the good thing about uber and lyft is

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let’s say you get popped by a damn red light camera not coming to a full stop

and let’s say that the fine is $500

you really can go out into the world at all hours

and you can make that $500 in a week, or a week and-a-half

i went to court on Friday at like 8:30am and paid the $10 cash to park in the court basement

it was cash only.

and i wondered why does the beverly hills court want cash so badly?

aren’t all-cash operations only doing that because they wanna dodge some taxes?

so why is a city doing that?

is there graft in the poshest city in LA?

and i went to the cour room and there were a couple dozen of us there.

and we read our names on the print out and the balif said some funny jokes, one of them directed at our dear president.

and we plead guilty, not guilty or no contest.

it was a judge pro-tem so he was extra careful to explain everything beautifully.

and along the way i overheard someone say there was video on the website, not just still pictures.

and i was all uh oh. because all i had seen were the still pictures and those didn’t really prove anything. well today i saw the video and i wish i had seen it before i plead not guilty because after further review im so guilty they should impeach me from office.

cubs lost today too.

but they were supposed to.

tomorrow im pretty sure they will win. mostly because they played well today even though they were tired AF.

and it was hot.

and sometimes the stars are conspiring against you.

and i should slow down anyways.

lifes a cabaret, old chum.

the libras biggest struggle is to truly let go

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im not a control freak. i swear.

i feel like im the best team player because i know what its like to be the leader, the quasi leader, and the not leader.

these people get in the uber and theyre so used to being the leader that they think they gotta tell me how to get to the airport

and im all, negro, do you know how many times ive gotten someone to the airport

in rush hour traffic, on the 405?

and youd think if you have a benz and its clean and theres a liscense plate that says

xbi

and the license plate holder that says 2016 world series champs

and miles davis is playing

and ive got water, mints, and a super long cord

that id be trusted.

but no.

some people think they have to do it all and im all sit back and let me do

what im best at.

what if it turns out that i was never meant to be a writer or a director or a baseball manager

but i was meant to be the worlds greatest uber driver.

would that be so bad?

theres some people who will never be the worlds greatest anything.

i appreciate people so much. i see them. i know they see me see them.

people should try to be the worlds greatest something.

they should strive.

i strive like crazy.

im over here striving my head off.

but ok mr advertising exec tell me how to drive on the 405.

the jungle i was sent to this planet to traverse across.

theres like four days a year when i have to work late

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and tonight was one of them: the student academy awards

there was nothing i could do about it. had to work.

i got some peeks here and there throughout the crazy night.

but for the most part i had to just trust

which i can’t say i did. but i tried.

did what i had to do, didn’t do a bad job, considering

and listened to the last inning as i sped home trying to see even a glimpse of it

but when i was parking they won. they won that damn game!

they head here, to LA!

i could see it. it’s just money. but it’s a lot. and Dodger fans aren’t the coolest come playoffs.

and last year during one of the games Todd and I just sat in the outfield bar

for good luck.

i could do that anywhere.

and thank God i now have that option.

whooooo hoooooooooooo!

cop shows up in my uber backseat, an undercover one

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he has a beautiful wife.

but as i have told many before, i can find out everything about my passengers within the first 5 minutes of the ride as long as they talk to me.

it’s like that weird 20 Questions game you can get at the drug store as a stocking stuffer.

whenever i pick up someone from a hotel i ask them if theyre in from outta town and usually they are. so i ask them where and they tell me.

this pair was from Denver. they seemed rich. it was a fancy hotel. Uber Select. going to a fancy restaurant. so i say, may i ask you a question about where youre from?

they straightened up with excitement.

i said, LA will soon have legal weed. your state has had it and has made a billion in tax revenue in less than a year. that seems like a lot of pot. has it negatively affected your city at all? has anything drastically changed?

then he revealed to me that he was a cop. he said that the only thing that has changed is more tourists come to town. other than that crime is neither up nor down. all is well. then he added this:

“the sheriff and i sit on his porch and pass a joint back and forth. it’s nice.”

