to ask me to write something about a tom waits song on his blog.

last night i was drunk and tired and not in the best shape to write about anything but when you write about tom waits its ok to be a little out of sorts i think. anyways, it wasnt about chocolate jesus, above, from the old school david letterman show

it was about a track from franks wild years, still my favorite tom waits album.

as i understand it, theres gonna be a triple-cd coming out of miscellaneous tracks called Orphans and you can hear one of the songs here: Bottom of the World. pretty much better than everything thats out right now. imagine that.

but i drank alot so that was nice. the chick who hung out with me the night i returned home from the road trip called me today to say that it was over between us and i was all thats fine. especially two days from my birthday. super nice.

then she followed it up with an email asking me what i wanted for my birthday.

rich girls who may or may not feel guilty shouldnt really ask people what they want for their birthday since in LA the sky just might be the limit.

but she knows me well enough to know that theres very little that i ask for in life other than a disease free dance parnter now and then, and high speed internet access at all times.

i asked her for a link from her blog.

my mom asked me what i wanted a few weeks ago and i said nothing and she said make an amazon wish list and i did in protest. although it is linked on the left there. no pressure, just sayin. in truth theres pretty much nothing that i want other than peace and quiet. i thought of two books i want to write now.

and i started a new idea the other day.

when the chickie wrote back to me saying that she couldnt link me from her blog because it was tied to the reason why she couldnt dance around on my coffee table any more i asked her to see what she could do about getting flagrant to link to me, if not forever, on my birthday.

am i happy that lou pinella is manager of the cubs? i would have preferred joe girardi since i liked what he did with the no name marlins. however if having pinella means that the cubs will get either a-rod or ichiro i will be happy. although id rather the cubs persue some pitching.

am i happy that christina aguilera tickets go on sale monday at 10am.

since that is the morning after my birthday it will be interesting to see if i wake up in time and remember.

madpony + funny LAist story + rapotblog

remind me never to drink so much that im the drunkest irishman at a pogues show. shane mcgowan, one of my all time heroes has damaged himself so much that not even a stage full of excellent musicians could help him stand up, speak, or keep it together.

he slurred so badly that not even his band knew what song he was calling out. “this ones called mrrrrrrrhhhhhhhahhhhhh”. which made the band break into “A Pair of Brown Eyes.”

and almost like a stutterrer who sings plainly when he breaks into song, Shane somehow only missed about 25% of the words, but when he sang it was crusty and rickety but solid. he sang two songs, insulted the audience, and walked off to refill his water bottle full of gin. then the band played a tune without him and he’d return for two more tunes and another exit.

the crowd didnt seem to care, which was nice, but this blogger did as it was breaking my heart. i listen to the pogues at least twice a week if not more. particularily if im writing something indepth that requires spell checking and facts. theres nothing better than that traditional irish music sung by that hapless drunk.

to me shane is a true punk rocker. he seriously doesnt give a fuck. he is so loved that they sold out 4 nights here in LA. three at the wiltern and one in the oc.

far be it for me to say “sober up, drunky” but i cant imagine wanting to see that sort of trainwreck again.

tonight im going to the beach to hang with anti and tanky and the pacific. then i will go see a show. maybe rancid who i love. maybe boyz II men. maybe bo brice at the ventura theatre. anything but my hero who is one big boozing fiesta away from the grave.

dont ever listen to me whine. ive told you that a million times but here you are listening. shut your ears. its not gonna be pretty.

all i wanna do is sleep. im so dumb. every day almost for a month i was out and about and driving and falling asleep at the wheel or eating something or checking out of a room or checking into a room. but today i slept in as late as i wanted i did whatever i wanted and now i dont wanna do the thing that i came back to LA to do: see one of my alltime favorite bands ever: The Pogues at one of my all time favorite places The Wiltern.

on top of it this hot chick got me to do two things i didnt wanna do. you know youre old when you dont have a facebook profile. so she rolled off me this morning and said i looked for you on facebook and you dont have one, why? and i said cuz youre a fraction of my age. and its only for college kids. and she said nuh huh its open to anyone now. and i was all good for you now do that thing you did last night.

and she did and later when she was leaving she said quick lets get you signed up and i had work to do. i had hella blog posts to write for LAist cuz for some reason everyone took the day off of writing for LAist today so i wrote something crazy like seven posts. and she asked me every personal question imaginable. i was all YOU TELL FACEBOOK ALL THAT INFO? i drew the line when she asked me my cell phone number. but she just flipped open her sidekick and typed it in and suddenly i had gotten a page and i was fucked. now facebook knows my everything. and it emailed like so many people from my gmail so if i bothered you im sorry. i dont even wanna be on that thing.

