for years michael kept these kids covered up and hidden, today Paris spoke and she ruled.

for the king of pops funeral precession

which might be the highest respect Los Angeles could ever give you.

rock on gloved one

update: follow LA Times tweets live from Staples

Ann Powers
Harriet Ryan
Maria Elena Fernandez
Brady MacDonald
LA Times MJ

for example, the one thing i like better than blogging, is taking photos for this blog.

and yet here i had a trip to vegas and of course i leave my camera in my desk at work.

therefore all i had was my iphone to document the weekend.

we stayed at the luxor, because im also a cheapskate, and they had this great deal

every other hotel for the fourth was two hundred a night but luxor had all u can eat all day

and two tickets to chriss angel, vip entrance to each of their clubs, and tix to the bodies world exhibit and this thing called treasures of the titanic.

but all we wanted to do was hang out at the pool and drink

soon as we got there these two offered a round of malibu and coke gratis

i said only if i can take yr picture.

later these other women had some mikes lemonade. those plus two margaritas plus a quick dinner made us wanna dance next door at The Hotel

64 stories above the vegas strip.

since it was the fourth of july there were fireworks viewable, despite the strip

but its the food im sure you care about. all you can eat breakfast lunch and dinner

they gave you a wristband so they knew you were good.

all sorts of food, even grits, even piles of cocktail shrimps, even dessert.

we went to the chriss angel show and i cant say ive ever hated life so much for two hours despite being buzzed full and a tad richer because of the roulette

yet after the show my truest and i were angry.

so angry.

we got stuck in a little sunday afternoon traffic that made it so a 15 mile stretch of desert took an hour and a half to traverse.

yet we still werent even half as angry about that as the time spent in the presence of Chriss Angel

i got to spend it with my truest in one of my favorite places ever

was it as fun as hanging out at the playboy mansion + slip n slide?

strangely, truly, unbelievably…

yes!

and then i took a picture of it for you.

yes even though we work at the local paper, if you want to go to the big event tomorrow you had to do what 1.6 million people did – you had to throw your name into a hat.

an unknown staffer here won one of the 10,000 wristbands and it was pretty awesome watching people who have seen it all suddenly see something this rare.

figured id share it with you because i heart you so.

also, heres just some of our coverage: http://latimes.com/mj

update: heres a picture of someone else… with a ticket as well as a wristband

suddenly im very very jealous

went to a lot of places

maybe the best part was this TA truck stop we stopped in on.

they had everything

no really, everything

one thing i learned, we need bullet trains to vegas

what are you doing this weekend?

is that the song is “They Don’t Care About Us”

the other day Matt Welch asked me to list MJs best 5 songs, post-Bad. and i totally forgot about this song until i heard it in my shower yesterday. whats great about it is its the antithesis of all of his hopeful, cheery, kiddie tunes. it’s a followup in a way of “Just Leave Me Alone”. heres the controversial lyrics that got him in trouble with his Jewish friends.

“They Don’t Care About Us”

Skin head, dead head
Everybody gone bad
Situation, aggravation
Everybody allegation
In the suite, on the news
Everybody dog food
Bang bang, shot dead
Everybody’s gone mad

All I wanna say is that
They don’t really care about us
All I wanna say is that
They don’t really care about us

Beat me, hate me
You can never break me
Will me, thrill me
You can never kill me
Jew me, sue me
Everybody do me
Kick me, kike me
Don’t you black or white me

All I wanna say is that
They don’t really care about us
All I wanna say is that
They don’t really care about us

Tell me what has become of my life
I have a wife and two children who love me
I am the victim of police brutality, now
I’m tired of bein’ the victim of hate
You’re rapin’ me of my pride
Oh, for God’s sake
I look to heaven to fulfill its prophecy…
Set me free

Skin head, dead head…

Tell me what has become of my rights
Am I invisible because you ignore me?
Your proclamation promised me free liberty, now
I’m tired of bein’ the victim of shame
They’re throwing me in a class with a bad name
I can’t believe this is the land from which I came
You know I do really hate to say it
The government don’t wanna see
But if Roosevelt was livin’
He wouldn’t let this be, no, no

