The Price Of Face

Perhaps I have mentioned this before, and it might seem a little hypocritical to be taking aim at anything on Al Gore's Internet when the very words you are reading would have to come to you carefully bound and written by quill pen without it, but what is the deal with Facebook? Maybe I just missed the demographic, or maybe I am way too immersed in my own musings to imagine taking on anyone else's, but what is the deal?
It would make more sense if I were the one who went to see "The Social Network" and had the scales from my eyes. At last I could see what a craven enterprise this thing is. I would simply go home and cancel my account, relieved to be free of this horrible time-sink. I would start meeting friends the old fashioned way: looking someone in the eye and having conversations longer than the size of a text box. I would connect with people on a level just a shade deeper than their favorite "Gilligan's Island" character. I would stop using "friend" as a verb.
Or not. There are plenty of very happy and healthy individuals who continue to be very polite and active in analog ways who continue to use their Facebook accounts. Sometimes we even make eye contact. These are the people who can walk away whenever they want. They aren't updating their status by the half hour. The trouble is, even members of that first group are apparently just as susceptible to the creeping tendrils of online creepiness. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that even those with the strictest privacy settings were in danger of having their personal information transmitted out into cyberspace for advertisers and those less scrupulous to do as they see fit with them. What I am saying here is simple: It's not just me.
Facebook currently boasts half a billion users. McDonald's would love to sell them all a hamburger. Coca-Cola would happily give them all both a Coke and a smile. And some bad people would love to use your personal information for making bad choices with someone else's lives. It's like the movie suggests: There's this great big party on Al Gore's Internet and no one wants to be left off the guest list. The trouble is, the guys who are running it keep changing the rules, and they seem to have a hard time keeping everyone safe. It reminds me a little of the 1980's.
Or maybe it's a little like heroin. "First one's free," says Captain Jack. Or like Captain Zuckerberg says, "It's free, and always will be." That one probably is just me.

Something For Nothing

This past weekend, my wife was minding her own business in a very literal sense at our neighborhood yard sale. That was until she was approached by a woman who wanted to share a very exciting opportunity with her. She wanted my wife to take a look at some products she had for sale. Ever pleasant and curious, my wife accepted the pretty green catalog. The woman was selling Herbalife: natural health and weight loss. Why wouldn't my wife be interested? Three simple letters: MLM.
Multiple Level Marketing has been the ruin of many a poor boy, and God I'm glad I'm not one. I am sure that the Herbalife Personalized Protein Powder would provide me with the results I so desperately need, both from a personal as well as a powder position, but I don't like the idea that I am going to be getting those results on the back of some poor schmuck who decided to get into the Herbalife game just a little late. Somebody's relative. Somebody's friend.
Once upon a time, I got a call from a chum of mine from school. It had been years since we had seen one another, and he invited me over to dinner. It never occurred to me that I was walking into an Amway Ambush. Being a clever sort, I immediately confronted this friend of mine from childhood: "You want me to work for you? Selling soap?"
"It's not what you think! It's not one of those pyramid schemes," and then it was too late. I wasn't in love with the idea of dragging a bunch of samples around and trying to find someone who needed paper towels by the caseload, but then trying to convince them to come and work for me so that I could stop selling paper towels by the caseload and start sitting on my couch counting money just wasn't going to happen. I didn't want to be part of the pyramid. Not at the bottom. Not at the top. It reeked of scam to me, even way back then.
I didn't finish dinner. I never saw my grade school pal again. He may have eventually found his underlings and ascended out of the one bedroom apartment in which he was living. Or maybe he used up the gallons of multi-purpose cleaner that he had shoved into his hall closet and moved on with his life. I hope he found happiness. But I will never understand how reasonable people become consumed and attached to such silliness. I understand that there are still plenty of people who believe that you can pop corn with cell phones. Responsible people with real jobs. They fall prey to the words that have been used for scams like this for years: "It really works!" It's simply a corollary to the words that make every ghost story truly scary: "It really happened." I guess, in the end, it depends on what is more terrifying: a guy with a stainless steel hook preying on young lovers in their cars, or some friendly face babbling on about a "business opportunity." They all end about the same, and no matter how many cell phones you use, they still won't pop corn.

