if the hillary people made this, like for reals, then i’d like to ask: who !@#$ing approved it?
if the obama camp cleverly made this, im voting for him
Reply
best thing i saw in my inbox
Jay-Z is gonna play at the Hollywood Bowl with Mary J!
worst thing i saw when i clicked the link: the prices
FIRST LEVEL GARDEN BOXES
US $350.75
SIDE BOXES RAMP AREA
US $250.75
SECOND LEVEL TERRACE BOXES
US $250.75
LOWER BOX LEVEL SIDE SEATING
US $150.75
FIRST LEVEL BENCH BEHIND BOXES
US $85.75 – US $150.75
BENCH SEATING BOX LEVEL
US $150.75
SECOND LEVEL BENCH BEHIND BOXES
US $55.75 – US $85.75
THIRD LEVEL BENCH BEHIND BOXES
US $55.75
FOURTH LEVEL BENCH BEHIND BOXES
US $39.75
so to sit in the back of the back of the hollywood bowl will still set a brotha back $40 a ticket plus ticketmassa fees? Jigga Please!
because im a zillion years old i remember when the SI swimsuit issue actually meant something
the irony of sports illustrated for me and for many boys in those days was the subscription was usually a gift from our parents or grandparents. it was ironic because, just like several of the critical letters that appear in followup issues, the swimsuit issue was the most jerkable material in the house.
puberty is a weird thing for both sexes. its so weird that you dont realize youre going through it until decades later. as much as i love the Internet Age i do worry about the kids. especially the boys who are bombarded with so much pr0n before they even make it to puberty that i wonder what they make of it all.
seeing Cheryl Teigs in that wet fishnet suit was an image that was so rare and amazing and beautiful and fascinating that as a lad i memorized every millimeter of that photo. same goes for the following issues with christie brinkley.
i remember getting a swimsuit issue and slowly going from one page to the other as if it was christmas and i wanted to savor each gift.
with a gazillion internet pages of smut out there today, do the boys even know what savor means these days? do they think that Every woman is just waiting to get naked for them? do they think that theres no limit to the various amounts of poses, situations, and sexual acts that Any woman will find themselves into?
surely the kids must be confused as hell today. which is why i feel for them.
oh for the days of a smiling supermodel walking down an exotic beach in a one-piece.
oh for the days when the mail man would deliver the one magazine that you’d store safely under your bed and carry with you for decades as you moved from your mothers house to the dorm room to your first second third and tenth apartments.
marisa miller is no slouch but i wonder if she wouldn’t have been the Biggest Thing Ever if she was born 20 years earlier when she would have had far less competition for the swimsuit connoisseur.
do these models even have posters any more? do outraged librarians even write hilarious letters claiming to cancel SI for the rest of the year due to the swimsuit issue any more?
do the kids even read magazines like this any more?
life has passed us by, and with it an innocence lost,
and a boner popped for all the wrong reasons.
dude, dont call this dude dude
17-year police veteran throws around his authoratay on a 14-year old kid
he is now suspended and metafilter has the scoop
write down the things in life that you want
well before i got this dream job at the Times, i used to “write to” my local paper in this very blog. i used to say that they should hire me and welch, i used to say that they should have blogs, i used to say that they should utilize the fact that they were this huge respected paper in LA therefore why not let the celebs write about their lives in first person.
because im not (that) insane, i never really thought that all of those things would come true, let alone come true pretty quickly. but thus is the miracle of life.
steven tyler of aerosmith talks about affirmations, and even though you probably should listen to old rockers who still have it, im not sure i believe wholly in the magical power of such things… but i do believe that if you really want things you should write them down, mostly because if you dont even have the guts to enunciate them then you probably dont even believe in them yourself. and you are the start of any magic trick.
super bowl friday i was late to work. because i have the best boss in the universe there really isnt such a concept. she wants me to feel comfortable so she told me to come in whenever, leave whenever, just produce and create and manage the best blogs ever. therefore i usually get in around 10am-11am, and usually go home between 8p-9p. that doesnt mean i dont have phones ringing in the early morn or emails going back n forth in the wee hours, but this is a love more than a job. so whatevs… to the max.
anyways two fridays ago my mom was nagging me to go to the post office to pick up a package she sent. every day she kept asking if i had picked it up or reminded me that it was there so even though i was running a tad late i went, murphys law i got in a long line, but got the gift. thanx ma!
