russia attacked ukraine

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so shits fucked.

people are dying over there.

no one knows what to do over here.

sanctions, threats, words, tears.

in russia, all over, people are taking to the streets protesting because they dont want war.

and yet here you got the last president calling putin a genius, you got one of his sr advisors saying ukraine aint even a country, you got tucker carlson saying he wants russia to win

what?

“white people crazy” is what the line is, but everyones crazy

we are so politicized right now, so many people want to keep us divided by looking at the world through either What Do Liberals Want or What Does Trump Want

that these “patriots” struggle to call insurrectionists traitors, can’t seem to bury the confederate flag, and refuse to watch our enemy Russia invade a sovereign land and say yep thats fucked.

it becomes distracting to say the least.

the other day i got back on the horse and interviewed a mountain climbing atheist guitarist.

today i got an Armenian refugee to agree to an interview in a few weeks

an old college friend who is now a realtor in one of the best parts of town wants to do it next month

and on monday a woman who grew up in Eagle Rock is ready to rock.

so maybe i just need to keep my head down and do the thing i need to do for the next 14 years

 

the experts say dont tweet on super bowl sunday

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hell, some of them say dont tweet on sundays at all

but especially not super bowl sunday because

“everyones watching TV!”

so how did my little video get 143,300 views?

and why do people, sorry, experts, always seem to have theories about when

not

to publish on social media?

do they ever tell you days you shouldnt tell your girlfriend you love her?

do they ever tell you which parts of the day you dont wanna be told youre incredible?

do they ever say which hours you shouldnt breathe?

a, b, c: always be (in the) conversation

always tell your girl she’s smokin hot

always tell yourself you da man

always be trying new ways to connect to that insatiable maw out there.

right now im trying to write a piece about cops.

ironically, im telling them that they should stop tweeting entirely

them, their deputy friends, and the entire force as a whole

why? because they suck at it and it’s embarrassing, and they only look foolish doing it.

but for some reason i am still stuck in this terrible writers block

something that was temporarily relieved when i went to a library a few weeks ago.

ive never dealt with this before and im sure its due to my lack of weed

how did that become my popeyes spinach?

but it did. it was a crutch. it was a habit that i thought i had under control

but if i cant write or dont wanna write or whatever you call this

then how was it not a liability?

i do feel healthier. i breathe easier. i dont wheeze. but i also dont sleep.

today is presidents day and the leaf blower guy didnt get the day off so i was up after just a few hours of sleep

and i dreampt i was tweeting

maybe thats a bad habit i gotta kick too

since clearly i have hit the high score.

fucked up and didnt check my memory card

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did a perfect podcast with my man Joe

i dont even wanna see how little of it got recorded.

he was a super good sport about it and doesnt mind doing it again on tuesday

but still

ive got 1,500 of these to do before i die

i cant be doing two of the same dude in the same few days

the good news is at least its joe, who produces podcasts for a living

as well as being a musician

so he knows this shit happens

and it was really good to do it with him

i know the best people

dudes a gd mountain climber

and busted with the biggest words

arggggg

heres another lesson i learned in college

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we were in the dorms. but that night we drove up into the santa barbara mountains and dropped acid.

i have had a blessed life and yes i am grateful.

even though i barely knew these people, for some reason we all trusted each other magically.

decades later we are still extremely close.

in the morning we ate more. it was liquid lsd someone had used an eyedropper to poison graham crackers left over from the smores we never made the night before.

we took an early morning hike.

none of this made sense to me: sleeping in the dirt, hiking around for no reason, doing hallucinogens.

at that point in my life i was extremely literal and a bit of an analysis, and i would typically overthink before trying new things.

these hippies yanked me out of that comfort zone quickly and i could just sense that they knew what they were doing.

in reality they were 17 and 18 and none of us truly knew what we were doing, but it felt different then.

as we hiked someone said watch out for the poison oak.

i grew up in the suburbs in illinois. cul de sacs. courtyards. houses that all looked the same.

wtf did poison oak look like? of note: this was pure lsd. untainted. from the lsd plant or factory or rain cloud, who knows, but it was neither “speedy” nor something else, they said, but extremely visual.

despite being just 830am, the colors were vivid green in those hills. and omg the tye died shirts they were wearing were a show all unto itself.

i could barely walk from the panic of stepping into this poison oak.

soon everything looked like it.

is that it? is that it? i asked.

yes. they said. yes.

then why are you going through it?

