cuz when i wake up in a town i just want to get the hell out of it and move on, even though i have a nice crepe breakfast lined up with the goods in a half hour and then a pint with mr ciavarro, but deep down i want to drive to the border and see what sorta drama they wanna try to hand me.

i want them to ask me all those wwII questions they asked people to find out if they were really american. like whos the president and who won the world series this year.

fucking white sox won the world series this year.

say it like that and not only do they know that youre an american but they’ll know youre a cub fan and youre in.

im so dumb for leaving my passport in my breakfast nook. im so dumb for being 113 yrs old and not figuring out by now how to do these trips as my job. but if it was my job they would have deadlines on my shit. id have to have written something about seattle that was palpable for the masses and thats one of the beauties of paid advertising on blogs: the sponsors will pony up and you can lay out whatever you want.

2005 was pretty good for the busblog, i invented 15 minutes with tony and probably a few other things ive forgotten about, but the secret plot for coming to vancouver was to get re-inspired for the new blog, the antibusblog, the second cumming.

anyone can have one decent blog but to have two, well thats something the instapundit doesnt even have, and yes im talking about his msnbc afterthought and the pajamas media stillbirth.

im listening to loretta lynns van lear rose and if i had a second blog this year i would know what the best records of 2005 were. but right now all i can think of is kanye and tsar. did anything else come out this year? beck? ha. matt didnt know that beck was a sceintology how can people not know that? when you live in hollywood they’ll approach you and i always tell them that when beck puts out a decent record i’ll think about it but as long as he keeps letting these yawners see the light then im out.

the second blogs purpose is two fold, the first fold is to put all the stuff i should be blogging in a beautiful box that pops out like oragami and is easier searchable and pretty and proper and web 2.0, the other fold is to put all the stuff ive always wanted to write about in a familiar box that is slower to load and uglier and rougher and even more real.

the other day matt wrote that he knows only two pure bloggers, me and raymi and thats pretty much the best compliment that i can get. but i know how much purer i can be. for example, what was the best porno i rented in 2005? service animals 18 of course. who was the best girl i fingered this year? anna kournikova of course. what was the best meal i ate this year, paris hilton of course. who has the weirdest life in the world, yours truly and im in a once cold hotel room in vancouver thats now too hot. and the musics too loud and the rooms too dark and my teeth needs brushing.

even before matt showed me his blog post where he called me and raymi pure he said you dont need two blogs and i said i want the busblog to be more like raymi, more raw, more real, more punkrock more idontgiveafuck. best thing that ever happened to me was getting laid off by E! because even though i pretended not to give a fuck you have a strike against you when your boss wants you out and another strike against you when theres an HR department and another strike against you when everyone knows you have a bloog, so the only thing you can do is swing at a ball in the dirt and try to beat the throw at first.

working for buzznet is still tricky because in a way i am a representative for that company and who knows if one day someone will say holy fuck tony pierce works for you and you let him say what his fingers smell like in his blog? what does that mean about your company? and the more i drive through the blue highways of america i see that its all about having your own thing that brings you your cash because then you can wear a tshirt under your overalls that has a picture of your middle finger. not that i have anything against working for marc brown, bro gave me these two weeks to find myself and meet some of you and drive drive drive. im just saying one day buzznet is gonna have an hr department and unless im sr vp of that department someones gonna say tony cant be writing what hes writing cuz its making our company look bad.

which is ironic because nothing that i will ever write will be as bad as illegally spying on americans or sending boys to war over no wmds or spending without taxing or outting cia agents, but… and its sixteen minutes to crepes and as much as id like to keep writing here in the dark i have to wash my ass and check out of this mamajama and brush my teeth hopefully not in that order but if i dont write to you from oregon later tonight it means that they stopped me at the border and wouldnt let me cross but theres far worse places to be stuck than in vancouver where i still have yet to see an ugly girl.

and because im supposed to be asleep and cuz imn a little bit drunk i will make this a 15 minutes with tony and we’ll call it a night.

