No Shame: 12,000 words on MySpace

[I tried to post the following as a comment on Audubon Park's new MySpace page, but it exceeded the limit by 10,557 characters.] [Burn.]
In the grand tradition of displaying a spectacular series of emails written by us and about us and how myspace stirs all sorts of dudeplex feelings, here they are in individual anonymity, and I quote:
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Well I saw so impressed by this, http://www.myspace.com/hotelmotel, hotel motel's myspace site that I got one for us. Yes, yes, I know, I loved the obscurity, and of course haven't told anyone, but go see adn if you think this is good we can go with it and if not , we will destroy it.
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we have 0 friends. awesome!
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We must keep it that way. I have to say, I have mixed feeling about myspace, but there's no reason we can't have a page. If rpbjr has one, it can't be bad. As long as the background is sensible.
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I think myspace is an okay thing mostly because it's a decent one-stop-shopping type of good place to investigate bands. i mean, it can be useful just because it's there and it's popular and so there's a lot of people checking it out. but we will have to (or, we get to) put up some self-taken soft-porn photos....
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Yeah, it's definitely one of those things that in and of itself is good or neutral, but gets tarnished by the way it's used by many (most?). The fact that it allows one to instantly sample the band's music is definitely a good thing. We just can't let it overtake the blog. And now I have to learn how to draw roses and nekkid women using dashes and semicolons and letters and shit.
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We have two friends: Jon and Charlie. I couldn't resist and have gone a friend spree. Yeah, it will be used to direct people to the blog because the blog, I have to say, is just aobut hte best.
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What the FUCK? We already have 2 friends?????? This is like middle school, but with friends.
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Well we are up to 6 friends:
Jon
Charlie
Schooner
The Whole World Laughing
Criteria
Rossi
That's about all you need in life.
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I'm very upset about this. I really wanted us to keep the 0 friends factor. It could have been us against the net. And now we're just like everyone else--we have digital friends.
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all you have to do is sign in and delete friends. that'd be pretty hard of us.
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Do the {friends} get notice that they’ve been deleted?
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Well, I felt ambivilant about it and now I feel ashamed. I am serious. I shouldn't have done it.
Oh well. long day
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I guess I see it as a way not to promote the band but as a way to get more people to see the blog. That is where hte real money is. The blog. Sorry I betrayed us.
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Well, I think I just made the myspace look a way that will make up for the fact that we have a few friends. Introducing: the big cookie w/friends. This is what is great about being in a band, but is very bad for being in school. Oh, man I haven't done shit today.
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I was also out for the whole myspace discussion. Hotel Motel accepted the lets-be-friends request and now I see perhaps we (I) should not have? The first friend request that came in [to hotel motel's myspace account], I responded to the person to say I didn't get a message, just her request. She was baffled because I was expecting a little show of interest just on the level of I dig your music, we play shows in your area, I think you'd like my music, but even that is way more reflective than what people do. Myspace is for networking or collecting pictures of girls with low self-esteem and little clothes. I can safely bet that most of the bands who added us don't like our music, or else they need to get out of the bands they are in. I never liked the idea of soliciting requests (except for actual friends, but I was never aware any of them had pages until they came to me) so our modest number of friends, by myspace standards, is all from incoming request. I imagine AP's incoming requests are/will get off the hook, and from local folk no less who actually do care. People just want to bask in the glory. I would personally let them. Having zero friends is cool but nobody will get to the myspace page if we aren't linked from pages people already know. Why not create a fake myspace page at a plausible URL? For example, myspaceonline.us. Then put up a Friends section with 0 friends, and a Friends With Benefits section with the pictures Robert wants up there. And do all sorts of other things that move our recent discussion topics into a Frey-prompted hoax-conscious is truth left Richard Rorty called practice. Let's start a damn hoax and get a cease and desist from myspace. Speaking of pictures, I'll scan in the ones I was supposed to scan right after Wilmington. Sorry! I forgot I had them until Robert mentioned putting soft-core porn on there, and I thought of the morning after photo Finn took.
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Well, this has become something. yes, I asked all our friends, who are actually our friends. Oh, and sebadoh, destroyer and ariel pink. Dash left us a message: " I think we should set up a show called The School of Unobtrusive, yet firm Knocks." I agree with him. that's a smart boy. Yes, the myspace pretty much unequicoably says, "go to the blog" This is email so I can't tell--I hope this hasn't actually become an issue for anyone. I was resistant, but I was resistant to having a band email address and webpage. I don't really want to fuck around with it much, the blog is enough, but it seemed like a good band idea. we should have a few normal ones I guess. i don't think we are going to be mistaken for professional soon.
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all y'all need to chill. i was kidding about the friends factor--i just thought it was hilarious that it said "Audubon Park has 0 friends". i don't care if we have a myspace page. i choose not to have my own for my own personal reasons, but i'm not going to raise a stink about this. i was KIDDING.
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What! Kiddidng! When does AP kid? Have we been kidding this whole time about everything including our tone!?!!?! serious for youth.
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i thought everything but our tone was the serious part. quick--look, over those hills, its.......another flurry of AP emails!!!! lookOUT!
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When Finn says he's kidding, HE'S FUCKING KDDING! He's serious. He's really upset. . .
. . . I'm joost keeedinggg! Punk'd!
If I may be serious for just a moment, seriously. I think it's good we have a myspace page because the music starts playing right away. That's what makes it a good thing. Next stop, FACEBOOK!
