shes been a little bit sick so shes been in bed for two days,
i was standing with my shirt off and long plaid pajama pants on
eating some jumbo shrimp i had just gotten for myself after going out to get her soup and seltzer water.
she said, “you remind me of a lot of the rock stars that stay at my hotel”
she works at a fancy beverly hills joint
she said, “you don’t worry about anything. you’re just cool.”
shes lived with me over a year and thats what she thinks?
oh i worry.
i worry this whole thing might get pulled out from under me at any minute.
i am not in control of anything. i could do the greatest job ever on this secret project and still get thrown to the wolves. i could do a cruddy job and get praised. you never know what people will think.
but my biggest fear is not a person at all. it’s God. i wanna go to Heaven. but you dont get in because of your dazzling good looks or witty banter. it’s your heart. and you can’t fake that.
what is in my heart? it aint sugar and spice and everything nice, thats for damn sure.
of course i care about the poor and others and this one and that one but i was in the xbi. ive done some things. who knows if im forgiven?
Yes Jessica painted this painting that i bought from her that she framed and sent to me. it says “forgive yourself. for all of it.”
it’s hung right next to my giant bedroom tv. right above a Cubs hat. i look at it every. single. day.
but there are some unforgivable things.
and even if i convince myself that there arent, what if God disagrees?
the Good Book says the only unforgivable sin is blasphemy, or more specifically denying God. everything else has been paid for by Jesus.
let’s hope thats the case because i would like to go back to worrying about the same things that rock stars in swanky hotels should worry about: when will the creativity dry up one day, when will the pretty girls stop paying attention,
and when will that Mexicoke ever arrive from room service?
the first is you can pretend that the whole world is going to pay attention to what you are saying
and they will change their minds when they read your incredible insights
and rainbows will appear and bunnies and butterflies and fireworks and the cubs will win the world series
that is not how i write.
the other way is to pretend that nobody will ever read it and there is no audience and it’s just you
and the Good Lord above and all of the angels and saints
and they’re probably too busy to look closely, they are just happy youre not out in the streets.
occasionally someone reads it and i am genuinely surprised because i have tricked myself into believing that not even the sweet angels who root me on will read it
and sometimes someone will ask me, why are you being so mean with your writing
and i will literally have to read it again because when i write i just let it out and commit zero of it to memory.
but then i will reread the masterpiece in question and i will usually surmise “you call that mean?”
heres what i think mean is. i think its mean to bore your readers.
i had a teacher in college once, and he was legendary in our school, which doesnt mean he liked me, im pretty sure he thought i was overrated and to be honest i dont remember ever writing anything great in his classes
but i did like one thing he said. he said the worst thing you can do to your readers is waste their time.
do not bore them.
thus, if i criticize a writer for doing the worst thing a scribe can do, that is not mean.
whats mean is not passing along the sentiment and working with that writer, despite how veteran he may be
despite how many stupid awards he has “won” and despite what emails come in or dont come in.
whats mean is letting someone who you know or work with or are close to slide into mediocrity.
not everyone responds with negative reinforcement, some people will bloom when they’re told how great they are because some people have never been told how great they are.
or they just need it so badly. you can be that sunlight.
other people have been stroked for so long that they might not know how dull their edge is. those people need prodding, sometimes even shoving.
the great jockey Willie Shoemaker used to talk about “showing the whip”. his theory was any jockey can whip the crap out of a horse on the home stretch, but a wise jockey knows that the whip will only work a few times and then the horse either wont respond or it will slow down as a fuck you.
so what Willie would do is he would show the whip by moving his whip hand really close to the horse’s eye and then giving him a quick snap where he can feel it. then through out the race, any time he wants a little more from the steed he will simply
show the whip and see what happens.
if the horse speeds up, perfect. thats what he wanted. that was the message and the message was received.
when the home stretch happens, old Willie would show the whip and if the horse ignored it he would show again and smack him to remind him what the whip was all about. sometimes he would do it on the other side of the horse after showing it on that eye.
willie won a lot of horse races.
my favorite manager of all time was Billy Martin. he was all whip. he burned out pitching staffs, he burned bridges, he got fired 4 times from the same boss, but he won and won and won
with style. and excitement.
some people forget that part of some jobs is to provide a bit of a show.
ask hunter s thompson. writers have a great opportunity to also be showmen.
anyways because Billy didn’t understand the nuance of showing the whip, his effectiveness was only about 2-3 years and the players would realize oh this guy really isnt gonna punch me in the face, so fuck him, i wanna be traded anyways.
my problem with many so called leaders is they’re just there for the ride. they don’t want to even show the whip. they wanna hang on for dear life and coast.
the horse is not going to win if you just let it coast. which means you’re not going to win and the audience is ripped off from the show they paid good money for.
the coach, the manager, and in some rare instances, the fans, are there to motivate the star to shine its brightest
and often that comes from explosive friction.
