Crackbook

I'm not sure how I got all involved in this whole Facebook phenomenon, but there you go.

Like many things in life it started out innocently enough. Curiosity mostly. My kids were spending crazy amounts of time on the site. It got so I would send them an e-mail and not hear back from them for weeks. When I complained to Katie Rose, (my youngest at 18 and just graduated from high school), that I was waiting for her response to a commercial I was in that I had e-mailed her a couple of weeks before, she rolled her eyes and said something along the lines of, "Dad, please. Like I have time for e-mail". (The twenty first century equivalent to "Man, you can't explain rock n' roll" when my dad questioned my obsession with Jethro Tull in 1971).

So I decided I would check it out myself. (Sure, I'll try a little puff. What harm can it do?)

I got on-line and filled out the little info page:

Political Views: "Liberal Gun Owner" (Wow. I've found a new place to be clever!!)
Favorite Books: (Ooh, I can show people I'm well read, too! I always meant to read "War and Peace", I can put that down there, right?)
Favorite Quotations: (Um, what did I do with that book of quotations??)
And my very favorite, "What are you doing right now?" Daily update! Yes!!
People want to know this stuff! People need to know this stuff! "Doug Alchin is __________!" Mmmm, deep.

I up-loaded my head-shot and I was on my way!

I "Found Friends" by filling in the questionnaire about where I went to school and where I had worked.

I found myself in conversation with total strangers, "Hey, are you on Facebook?" "Yeah, I'm on Facebook!" "Hey! Me too! I'm on facebook!" "How do you spell your name??" "S-M-I-T-H! How do you spell your name??"

It wasn't long before I was uploading pictures and videos and building links to my website!

I joined Groups that never meet, because for some reason they have struck a serendipitous chord with me:
"Lovers of Firesign Theater" (Ah yes! I hearken back to the lost years at 18 or 19 when I'd find myself laughing hysterically at three o'clock in the morning listening to Don't Crush That Dwarf... while playing gin with Bill Nico in the apartment up above the Rosary Book Shop in downtown Lansing. I can still recite entire monologues from that record by heart. And they still make me laugh!);
Or "I Use My Hand To Show People What Part of Michigan I'm From" (Uh, yeah...Only my whole life long);
Or "I Used To Eat At El Azteca Underground", (Hey, it reminds me of Bobby Kahle idling the old Grand Prix - the one that was kicked by a horse - in front of the restaurant doors while he ran downstairs to down a quick margarita and pick up an order of botana's to go.)

I have promoted friends businesses:
"Friends of Handshake Productions" (Chris Guggemos' concert promotion business in Couer D'Alene);
"Friends of the Capitol City Blues Cruise (Scott Allmans Sunday night radio show which is in need of new sponsors);
And "Icarus Falling" (A really great theatre troupe that has done wonderful off-beat productions and was the first to pay me to act - $60.00 for three weeks rehearsals and two weekend productions - and that is struggling to keep going in this tough economy). (All donations cheerfully accepted...)

Like a common street pusher, I have uploaded my e-mail address books and invited my friends to join. (C'mon man. You're really gonna dig it. Don't worry baby, you can't get hooked just trying it one time...).

Of late I have been hearing from friends that I haven't heard from in decades:

Those cute little teenage girls I met on the beach in St. Petersburg when I was just out of high school and who are all cute little grandmothers now. They've been posting pictures of me and my buddies when we were all buff long-haired hippie kids playing music for quarters and dimes on the beach at Treasure Island.

All those Jesus people and their children from Shiloh /New Covenant, (my old church-gone-wrong), in various stages of rapture or ruin who sometimes wax nostalgic about their brush with sainthood....

I have to be careful to keep an eye on who I am while I look back at who I used to be.

Don't get me wrong. I seriously love it. There's so much to say, so much to see, so much to do! Why it's just like being alive!

But there's a reason why it's known as "Crackbook".

You should give it a try though. You know: Tune In, Turn On, just be careful that you don't end up...well, you know.

Alltel gig

I was watching TV with Tracy a week or so ago and one of those Alltel commercials came on. One of the ones with Chad with the pointy blond hair and the four geeks that consistently fail to do bad things to him. I looked at Trace and said, "I hate these commercials".

The next day I got a call from my agent.

Yup. An Alltel commercial. With Chad and the four geeks who consistently fail to do bad things to him. We shot it last Friday at the newly renovated Book Cadillac Hotel in downtown Detroit.

I'm just an extra on it, (one of a couple of dozen), so it's not a particularly big deal except that it's part of their national campaign, so I'll get my mug all over America for a few weeks and that'll give my kids and my grandkids a chuckle.

I usually don't like to do extra roles, because as I have said before, anyone can do that. You don't even have to be an actor to get those gigs. (You could get that gig. All you gotta do is have the look they want and be able to follow simple directions. A couple of years in a Catholic school is all the experience you really need).

But, it was a Union Job, so there is a buy-out and it made me a few hundred bucks on a day when I would of otherwise made nothing.

So.

Good deal for me.

Next time you're fast-forwarding through one of those commercials and you see Chad and David Stremme (a Nascar guy who was in the shoot) sitting at a dais like they're in a press conference, slow it down and look front-row center, on the aisle where the "press" is sitting. From the back you will see the little half-acre of vacant lot on the back of my head where I used to grow hair, and from the front you will see my smiling face. (Acting! Ahh thank you.)

And by-the-by, Chad and company are actually pretty cool guys. They know what they have fallen into (a gold-mine) and they are grateful and humble about the whole thing. The two most frequently asked questions? "Is your real name Chad?" (Yes. From Peoria for gods sake), and "What happened to the original fat guy?" (Um, can't really talk about it, but green grass on the far side of fences isn't always what it seems.)