A Flock of Seagulls Walks Into a Bar (Or, Why Twitter Doesn't Fly for Me)

Elmer Fudd walks into a bar. ...

Stop right there. I don't want to hear another joke about someone - whether it be Elmer, Kermit the Frog, Cardinal Wolsey or Tyrion Lannister - walking into a bar, pub, tavern or similar establishment. The thing is, I really don't care for bars. They're either deader than the cellphone I lost under the couch five years ago or so loud I can't hear anything but what sounds like a flock of seagulls being attacked by a swarm of bees.

And I'm not talking about the '80s band with the weird hair. At least those guys could carry a tune as far as MTV land. A lot of people in bars can't, even though some karaoke night wannabes wind up singing "Love Shack" in a voice even more strident than the original. (The lyric "tin roof, rusted"? I think describes some of their vocal cords.)

That's the only reason I ever went to a bar: for karaoke night. I never joined a band because I worked nights. This is what I told everyone and is, in fact, quite true. To a point. The real reason (which I'll never tell anyone - shhhh!) is that I was too lazy to learn an instrument and not quite good enough with the microphone to get within a mile of a recording studio. I suppose that's why I always finish third or fourth or worse in those karaoke contests.

Still, karaoke is fun. Going to a bar for any other reason is not. Yeah, you get to drink. Whoop-de-doo. You have to pay something like four times as much for a beer as you would if you got it at the supermarket, and then you have to find someone to drive you home after it's all said and done. In the meantime, you're getting screamed at by a those angry seagulls and buzzed by those pesky bees. If you stick around long enough, two drunks will probably get into a fight, and you'll swear you're on Pit Road at a NASCAR race. That might be fine for some folks, but did I mention I'm not a big NASCAR fan? They just go 'round and 'round in circles, and occasionally, there's a crash. Pretty much the way people operate at a bar.

Now, you might say that going to a bar is all about the aforementioned birds and bees: It serves a purpose in the mating ritual of the species known as Libidinous Solitarious. Having evolved to take the form of Libidinous Matrimonius, I have no use for such rituals at this point in my middle-aged existence. In fact, I never did, because they never worked for me. (You might assert that this is because I was simply not a member of the subspecies Desirablus, to which I would counter that, had this been the case, I would likely never have evolved to the status of Matrimonius.)

The simple fact is, bars just aren't and never have been my scene, which brought me to an epiphany the other day about why I don't like Twitter.

"Now, that's a bit of a leap," you may be saying.

But stay with me here. The connection between the two came courtesy of my friend John, who offered the following analogy: "Twitter is like talking to yourself in a busy pub with a gang of mates stood round you, sometimes they'll answer back, sometimes the random stranger stood next to you at the bar will answer back instead, with the person who's just nipping past to go to the toilet chipping in a few thoughts on his way past ..."

John's from England, and being in England might make being in a pub tolerable simply for the novelty of it. At least they have darts there. But as to the mode of conversation John described? Well, it wouldn't exactly make me feel special to be a detour on en route to a porcelain pit stop, and I've got zero interest in chatting up random strangers. (This probably accounts for why I never met any romantic interests at a bar. Not that I regret this: The people you meet at bars invariably start out as strangers, but I'm convinced that most of them are better off staying that way.)

John's analogy, for me, was spot-on. Whenever I've gone on Twitter, it's always felt as chaotic as a bar scene. The bees swarming. The seagulls flocking and squawking.

And me? I just ran. I ran so far away ...

When it comes right down to it, though, there's another reason I don't like Twitter. Just count the number of words in this post (if you're a masochist), or better yet, trust me.

"I don't like Twitter because it's too chaotic." That's 39 characters. I could have used Twitter if I'd wanted to and saved you all a whole lot of time. But I didn't want to. Where's the fun in that when you can engage in the sort of unrestrained verbosity I've exhibited here?

I think I've made my point.

As Elmer Fudd said when he stumbled out of the bar, never to return: "A-ba-dee aba-dee, a-ba-dee, that's all folks!"

How a Notebook Changed My Perspective on Bullying

A couple of years back, I wrote a book titled Undefeated to illustrate a simple principle: that the abuse of power is wrong. Period. No one person or group has a monopoly on cruelty, and those who dole out abuse in one culture or time period might wind up on the receiving end of abuse under different circumstances.

I learned that lesson early.

