"I am officially flip-flopping."
Mayor Joseph "Diamond Joe" Quimby--Springfield, U.S.A.

Before you judge me…
My newspaper folded. A victim of the belt-tightening pandemic, The Hudson Current as we knew it is no more. I gratefully consider myself lucky to still have a writing gig in this volatile climate, but restructuring has found me relegated to page 10 of The Midweek Reporter. A while back I also used to write for Metro newspapers, where my colleague Elliott Kalan once did a tongue-in-cheek piece on the death of print media--he almost lost his job. Yet Time magazine has seen fit to run a cover story on how Twitter has irreversibly changed the way people send and receive information.

If you look out the porthole, old media is apparently a sinking ship, and I'm thinking it might be time to make a run for the lifeboats before getting caught in the vacuous eddy. As we all know, $#!+ floats, so…
I signed up for Facebook.

A scant five months after railing against the very concept of a social networking website, I find myself clinging to its lifeline as the stern of my former vessel plunges beneath the choppy surf. And why should I be the one to go down with the ship? I've been riding steerage on the HMS Newsprint for the last decade while those on the captain's bridge made a beeline for the lowest common denominator with flash over substance, colorful pie charts and pop drivel. Surely my numerous articles on toilets and drunkenness make a strong argument that I'm hardly an elitist, but if you open the majority of publications on today's newsstand they read like the contents of a high school girl's doodle pad. And now the black and white brick and mortar are being outdone and undone by the very medium they've been trying to emulate.

So I felt it was in my professional best interest to find refuge on a website I just recently referred to in January as "a social Jurassic Park," full of extinct relationships where "any attempt to resurrect them could have some unwholesome consequences."

Well I'll admit it--I was wrong. As I timidly stuck my toe in the waters I was embraced right away by scores of friends, many of whom joined Facebook with the same trepidation I expressed. And in stark contrast to the outwardly churlish persona I've cultivated over the years since I'd spoken with them, I was pleased to be welcomed into the fold. Like some digital Dorothy dazzled by Oz, I was completely overwhelmed by the people on there. "And you were there, and you and you…"

Sure there are a few weirdoes, but since I'm blatant using Facebook to distribute this very column, I'm not going to name names here. And like any recreational distraction, you can see how Facebook would become addictive--there are a few addicts out there who narcissistically narrate their every move and mood swing. Compounding my apprehension, I had an uneasy assumption was that people would pick up where we left off by trying to either emulate the good ol' days, resurrect whatever petty beef that may had driven they initial wedge between us, or griping like a Catholic mother over the fact that I hadn't kept in touch . But it was naïve to think others haven't moved on with their lives. Most of people simply use Facebook as a medium to catch up from time to time and show off pictures of their kids. Plus I blew my wife out of the water on the friend-count, which is really what this is all about.
Now this twitter thing I've signed up for still has me baffled. It's basically a sounding board for all your one-liners, without the pain of standing on stage under a spotlight as no one laughs. But I'm enjoying it, and I've even had some of my tweets re-tweeted, which is seemingly the ultimate compliment.

So provided you can't find The Midweek Reporter, or should you care to share this column with a friend, I invite you to follow me on Facebook or hit me up at http://twitter.com/HALLERON. Yes, I acknowledge that I'm an unrepentant whore and I have a backbone of Jell-O, but even I have to evolve and adapt. Frankly, I've waffled on a lot of things--cell phones, babies, and now this whole Facebook thing. To once again borrow a line from my favorite Simpsons character, "If that is the way the wind is blowing, let no one say that I do not also blow."