hi tony, why are you all dressed up?

guess.

hell if i know. getting married?

ha!

it’s christmas?

close?

omg!

what?

you’re selling me to buy the cubs?

dude, it’s your birthday!

it is?

it is!

wow! how old am i?

i’ll give you seven guesses.

get out.

yep.

damn!

totally! busblog, happy birthday. without you Lord only knows what id be doing right now. odds are i wouldnt be working at the LA Times running all their blogs.

i wouldnta been written about in newspapers around the world, i wouldnta been the subject of tv interviews in the US including G4TV (.avi), and interviewed by the French equivalent of 60 Minutes called Envoyé Spécial. not to mention interviewed by the New York Times and quoted pretty heavily in the Washington Post. although my favorite was when the LA Times in 2003 first noticed this little thing.

no way would i have helped coin the phrase “Blook” with help of Jeff Jarvis. or would i have been in the position to write the first two blooks: “Blook” (2002) and “How to Blog” (2004). nor would that word have been runner up for the Oxford Word of the Year in 2006 and i bet Lulu probably wouldnt have an award called the “Blooker Prize” where the winner of the best blook of the year gets ten grand(!).

without the busblog theres no way i woulda gotten an ipod for free, no way would i have been interviewed by LAist and then hired by them to blog for a living, and without the busblog theres no way i woulda gotten a car solely from the donations of the readers here and the subsequent road trip around the country (and canada).

no way would the dutch government have sent me to amsterdam to blog about it if not for you, the busblog.

no way would i know all the cool kids in canada if not for the busblog

and no way would i have been able to say to the readers, hey give me money, and then received enough in less than a month to fly to aruba and back if not for this lil bloggy

no way would anna kournikova, mariah carey, clipper girl, clipper girl’s cousin, and the wide variety of young women way out of my league have flown to hollywood to meet me, see me, and ravish my out-of-shape bod, if not for the busblog

but most of all theres no way i would have been as happy as ive been over these last seven years if it wasnt for the crappy job i had on wilshire boulevard which led to me discovering ev williams little creation which allowed me to fantasize about the superhero life that turned out in many ways to become reality.

all under the guise of nothing in here is true.

thank you busblog for making reality so much better than fiction.

happy blogday.

photo by mermaniac via flickr

Hi Tony. Hope all is well with you. Are you back from camping? Did you all have a great time? Did everyone come?

I don’t know why I ask all of these questions because you will answer with few words!!

Did you see the Cubs last night? I got stuck at work until 8:30 P.M. because of the HORRIBLE storm. I think I heard there were over 50K strikes of lightening.

Tornado sirens sounded in Itasca though it was hard to hear them. The lights went out a couple of times. But I couldn’t get to my car because it was raining so hard. I should have taken a picture of where we had to stand. If there had been a tornado, the big metal water pumps that we were standing near would have killed us.

Love ya.
Mom

+ + + +

Hi Mom,

yes im back from camping. yes it was fun. almost everyone came. of the missing were Linda and her little daughter, chris, james, and a few others. but we accounted for most of the lake. it was super fun.

i did see the Cubs game. it was on ESPN and thanks to the rain delay i was able to see the lightening strike on the friendly confines shortly after getting home.

why do you live out there, again?

the next time im back home i will crank up the volume of the Itasca sirens. someone seems like slackers out there. maybe the ones in medinah would be louder.

xoxoxo
tony

did the rock star provoke the violence?
did the bouncer have just cause to beat his employer?
did the rocker have the right to hit the bouncer?
did the rocker not know that the bouncer was helping?
are drugs, ultimately, to blame?
is this proof that we cant all get along?
how did grohl know so quickly that kurdt was in need?
is that courtney in the pit trying to kill her man?
is this proof that stage diving with a guitar isnt a good idea?
whats the song?

ate raw fish with me

the restaurant: kanpai
location: westchester, just north of LAX
the occasion: love of friendship, love of sushi

heres a review a reader wrote on the Times’ Calendar section a little while back:

Rave:

Get to know Peter, the head waiter. He is a sushi fanatic, and he will take care of you – I have never been disappointed by something he recommended. The quality of the fish is as high as any restaurant around. The non-sushi dishes are pretty good, but if you go to Kanpai and don’t eat the sushi, you’re wasting your time. This is not family-friendly Japanese food, but quality sushi for the purists out there. I highly recommend it, but make sure you have plenty of time to wait for the bill.

i couldnt agree more about Peter. bro knows everything. is very patient, will have the sushi chefs make your order the way you want. and will even remember you if you have a tiny habit of coming in with two knockouts.

i also made a buffoon of myself to the ladies. but thats nothing new.

using a mostly all-volunteer army of bloggers, photographers, and editors, LAist has totally decimated any of their previous traffic records with an impressive 3.1 million page views in july!

kudos to zach, lindsay, andy and the whole team. if theres anyone who knows how difficult it is to get people to click to LAist it’s me. it seems like just yesterday that gothamist publisher jake dobkin and i were at the formosa trying to figure out ways that LAist could reach its monthly goals of 500k and later 1 million, and now it’s quite beautiful to watch the kids triple that with the greatest of ease.

it’s also a testament to jake and executive editor jen chung‘s blueprint that volunteers can provide quality reporting, analysis, art, and insight on the local level in such a way that readership can grow and grow.

the concept of the group blog was one that i was aware of before being hired by LAist but i never really knew its true power until i worked there. now at the Times i preach the gospel of the group effort not just every day, but several times a day.

