do i miss her?

of course. i miss everyone.

this blog has been around half of her life. i wonder if she ever comes here. doubt it.

some people aren’t sentimental about me. some are. some are just mental.

pretty sure im mental.

20 years ago people asked what i had in common with a 20 yr old. weirdly, lots. now that i look back, it wasn’t so weird. some people just get along.

meanwhile some people who you’d think would get along dont at all.

ashley has recently married hubby #2 and is expecting bb #2.

she also has an excellent podcast with her bff anne called How do you Drew

it’s all about Drew Barrymore, which is how she and I met.

i dont listen as often as id like to because i have a podcast of my own to get out of the ghetto with.

something is telling me that hers is already more popular than mine

which is fine.

she’s a good person.

20 years ago i was looking for pictures for my website

back then i didnt have a blog, i had tonypierce.com and i liked to get big pictures that weren’t too busy and then write around the images.

it was sorta art sorta writing. if you hated what i had to say maybe youd like the picture.

one day i was looking through this very well maintained Drew Barrymore fan site. they had folders from each of the films, ads she had done, tv appearances, and so on

and in one of the folders was pics of all the fans.

the person who seemed to be the leader, or the biggest contributor named DaisyPrincess.

let the record state i was not looking for a girlfriend. i wasnt even looking for a friend. i had plenty.

the sad fact was i was breaking up with my gf at the time which was so sad because we loved each other. but we had to do it.

we were in the process of moving. and my little website was a creative distraction.

meantime my friends in Tsar were trying to make it big. they had signed a record deal or were close to getting one. but the way DaisyPrincess hyped Drew made me think, “if Tsar had someone like her on their side, it’d give them a great push.”

so i started emailing her just to find out what her story was, why was she in love with Drew. one thing led to another and we chatted on AOL instant messenger for hours every day. hours and hours. and it was all PG if not G rated.

for some reason we just clicked.

because life is bizarre, it turned out that she loved No Doubt, and that band’s stylist had just been hired by Tsar’s management. and that intrigued Ashley and she listened to Tsar but she was not really into it.

but for some reason she kept chatting with me.

after a while i thought i was being catfished. what’s this college girl in vegas want with me? i was not making any real money at that time. i was way older. i did not look like any of the guys she had either dated or swooned over on her blog. was i being set up for a tragic end? would i be found in a shallow grave in the desert if i dared drive out to meet her?

probably.

so once my breakup with my ex was completed and i moved into the apartment im in now, i suggested that we meet for a day.

i said i would rent a car (i didnt even have a car!), drive to vegas

and i told her that if indeed she was a 400 lb man who hated Cub fans and was going to kill me, all i ask is don’t touch my face,

that way my friends or my mother could identify me and give me a proper burial in isla vista or wrigley field

or somewhere strangers could gather and say omg what an idiot.

turned out she was not a man, not a murderer, and even prettier in real life than in her pictures.

we spent the night eating taco bell and watching charlie’s angels.

when i dropped her off i thought i’d never see her again because, come on. who gets a girlfriend from a message board?

either you get chopped up or you get ghosted.

but that didnt happen either.

it’s funny that i chalk up a lot of the nice things that have happened to me in the last 21 years to the busblog and blogging, but this happened before the blog.

it was like the silent film era. you did everything yourself. design, graphics, HTML… everything. even when i started the blog i would fall back to old school features like photo essays and special web pages where i would write around pictures.

why did ashley like me? who knows.

perhaps she did want to kill me in the desert but got cold feet when it turned out i really did love drew

and really did want to watch charlies angels on pay per view

and was not there to get her involved in a life of crime

like the others had.

i just wanted some killer wallpapers.

20 years ago seems like yesterday.

maybe because i live in the same place and when i look at parts of my apartment it’s easy to remember this or that.

or maybe because time really does fly

which is why you should go and meet that stranger whose probably gonna butcher you

maybe you should drive all night while playing springsteens drive all night

we are alive for a bat of a lash

so live.

i wrote the thing. it got published. someone who i did not expect to like it liked it.

but i dont like it.

i tried new things. i did all the stuff youre supposed to do. i took my time. i checked it twice.

still nothing. like the replacements i feel unsatisfied.

the last time i felt like this was in 1999. i was in frisco with the truest we had a great apartment i had like three jobs, friends everywhere, but there was a hole in my soul.

the bible reading that week was the part in the new testament about the rich prince. dude goes to Jesus and says i have done everything, what now? and Jesus said sell everything, give it to the poor and follow me.

rich prince said, whoops wrong number.

that story was told three times in three differnt books.

so i sold what i could and left. first isla vista, then mexico then LA.

in LA i signed up for a minimum wage job helping people. and within a year i had been promoted and was making more money than i ever had made.

but was i happy? sorta. am i happy now? sorta.

but this is about writing. am i happy with that?

no.

