sped up version
of “la grange”?
go to 1:27 of the van halen video and tell me that thats not really close to the riff of la grange – and then both songs break into the rock out.
coincidence, probably…
until you hear Van Halen from their early club days actually covering “la grange”, a riff that eddie learned and obviously never forgot
i wonder if zz got a cut of the 1984 hit?
after the cheerleader passed out i flipped on part two of Bush’s War on Frontline last night. so good.
and you know what my “takeaway” was? i hate that word, btw. my takeaway was i dont wanna be an unorganized dipweed who doesnt have a plan, who doesnt understand whats up with the world that im sticking my dick into, who cant explain what just happened and whats about to happen.
i am in charge of over 30 blogs. and as the chickie snored the most adorable dreams of daffodils and butterscotch cocktails i started putting together three-ring binders so i could start tracking and noting and documenting the ups and downs of each of these blogs. how insane is that?!>!?!
instead of just learning about recent history, or trying to understand human psychology, or political agendas; or instead of diving back into typical carnal rewards, there i was in the wee hours in my pajamas trying to organize and summarize and categorize everything that is going on in blogs that most of you dont even care about.
sometimes i wonder if you even care about this one, the greatest one of them all.
but this one doesnt put pearl necklaces on starlets so fuckit, i guess.
before i tell you what i really wanna tell you, which is something i read off Metafilter just know, which is that the Library of Congress just got its hands on some sweet ass baseball crap from over 100 years ago.
what i wanna tell you is, lets say you work at a dry cleaning establishment and you see the same guy who always comes into your place. lets say he always brings in some slacks and some shirts and he pays in cash in advance.
lets say you are doing a task like putting plastic over the newly dry cleaned articles, or youre stapling receipts together, or you’re organizing the hangars…
don’t make that regular customer wait for you as you do your task. dont let him stare at you and then the clock and then back at you. say hi tony. say thanks for your money. say thanks for new money. say i can get back to my other work when youre not here handing over cold hard cash.
lets say you do that next time, k?
k.
in other news the LAT Travel Blog published this little post i wrote about these 400 MPH Hand Driers that are now at LAX.
whats great about them is it only takes about 10 seconds, it doesnt burn, and you dont have to touch shit. all you do is stick your hands down into the wacky device, the air automatically starts blowing LIKE CRAZY and as soon as you pull your hands out theyre magically dry!
so awesome.
got Rick Astley to talk about Rick Rolling
Rick Rolling is sweeping the nation
and now our story about Rick Rolling is sweeping the blogosphere
it’s huge on Digg, huge on Reddit, even LAist has the fever
update: omg even Rush Limbaugh is talking about it!
today or yesterday she put up the pics from her bridal shower
i guess this means i hafta officially start dating her sisters
or something.
either way, congrats ashley!
who writes for Searchviews “the company blog of Reprise Media. We impart daily insights on Search Marketing, Social Media and SEO.” i first met Sepi at the Live from the Blogosphere panel in Chinatown where ev announced that google was about to buy blogger. not too long after that i asked Sepi to help me on Blook II, a project that never happened because i hate looking backwards, but over time Sepi found it in her heart to forgive me and when i finally came out with How to Blog i gave her a shoutout in the “thanks” section.
i have been approached by many people to talk about the cool and weird things that we are doing with the blogs at the LA Times but i say no to mostly everyone. sepi however is an exceptional person so therefore she is one of the exceptions.
later this week i will be on a panel organized by Harvard Law hosted at the Annenberg School of USC and moderated by a dude from MIT, but the real reason i accepted was because Doc Searls will be there, another exceptional person. sadly his presentation happens the same time as my panel but maybe we can knock back a cold one after the dealio (if not before, as im sure i will be pretty nervous).
anyways, heres my answer to one of Sepi’s Five Questions:
SV: Tony, part of your job at the LA Times is launching new blogs; for example, you recently brought Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on board and he’s done some interesting stuff with video and written about everything from jazz to politics. What new blogs are you planning now, and what ideas make for viable blogs? In other words, what should newspapers or other media companies consider when they’re planning new blogs and hiring bloggers?
TP: We are planning a wide spectrum of new blogs that I am not at liberty to reveal at this time, but they will leap from and be based within every section of the paper that you could imagine – from the front page to the back page.