LAist success is also due to an orgy of posts every day, seven days a week. when you reward readers with new posts every time they visit, from a variety of points of view, you give them reasons to return several times a day. the one, two, or three posts a day from a solo blog is fine, but readers will find a way to “catch up” mid week or at the end of the week and you will only get one or two pageviews a week per loyal reader. but if you can organize a team to produce, say, 20 posts a day, every day, then your loyal readers will happily return several times a day – and they’ll tell their friends.

it always makes me smile to see LAist whomp all over its so called competition and when i was told that they were about to hit that goal i was awestruck. three million clicks in a month is truly amazing and all should bow at that milestone.

my three favorite LAist posts of July? glad you asked.

by far the most amazing one, to me, was Elise’s Neighborhood Project of Leimert Park.

a close second was Zach’s kayaking the LA River three part photo essay of love

and third, but not least, is Elise’s LAistory about the Lions Drag Strip

rock on rockers and keep up the inspiring work!

photo of an LAist bbq “meeting” at andy sternberg’s bachelor pad last summer by Sonny I. LaVista

raymi: you can only kiss one more girl in the world ever, a girl you have never ever kissed before, WHO IS THAT GIRL?

Married: Christina Aguilera
Unmarried: Anna Kournikova

Gage: Last meal: What’s it gonna be? Fame, Fortune or true love… why? Describe the one moment that has truly brought you the most joy thus far.

Last meal: rat poison pudding, 5 Big Macs, and a goblet of hemlock. i hate letting the haters have the last laugh

Fame, Fortune or true love: true love because thats what you strive for in the other two.

one moment that truly brought me the most joy: winning Best Arts editor for the Daily Nexus in 1990 because not only had i been fired from that job and later banned by the editor in cheif, my nemesis, but the Nexus had never won that award before and i had a pretty dress in which to accept the trophy.

timmay!!!!!: what can you tell me about angela poe (aka “angeleenie”)?

never heard of her but i do like CSS and tumblr blogs. my favorite tumblr blog so far is Golden Fiddlr.

Notorious bWg: They’re remaking The A-Team. Ice Cube should (obviously) get to be Mr. T. Who should be Hannibal, Face, and Murdock?

Dr. Dre, MC Ren, and Yella.

Dave: Did you get a smug sense of self satisfaction watching Prince Fielder completely melt down yesterday? Or are you one of those “Take the high road” kind of Cubs’ fans?

I am not doing anything “high” this calender year. So yes I was quite happy seeing the worlds most talented fat man fail miserably along with his joke of a team during the Cubs sweep of the brew crue.

Martin: Genesis Chapter 1 Verse 11 says “And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.” Can a man smoke seedless hydroponic sinsemilla and be righteous?

if the bible says seeds, you should rock the seeds. plus theyre fun to pick out when they start glowing in the bowl.

christie: What is the secret of the Caramilk bar?

hate.

Phaedra: spit or swallow? the girl, not you. unless you like it like that.

how did you know i like to chew girls up and spit them out? the only thing i swallow is my pride when i answer these questions.

Chris: Heard something about a TSAR show? Details please. Why are all media outlets, and do I dare say your fine organization slanted politically?

Tsar: August 22. New bassist. No it’s not me. No it’s not a chick. Opening for Veruca Salt. Viper Room. Standing Room Only. Come one, Come All. It’s ok to call it a comeback.

I don’t think any media outlets are slanted politically. Here at the Times we cant even get people to park in the parking lot properly, how are we gonna get them all (800+ people) to all root for the same team? Have you ever seen 800 people really all get along? Even in the bleachers of Wrigley Field youve got those in the left field yelling RIGHT FIELD SUCKS and those in the right field screaming LEFT FIELD SUCKS.

We are the fourth estate, we’re probably pretty much meh to every field.

David: Who got the better value, the Angels with Texeira, or the boys in blue with Manny being Manny? And on a classier note, Schlitz, PBR, or Old Style, what’s your choice?

Manny is one of the best hitters in the league. And he did that while hating the team he was hitting for. Likewise I have been an Old Style fan since my first one, when I was 14 and the beer vendor in the bleachers gave me a free one.

Mike: Dodgers vs Cubs in the NLCS… who you rooting for? Do you think the Yankees are going to bounce past the BoSox now that Yankee killer ManRam’s on the west coast?

First of all the Cubs are gonna win the World Series, no doubt, no questions asked. The rest of the losers can battle out runner up but I’d like to see the White Sox be our bitches bridesmaids.

Sarah: The way to a man’s heart is through…?

Mastery of the word yes.

all images via Raymi the Minx

which means axe your questions in the comments and omg i will answer them

and of course the times is all over it

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