whats the other thing she did to me today. oh yeah she didnt get me the weed i requested from texas. when someone says yes i will get naked with you even though youre 18 yrs old and i dont do 18 yr olds anymore but i will if you have a huge sack of weed waiting, have the weed waiting. its not cute to get tony pierce mad. i know everyone thinks its like the funniest thing omg ever but its not. there are lots of bridges for me to jump off of and i know that if i ever do it its gonna be because of a tiny college girl with absolutely no body fat and less pubic hair.

girls today think that everything revolves around sex and that may have been the case when i was a younger man but im a senior citizen now. ive seen and done it all. theres no fucking chick that can make me jump through a hoop for sex no matter what she promises unless it includes every single one of the dallas cowboy cheerleaders in uniform. sorry but heres what motivates me nowadays: silence, housekeeping, early morning blowjobs, and writing well for LAist. and no, blowjobs isnt sex so shhh.

she did something else to me and now i cant remember what. bitch. OH YEAH she made me throw a birthday party for myself and then “remembered” that she was going out of town. so now im having a birthday party in my house, something im pretty much against, ive invited tons of people, i barely even wanna be there cuz im gonna be pooped and a horrible host, and shes not gonna blow me when the clock strikes midnight infact i wouldnt be surprised if i never see her again.

so if you live in LA and didnt get an evite or a gmail email from me today and you wanna come to the bash, email me and i will send you the directions. i think i turn 115 or some shit. and now im late for the pogues so hasta.

its not even midnight and im tired. i have no idea why. yeah i just drove around the country but its not like i walked. its not like i wasnt treated right by pretty much everyone everywhere i went. its not like mother nature didnt totally take it easy on me. its not like my car wasnt ideal.

everything fell into place the whole trip and at this point i should have some deep and powerful lessons learned that i should share with you. but im so tired. but ok i will.

but first let me tell you what happened yesterday at the university of phoenix arena where i bought one ticket for $80 to see my beloved Bears face off against the arizona cardinals on monday night football.

my ticket’s face value was $25 and it was in the corner of the new stadium and it was way up in the sky but still a good seat if you ask me because even though im olde my eyesight is pretty good for some reason. probably all the preventitive glaucoma medicine i took while in college.

i got to the game three hours early because a) what the fuck else was i supposed to do in zona b) where else would i rather be than surrounded by giddy bears fans in the parking lot in sunny phoenix glendale c) i wanted to make sure i got a ticket

the bears fans were everywhere. the tailgating food smelled wonderful but how do you ask to eat someones steak? it was bad enough that i was video interviewing them without their permission.

because arizona is smart they have this little area right by the front door of the stadium where the cops watch as people sell their tickets to people looking for tickets. and its ok to sell them above face value. anyone who thinks im a democrat is crazy. i believe in capitalism and small government more than the next guy and i love that little area of freedom and i didnt care that i was paying almost four times the price, i wanted in and everyone else were selling better tickets for $300 and even though i could have gotten that sorta scratch, i promised myself not to pay more than $100 and i got my ticket and sighed a sigh of relief and partied.

the game started and the bears let the fucking usc rookie march down the field on them and the fans cheered. then somehow they got another touchdown. then a field goal. by halftime it was 20-0 or 20-3 and i had walked all around the spacious stadium to try to find a lucky spot for the Bears who had nothing working for them and at halftime i was that close to leaving the fucking place in disgust.

i found myself in the smoking section of the arena which is a ramp on the far end. it was dark and gloomy and all the people were smoking and drinking and the bear fans who were once loud and proud were quiet and hopeless. these were the Bears we had all grown up with: fucking retarded losers.

as i interviewed people i asked them if i should leave and they all said no. i said but i can make it to Vegas by midnight if i bail now and they said youve been living in LA too long, this aint no fucking Dodger game.

and the fans cheered me up and we moaned and we drank and i inhaled their second hand smoke and it felt like being in college again. and i met two girls who were acting so wild i didnt know if they were just party girls or working girls or what but i liked them and they seemed to like me and in the video below you can see the dude ask me if im with the Bear fans or with the Cardinal girls and i walk over to the Cardinal girls as a joke.

by the fourth quarter the bears are down 23-3 and now ive snuck down to the best seats in the house. ive found an empty seat next to a guy dressed in a bear outfit from head to toe. he looks like a 7 foot teddy bear. he has a bears jersey on. he doesnt say a word.

