ZD's SUNDAY VICTORY LAP AROUND THE BLOGESPHERE: The People Are Watching...It's a lot to live up to, even for a legend like me!

It's "The Zuma Dogg Phenomenon": Even the posts about my rankings go to the Top!

Today's Most Clicked
BlogNetNews.com (California State Ranker)

Zuma's L.A. Daily Blog Ranks #2 on BlogNetNews CALIFORNIA Statewide Ranker
—L.A. Daily Blog

WARNING: This is a frivoulous, non-essentail post for only hardcore ZD fans, but it's something I wanted to post on a quiet Sunday and move on. The problem with realizing a lot of people are reading your blog, is it puts pressure on you to keep it up, cause you know you have an audinece tuning in, and it takes a lot of the fun out of it, cause I feel the tightrope is too high to be too frivolous. Like I would love to talk about a certain former professional mayoral candiate who is such a HUGE phony, but people have no idea, but at the end of the day, NO ONE REALLY KNOWS WHO HE IS, OR CARES, SO I HAVE TO TRY AND KEEP THE BLOG ON THE FOCUS THAT SEEMS HAVE CAPTURED PEOPLE'S ATTENTION. (The heat is on!)

ZD's SUNDAY VICTORY LAP AROUND THE BLOGESPHERE:

You know, no matter how "big" my image and whatever the level of awareness is of "Zuma Dogg" in the public consciousness, out there (Yes, at times I am reminded that the "legendariness" that is snowballing out of control on a daily basis); but I am usually walking around thinking to myself, "Damn, my neck hurts today." Or, "Man, am I hungry. How am I going to make it through the next two hours." Or, "Oh no, where am I going to safely sleep tonight, somewhere on the streets of North Hollywood?" After three years of this sh*t, the political operative spin doctors can say what they want, ZD is tattered and torn and feels he needs the Steve Austin "Six Million Dollar Man" crew to restore him back to full-functionality. (Hopefully, it's nothing some structural support (a bed) and good nutrition can't nurse me back to a somewhat human feeling, again.

Anyway, I'm not USUALLY walking around feeling, "Oh wow, people are really talking about me (huge word of mouth) and there is this whole 'Zuma Dogg political phenomenon' out there after three years of intense TV appearances on Time Warner cable and here on this blog." Again, I have moments where I am reminded. But more recently it has been the forementioned "crisis" thoughts, more than truimphant refelctiveness.

But these days, instead of returning to the crowd of Venice or some other highly populated area to soak up the "Zuma Dogg Celebration Parade" that occurs when I stroll through my hometown haunts after my trips to city hall and during my blogging, I need the "chillness" of "top of the mountain" kind of places where there is NO stress that accompanies these highly populated Zuma Dogg appreciation zones.

So less and less am I "feelin'"the crowd as I retreat from even late night karoake performances that used to be an outlet, replaced by round the clock blogging, talk radio listening in my car and going to the council meetings or coming back from them and before you know it, it's time for another meeting and the whole cycle repeats.

And my constant "miff" is that throughout it all, I'm the guy sleeping on the street and isn't a paid professional like newspaper and radio staffers and am the most uninvolved, least affected-by-any-of-it person ever to utter a public comment word. But at this point, after realizing I've been on cable TV in Los Angeles, once a week or more for almost nine years, enhanced by radio calls and all the people I've met in public...I guess I should just accept it as a given and try to knock the chip off my shoulder.

Zuma Dogg is kind of like a Batman cartoon character, and if I was one of the villians, like Riddler or Joker, ZD would be the guy out to prove he was right in the court of public opinion after having his innovative ideas scoffed, scroned and rejected until he was a guy washed up on the beach. But you couldn't take away my thoughts and creativity.

So I took my video camera; went to Venice and started filming all the fun stuff at Venice and making my smart ass comments with a little "first amendment" angle on top to keep it mindful; and started airing it on the various public access systems across the L.A. and Ventura county when I found out they could not say, "no" like corporate America.

The people responded to the all improv footage until Adam Sandler was flagging me down on the street, castmembers of "Friends" were invitiing me to their small family gathering (and if I wasn't availbale that day, they were going to change the date so I could be there) and it was a round the clock ZD celebration in the lines of Starbucks and parking lots strip malls across L.A. and Ventura counties.

