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why didnt any one tell me how great this is?
when he was at the Rocket show a few months ago he was so chill
chill as you can be at a damn good rock show.
he seemed happy and stuff and went outside and smoked
for some reason i thought he would like privacy
so i didnt ask to take a picture
what a great movie.
because they secretly know everything.
my truest went to an idie film one day and one of the trailers was this one above.
one night we were trying to figure out what film to watch on netflix and she suggested “The Art of the Steal”.
i have a terrible psychological problem in that i think that i have to be the one who always brings her all the cool stuff. i have to turn her on to the great music and movies and tv shows. i have to be a step ahead of everything. i guess i feel that she brings everything else to the relationship, that if i cant deliver the other good stuff then im worthless.
its stupid and crazy, but hi thats me.
so i said fine, lets see this thing and then go to sleep. BEST DOC OF THE YEAR! (even though it came out in 2009). its the story of a $25 BILLION art collection where the dude who owned it had no heirs but put together a will that said this art cannot be sold, loaned out, moved, or f’ed with. and sure enough as soon as he died the Philly art world did their best to f with it, and it looks like by summer of next year they will successfully steal it away from the home that he built for it, The Barnes Foundation in Lower Merion.
as you know we are in NYC. but all along we decided that we would make a day trip to Philly to see this art in its natural habitat. the place where Dr. Barnes wanted it to be seen. he didnt want tourists like us to come see it, he wanted students to study it. he didnt want people to buy tickets online, like we did, he wanted artists and check it out and learn and be inspired.
we were doing pretty much what he didnt intend, and we realized that, but i think at this point he’s rolled around so much in his grave that he probably has conceded to the fact that the really bad people are about to win. and to have people like me and the truest journey to where it was meant to be would probably be ok to the old dude.
we took the Apex bus, which has gotten a wide variety of reviews on Yelp from the horrific to the sublime. its a $10 bus that picks you up in the smelliest part of NYC’s chinatown and drops you off in a sketchy part of Philly.
but it’s $10. (nowadays it’s $12, but people still call it the $10 bus.)
like the reviews say, theres no real reason to get your tickets online because once you find your way to the nondescript office on Allen Street it’s first-come-first-served. we got there a little early and noticed a small line-up. there was no sign on the bus so i asked someone in line where the bus was going and they said Philly. so we gave the driver our ticket and 15 minutes before it was supposed to leave we were on the road(!?). had we caught the previous bus or was the correct bus leaving early with only 8 people on board?
who knows, who cares, welcome to Apex.
the A/C was blasting and i had foolishly forgotten to bring a jacket and since it was 77 degrees and humid i didnt think i needed a wrap. so i held my true love in my arms and we shared her jacket and i fell asleep in her arms. 1 2 3 awwwwww. somewhere near philly the bus driver pulled over near a mcdonalds. he called out the street name. no one got off. apparently they can drop you off in 3 parts of the crappiest parts of the city of brotherly love.
the second stop the guy pulled over and yelled at someone sitting on a bench. didnt pick that person up, didnt drop anyone off. and in seconds we were rolling again. finally, under 2 hours after leaving chinatown, we were on Broad and Onley. last stop, everyone off, the man said. we got up and the bus kept rolling. we were being dropped off across the street from a greyhound station. apparently Apex doesn’t have an official terminal. but who cares ITS $12!!
soon as we got off the bus we were surrounded by my people. black folk. a dude approaches me and says “need a cab brotha?” i look around and there are no yellow cabs. so i say, “sure, we are going about 8 miles away, how much?” he says lemme hook you up. and we make our way to another brotha who walks us to an unmarked minivan.
shady $12 bus, shadier minivan… i know, i know, im 105 years old, i make a decent salary, i dont need to put my life on the line like this, let alone my beautiful bff, but when you get to my age its nice to see what the universe provides and roll with it. and the universe was giving us a gypsy cab and it was so great.
is Michael Vick gonna do it? i asked. the dude was all yeah but can he please just shut his mouff? we had a great conversation about sports, and how Kobe has turned his back on Lower Merion (where he’s from), and how Oprah turned her back on Baltimore (where shes from), and how traffic is always bad in Philly even at 1pm which is what time it was and why we were experiencing traffic. and we made it to the Barnes Foundation in 15 minutes, the guy said $20 and we gladly handed it over.
we said we’d call him for the ride back but im xbi, i cant let people pick me up after dropping me off. what if they figure out who i be? now that would be dangerous.
the barnes was having problems with their online ticketing. thats fine cuz even though we had gotten our tickets online ($15 each) i hadnt printed them out. which was fine because there was our name on the list. 1:30pm reservation. it was 1:15pm. close enough. step right in.
we got the headphones and little box. $7 each. and started. and people immediately, just in the first room, there was a George Seurat. one you had seen before. huge. and all around it a cezanne, a matiste, a monet, a few manets. and whats this, a van gogh youd never seen before.
and thats how it was in every room. density of beauty. a greatest hits of artists. a who’s who of brilliance. and because Dr. Barnes had owned this art for decades and because he was no sell out, this art had stayed in one place for 50-80 years. it hadnt ended up as a cheesy print poorly framed at Z Gallerie.
around each priceless painting were odd door hinges or door knockers or candle sticks. underneath them were antique dollhouses or wooden chairs. it was clearly one man’s vision of “omg check out how monet used red in this painting, it reminds me of how this guy used red or that guy, so lets put them all together on one small wall, and lets put some chairs under them and some hinges around them and have some crazy painting of a guy looking down over it so his eyes are looking at the entire collection.”
