i have lots of pics i love. here are the 16 im willing to discuss at this moment.
one of the places i lived in San Francisco was on Haight Street a block from Fillmore. Near the end of the Fillmore line is a legendary rock club. At some point in my day I thought to myself, “Sound check for Elvis Costello tonight is probably 4pm.” So I got on the 22 Fillmore bus at 3:30pm, waited around a little in the mist and at 4pm a limo pulled up, Elvis got out. Earlier I had told a different guy, “if you take my pic, I’ll take one of you with him.”
one of the weirdest parts of my blogging career was how popular this blog was in canada. im not sure if it was raymi (pictured) or matthew good who linked to me first from up there, but as soon as they did, this thing went to another level for years. this is a halloween party up in toronto where raymi is dressed as a woman who got her neck slit open. im dressed as an american.
i had never been to a movie premiere before. liana miraculously got two tickets for the premiere of kill bill 2 at the chinese theatre, and you got free popcorn and pop.
very few pictures exist of me in college or with a skateboard, or wearing a swatch, or with chris smoking a cigarette wearing my amnesty international concert tee shirt. later that year i would have an epiphany on that plaid couch while watching roger clemens pitch in the playoffs.
found myself having to drive Cheech to his home and i said i have about an hours worth of questions for you on this 40 minute trip so strap in compadre. he answered them all.
i used to get invited to speak at colleges more often. but then the kids started quoting me on twitter.
my first day working at the LA Times also happened to be the paper’s Christmas party. this was the publisher David Hiller. he introduced himself to me and said, “Mr Blog Man, I have heard of you. I have a blog myself. Do you have any advice for me?”
I said, “I have seen your blog and it is good, Mr. Hiller. But I would not invest too much energy on it if I was you.”
Shocked, he said, “but why?”
I said, “I have heard a little about your life. You have a great life. Great life = bad blog. Bad life = great blot.”
And he laughed and laughed and someone took this picture.
I had no idea what to wear to work on your first day so I wore a ski sweater.
my first day at LAist I wore my lucky hawaiian shirt – which I would mysteriously lose the day etienne and i broke up for the second time and swim trunks. Basically on 6/6/06 we had drinks at the Good Luck Club and I said 100,000 people are reading this blog, your blog, right now. i know a way to get to a million. when i left we were at 1.3 million. the pants (left) knew we were gonna do it as did big tanky (right) because i was wearing a funny hat.
my last day at LAist i wore a robe and pajamas because the slur against bloggers was we were just losers in our pajamas in our parents’ basement typing up a bunch on nonsense. we were celebrating that i would be overseeing all the blogs at the LA Times. to my right is mr adam rose who had already made the leap from LAist to the LA Times, he was blogging about USC sports after a beautiful run of being the Sports Editor at LAist, a job he begged me for of which I gladly allowed him to do. he was incredible at it. he would later become a big wig at the huffington post.
sxsw austin about to ask a few questions to the drummer of metalica, watch amy winehouse, kiss a beautiful woman, and finish that diet dr pepper. sxsw is my favorite thing all year and i rarely go. but when i do i try to savor as much as i can while getting plenty of rest. the trick is to get a hotel right downtown. it will cost more. but if you can get a 5pm nap for about an hour and then go back out there, you’ll look as handsome and healthy as that smooth bastard.
i was sitting on a panel discussion in chinatown next to ev williams, pictured, who near the end takes over the laptop connected to the projector and it announced that Blogger had just that minute been sold to pre-IPO google. a few years later ev would co-found Twitter. the thing you probably clicked first to get here.
before i got work at the academy, i struck out on a bunch of job interviews. i couldn’t see why. my track record was incredible. but in retrospect, maybe the man upstairs was just waiting for the oscars job to open up. it turned out being the longest job i ever held and the most dramatic positive surge: 4,000% increase in followers.
crazy thing about LAist. we had no budget. i couldnt pay anyone. so i would throw barbeques at my apartment once a month. everyone would show up, theyd even bring food. it was beautiful. i think people write better when they like each other. this group loved each other.
bleachers, wrigley field, thanks to a go fund me supported by the greatest friends in the world. game four world series. three games later the cubs would win it all and my charmed life will have reached a peak.
on a road trip to canada in a dingy motel in oregon
on a road trip in ontario and quebec wearing a belt from a drug store that would tighten no problem but didn’t like to unloosen. etienne had just bought me ray bans and said i looked handsome for once and would like to take a picture of me at the count of three. un, deux