rolled into the office around 11 (embarrassed) and started going thru the emails. about 20 minutes in i see an email chain from the sports editor and my boss about the fact that kareem abdul jabbar was interested in writing every day for us. the emails started at 9am.
now most bosses would have called me frantically as soon as the talks started and screamed “why the hell arent you here yet!” but not mine. she totally has a gazillion plates spinning, as i do, and she omg trusted that i would handle this project that was clearly my responsibility. trust professionalism and honest communication. do you see why i love this woman?
so i contacted kareems manager, deborah morales, and we chatted for a few minutes, we agreed to meet on the monday after the super bowl at the times, and sure enough there was kareem on monday afternoon.
now over the super bowl weekend i picked up kareems latest book, on the shoulders of giants, which is a history of harlem during the harlem renaissance. totally fascinating, totally well written book. his sixth! in it he talked about jazz, and real estate politics, and race and culture, and, well, america. but in it he also talked about how he was once Lew Alcindor and how he is now Kareem Abdul-Jabbar – that he had transformed. but what caught my eye the most was how he proclaimed that he was once a basketball player and now he is a writer.
i asked him about that line when we met and he confirmed it and i said, well theres no better place for a writer than behind a computer blogging every day. and with that me and isabel and josh (both pictured) began to show him how to blog. it was an extremely interesting afternoon where we talked about jazz and sports and politics and history and writing, among other things.
it was plainly obvious that this great man, one of my childhood heroes, was just as well rounded in real life as he came across in his book, so i recommended that if all he wanted to write about some weeks was jazz, then he should write about jazz, same for politics, same for.. football if he wanted. and since we were all still in the glow of that great superbowl, our first blog post was about how much he loved the super bowl and how his famous basketball number was inspired by his childhood hero who was the blocking back for the ny football giants back in the day. like many of my friends hear me say, i told kareem “write it down!”
and unlike you and i, after he wrote it down, he just happened to have a photo of himself with the manning brothers. it was then that i knew that this would be a very very special blog.
when it launched yesterday i was relieved, amazed, proud, but mostly thrilled that this great man was starting something that very few celebrities and/or athletes do: tell their tales on the daily in public without a net. this is a man who has met pretty much everyone you can imagine. he has had unprecedented successes (after his freshman year at UCLA he never lost a game in college). and as a pro he scored more points than everyone, yes even more than jordan.
he has full license to write about anything that he wants, in any way. it’s a real blog, it just happens to be under a famous newspaper’s masthead. im pretty sure nothing like this has ever happened before – a hall of famer writing about a wide variety of topics, not just sports. which should make this fascinating for anyone.
so yeah, start writing down your dreams, and write down what you expect to do when they come true… because they just may.
ladies and gentlemen, i now present the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar blog
in the LA Times
am i thrilled beyond belief? yes.
did i read the book The Lew Alcindor story 50 times in grade school? yes.
was it nearly impossible for me to keep this under my hat for the last 10 days
no. cuz im a professional.
sorta 🙂
read it, be amazed, tell yr friends.
art credit terry smith
anonymous came to my block today
a few weeks ago i did a roundup on the freaky lil war between the church of scientology and a global group of interneters that call themselves Anonymous
it was decided that today was the day that Anonymous was going to protest around the world. “be very wary of the 10th of February” they wrote on various web sites.
if you’ve ever been to my bachelor pad, you know that i live quite close by one of the many buildings owned by the church. and if you know me you will know that i consider them good neighbors. they have 24/7 security, they are polite, and the one time that they came knocking on my door they politely left after i asked them if they had come over to talk about the Bible.
wanna talk about Scientology? they asked. wanna talk about Jesus? i asked back.
we shook hands and went on our way.
today Anonymous came to my block and they were polite and many were well dressed, and far younger than i expected. it wouldnt surprise me, if i learned that this was many of the protesters’ first march.
because it was such a nice day today (upper 70’s), and because i heard one of the masked young men say that they were going to Hollywood Blvd., i grabbed my camera and went over there to see if things were more “heated”, because they were very mellow over by me.
for example, not even the scientologist dude who was videoing the protesters freaked out the kids
hollywood blvd is always a little trippy, which is why its my favorite street in LA. so lets see a variety of different pics of the rally:
as i said last month, although i support people’s right to protest, i also support people’s right to their own religion, no matter how wacky outsiders might think it is. because i like costumes and young people getting off their fat asses and doing Something and because i love the warm weather, i enjoyed the rallies, but i didnt like that they were protesting this church when we have far more powerful churches who are doing far more obscene things.
