so many are so fearless about so much but it sure seems like writers are so afraid, but why
is it because our imaginations run and run and can think about all the possibilities – with special emphasis on the negative outcomes.
but they dont happen.
for years before i worked at the Times i wondered, what if they read this and think im insane and dont hire me? but not only didn’t “they” read it, they couldnta cared less. they barely read LAist which was 100x more popular
and wild. and fun. and at times embarrassing.
all the things you should be afraid of showing a prospective employer. but that was the thing we talked about the most.
finally got some sleep last night. the issue with this secret project is you can do it all day and all night and one thing just leads to another
some say it’s the largest home in all of beverly hills. some say it has 54 rooms.
i say, thats a lot of rooms for a single family with five kids in the late 1920s.
it was super cool. we were on a special visit. the people gave us an amazing tour that included the secret bowling alley and hidden bar.
the grounds are used for weddings a lot.
amber does this funny thing where she says i dont want to get married but if i did i would want to do it… and invite…. and honeymoon in….
so yesterday i told her the story of mick and jerry and how happy they were when they were not married and how they broke up almost as soon as they got hitched and i showed her pictures and i thought i had convinced her
until we visited the largest home in beverly hills and the gardens where even famous people have been married in. with its sweeping views of LA.
what a game that was. what a beautiful and terrible game.
nobody will tell you this because nobody is like your uncle tony. but heres the secret about being a bears fan, that’s different than being a cub fan.
and i can say this because ive been a huge fan of both teams for a very long time. how long? let me just say: i watched bears game on a NEW black & white tv that your grandma bought.
i bet youve never even seen a black n white tv. and for that alone you should be happy.
anyways heres the secret about the bears: they are going to break your heart more often and more painfully than the Cubs ever will.
the thing about the Cubs is they’re the lovable losers. even this season they lost and we loved them. but the Bears, for some reason, always gets our hopes up. they always have players who are so outstanding that you think, oh shit they can and SHOULD win this game.
and they get you right up to the end and they stab you in the heart.
then they get your heart and put it in a pie and put the pie in a box of money, the biggest box youve ever seen, and they give that box of money to jackasses like jay cutler or kickers named cody.
so heres what you need to do. you need to use that feeling inside of you and put it to good use.
i dont know about you, but heres how im feeling: like fucking shit.
but fret not, because shit is in this world for a good reason. you think im kidding but im not. ask your grandma. shit is extremely valuable for growing the most beautiful things in the world. green grass and pretty flowers. in fact the best shit cost money and people seek it out because the better the shit the bigger and more colorful the beauty.
and this is why wrigley field is the most gorgeous place in the world.
so use that shittiness that you feel. use it to make beauty. get your dads keyboards and hook up your headphones to it and play. so many beautiful songs have been based on sadness. i would never lie to you.
either the songs were made from the shittiness of the pianist’s life, or that crappy feeling drove that person to learn to play as a means for escape or a way for them to express themselves other than doing what they really wanted to do like take a giant torch to the entire city and start over.
now uncle tony wasn’t very good at the piano, or the saxaphone or the drums, but when i was in high school we had a dog who died. Chumbi. old Chumbi wasn’t crazy about me and i wasn’t nuts about him neither but when he died i was super sad. so i went down in the basement and i beat the crap out of those drums. for an hour i was the greatest drummer in the world.
and when it was over i learned a valuable lesson. that i should stick to writing.
which is my final bit of unasked for advice. turn that shitty feeling inside into words. if you dont wanna show anyone, fine. fuck em. just write. write and write and write. write truthfully, write a bunch of lies, write a cool combo of the two, but get the poison out. turn it into something that never existed before. use that shit to grow something excellent.
you might suck at first but keep going. everyone sucks at first.
cody the kicker should have practiced more too.
dont grow up and be like him.
practice.
i love you very much. next year they’ll break our hearts in new ways. so we got that going for us.
people can say well why not delete your blog too? and i would say mind your own beeswax.
amber is snoring next to me and its so comforting.
