if youre not confused yr not paying attention

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At first we thought they were bots.

How could anyone buy into the obvious baloney that was being shoveled down our throats?

Those can’t be people on the other side of those Twitter accounts with American flags in the bios and Bible verses next to their user names.

I DONT BELIEVE YOU Randy59680217!

But they are real.

They are our brothers and sisters, our neighbors, they’re sandwich artists and cops and very fine people.

70 million of them voted for a person who lied thousands of times… which was the least of his sins.

People are confused right now. On both sides. On all sides.

If you’re not confused you’re not paying attention.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t love each other. It doesn’t mean we can’t be civil.

The lady on my TV today said more people died today of COVID than all who died on 9/11, and that stat will be repeated nearly every day for the next 2-3 months.

Is she correct? Let’s hope not. Let’s hope we turn this corner fast.

Let’s hope the wonderful health professionals who are in harms way stay strong and get all the support they need because they’re so vital right now.

These are dark days and they may get darker yet.

Love each other.

It’s the opposite of what our enemies would want us to do.

some days are harder than others

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dear the future,

I’ve got a boy cat who DGAF and a girl cat who very much GAF

today I asked my GF when the last time she truly relaxed

she said never?

is it a boy thing that thinks there’s magic in zenning out? how could it be if women are the ones who have spa days and brunch and tea

I teller the devil doesn’t wear a suit and knock at your door he slips into your ear hole at a young age and never leaves.

whispering the worst things

singing the saddest songs.

you’ve gotta sing with him

but don’t slide down.

yes my buckets got a hole in it

but inside be laughing.

devil hates a laughing man.

and since he lives inside

inside be laughing.

She is such a sweet person and sure she hasn’t caught the best luck

but some are just born jumpy so you just gotta give em space.

my girl cat is twins with the boy. They’ve never spent more than 10 feet away from each other their whole lives, almost all of it in my luxury mansion.

a safe home with food and drink and secret drink next to the fridge in an upside down Dodgers helmet that once held nachos.

yet she’s constantly on edge

and he’s chill as a dollar bill.

all the forehead kisses in thai town can’t quiet the demons in the minds of the ladies of my happy home.

do amber and i have a perfect relationship? yes.

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she doesnt mind that im up writing until 5am. she only smirks when i crawl in bed and tell alexa to wake me up at noon.

and often as she rises in the morning i will hear her via ESP think

how is he so sexy at 197 years old? 

but one thing we disagree on is this pandemic.

me, i say stay at home, wear a mask, and limit ways for the deadly bug to get you.

she is young and full of life and loves being out and aboot.

this causes friction. not sexy friction. and not friction that one day will create a diamond.

this is conflict that digs right to the triad of all relationships: trust, honest communication, and the desire for the relationship to continue.

what you dont trust me? she’ll yell.

no, no i dont! i’ll write on a post-it and slap it on Prince’s tail.

unlike most relationships this lack of trust isn’t of a sexual nature, as a libra on the scorpio cusp i dare you to woo her better than i

i just dont trust how close she will talk with strangers, or how close other men want to get to her on the sidewalk.

and then she does the sweetest things like put together dollar store care packages for the homeless

every afternoon as i rise i see her smile turned upside down and i know it’s over one thing: her pissed off ness for being locked up like Rapunzel, who is not allowed to have handsome italian men charge her $700 to give her hair — her beautiful hair — the Sexy Smooth she’s grown accustomed to.

and it’s all my fault.

thats what she tells me.

YOU SAID THIS WOULD BE OVER BY THE FOURTH OF JULY! she reminds me.

how did i know the GOP would let it electorate suffer this fate?

live and learn, i guess.

or just learn.

 

humans are complicated, im no different

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like a lot of people i have low self esteem

i think it dates back to being a Cub fan at an early age and endured decades of them losing

some people combat it by doing this or that to their bodies or accumulating a lot of wealth

clearly i didnt think those were the correct paths

but even today the weirdest things hurt me deeply.

say i write you an email, maybe two, and you dont write back. even though i might know how busy you are, i take it very personally.

very.

which is weird because i have put myself out there since college writing for newspapers, web sites, social media platforms, you quickly develop a thick skin. and i dont mind if strangers say my wild take on this or that is crazy or they disagree with it. i expect that.

it’s when people enter into a conversation with me and then they give me the cold shoulder when i reply is when i get sad.

it’s like, would they do that to tom petty?

but im a different tp. my brain says, they do that to you because they can. you have not created a persona that makes that not an option.

but then i think about super cool people who have done super cool things, like springsteen or obama or even jesus.

those guys get dissed to this day.

church on Sunday was talking about John the Baptist and how special he was even when he was in utero.

his reward: beheading.

so maybe not having a couple emails returned during a dark and busy time isn’t that bad in comparison.

if anything it gives me more time to write the next American Girl.

today was sad for Cub fans for two reasons

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first the Cubs announced they would be letting Kyle Schwarber join free agency.