LOL we’re kidding. keep up.

can you guys do me a favor and dont kid for a few minutes, im nervous.

at some point one of the hippy girls said hold my hand, i’m not trippin as hard as you are. i’ll show you the way.

but even holding hands felt weird and i let go.

then she said something i have taken with me forever.

look around, tony. look up at the sky. look at those trees. look at cindy and rob and chris and joe. listen to them laugh. listen to the birds. can you hear the tall grass in the wind?

then she said, if you want to spend all day today

looking for poison

go ahead

but theres way more

not poison out here

focus on what you want.

and to this day i still dont know what poison oak or poison ivy looks like

but i have seen some beautiful

magical

unreal things since.

on one hand i wanna give up on the hear in LA website

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and only do as little as possible on it

and focus everything on the podcast.

but then i think, isn’t web shit my biggest strength?

isnt that what would help me beat the Obama / Springsteen podcast?

and then i think

yeah,

yeah thats it.

A WEBSITE. A KILLER WEBSITE is what will help me compete with the coolest POTUS ever

and the boss.

i swear to you i havent smoked weed in a while.

so anyways, thats why i may keep the web site lean and mean and not the stumbling block its been since we started this gangsta shit.

RIP Tybie Kirtman, Advertising Chief of the notorious Daily Nexus

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Tybie Kirtman

She sold the ads, smoked the Camels, and stayed out of our way, which had to be hard.

How hard? Once I produced a 12-page special section in the paper, just on where to get fucked up on campus and in IV. It was mostly about shrooms and LSD. Fryday Magazine. She didn’t bat an eye. She sold the ads for it.

And that was just me! There were literally hundreds of us who passed through those doors during her decades there trying to push the limits to see if the sky would fall. It never fell.

Just the opposite.

Only once did Tybie, pictured, take me aside. I used the phrase “sorority tart” once in a column and she said, “you’re better than that Tony.”

I asked “’tart’ bothers you? I began a piece ‘Fuck fuck fuck’ the other day and ‘tart’ bothers you?”

She said, “that other piece was art. It was poetry. ‘Tart’ is something any Bozo would type. You’re special.”

I’m misting up thinking about her. She gave us all the freedom. The most valuable gift you could bestow a young person.

Without her finding creative ways to finance our paper – a freaking daily paper with no adult supervision – we would have had to study or some shit.

St Peter is hearing some great stories tonight.

-30-

53 days ago i submitted an invoice

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in fairness it was a second invoice.

the first one was 71 days ago.

when you write an invoice on December 1 you think, ah what nice Christmas gifts I’ll be able to buy my family with that money.

a few weeks later I wrote a different invoice for 19 days of December and submitted that one as well.

that was 53 days ago.

neither have turned into monies.

2021 was not a great year for me financially and those two invoices were the 2nd and 3rd that have not been paid as of yet.

in total i am owed over $10,000 for work in 2021. hard to believe.

of the replies I have received when i inquired about remittance:

fuck you tony

and

you’re an asshole.

being raised in a community as a young man where i was the only Black kid in many situations, trust me when i tell you, name calling does not affect me.

i know who i am.

but those who i owe do not want to hear sob stories or “they called me an asshole and said it’s coming, what can i do?”

after 53 days is it really coming?

is it in one of those ships off long beach, polluting the air, waiting for a truck to get it at the dock and deliver it to my home.

the one i pay rent on.

who has a landlord who will say, “oh you’ll tell me when it comes? thank heavens.”

in the college of creative studies when they were teaching us how to write fiction they said, “when you write interesting characters think about their motivations. think about whats going in their heads. why do they say the things they do, why do they not say things.”

what could go through someone’s head when they know its been 53 days since the Second invoice?

and why aren’t they saying, “i’m sorry, tony. you’re not an asshole for asking. i am an asshole for not making this happen in a timely, professional way”?

54.