with 11 minutes to go in the 4th quarter i have circled the stadium dozens of times and ive even tried to ignore the game to give them luck but it doesnt work, rex grossman goes three and out for the last time and i did what my mother often does – leave the room. in this case i left the stadium and i wasnt the only one. so many of us hopped onto the shuttle busses back to the high school two miles away where the parking lot is. someone jokes that zona had scored again and we all moan.

the guy im sitting next to calls his wife who says, god i feel so bad. and he says, “you? im the one at the game in a fucking grizzly bear outfit.”

get to the lot, find my car in the dark which is tougher than it seems. everyone else has car alarms that they activate from their key chains but i have to rely on my spidey senses and find the fucker and turn on my computer to figure out if im gonna go to vegas or LA or san diego or mexico. everywhere is 6 hours away and its 8:30pm and i had been given some drinks by the ladies but i had convinced myself that those, just like all the other beers, were bad luck beers, and i poured them out after the bears had done something dumb. but still i was too tired and buzzed to drive too far. at that point i realize that Yuma should be my last stop. it was only two hours away and four hours from San Diego where i could have a late lunch with my girl danielle who i hadnt seen in too long.

i drive out of the lot, end up on a freeway that takes me past the stadium and i think, man im glad i didnt have to fight traffic against all those cars, but wow no one else seems to be leaving the stadium. then i turn on the radio and the announcer says “the bears somehow stay undefeated in what might have been the craziest ending to a monday night game EVER.”

and thats how i won the game for chicago.

you’re welcome.

this video was shot in the smoking section during halftime

pregame tailgating video here + photos here

the grand canyon was never truly in the plans. neither was phoenix but thats where im at right now. the plan was to kiss a girl in every state but sometimes girls pretend like they dont wanna get kissed which is pretty much the stupidest game ive ever heard but if kissing girls is what youre after get used to stupidity.

grand canyon was big and deep and colorful and it wasnt my first time there so i sorta knew what to expect however it sure took a long time to get there. so long that i kept asking myself, am i there yet am i there yet? the trip there, to be honest, was better than being there until a japanese girl asked me extremely politely if i had a lighter so that she and her friend could get high and sit on a bench and look at the grand canyon and i said i had one but it was in my car and they didnt trust me to come to my car even though there were like a million people around us, and they outnumbered me two to one and they were the ones who asked ME.

so i said baby if you dont trust me then theres nothing i can do, go ask grampa over there. which they did but grampa spoke french and french only. little did i know but this was international day on the southern rim of the canyon, since all the normal americans were in their living rooms watching football and ordering pizza.

everyone had a camera. everyone thought they were Mr. Photographer. everyone walked around like they were Mr Natureboy. people rode their bikes, people hiked with camera bags over one shoulder. people pretended to understand maps. i was pretending too. i was pretending that i wasnt getting a minor case of vertigo where i couldnt see how close the rail was to my hand. my depth perception was taking a little holiday and i was all where are those japanese girls to set this shit straight again.

i drove down the mountain and got sleepy after only an hour and i pulled over at an abandoned motel that looked like it had Just gotten shut down. i cracked the window, eased the seat back and put the alphabet city girl’s sweater over my eyes and tried to sniff her perfume from it but i think i sniffed it all off. and i fell asleep for exactly ten minutes and woke up forgetting that i had left my lights on accidentally but because i had a new battery all was good in the hood and i tried to google maps where i was but Grand Canyon, AZ doesnt really do well in google maps, little known fact, and lots of places around it dont have real addresses so i couldnt figure out if Vegas was really only three hours away or not

so i drove south to some little town and ate and then decided to come here to Phoenix because da bears are playing here for Monday Night Football and the Cardinals have a new stadium and i didnt really wanna be in Vegas on a Sunday since i try to keep it holy by not fingering girls’s assholes or beating off or being mean or being in vegas. so here i am. i ate the hugest chinese meal ever that included two crab legs. i got stared at by two girls in a fucked up car who wanted to find some trouble and sometimes girls just give you that eye contact that says take us somewhere tony we’re so bored being dirty hot young chicks in zona with no one to tell us to dance on the spare bed in the non smoking embassy suites room that you just got

but its sunday so i watched andrew sullivan get interviewed by brian lamb then i took Marie’s advice and watched Lost via you tube and then i ate ice cream and i wrote one email and then i played PSP golf and tomorrow i will do laundry and maybe a movie and then go see Da Bears break matt lienarts everything.