Race To Nowhere

"Everything is walking distance, if you have the time." - Steven Wright
It's that time of year when I start to consider the length of the runs that I take around the streets and lanes of my neighborhood. I don't think too much about ten kilometers. That's how far I run once a year: the Sunday after Thanksgiving. It's the organized, measured race that I participate in each year, and right about now is the time of year when they send me an application, just to remind me that I could run ten kilometers. If I wanted to.
The rest of the year I satisfy myself with the distance that time permits. That generally clocks in somewhere around three to four miles two or three times a week. These are generally loops that use my front gate as a starting and finish line. Occasionally my family and friends coax me into more directional routes that take me from one place to another. "Let's run over to the Lake," or "Let's run the trail up at Roberts Park." But mostly it's just me, running in circles.
Last week I had a memory of my first and only interview for a teaching position. The weekend before, I looked at a map of the area to get a rough idea of where the school was, strapped my son in our jogging stroller, and trotted off into the unknown. I had some vague idea of how far away the school was, but a number of dead ends and a few wrong turns added to the mix. Eventually I found myself on the curb, looking up at the place that would be my home away from home for the next fourteen years. I caught my breath, and pushed my son back up the slow incline, heading home.
That was a long time ago. Many miles ago. I've gone through dozens of pairs of running shoes. My son runs alongside me, from time to time. My dog has retired from the circuit, preferring the more relaxed pace of my wife's constitutionals to my hurried cadence. And it makes me think of another Steven Wright bit: "I took my dog for a walk, all the way from New York to Florida. I said to him 'There, now you're done.'" Me? I'm not done yet.

Strict Interpretive Dance

Rule 12, Section 3, Article 1(d) prohibits players "from engaging in any celebrations while on the ground," also known as unsportsmanlike conduct or excessive celebration. That's what the National Football, or "No Fun" League officials will tell you when you commence to cavort about the end zone after a touchdown, or dance like a maniac over the prone body of your mortal enemy, the opposing quarterback. It is what distinguishes professional football from Championship Wrestling. For the record, a flying chest bump is within the rules, but if you happen to fall down while attempting such a risky maneuver, it will cost your team fifteen yards. That's what happened to the Dallas Cowboys' Marc Colombo, after he missed the rather sizable target that is Jason Witten's chest. He fell to the ground, a flag was thrown, and the subsequent penalty helped the Tennessee Titans set up for their winning score. Incidentally, he was also flagged for unnecessary roughness, an ironic term in a contact sport, and the league office decided to fine him five thousand dollars. It was not Mister Colombo's week. This is a guy who, in his spare time, is the lead singer for heavy metal group "Free Reign." Maybe he should have saved up all that fury for the stage.

Or not. He's a big guy playing a game with a bunch of other big guys and things get pretty exciting out there sometimes. I confess I have always appreciated Vince Lombardi's suggestion that if you happen to make it to the end zone, "act like you've been there before." For this reason, I thought that Terrell Davis' "Mile High Salute" was a nicely understated acknowledgement of the reason he was on the football field in the first place: the fans. Then there was the other infamous Bronco end zone celebration, when Godwin Turk spiked a ball so hard that he dislocated his shoulder, keeping him out of the lineup when Denver went to the Super Bowl for the first time. Self-penalizing.

That was back in the days when the exuberance flowed a little more freely, before the highly choreographed displays of Terrell Owens and Chad Ochocinco. Dancing with the Stars, indeed. Is football a business? Is it a sport? Is it entertainment? Is it supposed to be any fun? Using Mister Ochocinco's statistics as a starting point, one might guess that he will continue to misbehave when he scores, since he's been there more than sixty times as a professional, and maybe that's just how he acts when he gets there. Go figure.