with that said here are the two people i enjoyed meeting the most this afternoon.
the first was a young lady with a pretty funny jacket who was kind enough to turn around when i asked for a picture.
and the other was a guy with a sign that said that he was a Scientologist and he would talk about his religion with anyone. he was super nice. very easy going.
he said that there were things about his church that he had problems with, but he still choses to be a member.
he included in the message of his sign the phrase “i do forgive” which is a polite dig at Anonymous whose motto ends with with “we do not forgive, we do not forget”. he told me that all the protesters had treated him with respect. and for the time i was there no one shouted at him and he was super mellow. he said no one from his church told him to be there, and it was pretty obvious that he was telling the truth about his experience.
then this guy tried to shove a sign in his face and sorta spoiled the mood.
whatevs, it was pretty damn interesting and im glad i got off my fat ass and took pics for you. best chants from the crowd? “boycott beck” and “save will smith”. i also liked the sign that said “xenu is my homeboy”.
from hollywood, tony p, reporting for thee
update: a video i took and some more pics here
bangs of the year
raymi has a lot of good things going for her. shes got an award winning blog. shes hot. she has a great bf… who takes lots of pics of her… for her award winning blog.
her bff is hot. her art is hot and everyone buys all of it.
somewhere along the line raymi decided to review shitloads of food in her blog along with her normal ruling, and thats hot.
and then this week she up and gave herself bangs and now we love her that much more.
oh, and she just won the 2007 Anna Award for like the fourth time in a row.
congratulations, Raymi.
more awards to be announced later.
top of the ticket breaks into the technorati 1000
one of the ways to measure success in blogging is through a site called Technorati. when i was at my last job, LAist, one of my first goals was to get us into the Top 1000 since no other -Ist except Gothamist had cracked that milestone at that point.
to be in the Top 1000 means that out of over 100 million blogs, you are one of the top .001% in regards to popularity and influence.
when we did it, we tried to get to 750, then 666, then 600. i was confident we could do it because this very blog, the busblog, had made it to the low 300s just two months before i joined LAist.
after i got hired at the LA Times in December one of my goals for 2008 was to get not one, but several of our blogs in the Technorati Top 1000. it was an ambitious dream because at the time the LAT didnt even have one blog in the Top 2000, and no newspaper blog had ever been in the Top 100.
today i got an email from Andrew Malcolm (pictured above in the center) announcing that the political blog that he writes with Don Frederick (and some occasional special guests), Top of the Ticket, today made LA Times history. Heres part of his email:
Subj: Pop the Corks!
Two days shy of our eight-month anniversary, Technorati has just this hour elevated Top of the Ticket into the world’s Top 1,000 Blogs !!!
We are now 998 with a weight of 1676.
A month ago we were 2224 with a weight in the 900s.
Congrats to everyone. We need a cake or something. (And a blinking star by the blog’s listing on the homepage. 🙂 )
a lot of people told me a lot of things before i started working with the Times. and id be lying if i told you that all of it was positive. but i can tell you this – Andy Malcolm has been an absolute joy to work with. he and i have emailed each other almost every day since even before i officially was hired on, and not only that but he has taken pretty much all of my little tiny bits of advice and done miracles with it.
bro works all day, all night, weekends, wee hours… hes not the slightest bit afraid to experiment in writing styles, subject matters, or marketing directions. when we first met in person we talked for hours and i showed him a few things and he said “every week teach me something new.” my man is 64 years old – not even twentysomethings have asked me to teach them every week, but andy has, and that eagerness to succeed is clearly one of his biggest strengths.
once i showed him Technorati he was obsessed. not just the list, but who was on it and what they were doing. he became, like me, a student of blogs and trends. he was already a veteran journalist, political expert, and fine writer, but now he’s an online force that simply wont be stopped.
added to that his partner Don Frederick in DC, contributer Scott Martelle, and web deputy Diana Swartz (pictured above, right), Top of the Ticket has just begun to rock. can Top of the Ticket hit the Top 500 by the end of the year? duh. can we get there before Summer?
whats the phrase? oh yeah – yes we can.
congrats Andy, Don, Diana, Scott and everyone else on the team!
watch this aggressive video reporter get shocked by this obama supporter
lesson: one of the coolest things in the world is an educated brotha.
dont sleep…