MySpaced Out:


Infrequently of late do I have the chance to 'Net surf and instill a chuckle in my otherwise bane existence. That mostly has to do with my crazy work schedule, as working 3 billion and two hours a week tends to limit one's free time. And free time is important, cathartic even.

Take the Internet. It, after all, provides that rare form of comic relief which, on one hand, strikes a funny nerve that makes you laugh so much you cry at the audacity of society, and at the same time feeds the crack that forces you to incessantly tongue the sore, raw spot until in gangrenous revelry. One doesn't need to leave the house to live. Need to eat? Click ... online groceries. Want entertainment? Click ... Netflix. And if that doesn't do it for you, email me and I'll send my list that's sure to bring hours of pleasure.

I digress.

It's all a big reality game.

Take MySpace, for instance.

I joined the "community" for much the same reason as most: to promote my band. OK, so I like to stretch the truth. Yes, I was in a band at the time, and my guitarist and I concocted a plan to set up profiles to meet girls, all under the guise of luring them to our shows. Hey, every band needs its fan base.

Anyway, I was also dating a girl at the time who was as online whorish as they come, and she helped pull me into this cyber abyss. "Everyone's doing it," she said, as if I needed to only understand the sheep's logic for WHY he plunged over the side of the cliff.

Little to my knowlege she and one of her "friends" was getting all too friendly, and soon I would be a big fat single guy. Now I really needed this thing.

Suddenly, with intentions germane to any great artist, I found literally millions of girls at my fingertips, all conveniently between the ages of 20 and 22. And of course they were all hot. If I didn't know better, I'd hypothesize that some secret sex industry PR firm was working around the clock to post profiles of cutest girls imagineable, all of which "totally love baseball and beer," enjoy spending free time shopping for Tool tickets to surprise their boyfriend and like to play Jeff Buckley on their '67 Fender Stratocaster.

All I had to do was come armed with a show flyer and I, too, could form a harem of thousand upon thousands of "friends." Of course, these "friends" would translate into headcount at the ticketbooth, you know at my shows. Each "friend" would undoubtedly bring three or four friends with her. OK, so I had no shows to play. Minor details. I had my friends, and the numbers were slowly but surely growing. I even met a couple in person.

And ... they somehow looked nothing like their profile. Not that I'm a male pig or anything, OK, so my track record is not proven, but isn't the camera supposed to put on an extra 15 pounds? How come all the girls I was meeting looked skinnier in their photos.

I sooned learned a very valuable lesson: all is not what it appears, especially online.

My point here is that pop culture has gone and tinkered with another great invention, and totally destroyed it. Myspace and sites like it do the devil's work. They lure us away from thoughtful free enterprise, like going to bars, getting shit-faced and hooking up with a parking meter the old fashioned way. It hypnotizes us, dick in one hand, mouse in the other, scrolling through an endless directory, searching, searching, seaching. For what I never discovered.

The gist: well, the grass is always greener. Didn't your grandma tell you that?

Don't get me wrong. There's plenty that's great about the Internet. Never have I so readily used a dictionary in my life as I do www.m-w.com (blatant product placement). I'm also a lot better with my personal finances. Ah, thank you online banking. I can even pay bills without getting off my pasty white ass to secrete the billfold from my back pocket. Oh, and I can find guitar tabs to virtually every song dating back to 450 B.C.

Who said the Internet isn't a great thing?