so if your expectations for this blog are that im going to write 2-3 times a day and everythings gonna be what they were before, then i am politely warning you that it might not end up that way.

physically, emotionally, logically, mentally, everything is going to be a-ok for my new job that starts august 1.

yes it was supposed to start this week but i got some amazing advice from a long lost friend to go and do some things before i started the new chapter in my life and even though it was scary and risky to renegotiate with the new gig i did it first thing this morning and disappointed them but hopefully they trust me enough to know that they will be far better off with the new improved super souped up edition of tony pierce than the well-meaning but slightly flawed version.

what does that mean? it means i have to finish my book, my podcast blog, i have to clean my house, i have to fix the leaky pipes in the walls and drippy sink, it means i have to fix my porch light and align my satelitte dish, it means i have to pay all my bills and change the belts of my car, pay all my bills, buy some new clothes, clean out my fridge, find some secret documents, figure out a work out schedule, pray, read the bible, get rid of my video tapes, send back this computer monitor that i paid for, buy a new monitor, get my printer working, get my scanner out of here, throw out all the garbage that is laying around my house, give most of my clothes to the poor on skid row directly, throw out all my bongs to the poor, go curtain shopping with karisa, decide if im never going to talk to ashley ever again, figure out how im going to handle the two bloggers who have gripes with me – one who might be seriously retarded and one who might just have his feelings hurt, start a week of eating right, give all these pulp fiction books of the 50s to old folks homes, give my box of sunglasses to the childrens hospital, get all the dust out of my bedroom, ebay my sheets because theyre historic, give my dodger tickets to the ronald mcdonald house, buy a serious new camera, back up my giant hard drives and then take 80% out of them, rewire my speaker system, and talk to the boys of odeo and get this podcasting shit together and rocking.

for starters.

and then figure out where im going to have a party in two weeks to celebrate the end of this incredible summer and the begining of the new thing.

i have no attention span so its good for me to dedicate one full week to doing all the things ive put off doing for all these years. and whats so interesting is all of this started when i got fired and all of it peaked when i drove through the desert at night to vegas and talked until the sun rose with all those strippers because i came back home such a changed man that i had stopped my addictive habit with the greatest of ease.

my friend who recommended that i finish that peak said that she wasnt suprised that that trip had caused that change and she said that another trip would do even more good but i dont need another drive to know what i have to do and what i have to do is cleanse myself and rid my body and soul of all the damage that i had done to it over all these years especially the last ones where i was unloved by those in power and totally loved by my peers. that friction created what you know as the busblog but unlike others i dont like to created diamonds from pressure and friction, i like to snap my fingers and have them appear out of thin air and if you dont believe that they can materialize both ways then you havent been watching the world like i have.

not everything needs to be hard.

and the busblog will get updated every day but maybe not until super late in the day, and for those of you who will be affected by this i apologize in advance and i hope that you click some of the other links on this blog when you get tired of being patient but i promise you it will be worth your wait.

i interviewed raymi in the middle of my deep cleaning today and i will upload it throughout this week starting tomorrow so maybe that will give you a reason to come back.

xoxoxoxo
tony

p.s. after i get back from the goodwill i will answer the good questions that were left in this post so if you have more either ask them here or there and i will get to them tonight.

time for living + zulieka + riley dog + nay turns nineteen this week

to do some much needed drinking and dancing and picture-taking

and since people ask me questions all the time, i figured id answer some here.

if you have any either put them in the comments or email them to me.

q. who won the Goldspot Contest???~!!!!

a. im so glad you asked ……….. smashing lady, congrats! and smashing lady, if you dont have a date, maybe you could invite Chris Gomez, he came in second place. thanks to everyone who submitted. i might have to do that again sometime.

q. how old are you really?

a. so olde its scary

q. youve mentioned the year that you graduated university and some of your friends have too, just doing the math it’s pretty easy to calculate how old you are, why dont you fess up?

a. keep in mind that i did some xbi training before i got to ucsb and i went to junior college, so im older than all of those people. im telling you, i look fucking rad for my age. not that i look rad, but line me up to people my age and i look like im doing everything right.