each wall was a collage of million dollar art cold chillin together in a way no museum would ever do. another thing a museum wouldnt do is have no description of the art next to each piece. all there was was a frame that had the artist’s last name. if you wanted to know the title and the year, there was a laminated sheet nearby. the wall is art. preserve the art.
room after room after room there was another picasso youve never seem, another van gogh you didnt ever see at the van gogh museum, another renior prettier than the one before, and a modigliani right next to a picasso – challenging it, holding its own.
it made me think about excellence. how i want to be excellent. how i want to have a Blue Period just as amazing as my Cubist period. how i want to do new things and great things. it made me wonder why people dont want to be the best ever and i am like that sometimes. it made me think that i dont spend my time crafting interesting tales on this blank canvas and tweak it and edit it and shape it so that its better than the first draft.
quality. excellence. beauty. marksmanship. preciousness.
there was a 100 year old pink picasso, there was a toulouse-latrecht that looked like michael jackson, and for no apparent reason here were all these great african sculptures surrounded by seemingly unrelated paintings.
and there, proudly displayed, was that punk rock master, the dude who thumbed his nose at The Academy, Gustave Courbet, and his Woman with White Stockings. dr. barnes keeping it real. dr barnes saying yes i hate the rules too. dr barnes saying i too want to say to the art world that they can kiss my ass (or in this case, kiss my taint). overheard, “hey harry, so is she putting on those stockings before or after? hehehe. or during?!?!”
it was really too much to absorb in one sitting. two-three hours isnt enough. to really be one with such a mass amount of high quality art. from baby sketches to medium sized paintings to freakin a picasso tapestry. its too much to figure out.
meanwhile the whole time youre in this building that was meant for this art and you had the horrible bittersweet taste in your mouth that this work was about to be yanked out and put in the last place that its visionary collector wanted it: in the philly museum of art.
it was like seeing the final year of the cubs playing in wrigley field before they would be moved to the south side to share Cellular Field with the hated white sox.
the cubs should only play at wrigley and the art collected by dr. barnes should only be seen at the barnes foundation. seeing The Art of the Steal convinces you, but viewing the art in person brings it home.
walked a few blocks, ate at a place called Cosi’s. called a cab but a white Lincoln Continental showed up and honked. dont honk at the xbi. dude got out of the car and said tony? did you call for a cab? all the cars were out, so the boss had me take his car to pick you up, where you going?
ruh row.
said a little prayer and told him. when it finally dawned on him that i was asking to be driven to the ghetto he called into the office “broad and Olney. yeah. OLNEY! i know.” very nice guy but white and clearly not into going where we were gonna go. he, however, knew everything about the Barnes and the film and philly and the bad politics, and so much. another good conversation. when we got to the place i asked how much as there was no meter. he calculated $18, i gave him $23 and we got out.
broad and olney is a subway stop, a busstop, and a greyhound station. its also kitty corner to a school for girls and a zillion other things. lots of people. lots of old dudes with canes waving their canes at people honking as they drive by. its black folk being black folk. if youre not into the culture its scary, if you can hang its entertaining and heartwarming and beautiful. we got there a little after 5. we realized the next Apex bus wasnt coming till 6 so we looked around for a bar, only found one that looked so shady we chose to chill at the dunkin donuts cuz my belly was sour.
finally a shuttle bus appeared around 6. it honked. we got on along with 10 others. i had tried to figure out how Apex made any money driving 8-10 people on a big bus from NYC to Philly – gas alone must cost more than the $80 that they were getting from us, so the shuttle bus made more sense. several miles later they picked up some jamacians. and then after a few more miles the driver said Get Out, Changing Busses.
confused, but prepared for anything, we all got out and stood in front of a chinese restaurant. others were waiting there too. i really had to empty the bowels so i went into the chinese restaurant and as soon as i was almost done i heard a knock at the door. the truest alerted me that the new bus was there. it was a huge bus like the one we arrived in philly in. but now more people were there. so many that i wasnt able to sit next to her. instead i drew the short straw and was forced to sit next to an 18 yr old college freshman girl with pretty long hair.
turned out she had a bf at nyu and they took turns visiting each other. he normally won out because manhattan was a tad more fun than philly. tried the bathroom about 90 minutes into the trip, noticed there was no tp and the stench was insane. and decided not to risk it.
got to chinatown safe and sound. really needed to go number two, but figured i could hold it till brooklyn. but we couldnt find where the subway was. asked a young man running a tea shop. he pointed. but his buddy said ok but buy drinks! i said if you let me use your bathroom i will buy a drink. they agreed. truest got a hot green tea, i got a ginger ale. i destroyed that bathroom. got out and the look on her face was amazing. she was drinking the finest green tea of her life she announced. he said his secret is he boils the tea first. whatever, she was in bliss. and i was more comfortable.
got on the subway. got back to brooklyn. had another deep, meaningful, bizarre, spiritual conversation with ms anna rose who was spending a few months in the basement of aj’s three story park slope flat and around 1am we decided that we would test out one of the all night diners.
truest and i strolled romantically down 5th ave, arm in arm. youd think we were newly weds or bf/gf but no, we’re exes. just extremely loving ones. we’ll duck into a corner and kiss. hold hands. say sweet things. but in a month or two she may be in india and i might be named the new manager of the flubs. who knows. who cares. we are soul mates and if more isnt on our dance cards for this incarnation, we will see each other in the next one. or maybe not. maybe we were together in the past and this is the bonus extra dvd directors cut encore.
it really does feel that easy and familiar. it really is that beautiful and carefree. there really is no tension to get “serious” or have kids or even be together tomorrow. but for right this minute theres no one who matches up with me better. theres no one who i feel more manly and smart and confident around. theres no one who knows me better. theres no one i feel safer around. despite the fact we may never see each other again.