he did say this interesting fact… that emergency room visits are up, usually from hotels, of tourists who buy edibles and eat too many of them and freak out. they get rushed to the hospital where they just have to wait for the THC to get through their system.

i said, so if LA was to learn anything from Colorado it would be to pay great care to edibles?

he said yes. make sure they are clearly marked with the dosage and each cookie or brownie or whatever should be equal to ONE DOSE.

it was a very pleasant conversation and he gave me a $5 tip and then said

I’d give you $4.20 but you were superb.

social media is the thing people still don’t know how to feel about

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the other day ESPN, a channel sports fans like me have loved since its inception, suspended a

sports analyst

for tweeting her opinions about something happening in sports.

to be specific, she was tweeting about an ongoing NFL protest where a handful of players are kneeling during the National Anthem to bring attention to the fact that police are killing black people, many of whom are unarmed, and not paying a price for their crimes.

companies for eons have had the upper hand on the public voices of their employees but once blogging and now Twitter have risen up, the companies are panicked because OMG what happens if an employee tweets something controversial?

the double edged sword of social media is people are either posting things benign like pictures of puppies or babies, or extremely controversial items like their feelings about politics.

what these companies dont realize or want to agree to is that Control is an Illusion. and when you suspend an analyst for analyzing you look a bit hypocritical – especially when many public-facing personalities are being judged by how many twitter followers they have.

look no further than our president who was praised by the mavericky way he was able to reach out to his millions of followers on twitter and speak his mind.

so it’s a bit odd when the leader of the free world can tweet whatever he wants, but the people in the free world are punished for it.

that dynamic is what the original europeans who settled here were escaping from: royal tyranny

this country, stolen from the native americans, was built on the idea that one could express their feelings – particularly about issues of The State – without being punished.

for if the people cannot speak truth to power in America

the home of the brave

on any platform, from blogs to tweets,

then we have bigger issues than police murdering people in cold blood.

which is fucking crazy.

drove two coworkers to the chance the rapper show

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it was actually one coworker and his hot babe girlfriend

we talked about all the normal things: the bible, isla vista, frat houses, halloween and films starring child actors.

sometimes i think the world would be better if i just let the passengers talk when i drove them

theyve got good stories to tell i bet

clearly mine are good

but imagine the modern day mark twain was sitting back there

and i didnt even give bro a chance to tell me about the time he took a steamboat down the mighty Mississip?

or about the time he painted a fence white with his homie Huck.

or that one raft ride he took with Nigger Jim?

odds are my passengers dont have stories about life on the mississippi

but what if they have even better tales

tales of nights drinking mead around a round table

stories about trading arms for hostages

lies about how the 2nd amendment isnt a raging dumpster fire of tragedy slowly tearing out country apart.

afterwards i drove home, woke amber up from her nap, then she went to work

then i was alone.

all night.

except for the cats who befriended me,

but only because they were hungry.

the LAT has decided to unionize

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seems like theyre nervous about their parent company Tronc

which is the Tribune, of Chicago, which hasn’t really given them any reason to trust

first of all, dumb name, tronc, wtf.

next, they made the editors ALSO publishers which breaks so many rules of journalism

then they did weird things like try to get their execs to go to the Oscars

allegedly they took the tickets allocated to the writers and gave em to the Chicago bigwigs

then they fired a half dozen top editors

then when they realized a copy editor was married to someone they had just axed, they fired her too.

thats not exactly how you build trust.

and it’s not even journalistically sound.

hows about only fire people if they suck. dont fire them if they intimidate you or are married to someone you just canned?

it makes me doubly sad because i grew up reading Chicago journalism

and i spent four of my happiest years at the Times with many of these professionals

most of the time they were teaching me how to be professional.

the LA Times not only wanted the best writing and editing and photography and graphics and art and and and and but they also wanted it to be done correctly.

it was a slow process and not everyone was on board but for the most part the goal was simple: dont fuck up and you wont if you have the proper goals

accuracy was the properest of goals.

not speed.

