of “Love, Inc.”

You first saw her in “Freaks & Geeks”, then you saw her in “The Smokers”, then in “Dawson’s Creek” and last summer in “White Chicks”.

If you dont watch “Survivor” or “CSI” on Thursday nights, you should consider tuning into UPN. If you check out “Everyone Hates Chris”, stay tuned to watch Busy in “Love Inc.” which I can honestly say is a good old-fashioned sitcom. It’s witty, it’s funny, it’s quick and it’s packed full of hot babes.

This evening I was invited to Busy’s hollywood home to watch the season premiere on dvd two days before it makes it to your house… as she got ready to see Interpol at the Greek.

Afterwards we sat down and talked about her show and her career for a good half hour and she was candid, funny, and right on the money.

What I learned was the show was originally slotted to star Beverly Hills 90210 bad girl Shannon Doherty, but it tested poorly but UPN was committed to the show which was written and created Andrew Secunda who wrote on Late Night with Conan O’Brien. After a little bit of casting Busy was hired to star in the show.

By star, I mean star. It’s her show. Yes Holly Robinson-Peete is in it, as the owner of a dating service, but the series revolves around Busy’s character who is the main matchmaker.

After talking about the show we went quickly through her history as an actress including her role in the cult classic Freeks and Geeks.

I asked her if she was invited to Dawson’s co-star Katie Holmes’ upcoming wedding to whatshisname

And I asked her how much she cruises the web.

All in all it was a super good interview that went way fast and hopefully if things work out on the show she will invite me back because we could have easilly talked for much longer.

If you would like to hear the interview, just click here and you’ll enjoy the 22 minutes of love.

by the way, for all the Stern fans out there, i did ask her if she was interested in going on Howard’s show and she not only said yes but said she likes the show. so you gotta love her.

if any other tv stars want to be podcast, just have your people messenger over a reel… 🙂

busy on imdb + my odeo channel + have a sneak peek at the show

called me the best blogger ever.

some of you have heaped similar praise my way and it humbles me to no end. as the man said, its just an honor to be nominated.

any time anyone says something nice to me it makes me very happy, and sometimes someone will write me and say, “i see people kiss your ass every day, but i just had to say…” and perception is such a weird thing because yes i do get a lot of praise, but i forget about it almost immediately. you people have no idea how much weed ive smoked over the years, thus my memory is painfully short, especially in regards to compliments.

anyways, all the nice things you guys say stokes me and encourages me, but when someone like doc, who is partially responsible for the famous cluetrain manifesto, says something like what he did today you can better believe i will remember it.

he also linked to something that i included in How To Blog which i will repost today because my carpal tunnel is killing me, but i think i should preface it with this:

the post in question was written about two years ago. it was written to two fellows who were fans of the busblog who were bummed out that i hadnt included them in my blogroll on the left. i hadnt done it for a few reasons the first, and most important, being that i had forgotten, but then, as i recall, they tried to be toughguys and call raymi some disparaging names. as you know i adore raymi – as a blogger, an artist, and as a person – so you wont get me to do you any favors if you insult my idols.

at some point they tried to attack me thru a blog post.

below was my rebutal.

(and thanks for all the nice birthday wishes you gave my mom. i hope she reads that post today.)

from the busblog 12/7/02

the only thing i like better than a good bank robbery is a blonde bj with a redhead working the balls.

hi, im tony pierce and i can kick your ass in so many ways, kids, that you better watch it cuz i will. for fun.

and for profit.

right now miss newport beach 2004 is speeding north up the long beach freeway in her miata to my cranky ass, this after spending much of the day with miss redondo 2001. is the fact that i get that sort of attention make me an asshole? no. being alive is what makes me an asshole. live a little and it’ll happen to you too.

yes, i have for some reason left ward entertainment off my list of links to the left. blow me. im 109. this is a blog. get a life. i have carpal tunnel, but i can, with a little help uncurl my middle finger, raise it high and shove it right through your acid washed gap baggies. and dont think i wont.

you call me a celebrity blogger? what the fuck is that. you call me the blogfather? then have some respect. how about an email? how about a comment? how about chilling out for a fucking second, dillweed. you’ll get yours.

its a link.

and you wish you flowed me 120 hits a day.

you know who gets me 120 hits a day? not you. not the real blogfather the instapundit. “anna kournikova nude” gets me 120 hits a day so step off bitch.

to me blogging is a variety of things. first you must know how to write. best thing about writing is that the more you do it the better you get and unlike beating off, writing well is something that you can parlay into sex drugs money power. so practice.

when youre done practicing read the good book. when youre done reading do curls, pushups, sit ups.

one day you might find yourself in the curious position of being requested to lift a young lady up in a corner of a suite in a swanky sunset blvd hotel far above the madding crowds and let me tell you the goal isnt to get there, it’s to stay there. the correct response is please dont leave me here alone tonight. call in sick tomorrow and drink mimosas with me by the pool.

fuck links on a blog, fellows.

so thats writing. the part that hollywood has all but given up on. the part that television couldnt care less about. the part that mr. miyagi would have considered both the wax on and the wax off of life. work at it work at it work at it.

