Still Twittering? Yeah I'm a Luddite too.

Joseph Kennedy, as the story goes, realized it was time to get out of the market when he got a stock tip from a shoe shine boy in 1929. When I originally heard the tale it was Rockefeller Jr. that received that tip rather than Old Joe, but the moral remains the same: Once everyone’s in the pool, you know it’s time to towel off and go hit the bar before somebody poops it all up.

Anyway, there’s a lot of grumbling to that effect in the twitter-verse these days; and although opinion varies about who the ultimate culprit is, (Britney, Rep. Joe Barton et al, Hilton, Kutcher, Oprah…) there’s certainly a consensus among the cool kids that twitter has jumped the shark. In response, a lot of them seem to be following a sort of 21st century manifest destiny by moseying along to Friendfeed where they can graze the wide open spaces of social media undisturbed by those all those pesky celebrities, noobs and posers. Or so I’m told.

At any rate, in the face of these shifting social sands I’m still holding fast to my status as a Twitter luddite, and as such I would point out that just last night I had a fine time following an exchange between Adam Savage and John Hodgman regarding whether or not it might be possible to pee straight through one’s khakis. It was actually pretty funny. Really.

So you crazy kids can have your Friendfeeds and Jaikus and Delicious-es and Flikrs and Linkedins; I’m just fine hanging out with the 2008-set, thank you very much. (And no, we don’t even mind the Fail Whale too much either, so there.)

Adam Lambert and the Lumpenproletariat

American Idol? =Really? =Yeah, well, as I’ve noted before it’s a shady netherworld into which I’ve been inadvertently drawn, just as one would be to Amway, midget tossing or being Born Again. One assumes.

Anyway, the embarrassingly all-too-sincere skinny on last night’s Idol is pretty much this:

• Early fave Danny Gokey continues coasting, and while he’s still going to be a finalist he’s been lazy and it’s disappointing to watch.
• Also-early-fave Lil Rounds continues coasting as well, and although I originally thought it was laziness like Gokey, after last night I think it’s clear that she really just has no idea what she’s doing.
• Nice-blind-guy Scott of the oddly distracting hair (Just me?) continues doing mostly OK, but he’s really a Christian Pop star and just doesn’t know it yet.
• Allison has an outstanding voice, but is clearly a 36 year-old Hooter’s waitress that at some point made a Mephistophelean bargain in which she’s switched bodies with a random teenager. Which is fine, except that if we’ve learned anything from all those body-switch movies from the 80s, she’s gonna get busted at the end when there’s a hilarious mix-up with the magic idol/statue/spell. Oh yeah, and she’s not going to win.
• Cute-guy (is his name Kris? Who can remember?) does a good job as well, but doesn’t have the charisma to win.
• Wormy-guy Matt is too inconsistent for my taste. As well as being vaguely reptilian. Ick.
• Anoop-dawg remains oddly compelling and strong, it’s just a shame that he feels like a lightweight and is probably just a little too goofy to go all the way.

Which leaves us with dark horse Adam Lambert; who, for the record, absolutely killed with his brilliant cover of Ring of Fire just as he did with last night’s outstanding performance of Strange World. Sure, the song was probably a little cliché for the nerdy set, but I can only hope that it was distinctive enough to prove to the Middle American lumpenproletariat that Adam is far and away stronger than the pleasant but lamely homogenous Gokey.

That is, I mean, as if I really cared about big dumb old American Idol. ‘Cause reality shows are all lame and I’m not really taking this seriously at all. Yeah, so there. (Well anyway, I’ve gotta sneak off now and catch up on some Dancing with the Stars. Shhh, don’t tell.)

Cue the Vultures.

Hey, feeling old? You find that it’s getting harder to think of ways to put a positive spin on just how tall your kids are getting and all that implies about your mortality? No? Just me? Yeah right. Anyway, it was just a few weeks ago that I realized that my oldest boy is as tall as me now, and I’ve gotta say it was a little more disconcerting than I thought it would be. Not life altering by any means, but still, humbling on the same sort of level as the first time you’re unpleasantly surprised by a birthday. Or the first day you catch yourself consciously thinking: “Easy now, don’t slip getting out of the tub.”

I guess it’s nothing more than a low-level, first skirmish with mortality though; so I suppose the positive spin here is that I still have time to save up for that mid-life-crisis-Corvette I’ll be wanting. Phew.


( "consciously thinking"?= Yeah, whatever.)