 

a few times a year i suck it up and my housekeeper comes

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so i skedaddle

today i went to venice beach, which has been near and dear to me since i first moved here in the early 1700s.

it’s weird, im weird, we get each other.

i haven’t smoked weed in a while so smelling the second hand smoke was so nice.

there were a lot of aromas i smelt, but did not dealt.

one was the scent of da club. not sure how that wafted, but it did.

on the way over i stopped off at this japanese market place called Mitsuwa and picked up a Bento Box

ate it while i watched 5×5 street ball on the venice courts

they were so bad i was thinking about going out there but ive had my day

these seagulls were hovering around me because someone left a half a plate of french fries but i was too near them so they hovered, squawking at each other

be cool, hes leaving, I SAID BE COOL

but i wasnt leaving.

drank my water, watched them play. there was a young lady out there. she wasnt bad. they didnt talk trash to her. but they did put their worst guy on her.

so many mistakes.

one guy could dunk.

gave $5 to this dude who plays the piano. he smelled of piss. like real bad. hes homeless.

tunes his piano and plays really fast, missing lots of notes, adding a few to even it out.

hes half deaf.

hung out with this south american dude who sells dollar cokes

we bumped fists. somehow he remembered me from the last time i was there, months ago.

had this awesome flashback when i passed the post office that it used to be a safeway in the ’80s.

LA has been so good to me, you have no idea.

me.

stranger in a strange land.

me. fucking nobody with three cents to my name.

driving home took forever. west side. like what are people doing?

ohio, santa monica, wilshire. all jammed even at 4pm. no way around it. nearly got on the 10. next time i’ll try my luck with olympic. west siders dont wanna go through the hood so maybe Adams.

on the way in i had to write a piece for Los Angeleno.

they hit me up last night about a piece about Angelenos nominated for the Oscars.

right up my alley. i was honored theyd even think of me.

so i drove to Culver City and asked Waze where the nearest public library was.

turned out it was 3 blocks away. such a nice little library. everything was clean and nice.

but then one little girl kept repeating the same phrase over and over in the childrens section.

i was trying to do my magic AND I WAS SOMEHOW but this lil angel kept with her bullshit

i turned around to give her the evil eye but neither her hot mom nor she picked up on it.

how am i gonna fertilize an egg if i cant put up with that, i thought?

she soon left and i got back to my masterpiece.

then a different little girl ran over to this wooden kitchen and opened and slammed the doors over and over and over

why is there a kitchen in a library? i wanted to say as loud as humanly possible.

but childhood is precious so i kept my trap shut as this 2 year old banged away as her mom browsed her phone.

the old man sleeping in the chair next to me did not wake up.

the librarians, of which there were far too many for this little place did not shush her.

i was clearly the asshole, once again.

but heres the crazy thing, i got my work done.

i wanted out of there, i wanted to be at the beach, i wanted this assignment behind me, i wanted food, i wanted the boardwalk.

it was a great motivation. and im telling you i knocked that article out faster than i have done in a very very long time.

maybe ever.

weed is not the reason im a professional writer.

the angels who whisper funny jokes in my ears are.

and they wanted to go soak in the 75 degree temps on 2/10/22 too.

a rival stern group suspended me

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i deserved it

do i come right out and bash the people who bash the king of all media?

no, but you don’t have to be a genius to see what im up to when i debunk nonsense online.

why do i waste so much time doing it?

at the world famous Daily Nexus, I had very few bosses. mostly because they made me an editor of different desks pretty quickly, which is normal in college since theres so much turnover and so few people willing to dedicate their lives to the paper

but one of my bosses was Dougie Gyro

i reached out to him the other day about the design of the Hear in LA website that has gotten me to stop my momentum

i am really struggling with it because i am no design expert and i am desperately trying to make it look like something i am not: elegantly professional.

doug gave me the best advice which is actually something he told me he learned from Apple’s Guy Kawasaki

don’t worry, be crappy.

which basically means, whoever it is youre trying to impress so hard either

does not care about you one but

or

can see through the facade and only cares about the content youre actually creating

warts and all

so make your Drudge Report design if you’re Drudge, it’s the You that matters

and thats why i am so grateful that the Lord put me in Santa Barbara when he did because so many of my friends are that wise

and one day i hope to be too.