q. what tv shows do you have a tivo season pass for?

a. real world, big brother, hells kitchen, regis and kelly, daily show, meet the press, this week, face the nation, best week ever, being bobby brown, pardon the interruption, futurama, howard stern, al franken, 60 minutes, bill maher, sopranos reruns, simpsons, three stooges, banana splits, countdown with keith olberman, soul train

q. what are your top four

a. big brother, best week ever, being bobby brown, pti.

q. why are you so into reality shows?

a. same reason i like blogs, i like real people being real. the best dramas are actors pretending to be real people and writers trying to be believable, why not avoid the middle men and just edit reality shows real well?

q. is it true that you smoked pot every day for ten years and now you’ve stopped?

a. for the exception of vacations and rare occassional dry spells of a day or three, yes, every day, ten years. and yes i stopped right before i went to vegas and ive been tempted to light up but i havent done it. the temptations have run the gamut from “hey you cleaned your room today, you deserve a hit” to “hey you got a job today, lets celebrate!” all good reasons, but somehow ive resisted.

q. will you ever smoke again?

a. oh hells yeah. id like to just take a really long break first.

q. do you have a girlfriend right now?

a. no.

q. dating?

a. no.

q. no?

a. my last girlfriend was awesome. awesome awesome. and i broke up with her and then we got back together even though i knew we probably shouldnt and then we broke up again. and i feel rotten about that last time we were together because i didnt act like the man that id like to be known as, lets say. and i dont want to do that to another young lady any time soon. so until i can convince myself that all the evil has left my soul – or most of it – then im sorta putting myself on timeout. which is fine. ive gotten far more tail than a man of my disposition deserves. im good for right now.

q. you seem like youve changed once you started putting ads on your blog. seems like you are trying harder to get more hits so you can make more money.

a. id disagree. if i was interested in more hits i wouldnt insult big bloggers like the instapundit and give them reasons not to link to me, i would link highly trafficked blogs more often than the ones i do link which arent well-trafficked, i would guest blog on popular blogs, i would kiss peoples asses who i love who deserve to be kissed like the good people at boing boing, and i wouldnt have called out those blogs that mimic me to put my link up high on their blog roll. and i certainly wouldnt have made a seperate podcast blog. all those things make you lose hits, not gain them and some of those things make you look like a dumbshit, not help your popularity. if theres any differences in my blog from the begining of may until now it was more due to the fact that i was unemployed and going through great change, than it was because of my dumb ads.

q. sometimes you come across as mean in your blog.

a. sometimes i am mean.

q. dont you think its in your best interest to edit yourself when youre looking like an asshole?

a. if i did that then youd call me a sellout only interested in selling more ads. see i cant win, so i may as well be honest. nobody is sweet 24/7, and sometimes the right thing to do is show your teeth and growl. i am fully aware of all my emotions, even the not-so-attractive ones. and im not ashamed of any of them. ive never pretended to be anything in my blog other than human. except for the time i pretended to be an escalator. but even then i was a pissed off escalator. this isnt the miss america pagent, if i want to call bullshit on something im gonna. if people find that unattractive, i can understand that. but ultimately this blog isnt for them. its for people interested in the entire picture of one person named sonny i. la vista. aka tony. and tony dont play.

q. in the interview that you did with matt welch you called yourself a pacifist, isnt that latin for pussy ass bitch?

a. no, i think that there are only three small portions of humanity who cannot be negotiated with. some are just straight up insane, some are in the republican party, and some are terrorists. everyone else you can pretty much sit down with and reach some sort of middle ground that they will stick with instead of choosing to blow your ass up. people assume that every single suicide bomber, for example, was someone who you couldnt negotiate with, i disagree. i think the mind is a very powerful and nimble thing, and i think the right person talking to the right person can stop Some of the evil that others have given up on.

q. youre nuts.