writing isnt bitching. writing isnt whining. not one man has gotten doubleteamed by brazillian gogo girls because he was a whiner. want proof? who’s the biggest whiner of all? thats right, drudge. and ask yourself, what sort of pussy does matt drudge have walking around his studio apartment clonking around his hardwood floors while he’s trying to type his little bullshit?

zero, people.

zero.

there will never be a “cribs” crew rolling up to drudge’s pad asking him to open his fridge to see if he’s got gold bottles of bubbly and a stripper pole in his boom boom room.

whiners wouldnt know the first fucking thing about a boom boom room, so dry your tears and remove the back of your hand from your forehead.

writing is comedy poetry and a freestyle bootycall that dips through drama and ends in a flourish of philiosphy. spread your wings and fly and make sure theres a begining middle and end.

easiest way to piss off a hack: bring up his endings.

and lie people.

the asshole who told you that your lives are interesting shouldnt be trusted. i lied in nearly every keystroke of this masterpiece.

even kids know that a good art heist beats a bank robbery any day under the sun.

lie when you write.

your boy drudge does.

then theres design. i like ward entertainment’s design. i like riley dog’s and illuminent’s and i super love my long lost girlfriend whateverhername is from youfuckedupmylife.net

love love love her design.

love. and i haint linked her sweet ass yet either, so back the fuck up, boys.

if i truly had interns instead of little teases who say they want to intern but dont, they’d do the upkeep on the day-to-day. im trying to lead by example, so dont make me make examples of you.

my advice?

think youre young and original?

get out before…

who’s that baldie on the sxsw page today? + the brownie merch has raised over $250 for the red cross, thanks y’all!

happy birthday!

i first met my mother a long time ago. im not sure what she expected but she got me and you know she didnt predict this, but for a mild mannered southern belle from fort valley georgia, she didnt freak out as much as you’d think.

i was wild as a kid. the doctors called me hyper, but my grandparents called me a kid. my mom was very patient with me and quite smart. she was one of the first computer programmers ever. and definately one of the first black female computer programmers ever.

so when the doctors called me hyper she said, but my boy can sit still and do a whole jigsaw puzzle, and the doctors said, oh, really? because of that, they were unable to prescribe the ritalin or whatever they were going drug me with and we went on our way.

my mom raised not only me, alone, but my sister as well, who is also crazy. needless to say my mother was never bored. she worked long long hours at motorolas headquarters in schaumburg illinois and sometimes i think it was because she didnt want to come home to the madhouse that i was responsible for. but when she did come home it was always with love in her heart and mcdonalds in the car and loving questions about school or homework or basketball scores or the like.

i could never have asked for a better mom.

her mother was a librarian at the state college in georgia. during holidays we would go down there and we’d always end up at the library and i am sure that my love of books and writing is directly influenced by my razor sharp grandmother who read two newspapers before 9am and was working on one of her novels before breakfast was done.

my mother worked on computers all day and paid for my first computer, the apple IIc. i will never forget what she did for my sister and i. i will never forget how difficult it must have been to be a working single mother in a town of so few Blacks.

one day a “friend” of mine fell on the playground and lied to his father and said that his black eye was the result of me punching him. the father came to our door with his son and told my mother that he was informing us that he was going to beat his son because no son of his was going to be beaten up by a nigger.

instead of freaking out my mom sat me down and said that she knew that i didnt beat that boy up, but that race is a difficult thing for people to deal with, and some people are just plain crazy, but that we needed to be patient cuz the world would catch up with reason soon enough.

im still waiting on that one, ma.

my mom always threw big birthday parties for us, she gave presents to all the attendees, she drove us to practices and games and rehearsals and recitals, boy scout crap, girl scout crap, science fairs, parades, amusement parks, field trips, she hosted our sleepovers. she went to parent-teacher conferences, she drove us to the airport and back, she took us clothes shopping for school supplies in the fall, she did it all, and i dont remember her complaining and i dont remember overhearing her ever saying that it was too much of a burden.

there was never anything that i wanted that i wasnt given. ever. and we were not by any means a wealthy family. i have no idea how she did it. she was always there. was there when i went through college. is there now for my sister and my neice and nephew and my brother in law. was there for our dying relatives. is there for our friends of our family. she is rock solid.

one of the finest moments was when my mother took me to my first real rock concert. AC/DC Back in Black tour. i was but a wee lad. she had given my sister the album that christmas and here it was nine months later and somehow i scored 1 ticket in the 12th row. one ticket because none of my friends’ parents would allow them to go to the show. but my mom not only drove me (about an hour away), dropped me off early, and drove home, but after it was over i called from a payphone and she drove back to the arena to pick my little ass up.

not only would most mothers not allow their kids to see devil music (hells bells opened the show and i nearly peed my toughskins), particularily Alone, but how many would make two trips to ensure a safe ride?

when i became of age to drive she tightened the reigns a tad because in her words, “the roads are filled with drunk drivers”, but i was still allowed to drive into Chicago to see the cubs pretty much any time i had saved up enough allowance money to pay for it.