if you remember, flagstaff was the town that made me turn around and go home when i first started this trip two months ago. i was told by two auto parts people that my engine would probably need to be replaced because of an oil problem, but as long as i checked the oil every 100 miles i would be able to make it back to LA.

of course i did make it back to LA, and after a $6 part i went back on the road a few weeks later, and here i am still with a slight oil issue, and a hood that doesnt like to open, but ive made it around the country and today i will go to the Grand Canyon followed by Vegas and then i will be back in LA.

because a lot of hotel and motel owners read the busblog heres some tips i have for you

1) when the checkout time is noon, dont have your maids knock on doors at 11am, particularily on doors that have the Do Not Disturb sign on the handle.

2) some people are grossed out with the idea that hundreds if not thousands of people have entered the room and “lived” in it throughout the year. have a checklist that declares that not just the sheets, toilet, sink, and pillowcases have been cleaned, but also: the remote control, the tabletops, the blankets, the spreads, the carpets, the faucet knobs, and the door handles. if you can establish that your rooms are clean, you can demand a higher rate.

3) this is a new world. i am just one person and i carry several electronic devices. therefore motels should invest in one or two power strips next to the bed so the modern traveler can plug his ipod, laptop, video game, camcorder, and digital camera battery charger in and place those items on the night stand. instead we have to disconnect lamps all around the room and spread our equipment all over. i was particularily amazed that “executive” and “residence” inns didn’t have a place for a variety of electronics.

4) if you are advertising hi-speed Internet (like 75% of better motels & hotels do), make sure that you are providing an ethernet cable long enough to reach the bed. just because you invested in a desk for the room or suite doesnt mean that we want to sit at that desk to use our computer. sure it looked great in the blueprint, but it’s a lap top that the majority of us brought into the room, let us put it on our lap, on the bed, as we watch tv.

5) it’s time for motels and hotels to go green. its nice that you ask us to re-use towels if we stay more than one night. we can live with that. but how about stopping your bizarre behavior of the little soaps and the little bottles of shampoo and conditioner? even the best spas use soap dispensers as well as shampoo and conditioner dispensers right there in the shower. not only would you save money on soap, but you will please the greens by cutting down on paper waste and plastic waste from those little bottles.

6) keep the hot tub open until 2am. if you’re worried that people will party in there and be loud, simply ask them to keep it down. communication really does work. and since most motels shut down their pool and hot tubs at the ridiculously early 10pm, the chain that begins to cater to responsible adults will win.

7) any front desk worth its salt would have an ipod charger available for the guest who left his behind. most of us have ipods. most of us on the road lose something. same goes for digital cam battery chargers and cell phone charger. its easy to invest in one ipod charger, and a universal digital camera battery charger, and several cell phone chargers. ask $5 for a charge and not only would you recoup your investment but your guests would probably love you forever.

im sure i will have more tips later. its now time to see americas ass crack.

first lemme say that there have been many great benefits to this road trip. one of them was seeing old friends. one of them was seeing my family. one of them was seeing the bears and the red sox and the cubs. one of them was seeing new blog buddies. one of them was seeing blog buddies who i had only met once or twice.

and one of them was seeing the wide varieties of motel rooms that you can get for uner $100. which leads us to the La Quinta in Norman, OK, which for $99 was one of the sweetest rooms that ive stayed in. apparently La Quinta is Spanish for “Hidden Gem”.

currently im being asked to leave the Baymont Inn & Suite of San Rafael, New Mexico which is probably the nicest place i’ve stayed in under $50, but that happens when you luck out and find a newly renovated motel by pure fate.

if theres a motel chain out there or a motel/hotel blog that would pay for me to travel around the country and the road and stay in a new room every day, perhaps i could convince my boss to create USist and i could write about this fine nation, which is fine, and speaking of fine check out that interview with Madpony Kristin who gave me a sweet tour of OU which is red bricker than i expected and smaller than i thought it would be and almost like a perfect lil college town.

of course anything connected with Kristin would be ideal. we had a nice little lunch at one of her favorite places which was packed because OU fans flock the campus on weekends that the football team plays, even if the team is bad, even if theyre about to lose to the undefeated Big 10 school, even if the game is a full 24 hours away.

kristin is also someone who i would hang out with a lot if she lived on this side of the mississippi. shes so smart. shes so quick. cameras have a hard time capturing her beauty. especially her eyes which you really should wear sunglasses else you’ll catch yourself swooning.