When I was a child, I was bullied. They say middle school (aka junior high) is hell, and I can attest to that. But, to be candid, there was a time when I was a bit of a bully myself. In sixth grade, some "friends" and I started giving another friend a "hard time" by knocking his notebook out of his hands when he was walking down the corridor to his next class. It was all in fun, supposedly. That's what I told myself to justify it. In reality, it was vicious and cruel.

Then, one day, everything turned on its head, and for some reason I became the target. Suddenly, it wasn't so much fun anymore.

Initially, I took it as a challenge. I'd outsmart them. I asked my parents to take me to the store and buy a "bully-proof" notebook. I thought I'd found one: one with a zipper to keep everything safely inside so that, the next time they knocked it out of my hands, none of my homework would come spilling out onto the pavement.

Except it did. Because the first time they knocked that slick new forest-green, zippered notebook out of my hands, they picked it up off the concrete, unzipped it and proceeded to shake out the contents until they were strewn all across the canopied corridor of A.E. Wright Middle School. Game, set and match. I was beaten. And to this day I remember how I felt when it happened: utterly defeated.

It wasn't because of anything I'd done (unless you believe in karma). The reason they knocked that notebook out of my hands wasn't because of who I was or what I'd done; it was because of who they were - and who I'd been when I did the same thing to the other kid in the first place. Mean. Selfish. Brazen. Willing to rationalize doing something hurtful by saying we were "giving someone a hard time"  or that it was all just "good, clean fun." It may have been fun for the notebook-knockers, but it wasn't fun for the person on the receiving end. It wasn't clean, and it certainly wasn't good for anyone.

There wasn't anything special about me or the other kid who wound up on the receiving end of these "pranks." We weren't minorities in any sense of the word; we weren't bad kids or layabouts or troublemakers. We were just there. A couple of years later, after I'd put on a bit of weight, some of the bullies took to calling me the "great white whale." It seems I had committed an unpardonable sin by being out of shape and pale as a scoop of vanilla ice cream (my Danish ancestry) in sunny, surf-obsessed Southern California. But that was just an excuse. If it hadn't been that, it would have been something else.

Because it wasn't about me. It was about them.

"It" is never about the victims. It's never about their sexuality, their gender, their race, their religion, their ethnic background or any of that. The bullies would like everyone to believe that it is, because they're under the warped impression that it will justify their abusive behavior. If something is wrong were their targets, it would mean something must be right with them. And this argument, if we accept it, blinds us from realizing that the wrong lies wholly with the perpetrators. 

There's nothing wrong with being gay, straight, bisexual, transgender, cisgender, lesbian, asexual, Asian, Native American, white, Pacific Islander, Aboriginal Australian, black, Indian, Ainu, Inuit, Latino, Norse, Celtic, Germanic, Slavic, an atheist, a polytheist, a woman, a man, a child, a senior citizen, a monotheist, a pantheist, a deist, an agnostic, a Gnostic, a poet, a scientist, an artisan, a cultivator, a merchant, a musician, an author, an engineer, a mathematician, a philosopher, a historian, a teacher, a chef, a healer, an advocate, a tailor ...

There is something terribly wrong with treating anybody as inferior because they belong to any of these groups, any one of which might be on giving or receiving end of abuse. Christians have been persecuted, and they've also been persecutors. So have atheists (remember the Soviet Union?). Name any ethnic group, and chances are they've been on each end of the stick at one time or another during their history. Power can be abused by anyone for any "reason," and the so-called "reasons" are never rational. 

The abuser-victim dynamic can flip in very short order, just as it did with me in middle school, as it did with the Christian church in the fourth century, or as it did with the Soviet Union in the early part of this one. Race, ethnicity, gender, etc. are never more than excuses for abusers to inflict their cruelty - and they're always bad excuses, at that. Regardless of the differences that we use as a foundation to build up barriers, one person's life is intrinsically no more and no less important than anyone else's. Human dignity recognizes none of these barriers and demands to be recognized despite all of them. Anything less is unacceptable.

On Life in a Small Town

It’s funny the connections you find here. I’ve heard the old cliché that, in a small town, everyone knows everyone else, but I’ve never really lived in a small town before. The closest I came was back in the 1980s, when I lived in Tulare in the San Joaquin Valley: Its population at the time hovered just below 40,000. That’s almost as many people as live in San Luis Obispo — the biggest city in our county — these days.