over the years she bought me a few saxamaphones, guitars, drums, lessons of all sorts, sports uniforms, bikes, games, books, junk food of all sorts, anything.

i cannot imagine a better childhood. i cannot think of anything i could have wanted more than the ability to be myself, and free, and trusted, and loved.

my mom did all those things for me and she continues to.

the only thing that she asked in return was that i be a good reflection of her.

and if it werent for the swear words in this blog im doing my best, although i know i fail pretty much every day. although when i quit weed im sure that made her happy.

i love you mom im sure you loved the bears game on sunday!

happy birthday!

ashley moved back to vegas + greg vaine + welch + christie

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mike royko was the greatest newspaper columnist ever. even he would probably agree.

he was a no-nonsense toughguy who took on the biggest toughguys in chicago, namely the mayor, the cops, ditka, and the owners of the cubs.

he first started writing for real at the Chicago Daily News writing obits. Quickly they moved him to covering politics and folk music as a columnist. When the Daily News went out of business he wrote for the Chicago Sun-Times.

As a Cubs fan I made a point out of not buying the Sun-Times, which was widely regarded as the Sox paper. But in my school they had both the Trib and the Sun-Times in the library and I snuck a peek at what Royko had to say from time to time. Ok, every day. And I wasnt alone. Many Cubs fans snuck glances at his super funny takes on Chicago politics and everyday life.

When Rupert Murdoch bought the Sun-Times Royko quit and moved over to the Tribune.

“No self-respecting fish would be wrapped in a Murdoch paper,” Royko said, and the fish pretty much agreed.

Remember the story of Valerie Plame, the CIA agent who was outted by Rove and newspaperman Robert Novak? Novak is a Sun-Times columnist and has been for years. When Novak dies, he’s got an ass-kicking or two coming to him and I would bet money that the Good Lord will let Royko near the front of the line.

But I digress.

in his 40 year career Mike Royko wrote over 7,000 columns. Right up to the end of his life when he suffered from a brain annyerism, he continued to be biting, critical, and funny. For example, when he made a list of his favorite Westerns someone asked him about his pick of The Magnificent Seven, asking him if he felt weird that one of his faves was actually a remake of a Japanese classic.

Royko replied, “if the Japanese producer had a choice, he would surely have made a western rather than a movie in which the heroes were stumpy, bowlegged guys who wore bathrobes and couldn’t speak English.”

Out of context some of that might appear racist in this PC world, but that sort of crude, street, common language, delivered in an intentionally ignorant manner was part of Royko’s charm. And trust me, he wasnt any easier on the… lets say… plump mayor of Chicago.

Or the cops. In fact late in his life Royko was arrested for drunk driving and resisiting arrest. In the police report the officers wrote down at least a half-dozen ways that Royko insulted them, many times questioning their heterosexuality.

Maybe its a Chicago thing, maybe its a big-city thing, but to me it’s classic.

As I’ve said several times here, there have been a few major influences in my life that are mirrored in this blog. Mike Royko’s hard-hitting tell-it-like-it-is style is all up in this piece. He was afraid of no-one no matter how big they were or how much clout they carried. And ultimately he was the champion for the common folk, and the Cub fans.

And for that he will be loved forever.

here is a column he wrote the day Jackie Robinson died.

Jackie’s Debut a Unique Day

All that Saturday, the wise men of the neighborhood, who sat in chairs on the sidewalk outside the tavern, had talked about what it would do to baseball.

I hung around and listened because baseball was about the most important thing in the world, and if anything was going to ruin it, I was worried.

Most of the things they said, I didn’t understand, although it all sounded terrible. But could one man bring such ruin?

They said he could and would. And the next day he was going to be in Wrigley Field for the first time, on the same diamond as Hack, Nicholson, Cavarretta, Schmitz, Pafko, and all my other idols.

I had to see Jackie Robinson, the man who was going to somehow wreck everything. So the next day, another kid and I started walking to the ballpark early.

We always walked to save the streetcar fare. It was five or six miles, but I felt about baseball the way Abe Lincoln felt about education.

Usually, we could get there just at noon, find a seat in the grandstand, and watch some batting practice. But not that Sunday, May 18, 1947.

By noon, Wrigley Field was almost filled. The crowd outside spilled off the sidewalk and into the streets. Scalpers were asking top dollar for box seats and getting it.

I had never seen anything like it. Not just the size, although it was a new record, more than 47,000. But this was twenty-five years ago, and in 1947 few blacks were seen in the Loop, much less up on the white North Side at a Cub game.

That day, they came by the thousands, pouring off the northbound Ls and out of their cars.

They didn’t wear baseball-game clothes. They had on church clothes and funeral clothes·suits, white shirts, ties, gleaming shoes, and straw hats. I’ve never seen so many straw hats.

As big as it was, the crowd was orderly. Almost unnaturally so. People didn’t jostle each other.

The whites tried to look as if nothing unusual was happening, while the blacks tried to look casual and dignified. So everybody looked slightly ill at ease.

For most, it was probably the first time they had been that close to each other in such great numbers.

