.

doug gave me the best advice which is actually something he told me he learned from Apple’s Guy Kawasaki

don’t worry, be crappy.

which basically means, whoever it is youre trying to impress so hard either

does not care about you one but

or

can see through the facade and only cares about the content youre actually creating

warts and all

so make your Drudge Report design if you’re Drudge, it’s the You that matters

and thats why i am so grateful that the Lord put me in Santa Barbara when he did because so many of my friends are that wise

and one day i hope to be too.

motor mouth speedway

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every now and then my man Gregory Vaine and I will take a long walk around Griffith Park and talk about this and that

yesterday was a long one i didnt expect. his beautiful wife molly invited me to try a chicken sandwich from nearby Dune

at first i declined because i had already feared i had talked Gregs ear off, but its very hard for this Black man to refuse a new fried chicken joint.

so we all talked for 3 hours or so about such a wide range of topics it’s ridiculous

i wish there was a term for the condition it is when you have a really good time with long time friends

but when you get home your internal monologue lists all the terrible things you said and how they probably negatively fell into the ears of the generous guests.

i learned some things last night im still chewing on.

one was the concept of a Thruple.

a Couple with a third person.

that might even be more challenging to juggle than a simple relationship, but what if it’s easier?

what if three incomes make it easier to have a second home somewhere to be inhabited by one of the trio who wants some alone time?

that would be super weird if it was just a couple

but in a Thruple that would give time for the other two to have some quality time together.

probably wouldnt work, and the way it was described it involved three women

and everyone knows three women could probably make it work

a man, in any equation, is gonna screw things up. unless he’s super handy.

another strike for me.

my lack of motivation is starting to worry me

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the cats woke me up early today so i had to get up and put Michael into Laundry Room time out

it’s the only humane way i know to express my displeasure with the scratching of the door

sure theyre hungry, but either learn to use Door Dash or wait until I wake

i do wake every day. just wait. the food will be delivered.

in a way it’s actually good when they wake me early because that stops me from sleeping until 2pm.

but dont tell them this.

as soon as i wake i walk outside, look at the sun, inspect the parking in the street, judge people who park, and talk to the security across the street if theyre around.

today they were around.

it was a nice talk.

“rooting for the rams, tony?”

ah hellllll naw.

my neighbor who’s a nurse arrived while i was out there in my robe talking to the guards.

turned out she saved her BFs life by nagging him into getting vaxxed. months later he got covid but didnt die. he’s not grateful to her.

no one ever is.

last night i received a text message. a good friend wondered if i would do some freelancing for her company. we chatted for 45 minutes on the phone.

it was delightful.

you dont need millions of people to think you’re rad.

but it’s really nice when the ones who know you the best respect you enough to put their own reputation at work at risk to ask you to join forces.

and this job, as big or little as it may be or end up being, is right in my wheelhouse.

praise God.

maybe i was demotivated bc my body was all, fuck this shit im hibernating until Spring