Monday, June 29, 2009

Oh Michael, Ye Hardly Knew Ye

I recall seeing the Jackson 5 on TV when they were just starting out. I thought they were cool. They were singing "I Want You Back", and that kid Michael was just going crazy on the dance floor. I loved the song. And I loved the dancing.

And I couldn't tell my friends. At least my white friends. We'd moved about 3 years before from a west Texas military and university community where people were just people, to a small town in the south where (at the time) white people were people, colored folk were generally something else, and there wasn't too much mixing, and then only under controlled conditions. Unless you liked getting beat up. A lot.

I had a couple of black friends, anyway; they'd somehow managed to cross the color line and not cause riots (no, I am not exaggerating). They and the local rock station turned me on to Diana Ross, James Brown, and many others, including the Jackson 5. My parents had worked hard (and rather successfully) to raise us to notice skin color about like we noticed hair color or eye color, and they were fine with us listening to this music. (We were the Outsiders, for sure.)

That radio station (and the black station that proper white folk weren't supposed to listen to) kept playing the Jackson 5, even playing their older songs over the next few years. At one point in 1972, I recall hearing five or six Jackson 5 songs in the same afternoon on one station, including "I Want You Back".

Some of my friends-- who'd been brought up in that culture of racism-- stared listening to these cats as well. They all claimed not to watch Soul Train, but if you watched them dance it was clear they weren't learning these moves from American Bandstand. By now, of course, black music in the white world was maturing (as well as sometimes getting rawer and / or angrier), but the Jackson 5 were still drawing people better than all but a few black acts.

For a few years after this the Jackson 5 (morphing into The Jacksons in a name dispute between labels) and Michael kind of flew under the radar for a while until Michael appeared in The Wiz. Things started moving for Michael again, though predominately still in the black community. But now his weirdness was center stage; black friends who bought The Jacksons' records and Michael's records were as likely to talk about his surgery and idiosyncratic behavior as they were his music. Until Thriller. Now everyone listened to (and watched, via MTV) Michael. Subsequent tours (no tour for Thriller) saw ticket prices that, for the time, were insanely high. The Machine was in full gear, and Michael was the hamster keeping the golden wheel spinning.

The Music Industry, the Pop Fans, and Greed Running Amok in every one around him (and probably in him; Real Money and Adoration of the Masses will tempt nearly anyone) had caught Michael at a young age and locked him in that hamster wheel. I've often wondered whether his bizarre lifestyle was primarily because of substance abuse or just a reaction to the cage, trying to carve out an identity because he really didn't know who he was. In either case (or perhaps both) the man sure seemed lost inside that ever changing body and the growing metropolis of the Michael Jackson Mystique. This is the end, to greater or lesser degrees, for far too many of our kings and queens of popular culture.

I never met the man, and I certainly can't judge him. But despite the glamor, the money, the accolades, I don't really see Michael Jackson as all that successful. Sure, he had money, fame, and millions of rabid fans. But I see a sad case, a man possessed from a young age by people riding his gravy train, molding Michael Jackson into the image of the god they wanted serving them.

I've made my share of jokes about his bizarre lifestyle but I really do appreciate the contributions he made to the music industry (especially to helping black music go mainstream in the 1969-1973 era) as well as to music itself and ultimately to racial harmony. He was a great pop singer, a great dancer, a brilliant showman / entertainer. He made some pretty cool, significant contributions to charity. But in the end, I wonder how happy he really was, if he really knew who he was, who he was created to be, and where he was ultimately headed. I don't know that he did. For his sake, I hope he did. Eternity's a long time by yourself.

What about the Machine? The Music Industry; society with stars in its eyes, worshipping its idols and driving them to hide, to despair of the public; the Greed Machine? While I detest them as collectives, I feel the same way toward the people in them as I do Michael and everyone else. Far too many of us look at Michael Jackson (or Elvis or Farrah or whomever) and try so desperately to be one of them, someone we are not, that we in turn lose sight of who we are and were made to be (if, indeed, we ever knew), and wander, like Michael, in an inner city of confusion and desperation. May God have mercy on us all and deliver us from ourselves.

Thanks especially to Kayla Marie and to John VanPelt, whose responses to Michael's death got me thinking more about these issues.

Monday, June 22, 2009

My kind of wedding!

I love a good wedding and suffer through the rest. The Hall family weddings are always fun. They manage to take the wedding seriously without taking themselves or life too seriously. Since I haven't cleared this with anyone in the family, I won't name any more names. Those who know will know, and everyone else can fill in names as they please. If you need names, then I suggest (in order) Edwina, Fred and Poquan. Just because.

When the bride (traditional white satin) started down the aisle, the groom (jeans, jacket, boots & hat) went wild, like he was going to run down the aisle and tackle her. The best man held the struggling groom off the ground to keep him up front.

A couple of times during the service, the bride got so excited she just shimmied all over.