first of all i must tip myh cap to the good people of elimitaste, the gum people who have sent me gum and advertised on my blog… well tonight they paid for a tank of gas for the road trup, so thanks fellas and thanks to0 jeanene who had something to do with it too. im confuesed.

had a hard time getting across the boarder. dont ever drive across the boarder. first they make you form two lines of cars. then they dont let either move for a good 15 minutes, then they ask you fore a passport. i was all wtf i dont need no stinking passport to leave my damn country in a CAR. but they swore you do now. so i say alls i got is this drivers license. and they say a dl isnt proof of citizenship.

i was all, since when? ive been to mexico a hundred times… anyways they let me into canada and now im a little nervous about making back into america tomorrow but if worse comes to worse i’ll just friggin go to the vancouver airport and have my buddy at homeland security deport me back to america.

so tonight for some reason i thought i had made plans with smelly danielly but when that didnt happen i called up both matt good and chad ciavarro and left messages and took a shower. when i got out of the showere murphys law they both wanted to do something so since matt was right around the corner he his wife and their friend from colorado all ate sushi on granville. then back to their place for port and wine and board games and petting of the dogs.

then i raomed the streets of vancity which was fun because it made me feel superior becasue drunkards are dumbshits. this one kid seriously punched the glass window of this store and broke it. but the fucker did it right in front of TWO cops! he was all, i was just testing the durability of this window.

dur… so they handcuffed him as his friends called him a jackhole.

then this one guy started puking around the cornerl, then this other guy asked me for money. then i went to a pizza place and ordered a slice and had to listen to these two guys swear that there was no cheese on these pizza slices.

so lets wrap this up by saying i talked to my mom on the phone when i was in seattle and i was gasping at how gorgeous that city is. i have no idea how kurt could have killed himself. life is a mystery, above is me singing karoke to pants last night in tacoma. i sucked but f0rtunealy others sucked harder. pants ruled. she was the hosue favorite.

next year im gonan have two blogs. matt is designing tghe other oen. this one is gonna be dirtieer and sexier and im gonna say fuck more. the other one is gonna be more straighht laced.

im gonna do it for two reasons. fiorst is cuz this one is blocked by lo0ts of servers, so if people are gonna block me then i may as well put titties on here and write porn reviewes and talk more about all the loads of sex i get.

the other one will be more about things i dont talk about here that i should, like spoorts and politics and movies i see and general thoughts that i have like about this sirius satalite radio that ive been listening to almost the entire trip. its fucking insane. today i started listening to the comedy channels fior once. RAW DOG is dirty comedy like chappelle, the other comedy is cosby and seinfeld and pg-143 crap but good.

of course theres howard and espn shows and nprs and all the music you can shake a stick at. this morning all i listened to was the stones channel.

then i turned it off when i got to seattle, and plugged myu iopod into the aux jack and played nirvana as i drove around where jkurt ended it all.

Stiff woudlnt have been around without kurdt and i listened to nevermind twice and all the others once and i miss you kiurt and Stiff if its anything is my daydream that kurt kobain is in heaven and not the place the bible says he probably is.

the official gum of the busblog roadtrip

im off to sushi with mr and mrs good – yes, i know, gay

check

no i havent been kidnapped. anyone who knows me knows i hate starbucks, but i desperately needed to charge my computer and for some reason coffee shops dont mind if you hang out in their little corporate establishments and suck their electricity and bypass their pay-wifi for the Comfort Inn wifi across the street, so hi, my name is tony, im a blogger.

sipping some okay hot chocolate and listening to them pipe in the new stones cd. its ok. certainly the type of meloncholy day after Christmas on the road alone music that would make most people sob in their styrofoam but a shot of rum somehow made its way into my cup and watching the percentage of juice on this white notebook reach 35% only brings a bigger smile on my face.

two Oreogon state troopers have made it into the ‘bucks and i wonder if they get free joe? chocolate moca says one venti blahblahblah says the other. $3.35? theyre gonna charge these men? get out of here. are you insane? when i worked at mcdonalds you gave the coppers free whatever because you wanted them to sit around the place to protect it for free, and you also wanted them to come running if there was ever a report on their radio that the place that gives them free shit was being robbed.

