the new LA Times owner came to our office yesterday but i was busy trying to put out fires. everyone who went loved it. earlier in the day he wrote us an email saying that his fifty cent salary confused some because how would you get that salary into 26 payments. so sarcastically said he would get a committee together and figure out a way to get a two cent raise. ha. apparently he hates the red tape that he sees stifling the tribune corp. he hates the meetings, hates the navel gazing, hates the bureaucracy. save us sam.

apparently during the speech someone approached him with a quarter to give him a 50% raise – and he took it! shamelessly. beautifully. like a rich man is probably used to doing. all while dropping a wide assortment of f-bombs, and jokes, and no-nonsense strategies.

then he went to our big printing facility on olympic blvd. the veteran pressman and blogger ed padget was there and captured it on video (above) and uploaded the first 9 minutes of sam’s speech. if more of it becomes available i’ll post that too. but watching this makes me wish i had seen sam in person cuz he seems like my sorta guy.

the gentleman in the front row is our publisher david hiller.

i wish i could explain why. i wish i could just write everything that i feel right now and why and because of who, and everything.

and even though nothing in here is true, nobody cares.

what i want you to know is this. i love blogging. i love my job. i love you, my readers. i love pretty much everything.

i love that its quiet right now in my office and cohort is out sick and doesnt have to deal with me right now in the state im in.

i love that i have a half hour to get back into a mindset to rock. i love that i will be going to sxsw to learn and meet new people and hang with cool people and omg write for my employer about the newest bands from all over the world.

i love that me and karisa had sushi last night and kept ordering more and more and drank saki and beer and ate more and caught up and smiled and laughed.

i love that my house is a mess and soon my maid will show up and clean it all up.

i love that my man matt welch, against all odds, spent a huge chunk of last year researching and writing a book about John McCain. and now he will probably sell a gazillion books because everyones gonna wanna know all the dirt on the republican nominee and matt wrote it all down in a funny and informative manner.

i love that im healthy. i love that im starting to eat right. i love that my mom got sent home from work today because the snow was starting to pile up in chicago.

i love that shaq is baq in the western conference. i love that the cubs havent made any stupid moves this winter. i love that i have a corner of a kleenex in my nose because i got a bloody nose from blowing it too much and now people probably think im a coke addict.

i love that i have a half bottle of warm coke on my desk. i love that i have my own office. i love that im wearing a cowboy shirt. i love that i get to type and type and type to you and most of you will read it.

i love that ashley and i are friends again and i have a package for her but its too big for the box and its sitting here on one of my many drawers in my office that i dont use. i love that im practically paperless.

i love that im feeling better.

Just saying hi. Hoping everything with your new job is still going well…. You ceased your “raving” about it on your blog, so I hope it’s still okay….

xoxo,
me

dear me,

hi baby. thanks for writing. first of all lemme tell you how great your blog is. i read it all the time and not only is it always a treat, but its so much better than so many other blogs out there.

its sexy and funny and disgusting and real and quirky and sometimes drunken and beautiful and weird.

you continue to amaze me because youve done things that all bloggers should strive for: you have found your own voice and you have rocked it. so kudos!

as for my job. i fucking love my job. it is such a dream come true and almost every day the dream gets better and better and better.

its almost like having a new girlfriend where at first you cant believe that the prettiest girl in school actually knows you, let alone wants to make out.

when that happens all you wanna do is write about it.

but then things get hotter and heavier and you go to pick her up to take her to the movies and you put your hand on her thigh as you drive and she puts your hand under her hemline and you feel something, whats that, omg garters? and you never make it to the movies. and you realize that the cutest girl in school is sorta a closet freak. either that or she totally loves you. or maybe both.

but its so new and you’ve been around the block a little yourself so you know to keep most of all of this under your hat, publicly at least. like maybe you’ll tell some of your boys, and she’ll tell some of her girls. but you dont tell everyone, not at first at least, cuz its crazy beautiful and its not like youre the type that believes in the lame concept of jinxing things

but there is a time and a place for everything.

and on monday you should come back to the busblog because she said that i can say something about our relationship or whatever this is then. but its something you will never believe and you will totally be blown away by, and maybe even a little proud but you shouldnt be proud, just happy, cuz its rad as hell.

k?

love you back,

tony

mostly cuz it was Super Tuesday, one would be sick of politics

but thanks to the kids over at Fark, here are some funny Obama pics

and an oldie of the clintons:

btw, the LA Times have some cool kids of their own doing some sweet election Java magic:

who’s winning in your county + primary tracker

i love my job and just wait till Monday for a special treat

did you see any of the late night tv last night? there was a funny bit where colbert, stewart and conan were all on each other’s shows (think it was making good on a promise that stewart made to waste time on all their shows b/c of the writer’s strike) Anyways, we had a half hour to kill before we could watch the last bit of the trio on conan’s show so we flipped to Letterman just as Hillary Clinton came on as a guest. Anyways, was wondering if you caught it, I thought it was a crazy PR move for Hillary, wonder what history will make of it cause one day every bit of this campaign to the primaries will be written about.