We managed to get in, scramble up a ramp, and find a place to stand behind the last row of grandstand seats. Then they shut the gates. No place remained to stand.

Robinson came up in the first inning. I remember the sound. It wasn’t the shrill, teenage cry you now hear, or an excited gut roar. They applauded, long, rolling applause. A tall, middle-aged black man stood next to me, a smile of almost painful joy on his face, beating his palms together so hard they must have hurt.

When Robinson stepped into the batter’s box, it was as if someone had flicked a switch. The place went silent.

He swung at the first pitch and they erupted as if he had knocked it over the wall. But it was only a high foul that dropped into the box seats. I remember thinking it was strange that a foul could make that many people happy. When he struck out, the low moan was genuine.

I’ve forgotten most of the details of the game, other than that the Dodgers won and Robinson didn’t get a hit or do anything special, although he was cheered on every swing and every routine play.

But two things happened I’ll never forget. Robinson played first, and early in the game a Cub star hit a grounder and it was a close play.

Just before the Cub reached first, he swerved to his left. And as he got to the bag, he seemed to slam his foot down hard at Robinson’s foot.

It was obvious to everyone that he was trying to run into him or spike him. Robinson took the throw and got clear at the last instant.

I was shocked. That Cub, a hometown boy, was my biggest hero. It was not only an unheroic stunt, but it seemed a rude thing to do in front of people who would cheer for a foul ball. I didn’t understand why he had done it. It wasn’t at all big league.

I didn’t know that while the white fans were relatively polite, the Cubs and most other teams kept up a steady stream of racial abuse from the dugout. I thought that all they did down there was talk about how good Wheaties are.

Late in the game, Robinson was up again, and he hit another foul ball. This time it came into the stands low and fast, in our direction. Somebody in the seats grabbed for it, but it caromed off his hand and kept coming. There was a flurry of arms as the ball kept bouncing, and suddenly it was between me and my pal. We both grabbed. I had a baseball.

The two of us stood there examining it and chortling. A genuine major-league baseball that had actually been gripped and thrown by a Cub pitcher, hit by a Dodger batter. What a possession.

Then I heard the voice say: “Would you consider selling that?”

It was the black man who had applauded so fiercely.

I mumbled something. I didn’t want to sell it.

“I’ll give you ten dollars for it,” he said.

Ten dollars. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t know what ten dollars could buy because I’d never had that much money. But I knew that a lot of men in the neighborhood considered sixty dollars a week to be good pay.

I handed it to him, and he paid me with ten $1 bills.

When I left the ball park, with that much money in my pocket, I was sure that Jackie Robinson wasn’t bad for the game.

Since then, I’ve regretted a few times that I didn’t keep the ball. Or that I hadn’t given it to him free. I didn’t know, then, how hard he probably had to work for that ten dollars.

But Tuesday I was glad I had sold it to him. And if that man is still around, and has that baseball, I’m sure he thinks it was worth every cent.

rokyo collection donated to library – nothing from former mayor + some classic columns + a nice piece by salon on royko + royko on daley

and i still havent written my 600 words for the weekly. i never procrastinate. i always knock that shit out.

its not due till tomorrow afternoon but some of us work and i will have no time to do it there so all i gotta do is squeeze all of what i wrote down there into six hundred words which is why i thank the Lord above that he whispered in my ear to major in poetry cuz a poet can make anything short.

im also procrastinating cuz theres a lot on my mind. im mad at the world. im mad at my landlord im mad at my neighbors im mad at the people on the freeway which is why i dont take the freeway any more.

im mad at the cubs im mad at the raiders im mad at rodney on the roq im mad at my xgf for picking whiteboys over me time after time.

i think theres nothing that fool has over me. he has one thing, hes got a motorcycle. thats it. i could have a motorcycle. anyone could. black man could have two motorcylces, it wouldnt matter. we’d have to have three.

letter have her whiteboys my good angel says. its like how this country votes republican. they do it because they feel like theyre almost supposed to but when its over they always feel so fucking gross and they run around thinking that it was them who did something wrong, not the whiteboy. bitch it was both of you! stop it.

i went to the show yesterday with a very sweet girl. twenty years old. why are all the sweet girls nineteen and twenty years old. i was all are you hungry she was all i never get hungry. i was like want something to drink and she was all i never get thirsty. i got her food and drink anyways. licorice and water is all shed accept. she took the licorice and made a straw out of it and sucked up the water and you tell me, why should i hang out with anyone older than twentyone after that shit.

six hundred words. i can do six hundred words standing on my head. the problem is i really wanted spending today on the final edit of stiff. i wanted to add a few more poems and throw in two newspaper columns from the nexus cuz the poems were written around the same time. this book is never coming out. i hope you know that.

i dont know if i ever told you but i saw the 50 cent movie the other day. it wont come out for a little while but when it does it’ll win an academy award. thats how good it is. but im not supposed to talk about it.

one of my favorite bands from the isla vista days, the sean white band, put their stuff online and i downloaded some of it and its great. thanks jamie.