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Oh yeah! I thought I mentioned this option in my other email but it looks like I forgot. When I proposed the hoax, I knew Finn wasn't serious when I sent my email--or rather, he kind of meant that it would be cool to have no friends on myspace, but wasn't upset. I just want to do the hoax. On the other hand, it would be indescribably badass to just remove the friends from the real page. We could send everybody a message that says "Happy Valentine's Day MF's! You ain't my MySpace friend after all." Then there would be a link to an mp3 of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' "Don't Come 'Round Here No More."
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"Jenny Lewis is HOT. But Rilo Kiley is NOT. Also, I have a cousin named Jenny Lewis, so this whole conversation is dirty. David, stay off my cousin's myspace page."
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a) what's wrong with a cousin?
b) I am in class, or I wouldn't have all this time to email and I just read a whole history of the green lantern. I don't even care.
Yeah, she's hottish. That dude in Rilo Kiley with the moustache is hurt for real. I watche dhte morning becomes eclectic of his other band the elected. I don't take children seriously. Why are so many of hte younger artists, in their early to mid twenties so short? Did their parent's smoke? They look rediculous. Pavement didn't like like children when they were that age. I didn't know there were girls on my space. except for th big cookie girls.
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"Everyone dies, that does not change and we do not give gifts to the dead."
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don't feel like looking it up (i mean, shit, i looked up fucking "religion" on wikipedia yesterday), so just tell me: was jenny lewis the small wonder? pretty sure i'd dismiss r kiley and the solo lewis within a couple bars, but i also know that on her new album she does a version of the t. wilburys' "handle with care" with m. ward and c. oberst. what're these kids gonna sing about when they actually do get old and decrepid and limp and irrelevant? what it used to be like to pretend to be wise? can i get a "burn"? happy vageen to you
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That Wilburys song is the shit. I gotta hear that cover. Can I getta “mp3”?
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>can i get a "burn"?
Request acknowledged; burn.
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Well, I did look it up and it appears that Ms. Lewis didn't appear in small wonder at all but was in troop beverly hills and on an episode of golden girls and some other shit. IMDB> maybe she was and I didn't see it. Yeah, I would delete thre freinds but I aske dhtem to be our friends so I say we forget we even have the page, but if you haven't seen the cookie girls or stingy, then you don't know waht is missing. I made a banner ad for the blog and put it on there. Also merge and destroyer are our friends.
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32 friends now!
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i'm so totally into m. kalb's Happy Burnintine Day idear -- i was actually going to use the term "bad-ass" in my email informing on the potential for friend-deletion, but opted for the less slangy, more targetted, "hard." either way, this would be a great way to maybe make damn sure that we don't get professional anytime soon. more on myspace that is not kidding: i don't think myspace is a good thing which is defiled most of the time by the horny and low self-esteemed. it's not that we should use it even though most people abuse it. instead, it's a disgusting and disconcerting modern appliance that we can actually get some efficient use out of -- right, the music plays immediately when you go to the page, and it's free. also, take it or leave it, myspace probably is the kids of today. i mean, it's fun to pretend to not be professional (or really not be professional, i guess), but is it fun to hate everybody? right, most people are doing things in a way that'd we'd all like to think does not happen (the whole 2000's being the "i'm an asshole and have not heard of shame" decade), but you can have a myspace account and be noble. boycotting it would be like boycotting email, i-tunes, amazon, ebay: good for you, but no where near a drop in the outside world's bucket of changing or stopping something. myspace isn't mind control or fascism or lay-offs or hydrogenated preservatives or over-medicating or intelligent design or even mtv/vh1/e. it's a bar, a meat-market, full of despicables, and we can 'be there' too. 2 psychic issues re myspace: (1) "oh shit, i might want to see photos of this girl, and, oh shit, this is wrong....", and (2) "oh shit, look how many people and bands there are. i am so small. and inconsequential." Ta Da!
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I totally agree with all that. It is indeed not fun to hate everybody, although it IS fun to hate ON people, though not everybody. True true. A bar of despicables is also totally true. The kids of today, that is definitely true. Can we get some use out of it? certainly. Will we? Who knows? Let’s try. We might get a group of despicables who wander over and post comments and shit and draw us a rose and ask when we’re playing a show.
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We could havve posted all of this as comments on the myspace page. that would have been coola.
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I see "Audubon Park" (David) has posted comments for "Hotel Motel" (me). What's great is the AP picture is mainly me so it just looks like I'm posting comments. What will the myspaceosphere think?!?
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This is another email.
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Kalb and Biggers are neck in neck! Kalb with the most emails, but Biggers with the most pontificating. who will round the corner first. Nahm and Cohen are tied for the least emails, while Spiker has stopped to smell the roses.
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Neck in Neck!
Whuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut?
Guhhhhhhh-roooooosss. Gay, gay, gay! Gay, gay! Yur gay! gay band members!
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okay, i'm posting a comment on myspace right now that displays all discussion relevant and non- to myspace. and i've done my best to remove anything that might actually be embarassing or real (non-virtual) world damaging. please contact david about removing/deleting the comment if you have problem(s) with it. and please don't talk about this anymore so that i can stop cutting and pasting to the comment box, hoping that it won't fart out on me and lose my last 1/2 hour's worth of (really worthwhile) work. META IS HARD WORK.
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