if you can’t handle the heat, get used to mediocrity.
pros: strangely less distracting as i never turn on the tv or radio. my home office is a quiet little sweatshop.
cons: i miss all the people.
pros: no need for pants!
cons: i was getting headaches because my face is smooshed into this bigass macbook pro.
pros: i learned that the 99 cent store has a generic version of Excedrin that knocks that headache into last week.
pros: no need for shirts!
cons: i eat way more.
pros: but i am spending less because eating at home is way cheaper.
cons: there are way more people at your work that you meet than you think, and i miss them.
pros: if someone says, meet me at noon across town for that thing you wanna do for that secret project you dont need to ask permission or get time off, you just say hell yeah bro, and you’re there.
cons: you’re out of the loop.
pros: the loop distracted you from the things you really wanted to do anyways. the loop is overrated.
cons: you work all night and on the weekends when you work from home.
pros: sometimes your girlfriend is off in the middle of the week and you can hang with you as you work and that may be the best of all.
cons: she probably misses her alone time at the crib.
a long time ago i dated a wonderful young woman whos bff was busy philipps’ bff and in 2005 i interviewed her on my short lived podcast and she was a delight.
so needless to say, i have been rooting for her.
her book is really good you guys. she tells it all. perfectly. and if you get the audio book she reads it and it just flows.
i listen to a lot of “books on tape” because im a busy gentleman and im in my car a lot and even with all the channels that Sirius delivers, often i just want to hear someone reading a book to me.
i prefer the ones where the author reads it themselves but sometimes those are bad too because the author isn’t great at reading.
busy being a longtime actress is fantastic at reading and it’s her life and so it should be great. but on top of that she has weirdly interesting tales to tell about her rise to fame and the struggles she had getting there.
for example did you know that she wrote the concept for Blades of Glory, the comedy starring Will Ferrel and Jon Hader? i didnt either. and the reason we dont know about it is a very sad story that she describes perfectly right down to someone telling her that no one cares who the writer is… and how that plays out at the hollywood premiere.
sorry, writers.
there were some tragic moments, some happy moments, and even if you watch her Instagram story every day like i do, there was one surprise about her relationship with her husband that i for sure didnt see coming. mama mia.
but best of all are her impersonations. when she reads the quotes of her mom, michelle williams, and her other bff Emily BB, they are hilarious and perfect. especially how softly she delivers michelle and Emily’s words.
the release of her book came at the perfect time because she just taped her new talk show for E! yesterday and maybe im not her demographic but i wasnt crazy about the first episode, but i am for sure crazy about the book because it is a very good look at the inside of hollywood from a person who is super honest and has done big things on tv and film and was right there for some really interesting moments.
i wish busy all the luck on the tv show. i will continue to watch it and im sure it will get better. first shows rarely tell you what it will look like in the future. i clearly remember not being gaga over the first shows of Trevor Noah or Colbert’s Late Show and now i cant get enough of them. so maybe it’s me.
anyway, if i ever do a podcast again i would love to interview her because the book had me asking lots of questions that didn’t really seem resolved.
i got a twitter direct message from a young lady who said she wanted to meet me.
that’s nothing new. look how handsome and successful i am!
she said she had been reading the busblog since 2003, was friends with Moxie, and wanted to make an authentic Indian dinner for Amber and I and then tell us a great story.
apparently somewhere i said online that i liked to hear great stories. (which is true)
the problem is all of that could have been lies. anyone can say theyre friends with anyone. who knows.
meanwhile i am meeting more than my fair share of strangers on my secret project and one weird little quirk about me: i don’t like plans, planning, or having to be somewhere at a certain time and place. i would much rather someone be spontaneous with me and say yo tony tomorrow we’re gonna blah blah blah come over.
but truth be told id probably figure out a way to avoid that too because deep down im a very shy person who wants to move to central oregon and live on a farm and raise weed that i can sell and give the profits to orphans and invest in half way houses for drunks and drug addicts.
but somewhere i read someone saying that she was going to start saying yes to things. and i thought that was an interesting approach at life. i know how frustrating it is to have a well of brilliant ideas and have one person after another say no to me for a variety of reasons.
so i said yes to this internet stranger who i had never met and amber said are you crazy, theyre going to kill you and bury your remains in the backyard like they did with that wall street journal guy.
i said, i have never said anything bad about the saudi royal family! she said yes but you regularily berate trump and moxie is a republican which means this young lady is probably republican too which means theyre digging a hole right now for you and they’ll torture you too if you go there.
so she was out. plus she was feeling sick.
i Googled “what wine goes well with Indian food?” i went to the store, bought two bottles and drove to the address. (Google said white!) on the way i called my mom who said “ive raised a fool. text me when this is over so i know youre not dead.”
