not a bad selection for Good Friday, eh? thanx raymi!

happy good friday. because of all the traveling and working ive been doing i didnt even know that this weekend was easter until karisa asked me yesterday what i was gonna do for easter. i was all whens that.

she was all, its sunday.

when i got home from the office there was a package waiting for me on my doorstep.

it was my easter basket from my mom.

how did easter sneak up on me? and how did i make a deal with mc brown that i would work from home today. today is good friday, holiest day in the year for Christians.

i stayed up all night working. its 415am. funny thing about me is if i like what im doing and if i can do it all night i will do it all night.

but the funny thing about working for someone else is theyre likely to call you the next day and totally discount that you were up all night doing little things and some big things.

one of the big things i did was ask a few people to put that Coachella Blogad ad on their blogs. and lucky for me a few of em did it.

because this is good friday i cant really ask all of you to do it, but for those of you who have blogads and youd like to stoke your pal tone, i cant pay you anything, but i might be able to work something out, like i was thinking about holding a raffle for all the people who do it. or give away some tshirts or something.

all you have to do is email me your Offer Code in your blog ads thing. if you dont know where it is i can help you. anyways i shouldnt be selling or pitching or anything on Good Friday.

i should be thinking about the Lord. and how He died today. died with pretty much nobody believing in Him. died with probably just as many Romans believing as Jews. i have a feeling the Romans totally believed, thats why they were scared. you can tell if someone believes in you cuz theyre scared of you and they act mean. its like dogs dont bark at you if they wanna bite you, if they wanna bite you they bite you. if they want you to back off they bark. and the only reason they want you to back off is if theyre scared of you.

my mom got me a cubs baseball with a little clock in it. she also got me some cubs peanuts, and a tshirt that says lake geneva on it. and then of course the nice sized easter basket of candy and chocolate and stuff.

this morning i was awakened by the telephone ringing. the land line. no one good calls the land line in the morn so i let that fucker ring but then it was Chris, she left a message. she said she only had two minutes on her calling card and i jumped outta bed and tore through my house to the phone and i was all baby baby baby and we talked for thirty seconds. mostly i love you i love you too i miss you i miss you too. i was half asleep so i couldnt even think. i didnt get her to ask any questions. i knew her time was running short so what do you say?

oh i had so much to say too. i wanted to tell her i had just seen this thing about the elephant orphanage on 60 minutes. i wanted to ask her how the lions were. i wanted to ask her if she had masturbated in africa. im sure she would have said no but i wanted her to know that she was really on the phone with me and not some spy who had put cloroform over my mouth and was holding me for randsom in some underground lair.

i wanted to ask her if the phone books there were one or two pages. i wanted to ask her how many post offices there were in uganda since they had zero zip codes. i wanted to ask her how much a coke cost because thats my universal standard for the cost of living in a town. its fairly unscientific but… when i traveled around europe many moons ago in some towns a coke was a buck in some two bucks.

her voice was so clear and sweet. it sounded like she was doing well. she asked if she had gotten my text message and i hadnt. fuck! and then she was gone. no call backs cuz i didnt have her number.

i have caller id that speaks to you. in the old days it would have been my voice that would have said chris. but when its an out of the area number its the built in voice that says “this call is out of the area”. so i blow it off. i should always sleep with the phone next to me from now on since i have so many questions to ask her.

mostly i want to know how i can help. i always want to help. ive had a lot of jobs over the years and one thing that the mean bosses have misunderstood about me is at my core i want to help. im all about customer service. im also about telling people to fuck off if theyre fuckers but im mostly about helping. i dont think theres anything better than the behind the back bounce pass unless its the through the legs and through the defenseman’s legs bounce pass. and to me its the dude who makes the pass whose the star not the dude who gets the pass and lays it up.

and thats why steve nash should get the mvp this year, for the second year in a row. although mr ron artest is making a strong case for himself as before he was traded to the kings they were in dead last. now theyre poised to get the 7th slot in the playoffs with the lakers likely to get the final slot, and dont expect the kings to get knocked out immediately like my hometeam probably will.

its good friday and i miss you chris and i miss you wrigley and i miss you isla vista and i miss karisa and i will be having lunch with her at 1pm which means this will definately be a good friday.

