05/01/09 - My First Day in the Twitty-verse (in Verse)
My First Day in the Twitter-verse (in Verse)
Two things you can be sure people on the Web will do: 1) Join the new, “hot” social networking site, and 2) fill out some kind of quiz or survey about their musical tastes. It’s not a question of “if”—spend enough time online, you WILL do these things. It’s as inevitable as your first penis enhancement email.
In general, I’m sorta codgy and resistant to e-change… It’s annoying to spend the time creating and customizing a profile on a website, filling it with content, getting used to all of that site’s particular quirks and shortcuts, only to have to do the same thing on another site a few months later. But as an artist / entertainer / attention whore, I kinda have to go where the people are… If you’d all stay still for a minute, dammit!
This week, conceding to peer pressure, pop culture, and faint curiosity, I joined one of the two most-talked about websites out there today. Not the one with the sexy ads and the killing (though someone did recommend the singles section to me like a week before all of that hit the news—not sure what that says about me)… No, I joined Twitter, which isn’t very sexy, but hasn’t gotten anybody killed yet. More importantly, it’s inspired and made it possible for over a million people to actively follow Ashton Kutcher’s daily activities, which is so mind-bogglingly stupid to me, it bears further investigation.
Odds are, even if you haven’t joined yourself, you know the basics at this point: “What are you doing?”, 140 characters, stupid-looking “@” symbol in front of everyone’s name. That’s really it. But despite the anti-climax of first joining the feed, I still felt like commemorating the moment—my 12,000th appearance on The Bandwagon, or something.
Actually, I found a way to kill two birds in one fell swoop (for those keeping score, that’s a “Double Aerial Mixed-Metaphor with a half Gainer)…see, I frigging HATE online quizzes and chain surveys —they’ve always seemed like time-wasters to me, just more specific and catered to our interests than most. And sure, maybe one every now and then is a fun diversion, but there’s people out there taking 800 of these quizzes a week. Seriously, after finding out that you’re Wolverine, Mother Teresa, a panda, Capt. Mal Reynolds from FIREFLY, George Washington and a grilled cheese sandwich, you really need to know what famous duck you would be? ‘Cause it’s probably Daffy or Howard, okay? Sorry if that ruins the surprise—don’t worry, the “What Famous Zebra Are You?” quiz will be up in like ten minutes…
Point is, in all of my time over the years online, I’ve NEVER answered a musical survey, never posted a playlist, never even listed my favorite bands in the bio section of a webpage. So what I did Thursday struck me as a somewhat novel way to finally show a slice of my musical tastes to the Webby-World, while also being somewhat obnoxious at the same time. And that’s me all over, kids—obnoxiously novel, somewhat.
So without further ado, here is my First Day on Twitter:
730AM: To commemorate my 1st day on TW, each hour I will post a new song lyric, ‘cause f@#k it, there’s only like 10 of you following right now…
8AM: “In comes the Shaping Man / Nation in his eyes…” -D. Bowie
9AM: “When I first came to America, saw XANADU, & that’s all I wanted to do… Was roller skate!” -DJ Shadow
10AM: “Now put that suitcase down, and go on in there, and put on that new wig I bought you- No no, the reddish-brown one…” –Prince
11AM: “She took me by the hand / Hell was the Promised Land / I’m way down now…” -World Party
12PM: “I got soul, but I’m not a soldier…” –The Killers
1PM: “People talk so much s#!t about me at barbershops, they forget to get their hair cut…” -K. West
2PM: “Never trust a big butt and smile…” -Bell Biv DeVoe
3PM: “Well, I could be condemned to Hell for every sin but littering…” -Soul Coughing
4PM: “And maybe I’ve forgotten / The name and the address / Of everyone I’ve ever known / It’s nothing I regret…” -New Order
5PM: “When brothers disrespect me and give me flak / I stop and think before I react…” -MCA (Beastie Boys)
6PM: “I am alone / But adored / By a hundred thousand more…” -Dandy Warhols
7PM: “If I’m not workin’ or putting work in / I’m either wheeling or dealing / Or probably jerking my…” -Viktor Vaughn
8PM: “You probably seen me hanging around / I’m a very familiar face in this town…” -MC 900 Ft. Jesus
9PM: “I wanted to be with you alone / And talk about the weather…” -Tears For Fears
10PM: “Your homie Hov in position / In the kitchen with soda / I just whipped up a watch / Tryin’ to get me a Rover…” -Jay-Z
11PM: “It’s a must that I bust any mic you hand to me / It’s inherited, it runs in the family…” -Eric B. & Rakim
12AM: “One lonely evening alone home / End up with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome…” -MF Doom
1AM: “I don’t know what I’ve seen / Was it all an illusion / All a mirage gone bad?” –Beck
2AM: “Even my shadow leaves me all alone at night / Guess I need to start to take my own advice…” -Gnarls Barkley
(By far, the Soul Coughing lyric elicited the biggest response),
JG