a. guilty, but let me put it this way. i love Super Nanny and that other nanny show. i dont know anything about raising kids. so every show id see these horrible kids climbing up entertainment systems, throwing cat food all over, lying, hitting, basically terrorizing their suburban mcmansion. my first reaction every time is “holy crap beat the shit out of those fucking kids!” but supernanny never hits the kids, she works with them and makes it happen EVEN WHEN the parents are fighting against her. mind over matter my friend. to me pacifism is saying, im so much smarter than you that i dont have to whip out my boomstick, i can control you with my head. also, if violence worked, we’d had been out of iraq a long time ago, we have the bigger guns, the best equipment, and the most violent accessories. not every kid behaves because of violence and not every conflict can be settled with war.

q. why was it so important for you that the blogs who copy you put your name up on the top of their lists? you realize that makes you look egotistical and trite.

a. if people want to misunderstand it that way theres not much i can do. what i saw were several blogs that were plainly ganking my overall style and portions of specific staples of the busblog. i had said repeatedly that i was flattered that of all the bloggers, they chose to mimic me. in fact i didnt even know that i had a particular style until those blogs popped up. i linked to them over the months, and answered their questions when they wrote in. a few of them, i noticed, werent even linking to me at all. thats when i said, ok, now i think youve crossed the line.

q. what line?

a. the coolness line. its not cool to pretend that youre responsible for everything on your shit when its obvious that youre not. it would be like a tribute band taking props for the songs that they play. i didnt tell them to stop, i didnt tell them to take down their shit, i just said, IF you are paying tribute, then fucking pay tribute, and this is how i think the tribute should be paid, not with money, but with a link in a place of respect. thats it.

q. but what about the messy aftermath?

a. well, thats just people not understanding the original point. and other people sticking their noses where it didnt belong. and others just being pussies. and with technorati, if someone types in my name or links to me and says something fucked up, i would be doing myself and my blog a diservice if i didnt address it. because lets say someone is just discovering the busblog and they type it into technorati and they see someone saying something totally stupid, if the new reader doesnt see me either address it in the comments or see where ive addressed it on a post then they might get the impression that im admitting guilt, and asking people who obviously respect my work to follow up with a respectful link is nothing that i feel guilty about. and if someone wants to write a post calling me a jackass for wanting that link, theyre going to get a comment of me saying that theyre wrong.

q. often you say that you are leading by example. wtf does that mean?

a. ah yes. ok, i never thought that my gayass blog would ever reach this sort of popularity. and on paper it shouldnt be this popular. this girl the other day was all omg omg tony pierce emailed me back! for an old, bald, sloppy fuckup to get that sort of reaction to answering an email is amazing to me. therefore i feel a weird sense of responsibility to either set precidents when weird shit happens or document how i handled a certain situation so that When some other blogger gains popularity they might have an example of how dumbass pierce did it. because trust me, in many ways im very much like the blogs that i link to who arent getting the attention that i get, so as they get more popular, hopefully they can learn from my mistakes and sucesses. and also, maybe i can show other popular blogs that they dont have to worry about being transparent and honest.

q. is it true you just got a new job?

a. yes and im stoked.

q. how long were you unemployed?

a. almost exactly three months. it was a great summer, but im ready for my reassignment in the xbi and i like where theyre putting me.

q. and wheres that?

a. its classified.

q. meaning?

a. meaning only karl rove and bob novak know.

the holy writer + kitty bukkake + the farmer in the deli + untitled blog

part one is about eighteen minutes and we talk a little politics

part two is a little over a half hour and we talk about blogging and crazy shit

right click > save for easiest use – or you can just click the links, i suppose

starring johnny depp, helen bonham carter, and some kid as charlie
directed by tim burton

tim burtons new film is unnecessary, imperfect, uninspired, and yet magically entertaining.

its dark, its colorful, its funny, and its an excellent re-make of a classic that didnt need to be remade.

the set design is creative and inventive, you definately get a sense of a differnt land, and once youre inside the chocolate factory you’re happy that burton was behind it all because he’s never had a problem mixing childlike fantasies with nightmarish twists.