i remember the day Michael Jackson died. a bunch of outlets were saying he was dead and maybe he was dead but the whole world was waiting for the ultimate umpire of a Los Angeles tragedy to make the call.

our site nearly went down because so many people were refreshing their browsers.

at first we thought we were getting hacked or it was a virus because the traffic was crippling to the mighty site.

and when the news finally was published it was so bittersweet because finally we knew the truth

but the truth was so so so so sad.

but it was the truth, which is all that matters inside that building.

tronc fucked up in major ways in their relationship with the LA Times

they should have seen this coming, they should have seen that they created this.

but alas, they have different goals

and the satisfaction of the hard working and veteran LA Times staff has not been one of them.

which was so dumb it’s hard to believe.

there’s two kinds of people in LA: phonies and friends

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you cant really blame the phonies because theres these beautiful houses on the hills of hollywood and mansions in beverly hills

not to mention beach pads in malibu

and fancy cars stuck in traffic alongside you.

and the phonies think that if they change who they are they will get the things that they want.

of course they are wrong. dead wrong. mostly wrong.

life is about living Your life, your truth, your path.

and if you get the house on the hill off that then great, you don’t have to change anything once you get it.

what the people in those houses won’t tell you is the turnover rate of those mcmansions are high

not because people be flipping them

but because fakers don’t belong there and the houses spit em right out.

tom petty died twice yesterday and he was no faker.

once he brought the Replacements on tour with him and they even jammed with he and the Heartbreakers from time to time.

the first time I saw Tom Petty was in the mid-80s. the Southern Accents tour.

i was renting a room from an old lady in Inglewood and I walked down to the show at the Forum.

for some reason i had an extra ticket and no one was buying so i placed my ticket down on the ground in the parking lot.

i dont think anyone took it.

next time i saw him was in 1989, also at the Forum, when the Replacements opened.

it was so surreal seeing them play in such a huge place, for them.

i dont remember a thing about Petty’s performance because i was so nuts for the Mats.

im sure i saw him again but the next time I am certain about was in january of 1997.

he played five nights at the legendary Fillmore in Frisco

only reason i know which show i went to was afterwards they were handing out Free posters and it was the night of the green mermaid.

again, no memories of the show other than the poster.

which i have carried around with me from apartment to apartment, lo these 20 years since.

about 10 years ago he played at the Hollywood Bowl and i didn’t have tickets so i brought $100 cash with me but everyone was selling tickets starting at $150

so i went home.

then a few years ago he played several nights at the smaller-than-the-Fillmore Henry Fonda Theater. my buddy Todd had a last minute extra ticket and he asked if i wanted to go, i said hell yeah

and that was the first time i ever took Uber cuz i had to get there fast and i didnt wanna park.

you may have remembered my little blog post about how we sat in the bar and listened through the door for a bunch of it because it sounded soooo good out there in the lobby because Petty had these arena sized amps and it filled the little club so well

probably the best sounding show ive ever been to.

the last time i saw him was just a few weeks ago at the Bowl.

i had heard that he was sick so i didnt sell my tickets.

we went. we laughed. we sang. and we got a little sad when glitches of something not so right appeared through his person.

in fact the whole time i felt like i was watching a time bomb slowly tick tick ticking.

so when they announced on twitter yesterday that he was rushed to the hospital i was all, whattya know, the person who told me was right about his illness.

and then last night he died and even though we were already sad about Vegas, i was doubly sad about Petty

a guy who was never a phony

who was always cool

who never tried to be anyone other than who he was: a chill lover of rock and all that has made up rock.

but i still cant believe he’s gone.

had the most beautiful dream last night

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i never dream, so when i do they’re usually bad

because they know they’re unwelcome

but this one was fantastic

and when i woke up i felt good inside.

but as i watched football today i thought

wait a damn second

that dream tricked you.

aint nothing changed in your life.

everythings exactly the same.

because that did not happen.

why would you believe the movie

and not the book.

every day i write the book.

we know what the truth is.

truth is that dog wanted his hair cut that way, aint nobody’s fault.

everybody wants something a little different.

and some people want dreams.

well you can have mine.

free.