but starfucks is corporate and this is why corporate rock still sucks. poor girl would probably get canned if the surveilance cam ever found out that she was giving the overpriced beanwater away.

i believe my good pal ken layne, his beautiful wife laura, and their pride n joy jesse dean are about 20 minutes away from here, and i believe that jack bog is probably even closer, but deep down im a ramblin man as hank sr so elequently sang, and if it wasnt for the fact that i get sleepy at night i would blow right through washington on my way to canada. so as i pass by, buddys i will give a friendly wave and pour out some bacardi onto the freeway for the brothas who arent with us.

i love traveling so much, and i love meeting people, and i love typing on this bad boy on my lap outside a best western and i love being run out by a motel owner in his overalls, but i really love sitting here in this foreign coffee shop as cute girls walk in with rolled up jeans and say hi to their friends behind the counter, but best of all i love typing on this table because the keys want to tell this tale and its a long one and a good one, one of gmail accounts filled to the brim with Christmas greetings and topless pictures of women who i dont know.

thank you women who i dont know.

you might be fakes, those pics might be of your friends or sisters, or xxx images you found on xxx sites and youre just pretending. some of you have held up my book(s) next to your most intimate of areas and you i truly love because… well… because you know me so well.

this afternoon i peed on a tree next to Duck Stadium and hopefully soon i will pee in Washington for the first time ever, the state where Kurdt lived, our 48th state, our forgotten province. yes its the home of bill gates and ichiro but its also the birthplace of jimi hendrix the true king of rock n roll.

42% says the number on the upper right, and now 43% i tried to call my momma last night to wish her a merry Christmas but her cell phone was turned off. then this morn she wrote me an email saying call back call back that she had just gotten to the phone a tad late and technology can be your friend but it can also be a jealous mistress, damn you phones that dont know that its tony pierce the third on the other line. damn you voice mail. damn you lack of esp for the commonfolk.

i got a lot of gifts yesterday, lots of candy, some pajamas, some games, but the best gift was being able to sit next to the fire with my best friend christina spurnikova under a blanket and whisper and laugh and tell each other that we’re the coolest kids on the planet and deny it but deep down know that no matter where she travels to next year, namely uganda, or where i travel to next year, namely every fucking place i possibly can, we will be in each others hearts and thoughts and fantasies when we wake up a tad ornery.

well, i admitted that part. and then we threw a dab of gasoline on the log and watched the flames roar and i kissed her cheek and she fell asleep on my shoulder and we woke up to the sounds of embers fizzing out and i carried her to her bed and i went to my bed and now we are apart, again, as usual, as is fate.

and this time when i come to vancity im gonna try some of that bc green shit. you betcha.

small island girl + ben allbright + susan + smelly

today we are on the outskirts of eugene oregon where gasoline is 2.39 and the dudes pump for you.

the roads are clear and dry and the birds flutter around fat because the ground is so moist that the worms walk around and tip their tophats to their brothers right before they get swooped down upon by a lazy but alert blackbird.

i had to say good-bye to chris and her family today. i asked one of the little boys if he had gotten everything that he wanted for Christmas and he nearly broke our hearts when he said, no, he didnt get a hug from tony.

awwwww.

i said get used to life not being fair pallie, and left without granting him his wish.

jk.

the plan was to leave early and turn left at Aberdeen and loop around and spend the night in tacoma but it looks like aberdeen might have to wait until the next trip cuz its so far out in the middle of nowhere and im so unprepared i dont even know what kurdt did there other than learn how to play guitar and be homeless.

chris’s brotherinlaw said he lived there for a summer and i said so whats there and he said nothin so im thinking about taking a pass on it unless someone tells me that theres something there that i cant miss.

tomorrow night it looks like i will be staying in downtown vancouver on granville at one of the swanky hotels there. i forget which one and my travel agent intern is still drunk on pennyroyal tea so hopefully she will email me tomorrow before i make my way there so i can get it together.

i explained to my hosts this morning over french toast that i havent written very well after being laid off from E! and sitting in the front seat of this old toyota watching the trucks pass and the drizzle tap on the tin roof only inspires me to say it beats sitting in my closet in hollywood, but its still not shakespeare.

