when i flew to california after high school i had no friends here

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quite a change from Illinois where i had gone through kindergarten to high school knowing pretty much every single kid.

was i popular? when youre the only Black kid in your grade it helps to be popular, but for sure everyone knows you. i was also loud.

santa monica college, 1984, michele had ripped runned fish net stockings, a skirt of some sort, a raggedy sweater, converses with words written on the sides with lipstick, she had the blues eyes the blackest hair and more lipstick on her pout

i said hello to her in the outdoor arena where bands would play at lunch time.

she had a wild looking friend with blonde dredlocks and barbie head earrings.

both a bit intimidating because not one girl looked like either of them in my preppy midwest high school, but this was exactly what i wanted when i moved to LA so i said hello again

i have no idea how i got a date with her but i did and one led to 100. she lived in malibu in a neighborhood where every house is worth at least $2 million, but she was not rich, far as i could tell. maybe her dad had money since he was an engineer way down in manhattan beach but their house was modest and so full of love.

the mom, the brothers, michele, the cats, the food, the open mindedness of everyone.

when i say i have had a charmed life this is exactly what i mean. if i had picked the blonde, none of this would have been the case. but fate put michele next to me and even though we broke up three times, we got back together repeatedly and i learned that Geminis are just like that, as is the world, so just roll with it and stop taking everything so personally.

she taught me about U2 and poetry and journalism, as in that was a path one could actually take and make a living from, and it would be honorable. before her i just assumed it was created inside a hollowed out volcano somewhere and delivered by magic.

we went to foreign films and talked all night on the phone and kissed and kissed and drove and drove because i lived in inglewood which was 32 miles away. 

worth it. every time. every single time.

after a while her mom said oh tony just spend the night.

i was so catholic and so midwestern and such a virgin, i declined the first few times but you do get drowsy after smoking a little weed on zuma beach under the stars.

i forget where i read it or heard it. it was either a model or a porn star or an actress who said

guys move to california and they think they’re gonna meet some hot native californian and make out on the beach and live the life everyone sees in movies but not it’s not like that.

and i know the world famous busblog says nothing in here is true but lets pretend for this minute that sometimes things are true here

you can move to california (or wherever) and you can have whatever it is that you want

and it will not be what you expected it to be.

but it will be perfect for you.

and sometimes it will be even better than you ever dreamed of.

happy birthday michele!

heres the thing about LA that visitors are confused about

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LA is in a constant state of change.

demographics, housing, cars, fashion, drugs, music, art

it’s all building on itself, it’s moving and growing and

never stopping

so yes you can try to parachute in here from new york city

and you can see if your predetermined expectations are realized

but then you might make a wrong turn and see the most interesting thing

something that no magazine has ever written about

and then what do you do?

do you dare be original?

do you trust your bosses wont yell at you?

or do you just come straight out and say, LA is a caterpillar that is turning into a butterfly

and then a sports car

and then a train wreck

and then a forest fire

and then a drought

and then a race riot

and then a gang bang

and then Woodstock

and then and then and then?

or do you just say fuck that and pay attention to the one thing you loved

and report back on that

because aint no way youre gonna describe the past future and present of shit

not you

new yorker.

i got my tape recorder today

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and with it came a free box of fear and insecurity

both of which i will go to the Americana tomorrow and return at the Amazon store

here i had been waiting and waiting for this thing and then when it came i was all omg

how do i compete against all these famous people

how do i think of good questions, how do i make it not-too-long

how do i couple it with great social media and razzmatazz?

then i got a phone call and she said why are you scared, youre tony pierce

but im not tony pierce in the podcast world

in fact being tony pierce in that world is like being tony pierce in figure skating

so in that regard i totally wanna do this because it’s just ridiculous.

and heres another way to look at it

any breakthrough filmmaker, musician, rapper, artist, even race car driver is saying

i know all of you are more accomplished

but ive got something a little different, may i say

new

and people fucking love new

of the many things i learned from Amber was this

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Amber was really good at editing videos and putting them on YouTube

i was amazed because she learned almost over night and did it on my iPad!

so yesterday i heard our buddy Ken Layne on a podcast and i was bored from waiting for my life to begin, so i took a little one-minute chunk to see if i could make a funny little video of it

and i did.

and he loved it.

which means i do too.

it only took me an hour to do.

but more importantly it taught me that this is what i should do for all of my podcasts in the future: find a good chunk, add some funny pictures, and post it on the youtubes.

being praised by Henry Fuhrmann is better than winning a Pulitzer

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Henry has seen it all in his decades at the LA Times. He worked in various offices around LA and saw it all from the inside out.

If he had not embraced The Web the way he had, there would have been no way our success would have happened.

I knew I was in trouble when I landed at KPCC and asked where the copy editors were. As Henry tweeted, when I was first at the LAT there were 100 of them. At KPCC there were zero. That never changed. Finances. They considered it a luxury.

When you drive your car do you consider your brakes a luxury?

The man who would successfully push me out at the Times also didn’t believe in the copy desk. He created a blog that would publish first and have copy come in afterwards. I said why would you do that? He said he wanted to be at the cutting edge of Google Trends. I said great you get your headline on the top of Google News and what’s gonna happen when people click and it’s a mess? He said, no one will notice.

But that’s the funny thing about big time digital news from a big time news org: they notice the errors way more than the successes.

I am glad that guy is no longer in my universe.