have i procrastinated enough? its so silly cuz ususally the only time i procrastinate writing something is when i either a)dont know how to start it or b)have waaay too much to say.

i totally know how im gonna start it, im going to say that someone put something in rivers’ juice box and he went nuts on stage thinking he was angus young.

and i dont have waaay too much to say. i just have too much time to say it.

once a week you should learn something about me.

since this is technically the begining of the week, here goes: i dont beat off on sundays. i try to keep the sabbath holy. for some reason i dont think looking at porn and beating off is very holy. well, at least not the porn that comes into this house.

clinton finally shows a pair + hackoff.com, a blook + a blook from kids – too adorable

starring weezer, beck, arcade fire, garbage, madness, oasis, jet, cake, 311, bloc party, fishbone, and others
9/17/05

the purpose of a reporter is to go somewhere that the masses cant go and tell them what happened and what it was like.

and although i am not really a real reporter, i play one occasionally in the pages of my local free weekly. and this thursday you will get to read some of my thoughts about the show, but today i will tell you some things that could only fit in a personal blog.

first of all i was pampered like a stud.

matt good often seethes when he talks about radio concerts filled with all star performers, which is gutsy since the relationships between radio and musicians almost always is equal to the artists’ success. therefore one should be careful not to bite the hand that feeds them.

and perhaps this show, and ones like them are as much for the radio station to blow its own horn as it is to thank those who have supported them throughout the year. and kroq certainly thanked those on its guest list, including the press, and for that im grateful.

not only did i get backstage access and killer seats, but i also was afforded parking so close to the front gates of the place that i went to my car a few times to freshen up and grab a sweater after the sun went down and the temperature dropped.

but first lets talk about the tickets.

ive been assigned a few shows from various publications over the years. recently because of the weekly, the good people of goldenvoice stoked me with coachella tickets so i could review that show, and even the people behind motley crue set me up with decent seats to the side of the stage to review their latest show at the forum.

but kroq put me dead center, just a few rows behind the pit up front. not only were the sightlines amazing but the sound was so good that i didn’t even realize that it was loud until i got home late last night and noticed my ears were ringing.

it made me seriously consider a life of crime or journalism because it made even the worst performances like 311 and oasis tolerable. but what it really did was allow me to see the intensity in the eyes of the likes of rivers cuomo who ran around the stage like he wanted to prove to the world that his was the greatest band around – or he was seriously pissed at something – i still haven’t concluded which it was.

kroq could have easily put us in the second section or over to one side or the other, but they didn’t. i don’t know why. but it reminded me of how chick hearn used to complain sometimes at the poor accommodations some arenas would place the announcers like himself. he would say something along the lines of “we’re the eyes and ears of thousands of people, and they all know that, why they’d stick us up here in the rafters where we can barely make out what’s happening is ridiculous. magic is yoyoing up and down with the ball and now passes to worthy…”

there are usually a very small fraction of journalists at any event, logic will tell you that if youre proud of the event and interested in the story being told accurately you will put those writers and photographers right up front where they will catch every word, see every wince mistake and moment of glory so they can properly let their brothers and sisters know what they missed.

so thank you kroq for doing the right thing.

now let me tell you about backstage.

first of all, i realize im the luckiest man in the world for even getting to go to that show for free, let alone getting paid to write down what happened, but kroq had a backstage set up that was similar to the lush environs that goldenvoice had at coachella… but kroq took it a step further.

miller beer was a co-sponsor of the show which apparently meant that they had exclusive rights to the beer sales of the show. i wouldn’t know though because at concerts i only drink one beer: miller genuine draft.

when im in mexico i drink corona, at a divebar i drink pbr, at wrigley i pound old style, at classy joints i down Guinness, at mc browns i enjoy the high life, but at concerts for some reason i love mgd.

part of my press package was accessibility to miller’s two hour happy hour in the vip tent featuring $2 10-ounce cups of mgd. oh my.

only problem was arcade fire was on for an hour of the happy hour, which wasnt a problem because the security forces allowed you to carry two cups of beer right past them on your way to your seat.

and even though three beers merely gets this uc islavista alumn going, the arcade fire were on fire. in fact ive seen the future of rock n roll and they play violin and accordion and dress like theyve lost their museum tourguide.

jet had the inevitable task of following them and at this point the sun was not at its highest point in the sky but it was hot in the san berdu desert. fortunately miller had also supplied lovely ladies to roam the box seats handing out free samples of sunscreen. yes, life isnt fair. and even though i could always escape to the mist tent backstage or the full blown airconditioned bigger media tent next to it, my pals on the lawn had to fend for themselves.

i did feel a tad selfconcious applying the salve to my bald head, but ive never worried too much about looking cool, although theres nothing less cool than sunburn on your shiny pate.

needless to say i spent half of the jet set sampling free tritip, salad, chicken, and ben and jerrys in the tiki tents.

although i wondered why theyd spend so much time and effort putting big screens and couches in these tents since the show was just around the corner, it made sense when Live took the stage. we gave them one song to win us over and we went back to the vip tent and watched from a leather couch while sipping complimentary red bull and taking turns reliving the past with the supplied video games sprinkled around the back area. burger time, mr do, paperboy, front line, bump n jump… but anne and i were stoked to see elevator action, which i hadnt played since… well, probably since she was born. shhh.

