The rise of the Bon Jovi myth

Twitter, my favorite social networking site, recently became the conduit for a fake story that Jon Bon Jovi had died.

Bon Jovi responded to the false reports by posting a photo of him with a sign that read, “Heaven looks a lot like New Jersey.”

I’m not sure how he got Heaven and Hell mixed up, but that’s not the point.

Think about how many fake things have shaped and influenced our world. Devious tweeters have also posted fake death announcements for Mick Jagger, Will Smith, Bill Cosby, and Justin Bieber. Colin Powell became the vehicle for a fake story about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. “The Girls Next Door” and “Kendra” on the E! channel became vehicles for Kendra Wilkinson’s fake boobs.

I follow various news organizations on Twitter – thus creating a personalized news feed – but the thing that bothers me about the social networking site is how quickly it can deliver false information. A few people decide to “re-tweet,” and before our national debt can jump another billion, everyone on the planet knows the news.

Imagine this scenario: Someone tweets the false news of Bon Jovi’s death, and just after that, terrorists hit power grids across the United States.

For hours, days, weeks, perhaps even months, everyone believes Bon Jovi is dead.

The nation, already in severe withdraws from television and Internet, trudges through the additional burden of knowing Bon Jovi would never sing “Livin’ on a Prayer” around a post-electricity campfire.

This mass deception further dispirits the struggling millions who don’t know how to cook over an open flame – no freezers plus no microwaves equals no meals. Livin’ on a prayer, indeed.

So while most Americans believe that Bon Jovi is dead, the man himself begins appear to groups of people and proclaim he really is alive, never died, and the death announcement was just a hoax on Twitter.

This only complicates matters.

Some claim to have seen the ghost of Bon Jovi. Others claim he has become a zombie. Still others claim that he has risen from the dead, adding that it kind of makes sense because Bon Jovi concerts were religious experiences.

But at least without Twitter, these rumors take longer to move around.

Then again, that makes the rumors into taller tales.

As the months pass, news of Bon Jovi spreads. Now some are saying he touched a darkened television set in Sayreville, N.J., and the tube illuminated with re-runs of VH1’s “Pop Up Video.”

Others now say he levitated above a crowd under a New York City bridge and proclaimed, “You live for the fight when that’s all that you’ve got.”

Many copied down those words on their tablets – paper tablets that required pencils.

But some copied down, “You live for the night,” not “fight,” so divisions form among Bon Jovi’s followers. Most people feel obligated to choose a side, so one’s beliefs about Bon Jovi become the central matter of identity in the U.S.

The "night" side and the "fight" side come up with various rituals and institutions to memorialize their founder and instill proper beliefs in their youngsters (how are those youngsters going to rebel? Become religious fundamentalists?).

Entrepreneurs invent hand-tooled leather bracelets that read, "WWBJD?" All the kids wear them.

So even in the post-electricity apocalypse, Twitter creates a new myth, a new religion, and Bon Jovi’s name lives on in a blaze of glory.

-Colin Foote Burch
(This column originally appeared at WeeklySurge.com and was re-posted here in July 2014.)

Spies like us

As Christmas approaches, I think we should note that Jesus has been appearing in a new TV show produced by J.J. Abrams.

“Person of Interest,” which appears at 9 p.m. Thursdays on CBS, stars Jim Caviezel, perhaps best known for playing The Savior in “The Passion of the Christ,” a film which had a pretty good reputation until director Mel Gibson became internationally known as a drunk-driving anti-Semite and baby-momma batterer.

Jesus, or Caviezel, plays Reese, who – for the record – only had an oversized first-century beard during part of the premiere episode.

In “Person of Interest,” Jesus isn’t always watching over you, but his employer certainly is. Jesus’s boss easily taps into massive networks of surveillance cameras and cell phone transmissions – for good purposes – in a way that ought to scare us all.

The employer, played by Michael Emerson, is Finch, the architect of a post-9/11 database that draws information from close-circuit television cameras and phone calls. Based on that information, the database predicts who might be a potential terrorist threat. Development of the database was funded by the U.S. government.

Although the machine was designed to predict terrorism, it also finds out about non-terrorists who might be running into trouble in the near future. The U.S. government didn’t want to deal with the people who aren’t threats to national security, so Finch left himself a backdoor into the system to find out who else might need help.

As a 9/11 survivor who apparently was assumed dead and now walks with a limp, Finch can’t chase the bad guys and protect the good guys. So Finch picked Reese – former special military agent who can take on gangs singlehandedly – to swing fists and fire bullets into non-lethal body parts while protecting innocent people in trouble. Jesus can really kick ass, and that’s the fun part of the show.

When Finch’s machine alerts him to a new person of interest, he immediately gets on his computer and accesses all kinds of personal information, files, records, and even photos. (Note to self: change privacy settings on Facebook.)

Watching the first few episodes of “Person of Interest,” I absorbed Finch’s access and quickly took it for granted. After all, Finch and ex-Jesus are good guys. As created characters, their work is ethical and intended for righteous ends. Finch has the access to the surveillance database, so why not use it?

Of course, the U.S. expanded its surveillance of its own citizens following 9/11, and that made some Americans uncomfortable. But there I am, each Thursday evening, watching someone watch surveillance feeds, watching someone spy on Americans – for a good cause. It’s a timely issue, like the end of “The Dark Knight,” when Batman hacks the cellphone networks to find the bad guys.

Many of us probably assume that the U.S. government has pulled back from its surveillance after the death of Osama bin Laden – which makes about as much sense as Lindsay Lohan telling Playboy she has learned from her mistakes while arguably making the mistake of appearing nude on 10 pages of the magazine.