When I lived in Fresno, people called that a small town, too, but it wasn’t. By the time I was born more than a half-century ago, it had already crossed the 100,000 threshold. It wasn’t the Los Angeles megalopolis (I’ve lived there, too), but it was plenty big. My favorite restaurant there was (and is) El Torito, and I still lament the fact that SLO County doesn’t have one.

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NOTE: I'll be posting teasers and links to my column in The Cambrian and The Tribune periodically. To see a collection of my columns, click the COLUMN link at the bottom of any page.

For Mom ...

For Mother's Day, I'm posting this photo of my mom, shown here with my dad on one of their many trips - trips she made despite being paralyzed on one side by polio when she was a young teenager.

She never again rode the horses she loved, but there were so many other things she was never supposed to do again.

Yet she did.

When I knew her, her right arm - she was born right-handed - hung all but useless at her side. The only muscles that worked were, oddly enough, in her fingers, which could still grasp things. Her right leg was similarly immobile. She had to swing it out to the side, balancing on her left leg, each time she took a step. Sometimes, my dad helped her up off the couch or steady her as she walked, but most of the time, she did these things herself. Just as she changed my diapers herself, walked up three flights of stairs at UCLA on her way to a bachelor's degree and got a job as a supervisor at Douglas Aircraft on her own.

Her determination to not only survive and emerge from an iron lung - when doctors said she might not - but also walk again after being told it was impossible remains an inspiration to me. But it wasn't the polio that defined her. It was her patience, love, support and willingness to listen without judgement that made her who she was - at least who she was to me. She was Mom.

I knew she'd gotten weaker from a series of strokes in her early 60s, but I never expected the call I got from my father that day at work. It was wintertime, just past the new year, and I hadn't seen either of them since Christmas. Through tears, he told me how she'd gone to lie down for a nap and hadn't awakened. I'd never heard him cry like that. To this day, he speaks of the wonderful life he's had, with his only regret that she left too him soon.

They'd had 39 years together, but it would always have been too soon. I know it was for me.

Mom's been gone more than two decades now, but her example and guidance remain my beacon. I wouldn't be here today without her, perhaps in more ways than one. I only wish she had lived to see me begin to achieve my dreams.

Thanks, Mom. I love you.

Ten Species of Troll

Here are 10 species of Internet troll I've observed and cataloged in my study of the Wild, Wild Web. Recognize them. Avoid them. Lead a much happier life without them.

1. Stalkers. Attention seekers who need others' responses to feel validated. They follow you from one page to another, leaving comments on whatever you post. The problem is, you never know whether to treat them like lost puppies and scratch behind their ears, but this just keeps them coming back for more.

2. Lurkers. The next stage in the stalker's (d)evolution. Having been banned or blocked, they stay quiet and hide behind bogus profiles, conducting online espionage. Like the rude but distant relative who invites himself to Thanksgiving dinner, they feel they're entitled to a place at the table, even after they've been asked to leave.

3. Imposters. Critics who masquerade as a member of a certain group, they wait until the time is right, then ambush members in an open forum - sometimes with self-righteous religious rhetoric, sometimes with ads for fake Ray-Bans. I'm not sure which is worse.

4. Backstabbers. They air their dirty laundry to the world, slamming a spouse, relative, "friend," boss or some other third party who's (conveniently) not around to defend him/herself. They smile in your face. All the time, they wanna take your place ...

5. Know-it-Alls. These ego-driven types pose as authorities to gain "minions" as though they'd been chosen for the lead in Despicable Me - even though the lead character in that animated film is far more three-dimensional. Like stalkers, they want validation. But instead of targeting a single person, they cast a wider net in an effort to build a cult-like following. They're usually not authorities on much of anything. But that doesn't stop them from pontificating ad nauseam on their favorite subjects.

6. True Believers. The minions or clones from No. 5, who follow Know-it-Alls pretty much blindly, faithfully memorizing their scripts and robotically regurgitating their lines. Clones? Dittoheads? Do people actually take pride in these labels? Sometimes the Web is far too similar to bad talk radio, and you've just change the station.

7. Button-Pushers. They get a rise out of people by posting uncompromising positions on hot-button issues. On the one side, they get a lot of attaboys; on the other, they receive plenty of criticism (often spiced up using colorful language). Either way, they're out for attention, same as the Stalker and the Authority. They're motto: All publicity is good publicity.

8. Victims. Often Button-Pushers who pretend to be persecuted for their beliefs, they fly the "minority" flag as though it were a battle standard - whether or not they're actually in any minority. One favorite tactic: saying something outrageously offensive, then crying "censorship!" when the owner of the wall or page removes their comment.