During the vows the best man was looking straight at the bride over the groom's shoulder with a big, goofy smile on his face. The bride barely made it through the vows without cracking up.

When they (the bride and groom) kissed at the end, it was so passionate I thought her dress was going to catch fire.

As the bride and groom started down the aisle after the service, the DJ started playing the traditional wedding recessional. After a few seconds of this the sound system made a noise like a dying turntable and switched to disco music (K C and the Sunshine Band).

After the dinner and dancing, the bride threw the bouquet. Her two sisters both got hold of it and fought over it until it ripped in half.

When the groom got ready to take off the bride's garter, they blindfolded him. She got up from the chair; the best man sat down with his pants pulled up to his knees and his boots off. The bride sat next to him to cover his legs with her dress. When the groom got old of the best man's *very* hairy legs, his expression was priceless.

Friday, June 19, 2009

Dear face(less)book

An open letter to facebook and its advertisers (including corporations I was recently a "fan" of on facebook):

Dear face(less)book,

A couple of days ago, out of the blue, I was suddenly warned that I was possibly in violation of your terms of use, that I had possibly practiced "wall post abuse", and that my account could be locked (I forget the exact term) or I might be blocked from using this feature if I continued in this practice. That was the gist of the (singularly useless) warning.

Nowhere did you explain what you really thought the problem was. Nowhere can I find a list of the things that constitute "wall posts". Nowhere did you explain what behavior, how much, or in what time frame would result in the account being locked.

I spent some time looking through the FAQs as you suggested. I could find nothing at all that applied to my use of facebook.

I looked through your terms of use. I could find nothing in which I might be in violation.

I looked through your notes on blocking. They were also useless, other than warning me that you could not, under any circumstance, lift a block early. (I'm sorry, but that's just absurd.)

Giving up, I went back to my home page, and commented on someone's status. Surprise! That turns out to be a wall post! A huge banner took over the top of my page, explaining that You Have Been Warned, You Were Bad, Now You Are Banned, You Account Could Be Locked (whatever, still don't recall the phrasing). For some, apparently random amount of time from several hours to several days.

At this point I discovered that you are essentially not really facebook, but facelessbook. You make it as difficult to contact you as possible. All I could find was a "suggestions" contact page, which I used. Several days later, I still haven't heard back. It doesn't surprise me, but it certainly irritates me.

The icing on the cake is that after 24 hours (best guess) the giant warning banner disappeared. Nowhere can I find any hint of whether I am still blocked. I can try to wall post; only after I try to submit do I get a popup explaining that I am still blocked. Again, nowhere do you tell me whether this prolongs the block or increases my chances of having my account locked, or if this is, indeed, the correct way to determine when the block is lifted.

So for now, all I can do to communicate is set status and send private messages. This severely limits interaction. I got onto facebook primarily because I am involved with teenagers and college aged people. Much of this is because I am a youth pastor; in today's culture, facebook and myspace are requirements for keeping in touch and communicating with young people. You have now, arbitrarily, capriciously, and without any useful warning, cut off much of that interaction.

I suppose that since you provide a "free" service (of course, nothing is free, as the ads take time to load and draw my eyes, costing me time, my most precious asset) you feel no need to provide customer service. Until this blocking, I often opined that I would be happy to pay two or three dollars a month to get rid of the ads. But now, having experienced one of the highest levels of "customer no service" I have personally encountered, I am not so sure I would trust you with my money.

As someone who has spent over two decades in software development and IT, as an early adopter of the internet, I understand the necessity of defending against both spam and harassment. But your implementation of these defenses violates many, many rules of usability and user interaction.

I happen to know that I am not alone in this predicament. Quite a few others are in the same boat, including at least one school teacher. I'm sure some of those blocked deserved it. Some of them may even know why they were blocked. But I bet not all of them knew, and I know for a fact not all of us deserved it.

A a premier social media service, you wield great power. With great power comes great responsibility. While you have a responsibility to protect your users from spammers, stalkers and predators, you also have a responsibility to treat your users fairly, and to respond to problems appropriately-- not arbitrarily, capriciously, or without appeal.

You are currently the 700 pound gorilla. But on the net, empires rise and fall far more quickly than in the physical world. If you don't solve these problems, and solve them fairly quickly, I strongly suspect you will have a competitor arise "from nowhere", and take over most, if not all of your market share. You can choose to be reasonable and solve the problems, or to be arrogant and stay the course. In the latter case, you will ultimately be just another failed footnote in the second dot com bubble.

As far as advertisers and corporate fandom goes I certainly don't hold those companies responsible. But I will nevertheless boycott them so long as they support your faceless attitude.

Resolution: I quit trying to do anything that included a possible wall post for over 24 hours (close to 36). Suddenly I can wall post again. Was this the magic needed, or was it just that the random timer tripped? No clue, because facelessbook never responded.