Kareem has been quite a blessing. I don’t think anyone anywhere has a Hall of Famer writing for them, from their heart, every day, about sensitive and interesting topics. And as you said, he does it with video, audio, and the written word. His Rolodex is endless, so one day you might see him doing an interview with will.i.am and the next day he’s exchanging emails with Senator Barack Obama. The day after the Super Bowl, Kareem reminisced about hanging with the Manning brothers, and the day after the Grammys, there was a picture of him with Herbie Hancock. Last week he was on the Colbert Report, and when the Lakers return you will see him inches away from the court with the Lake Show. And he writes about all of it. He is a totally fascinating man with an amazing and unreal life, and we are so lucky to have him writing about it daily.
When newspapers are planning new blogs they should consider what jewels they have in their backyards. It might not be ESPN’s Collegiate Athlete of the Century, like Kareem, but odds are they have more than a few precious gems on their radar. My advice is to reach out to those people and let them do what we’re doing with #33: let them write about whatever they want, using whatever format they feel most comfortable with. Not everyone wants to write about what made them famous, not everyone wants to type away at a keyboard. Most people are complicated. So let them tell you a wide-ranging assortment of things in a variety of ways. The blogging medium is dynamic and limitless, so don’t let your own boundaries limit your bloggers. Let them go, let them experiment, encourage them, and be there when they need you.
read the whole thing here and dont miss the part where i diss mark cuban whose dallas mavs have been on a karmic-induced slide lately.
investigative reporter of the LAT
who recently wrote more on the 2Pac shooting
enter the chat now (we’re chatting thru 1pm PT)
while lots of blogs were out hiding and finding eggs instead of blogging, LAist was hustling as they should!
Friday afternoon my alma matter posted a few dozen pics of the tri-yearly UCLA Undie Run, a continuing tradition at both the campus and the blog. Usually LAist will get a nice bump of 100k page views or so – a little less if there arent many good stories, a little more if some wacky Russian or Croatian blog finds it. But Saturday it got on Digg and it shot across the web like wildfire racking up over a half million page views in just two days.
there were months when we struggled to get a half million hits and this weekend LAist did better than that in just two days. so i take my hat, shirt, and pants off to you Undie Runners and Undie Bloggers. maybe now the belief that you cant get hits or traffic on weekends or over holidays can be officially put to rest. you can get traffic whenever you want, you just have to be on top of stories and present them in ways people can get behind.
its usually after ridiculously free college girls come over to my bachelor pad with taco bell on easter night with diet coke and baccardi, and act ridiculously free and afterwards we watch mtv hd and talk about music,
and then its revealed that babygirl was born a few months before the beastie boys came to the greek with run dmc, dj hurricane, that one lady in the cage, just one record, and more importantly with cases of budweiser beer which they poured over each other, themselves, the stage, and the crowd.
you missed everything i teller as the glow of the tv illuminates my messy room, which wasnt nearly as messy as before she drove over
you missed the back in black tour you missed when the scorpions ruled you missed the twin tone rock before the storm and you missed grunge.
i didnt miss grunge she said and explained that she was at the nirvana concert at the forum with bob goldwaith and the butthole surfers
get out you were?
she reached over me to dip the cold chips into the cheeselike cheese which she ordered extras of. something i teased her about but now im grateful for cuz it isnt bad on bagels in the morning.
yes my mom took me and she cried during the acoustic part and i was so confused cuz why would you cry at a concert.
just like why would you obsess over age when theres chalupas waiting to be devoured.
today being Easter, i thought it would be a good idea to blog a little about Jesus Christ, who many believe rose from the dead on this day (give or take) several centuries ago. thousands of years after his death, Jesus still remains one of the most influential and powerful men on Earth, and certainly in the USA.
one cannot, for example, believe that they can win the election for President of the United States unless one is a Christian, which is a belief that Jesus was and is God. Indeed one of the ways that detractors of Barack Obama’s campaign are using to try to raise doubt among Americans is to suggest that the senator is an omg Muslim. meanwhile some believe that because one-time front-runner Mitt Romney believed in an unusual sect of Christianity, Mormanism, that thats what turned him off to many conservative americans.
although it has only been around a few years, there are very few things online more influential than Google and its internet search. in this post i will be showing you the five top results when you type “Jesus” into Google and click the Image tab.
above is the #1 result which i believe also typifies most people’s ideas about Jesus. in this image he has no real details, he appears to be in Heaven or ascending into Heaven, he’s dressed in white, all is calm, but still there appears to be something Bigger that he is in the presence of.
this is Jesus the Son, as opposed to Jesus the Man or the Spirit or God. it’s an idea that many believers can probably feel comfortable with as it’s an overall approach to the subject, and one that probably best aligns with how they imagine the concept of Jesus.