At least Lohan knew she was being photographed – well, I guess she did; we’ll never know for sure. I haven’t always been sure when I was being photographed, like the time Lohan’s fellow “Mean Girls” actress Rachel McAdams jumped my bones in the elevator of The Martinique resort hotel in Myrtle Beach. I was like, “Wait! Stop! Let’s not embarrass ourselves! There might be a hidden camera in here!” Just go with it. I had to explain the lipstick smudge to my wife somehow.

I also didn’t know when I was being photographed or video-taped during four trips to London during the past two years. Closed-circuit cameras were everywhere – not just in train stations and subways, not just on buses. In England, home country to George Orwell, author of 1984, everyone accepts that constant surveillance is a necessity in violent times.

I’m not sure if the London cameras actually deter people from stealing or vandalizing – I mean, when there’s not already a community-organized riot and arson session in progress – but there were several times when I thought twice before scratching my ass.

Who would see me scratch my ass? Pick my nose? Quickly adjust my uncomfortably situated boxers?

Would the watcher think less of me? Laugh at me? Notice that my quick, private moves were especially American in form? Or worse yet, would think they were French in form?

Maybe that’s why I will continue to watch “Person of Interest.” Maybe I want to know what I and my microbrew physique look like on close-circuit camera.

Plus, I can’t stop watching Jesus kick ass and his boss navigate high-tech surveillance networks.

So maybe Lohan has the right idea. If you can’t have privacy, you might as well make a few bucks exposing your privates.

-Colin Foote Burch
(This column originally appeared in WeeklySurge.com and is re-posted here in July 2014.)

Hands have renewed purpose in 'hand-lit' craze

I heard an advertisement for Brookgreen Gardens’ Nights of a Thousand Candles.

The ad enticed me with its promise of “hand-lit candles.” I found this reassuring. I certainly think the ambiance is best when the candles are lit by hands. Candles lit by Bacardi 151 can sure trash a living room.

If Brookgreen is advertising them, hand-lit flames now have high-end market value. Soon, everyone will try to make a buck on the hand-lighting craze.

Light the Advent wreath, the menorah, or the Christmas tree with your own hand, and you’ve got something special there. Show it off and charge admission. Add a surcharge if you use short matchsticks.

Local hotels will boast about buffets featuring hand-lit Sterno cans.

Now that hand-lighting has become a commodity, hands are riding a new wave of popularity. We’d almost grown tired of hearing “hand-crafted” in Samuel Adams Boston Lager ads and campaigns for other brews. These ads usually involved extra syllables – “ha-a-a-a-nd crafted,” calling to mind Goat Boy from older Saturday Night Live episodes. Just when hand-crafted was on its way out, hand-lit saves the day.

Hand-lit candles and hand-crafted beers aren’t the only new contributions of the five-finger gang. Hands have found new ways to promote actors and recording artists. Recently, for educational purposes, I was researching “famous pictures of all-natural tweeting birds” on the Internet. Search result? Top nude celebrity photos that have appeared on Twitter in 2011. This had nothing to do with tweeting birds, but I believe in learning from mistaken Internet searches. I learned hands have delicate and complex abilities to display both male and female parts of celebrity exhibitionists.

Hands have also become associated with South Carolinian activities, and I don’t mean pulling triggers. I mean a special image on a U.S. 501 billboard from Smoke Free Horry, our local self-appointed health nannies. In the image, a woman – presumably a South Carolinian – is displaying her very pregnant belly with one hand while holding a cigarette in the other. Surely the presence of pregnant smoking women is one of our state’s most endearing qualities – how else could other states look down on us?

But as the South enters the 19th century, we insist our women are no longer barefoot and pregnant. They’re smoking and pregnant. And our hand-lit cigarettes are neither light nor low on tar. If we’re going to hand-light something these days, it’s going to be something worthwhile, like a Marlboro Red, a beachwear store with good insurance, or a bottle rocket aimed into the wind.

Our hand-lighting is now reserved for special occasions, like frying a turkey for the holidays, or inviting our friends and neighbors to special events. So even in an age of lighters and electric grills, I believe the match, like the dead-wood book and the LP vinyl record, will always be with us, even if it becomes a little more upscale.

-Colin Foote Burch
(This column originally appeared on WeeklySurge.com and was re-posted here in July 2014.)

Adam Carolla rants about Occupy Wall Street

Smoke-free bars? Really?

Here's a bad idea: A smoking ban in Myrtle Beach bars.

As WBTW-News 13's Mason Snyder reported tonight, "Next month Smoke Free Horry plans to present Myrtle Beach City Council with research its done that shows the negative health impact second hand smoke has."

If smoking is legal, businesses ought to be able to choose whether they will allow smoking -- especially bars and restaurants.

Here we go again with the never-ending confusion between "freedom-to" and "freedom-from."

We ought to just allow as much "freedom-to" as possible, and let the people who want "freedom-from" go somewhere else.

That includes me. I'm a non-smoker.

If a business owner wants to establish a bar and allow smoking, does that mean everyone has a divine right to go into that bar on his or her own terms?

Should we worry about the sensibilities of animal-rights advocates by banning steak from steakhouses? Does an animal-rights advocate have a divine right to enter Liberty Steakhouse & Brewery and remain un-offended?

Sure, cigarettes are unhealthy. So are cheeseburgers and everything else on the McDonald's menu.

Just keep Horry County a truly Independent Republic.