just a girl + this day in black history + my gum job

after a suprise wedding in Malibu, may i present to you The Browns!

for a pulitzer.

sux.

woke up with clippergirl next to me this morning. she was playing with what little hair i have.

you have the longest eyelashes for a boy she told me.

i mumbled something about carrottop and rolled over.

she said no no no its early lets seize the day, lets maul the morning.

i swear to you she said maul the morning.

please tony please lets actually do something today. ive been good.

upon reflection it turned out she had been good. so i told her that we could do anything that she wanted today.

she asked anything?

i worried for a second and said, sure, why not. anything.

and a full eight minutes later she kissed me on the cheek and then asked me what i wanted to do today.

i told her that i wanted to go to hollywood park but it was closed.

she said, what about santa anita?

i said, i thought you didnt want to rack up miles on your miata.

she said, fuck the miata, lets go to the races!

went to the track. im a mess at the track cuz all i want to do is drink and swear. and take pictures.

clippergirl says ive been annoying with my new camera lately taking pictures of every damn thing, so she asked if we could give the camera a day off. i told her it was palm sunday and how great would it be to take pictures of palm trees today.

she told me how great it would be to just enjoy the day, like adults, holding hands, drinking white wine, watching the horses with the san gabriel mountains in the background.

i reminded her that she was a cheerleader and i was in the xbi, therefore if anyone deserved to shun age it was us, and put on my gwar shirt, she put on her pleated skirt and we gave the finger to adulthood.

clippergirl however persuaded me to put on a different shirt and we went to the track.

as could have been predicted we lost all our gambling money after the third race. im not a good bettor. fortunately our drinking money wasnt even close to being drained.

when i was just at the point of either being too drunk to drive or just buzzed enough to deal with being at the races without betting, she started asking me questions that i only hear when she is one wine past drunk.

do you love me tony?

of course i do.

who do you love the most?

my mom.

who do you love love the most?

chris.

still?

shes only gotten better with age.

who do you love the least?

probably anna kournikova.

why would you say that?

i only love her for the material.

on a scale of one to ten, how much do you love me?

i brought my right hand to my nose, looked up into the blue sky, sniffed and said, eight and a half.

and i’d be lying if i didnt tell you that it was a quiet ride back home in that miata.

no one takes pics like raymi

“Love Explosion” – the second single off Band Girls Money (now available in the UK)
“Startime” – my favorite song off the cd – created by an 18-yr old fan!!!

i guess that serves me right since i wasnt very good to my last ones.

but still, i put out, chicks oughtta be banging down my door.

and i like romance like the slow jamz, and fireplace fires, and makeout competitions, and breakfast (burritos) in bed.

i dont cheat, i dont lie, i dont blog about the relationship. i know cool people. i have a decent record collection. i dont do that many kinky things in bed. on the floor is a different story, however.

maybe i need to go to more bars to meet the ladies instead of thinking that theyre just gonna come to me off this blog. like theyve done in the past. like they will in the future.

its gorgeous here in LA, 80 degrees maybe, but i have a flannel on. i went to mcdonalds for lunch and the lady didnt speak english cuz i was in a mexican neighborhood. they have this new machine there that chops up the potatoes and turns them into french fries and even loads them into the basket for you. i heart mcdonalds.

karisa keeps telling me not to eat there but sometimes when karisa tells you things youre just mezmorized by her hotness and nothing gets through. i’ll pretend that thats whats going on, but any time i eat anything its one of those wwks – what would karisa say. i heart her too. girls should wanna bone me and be my gf just so they could meet karisa.

i watched the two parts of The Ten Commandments yesterday. quite a daunting task to take on the cc deville classic. or to take on chuck heston. i cant say it was better than the original but it did try to keep more things closer to the bible, but it missed a lot too.

for example during the Let My People Go portion where Pharoah got all the plagues sent to Egypt for not letting Moses and the jews leave they totally left out the huge part that Pharoah wanted to free them but God hardended his heart.

the way they showed it on tv it was like this

Moses: dude let us leave here.
Pharoah: f you slave.
Moses: you know im not really a slave. technically yes, but come on.
Pharoah: kiss my ass.
Moses: Gods gonna fuck shit up if you dont let them go.
Pharoah: Bring it fuck.

