shes 24. she has the coolest look the best voice and much better musical taste than all of yr friends minus me.

last year she interviewed me on her show on music plus tv and earlier this month at sxsw i was fixin to interview this one dude and this other dude went omg tony pierce and i was all thats me and he was all bro i was the producer of the music plus show that jenn interviewed you on and i was all please tell me shes here and he was all i dont know where she is and whatever he said after that my mind just wandered cuz jenns all that.

born in kansas where only the koolest kids move away from (johnny carson, zulekia, burroughs, max) jenn packed her bags right after high school and ended up working with me at E!

this was back in the day where brooke burke, jules asner, and alecia tyler roamed the halls but there were only two girls who id hope would pass by my desk each day – this news chick who looked like mariah carey and todays birthday girl.

this was back in the earliest days of the busblog when no one knew of tony pierce and i dont even know how i ever got the courage to talk with her but somehow we did and she was even cooler than i could have guessed and last year about this time the stars aligned and she an i sat next to each other on the planeride home from sxsw and we transfered planes in zona and missed the connection because we were drinking too much tequilla in the airport taqueria which was bueno with me-o thats for damn sure.

and if the stars woulda aligned this year i woulda said jen what about the cribs, what about the kills, what about the ting tings, what about care bears on fire, and she woulda said yeah but what about blah blah blah and i woulda been all damn girl i aint even heard of them and her blue eyes woulda sparkled and i woulda floated away

happy birthday mtvs shoudla been vj

whereever you be j

here’s my bro’s answer to the question “Is TV or print media more impacted by the Internet?”

Interesting question. I’d guess print media, for the simple reason of price point. Broadcast media already knows it must be free to consume, unless it adds the kind of differentiating value (i.e., cussing and Adult Situations and hyper-specialization) that can graduate it to pay-cable or satellite radio. Newspapers, though, have institutionalized a half-century’s worth of inaccurate, monopoly-driven belief that they must cost money to be somehow credible. Even while (with a few exceptions) degrading their own physical beauty & failing to take advantage of the things that only tactile products can offer. Partly as a result of both, their print circulations continue to plummet, and even at this late date ink-stained curmudgeons openly ponder the insanely idiotic idea of throwing more content behind paid firewalls.

This kind of fat-headed mindset created an Original Sin that all newspapers save the UK Guardian and SF Chronicle have committed — fucking up their archives. Some time in the not-so-distant future, news organizations will make serious money out of the mere fact of having cajillions of individual Web pages of super-credible/interesting information, alongside which targeted ads can be sold. Besides leaving that advertising money off the table through the pound-foolish idea of selling archives, these news organizations — whose very selling point is their comprehensive intelligence — have willfully made themselves underrepresented on the place that matters most — Google. That’s a whole generation of brand-building just washed down the drain. Incredibly, incredibly stupid.

I’ll point to one other way that print media is more impacted — competitive mindset. TV is competitive across most markets and platforms. City newspapers are mostly uncompetitive, except for the global share of eyeballs. The bottom-up Internet, by definition, is hyper-competitive, even though the business stakes are usually much lower. On one side you’ve got “amateurs” happily toiling for free in the drive for more respectability and page views; on the other side you’ve got a bunch of morose monopolistic lifers who don’t try harder and who see the word “competition” as being roughly equivalent to “child pornography” — a degrading, definitionally harmful phenomenon. I am generalizing for effect, but only just. Read the woe-is-media criticism from any Legacy Media lifer — your Bill Kovach, Tom Rosenstiel, Len Downie, whoever. Competition is a dirty word, causing job-loss and degradation in quality. Almost nowhere do you see big-city newsrooms taking responsibility for their own failures. Compare that to the happy-warrior, individual-responsibility mindset of bloggers, and the phrases “irresistible force” and “immovable object” come to mind.

What most newspaper execs fail to realize is that they’ve got a gigantic built-in advantage in this new world. Leverage the things only newspapers can do — quality, ubiquity, depth, physical beauty/interest — set the product at 21st century prices (free), give each story a URL that lasts forever, embrace competition with the zeal of a convert … and you’ll run the table. But the mindset is the obstacle, and after having been on the inside even of a forward-looking section of a newspaper that’s trying hard right now to change cultures, I’m pessimistic.

i miss matt and emmanuelle very much and i hope DC appreciates who they have. i also wonder how awesome it would have been if he and i had worked together at the Times at the same time. anyways, one of the “imbeciles” shoving their content behind pay walls, oddly is ESPN.com, who ghettoizes some of their best blogs back there. why on earth would they do that to perfectly good bloggers?

anyways read all the rest of the Mayor Sam roundtable here, which by the way, left Zuma Dogg out of the discussion, for some reason.

speaking of Emmanuelle, she reminds us that yesterday was the 1 year anniversary of Cathy Seipp’s death. you’re still on my Facebook list, Cathy!

interview with chuck philips, the LAT writer who knows all about 2Pac’s murder

many LA car washers get paid less than minimum wage, are illegal, and get treated like crap by the owners of the car wash

check to see if your neighborhood car wash has been fined before

iphone users: “It’s turned me from a really annoying know-it-all into an incredibly annoying know-it-all, with the Internet to back me up,” said Sadum, a technology writer in Denver. “It’s not a social advantage.”

the el camino is back, yo, but it probably wont be called that

the soldiers are not only ghost riding their vehicles in iraq, theyre video taping it

dont you have a photo essay that celebrates easter while relating it to AC/DC?

why yes, yes i do

(click the pics)

Mike asks: when’re you gonna get Magic and Worthy to start their own LA Times blogs?!

last time i checked magic has a lot of plates spinning: TGIF, Magic Theatres, Starbucks, Fatburgers… I’m not sure if he still owns and operates all of those things but he is also doing the AIDS stuff and he is at Laker games all the time. I’m not saying that other bloggers arent busy too, but when would he have any time to write?