strangely the only thing that wasnt free or super cheap in those tents was water. but fortunately there was a press tent that even the vips couldnt get into, but i could. they had coolers of soft drinks and water, bowls of peanuts and chex mix, power outlets for batteries to charge… pretty much everything except atmosphere, but the press wasnt in that area to schmooze, they were there to work, and a few times i worked on staying hydrated.

as for the show, you’ll have to read my report in the weekly later this week, but a quick rundown of the highlights went like this

arcade fire: they have no peers, they have no limits, they know everything there is about making great music and putting on a great show. theyre truly a band thinking so far outside of the box that they don’t even realize there ever was a box in the first place. and the one violinist might be the worst dancer ever but i love her and not just cuz she looks like my first california gf.

madness: they nearly stole the show. they were fun, they had everyone up and dancing. it was effortless. bro from fishbone jammed with them on one song. they seemed grateful to be there, but we were the ones who were lucky. it was a perfect example of how the music biz gives up on bands far too early.

jet: proof that an album full of coversongs doesnt make for a great band. they looked the part, they sang fine, the drummer ripped, but there was a reason why in even the confines of Spaceland several years ago when they opened for Tsar i went to the back of the club and started drinking – this band has no stage presence and will be forgotten in two years time.

311: one day i will ask kroq why they play these guys every hour. i thought seeing them live would answer that question. it didn’t. i did, however, enjoy their drum solo, but robert smith, im sure, winces every time they play his jam.

fishbone: they covered sublime’s daterape. theyre such a classy band which is probably why they didn’t make it even though that debut was rock solid all the way through. it was cool of kroq to have them play this.

bloc party: next time they come back and play they’ll be on the main stage where they belong. jet, oasis, 311, cake, and live had no business there.

oasis: they stood there like we should feel lucky to be in attendance. if only they sold tomatoes. someone yelled “you suck” and liam said yes i do, but don’t we all. if only they sold pineapples.

live: what, hootie was booked?

beck: ive seen beck maybe ten times now. every time its different, visually and musically. this time he had a dude in a white shortsleeve shirt and a black tie and glasses running around and dancing like a fool. it could have been annoying but it was actually really funny and it made me want to buy a white shortsleeve shirt and a black tie and glasses. the glasses might have been rivers because he didn’t sport any. half way through, when beck was doing his acoustic parts they brought out a big table and the band ate while beck played, i was all, how sweet of him, i hope they got some of that tri-tip from the back, but then in the middle of a song i noticed that the lads were tapping the glasses and the plates with their knives and forks and i was all shit beck youve done it again. then he played one line of debra and said, you don’t wanna hear that, and went into a flaming lips cover “do you realize” that was beautiful.

garbage: im not a fan of this group, ive seen them once before when they played sandwiched between the distillers and no doubt and they came in last place by a huge margin. but yesterday they were incredible and it wasnt because of shirley looking all that amazing – she didn’t. it was because they were tight and musical and shirley dominated the stage wonderfully. at one point she just kept walking off stage into the crowd and kept going and going and going with no security. she knows we’re soft out here. earlier i saw her interviewed backstage and she was stoked that this was the last show of their tour. they didn’t seem tired, they seemed perfect.

weezer: ive seen weezer play a bunch of times. every tour infact, and then some. theyre my second favorite band. i can honestly say that ive never seen rivers more intense and furious. at coachella he could have been knocked over by a sudden breeze. last night he attacked every big note, he gritted his teeth, he leaned back at each accent, he ran around, he made it happen. even the songs they played were all upbeat. my theory is they wanted to send a message to oasis that theyre the ones bigger than the beatles because they mentioned oasis three times.

for their encore rivers appeared at the back of the seats and played to the kids in the lawn. a full moon was above him and one gentle spotlight. it was like watching a weinerdog yap at a pit bull. and then watching the pit bull meow and roll over. weezer played as hard and as strong as ive ever heard them and they did it without their trappings since they flew in special for this show as theyre on tour with the foos. and as a tip of the hat to grohl, weezer did “big me”. because the fans are boneheads people were throwing earplugs at them and someone threw a pack of m&ms. after the cover song rivers bent down, picked up the full bag, and said thanks for the m&ms but werent they supposed to be mentos?

how good were weezer? even beverly hills and we are all on drugs sounded good. their fans agree.

promiseoftin’s account + some pics from the lawn + lost perfection + a much longer recap from the lawn + some more good pics from someone with better seats

rock and roll is the combination of black music and white music.

black music is the combination of delta blues chicago blues southern slave spirituals gospel and soul.

white music is a combination of hank williams and more hank williams.

all great white music comes from hank sr. except for jazz which comes from the blacks.

and dont even start with what about classical because classical is simply the absence of both hank and black music, which is why it works so well in cartoons.

nobody has ever written as simply and as clearly and as heartbreakingly perfectly as hank williams, except for whoever wrote those famous great lines in Genesis (the book, not the band).