freaky.
and a lot how i feel while in new york city.
born to mexican refugees just outside of ensenada, liana burrowed her way to america through an abandoned drug tunnel to san diego and sold chicklets to tourists outside sea world until she was six.
once she learned english she was adopted by american diplomats who traveled the world and showed her the ins and outs of politics, classical music, linux, and modern art. if you ever want to impress her whine about how the guggenheim isnt what it used to be and how californian wines are overrated.
a graduate of brown and harvard law, liana decided to enter the world of marketing purely to spite her adoptive parents who always said that marketing was for snake oil salesmen and charletons. “if brooke sheilds was giving free shows in the basement of the alamo,” her father used to say, “there would be no need for any market studies, advertising, or viral schemes – the word would get out and there would be a line a mile long.”
i met liana on my one and only time on j date. neither of us were jewish but we wanted to see what all the hoopla was about and we found each other. she lied about being a gemini and i lied about being ad rock’s cousin. it was lust at first sight but nothing happened as she immediately threw me into the dreaded “friend zone”.
things have a funny way of working out however, for because we werent together she got me a job at her market research company when she found out that i was enjoying an unexpected summer vacation after being let go by the tv network. this was a job that i would only have for three months before buzznet picked me up, but it was three of the most wonderful months of my life as the office was filled with incredibly smart young women doing all sorts of interesting assignments, of which liana was the center of.
a purveyor of chocolate, gangsta rap, and mimosas at sunday brunches, liana will be spending her birthday tonight with her family and friends at the chic beverly hills hotel bar whose name escapes me because i still have yet to receive an invite.
maybe its because after all these years i still insist that her eyes are tan which she claims to be an impossibility.
happy 24th birthday liana, i will be indebted to you for taking me to the kill bill 2 premiere at manns chinese a day before it came out and then shaving my hair off.
the only problem with dating young babes is they havent seen alot of really good movies to know the difference between a quirkly snarky overhyped selfobsessed monotone unrealistic unbelievable flat ohtoosmartforitself not bad movie from an actual good movie.
if you havent seen Juno maybe you should avert your eyes because i dont know how else to talk about this movie other than give away some of the “spoliers” so i apologize, for the most part im able to talk about movies without giving away ANY of the plot but one of the main things i hated about this movie (a film i didnt Hate, overall) is that i felt like i had seen it before.
after i got home this morning and went back through the trailers i discovered that i had seen the film – in the commercials for the film. why on earth do people do this? pretty much the entire plot was given away in the trailer. plus there was no real climax in the film, no plot development, no character development, no breakthrough, no serious tension, and people who were either too good to be true or too dull to be believable.
and this is being considered for awards of some sort?
the only thing decent about the movie is its references to music, but half the time theyre playing the oh so precious whisperings of belle and sebastian who havent been relevant for at least 5 years so who gives a fuck?
and are we supposed to scoff at the pregnant chick at being naive when she tries to diss Sonic Youth by calling one of their albums “noise” when she is supposed to be way into punk circa ’77?
and are we supposed to scoff at the monotoned Jason Bateman (who is too good to be true since he loves all the things Juno loves, and can play guitar better than her, and knows films better than her, and somehow scored Jennifer Garner, but for some reason doesnt have a backbone to save his soul: you call that an interesting character?) says that rock music was at its best at ’93? what about ’91 fuckface?
the only interesting people in the film are Junos parents who are also a little too good to be true, but are atleast somewhat unpredicatable and all of their smart alecky lines actually go down easier than when Junos cringe worthy hep talk gets flung at us.
someone needs to slap the bitch and tell her boyfriend to drink a beer and take off his bra.
plus i dont buy their attraction to each other one damn bit.
still somehow i give the film a B or B minus but that might have been because my date was hot and let me do whatever i wanted all night.
rotten tomatoes gives it the highest rating of any current movie out today: 93% Fresh. and is it true that it made 87 million bucks? damn. then fix the problems next time!
today i wrote better
today im jealous of everyone but me. bum in the back of the bus today looking like a black george bush, bald, im even jealous of him cuz he gets to take the 21 down to santa monica beach this morning and i dont. and just as i thought that he walks up to the front of the bus, a good twenty minutes into the ride and asks for a transfer and he gets one.
you’re not supposed to get a transfer like that. you can only get one right when you pay your fare. he pulled up his pants a little and hopped back to the back of the bus with me and the drunken mexican cuz he knew his good luck.
i was jealous of the drunken mexican this morning too. one because he was drunk and i couldnt be. two because he got to ride the 21 down to santa monica beach today and i had to come in to work. c because he got to crack open a can of beer as the bus was putting on the air brakes and everyone must have heard that thing opening but nobody knew it was a beer since it was cleverly disguised with a little brown paper bag. i didn’t look at him out of jealousy until i almost got to my stop and then i noticed that he had todays new york post. how does he get todays new york post! that shit cost a buck out here.
im jealous of anyone who has a date this weekend. im jealous of everyone in corvettes. im jealous of everyone who actually gets respected in their chosen professions. im jealous of anyone who has a viable career.
im jealous of the guy who pawed my true love last night. a guy who doesn’t share any of her beliefs be them politics or rock music. its the politics that steams me up the most. even the fortune teller told her that this wasnt the man for her but she doesn’t care. none of you girls care. only girls who want me are the ones who know im the wrong man for them and they keep on paying attention to me even though the sign says closed.