Schwarber the loveable pudgy catcher who was moved to outfield once Willson Contreras developed into a flashy all star.

Schwarber the heart of the team that, like a cow, had several stomachs that were also hearts.

Schwarber who once hit a ball so far that it landed ontop of a scoreboard and instead of trying to take it down, the grounds crew built a little glass case around it so it could live there forever.

then the Twitter leaked the news that Len Kasper, the mild mannered announcer who often said how much he loved WGN because unlike other outlets didn’t force he and JD to wear shirts and ties.

but then the Cubs ownership created its own Cubs network… and made the boys wear ties.

so he quit and allegedly got picked up by the enemy, the White Sox.

is life terrible?

sometimes, yes. very much so.

but sometimes life is beautiful and these two men gave us so much joy

so much life

so much hope

and i am so grateful to them for that.

 

 

2020 will probably be the year i’ve blogged here the least

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let’s list the reasons this was probably the case

  • i wrote a buttload on Los Angeleno
  • pandemics aren’t fun
  • often when i work from offices i’ll blog when im bored
  • any time i had a good idea i’d either write it for work or tweet it
  • i struggled writing for Los Angeleno many nights, so for damn sure i wouldnt blog and take whatever magic was left for this old friend
  • my favorite things to blog about — sports, movies, and concerts — were practically non existant
  • i wrote politics mostly on facebook where others could easily share in the discussion
  • im not the blogger i once was

took a long walk today and saw a dead person

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as you know i like to talk to people.

mostly because i ask easy questions and people generally answer them, and as they do, they tell me things i would have never expected.

before we saw the dead person we walked past a bus driver taking a break.

i asked him, “have bus drivers here in LA been catching The Rona?”

he said, “you’re talking to one of them.”

he told us that unlike many, he didn’t lose his sense of taste or smell, but “felt like shit” for a few days. he took a test and it came back negative. then he took another test a few days later when he was super achey and he got a positive result.

he said he was sick for an entire month.

after a while he got a little better but he was rushed back to work because the benefits were running out. he explained that this was early into the plague so the union didn’t know how much time to demand that sick drivers should have off.

he said he knows of over 100 LA bus drivers that have gotten COVID.

then we walked a half block up and saw a couple of police cars and the coroner’s van. a homeless person had died. a photographer from Getty was there and a homeless worker who provides free showers was there too.

the latter tried to shake my hand as we introduced ourselves.

over 6,000 people in LA today got COVID. next week that number might jump past 8,000.

i have to stop walking around.

it’s tough because the weather is getting nicer and i sure could use the exercise but Hollywood is cray.

we’re all just walking each other home

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amber is watching a wake of someone she knew from AA meetings.

it’s on speakerphone so im hearing it too.

it’s really interesting hearing people talk about someone dead who i dont know and i dont know any of their friends.

people are singing songs, playing music, telling stories and quoting all sorts of people including the quote above by Ram Dass.

human life is so fleeting, so precious.

we touch way more people than we realize, so let’s do our best to leave pleasant memories behind in our wake.

and lets make sure to walk people home safely

and with kickass stories along the way

over 6,000

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today the LA county public health department said that they just confirmed over 6,000 new covid cases.

a few months back i was uptight because there were several days in a row with over 2,000. then i started listing them

in july i started giving bigger lists.

but now we are past 6,000?

i stay home now.

which will be hard but with my luck both donald trumps get the rona and survive, but i die.

the problem is the pretty girl.

she wants to be out every day, she wants to go on her walks.

i dont even want to look out the window now.

i want everything delivered. i want the blinds shut.

i will miss you, outside world.

but i have found my number.

i feel like ive had many educations

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i spent several years at the beginning of this century hiring people while being part of one of the few internet startups during the dot com boom that went public and stills around.

that was college of learning how to see people’s hearts, a handy superpower.

hired over 400 people there.

over the years i was lucky enough to have the chance to hire others and they were pretty much all incredible due to that early experience.

this blog plus LAist was college of learning how to blog decently.

then the LA Times was like the journalism school i always wanted. but way better.

then the Academy was like college of social media.

all of those places were days and days and years and years of on the job training and learning from the best.

and then watching the scoreboard tell you how youre doing.

tonight i watched BUtterfield 8 and sorted baseball cards.

perfect saturday in lockdown.