so perhaps this leg of the trip will lead me to some barrooom brawls or some shootouts at the border, but unfortunately the most exciting thing that has happened so far is finding some free wifi to tell you how beautiful this country is, or in todays case trying to show you a double rainbow i got to capture at a truck stop.

i understand the bears are bound for the super bowl and that makes me happy, but since my mac tells me that my battery’s only at 40% i should probably make like a one of these gorgeous trees and leave.

much love from the side of route 99,

copernacus

and because we’ve been nibbling on cookies and candies and pies and treats all day, not to mention drinking and laughing and filling the kids heads with nonsense about Santa having no love for Yankee fans, i write to you tonight from the laundry room of Chris’s parent’s house while nibbling from a piping hot grilled cheese sandwich with a special guest star ingrediant of chicken.

chris and her dad are playing acey-duecy and chris’s mom is watching the food network and im trying to figure out how to sneak William Hung’s Hung For The Holidays into a boombox when nobodys looking for he entertained us all very well last night on our trip to eugene.

this is a wholesome family where pa knows how to fix anything and mom knows how to cook amazingly and understands the ins and outs of all the neighbors here in this rural town.

how rural is it? so rural that when the Umpqua Dairy put out a full page color spread in the local paper with pictures of all of its employees, it showed smiling faces from Roseburg, Coos Bay, Grants Pass, and Klamath Falls… thats right Umpqua is so tiny that even the Umpqua Dairy has no presence in Umpqua proper.

Drain, Oregon laughs at how wee Umpqua is.

so this wholesome family in this little town has tony pierce staying with them over the holidays so what do you think they have to put up with but stories of how great howard stern is and some of his groundbreaking accomplishments including the time when wendy the retard and gary the retard conferenced called with mr. carver the KKK dude from georgia.

poor souls. and of course i blab about all of this in the red santa hat that they just gave me and the reindeer pajama pants i had just gotten as their daughter is being harrassed for not making any Black santa claus cookies.

where the brothas at? i ask her. just cause Santas from the northside means that he’s a white man? uptown’s where the brothas stay. boycot sals famous until theres some brothas on the wall!

and then i got distracted by da bears winning another game against brett favrah something i can get very used to, i popped a half dozen brandy balls and passed out.

when i awoke we watched the simpsons and the family guy and laughed.

merry Christmas!!!

its’ 10am here in umpqua and the little nephews are speeding around dangerous foggy rainy curves to grandmas house here in the woods.

last night we went up to their house in Eugene and ate some traditional potato leek soup and ate a triple decker cheeseball shaped like frosty the snow man. and then we took a walk through the neighborhood to…

the graveyard!

we went there to sing Christmas carols of all things. ah eugene.

because its a hippie town they didnt roam the streets singing for the shut-ins and elderly, they stood right there in the cemetary and passed out singing sheets and candles and one guy yelled out #21 Silent Night! and someone started and everyone joined in.

by the end of silent night there were probably a hundred men women and children in the cemetary singing along so when someone yelled out #5 We Wish You A Merry Christmas you could hear people saying What? and people having to repeat it.

of course the women sang far better than the men, so the men just shut up after a few songs and looked at all the pretty faces lit up by candlelight.

when we got to #9 O Little Town of Bethlehem everything was going perfect until we were about to make it to the second verse when some woman yelled out THIRD VERSE so we could bypass the offensive second verse which talked about Jesus being the Lord, etc.

because my mother raised me right i held in the boomingly loud W T F that was itching to blast out.

hippies.

eventually it became a battle between those who wanted to sing the sweet religious Christmas songs and those who wanted to sing the poppy secular Frosty and Rudolph Christmas songs out there in the cemetery.

blows were about to start flying between the respective camps until some jackhole yelled out #24 The Twelve Days of Christmas… because noone wanted to sing that one he attracted the entire of the ire of both the religious and the satanic and i believe the dirty looks aced him right there and he was struck dead and fell into an awaiting open grave and was buried before we made it to the eight lords a leaping.

