sounds familiar

Tuesday night and I’m stuck here again, right around that part where I begin everything with something like, “XXXday night and here I am again.”  I guess I could just say something like: “Hey Tuesday folks,” or maybe, “One day closer to hump day, one hump day closer to the weekend.”  Something like that.

Ween is on the iPod (Sharaun is at her volleyball game, so I get another TV-free all-tunes evening), I saw these guys when I was around fifteen in some small hole-in-the-wall club in Melbourne, Florida.  Myself and a crew of about six guys got dropped off by someone’s folks, and proceeded to hang out in front of the gas station asking random sketchy-looking dudes if they’d buy us beer.  After striking out, we entered the club empty-handed – no beer, no dope, no nothing.  For fourteen year old punks, the prospects were slim.  But we still had the show.

We regarded Ween as mostly a joke, as we were listening to the Pure Guava album at the time and songs like “Push the Lil’ Daisies” didn’t do much to bolster any “serious musician” cred.  But, at the show, Ween was amazing (I’ve looked and looked and looked online for a bootleg of that particular show, would be amazing to hear it again all these years later… and Ween has a fanatic fanbase of live show collectors, so I assume it’ll show up eventually).  They played a blistering million-minute cover of Prince’s “Purple Rain,” which proved they could play… so why all the crap on the records?

We begged them for “Big Jilm,” which had become a running joke amongst the group as maybe the most retarded song ever made (sorry retarded people).  They replied that the tape loop for that song was busted, and this had us howling almost as much as when they launched into tracks like “Hey Fat Boy, Asshole,” and, “Flies On My Dick,” which they dedicated to their grandparents – who were actually in the audience.  What an amazing night for some kids…

Oh gosh look, I wrote about it before, and seem to remember there being dope.  Who knows…

OK, let’s move on to the meat.

I am not now, nor have I ever been, a “social networking” kinda guy.  Not on MySpace, not on Facebook, not on Bebo or LinkedIn or any of those other all-the-rage sites.  Never will be either, I just don’t cotton to the canned nature of the pages and the stupid back-and-forth banter.  So, that’s something you now know about me.

My brother, however, has a MySpace profile.  Now, I know I don’t write about my brother much here on the bloggy-blog-blog, but he’s a good guy and I like him a lot.  I don’t deride him for having a MySpace thingy – I know plenty of people who have ’em, it’s totally cool.  In fact, I used to visit his page occasionally just to see what he had posted or what his buddies (or whatever MySpace dubs them) were talking about.

Some time ago (been a long while now), my bro set his MySpace page to private.  I think this means only people he knows or has “friended” or whatever can see his stuffs.  I still have the link bookmarked though, and occasionally I’ll go there to see if maybe he’s un-privated the thing.  I never have any luck, the thing’s always still private – but I can at least see his little picture, his “current mood,” and his little tagline/motto thing.

But, what I noticed tonight, and what I wanted to write about, is the bottom of the page.  Down there after MySpace tells you the profile is “private,” it offers you a consolation prize by following up with, “Here are some public profiles you may find interesting.”  I can only assume the logic behind what I may find interesting is MySpace looking at the details behind my brother’s private profile, comparing them to the millions of other profiles on MySpace, and serving up those with some degree of commonality.  I imagine they look at age, interests, school and professional history, taste in music, links, comments, etc., etc., etc.

So, what worries me is the rank-and-file losers it pitches me as “public” stand-ins for my “private” brother.  MySpace, how dare you boil down my bro to this douchebag parade?!

Actually, I don’t know any of these guys… so I guess it’s kinda mean to assume they are, or label them as, “losers.”  Sorry guys.

For all I know, SHoRtYRoC is a Rhodes scholar.  Matt and Brian appear to share hats – so that shows kindness; and S.A.G. appears to be a real gangsta so I better reserve comment on him.  Randy and Scooter… oh Randy, oh Scooter… guys…  And I could go either way on Patrick.  But, just looking at them in aggregate, I don’t think they have much bearing on tho “who” of my little bro.

So, who is my brother?  I wrote this about him a few years ago:

Frank is my brother. His real name is John. When I was in the 4th grade (I think), I was of the opinion that the name “Frank” was one of the dumbest names a human could have (my apologies to all the Franks out there who are offended by that, but I was young). I started calling my brother Frank to be funny, or mean, or a little of both. Incredibly, the name stuck. Stuck hard. So hard, in fact, that by the time he was in high school, that’s all anyone knew him by. He even got “Frank” sewn on his Little League jacket.

Unfortunately, Frank endured many years of torture at my hands – both physical and psychological. I threw the cat in the bathtub with him; I brainwashed him into admitting guilt for things I’d done; I used to punch him as hard as I could every time I died playing Nintendo; he always had to be Luigi. When we were young, we were the best of friends. I remember playing Star Wars in the back yard, we used a shovel to dig the Sarlacc’s pit that Han got flung into (much to my mom’s chagrin). I remember tying ropes around the necks of our stuffed animals, and swinging them around in giant circles, pretending they were on some ride at the carnival. We were best buds.

I don’t know when that ended, but now we’re more like old friends who are flirting with the idea of having a brotherly relationship. My bro dropped out of high school in his junior year. We weren’t very close during those times, but I imagine he had a lot of the same experiences I did at his age… and he, too, lived through them (apparently the family mettle is strong). I hope Frank and I can get back to the days of Sarlacc pits and stuffed animal abuse one day, at least in spirit.

I wrote that sometime in 2000.  I’m happy to say that the sad-sounding ending isn’t really applicable anymore, and my brother and I have a fairly normal relationship at this point.  So, suck it MySpace.

Not comprehensive, but not bad.  Goodnight folks.