ask your questions, take your time, dig deep,
tip your waitress and expect answers tomorrow
after the live draft because i will be sorta busy tonight

cuz im running late for work but todays word is “fantasy”

but first i wanna tell you about this picture. the other night after my birthday party i was hungry and karisa was nice enough to indulge me in some late night sushi. so we walked two blocks to this cool place called incognito. half way though the meal i was starting to get sick because i had had vodka shots, baileys, makers mark, beers, and then sushi sake and more beer.

karisa, who has been around me many a time while we imbibed in drink, said that it was the drunkest shes ever seen me. i asked what she meant by that – was i slobbering over people, or slurring my words, or telling secrets? she said no, that i was just the type of person who liked to stay in control and i wasnt in control and it was “cute”.

i still have no idea what that means, but here is a picture of me at the drunkest ive ever been around karisa (i still claim ive been way drunker in my life). shout out to Anti who gave me those glasses for my bday.

ok fantasy #1: the busblog yahoo fantasy hoops league #3 will draft tomorrow. i am the commish, and as always i will win. so this is really an exercise for who will come in second. the live online draft is tomorrow at noon pacific. join up and i will see you virtually tomorrow:

League ID#: 87677
League Name: busblog3
Password: blogger
Custom League URL: http://basketball.fantasysports.yahoo.com/league/busblog3
Draft Type: Live Draft
Draft Time: Sat Oct 25 12:00pm PDT
Max Teams: 18
Scoring Type: Head-to-Head

fantasy #2: i received a phone call from the playboy mansion yesterday and asked if i would like to return tonight to meet hef and the girls and i thought about it long and hard. and said hell to the yes. they said they loved the photo essay i did earlier this month, so it looks like tomorrow i will be able to show you the mansion, the grounds, and something new at the coolest home in LA this weekend, so stay tuned.

an excerpt:

Q. your blog doesn’t seem to be promoting your ‘writing’. it just seems like your doing it for fun. you obviously have some kind of an audience. how long did it take for people to become really interested in your blog? how long were you just writing this blog for yourself?

A. I started blogging in 2002 when you were in diapers. I blogged on a site called “Diaryland”. I started gaining an audience probably about a year in. This was probably due to being ‘promoted’ by a superstar fellow blogger…the Blogfather…Tony Pierce who I had met on a poetry chat board some 8 years prior. He got me blogging and now he is the blog editor at the LA Times. We have ‘known’ each other 13 years, but have never met. I would’ve never blogged if it wasn’t for him.

I’ve always been writing my blog for myself as I must write shit or I feel like that feeling when you have to crap or when you have to sneeze or when you feel like throwing up and the only way I can make that feeling go away is if I write. The bonus prize for writing ‘for myself’ is that others seem to enjoy it as well. I also write for them because they are cool for even wanting to read my shit in the first place. Go them!

My blog does not ‘promote’ my writing, in that, I’m not looking to become an ‘author’ at this time in my life. I have been published at a handful of online zines and that is awesome and fun, but not my main focus. I think when my life changes in a few years, I might really try getting ‘serious’ at writing or something. But for now, it’s just because I feel the need to write

read the whole deal here when i can remember which blog it was on

update: heres where the lovely interview with xTx is!

photo by jared via flickr

but happy. headachey but satisfied. i ate sushi twice yesterday, and barfed it up once.

im off to the doctors for the results of my physical. but in the meantime here are some of the folks who helped me celebrate my millionth and one birthday

thank you all for your nice comments, phone calls, text pages, facebook messages, gifts, cards, balloons, and nudes.

i feel very lucky and grateful and loved and appreciated. its crazy!

xoxoxox

tony

id just like to blog for a good 15 minutes from my heart which isnt as perfect as id like to pretend it is.

this has been the strangest month. ive had very high highs and very low lows. after the cubs lost in front of me at dodger stadium thus tragically ending one of their most promising seasons i was so lost, so down, so confused. i became reckless and unfocused. i didnt care any more about anything. i was in a dangerous place, and may i repeat, very confused.

one theme in my life has been luck. i feel ive been very lucky, which is weird because i dont really believe in luck. i believe that we make our own destinies. i believe that God has given us Free Will but every now and then he will nudge the pinball machine of life and help us when it looks like things might send us down the wrong path. for lack of a better word i will call that moment luck.

i was not born rich or smart or tall or handsome or filled with inordinate amounts of self esteem. my senior year of high school i got a d in english a d in computers and a c in photography. my only shot at college was junior college and where most people only do two years, i had to do two and a half because my history teacher said i wrote like crap, and held me back from transferring to a university.

i consider that one of the luckiest days of my life, even though i cried in the library that day, another day where i felt lost alone and so confused. that was a lucky day because i learned how much of life is about hard work, about how if you have no natural skills its ok because you can, with practice and desire, still make magic happen, but you have to try. through my tears i picked up jd salingers nine stories and studied his masterful style. i also paid far more attention in school and learned what an essay was and why the teacher thought i was so retarded.

one of my favorite baseball players was pete rose, who was also not blessed with amazing skills. he wasnt strong wasnt fast wasnt the most graceful fielder, but he was Charlie Hustle. through him i learned that many times the guy who truly gives 100 percent will beat the crap out of the golden god who coasts through life giving 99 percent. the tortoise and the hare was not a fable.

dont get me wrong, in many ways i am a slacker. gen x foreverz. plus i couldnt give a rats ass about money, a clean apartment, fancy cars, hot clothes, working out, or social standing. but i always wanted to write. so after the slap in the face in junior college i paid way more attention in school and did whatever i could to improve where i had failed: writing.

one thing i learned at ucsb was good writers read a lot. also good writers write a lot. back then we didnt have the internet, but we had several libraries and the best college newspaper in cali.