googlestalked my first girlfriend ever because i havent done that in a super long time and i just wanted to see a picture of her and make sure she was alive. found the pic. she looks different than i expected. brown hair instead of blonde. also younger. last time we talked she told me that she had caught her husband cheating. that was such a long time ago. found her new last name. which means she musta met another man and got hitched which i approve of. she was so nice to me. i would write her letters every day.
maybe i still do.
and thats the difference between twitter and blogging, people, these are love letters to the ether of the otherlands
tweets are just darts at an invisible water balloon thats being thrown at your face. will you get wet? will you miss?
there was a car chase today where they did the pit manuever to a dude literally four times and each time he was able to get away after being spun around. it was remarkable.
then they just let him drive south down to oceanside. which is why i was thinking about her. cuz she lives down there.
i have had such a blessed life. so above average compared to what it could have been. i dont have movie star looks. i wasnt at the top of my class in shit and i wouldnt be if i went back in time. my family wasnt rolling in dough. i went to community college, alone, no friends in a new city. while working at mcdonalds. even the girls at mcdonalds wouldnt go out with me.
but i persisted.
cuz what else you gonna do? give up at 18? no. i wrote her love letters and she basically said thank you next, which was good. out with the old. and the new life was good. you meet friends after a while. one thing leads to another.
thank god i had a car though. i drove alllll over LA back then. all these streets and towns i had heard about in records or tv shows. id even fill up at a gas station and id think, did Kareem ever come to this gas station? did Elton John? LA was this magical place. the one city where dreams could come true to you and you and you.
and come true they did. over and over again. did i think i would be 52 with a 32 year old gf snoozing next to me writing notes to the superdooper in infinity land? no and thats why life is grand. all the stupid shit you think will happen when youre a teen is weirder and better and a hundred percent different than your dumb head could imagine.
it started simply. i was in 3-4 Howard Stern groups and I noticed that they were hateful and mean and stupid and they all seemed to despise Howard – and especially his wife.
they’d complain that the show wasn’t funny anymore, that things were so much better in the old days, that the Sirius app didn’t work a lot (valid). They’d complain about the guest, the bits, the musical acts, the Wrap Up Show, Howard 101, and each other.
and when politics entered the discussion it was all out war.
so i started this Howard Stern group with a long name and i said there are two rules: no politics, and be nice.
the rules have since grown to six:
No Politics
No pics of poop
No disparaging of Howard, Robin or Beth
No fuck-marry-kill (because it’s only interesting when it’s a famous person being asked)
No disparaging of each other
No comments that ask women “how’s the slot?”
with over 10,000 members, not everyone liked the rules, but I told them that there are plenty of places (including other Howard groups) that allowed you to do those things, but in my opinion nothing good comes from those things.
turned out i was right.
when someone signs up to be in the group they are asked a few questions, namely
Do you understand this is a Howard group of Howard fans, so no negative posts about Howard, Robin, or the Show, ok?
Likewise, do you understand that there are no politics allowed in here? There are endless amounts of other groups for that.
And finally no berating other members about their questions, insights or pieces of vinyl, right?
The vast majority of the new members are a-ok with this and say so. This also prepares them for the rules and the tone of the group. If people complain or seem wishy washy when answering those questions: they are out.
Existing members who break the rules are dealt with publicly, swiftly, and politely. Usually they will be Muted for a week on their first offense (they can’t comment or post). And banned on the second offense. If the first offense is nuts, they’re gone immediately.
So far I have either had to deny access to the group or ban 152 people.
If someone messages me with a valid excuse, I’ll bring them back to the fold but most people understand what they did and go on with their lives.
What has helped is there are about 4-5 super fans of the group who message me any time something is going wrong. Also, anyone can flag a comment or a post so if someone goes nuts it’s immediately brought to my attention and I can snuff it out.
The most active posts get between 5,000 to 8,000 eyeballs. Which is pretty great for Facebook which notoriously makes it hard for fans of something to see the thing that they signed up for.
My guess is the people who join this group really truly love Howard and check out the group every day or several times a week. They seem to have also not signed up for a lot of other groups that attract their attention. I also think that because they have to really go out of their way to get into the group (it’s not as easy as clicking a Like button), they’re invested in it.