Likewise, I feel blessed that Henry even knows my name.

had a good chat with the therapist

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she told me she liked my idea for the podcast but was worried about its ability to make money

i said you and me both, gurl.

but then i said, ive been in jobs where the companies were in financial peril and i hung in there

the entire time i was at the LA Times they were in bankruptcy plus Chicago was trying to destroy it plus all these other entities were trying to hurt it.

this is nothing new.

whats new is i will have a smidge more control over the outcome

i wont have to have things approved

do you know how insulting i took it to have certain things approved in my life?

i was all, didnt you hire me because im the expert of this shit?

havent you seen me turn loaves and fishes into mcribs?

we got this.

and then when i did it, months later i had to do the whole approval process over again.

maybe its how i show up in the world.

maybe its because i dont speak the way they want or say the things they want

or ESP the things they wanna silently hear.

doesnt matter any more.

they’re doing their thing and i wish them well, i honestly do.

but as soon as i get this damn tape recorder which is in DTLA right now waiting for the UPS man to bring it to me

imma start living my life.

got my car outta the shop (not pictured)

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i dont have a lot of money. i dont even have a job. but sometimes you have to invest in your car.

for a year i have been broke and for a year my car has needed to get work done on it.

brakes, oil, you know: little things

but i met a guy by the river and i did a little favor for him, so i paid off a chunk of my apple card

and then put a grand back on it fixing my car up.

youve gotta be careful going into a shop and just omg paying for what they say is wrong

but this place is different. ive known the son for two years and his dad who has owned it for nearly 40 years. he’s going to be retiring soon. it’s a small place that usually works on very expensive Benzes like the $80k classic in the picture above.

apparently someone accidentally put diesel in that one.

when i asked how many miles that 57 year old car had

the guy said, no one knows because the odometers back then were only 5 digits.

when i got in my car it drove like it was brand new.

i can drive it to you.

 

it was a good day already at 10am

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woke up on time. got the car to the shop. the dude was great.

walked over to the jack in the box. sat down in there. ate an egg and bacon croissant

drank juice.

watched two people parked in their tesla watch netflix on the car’s giant ipad.

listened to a man talk on the phone in spanish.

listened to how twitter went through one rough patch after another

like an expensive plane trying to get through the turbulence and into the clear air above the clouds

it was warm but not too.

got over to hollywood n highland and walked around dave and busters

why not

theyve got some wild machines i may have to try out one day.

poked my head into hot topic because thats my boo

remembered there was a kobe mural

then i noticed there were these little signs on the ground to show you how to get there

got up to the fourth floor and there was these

two barriers stopping you from getting to where the mural was

i also saw a kid in a wheel chair with his mom

they were waiting for the elevator to take them back down

there was nothing else up there on the fourth floor

and this kid had a lakers jersey, lakers flags

and his chair was purple and gold

i said, if i move those barriers would you want to go see the mural?

his mom said we came so far to see this

yes!

so i moved the barrier

looked around

motioned them in

and they got their picture

and i got mine

may was really good, blogging wise

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my goal each month is to post at least one thing a day and in may i went over.

i think part of the reason i was productive is because i wasn’t worried about the Medium blog any more, and i was sorta working for this thing, and it filled me with creative ideas, of which i gave to the thing, but i also gave to this thing.

and now that energy is spilling over to the forthcoming podcast which i will start working on this week.

today i have to wake up before 10am to go to the benz repair shop to get some things worked on that i shoulda gotten done a year(!) ago but covid.

hopefully he doesnt find a million things. and also hopefully i can fall asleep soon so i can wake up early.

i am eating creamed spinach and generic minestrone soup.

for all of 2021 i have cooked for myself. it’s a little bit of a miracle. the creamed spinach is probably a ripoff because it was $6 for two bags. you put a bag in the microwave for five minutes and out comes a good sized serving of Popeye’s favorite.

do you know i love you? i do.

the last time i had a colonoscopy the dude was all, for a guy who eats fast food as much as you claim, you are super clean in there, but one thing youve gotta do: more green leafy vegetables. and i asked, is creamed spinach ok? he said yes but take it easy on the cream.

the soup is generic low salt like old men eat. i get low salt because they say the only reason people like certain soups is because it has lots of salt in it. so this is how i judge canned soups. if it can taste good without cheating, then cool. sometimes i’ll add chicken or peas or beans to make it a real meal. sometimes i’ll air fry a thick slice of bread.

but tonight i just nuked that spinach and called it a night.

this has been a very weird first half of a year.

things have already happened that i did not expect at all.

im very curious if this podcast will make things even weirder but weird good, for the back half of this

please let it be so, God.

today is kyla’s birthday, i think shes 19?

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i am not a good uncle. i probs would have been a bad dad.

my shrink asked me why i never had kids,

i said because condoms work.

she said but why didn’t you want kids?

i said, i think it was because the ladies i was getting naked with didn’t want them.

she asked, if you met someone who wanted kids would you have them?

i said, if i was in love, madly in love,

which is code for stupid, sure.

she said, you think love is stupid?

i said no, i think love is the greatest, but when you are in it you do super dumb things, and i am telling you this out of experience.

so you think having children is dumb? she asked.

i think me having kids is a risky move because of course i would love them and try to be cool to them, but i overshare and i dont see a lot of parents do that, so maybe it’s not a good thing, and if i was around little kids i would want to do the good thing, not the idealistic thing, and i have no clue what the good thing is

and maybe the good thing is to just lead by example and not be an asshole

that way if a kid, like say, my niece, sees me doing things, she will say “oh that seems not ass holey. i think i’ll do that too.”

which isnt to say i havent been an asshole to people, in fact i think about the times i have been so cruel, all the time. but i think the reason we are still breathing is to grow and learn from those sins.

kyla this year helped me transcribe some of the things ive been writing and that was an unexpected joy. and i paid her and she said you poor. i said doesnt matter, you should always ask for payment when you work.

she said, ok but how about you put it in my college fund.

which i did. totally forgetting that college for her starts soon.

in my head shes still a little kid putting on way too much sunscreen.