johnny depp is weird enough to play wonka and does a fair job of his love/hate relationship for children and actually accomplishes the daunting task of owning the role despite the masterful job gene wilder did in the original.

but probably the best part of this, and perhaps the reason for the remake is the theme of family, best represented by charlie’s close-knit and loveable clan of three generations all living under one seussian roof.

there are several hurdles a director must clear when remaking a beloved tale, the tallest of all being how do you tell a story that everyone knows? and in this case knows quite well. we know charlie is going to get the golden ticket, we know the kids are going to fuck up on the tour, and even though it’s tim burton at the wheel once we meet the charlie character we’re pretty sure that he’s going to win the surprise prize cooler than what your wildest imagination could fathom.

not only does burton take us down the familiar ground, but he includes enough new touches, namely the 21st century oompa-loompahs, to keep us on our toes.

so thats the good stuff. and there were enough good stuff to keep this blogger satisfied on a sunny weekday in a mostly full airconditioned theater in the summertime. in fact many in the matinee crowd clapped at the end.

despite the fact that…

you cant replace gene wilder’s trippy eyes and haunting singing voice, you cant improve on the spooky original loompahs deep voices and pyschedelic outfits, all of the characters are flat as pancakes either angelic clueless or evil,

and inspite of the fact that depp isnt all that funny even when trying to be funny.

and why the hell would you put helen bonham carter in this film if all youre going to have her do is say oh charlie and stir cabbage soup?

the music is forgettable, there were more novel details in pee wee herman’s bachelor pad than there were in the entire chocolate factory, and some of the backstory of wonkas history is utterly ridiculous the worst being his first bite of chocolate.

if youre going to make children evil, make them really evil, just because a kid is destructive and likes video games doesnt make him bad. have him walk down the street pulling fire alarms, letting air out of tires, and putting bottle rockets up animals’ asses.

but then tell us why hes so bad. people arent born viscious, they learn it somehow, and since you have their pu-pu-puh parents right there blame them if you must. but these kids werent nearly as bad as i wanted them to be – and not nearly as wicked as their predecessors.

my guess is that in order to get a PG rating Burton had to tone down his typical schtick. huge mistake. currently im watching the original Bad News Bears to prepare to screen that remake and when Tatum O’Neil gets introduced to the team one of the kids complains “Jews, Niggers, Spics, and now a girl?” thank God filmmakers and studios didnt pander to review boards in the 70s as much as they apparently do now.

willie wonka and his chocolate factory are freaky dark icons perfectly matched with tim burton and johnny depp. and even though this movie doesnt reach its full potential, its entertaining and light despite its unnecessary moral.

i could sum this up with some cheesy allusion to candy or nuts or bubble gum, but i’ll leave that to pretty much every single film critic hack who considers themselves clever. predictable is never clever. which is why charlie shoulda been black and willie shoulda been robin williams. but in an era where remakes are shitty standard summer fare, this one didnt suck.

JaG + pitt + koganuts kicking ass in blogging.la + candy blog

and im in my hollywood bungalow trying to get my podcast shit working for you. if you only knew the brilliant minds that are trying to help me youd be hella impressed.

we’ve got steven j hawkings on speakerphone, weve got carl sagans head in a jar, ive got hopi indians chanting infront of my home, we’re looking for virgins to sacrifice, and ive got abe vigoda on his way back from the grocery store with twelve packs of Orange Crush cuz meg ryan and tom hanks are on the way over to jump into the big woo

and yes im tempted to roll up a j and get the ghost of jerry garcia to noodle some good vibes my way.

think damnit Think! i keep saying to my computer monitor.

but im a Christian, maybe i should pray.

Lord, i know you probably dont care about podcasting or the Interweb, and maybe this is just this generation’s Tower of Babel, and yes my voice appears much higher than id like, but could you please just help me get this thing on the air because you’ve blessed me with knowing the coolest people in the world and i want to share that with everyone else.