my heart is a flower, its wilting though. they say that some flowers will bloom when theres no water. this flower gets pissed off and sometimes that coloration is beautiful but right now its just weepy and sad and chris taught me that if you prick a droopy tulip or gerber near the top of the stalk it will prop itself right back up, but this stalk knows that trick and just needs a little sip, not a prick. definitely not a prick.
tomorrow night i want to get with this girl i used to do. dont be so surprised, i want to get with every girl i used to do. even though the wind in the willows whisper to keep moving forward, little tone keeps saying lets go back. how far back. way back. and i wouldn’t mind the new ones but the new ones lie. and they keep lying. only place you can lie is in your blog, new ones. and even though the old ones lie too, theyre familiar lies that we’ve heard before. i’ll be back at a reasonable time. god i love you tony. god you’re so big. god you’re so great.
and tick tock it dont stop. even the sun isnt sure about rising this morning. even the heart isnt sure about beating tonight. met a girl yesterday who looks like that chick who played frida, but minus the unibrow and minus the ed norton boyfriend. she was telling me all this great stuff and then she told me about something that she heard in church last sunday and i asked her what church she was at and she told me and i said shit i used to go to that church all the time. but it was cold yesterday and she just had dranken an iced coffee and wanted to end our little meet and greet before i could ask her on a date this weekend.
how about a little saturday night mass, hot chick, i was about to ask her. only i would ask a girl to church on a first date. and only i would think that theres absolutely nothing wrong with going for it after ice cream and movies and drinks. and only i would get said yes to. unfortunately only i would let opportunities slip away like sand in the hourglass, these are the los angeles times.
evil asad + carmen + nk + phallusy + new replacements song
are gonna do this
Four Jobs I’ve Had in my Life in LA:
— Grill Cook, McDonald’s (Santa Monica – 2412 Santa Monica Blvd.)
— Associate, Licorice Pizza Records (West LA – 11876 Wilshire Blvd)
— Audio/Video Salesperson, Federated Group (West LA – 11820 Olympic Blvd)
— Manager of Worldwide Recruiting, PeopleSupport (Westwood Blvd.)
Four Movies About LA I Could Watch Over and Over:
— The Bad News Bears
— Fast Times at Ridgemont High
— Valley Girl
— Pulp Fiction
— The Player
Four Places I’ve Lived All Over L.A. (With Food Memories From Each):
— Venice Beach (Boardwalk Hot Dogs, $1 slices of pizza).
— West LA (Delores Restaurant breakfasts, China Wok).
— Westwood (Fatburger, All American Burger).
— Hollywood (Palms Thai, Zancau Chicken, House of Pies, Canters).
Four LA-Themed Shows I Love(d) to Watch:
— The Brady Bunch
— Sanford and Son
— CHIPS
— The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson (the reason I moved here)
Four LA-Based Websites I Visit Daily:
— flagrant disregard
— matt welch
— xTx
— blogging.la
— laist
Four of my Favorite Foods Found in LA:
— Soul Food of South Central (Stevie’s on the Strip, Mr Jim’s you need no teeth to eat Mr. Jim’s beef r.i.p, M&M’s)
— Midnight Tacos (Santa Monica and Vermont)
— The Original Pantry
— Dodger Dogs
Four Places in LA I Would Rather Be Right Now:
— in bed with anna kournikova
— in an alley with clipper girl
— on the floor with clipper girl’s cousin
— skateboarding at venice beach
a tv show was launched by an acclaimed creator/writer/director and before the season could end the network canned the show.
What happened next was a miracle.
The fans of the show demanded that it return to the air, but when that didn’t happen, somehow they got the studio to release the complete season on DVD. When it was released an ungodly amount of discs were sold and the studio realized that they had made a terrible mistake by letting the show get canceled.
The show was called Firefly. The director/writer/creator was Joss Wheadon, creator of Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel.
The studio was Universal and when they realized they had to bring this show back to life, instead of going the route of the small screen, they did the right thing and greenlit a feature film to be made called Serenity.
But the smart moves didn’t end there.
Because of the groundswell of support by the amazingly loyal fans, Joss and Co. let the kids in on the development of the movie. The big wigs screened the film to thousands of lucky fanatics who went ga-ga for the film despite several special effect scenes being unfinished.
Didn’t matter. The fans went nuts and named themselves Browncoats after some of the heroes in the series and film.
Somehow your pal Tone got into one of the screenings, and I’ve gotta say, its pretty killer.
It’s like Star Wars without the robots, its like Battlestar Gallactica with jokes. It’s action packed and creative and smart and quick and the effects are completely modern.
And the way that they’ve slooooooowly released this thing is really genius. Infact as I linked yesterday, if you have a blog and you live near a city where it’s screening over the next few days, you too might get a chance to see the film for free before it opens if you promise to write about it on your blog.
Groundbreaking!
All you have to do is follow this link, see if your town is on the list, email the proper party and keep an eye on your email box over the next 24 hours.
If you want you can go to the store and rent the series if you havent seen it but I didn’t know shit about Firefly before I saw Serenity and I was still sucked in, and I was no Buffy or Angel fan, as Ashley can sadly attest.
Doesnt matter. Its fine filmmaking, great writing, interesting characters, and best of all, some of the scariest eviliest bad guys you’ll ever run across.
They rape you, kill you, eat you, and then sew your skin onto their clothes.
Hows that?