But in the bible it was way more like this

Moses: dude let my people go
Pharoah: wtf
Moses: seriously
Pharoah: well i am rich, you guys did stoke us for hundreds of years, you know what fine.
Moses: cool
[God hardens Pharoahs heart]
Pharoah: on second thought f you Moses.
Moses: wtf?
Pharoah: yeah kiss my ass and kiss my bald son’s ass
Moses: oh no thou didnt. fine. youre gonna pay and your son’s gonna pay
Pharoah: whatevs. jew.

in my opinion the Bible tells the better story.

also in the new tv movie the parting of the red sea was more like a tidal wave on a beach. this is 2006 is that the best special effects the religious right could flow you? sheesh.

either way i watched the whole thing. im a sucker for bible stories, bible movies, tv evangelists, pretty much anything bible-related. except for this new Book of Judas nonsense and of course the wickety wack Davinci Code.

simply put, if Jesus wanted to bang chicks and have a family he woulda done it. He did anything He wanted to do anyways including working on the Sabbath, why wouldnt he have done something that wasnt illegal like having a wife? i hope the film bombs.

top photo by aj goddard + middle photo by snowsmiles

right before the Washington Nationals home opener he was roundly and loudly booed.

if you watch the video you will see that the outraged increased when he wusses out and throws the ball from in front of the mound instead of from the actual rubber.

i know the man has heart problems, and is old, but the distance from the rubber and the plate is 60 feet, six inches. if you cannot throw a baseball 60 feet six inches you shouldn’t waddle out to the middle of the field.

often times when women throw out the first pitch they do it from the first row of the stands to an awaiting catcher 30-40 feet away.

ive seen senior citizens take the mound and throw the ball over the plate.

perhaps if the Vice President’s bullet-proof vest is on too tight he should loosen it, or better yet, load a baseball into a specially designed rifle and shoot it.

for such a macho man, for such a tough talker, for someone so interested in showing whose boss in the world, he should have known that throwing the first pitch from in front of the mound is like riding a bicycle as an adult with training wheels. there is no way to look cool, there is no way to pull it off, and all you will incur is wrath pity and ultimately insult.

is no one listening to karl rove over there? surely he would have advised against such nonsense.

the rules of throwing the first pitch are simple: take the rubber, wave at the fans, dont forget to wave at the fans behind you in the bleachers, look in to the catcher, shake off a sign, wind up like either Luis Tiant or Fernando Venzuela, and aim high so as to get the ball over the plate without bouncing it.

children know this.

and when you get the ball back from the catcher and walk off the field either hand the ball over to a young child, or toss it behind your back to a hottie in the front row.

next week, mr vice president, i will show you how to pull out of a quagmire without spending another trillion dollars that you dont have.

in the Scratch My Back & I’ll Scratch Yours dept: all the people who write a sentence or two in their blog about The Official Coachella Blog being on Buzznet (and then link to it) will in turn get a link to their blog on the busblog either at the end of one of my upcoming posts, or if its a really sweet sloppy kiss, over on the left hand side as “tony’s specials”.

just let me know you did it in either the comments or via email. busblog at gmail

in typical fashion, it was fun today to switch it up a bit and f with the program.

the victim? one Franz Ferdinand.

however instead of writing about the band i wrote about the man. the archduke. the king of pain. the undersecretary of heredity. the martr who startred the war to end all wars.

even though i went to college for seven years i didnt find myself in many history classes because the girls in those rooms could see right through me. dont get me wrong, i have nothing against smart girls, but its hard enough to get a girl to let me up her skirt, i didnt need her to be serious when she said she had to study.

so i stayed in english classes with depressed girls who yearned for a knight to come riding through the forest on a pale horse. i of course had no horse but these young women could be wooed through pen and paper and i sure as shit had reams of those.

unfortunately i missed up on a lot of edjumacation, particularly about world wars and geography and politics and diplomacy and royalty so i had never heard of the real Franz nor did i care.

until today.

see at Buzznet when my job isnt to fly to foreign lands and throw parties, and when its not to find creative ways to get hoards of people over to our little picture show, ive been tapped to write about as many coachella bands as i can before april 28. the problem is what do you say about someone like franz ferdinand other than theyre from scotland and girls like to dance to them?