Thanks for everything youve done for me and please let Nomah come back healthy and ready for the home stretch. Amen.

ok and with that im going to make like a tree and get the hell outta here.

i dont have AC but i have five state of the art movie theatres just dying to show me some quality films.

at first i was going to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as it was one of my favorite books and movies as a kid, but sk smith wasnt thrilled and i trust her taste. so i will go to the archlight and catch Wedding Crashers.

people keep emailing me about my Weed issue.

aint no issue. yes it would be nice to smoke a bowl before hopping on the bus and seeing the movie but i would really like to see if i can behave for the rest of the summer before i even allow myself to entertain that practice. and when i do i dont want it to be a practice ever again, like threesomes at the playboy mansion, i want to keep those episodes special occassions. everything in moderation.

i believe its the theory behind McDonalds only letting the McRib out there every now and then,

but i could be wrong.

when i get back home i will put up the first two parts of my chat with Mr. Matt Welch. we spoke in his backyard and not over the phone so hopefully the sound quality will be noticeably better.

while i was trying to get my Feeds fixed i had Stand By Me running in the background and i hadnt seen that movie in a decade and it was pretty cool to see Wil and River and Jerry and Crazydude as kids again. and how could i forget that Wil had that leech down his pants.

trust me, when, and if he grants me a podcast interview i will be sure to ask him a little about that movie cuz i love it and it still holds up beautifully today.

in other news, i got an email telling me that i have an offer letter in the mail, so this summer might just be winding down, which is fine with me, as i havent really done much with it.

Big Brother is on tonight!

sigh club‘s cat can read! + read raymi today + leah has a good man a very good man

ken and i faught together in the war to end all wars, thats right, the little known battle of lil big ass.

once there we decided that ice cube was right and life wasnt nothing but bitches and money. since at the time we had neither, we ventured into the world of computers and music. for ken that led to Tabloid.net which has now been morphed in a general way into Sploid.com, part of the Gawker empire.

ken was gracious enough to chat with me last night on the phone and even though he thought he would merely spend 15 minutes with me, i told him that time flies in these podcasts that he might consider planning on a half hour. well, an hour later i reminded him of our initial deal and let him go back to his lovely family.

i write this post not to kiss ken’s ass for allowing me to interview him, and not to ease Matt Welch’s concern that ive forgotten about our epic conversations that have yet to hit the web, or to brag about my fortunate relationships but to educate you on two things:

the first is, this interview with Ken is really funny and even if you dont know about him, or Sploid, or the Corvids, or Tabloid, or Prognosis, or Nick Denton, or Hitler, or ET, or Reno, or Hunter Thompson, or alt-country of the early 80s, you really should do yourself a flavor and listen to this chat.

the second is, i want to provide a few links that will help you as far as Making Yr Own Podcasts, and Subscribing to Podcast Feeds.

now even though i have a pretty good tech background it doesnt mean that i am excited about new technologies. infact i am getting up there in age and i sorta like things easy and uncomplicated and intuitive as i start slowing down.

where i am tonight, at 9:30pm on Wednesday 7/20 is where i wanted to be at noon Friday 7/15 when i started this nonsense of talking into a recorder and uploading it on the web for your collective asses.

yes i learned pretty quickly but i couldnt have done it without the help of one mr antidisestablishment of redondo beach cali and one mr jason vertucio of bristol PA.

anti taught me that the quickest way to get a feed of my podcasting blog was to use Feedburner. thru Feedburner i clicked some things and that made it compatible with iTunes.

all an RSS feed is, is a broadcast in a way that says here-i-am here-i-am.

i dont know how i dont know why and frankly i could give a shit. but if you look at the bottom of my podcast blog you will see this image which means that im hooked up with feedburner.

we’ll get to that lil buddy later.

once i had my podcast mp3s i submitted my blog to iTunes but they never confirmed me. jason said it might be due to the fact that i had never embedded my code with tags. wtf are tags i asked him through AIM, and he helped a brotha out and now that i have tags in my shit and all my code is correct iTunes will probably okay me and in about a week you will be able to go to iTunes, click Podcasts, type in “tony” or “busblog” and there will be a good chance that my podcasts will be on their list for you to subscribe to.