got to the house and weirdly it was about three blocks from the Academy in beverly hills, on a street that i had walked maybe 100 times on my way to my favorite chinese joint. the house was colorful and beautiful. i was introduced to her soft spoken brother, his beautiful wife, and their youngest son, a teenager attending beverly hills high school. i couldn’t have found a nicer family to be murdered by.
he offered me an IPA and i accepted. would it be poisoned?
earlier i had told my mom that if things had worked out differently i would have been a monk or a priest and one of the things youre supposed to do is eat, when invited, at the homes of the parishioners. and they are supposed to invite you over since you are penniless. of course i said this on blue tooth through the most expensive iphone apple has ever made while in a mercedes benz. but still the principal remained: in life we should ask for the things that we want, and if someone asks something of us, we should do our best to say yes.
especially if there’s nothing in it for us.
im not a monk. i can pay for my own meal. i can find plenty of people to break bread with. why do it with strangers? simple: they asked.
her name was Sunana, but because i had never met her i didnt know how to pronounce it. on the way over i practiced: sun-anna? sue-nana? Google was no help. neither was Siri. but fortunately through conversation i heard her sister say it and i was in the clear.
both her brother and sister in law are doctors and the teen wants to be one too. Sunana is a fantastic cook and the only republican of the bunch. but everyone loved her for good reason. she is very sweet and brought me there not for evil, but to see if i could help her brother.
help? thats what a monk loves to do most of all!
because everyone was so smart the conversation went from sports to politics to medicine to education to LA to the midwest (they’re all midwesterners) to my secret project and finally to how i could help.
i heard the fascinating story. i agreed to help. i gave them three names. but later i decided to reach out to a fourth and a fifth. we chatted for maybe four hours. Sunana sent me home with a tupperwear of three of the dishes we had eaten and i have to tell you
i loved every second of it.
it was a warm, beautiful home, inhabited by warm beautiful people who have spent their lives serving strangers via garnering as much education that they could collect. her brother is a cancer researcher, for goodness sake, which i always considered a lost cause because lets get real, how many times have we heard of someone getting cancer and it kills them? but unlike me, bro is no quitter. he sees challenges and accepts them. he is met with a problem and says ok how do we fix this? which is what i am all about too. (sometimes) (rarely)
one of the funniest moments was when he mentioned the bible and Jesus and i said “oh so you are Christians?” and the ladies said. “no we are Hindu, this is the first we’ve heard him mention Jesus!”
when the Cubs won the World Series two Octobers ago a few things happened to me and a few of my friends. one of them was we had to re-evaluate our life goals. little had we known but having the Cubs win was our #1 goal. even though we couldn’t really do anything about it. and once they won, and the immediate euphoria had passed, some of us felt confused and a bit depressed and rudderless.
me, i started not giving a crap about anything else. wanna kill me and bury me in your backyard? who cares, we won the World Series.
but the good news about not giving a crap is you are free.
whatever this new chapter is about, is truly new and truly unique because it is not anchored to anything else.
the more creative you are the less likely you are to be understood
the more ambitious you are, the more likely someone will want to stop you
people will not call back. people will not write back. people will be people.
read the Bible, they even acted this way to the guy who restored sight to the blind.
it’s ok. it’s supposed to be hard.
and you will break through.
and it will be harder
and you will get through that one. and again and again.
when we are kids we fall and bounce back. we do it so much we dont even notice. and when we cry our parents who know better say hush now. shhhhh.
whenever i think about winning the lottery it feels like a lot of work: how do you stop people from begging for some cash, what do you do about All the poor? what do you do about buying every pre-1984 Corvette model they made?
how do you buy the Cubs?
i dont worry about those things, being poor. in fact my worries seem minuscule in comparison.
for example, if one is a billionaire can one just stroll on a beach in a country known for kidnapping rich people? no. if one is a billionaire and one sees an empty sky scrapper, can one just pass it by without thinking “how can i just fill this place up with homeless people and call it a day?”
can a billionaire go to Guitar Center and leave without buying a piano, 10 guitars, 2 drum sets, a gong and a marimba? and then lessons. and then a smoke machine? and then that disco floor from The Jerk?
how many bodyguards should a modern billionaire have? how many guns? how many houses? how many top hats? how many bowling alleys? how many dive bars? how many farms?
the good book says its easier for a rich man to get through the eye of a needle than to get into heaven. how many good books does a rich man read? hopefully more than a working man because a rich man has more time? no?
life is meant to be lived and a lived life isnt easy.
if it was the aliens would vacation here more often.
pros: strangely less distracting as i never turn on the tv or radio. my home office is a quiet little sweatshop.
a long time ago i dated a wonderful young woman whos bff was busy philipps’ bff and in 2005 i interviewed her on 
i got a twitter direct message from a young lady who said she wanted to meet me.
the more creative you are the less likely you are to be understood