– K

hey K,

no i didnt see it, but heres Hil’s appearance last night. if Ron Paul and Barack werent running, shed get my vote!

im about to head over to the polling place to cast my vote in the primaries.

i gotta say that its pretty cool to have the choice between a totally capable woman and a totally capable black man for president.

it is a bummer to hear the midwestern accent in hillary but not hear her say that shes from park ridge, il (which she is).

and its a bummer to know that barack is a sox fan, and not a cub fan.

which is why id vote for ron paul if here in california we could. but i am a registered Independent and the repubs wont let Indies vote for them in the primary.

which brings us back to the woman or the sox fan.

this morning my niece and nephew posed for this picture to try to sway my vote.

it may have worked.

yes thats right, one of our favorite bloggers has gone from the frying pan into the fire by accepting mr laynes plea to write for him on Wonkette!

as you know sk and the busblog go way back but because all the stalkers over there seem so obsessed to dig up any dirt on her (resorting to accusing her of writing Amazon reviews in a past life – omg as if) i wont make it any easier for them.

lets just say that shes good people, nay great people, and wonkette doesnt deserve her. ok it does. shit, now i really have no excuse not to read it!

heres how layne announced it.

Oh Hai: Here Is Some New Wonkette Person!

Your newest Wonkette associate still confuses Barry Goldwater with that other guy, the Democrat (McGeorge Bundy?), and spends her free time watching surgery programs on The Learning Channel. In other words, she’s got that perfect combination of seasoned inside-the-beltway perspective and an intimate working knowledge of enlarged livers that makes her the right person at the right time for Wonkette, until she gets fired. Exciting and detailed personal information, after the jump!

Sara K. Smith was born into a band of roving hobos, but through sheer moxie and old-fashioned grit transformed herself into one of those white Ivy League-educated douchebags that “ordinary Americans” despise. Several years ago she abandoned her glamorous job as a freelance technology marketing writer to work for Sploid, another doomed venture headed up by Ol’ Beardy. She now happily jumps aboard this leaking proud vessel with Hope in her heart that she, like Hillary Clinton, may some day bring America the transcendent blessing of electronic medical records.

i cant wait for the day when ALL of my friends are pro bloggers.

Sam Zell is really the owner

last month zell was in florida speaking to the Orlando Sentinel, one of the many Trib-owned media outlets. a woman asked a question that has been one that ive heard every week during my first few weeks at my dream job: what is news? what should we cover? what do the people want? what should we give them that they dont know they want yet?

after the photographer asked sam the question and he answered, she followed up. he then followed up and concluded with an interesting lil f-bomb. this is how it will be described in tomorrows paper:

In Orlando, Sentinel photographer Sara Fajardo asked Zell at the staff meeting for his views on “the role journalism plays in the community, because we’re not the Pennysaver, we’re a newspaper.”

Zell, standing at a podium, responded, “I want to make enough money so that I can afford you. You need to in effect help me by being a journalist that focuses on what our readers want that generates more revenue.”

Fajardo told Zell that “what readers want are puppy dogs,” presumably referring to soft feature stories. She added, “We also need to inform the community.”

Zell shot back: “I’m sorry but you’re giving me the classic, what I would call, journalistic arrogance by deciding that puppies don’t count. . . . What I’m interested in is how can we generate additional interest in our products and additional revenue so we can make our product better and better and hopefully we get to the point where our revenue is so significant that we can do puppies and Iraq.”

As he finished his remarks, he stepped back from the podium and muttered the obscenity.

what’s interesting is when you watch and listen to the video below of the exchange, it doesnt sound all that bad. especially if you believe that maybe zell was reacting to the accusation that the woman turned her back on the owner when he was concluding his statement.

either way, no one told me that it would be boring at the LAT, and therefore no one has been wrong. sam visits the LAT on super thursday, i hope i get to shake his hand.

in other news our Homicide Report writer, the amazing Jill Leovy, is stepping down after a year, and explains that even during a year when murders went down here in LA, she always had a lot of work to investigate and report on. and it was far from easy.

not only was i lucky enough to meet her, but ive recently met the man who will replace her and not only was he a cool guy, but he’s been reading the busblog for a few years now which always blows my mind.

and as nice as it was to see Tom Petty

a year ago yesterday Prince rocked the house in the rain in heels