surprisingly the #2 Jesus on Google is the “Black Jesus” depiction.
although there are very few physical descriptions of Jesus in the new testament, the one that many in the Jesus-was-Black corner lean on is from Revelation 1:15 that says: “And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and His voice as the sound of many waters.”
truth of the matter is Jesus was born in a part of the world that was the crossroads of the world, and much closer to Africa than Sweden. in fact days after he was born his parents hustled him to Egypt so he could escape King Herod who wanted him dead when word was sent to him that the King of Kings was about to be born.
also there was the fact that when Jesus was in hiding in Africa he was never identified and never stood out. coincidence?
did he look like the lenny kravitz dude in the painting to the right? probably not, but he also probably didn’t look like the blue eyed Jesus that we will see next.
And Jesus probably did have some African links – after all the conventional theory is that he lived as a child in Egypt where, presumably, his appearance did not make him stand out.
The New Nation takes it further: “Ethiopian Christianity, which pre-dates European Christianity, always depicts Christ as an African and it generally agreed that people of the region where Jesus came from looked nothing like Boris Johnson,” the paper says. As light-hearted evidence that Jesus was black, it adds that he “called everybody ‘brother’, liked Gospel, and couldn’t get a fair trial”. – BBC
to the left we have the so-called Classic Jesus. looking far more like an American hippie than a Middle Eastern or Egyptian man, this Jesus is a shave and a haircut away for posing in any number of Abecrombie or Gap ads. Looking up as if listening to God, he is peaceful and confident, and ready for whatever order The Father has for him.
the receding hairline doesn’t say 33 (the age he allegedly was when he was killed) as much as it says “im ready for my crown of thorns. lets do this thing”. but the long locks suggest sensitivity, rebellion, and anti-establishment.
it’s hard to believe that this image doesnt rank higher in Google, but maybe it’s because it’s such a typical portrayal, and thus lacks any edge.
speaking of soft, here’s the #4 return of Jesus on Google, the good shepard with his lamb.
whats interesting here is the rudimentary photoshop spotlight around the subject – a sort of cheesy halo effect.
whats missing is any middle eastern or north african features to the model. who needs history to tell you how to paint a historic figure?
although Jesus was known more for his preaching, turning over of moneychanging tables, and carpentry, the idea that he loved to hold baby sheep is a curious staple of artist renditions.
often you will see him with a sheep over his shoulder, or in this case as if it was an infant. never do we see him embrace the sick or the dead or the lost *people* of his life, it’s usually the barnyard crowd.
for some reason.
lastly we have the heart in sand with the word jesus image coming in at #5 on Google images.
it’s not the sultry sacred heart jesus,
it’s not the freaky and detailed heart of thorns jesus,
it’s not any of the countless baby jesus with mary images,
it’s not even the most famous of all the Jesus paintings – the last supper,
instead we get this simple dealie that could have been done by anyone at any time.
which might be exactly why people like it.
happy easter!
shes 24. she has the coolest look the best voice and much better musical taste than all of yr friends minus me.
last year she interviewed me on her show on music plus tv and earlier this month at sxsw i was fixin to interview this one dude and this other dude went omg tony pierce and i was all thats me and he was all bro i was the producer of the music plus show that jenn interviewed you on and i was all please tell me shes here and he was all i dont know where she is and whatever he said after that my mind just wandered cuz jenns all that.
born in kansas where only the koolest kids move away from (johnny carson, zulekia, burroughs, max) jenn packed her bags right after high school and ended up working with me at E!
this was back in the day where brooke burke, jules asner, and alecia tyler roamed the halls but there were only two girls who id hope would pass by my desk each day – this news chick who looked like mariah carey and todays birthday girl.
this was back in the earliest days of the busblog when no one knew of tony pierce and i dont even know how i ever got the courage to talk with her but somehow we did and she was even cooler than i could have guessed and last year about this time the stars aligned and she an i sat next to each other on the planeride home from sxsw and we transfered planes in zona and missed the connection because we were drinking too much tequilla in the airport taqueria which was bueno with me-o thats for damn sure.
and if the stars woulda aligned this year i woulda said jen what about the cribs, what about the kills, what about the ting tings, what about care bears on fire, and she woulda said yeah but what about blah blah blah and i woulda been all damn girl i aint even heard of them and her blue eyes woulda sparkled and i woulda floated away
happy birthday mtvs shoudla been vj
whereever you be j