As for Big Game James… he does a lot of TV work for the Lakers station, which keeps him pretty busy too. So i dont think either of those laker legends would be interested in blogging. i think they barely have time to admire their retired jerseys.

PatZ ponderz: what are your Final Four predictions.

ucla, stanford, tennessee, wisconsin

Dan pleads: can we have your archives back? please?

when we have three LA Times blogs that are getting over 1 million page views a month, yes. right now we have uno.

Bob D requests: Can you please provide us with your predictions for the MLB season? – Cubs record? – division winners? – World Series winner? – Fukudome’s stat line?

cubs will be (100-62); san diego, cubs, mets – angels, tigers, red sox; cubs will win it all, fukudome will hit .300, 25 hrs, 75 rbis, 20 sbs, 5 errors

Adriel queries: should i kiss him even if it’s mostly because i’m needing to forget about the last one?

hells yeah!

4rilla wonders: Wondering if you will be attending the Red Sox vs. Dodgers exhibition at the Coliseum?

hells no!

Phaedra axes: Smarties or M&M’s?

M&M’s have been a favorite of mine since I was a tiny little infant. I’m not sure if i have an Easter basket waiting for me from my mom, but if i do im sure she will have a few pounds of the lil fellas waiting for me in there.

so for sure M&Ms.

mmmmmmm

new fotos of madpony courtesy madpony enterprises

and some answers

Tony, im having a hard time sleeping lately. I stay up late all night talking to this really cute girl and end up getting around 4 hours of sleep. do you think its worth it? – wesley vena

wesley,

your question touched me in such a way that i wrote a little poem/song about it.

voila:

butterflies and marigolds know nothing
they flut around and sing of this and that
cop cars chase around the bad guys
the fearmongers sleep with baseball bats

but its ok
yes its ok
oh its ok
to be in love

shes a dream girl
might be a stripper
but shes the kindest soul you know

and its ok
yo its ok
mmm its ok
to love

your helicopter leaves a trail of rainbows
her skateboard spreads skidmarks of glitter
your phonebill says ha ha youre poor now
but thats ok cuz you just found skype

so its ok
man its ok
bro its okay to be in love

sleep is boring
dreams are lying
pillows suck your brain at night

buts shes lovely
she likes weezer
her bff is out of jail

so its ok
fuckin a-ok
dude its ok to fall in love

its the springtime
of your content
its the boner in your heart

it is ok
damn right ok
angels sing all night bout love

call her earlier
buy a web cam
put it down your pants and type

say i love you
bitch i want you
fly out here and watch tv
bring your girlfiends
bring your short skirts
spend a month with me by the beach

cuz its ok
fuckin ok
truly ok to love

check out the interactive ncaa map via the la times

1. you should give thanks to the Messiah for dying for yr sins
2. you should give thanks to Christie St. Mahtin for writing tons on the LA Times
3. you should give thanks to Jah for letting you make it into another Spring
4. you should ask your boy a question in the comments since its fryday, yo

today he answered the question “Kareem, why are you always so angry”?

An excerpt:

One of the common myths about me was repeated last week when a friend of mine was playing in his weekly basketball league and a teammate asked him, “Why was Kareem always so angry?” That’s not the first time I heard this charge. What’s weird about it is that every morning when I get out of bed, bluebirds, squirrels, and deer help me get dressed while we sing “We Are the World.” By the way, squirrels really suck at tying shoes. And deer often mumble the lyrics.

Even that doesn’t make me angry.

What’s interesting about the question is that the person who asked the question is white. In fact, no black person has ever asked that question. That’s because they already know the answer.

you can read the rest here on the Kareem blog.

my 2 Live Crew concert review got up on the LAT’s Soundboard, and they were nice enough to accept my headline

“Still Horny After All These Years“

which strangely enough was not precisely the headline I was mulling over. i was considering “Still So Horny After All These Years” which my editor Margaret, i think, wanted, but she chose the former, which is totally fine with me.

im a weird writer in that once i write it down i couldnt give a fuck what you do with it. you can change the headline, you can rearrange the words, you can change everything. once i make the poop if you wanna sculpt it into a castle or a snowman, its all you. i have thousands of more in me and theyre all gonna get out at some point, so no use fighting over this one or that one cuz like doritos i will make more.

also i trust and respect my editors and copywriters and i value their opinions, no shit. also sometimes i have to make hard decisions and i always appreciate it when my cohorts just let me do what i need to do without a lot of ‘splaining.

another story that got posted yesterday was my Flatstock photo essay.

Flatstock is this huge concert poster convention which is better than a kid in a candy store cuz its art. and everything is pretty much reasonable. and cuz it doesnt turn to poop after you enjoy it.

why are things so poopy in my mind today?

anyways its very nice to be able to bring my love of photo essays to the LA Times.

and its totally awesome that I am the one who gets to do it.

genius.

as always.

and hilarious.

can we just elect jon stewart?