one of Chris’s nephews kept looking up into the night sky twinkling with stars. i think i see something red in the sky he whispered to me. its commies, i whispered back, we have too many national guards in iraq.

then he said uncle tony i think i hear sleigh bells. i said thats the pockets of the wealthy who got tax breaks this year, theyre walking to the banks to enjoy their spoils.

and right at the end What Child is This we heard the familiar HO HO HO and whattya know St. Nick appeared behind a gravestone accompanied by a set of foxy young female elves who spread out a velvet rope adorned with tinsel and said gather round kids i have some gifts for some of you!

the kids nearly fell over, but the smart ones ran forward to the rope.

turns out all the parents dropped off gifts the night before at “the north pole” and santa read off the names and handed the kids their gifts out there in the dark and i gotta say even though id like to take the Santa out of Christmas, it was pretty damn cool.

especially when Santa said, i kid you not, “thanks to the Bush administration ive wiretapped all your homes so i know who has been naughty and nice.”

one of the best parts was when the littlest nephew hadnt yet received his gift from Santa and there were only 4-5 presents left and i said, Tristan are you sure you were nice and not naughty? and he said, i i i dont know.

and just then Santa called out his name and Tristan said here i am santa here i am!

and he got his gift from the fat old man and we ran home and they ripped open their gifts and inside was just what they wanted… FLOAM!

the kids have just arrived so let me wish you all a Merry Christmas. i’m very lucky to know all of you virtually and literally and i hope that you are all having as much fun where you are as im having where i am.

and thank you to everyone who sent me emails and comments and all the well wishes. i’d reciprocate but i have very limited access.

Happy Birthday Jesus!

more pics of Christmas eve here

i have to write it. people get a little confused when i say how much i love central oregon. i dont blame em. yes ive lived in california for over twenty years, and most of that time has been spent either in the metropolis of los angeles or san francisco. and even though isla vista is my adoptive birthplace, the kids there worry me with their terrible taste in music and their affinity to the greek system.

so when it comes to a place where i could raise a family and farm and fish and lean more towards hemingway than bukowski and brew up my own rum and shoot at things that shouldnt be in my back yard, i think of umpqua, my home away from home.

youre pretty much on your own out here. if theres a bump in the night you cant call the sherriff cuz the sherriff is an hour away. if your electricity goes out you better have a generator or youre sol. if lightening hits one of your mamoth trees and your chain saw isnt strong enough for one of the branches that are as big as trunk you better hope your neighbor shows up with a ginormous buzz saw.

its a land of true self reliance. its the american way and the american dream all wrapped up in one green bow.

i walked down to the river last night and i was greeted with the sounds and sights of creatures that i hadnt seen or heard of in a long time. a little mole poked his head out of a brown mound. a deer looked at me from across the river and kept an eye on me as he sipped from the waters. a hawk flew above me and circled like he was trying to poop on me, and because it was turning nighttime the frogs were starting to sing their songs of sexual healing out in the marshes.

i saw probably ten different types of grasses and mosses. i saw probably eight different kinds of birds. a moth flew by as big as a bat and a dead body floated by in the river quickly obviously a crystal-head whod gone nuts and slipped into the freezing waters.

ah america how i love you.

so people have asked and i dont know when i will get on the computer again so i will answer. the plan for the rest of the trip is unclear but if the weather stays dry i will celebrate christmas eve tonight in eugene, then we will open presents here in umpqua tomorrow, then the day after Christmas i will make my way to Aberdeen to visit the bridge of Kurt Kobain and if the offer is still good crash at casa de pants in Tacoma. then i hope to meet up with the kids of vancouver tuesday night. then back to oregon wednesday night, frisco thursday night and LA friday night.

all times and dates subject to change due to weather and drinking and general malfeasance.

now i must jump in the shower since chris is making burbon balls and the cats are meowing at the tv as it appears an nfl referee pulled his groin during a football game.

i was just handed a homemade clotchkee, a czech creation made from vanilla ice cream.

ive said it before, and i hope i never stop saying it, im the luckiest man alive.

happy Christmas EVE!

thanks for the gas money Jeneane! + michele + binsk + sheila