i get conflicted bc being Gen X i’m not supposed to care, im supposed to be a slacker, and i cant remember the other thing bc i dont care

but i do care

however i have this crazy struggle between idealism and what i “SHOULD” be doing

idealism says do whatever you want

SHOULD says you should be doing xyz

so at night when i have gone the day without blogging, New Tony has been saying fuck that shit, watch netflix you pay for it

but Should Tony says, you were doing so well this year, you had a few months where you wrote every day.

but Some Things In This Blog Are True Tony says the reason you cant write is because you dont want to make public all the things you are Actually thinking about and tip toeing around some serious, life changing, emotional parts of your current life is fucking exhausting and ultimately boring, I thought you were the muthafuckin busblog

at its heart is this

life right now is crazy enough i dont wanna lie on this blog even though…

and crazy meaning good. i love my podcast. i was so nervous about making one but after years of seeing idiots do things poorly i figured fuckit, i couldnt be any worse than them.

turns out i am not any worse than they are

in fact i am pleasantly surprised at how well theyve turned out

due in no small part to mr jordan katz

who i could not have done this without and i am so lucky

and who is in store for an excellent hanukkah gift because seriously

there is a huge Evel Knievel Snake River gorge between thinkin up something

and getting it out into the world.

i had been thinking about Hear in LA for years.

Jordan made it happen.

[rock on in yiddish]

if you havent noticed, im a crazy person.

im interested in so many things,

but also not interested in the things i see a lot of “successful” obsess about

things like time management and setting goals and putting things on a calendar.

i am a man with very little anxiety, and i feel a little guilty about that because as i have gotten older i have noticed how many people suffer from it in big and little ways

and yet somehow it has passed me over. thank God.

but one thing that stresses me out a tiny bit, and therefore its totally unacceptable, is having something on my calendar.

i hate it.

i want to be 100% free.

certain things i can deal with. deadlines ive never had a problem with.

we’ve gotta have shows up on mondays and thursdays. fine.

and yes i have to schedule some of the interviews because people have lives and you wanna seem professional. but still

i bet you 30% of the reason i quit having a shrink was because it totally fucked my day up by having something at 3pm on a thursday every week.

it sorta ruined thursdays because i had to think about what i wanted to say, and i couldnt book anything on those days because murphys law something would run long and screw it all up.

it was just way too much stress for the reward. which wasnt that huge of a reward, no offense to the nice lady.

but i dont have problems getting to my problems. in part because my schedule is wide open.

i am comfortable with who i am, my friendships, my self image, my place in the world.

my shrink was on me about omg you broke up with your gf that must be very hard

no. we lasted 4 years. through so much drama. and one year of COVID.

the whole time dumbass mfing trump was president.

anyone who can make it through all of that should feel like they accomplished something and i sure do.

i have no regrets. i tried everything. i did a lot. and now on the back side i cook for myself, do the dishes

AND look at how many posts i wrote for this dead blog last month. which was the point of this post.

that dumb calendar widget that i put in this blog reminds me of the days i miss.

and motivates me to have fewer of them each month.

not so i can save up for a BMW.

not so i can lose weight so Blah Blah Blah will fall in love with me.

but because i want that number to be bold and hyperlinked.

how insane is that?

i learned early early on that everyone is motivated by very odd, personal things that are often unique to them. if you can figure out what it is you can be a great aid to them.

for me, for this blog, its that dumb calendar.

the busblog is nearly 20 years old.

however there are some things that really shouldnt be on here.

super true things, for starters,

and also things that could find a bigger audience elsewhere… like on Medium

my secret blog over there is busblog.medium.com

things i want to put over there are

exclusive interviews

various bits about hollywood and the surrounding area

workout tips

cryptocurrency insights

van halen lyrics

breaking news

detailed details about my personal life

and links to my onlyfans content

today i wrote about my favorite corporate Twitter account, Wendy’s.

on Facebook i do this thing called

today in corporate twitter

where i critique when brands make fools of themselves

or in this case, where they really shine.

so since Wendy’s carved out a day where they could make fun of people and brands, it seemed like the perfect day to launch this new blog.

i hope you liked it, but even if you don’t when you go there follow me and click the hand claps and comment and print it out and make a paper airplane of it and put that in a bottle and toss it into the sea.

and i hope i get it.

got a lot of work done

sold a magazine for $16 on ebay and mailed it off

talked to my mom

drove to a dollar store and bought a giant sweet potato for $2.50

made mashed potatoes with the potato

added peas and Impossible burger

wrote emails

danced in the hallway next to the radiator

watched very little tv

put up some hooks in the shower

took a shower

shaved

got in 3,000 steps

registered to give blood tomorrow

thought of some incredible ideas for this project.

figured out some things this company’s competitors are doing dead wrong that they can exploit.

applied at another company if this thing doesnt pan out.

played with the cats

blogged. which is def an accomplishment because this month ive blogged nearly every day so far this year, which i hadn’t done in the januaries of any of the past most recent years.

as you can tell from the image on the right, my production here on the world famous busblog has diminished year over year.

i barely got 200 posts on here last year.

true, i wrote 100 posts on Los Angeleno, but that’s no excuse.

this is my baby. this is my soul.