AND somehow its also funny.
starring dakota fanning, tim robbins, and tom cruise
directed by steven spielberg
tom is making a fool of himself right now and maybe its because hes in love, maybe its because hes pretending like hes in love, maybe its cuz hes going through a midlife crisis due to the fact that he looks quite young for his age (56) and for the first time in his life has to play the role of a father of an alleged teenage boy who looks like hes in college.
maybe hes making a fool of himself because he really believes that the aliens are coming down to eat us. maybe he doesnt know that its just a radio show.
and then maybe hes not the fool, maybe we are. his fingers smell of katie holmes dont they. dont they?
even if they dont he has one thing going for him, he knows how to get into the right movies and directed by the right directors at the right time. every single one of the movies that he has been in has been a hit except one. lets go down the list: endless love, taps, the outsiders, losin it, risky business, all the right moves, legend, top gun, the color of money, cocktail, young guns, rain man, born on the fourth of july, far and away, a few good men, the firm, interview with the vampire, mission impossible, jerry mcguire, eyes wide shut, magnolia, mi2, vanilla sky, monority report, the last samurai, collatoral, and now war of the worlds. amazing.
especially since hes not that great of an actor and much of his popularity has been, in my opinion, due to the fact that he was in these dynamite movies that rose to their heights, in many cases, despite him, or because of other people in the film.
he has always been stiff he has always been unlikeable and in his best films we are happy when terrible shit happens to him.
without spoiling any part of this classic remake lets pretend that in war of the worlds the aliens are coming the aliens are coming and you know what if they get anyone i want them to get tom cruise and i bet im not alone.
who didnt love in vanila sky when his face turned hideous? who didnt love in risky business when his porsche fell into lake michigan? who didnt love it when in jerry mcguire cuba gooding jr made him his little bitch? dance white boy, squirm, and in this movie, run.
i love steven speilberg because he isnt afraid to put his characters into great harm, and oftentimes this means loveable characters, and in my favorite examples it means children.
jurrasic park for many years was my favorite movie of all time because speilberg had me believe for a quick second that he was going to show one of those big ass dinosaurs eat a little kid.
perhaps you remember the scene. a trex had pinned either the boy or the girl i forget in the explorer and the only thing between the child and the dinosaur was the cracked sunroof that was being held up by the young person as he cowered.
part of me was all no dont eat him and part of me was all speilberg is going to establish ruthlessness by making the dinosaur eat that kid, what an amazingly brilliant evil genius.
enter wide eyed and precosious dakota fanning who is on her way to being so incredibly annoying that she too is being saved by all these great films she finds herself in.
the trick of a good director is to make us root for these somewhat unlikeable overly rehearsed over-actors even when the dinosaur is about to do precisely what in any other situation we want him to do: eat the rich.
tom cruise is far from likeable in this movie and dakota is intentionally annoying and it only adds to the tension that is deliciously thick in speilbergs best film since schindlers list.
make no mistake this is a steven speilberg scifi horror suspense war film. its masterful and creepy and not in the slightest bit tailormade for cruise. if you ask me mel gibson would have been better cast in the lead. but he muscles his way through every scene with the cruisian stiffness we’ve grown used to.
because it really is part war film, there was an opportunity with tim robbins character that speilberg could have very easilly slid in a few lines about the nature of war, the nature of violence, and the paradox that as long as there is life there will be beings who want to bring death through war and violence, it could have given this film a human heart that it never finds in cruise, the star.
it could have been as simple as a tag line from either cruise or robbins delivered like eastwood along the lines of “everyone wants someone to die”, but like most special effects films, dialogue takes a back seat to spectacle, which is top notch and disturbing.
two thumbs up.
to perform my civil duty. unlike most people i enjoy jury duty because i find the whole legal process fascinating, especially when its unfolding right in front of you and you get to help decide yay or nay.
but being happily unemployed and enjoying my newfound and delicious freedom to lounge in my pajamas all day and sleep until 2pm, for the first time ever i didnt want to be on a long, involved, indepth murder or bank robbery trial. i wanted to be at the beach.
since everyone knows theres nothing the barely legal pink bikini girls love more than when the unemployed bloggers show up with their cubs beach towel.
so, murphy’s law, guess what they announced at 10am yesterday morning in the overfilled jury pool room?
“your attention please jurors, and now we will be calling the names of those who will be asked to go upstairs to be on a panel for a case that is estimated to last 20 days.”
the entire room groaned. no one wanted to spend a month waking up, fighting traffic, and being part of a big trial that would only get you $15/day and your face firmly etched in the mind of a possible killer. la’s a small town. do you really want to be the last face a felon sees before the judge says the jury has found you guilty?
not in this town where a few years ago a guy turned a newspaper ad of an eddie murphy movie into a fake id and walked out of the downtown jail.
some say the only reason he was caught was because of the xbi but thats another story.
the jury room holds about 300 people. they would pick about 22 people to be part of the “panel”.
the two lawyers in the case look over the 22 prospective jurors and ask them questions to see who they would weed out. each lawyer may dismiss jurors for any reason. usually if youre a prosecuting attorney and a old woman is on trail for killing all of her cats, and theres only two old women on the panel, you probably want to get them out of there.
the panel is also the time when the jurors can say the things that will make the judge want to kick them off. usually i am tempted to say things like “im very likely to find blacks not guilty, so present a hell of a case or you can predict my vote and i have no problem hanging the jury,” but i’m usually kicked off immediately when, in the short questionaire, next to occupation, i write XBI Agent.
try it. it works every time.
but like i said, im unemployed now, so i had to say Unemployed.
as the woman with the microphone went over the list and each name was called everyones smiles got bigger and when she called the last name the collective sighed in relief was clearly audible which cracked everyone up.
until five minutes later when the woman on the microphone said,
“hello jurors, and now i will call the names for another panel. this one is only expected to last 14 days.”
only? someone said sarcastically which brought more laughter. it was a jovial group. probably because there were hot babes everywhere. apparently summer is definately the time to be called for jury duty since the coeds were home from college, the actors were unemployed since tv season is over, and because people dress better in the summer.