i want something to zing. i want something to fly off the shelves. yeah i hit a huge homer with that video but what have you done for me lately?

plus that wasnt even writing.

way back when i was thirty something i dated nineteen year old ashley. people occasionally asked what we talked about. mmmm everything? ashley was super smart.

one day she said, you are never satisfied tony.

maybe thats my curse.

was she the first person i ever met from the internet?

i think so.

life is such a weird and wonderful thing that i dont know what advice id have for my kids if i had them.

i would say try thing, pray a lot, and learn how to judge people by their hearts.

we can get distracted a lot by how pretty some people are, or how fancy their cars are, or how well they speak foreign languages

but one thing they teach you in little league football is “if youre trying to tackle someone, aim at their belly button, dont get faked out by their arms or head or eyes.”

ashley and i chatted a lot on the now ancient AOL instant messenger and the good thing about that is you can learn a lot about someone simply by their words. hours and hours of words.

to me thats the same as looking into their hearts, which is why i think people fall in love with writers and authors and poets and songwriters. words are the highways to the soul. and on a thing like AIM it’s hard to fake. nowadays everyone has text messages or snapchats and you could show a picture of your infinity pool or your sixpack and if your emoji game is on point who knows what nonsense you can make others believe you are all about.

but words on a blank screen, live, while you’re living, that’s pretty much you.

and so when we met it was, oh yes, hi, oh your accent is funny. oh your eyes are that blue.

oh you really do wear a cubs hat everywhere.

ashley is pretty active on the social medias and its nice to see her be such a great mom to her little angel. it’s so nice to see that her family and extended family are just as close and happy as they seemed to be decades ago. it makes me happy because it couldn’t have happened to a nicer person. and today i hope she has a great birthday.

and other drama of 2001

i didnt want a blog, i didnt want a teenage long distance gf, i didnt want 9/11 to change everything.

shows how much control i have in my life.

in the wake of the tragedy that was my longest relationship ending came a wonderfully strange romance with someone known here as ashley. it started out as an innocent hunt for drew barrymore photos, it ended in some of the more interesting tales ever described in this blawwwg.

speaking of the busblog, it was in august of 2001 that this here thing was formed as a way to blow off some steam as i toiled away in one of my saddest jobs ever.

at first i couldnt believe ashley liked me as much as i liked her, likewise i couldnt believe how quickly this blog skyrocketed to popularity. probably because at the end of the day i would take the bus home and go to my empty apartment and spend the night alone. none of the rewards that one would expect were in my driveway, socked away in a bank account, or waiting for me in my boudoir. for a long time it was all virtual.

then one day i took a chance to meet the girl who i had only known online. it wasnt the smartest thing to do, in retrospect, flying to las vegas alone. any number of terrible traps could have befallen me. she was far too cute for words, let alone, for me, of course it was a trick. of course i would be robbed and kidnapped, and sent to work in some diamond mines in south africa.

when i first saw her she was this little poof of white and blonde and smiles and immediately i carded her and all night i waited for the hotel door to be broken down but all that happened was charlies angels (the movie) on the tv and diet cokes and smiles and the start of something that could not be stopped no matter how many times i tried to pull the plug.

it couldnt have happened at a more important time for me, and im very glad it happened with ashley because i learned far more from her than youd ever guess. the most important lesson being, its ok to ask for love, and its perfectly fine to demand it.

took ashley to see austin powers. drove down sunset through west hollywood turned left at rodeo drive and then right on santa monica to century city.

some ass changed the name of the century city mall to westfield mall.

westfield mall?

the dot com that i worked at had its start in century city right there on avenue of the stars. we would eat lunch in the swanky outdoor mall every afternoon. that was in the summer of ’98. an eternity ago, to me.

it’s 840pm and two of the showings are sold out. somehow they create a 930pm show and we buy tickets and hang out in the bretannos where chris got drew barrymore’s autograph for ashley. she also got one for me.

ashley gets very excited when she realizes that drew was in the same place that she is at. very excited.

get popcorn, two large sodas and a bag of sour gummi bears. $15. back in 98 a week before i got the job at the dot com i had a date with a girl where i invited her to my house to drink the only coke that was in our fridge. $15 would have lasted me a week.

spill some of the popcorn at the door while trying to show the 36 year old usher my stub, he yells, tania! tania! i say, dont worry about it. he says, you dont want a new popcorn? no. no thanks.

as i get older i start falling asleep easier. eating, drinking, smoking, snacking, and holding ashleys hand in the theatre with a pleasant movie on made me very very drowsy. in a good way. “austin powers in goldmember” is a good solid movie. totally fun. very funny. sexy. predictable. a touch offensive. and head and shoulders better than 98% of what you can see at the movies nowadays.

mike myers is in top form. beyonce isnt bad, and mini me steals the show, again.

we take the ten home, stopping off at mcdonalds for an oreo mcflurry.

we get into the house.

turn on the slow jams.

turn off the kitchen light.