9. Advocates. People who take up a single issue or slate of issues and draw a life-or-death line in the sand, then dare others on Facebook to cross it ... which, of course, they do, leading to sometimes amusing but mostly aggravating repercussions. They produce more litmus tests for than your eighth-grade science teacher and flunk you if you answer one question in a hundred the "wrong" way.

10. Devil's Advocates. The people who fuel the Button-Pushers' fire, their goal is, like most of the others, to gain attention - but their method's a little different. They're counter-punchers. They wait for someone else to state an opinion, then look for a weakness and pounce when they think they've found one. It's purely a game of one-upmanship. The Devil's Advocate who can beat the Know-it-All in an argument has pulled off an effective Facebook coup and can build a following of his/her own.

Illustration: John Bauer, from Walter Stenstrom's The Boy and the Trolls or The Adventure in children's anthology Among Pixies and Trolls, a collection of children's stories, 1915 (public domain image).

When is a Rock Concert Not a Rock Concert?

About halfway through the concert, I turned to Samaire and remarked, "This is a first. A rock concert where I haven't caught a single whiff of pot smoke." No one was - in the words of Jay from Dogma - "rockin' the ganj."

It doesn't matter who's playing. Queen. Aerosmith. Fleetwood Mac. Van Halen. I've seen them all, and each one of them was accompanied by an entourage pungent smoke drifting through the ether. But on this particular evening, so far, I hadn't "sensed any milla" to speak of.

Lest I leave the gentle reader with the wrong impression, I should point out that I don't smoke the stuff myself. As an asthmatic, I don't fancy emulating a smokestack. Still, it almost seemed like something was missing when none of that distinctive odor wafted my way that evening at The Greek in L.A.

This was a rock concert, wasn't it? 

I looked around. Headbangers in the audience? Check. Laser lighting? Check. Musicians whipping their long hair around more frenetically than those wildly dancing strands of fabric that attack you from the ceiling of an automated car wash? A big 10-4 there, too. But that familiar smell ...?

Wait. I had spoken too soon. No sooner had the main act, Nightwish, taken the stage, than someone, somewhere lit up and reassured me that, yes indeed, I was at a rock show after all. And a good one, too. All three bands - Delain and Sabaton were the other two bands on the bill - put on a show that made paying $4 for a small bottle of water and $20 for parking more than worth it.

We even stuck around after the show and met three members of Delain, an opening act that deserves to be a headliner. I've always been timid about approaching celebrities, figuring they had better things to do than to hear fans gush, "Dude, you guys ROCK! I'm totally your biggest fan!" Then again, if people said that to me, I don't imagine I'd mind it too much.

Bassist Otto Schimmelpenninck was happy to answer questions - seemingly as many as I wanted to ask. He, drummer Ruben Israel and singer Charlotte Wessels all consented to have their pictures taken with me, and Schimmelpenninck even accepted my friend request on Facebook. Very cool people.

I'll admit it: I envy anyone who has a lot of hair and (or?) sings in a rock band, so maybe that made me a little more self-conscious. Besides, I'm an ultra-cool professional journalist. I've actually gotten paid - not a lot, but money's money - to talk to famous and semi-famous people; I therefore have an image to maintain. But so does Gene Simmons, and he wears a wig. I don't. That's got to be worth something, right?

Who am I kidding?

To be honest, I have Samaire to thank for my new willingness to stick around after an event and "meet the famous people" without feeling like some kind of a middle-aged toadie. A while back, she persuaded me to hang out after a play called Allegiance to meet George Takei. Depending on which generation you're from, you'll know him either as the godfather of social media and a champion of gay rights, or as a helmsman for a starship in the 23rd century. Oddly, he was piloting that starship before same-sex marriage was legal in California, which may (or may not) prove that time travel is possible if you're the Enterprising sort. 

The once and futuristic Mr. Sulu talked with us for about five minutes, about everything from Star Trek to then-California Gov. Earl Warren's support of the Japanese Internment during World War II. He, like the members of Delain, was pleasant, gracious and didn't seem the least bit put out by yours truly or any of the several hundred others waiting for an autograph. A class act all the way.

There was one minor difference: I don't remember smelling any pot smoke at Takei's performance. It wasn't a rock concert. But it still rocked.

Pictured: Me (bald guy at right) with Otto Schimmelpenninck (left) and Ruben Israel of Delain.