the instructions said business casual but only a few obeyed the instructions. make me go to jury duty And tell me how to dress? pick one and live with it was my attitude and i wore my sxsw tshirt, a flannel, and my cap pulled down almost over my eyes. who on earth was going to have a possible gangmember on their jury? and an uemployed one at that.
anthony pierce she said.
here, i said weakly. we had been instructed to say here if she called our name.
oh shit. she had called my name! i might end up on a two week trial? which meant i wouldnt be able to go on any job interviews until the first of july? which meant after the 4th of july? which meant probably no paycheck till august. yikes.
i could handle a one day or two day trial, but two weeks? mr cool did get into panic mode for a second, i will admit. gotta keep it real. but then the lady with the microphone read a name off the list that you would only hear in los angeles
a name that everyone knows. a name that also only in la in a crowded room of 300 only in la would a woman of such beauty blend in and become unnoticed. yes unnoticed because when the woman with the microphone said
tia carerra
every male head shot up from their prayer beads and thought holy fuck tia carrera is here?
here, she said.
and there she was. no make up, hair tied back. reading the paper. and look at that, about six months pregnant. hot, but not nearly as hot as our girl, but yes, that was definately tia carerra. and here i thought that was a stage name. huh.
the lady said ok its 10:45, but they wont be ready for you until after lunch so please report to court number blah blah blah at 1:30p. have a nice lunch.
so bad news: possible jury duty for two weeks. good news: it might be with tia carrera and two other chicks who were so hot that no one had previously realized that tia carrera was in the house.
lets just say i had a good lunch.
until i realized we were all going to have to stand up and state our name and occupation and i was going to have to let tia and the ladies know that i was unemployed. fortunatley a juror can ask for a “sidebar” where he can approach the bench with both lawyers and discuss these matters privately with the judge.
which is what i did when i was the first juror that they asked to stand up and state name and occupation. yes me, the only gangmember-looking dude in the hizzy.
hi your honor, i said.
hello gentlemen, i said to the lawyers.
my situation is that, if you havent noticed, there are two super hot chicks here and im totally down for being on a long trial, but please dont make me say in front of the babes and tia carrerra that im unemployed.
one of the lawyers said, tia carrera’s here?
the other lawyer said, yeah didnt you see the list?
they turned and looked and saw tia carrera and then both nodded silently.
so the judge said, fine, son. youre unemployed. do you think there are any reasons why you cant be impartial in this case.
and i said, nope, but just like those michael jackson jurors, if you dont deliver real evidence, even if i think the defendant is probably guilty of Something, it better be of what he’s accused of and it better be proved in this court or i will vote not guilty and i will argue like crazy in the deliberation room.
and then something even weirder than tia carrera in the jury room happened. the judge said, anthony, do you go by tony pierce?
fuck.
yes, your honor.
this was not a young judge. he wasnt really old though, but how on earth…
are you the blogger who writes the busblog?
o
m
g
he asked a few questions and informed the lawyers that i would not be on this jury and then said, but i have something to ask you. how do you find time to write so frequently?
and i said well now i have lots of free time since, like i said, the reason for me asking for a sidebar, im unemployed.
to which he said, but ive been reading you since my son emailed me your homepage url about a year ago when you wrote the how to blog rules. you write just as much unemployed as you did when you were employed. how do you do it?
i said, theres time in everyones day to write two or three posts. just dont get hung up on it. pretend its an email to a good friend. or dont watch tv for an hour and write. or write during your lunch break. it’s not as hard as it looks.
and i thought i was done but the judge wouldnt stop asking me really good questions. fanboy questions! do judges have nothing to do at night?
and then said, i admire how youre handling your troll situation, but i noticed he hasnt written today. did you ban him?
i said your honor nothing on my blog is true.
he didnt get it, so i said. sir, im at jury duty, how could i continue the farce that was tim if i dont have access to a computer?
and his jaw dropped.
and i nodded.
there was silence and then he laughed.
i was told to go back to the jury box.
they went through the rest of the jury and then each lawyer went down their list and said things like “Ms. Carrerra you’re excused, Mr. Pierce youre excused, Ms. Hotchick you’re excused…”
and they told the rest of the jury that theyre to come back in 30 minutes when the trial will begin.
and as we left the judge said, mr. pierce and waived me over.
which i must say raised a few eyebrows.
and he asked, but tim’s email address?
i said, its my friend’s in colorado. college pal. we were both into the Replacements. Tim was my favorite album and he’d always give me shit for it because everyone says Let It Be is the best. long story.
and then the judge said, well my kid will get a kick out of me telling him that i shook your hand. keep up the good work.
and i got out of the courtroom and a group of my jurors waiting for the elevator stopped talking when they saw me approaching which was really weird
but not as weird as ten seconds later when one of the impatient jurors mashed his thumb on the elevator button
and on saying, i bet this button doesnt even work
the earthquake hit.
a nice sustained 4.9
needless to say we took the escalators back down to the jury room and counted the minutes to possible freedom.
which im happy to say we all received.
and to add to the freakiness of the day, as i was looking for tia carrera pictures to put up here i went to imdb to see what other movies she had been besides waynes world 2 and i shit you not she was in one called Jury Duty with pauly shore, which if i had realized the irony That would have been the icebreaker that i was searching for all day to approach her.
something i never did.
but at least now i will be able to go up to her one day and say, remember the day you were on jury duty during that earthquake…
and i consider that the highest form of respect.
right back at ya, big guy.
i have many issues with the instapundit but none of them are personal. which is rare for me because i pretty much take everything personally.
chalk it up as my biggest flaw.
next to my insanely low self esteem.