but a funny thing happened after i posted my ken layne podcast – friggin anti put down his 5 footer and messaged me with “bro i just got your podcast, im suscribed thru iTunes”

again i was all wtf because i thought that iTunes had to know about me and shit.

anti educated me that it was i who was stoned, that once i had set up the feedburner RSS malarkey that what he did was drag and fuckin dropped that little icon buddy into his iTunes and now any time i updated my Podcast blog it automatically downloaded into his iTunes

i nearly knocked the cheerleader off my lap as i got up to do the happy dance.

and then i messaged him back with TELL ME EXACTLY HOW YOU DID THAT YOU FREAKING GENIUS. to which he said, ah maybe i will make a film. to which i said DO IT DO IT, DONT THINK ABOUT IT DO IT DOITDOITDOITDOIT. rollins. to which he said oh look, this dude already made a film and its brilliant

and yes that film is for mac users but it also works if you use Mozilla/Firefox on a PC so watch it and be amazed!

and then – just to friggin show off like a mad man Jason made a new blog that explains all the steps necessary as to how to podcast. it includes the bits that he taught me this afternoon.

these gentlemen deserve a round of applause or apple sauce and/or tips into their paypal accounts. as soon as i get my Fatburger im going to hit up anti and wait for jason to create an account because seriously gentlemen i couldnt have done this without you. [update i dont see a PayPal deal on Anti’s blog either, wtf, i repeate wtf!]

as i have said, i have the greatest friends.

p.s. whoever paypalled me the $5 last week, thanks!

[Update 11pm 7/20 for some reason only my Matt Good feed is going thru Feedburner > iTunes, so if you have followed all the instructions here and youre not getting updates, neither am i, im working on it, and if anyone has the answer, lemme know ]

upcoming podcasts: the Matt Welch mini series, Danielle K. Berkley, and many more

jay v’s podcast blog + anti + ben allbright + bro apologized today

as the busblog and blogging gains popularity there are increasing opportunities for me, and therefore you.

the last contest we had was a secret one that even the contestants didnt know they were involved in and Chokey Chicken won a giftbox of goodies that included the Blacksmith’s cd that they gave me specifically for the purposes of a contest. when i decide to stop filling up chad’s gift box and mail it i think he will get on his blog and be shocked at what he has received.

today i present to you a new contest to see and hear the up-and-coming band Goldspot perform at the world famous west hollywood Troubador next Tuesday July 26.

as you heard yesterday in my podcast with matt good, there seems to be a dirth of original, creative music out there, and originality is rarely rewarded with radio play or love on mtv.

recently i was approached by Goldspot’s label to provide a pair of concert tickets for next Tuesday’s show and after listening to them on their Myspace page i agreed to host a small contest on my blog. i am not getting paid for this, this is not an ad, and the label isnt co-opting this post like some bloggers have allowed other companys on their blogs. i am doing this at my own will, because as you have come to expect, nobody calls the shots here about anything except for me.

which isnt to say that i could not be convinced to sell space on this blog, as is evident from pauly shore’s goofy mug to the left of this post.

but thats not the case here.

i think Goldspot is an interesting band with a varied collection of influences, i think theyre trying to do something new, i think that their label is trying to do something new, and i think that whoever wins the pair of tickets will enjoy their night on the town. and not only do i want to encourage and support new music but i want to encourage and support the power of blogs to turn people on to things that they might not be exposed to through the traditional channels.

so therefore the contest is now open and its so easy i cant even believe it. if you live in LA or you will be in LA on the 26th and you would like to check out Goldspot, simply leave a comment below with why you’d like to go.

heres the simple catch
i will only read hiakus
so write carefully

you can write as many as you like and the winners post will appear on the busblog Friday afternoon. the winner will get their name plus one on the VIP guestlist.

bonne chance!