hemingway came close but when he realized he had never written anything as concise and as tight as “im so lonesome i could cry” he put a gun in his mouth and squeezed the trigger. rightfully. which is why im secretly an nra member.

bob dylan tried to write like hank but when he saw how hard it was he said fuckit and wrote completely the opposite. it appears to have worked out for him.

if the government wasnt so full of liars buttpirates and visonless fratboys hank williams’ face would have been on the $2 bill a long time ago, but you people keep electing idiots

who you refuse to shoot when the truth is revealed.

your problem is youre soft, something todays birthday boy never was.

constantly in pain, constantly drunk, hunched over and sallow even on a good day he was kurt cobain before seattle was even named.

he hated being on time, he hated his bald head, he hated who he was, and most of all he hated a full glass of booze.

born in alabama on this date in 1923, he hated his given name Hiram so much that he begged to be called Shaquille but settled for Hank.

and just like you’d expect this poor little shoeshine boy didnt learn his trade from school or video tapes, he learned about music from a black man. in hank’s case it was a street bluesman named Rufus Payne, aka “Tee-Tot”. lookit up.

when he was sixteen hank quit school cuz even an ignorant whiteboy knew that you couldnt learn shit from some alabama public school in 1939. a few years later he was packing them into bars and juke joints. by the time he was 21 he was married and the next year he was signed to MGM and the year after that he had recorded his third hit “move it on over”.

oddly by 1948 at the ripe old age of 25 many considered hank washed up even though he was a regular on the popular radio show The Louisiana Hayride, but in early ’49 country music’s greatest songwriter released a cover of rex griffin’s “lovesick blues”, a track hank only recorded twice in the studio (one for backup) and forgot about.

but just like most great rock n roll stories, that little song spent four months at number one. and legend has it that when he performed it at the grand old opry he earned six encores. washed up my ass, hank sneered.

that year hank jr was born whose only real claim to fame is that are you ready for some football song. pffft.

despite hank srs great success and the string of hits that followed lovesick blues – in ’49 alone he had seven hits including wedding bells, mind your own business, and my bucket’s got a hole in it – and despite divorcing his first wife and marrying a very young woman named billie jean at the sold out new orleans municipal auditorium, hank was never able to defeat his demons or cure his pain.

in ’52 as rock was just a glimmer in it’s drunken uncle’s eye hank cheated on billie jean and sired a daughter named jett who would be born january 6, 1953.

however on new years day ’53 in knoxville tennessee hank williams shot up with both b12 and morphine, hopped in a rented cadillac, and sipped whiskey while driving all night to oak hill west virginia where he pulled over at a gas station and fell asleep. he never woke up. he was 29.

legend has it that his funeral in alabama was the largest ever held in that state, even to this day.

hank jr, hank iii, and jett are all playing music today.

but only hank iii is worth a shit.

if you like music or american history you’ll get any of hank’s greatest hits.

if you love music you’ll get polygram’s 3-cd box set but i promise you that if you try to listen to more than one cd at one sitting you will get so depressed that you’ll want to get in a cadillac and drive to west virginia with a bottle of jack too.

consider yourself warned.

“i’m so lonesome i could cry”

Hear that lonesome whippoorwill
He sounds too blue to fly
The midnight train is whining low
I’m so lonesome I could cry

I’ve never seen a night so long
When time goes crawling by
The moon just went behind a cloud
To hide its face and cry

Did you ever see a robin weep
When leaves begin to die?
Like me he’s lost the will to live
I’m so lonesome I could cry

The silence of a falling star
Lights up a purple sky
And as I wonder where you are
I’m so lonesome I could cry

hank in los angeles + jett was screwed + great discography

fyi. i know i whined a little this morning and i might whine a little in the future. and i know that even though i try my best not to totally rip off the fine work and style of mr charles bukowski, if theres one thing that i am 100% concious of is that mr charles bukowski never whined. he wined but didnt whine. and compared to him i have a great life. sure he ended up with a great life, but i have one now.

if youre ever in doubt just go to technorati and put “tony pierce” in there – with the quotes and you’ll see totally mindblowing things like the mighty doc searls put me in incredible company just yesterday

“I’m a fan of very few celebrities. Or writers. Or both. Mostly both, I guess. John McPhee I’ve told you about. George Lakoff too. Hal Crowther. I’m also fond of Stephanie Brush, Fran Liebowitz, William F. Buckley, Cynthia Heimel, Hunter S. Thompson, Mark Twain, Howard Stern, John Updike, Tony Pierce, Chris Locke, David Weinberger and Saul Bellow, even though it’s hard to connect their dots — except that they all make me laugh. (Not always in some cases, but sometimes in all cases.)”

for those of you who actually know who mr searls is thats quite a compliment. so dont ever feel bad for me.

for example, i have a book agent. yes me, dorkwad. and even though i dont have any published books, like officially published books, i have an agent. for some reason shes the only person who believes and understands the disclaimer “nothing in here is true” so she has not only been trying to pimp me out on some secret projects but she doesnt believe that i have a new job.