and overwhelming disdain of actively pursing any normal type of highly-profitable career.
what i dont get about the instapundit is he’s young, hes successful, hes smart as fuck, he’s down-to-earth, he’s popular, a good family man, in-touch, has a great job as a law professor, holds many interests, and has remained on top of the blogosphere for years now
and yet he refuses to link opposing views on matters of politics on a regular basis. for every one link to a so-called liberal, there are 15-16 links to so-called conservatives. the night before michael moore’s movie came out he claimed that listen missy didn’t like Fahrenheit 9/11 despite the fact that she never even mentioned the film and hadnt even seen the damn thing yet. later he noted his error, but kept her objection up there anyway.
what on god’s green earth could he be afraid of by not linking to people who might have a different feeling about moore, people like, i dont know, me?
could Doc Searls be right? that if “any stick you can whup Bush with is a good stick,” and i, could be the best stick so far?
im sure theres better sticks. but i do agree with doc that i, too, am interested in talking across the the divisions that keep us from talking to each other.
so for Indy, and all his readers who might have missed what went down on the busblog in June, a month i battled chronic tendinitis and carpal tunnel, here are some highlights:
6/1: anna kournikova came over right before the laker game
russian girls normally get it wrong and when they do they do it with their arms crossed.
6/1: dear the pope,
four solid reasons why the pope should be in favor of legalizing marijuana. with a suprise quote from Genesis 1:29.
6/2: A Letter From Chad of Chokey Chicken
in which the graduating high school senior puts me on the spot and asks me to list the top ten most underrated bloggers. so i did:
2. raymi
3. anti
4. t-money
5. sk smith
6. jaylex
7. angelina
8. raspil
9. bunnie
10. zulieka
6/2 yes it’s true i just had breakfast with the mysterious and glamorous zulieka from zulieka dot com at the pantry in downtown la.
of which she wrote on her blog “4.Tony Pierce. Deceptively cute at first glance, he notices and reads through subtle indications like a poker player. He is so, so quick but he pretends he’s just sitting there. He is both street smart and worldly. After all, he works for the XBI. Thank You Tony for the breakfast. You forgot to mention that I had hashbrowns too, with tabasco sauce.”
6/2 when i think of the president of the united states, this is what i see.
i see a fucking retard.
6/4 today is angelina jolie’s twenty ninth birthday
the mexican lady kept the elevator button mashed in as if it would speed things along. now you know why the elevators are always broken i hissed in spanish.
que?
nada.
6/5 why the president is a fucking retard
if you ever go to the special olympics you will see a spirit that is absent from any other sporting activity you’ll ever witness: unconditional love and reward.
even the slowest, most fumbiling child who finishes a race gets a hug. a loving embrace for participating in the event. a symbol and an action that says, you tried and thats all that matters.
you are loved.
the only institution that mimics this behavoir is the united states of america and it’s relationship to the president of the united states, george bush, and the people and things that he supports.
they treat him like the retard that they know he is
6/6 after calling the sitting president a fucking retard id be a fucking asshole if i didn’t celebrate the death of the president who started all this bullshit.
in which i urinated on the grave of ronald reagan; the man who funded osama, delivered weapons of mass destruction to saddam, sat in his little chair for much longer than seven minutes as AIDS hit america, traded arms for hostages, and illegally funded the contras.
my biggest complaint remains that he is called the great communicator when we can only remember three or four things that he said his whole eight years. the easiest being “tear down this wall,” which of course wasnt torn down until after he left office.
in which you’re instructed how to act properly when it happens.
a movie review about the documentary of LA’s finest poet/novelist/drunkard
that he’s disappointed with me and dumbfounded by my disrespect of the dead president.
and in which i reply with, well, an awful lot of curse words. and a reminder that the man who killed communism forgot about china, who is doing better than ever these days. and is still very much commie.
mr. reagans death should be a bedtime for bullshit, but how can we even get out of this murky morass of mediocrity if you insist on watering down the genepool of eligible candidates by suggesting that theres something about the incumbent thats admirable.
whats admirable is that he gets out of bed in the morning without bumping his head on the nightstand.
howard, this is america the beautiful. the land that i love.
i shouldnt be able to beat the holy fuck out of the commander in chief in scrabble, let alone economics, common sense, or trivial pursuit.
6/10 top ten reasons oj is not guilty
number ten: the columbian necktie
with special guest quotes from mark fuhrman, f. lee bailey, johnny cochran, katie couric and oj simpson as the juice.
6/12 Dear Tony, Can you please explain to me what the fuck is going on with your Lakers?
here i explained why the lakers weren’t going to lose to detroit in the finals, and how it had something to do with the fact that the team resided in california.
6/14 linda was a teenage runaway.
long hair. bare feet. short nails. hot eyes. brown skin. smooth cheeks. wild mind. hard tongue.
somehow bigger than life. somehow from another place entirely. somehow found the best people to migrate with. somehow made everyone better who she mixed in with.
if msg had eyeliner.
6/16 exclusive interview with shaquille o’neal in which he explains why the refs were unfair to the lakers in the finals
q. why do you think its like that?
a. its easy. its psychology. you see a big huge guy. then you see a bigger huger guy. if the bigger guy is standing there getting fouled by a smaller guy it doesnt look like a foul, it looks like the smaller guy is just trying real hard. but indeed it is a foul. its a real foul. if you prick me, dont i bleed?
q. as a matter of fact, ive never seen you bleed shaq.
a. well, i do. i bleed inside. where it counts.
q. thats sad.
a. im bleeding now.
6/16 how to blog, by tony pierce
the most popular blog post i’ve ever written.