and because Jesus loves me, we also had the college of creative studies, which “discovered” me and let me learn way more about reading and writing than i ever thought possible. that whole experience at that college was priceless to me and the rest of my life. i was fortunate enough to meet some of the greatest role models who became my friends and everything after that was amazing – the girls, the successes, the happiness.

until this october.

when the cubs got swept by a team that didnt even really deserve to be in the playoffs everything stopped making sense. in retrospect i can now see that they didnt hustle or prepare or take that first round as seriously or play with the eye of the tiger the same way the dodgers did, but at the time i was not thinking about the tortoise and the hare. i was thinking life has no meaning, life is not fair, life is over, life is a lie.

but precisely because life is not fair, i was invited to the playboy mansion to have lunch. i was given a tour, i got to meet kendra. i got to see precisely how unfair life could be if you had the courage to dream and work hard to make that dream come true. maybe that doesnt make total sense to you, and maybe thats because i know im still not the writer that i aspire to be, but it made sense to me while i was there, and after that my birthday month has been one amazing event followed by the next.

last night i sat in the backyard of a lovely home in front of a fire pit with one of my favorite bloggers, his wife, and the publisher of rolling stone. we roasted marshmellows drank delicious wine and had the best talk about music, magazines, newspapers, and everything.

i dont know whats next for me for the next 102 years. but i do know that i am racking up some major points in the pinball machine of good luck, and i know i dont deserve it, but please know that i appreciate it and im especially loving the music, the great friends, the ridiculous success in this life as a blogger, the crazy access to pretty much anything i want, and the hot girls who whisper the best things at the craziest times.

i cant thank God enough. especially for all of you.

It’s the precursor of the Xerox machine.

October 22, 1990 Jonathan Lipnicki, actor, Jerry McGuirre
October 22, 1985 Zac Hanson, Hanson – MMMM Bop
October 22, 1981 Michael Fishman, actor, DJ – Roseanne
October 22, 1974 Layla Harvest Roberts, Miss October ’97
October 22, 1974 Miroslav Satan, Buffalo Sabres
October 22, 1973 Ichiro Suzuki, OF, Seattle Mariners
October 22, 1972 Scott Lachance, NY Islanders
October 22, 1972 Victoria Lagerstrom, Miss Sweden ’97
October 22, 1971 Anthony “Pig” Miller, LA Lakers
October 22, 1970 Spike Jonze, director “Sabatoge”
October 22, 1968 Shelby Lynne, country singer
October 22, 1966 Valeria Golino, actress, Rain Man
October 22, 1965 Marvin Washington, NY Jets, SF 49ers
October 22, 1965 Otis Smith, NY Jets
October 22, 1963 Brian Boitano, gold medal figure skater
October 22, 1963 Cherie Witter, playmate, 2/85
October 22, 1961 Barbara Potter, tennis player, changed shirt on Wimbledon Court
October 22, 1961 Leonard Marshall, NY Giants, Jets
October 22, 1958 Bobby Blotzner, rock drummer, Ratt
October 22, 1952 Jeff Goldblum, actor, Fly, Jurassic Park
October 22, 1952 Patti Davis, daughter of Nancy Reagan
October 22, 1946 Eddie Brigati, singer, The Rascals
October 22, 1946 Richard Loncraine, director, Deep Cover, Bellman and True
October 22, 1945 Leslie West, [Weinstein] rocker, Mountain – Mississippi Queen
October 22, 1943 Catherine Deneuve, actress
October 22, 1942 Annette Funicello, Mickey Mouse Club
October 22, 1939 Joaquim Chissano, president of Mozambique, 1986-
October 22, 1939 Tony Roberts, actor, Annie Hall
October 22, 1938 Christopher Lloyd, actor, Taxi, Back to the Future
October 22, 1936 Bobby Seale, American Activist
October 22, 1927 Ray Stern, mother of radio personality Howard Stern
October 22, 1920 Timothy Leary, Harvard prof, LSD taker
October 22, 1917 Joan Fontaine, Tokyo, Japan, actress, Gunga Din, Ivanhoe, Rebecca
October 22, 1913 Bo Dai, last emporer of Vietnam
October 22, 1913 Patricia “Boots” Mallory, U.S. dancer/actress, Handle With Care
October 22, 1908 Tony Pierce, Dumbass, Blogger – busblog, LAist, LA Times(!)
October 22, 1907 Henriette Wyeth, 1st lady of american art
October 22, 1907 Jimmy Foxx, baseball HR hitter, 534, Detroit Tigers
October 22, 1896 Charles Glenn King, biochemist, discovered vitamin C
October 22, 1845 Sarah Bernhardt, born in France, actress, Camille, Queen Elizabeth
October 22, 1811 Franz Liszt, Hungary, romantic composer/virtuoso pianist
October 22, 1689 Joao V, Rei Fidelissimo, king of Portugal, 1706-50
October 22, 1686 Georg Balthasar Schott, composer

im having dinner with the publisher of rolling stone tonight. my coworkers are throwing me a party at a downtown bar tomorrow. my bears are on fire. ac/dc has a new cd coming out today. and our paper had a pretty major redesign today.

but you know what im obsessed with?

the fact that the vending machine dude not only came to replenish the soda machine and didnt fill in the empty row with my beloved apple juice as we hoped he would last week.

but he didnt even throw me a bone with orange juice either.

im outraged.

yes im glad that he didnt give us more grapefruit juice. but whats up with trying to overload us with Gatorade? you can shove your electrolytes where the sun doesnt shine. i want the real thing. the fruit juice of love.

an apple a day gets you to 102 looking as good as i do. orange juice in a pinch, but not that phoney baloney gatorade.

im gonna find out who this vending machine dude is and “interview” him for your ass, if you know what i mean.