some call LAist my baby, and i can see that a little but even then it was the product of a group home. now it’s at a boarding school.

well the busblog is finished with finishing school.

i dont math well but i think the busblog becomes legal this year.

which is crazy.

everythings crazy.

luckily everything’s been crazy for a long long time. so we just have to read books to figure out how to pilot this riverboat down the mighty mississip.

and heres how we get that number back up in the 500s where it belongs.

first imma stop twittering so much.

and maybe slow down on facebook.

why give Zuck all my content?

he aint need it.

my problem is i go where the interactions are. and in social media the people respond.

for a long time on this blog people would just basically say omg tony you are so great. and you know, that never got old.

so i kept blogging because as someone with low self esteem, that was like sunlight to a plant. it would perk me up.

now i resort to likes and retweets, which is fine because it helped me learn how to get those for the jobs i had worked for.

but theres something unique about blogging, something that transcends the good people saying omg love you.

for example right now i have a cat napping on my thigh while The Seeds play on my Alexa “Daisy May”.

i read something great the other day that i wanna try to a smaller extent.

the great drummer ?estlove said he tries to listen to 100 new songs (new to him) every day. he just listens to something then scrolls down to what his streaming service says is similar to that song. and he repeats that 100 times.

me, imma ask Alexa to play a band i really dont know. Today i said The Seeds.

way better than i expected.

its cold today in this house, im wearing my Buzznet hoodie. im thinking about turning up the heat.

im thinking i should figure out a way to post 2x a day.

it’s not hard.

im not trying to be shakespeare.

and yes i am just trying to up my numbers.

but maybe in trying… something good will come.

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

writing to you? whoever you are?

telling you the news of the day. the thoughts in my head? my dreams my wishes my annoyances?

when i was in high school i started a diary. it turned into three or four.

it would have been interesting if this blog was like that:

“today dawn colvin winked at me. blew my mind.”

“today the Cubs lost. those bastards!”

yesterday the Black Panther died.

people are sad. and they should be. even though he had been struggling with cancer for years, very few knew about it.

43 years old.

it makes you wonder about all the other people who are fighting actual fights.

not just twitter battles.

not just road rage bickerings.

not just bad neighbors doing weird parking maneuvers during a pandemic.

but real life shit.

shit that would scare the hell out of you if you paid attention.

i cant stop paying attention.

im locked in.

last week it was decided that we should have an Oscar story or two, so all eyes were on me

and i thought of how hard it must have been to be the TV show’s main hype man

i mean there was Oscars So White, EnvelopeGate, Trumpsters hating host Jimble Kimble, there was Kevin Hart struggling between the cardinal rule of comedy (never apologize) and what the Academy asked him to do to remain host, and of course ratings of all tv shows sinking as people cut the cord

that PR person is an excellent man who no longer has that duty, Steve Rohr.

so i emailed him and asked him if he wanted to get the treatment, he agreed, and thursday we had lunch.

thursday night i transcribed it, wrote it, edited it and today it was published to a very warm welcome from the internet.

why? i think because we weren’t trying to make news or talk out of school, i just wanted people to know about his fascinating gig, and he was finally free to reveal all. plus, who better than someone like me to ask the questions since for years we worked on opposite ends of the same floor?

i was the right person because on one hand i did know some things, and saw some things, but on the other hand, i was in a different department involved in different assignments and priorities, so i was interested in being educated on certain things myself.

interviewing Steve reminded me of how in October i talked baseball with Jon Weisman who does publicity for Showtime. both men are so well spoken and clear. you transcribe what they say and it’s just as good as if they wrote and edited it before it came out of their mouths. very inspiring.

also, both of their memories are astoundingly accurate. names, dates, ages.

tomorrow im going to the grove to ask people questions. it wont be as easy because theyre strangers, but the good thing about strangers is they are more likely to tell you freakier things because they probably wont ever see them again and you dont know the same people.

in a turn of the tables, i was the one on the hot seat when Miss604 interviewed me about driving for Uber n Lyft.

apparently Vancouver has *just* okayed rideshare and she wanted to know what makes a good rider and i told her not just that, but lots of other tips too. so many she had to make it a two-parter.

part one

part deux

rebbecca took this incredible picture of me driving she and keira-anne around beverly hills almost exactly three years ago

her blog has always been one of my faves and vancouver is lucky that she has kept it rolling.

people arent going to understand you

and it doesnt matter how well youve done in the past

or how well youre doing in the present

jesus walked across water

and days later his bffs asked

when can you show us the father

some people dont like the doors

some people dont like pink floyd

some people say trump did nothing wrong

some people move away from LA and California and never come back

they hate it.

so of course, you, suburbs boy, old bald man, super boring dresser, something less than lesser

is going to run into a few people who do not understand all the crazy ass thinking that you do or have done or have written or have said, and they wont even if you do the magic trick right in front of them over and over and over again.

it is not their fault. it is not your fault. it is no ones fault.

no matter what you do or say there will be people who just dont get Pinkerton

just love them.

cuz theres shit you’ll never get too.

we are all in this dark jungle, feeling our way around it

looking for light.

listening to clues.

but we are in this together, for a reason, it’s part of the plan.

there are no desert islands with a sole palm tree

and an endless supply of coronas.

we have each other and we are not clones.

we are meant to be like this.