6/17 madpony quits blogging, and the busblog got the exclusive interview
kristin: sigh
dumbass_dumberass: should i blame your bf?
kristin: nah
dumbass_dumberass: whats the reason then?
kristin: i’m just tired of it
6/18 danielle is introduced to the blogosphere
whenever im around the office for lunchtime i like to eat with her cuz shes funny, shes smart, shes brutally honest, and there has never been a topic that she wont discuss with me.
and she hates wearing underwear.
youd be surprised how depressing it can be saving the world. so its nice to have a happy girl to have a half sandwich and soup with on a june gloom friday.
she loves anthropologie and fishing. she likes to hike through the palisades and rich guys with loose wallets. she’ll flash you if you dare her so i dont dare her.
6/19 napoleon dynamite movie review
disguised as a review of the mini glutton bowl that took place at the la film fest outside the cinema.
6/20 oj and courtney and everyone but you
on this post you can follow along as i read aloud (via audblog) a poem i had written exactly ten years ago
6/21 dear amazon dot com are you fucking kidding me?
in which i am critical of the amazon associates program and give a screenshot of my quarterly earnings.
6/22 had the monkey dream again this time with a weird ending
a chimp ripped the page out of his old machine pushed his reading glasses up the bride of his nose crossed his legs and inhaled from his cigarette and exhaled out the corner of his mouth. laughed like monkeys do and without looking reached for his bottle of xxx and took a good swig and kept reading his little masterwork.
“what do you see?” an orangutan asked me and held up a white piece of paper that appeared to have a perfectly symmetrical coffee stain on it.
i see a coffee stain.
6/24 dear michael moore,
i seriously dont know why some people dont like you, but i like you.
i sorta love you.
i think your movies are terrific.
but deeper than that, i love how you make people yearn for 100% absolute truth.
people call you a liar in a way that you’d think that everyone else is completely honest.
6/25 dear vice president haliburton
in which we see the latest Dubya re-election commercial which compares democrats like john kerry, howard dean, and michael moore to hitler.
after being completely picked apart by metafilter, slashdot, and the rest of the web, the rnc changed the begining of the original by adding a twenty second disclaimer.
the new version can be seen on georgewbush.com, it’s called “Kerry’s Coalition of the Wild-eyed”
6/28 Fahrenheit 9/11 a sober film review of the week’s most popular documentary.
in which i answer some of jeff jarvis’s and christopher hitchens’s concerns about the movie.
Jarvis says, “The real problem with the film, the really offensive thing about it, is that in Fahrenheit 9/11, we — Americans from the President on down — are portrayed as the bad guys.”
First of all President Bush in this film is portrayed as much more than just a bad guy. He’s being portrayed as a greedy, dumb, slow-witted, poor-talking, “War President”, who doesn’t know how to win any wars, doesn’t know how to treat soldiers, and isn’t loved by his public.
Are you a bad guy if you send troops into a war and then decrease imminent danger” pay (from $225 to $150) and family separation allowance (from $250 to $100)? Are you a bad guy if you oppose the National Guard from receiving access to the Pentagon’s health insurance system, despite knowing that only about one out of every five Guard members has no health insurance?
6/28 the busblog collection of 11 completely random online movie reviews of Fahrenheit 9/11
ok, i was being sarcastic.
they were 11 glowing reviews of the film, expertly edited to give one big nice even more-glowing review.
but to be fair i linked each paragraph to their original column.
and i also linked the rotten tomatoes site for the 130 positive reviews; and, to be fair, the 25 negative ones.
6/29 suddenly the republicans want to listen to clarke?
in which reader john stinson leaves a comment about how richard clarke said that it was his responsibility that the bin laden family were allowed to leave america on 9/13 when no other charter planes were allowed to fly.
so therefore michael moore’s movie had at least one lie in it when it accused clarke’s boss (at the time) president bush, for having the planes jet off before the fbi could interrogate the members of the powerful family who are very close to the bush family.
mr. stinson is greeted with a handful of other clarke quotes to mull over.
6/29 i swear we’ll talk about babes soon begins with our buddy howard owens back again accusing yours truly of hating on bush because for the sole reasons that he’s republican and im a liberal.
to which i explain that in recent history ive voted for just as many dems as repubs. that i like several of the planks of the main parties. and that i dont like bush because he feels it necessary to bullshit me, and my countrymen, who have mastered the art of bullshitting so well that atop my blog theres a clear warning of untruths ahead.
and i hate cuz hes dumb.
and in a brilliant little line, i summed up the irony of the theme of freedom. something that the president constantly claims to be bringing to the people of iraq even though he is against freedoms in the united states like gay marriages, abortions, presidential election recounts, free speech on the radio and tv, and the legalization of drugs that he himself has “experimented” with at great length and knows to be harmless:
freedom is a double edged sore.
but mostly in that line i was saying that when we as a country were at our most free we were also at our most vulnerable
and every once in a while you have to pay the price of so much freedom
but you shouldnt freak out about having to pay that price.
it’s just part of the deal.
and later i ask not to be called a liberal.
not everyone who thinks bush is bad is a liberal.
some people just don’t like being lied to in regards to why this country goes to war.
other people don’t like being lied to about when public people are asked about their private sex life.
me, i couldn’t care less about what you do sexually in the privacy of your oval office, but don’t bullshit me about real matters of life and death.
and don’t call me a liberal.
im an american, i can think for myself.
maybe the blogfather simply just overlooked the busblog. maybe im not interesting enough. maybe i dont write well enough. maybe i dont have enough fresh ideas.
maybe i’ll just have to concentrate harder in july.
buzzmachine + tim blair + welch is back from romania
6/7 