The Big Fix

Megbay Whitman wants us to fix California's education system from the top to the bottom. The California teacher's union doesn't want her to get a chance. It comes a no surprise that the traditionally Democratically-aligned CTA has their differences with the state's leading auctioneer. Instead they find themselves in an uneasy alliance with Jerry "Been There, Done That" Brown. He's the guy who started the rush to charter schools in Oakland back when he was mayor here. The two that got his personal attention continue to survive, even if they don't quite meet the federal standard for "thrive." Jerry does say, on his web site, "I have gained first-hand experience in how difficult it is to enable all students to be ready for college and careers." I'm not going to be the one who goes out and searches for evidence of his hours in the classroom, but we'll give him a point or two for continuing to have his name associated with these institutions. I like the idea of reforming the state testing program. I like the suggestion about broadening the scope of instruction to include more science, history and humanities. That sounds nice. So does having chocolate milk every day at lunch. Megbay, on the other hand wants us to know that, "If our schools don't improve, our prisons will continue to be overcrowded, welfare costs will continue to spiral upward, and we will lose our ability to be a center of innovation." No chocolate milk for her.
The reality is this: Neither Brown nor Whitman will inherit any sort of quick-fixable agenda for anything, especially education. There will be plenty of photo opportunities to go along with all the lip service that is currently being paid before the second of November. Then, suddenly, it will be time to put all of these words into action. Or not. Whitman's plan to cut welfare and shovel that money back into higher education, and Brown's concern over the ability to transfer credits between the CSU and UC systems seem quaint compared to the challenges faced by public education as a whole. None of this can happen without some sort of change and/or relief on a federal level. Unless California finally becomes its own republic, and since I didn't find any plans for secession on either one of the candidates on either web site, I'm guessing we'll continue to wait and hope for change.

Watch Where You Swing That Price Club

If, as Newt "So Silly A Name That A Nickname Is Unnecessary" Gingrich insists, Democrats are the food stamp party, where does that leave Wal-Mart? Those courageous retailers who have lead the fight to keep our families fed, even if it is via the variety four-pack of Pringles. There's a battle being waged out there, and the friendly folks at Wal-Mart want to make it safe for you and yours to put one more meal on the table. Unless it starts eating into their profits.
A few months ago, the great blue beast that is Wal-Mart started a campaign of "rolling back" its already low prices. There would be bargains on top of bargains, and who would be foolish enough to turn down a deal like a six pack of Lipton's sweetened iced tea mix for just thirty-one dollars and ninety-eight cents? You'd have to be crazy to miss out on an offer like that. And while you're there, you should probably pick up a few items that you really don't need.
That's how they roll: back. They don't make any money on the stuff that they sell for next to nothing, but hope that you'll stick around long enough to purchase enough "impulse buys" to make the trip worth their while. Like that forty ounce bottle of Heinz ketchup, for example. Except that's not what consumers have been consuming. They have the temerity to buy only those items that have been rolled ridiculously back, and then fled. There have been unconfirmed reports of blue-vested employees chasing customers out into the parking lot, ranting about the deals that they are missing and pleading with them to purchase just one more twelve pack of Rayovac D cell batteries. Even though the recession is over, there are just so many D cell batteries that your average family of four can use in a month.
And so Wal-Mart will no longer be rolling back prices. You might pay a little more for that case of Wilson Titanium tennis balls, but at least you'll have your self-respect. It's all a part of Wal-Mart's new "Build Your Self-Esteem By Buying Junk You Don't Need At Inflated Prices" program. I smell a winner.

What's In A Name?

If you type "Vernon Park" into your search box, you probably won't get much specific response. Contrastingly, if you put "Juan James Rodriguez" in that same box and press "enter," you'll get a whole lot more than you might have expected or wanted to see. This is the guy who got arrested this past weekend for streaking in front of the president. He did it, allegedly, to snap up the million dollar award set up by billionaire media "prankster" Alki David. Mister Rodriguez was quickly arrested. Mister David said it was unclear if his naked minion met all the criteria to qualify for the prize.
More to the point, it was the name of the web site, Battlecam.com, that needed to be stenciled across the streaker's chest, and had to be shouted "six times within earshot of the President." In the big book of "there's no such thing as bad publicity," I suppose Alki David just wrote a chapter all his own. His web site gets all kinds of traffic, his bio gets refreshed on Wikipedia, and Juan J. Rodriguez slips quickly into the footnotes, right next to Robert Opel.
Then there's the still-unnamed author who, in a fit of what might be best described as exuberance, tossed his new book at the President. Same day. Same park. He too was quickly taken into custody, even though he remained clothed during the exchange. According to reports, the guy "really wanted the President to read his new book." Obviously he missed the mark. He should have written it across his chest and run past the podium. The font would have to be smaller than a simple web address. Or better yet, he might have hired somebody else to "show off his shortcomings." Then maybe we'd know his name too.