Skin head, dead head…

Some things in life they just don’t wanna see
But if Martin Luther was livin’
He wouldn’t let this be

and totally forgot about it.

it might be my last interview. im way too blunt, way too honest. way too easy for people to misunderstand. also when you get me talking about Blogging, the thing i love the most, the thing i want everyone in the world to do – several times a day – i can come across as a snob. which im pretty confident i came across in this interview.

my old boss, Jake Dobkin, tweeted this about me this morning when he linked all his followers to the piece, “Paraphrasing @busblog: ‘Citizen’s journalism is just a viper’s nest of paranoiacs, liars, and queers.’

because everyone loves and respects jake, including me, heres what i Actually said:

“For the most part, this whole citizen journalism concept is fine for about three or four people per town, but that’s about it,” he said. “And most of those people are not journalists for a reason. Either they’re crappy writers or they’re crazy, which makes for sometimes interesting blog posts, but is that something that a major newspaper would link to? I mean, even my personal blog is certainly nothing I would have expected the LA Times to link to. I was swearing a lot, it was mostly very personal, plus I say on it that it’s full of lies.”

But if the newspaper didn’t feel comfortable linking to all the local content, should it at least try to sell advertising on these sometimes highly specialized blogs, creating an advertising network that benefits everyone?

“It’s just that if you have a whole lot of blogs getting 5,000 page views a day, you’re going to need a lot of them, a whole lot of them,” he said. “And even if you have a whole lot of them, where do you put that ad that it’s going to be really valuable? It’s a really tricky situation, and I might come across as kind of a snob — I mean, I love blogs more than any other person — but I’ll be the first to tell you that most of them are crappy. Which isn’t to say that individual posts can’t be great, and I think that’s where newspapers should focus.”

the topic by the way was whether newspaper websites should aggregate huge swaths of local blogs under the newspaper’s masthead. theres both good and bad reasons to do such a thing and the Chicago Tribune’s Chicago Now is a good reason to try it because their thing is new and looks promising.

But in LA im not so sure. here the blogs dont usually stick to one subject, so it would be really difficult to pretend that more than a handful of them would actually be a a great supplement to the news we already produce, the 42+ blogs we already have, and the interesting comments we get every day.

but im willing to be proven wrong.

we might go to neverland this weekend. we might go to vegas this weekend. we might just hang out in LA this weekend.

we’re undecided because the weather is so good here and even though theres so much happening elsewhere, theres also some good things happening here.

me, i wanna go to vegas. she however is a huge michael jackson fan and she wants to pay respects either at the encino compound or up near santa barbara.

yesterday was canada day and how did i celebrate it? i ate ice cream and pretended it was poutine.

then i cross checked my mail man.

today i got a really great email that lead to a press release all about our man Ken Layne and the fact that he got a book deal with Harper Studio. heres part of the interview press release mashup buddy:

4) Tell me about David Geffen and his coastline.

I should not speak for David Geffen, because he has a clone army of lawyers, but published reports suggest that he would prefer California’s magnificent public oceanfront, which is supposed to be available to one and all, to be his coastline. For decades, Geffen fought access along a narrow corridor alongside his Malibu house — even though he accepted that corridor as part of a deal to expand the seaside mansion back in 1983.

In 2005, Geffen finally lost and the gates were unlocked. He’s not unique for wanting privacy at his beachfront house. His wealthy neighbors – including my old boss, former L.A. mayor Richard Riordan — just want to keep the unwashed hordes and TMZ paparazzi off their beach.

Unfortunately for them, it’s not their beach at all. The socialist republic of California is not like Martha’s Vineyard or Jamaica, where the best beaches are private. We have coastal access laws here, and the entire shore is public property, up to the high tide mark at minimum.

Anyway, as my path runs from Mexico to Oregon, roadside access through a wall of Malibu mansions isn’t an issue. But it’s a regular conflict here because the rich and powerful and famous love to make their homes by the ocean, and the other 37 million Californians are mostly packed against that same beloved coast.

HarperStudio will publish Layne’s book in 2010.

Tagged as: David Geffen, Ken Layne, LOLcat, The Left Coast, Wonkette

im hoping the book will be called “HarperStudio signs Ken Layne to write book about California” but that would maybe confuse some people. but not the cool people!