And once they are in, and they see that all the jokers and asswipes get booted immediately (and this appears to be the only Howard group that does that) the discussions are better.
Anyway, it is the thing I am most proud of from 2018.
but im glad it’s over. so much stress. not enough religion.
theres a bunch of stuff i gotta do.
one is get my car detailed. ive had it for years and maybe 1,000 people have been in it, and i need it properly cleaned out.
it’s gross even thinking about it.
next i need to be a better shoulder to cry on for amber. im always fixing problems she tells me and i need to be more of a listener.
it’s almost impossible for me not to try to fix things though. so it will be interesting to see if i can do it.
i also want to read more shakespeare. when dickens was acted out at church the other day, i was in awe of his use of words.
so what i wanna do with shakespeare is watch a play a week and read along on my ipad from one of the plays i can download from the LA Public Library.
i remember loving shakespeare in college, but let’s be real, that was a long time ago. id love to watch his top 30 plays by this time next year.
and i always say this but i want to blog more. this year produced the fewest amount of posts of any year of the busblog. i was super busy. i am super busy. but whatever thats a lame excuse.
kids in africa would love a blog. i will blog. they will be weirder than usual though because i think one reason i have slowed down is im nervous that people will think im weird if the weird stuff comes out
but two things: im not that weird, and people love weird. let em have it.
i have a long list of people i want to meet if i am fortunate enough to be invited to Heaven
cobain, hendrix, elvis, belushi
but i cant wait to ask Joseph, were you freaking out? you literally had one job and you sorta blew it.
you knew for a long while that your virgin wife was pregnant with the Son of God and in the eighth or ninth month you decide to journey to little ass Bethlehem to sign the census or pay taxes or something
even though the Son of God could probably solve whatever weird paperwork problem it would have caused if you had stayed
AT HOME
in Nazareth, but instead you wander, get to Bethlehem and cannot get a room to rent
even though your people are from there, dating all the way back to David
but theres no one around for a nice pregnant lady and her man?
and you can’t get a hotel motel or holiday inn to squeeze you in?
that pressure must have been incredible.
and what do you do when you say to yourself, ok, cool, mary, heres what we’re gonna do, you chill here next to this donkey and im gonna clean out this little shit shack here
and like animals we’re gonna do this right here under the stars
like was it that spiritual? or was it survival? was it her idea? was it that holy spirit that whispered in your ear at the beginning of all of this when you were gonna bail on her because you thought she had cheated on you?
who made it ok to deliver God
in the poop and piss mud of the stables – and then placed in the manger
manger, being of course the trough where the food is held so the animals can eat it. and what was the food for animals back then? all the left over grain and guts and god knows what
and slobber.
was that cool with you? did you feel like a loser? if i was a hippie would i feel different?
and it was cold. Israel ain’t Maui. It’s cold in the winter.
you must have huddled baby Jesus tight when you two and the donkey delivered Him into the world and slept through the night.
did you sleep? did the wise men wake you? could you sleep? that was Jesus. did you realize what you had there? was it obvious?
so many questions about what happened on this night, 2,018 years ago.
call me a purist but i havent heard one word about Jesus this Christmas
all these so called Christians, especially those on Twitter who have bios that say:
Bible, Family, MAGA
nobody’s talking about Jesus, the reason for the season. once a year there should be a good discussion about him
all the smartest minds: historians, poets, rabbis, preachers, priests, the pope. how come the only time we hear from the pope is when he is saying something punk rock? why isn’t there a limited series starring the pope and what he has to say about jesus like every three four years?
am i the only one in this for more than the presents.
poor amber was stressed because she didnt know what to get me i said socks, pajama pants, and something that you wanna wear about the house because i see you a lot more than i see me.
but what i want for christmas, truly, is to hear some good conversations about the son of God who came down to Earth, performed miracles, escaped into the desert, and then got killed in a terrible way only to return from the dead while his closest followers were running for their lives denying his greatness
to me thats something worthy of the twinkly lights
