ive been doing this gangsta shit since 2001 and in that time this blog has gotten me jobs and travel and friends and fancy cars and pretty much everything a man could ever want.

but today, a little bird reminds me, is the tenth anniversary of when a beautiful young lady, aged 21 i think, flew across the country to meet me.

and when she arrived i picked her up at the airport and drove her to my house and she put her suitcase on the floor and we looked at each other

and i said, well. and she said, yep.

and i said you flew all the way here to meet me?

and she said yep.

and i said here i am.

and she said and here i am.

so i slowly took off my cowboy shirt and hat and she took off hers.

and we stood there, hatless looking at each other as my christmas lights twinkled and i said, so you’ll do whatever i want right now?

and she said yep.

so i said twirl around a little so i can see if youre carrying a weapon.

and she said you are way better than i expected.

and i discovered that she was not carrying any weapons

and that was just the first of many discoveries that we had that weekend and it was, ive gotta say, one of the top ten things that have happened to me that wouldnta happened if i hadnta written a blog way back in 2001

which is one of the reasons i try to convince everyone out there in the world to write write write write or draw draw draw or whatever you do

do it.

because it just might ring true to someone else. and they might be tall and tanned and way prettier in real life

than on flickr.

they waste their time trying to look good, but they fail.

and worse, they never get to any real issue. let’s say someone uses a word that you’d never hear Tom Brokaw use.

instead of trying to figure out if that word triggers something to themselves, they do the most obvious thing

they say, “that word should not be acceptable for use.”

which makes me say, “the concept that some words should not be acceptable to use is fucked up”

and then we devolve into a bunch of monkeys barking at each other.

words in the hands of people not being 100% honest are far more dangerous than

words in the hands of people trying to make an actual point.

do we all pretend a little as we go through our day?

how are you? FINE

how was your weekend? GOOD

sure, but none of that adds to the real conversations of our lives.

while i’m not surprised that some people are stuck in the boring motions of automatic responses and faux outraged,

it does become tiresome after awhile.

what i am encouraged by is things like DesertTrip.com, a concert of six incredible artists from the 60s

who DID NOT say fine when they got to rock the mic

they said and sang things that were uncomfortable, controversial, and real.

and now they have found a way to charge a pretty penny to say it

and people are gobbling it up.

rock on, my niggas

i was minding my own business, circling the big buildings around century city, wondering if it was even worth it any more now that the century plaza will be closed for several years as they renovate

and i got a ping from one of the towers near CAA.

nice guy climbs in wants to go to western and wilshire. fine with me.

as we get going it’s obvious hes a lawyer: super smart, great vocabulary, well versed. he tells me he used to work at the LA Times in the 80s. i tell him i used to work there too, but more recently.

eventually he says, wait, i know you. how dumb! youre tony pierce!

i was all, yep!

he said, i should have known from the license plate!

i was all, ha!

he said, the busblog is groundbreaking. i remember you wrote once about the girl who got away. i printed it out.

i was like they all got away. which one?

we drove down wilshire trying to remember and he complimented me more. then said how about we go to union station.

so we blow past the wiltern and keep moving.

great convo continues and he’s telling me about the history of modern banking, obama’s flaws, printing presses, and he says lets go to Pasadena. so we go.

i tell people all the time that they should be blogging. it doesnt even have to be about their real lives. it could be about anything. but they have stories. You have stories. tales that wont get you fired.

i promise you.

and you never know, one day when you least expect it someone might say they remember you and something you wrote is on their wall or in a folder or tattoed onto their arm.

or best of all, in their heart.

first of all im sorry i put even an imagined quota on you. for some reason i still believe quantity is quality

but after seen bruuuuuuce last night i realized quality is quality.

if you have enough songs for a double album make a damn double album

if all you have is enough for Born to Run, then make Born to Run.

sure it would be great if i could blog here three times a day like how i used to

but that was 15 years ago. lifes different. i have a job i like. two sorta.

i might not be able to write even two a day.

but i promise i’ll write every day and it’ll be right from my heart.

one hit at a time.

and sometimes you might feel like walking on top of said houses

and sometimes you might feel like

you know what,

i really should just totally jump

no matter what they say about white men and jumping.

and at that point you should probably ask yourself

have i ever jumped off a shit house before?

this is a lesson i want to put on a tshirt

have i ever jumped off a shit house before?

but something tells me if there was a tshirt that said that

this dude woulda had it

and woulda worn it when he jumped.

i have to write some things but theres a blockage

two weekends in a row i just wanted to stay in bed and not do anything

dont wanna uber, dont wanna write, dont wanna change the world, dont wanna text this pretty girl and take her to mcdonalds, dont wanna see rock music at the echoplex

dont wanna see movies at the theater

dont wanna do the thing that’ll make me a little extra on the side

dont wanna do laundry dont wanna put things up on sals wall dont wanna read books

dont wanna play nba2k2016

i barely wanna go to the kitchen and crack open another mexicoke, but a mans gotta breathe

today i watched the doc about all those kids who lived in an apartment in the LES and never left

The Wolfpack

then i watched the doc about Keith Richards where he travels the world and sheds new light on blues, country, and rockabilly

i didnt know how much my man tom waits was gonna be in there.

it was good but not as good as The Wolfpack which was bizarre and beautiful and shed a light on the human condition and how tick tock it wont stop. how if you stick us in a closet we’ll turn into psychedelic mushrooms and the longer we’re in there the more potent we will be.

these kids love movies so much i wish i could send them all of my dvds that i dont watch any more.

they taught me i should wear suits more and trench coats.

hard not to respect a man in a suit and a trench coat.

and then give them the benefit of the doubt.

who doesnt want the benefit of the doubt.

the ends dont justify the means, of course

but its so true that with every action theres an equal reaction.

and all that craziness and hate and destruction that went down nine years ago

bloomed into more craziness and creativity and construction all over the web.

one day someone smart, hopefully Welch, will write a book about how 9/11 put blogging on the fast track

how it made everyone understand this medium. how that tragic event sent everyone online.

and embraced the non-professionals who were there, or who were good at pointing to the there.

i always look for silver linings. thats mine for today.