transcribed the first 1/3 of wednesdays podcast, which i rarely do this early in the week

did most of the dishes

did laundry, watched most of church will watch the rest now

and i called out the head of the la times bc his staff weirdly missed the lede of this story

that purports the way to get from woodland hills to eagle rock is the 110

when it’s actually the 101 to the 134.

i told him the reason Hear in LA is so vital is because

even the very smart people at the award winning paper

couldnt possibly know all the inner workings of the neighborhoods

which is where my podcast comes in.

he probably wont take it the right way but sometimes you gotta shoot yr shot

ok now back to church

best of all was publishing episode #69 of Hear in LA

where a fantastic actor and podcaster told me about burning man, ketamine, and boofing 

then as soon as i did that i needed to hurry to write a recap of the six hour LA taylor hawkins tribute show

bree asked me last minute, but early in the morning i saw Joey Maloney had taken some 

beautiful photos outside

and inside the forum

so i texted him to see if he had shot it for anyone

(no, he shot it on his $2k point n shoot)

so he said as long as i link to his IG we could have it
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so then i only had an hour to write it and i hurried and time pretty much gave me a break and i was able to whip it out right on time.

i asked for 15 extra minutes to upload joeys pics and do some touch ups

but there it was!

then i drove one trip for Uber

i didnt wanna do too much, just pay for my lunch

because Tomorrow uber changes everything

and they will allow us to see everything about the ride

and let us decline as many as we want

you know, like as if they werent our bosses

which technically they are not.

for a year i forgot i hate paywalls – in part because it was a soft one

you could go to 5 articles a month for free

and on social i always included a Friend link that wouldn’t subtract from your 5

but the interesting thing with having a 79 year old mom is

if i can make things foolproof for her, then i know they’ll be foolproof for anyone

and she was always getting stuck at the paywall.

thats not good.

behind the scenes i am trying to work on a proper website for the thing instead of having it hosted on Medium

but the problem is it’s a lot of work and weirdly i dont have a lot of time and i have even less money to throw at it

speaking of money, the only reason i was having Hear in LA be behind a paywall is in hopes that if something took off, Medium would pay me a handsome sum.

i did have a few things take off, but i was paid a fugly sum.

worse: any time i wrote something non-Hear In LA related, something topical and slightly click baity i would have pretty big traffic numbers and still only make $5-$10.

is it worth $10 to have my pride and joy behind a wall that even my dear mother can’t get to easily? of course not.

so now it’s down and hopefully that will bring more people

and then all will be well

even though i am not doing this for huge traffic

im doing it because it’s the right thing for me to do right now.

A guy who was Bob Dylan’s bass player in 1984 and grew up with Andy Kaufman – Carthay Circle

A delightful research librarian I worked with at the LA Times who is sailing off into the sunset, literally. – Sherman Oaks

A mixed race writer and editor who once taught in the Compton public schools and she says she is not shy about telling people how good she was at it. –  Virgil Village

HE HAS 100,000 BEES IN HIS BACKYARD AND I TOUCHED A FEW OF THEM – Harbor Gateway

The LAPD accuse him of being the head of Antifa LA, but he told me that would be impossible as there is no such thing as Antifa. Within a very short period of time this episode became our most popular podcast to date – Mid City

Today I published my chat with Joey Ng who is a bad bitch, a great mom, and the perfect person to ask about where to eat in – Chinatown

there are things that come easy to me

some i gotta work on

and some i gotta toil over and try so hard not to suck at

this damn website has been a struggle

and thank heaven for Mark Johnson because he has been so patient

and has helped me so much

and the other day he got COVID while in NYC visiting his boys.

jordan has helped so much, mark has helped so much, and weirdly everyone who has been even the slightest bit positive

and especially those who have put up with my unending promotion

have made all this happen.

today i realized this has never been done before in the history of LA:

• interview at least 5 people per 250+ LA neighborhoods
• put the majority of the interview online in audio
• make a real blog post for each resident

i gotta get motivated tomorrow.

yesterday we produced our 50th episode.

50 episodes in 10 months.

do you know how crazy that is?

and we took two months off when COVID was raging.

and neither of us got paid for any of this.

labor of love.

planting the seeds.

figuring shit out.

i wanted this 50th episode to be special and spectacular

and like a Sports Illustrated double issue swimsuit edition

and look at how it doubled the views of a normal day:

before we publish a podcast i like to take a walk and listen to it in earphones

earbuds, earpods, whatever you wanna call it.

i want to hear it the way someone might if they were hiking.

most of our shows are an hour and that allows me to get like 7,500 steps in

but yesterday’s was a two hour bonus edition

so i walked and walked and ended up at Hollywood Forever Cemetery

and lo, i saw the xbi has already gotten me a giant tombstone next to a beautiful palm tree.

so nice of them. but no, i am not returning!

even though i only live a few miles away from hollywood forever, ive never just strolled over there because it really would take about 2 hours to go there and back and I HAVE THINGS TO DO

I AM A VERY BUSY ADULT MAN

which is crazy because Johnny Ramone wants to play for us.

we should listen.

and we should mourn the death of Grass.

while walking around i laughed outloud, i smiled, i beamed. it was a great episode.

just listening to it i knew it would take off.

which is something i say about all of them, but this one i just knew

it was just so controversial and wild and hyper local and interesting.

i am so indebted to jordan for getting me off my ass to do this thing

and now we only have 1,450 left to go!

now to make some videos

listen to it by clicking here

8 episodes in 4 weeks

The worlds smartest Uber driver lives in Granada Hills

Atwater Village‘s Audrey Wu is here for you

Is this Granada Hills neighborhood the most idyllic in the Valley?

Money Mark fixed a gate in Atwater Village owned by the Beastie Boys, and his life changed.

22 annoying questions for a Larchmont Village realtor

Photographers should love this Carthay Circle man

This songwriter scored ounces of pure coke in the ’70s from a doctor in Carthay Circle

She’s leaving Sherman Oaks after 25 years to sail on a boat forever with her man

even though ive been blogging over 20 years now i dont know how to fix anything.

id always ask friends for help.

one of the nice things about Blogger was you could put in a support ticket and ask them for help and they would and they were always so nice about it.

then the other day either on tiktok or youtube this programmer said

psssst we’re not really all that smart, we just know how to Google better than you and use Stack Overflow

so there was this error on the top of my blog and i googled it

then i clicked the Stack Overflow result

and it said turn off each of your plugins one by one.

this would have been scary for me but after the Cubs won the world series i just stopped giving a fuck.

my blog does not look as pretty as when Gregg designed it, but it is nice to be able to play around with it. i hope to do more of that on HearInLA.com

i have so much to do for that thing. voice overs, editing, and working on the website.

young natasha the other day fully insulted so much of hear in LA, mostly the social media

and i wanted to say girl we’re blasting out two episodes a week do you think thats easy?

im also downloading a proper audio editing program so i can wack out most of the obvious cruddiness before i send it to jordan

that way he can get through the edits faster and we can more easily pump out two a week.

control is an illusion, true

but having more ability to make the blogs cooler

and the podcast more beautiful

then i can focus on the hard stuff

making the video commercials

i need to get my benz in shape so i can get back to driving lyft again because

i need to make sure nothing stops this podcast

meeting creative, nice, smart people is the best.

i even accepted a beer when it was offered.