Goldspot Myspace page + official website + union records

topics: babes at the modrian pool, the suckiness of Canadian and American Idol,
the ruleyness of Arcade Fire and Sonic Youth, how he learned to rock,
comments in blogs, raymi’s titties, and abortion.

available at my podcast blog
and on his music blog

two matts a stuart and an aaron.

aaron for some reason isnt crazy about being interviewed on the phone, and i can appreciate that, i hate the phone too. and whats great is he likes aol chats. so for those of you who like inside baseball, meaning not just “yankees suck”, but intelligent deep deep discussion of our national pasttime, then you will enjoy any upcoming conversations with my favorite baseball blogger.

then i got on the horn and talked to canadian rocker and blogger matthew good who has returned from his mini tour across the great white north. we talked for about an hour and we both decided that it was a good interview but it wasnt perfect. i wouldnt call matthew a perfectionist but he cares far more about details than i do. i respect that and i should learn from his fine lesson.

whats also interesting is where i might look at blogging and podcasting as a fun lil hobby to do on the side, guys like matt good are talking about not just his life but his profession, and part of his profession depends on his image. id be a liar if i didnt admit that part of the formulae that goes into my cd-buying habits has to do with the politics of how i view bands. not “is it cool or not to buy BandX” but things like “Singer Y is an asshat, fuck if im ever going to buy his records again.”

mr good is quite aware of that mentality among music buyers and is wise to be careful about the things that might be misunderstood in the press and in blogs. especially in coversations with guys like me who try to get people to drop their natural defenses. what i like about matthew is i know we will have plenty of conversations in the future, on the record and off, and therefore i want the ones that will be on the record to be educational and interesting and insightful and one dry run practice is fine with me. it’ll be novel to hear me come across as professional and prepared for once.

i also had a nice chat with mr stuart berkowitz a producer of the howard stern show who is still employed at E! stuart and i worked side by side for several years. i called him when it looked like he might be laid off from E! like the crew in ny but he was already on vacation. today he called me back and we got to discuss my lay off and his current employment. i invited him repeatedly to talk in a podcast with me about some of his experiences on the show but he hesitated since its sorta well known that the behind the scenes staff of the show pretty much stay behind the scenes. again i respected his wishes since that show has been his profession for the last six years and my podcast is a bs lil hobby that i started a few days ago. i would hate to have stu’s future get jeopordized and i would be very saddened if i found that ive upset howard. stu and i are to have lunch next week so maybe i can get him to say hi to you all.

then i hung out all night with my good pal mr matt welch and his beautiful wife emmanuelle richard. matt and i sat in his backyard and talked all night about a variety of topics and drank bottles of wine. not only was it so much fun bopping from sports to politics to our glory days at the nexus, but it was great just to hang out with my former little league co-manager, something i rarely do despite living a half mile away.

you all realize im an idiot, right?

so matt and i talked until the batteries ran out of the player and then we talked some more and then em found more batteries and we talked even more. if you think me and aaron got into some inside baseball shit you should hear where me and matt went. fuck! and lucky you over the next week i will be sending portions of those conversations onto the web.

will you find it interesting? who knows. i hope you will. i tried to break them up by topic so if you dont like baseball dont download that segment. if i were you id download it anyway because you might want to hear me make fun of matt for knowing all the sick shit that he knows about baseball players of the turn of the century. its bizzare. how can you know someone for nearly 20 years and not realize that he can pull out names like Stuffy McGuinness and actually know who the fuck he is.

after he said that, of course i grabbed the mic and said, “for those of you listening, Matt is not reading off notes, nor has he made that name up. i know this because i know he’s not that creative.”

im a lucky man who has been blessed with awesome friends and cool coworkers. just like i feel blessed to live here in hollywood and i have made this blog as a way to give those of you a glipse of the real tinsle town, i am interviewing these people so you can meet, in a way, some of the best bloggers and coolest people. i know that if i had stayed in suburbs of chicago i would certainly appreciate interviews with people like stu and aaron and the matts, and thats what i think of when i do these things. you. the one in the burbs.

expect some more updates on the podblog supersoon.

scotty has another bad day + crooks and liars has so many great vids + shane defends himself + “busblog? im not impressed”