turned out there was a LOT to say about the real man, the tragic soul and his baroness but not royal-enough wife, there was a lot to learn about the history of the austrian/hungarian region, as well as the young anarchists determined to take down double F. but the most interesting part is what happened to those who tried to assasinate old Franz and the fella who was successful.

click here to read my version of history, which probably got some of the facts wrong, but like i said, when i should have been learning this shit i was splitting infinitives and trying to pretend like i meant to do it.

in other news the cubs got spanked today, i chatted with the beautiful ettiene, i noticed that the pants got naked on buzznet, leah got a new hairdo and i hope the color lasts two weeks when she will be my date for dan and sara’s wedding.

and lastly, today i was told that i have shot up from the mid 1,500s on Technorati to #312(!), which supposedly means there are only 311 blogs more popular than the one youre looking at. out of 33.9 million blogs i find that hard to believe, but i’ll take it. how far away is the busblog from reaching the Technorati Top 100? a thousand links from blogs that currently dont link here. thats a lot.

— i slept and slept and slept last night on account of all the traveling i did this weekend. the good news was i woke up early and watched the Sopranos this morning so sheild your eyes if you havent seen the episode yet.

tony is really getting softer on some accounts, but i love how he proved that he still has it over at the Bing when he took care of the muscle bound driver of his.

im hoping he told the dude what he was gonna do, but i liked it because, well, i know a thing or two about alpha males and if you remember the opening scene of 2001 there are some monkeys who sit on the outskirts of the circle, there are some who discover shit, there are some who bark at people, and then there are those who pick up the bone and use it as a tool. sometimes violently.

and then there are the monkeys who just mimic what the innovators do.

tony soprano is head baboon in charge. hes the innovator and the killing machine. thats what makes him so fascinating. christopher may throw in his 2 cents but tony doesnt wanna hear it. he didnt ask for it and he doesnt want to know what anyone else thinks. not because he doesnt know hes doing the wrong thing in some people’s eyes, but also because he’s been successful at what he does.

hes not in jail, hes not dead, hes not in court, hes not awaiting trial. hes got the band the girls and the money. so fuck christopher who doesnt have all his chips in the family business, fuck christopher who really would rather be writing screen plays and getting lap dances from the whores at the ‘Bing.

only tony knows how to conduct business right in front of the Man while using the elderly as a beard. only tony knows the fine art of saying no no no and then yes to those who he will need in the long run.

any ape can say no to everything, but the smart monkey knows when to say yes even when it might not be 100% in his best interest or involve risk or appear less-than-manly. and thats what i love about tony soprano, alpha males dont always have to hit people over the head with bones to prove that theyre the top dog, real alphas know theyre the man, and real alphas only use the whip when they have to, most the time they simply show the whip.

but what really makes tony a likeable character is his heart. in this episode the thing that he wants the most has nothing to do with money sex or power, it has to do with knowing that his mortal coil isnt infinate, that it has a begining and an end and that the end is nigh.

what tony soprano wants is a grandchild. preferably a grandson because the soprano blood might be running through his son but his son is a lunkhead loser, the good genes all went to meadow, and not just in the looks deptarment but also in the smarts. she knows she has an idiot boyfriend so when everyone keeps asking her when she’s gonna get married she laughs it off which is too bad because more than anything tony wants to hold a grandchild on his lap and peer into the future.

the only flaw i saw in the episode was that of the cops being cocks to the father of the bride. yes it needed to happen to show that crime doesnt pay, that even though the judge allowed the mafia boss a chance to see his daughter’s wedding it didnt mean that he could have a perfect evening. but if i was buschemi who directed this fine episode i would have had the cops give him a few more warnings that the clock was ticking. the way it went down it just looked like the cops were totally out of line and trying to embarrass everyone and ruin the wedding.

i would have put the responsibility on others as well that the ceremony was running too long and the cops were getting phone calls from the jail asking “whats going on, where is he?” the way it wound up it looked like it was the cops and only the cops who were the bad guys at wedding, and when youre surrounded by bad guys its crazy to only paint cops as the villans.

all and all good episode and i think i saw Vida dancing for Chris, or was i hallucinating?

alex + foxxy + accordian guy + riley dog