Then, three years ago, I ended up at City Hall for public comment concerning my income at Venice Beach as a licensed vendor, and "The Zuma Dogg Show" moved from the set of Time Warner and into Los Angeles City Council chambers, three days a week. (Twelve airings per week with repeats counted.)

And very, very, very, very, very, very, very surprising to me, was the reaction I was getting from people at the council meetings, both staffers and residents in attendance. I guess no one ever really was crazy enough to head down to city hall; day, after day, after day, after day until I began to feel like Jay Leno or Steve Edwards who had to be on the set for the show because the people were waiting.

So my life has been turned upside down, and all of this political stuff for me to be involved with is like Eddie Van Halen finding out he had a knack for guitar at my age. Or Arnold Palmer just finding out he was good at gold. I am very un-witting in it all, but my main gift isn't being the smartest or best at the legalease, or even investigations; but because of my "relationship" with the public that has been established over the past eight (almost nine) years.

When someone meets ZD, they feel like they know him already, and I have met so many thousands of people, it feels like I know them already. This happened this week. When I was having lunch with someone for the first time, and I was getting cranky at him for saying the same old stuff I was already sick of hearing from the first 1000 people, then I stopped and said aloud, "I'm sorry, bro. I forgot. We just met five minutes ago. We've never spoken, so I have to remeber we are having this conversation for the first time.

So I think people see that I am "out there" hollering the stuff no one else seems to be hollering in a way no one else is hollering. And the biggest amount of my time, and biggest cause of daily nervous breakdowns is the time I spend listening to all of these true legalese and research geniuses who have so much knowledge and it always goes so deep...THEY ARE FULLY AWARE THAT THE AVERAGE PERSON WATCHING AND READING CANNOT UNDERSTAND A THING THEY ARE SAYING.

So these people see I am saying these complex things in a way that everyday people can understand and make them understand "why" they should be understanding. And so they feel it's worth their time to toruture themselves trying to get knucklhead ZD to understand to the point of being able to spit it back out, simply AND ACCURATELY.

And a big pressure of it all, is a lot of the people do not go out and say this stuff publicly out of fear. So they give it to me, and I'm numb-skulled enough to go out there and say what they are scare to. But I'm not exactly comfortable blasting it so publicly myself, either. AND THE PROBLEM IS, THAT DOESN'T STOP ME. So ZD is your "information launderer." You tell me, and I say it so you don't have to assume the risk and liability.

And part of what has been driving me mad is that after three years, I have a history, a short history but intense history, and I see all these crazy, out-there-on-a-limb, CRAZY and WILD predictions that I have been making and warning of HAD ALL COME TO ROOST WITH SHOCKING ACCURACY AND SPECIFICITY. So again, I know I'm the big, bad 800 lb gorilla Zuma Dogg...BUT IT'S SURPRISING AND SHOCKING TO ME THAT I HAVE THE "RAINMAN" KNACK WITH THIS HIGH LEVEL STUFF. (It's called "unwitting" y'all, but I'm rollin' with it, but I am telling you, and it's hard to understand for most, but not some, THIS ZAPS THE ENERGY OUT OF YOU! I'm telling you!

So to summarize, although the constant cloud of bitnerness looms, I guess seeing my blog go from unranked, to #15 to #10 to #5 to #2...as a guy, "Caught in a cross fire that I don't understand. But there's one thing I know for sure, babe, I don't give a damn for the same old played out scenes. I don't give a damn, for just the in betweens. Honey, I want the heart, I want the soul, I want control, right now" as Springsteen once said (a million times, in concert probably), I guess should feel a little better that people are actually tuning in and cutting through all the internet clutter to read my blog each day. Thanks for reading my mind. I hope you understand there is an evil, evil, desperate, gentrifying, pension losing force I am fighting.

I wish I could have fallen into something more shallow and blissfully ignorant, like a job on the set. Instead, I gotta schlep it out with the lowest, most desperate, evil, dispicable people in the city like the mayor and councilmembers. They're worse than record promoters.

So thanks to all the people who shockingly pushed my blog to #2 in the BNN ranker of 100 statewide blogs, and come to think of it, thanks to everyone who sends ZD the good feedback that helps keeps the ZD runaway train speeding along at full steam and off the tracks.