when it was discovered that i had a long drive ahead of me we took off before i could meet her perfect husband. but she pointed me in the right direction and i sped through oklahoma city and saw the baseball park and the arena where the Charlotte Hornets now play and then i was out there in the praries of OK.

i stopped off at the Cherokee Trading Post to take pictures of their famous buffalo. and i had some beads to trade for land but they were all ha. i was all meh. they were all exit. i was all k.

while driving on the President George Bush highway outside of the Dallas Fort Worth airport i got a phone call from someone who used to be super important in my life. for the sake of anonymity lets call her Clipper Girl’s cousin, since she is a beautiful young former nba cheerleader, and the cousin of an nba cheerleader who i would sometimes hook up with. this particular girl was way more than a hookup, we’d often spend lots and lots of time together, and we probably said we loved each other probably ten thousand times.

so this particular young lady, oh and lets pretend that this is the busblog and nothing in here is true, called me up this evening as the sun was setting while i was on President George Bush freeway in Dallas and my stupid phone is stupid so it rings when it damn well pleases but it definately beeps if i ever miss a call.

i saw that i had missed her call. now Libras, which i am one, have weird things happening for them around sunset. its a well known secret. i for one get extremely emotional during that time. even scared. basically all the things that im not any other time of day happens to me for that half hour or so when the sun is really setting. i think it has something to do with the transition not being a firm one. i need, in many parts of my life, to know if its night or day, black or white, do you love me or would be happy never seeing me again. so sundown fucks my shit up and makes me very uneasy.

and im not a big fan of texas and im not a big fan of dallas since they were the team that would always beat the bears in the playoffs back in the day and i really cant get behind a city that has a fucking road called President George Bush freeway.

so i shouldnta called her back right then but i did because i had a feeling that she was gonna say some really sweet things to me because i just hooked her up with something that no one in her life would have been able to hook her up with in a million years, something that you clip, frame, and put in an important part of your house.

instead what the conversation devolved into was her saying all these super mean things to me. saying i was insane and delusional or demented or something with a d-e begining and i was trying to keep it together but the sun was setting and my mojo which had already been stolen way at the begining of this trip was threatening to never come back.

and i was sweating even though it was cold in dallas tonight. and i tried to tell her nice things but she just got meaner before i could even say anything. and i hate that all of our last talks have always been fights and i was really hoping that not talking for a long time was gonna change that but all it has done was end the good thing that we had once upon a time.

and the devil always whispers things in my ear but the angels have a pretty good seat at the table and they were all, dude just get famous and rich and all these bitches you have been good to who diss you will feel bad, and the devil just laughs and laughs and says come on you know that never happens and its not like tony wants people he loves to ever feel bad.

and the road got twisty and turny and the radio started sucking so i turned on the ipod and it was as if the angels started choosing all the best songs just for me. its the reason god invented shuffle, so that sometimes he could talk to us through song. and all the songs spoke to me on that dark highway entering oklahoma.

what one of the songs told me was that just likes theres a first kiss, theres always a last kiss, you just never really know when its gonna be with some people. and even though you might remember that first one, if youre not paying attention you will forget the last one.

another song told me that sometimes people have their hearts hardened for a very good reason so that you can move forward and they dont want to hear that you miss them and still love them and will always love them because they need to move forward too. and even if it doesnt look like theyre moving forward in all parts of their life, dont worry, the best you can do is be nice even though nice guys finish last. every time. even though being an asshole is the easiest game in town. even though being distant is super simple. even though anyone can pretend to be a certain way, but if you are yourself and the cheerleader gets naked for you then you know you have something good there so dont fake. dont be a faker. dont let loss ruin you. dont think that being successful is going to change anything. sometimes the ho in front of you just dont want you. no matter how you make them tingle. cuz lord knows youve turned your back on some hot pieces of ass for no good reason too.

i was at a junk yard today wearing my bears sweatshirt and one of the guys said i love the bears and behind him was a dallas cowboys insignia engraved in a hubcap and his boss said boy thats sacriledge to say that shit. and one reason i dont tell many sad stories on here is cuz just like the junk yard man, everyone loves a winner. but sometimes you just have to keep it real. and after you lose, if youre lucky you’ll get to pull into a mcdonalds, take off your sweaty sweatshirt, towel off with your trusty towel that douglas adams was so right about, and you put on a new shirt and you get back in, and continue your journey. and mookie, always do the right thing.

top photo by bicycle mark when we were filming in nyc