so today she emailed me to see if i was interested in being a personal assistant for probably the most beautiful porn star in the entire world.

which is pretty tempting, let me tell you.

but i know how this will end up. sure id make a great personal assistant, especially since i have a car now, and a cool cell phone, but porn is a slippery slope, and anyone who knows me knows that i have a million ideas about a million things

but i have a billion ideas for porn.

possibly a kabillion.

my only problem is i want to go to Heaven one day and theres no way i’ll be able to meet St. Peter and say, yes sir i took whatever gifts i was given to revolutionize the porno world, so thanks, now may i meet jimi?

plus its hard to beat my ten minute commute and anyone familiar with LA knows that only an idiot would live in hollywood and quit working in hollywood to fight the traffic of the ventura freeway every morning even if your job would be to hang out with porn stars and do their bidding.

wait, what did i just say.

just a girl + miss iceland + blogfart + that dude mike

and even though we started by talking about blogging, which i could talk about all night we ended up talking about Tom Waits.

heres my favorite tom waits story.

when i first came to california i didnt really know much about music other than i loved it. i first worked at mcdonalds cuz nobody would hire me, but then i got a job at a record store, Licorice Pizza. mr. gary calamar who is now the music manager of kcrw and hosts the great show The Open Road, hired me even though my only experience was working for four months at the mickey d’s down the street.

in the interview he asked me to look behind him at all the album covers on the wall. he said, tell me a little something about some of these records.

i said, i love them all.

he said well pick one or two.

and i was all… starting left to right i see judas priest british steel columbia records, i like them but not as much as iron maiden and ac/dc although the new metallica record “…And justice for all” is about to come out which is gonna be top ten i betcha. next to that you have bruce springsteen the river whose hit single Hungry Heart was a last minute addition which is sorta funny since it was a double album but apparently the label didnt think there were any hits which you wouldnt think a guy like Bruuuuuce would need, but it turned out they were right and that was his first top 10 single. next to that you have Pete Townshend’s Empty Glass whose big single is Let My Love Open The Door, however the b-side is super great.

and Gary stopped me in my tracks and said, we’ll call you in a few days. and i was so depressed cuz i thought i had blown it but i hadnt and i got the gig and i learned way more about music than i ever expected. namely about Elvis Costello, the Velvet Underground, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, and the Replacements.

so Elvis Costello had a series of shows in 86 in LA. five nights. every show was going to be different cuz he basically had two records out, king of america, and blood and chocolate. one night was gonna be all king of america, one was gonna be all blood and chocolate, one was gonna be elvis’s greatest hits, one was gonna be all requests, and one was gonna be The Spinning Wheel night where he had a huge wheel of songs and whereever it landed he and the Attractions would play the song.

because im a freak i went to three nights outta the five.

but the best, and probably the best show ive ever been to was the Spinning Wheel show. elvis had invited John Doe from X and the Bangles and Mr. Tom Waits to join him for the show.

and this is how it happened.

the lights dimmed and a weird accordian sound was heard and there he was in his trademark suit and hat: tom waits, whose Rain dogs record was out and kicking ass and tom sang one of those crazy dark weirdo songs and when it was done he bowed, put down his guitar.

Welcome he said in that deep gruff voice

Welcome to hell. welcome to elvis’s nightmare. what you will do is raise your hand. if the spotlight hits you you will be asked to spin the wheel of Death. where it lands nobody knows. then Mr. McManus will lead his band of mercinaries into the song. you will either dance next to that go-go cage with his wife, or you will sit at that bar and watch Lou Reed via satellite. now who wants to come up here and spin for your life?

it was a little theatre, the Wilshire i think. not the Wiltern, somewhere even smaller. who knows, maybe it was the Wiltern… doesnt matter, i had great seats but i didnt dare spin that wheel cuz i was pretty much pissing my pants anyways.

someone got picked, they came on stage, elvis and the attractions took their positions and Tom acted exactly like a cheezy master of ceremonies and said whats your name.

Jerry.

ok Bob what song would you like for the band to play.

Jerry looked at the wheel and there were some Elvis classics but a bunch of weird rarities and cover songs.

“oh wow Tom I’d really love to hear them play Tom Petty’s American Girl”

ok Fred go ahead and spin for your LIFE!

and when the wheel turned around steve neive tinkled the ivories, the lights flashed and when it slowed down to the slice that showed the song the band immediately went into the number and Tom Waits escorted the spinnee to a seat next to the rickety bar area, rubbed his shoulders and then poured him a drink.

after a few songs Tom and Elvis did a tune or two together that pretty much blew everyones minds.

then the bangles of all people came out for some acoustic numbers dressed in sparkley cocktail dresses.

then john doe in a blue prom tuxedo took over as MC for the second half.

and then an angel from above said tony i hope you know youre the luckiest man of all and i said yes i know and the angel asked to take a sip from my beer and fucking chugged that bitch down burped and laughed before vanishing.

Update: the show was at The Beverly (scroll down just a tad). how on earth can i remember these things but i still havent memorized my own cell phone number?

best week ever + now is the time to buy Siri + moxie