... if you're not checking for me on ...

Busy days.  

America is suffering under a lack of leadership.

To be fair, the world is suffering from a lack of leadership, but most cameras and most eyes and most guns and most interest is trained on the contiguous 48 (apologies to Sarah Palin and Barack Obama's childhood homes), and I have a very wide swath of experience therein, so that's where we're gonna focus today.

Leadership is the sort of thing that Patrice Lumumba brought to the Congo, that Toussaint L'Ouverture brought to Haiti, or (even notwithstanding his imperialist bloodlust and apparent insanity) Teddy Roosevelt brought to the US presidency. Going back to conquerors like Genghis Khan, entrepreneurs like Madame CJ Walker or great thinkers like Dr. Mark Dean (one of my missions this year is to name drop this guy as much as I can, in that I technically could not have made most of the money in my career without three of the thirty patents he holds existing, forming the foundation for all "personal computers" that we use today), leadership changes things. Leadership steps up.

Unfortunately -- and I can personally attest to some of this -- leadership has been bred out of the greatest parts of western culture for (at the very least) sixty years. With the advent and popularity of television (combined with the staggering yoke of sexism, holding down some of the most talented minds from jump street). After a soul-crushing day of workplace monotony and dehumanization, the comforting opiate of cathode rays (or reflected plasma or LCD screens these days) is a welcome reward and a childcare necessity for many. Made all too comfortable by the "convenience" of iPhones and Wal-Mart, the rewards of leadership -- historical posterity, change, a better world for the future to inherit -- are viewed as not worth the challenges of hard work, rampant opposition, political gladhandling in organizations and (in some cases) threat of personal harm. This is true even when it leads to being in debt up to your eyeballs, imprisoned by mortgages and soccer practice schedules. The very concept of service has been middle classed to death with Huxtable aspirations and Good Times realities

Check the original for more. As always, thank you for your continued readership and support.

Watching (Hulu) Glee pilot director's cut. Awesome.

What kinds of new blog goodness are you missing at The Hundred and Four and The Soapbox?

The Reason (or "The Black Bag In The Closet"): What treasure could be so precious and so new that it could make me easily forget the roar of the crowd and intoxicated demons? Find out what retired the DJ machine for good.

The Second One About Smartphones: Has Hannibal found true digital love in a multi media device?

The Ballad of Casey Jones: Familiar Refrains: More workday musings about what Suge Knight and Dick Cheney have in common, plus talking about the strange places love leads you.

The Mouse House of Ideas: Marvel buys Disney? What's that all about? Examining the possibilities.

The Fire This Time: Photos from the smoke zone in Pasadena, California, as the Station Fire rages and terrifies northsiders and blankets the city in gray.

You can also check me out on Twitter and my weekly comics reviews on CBR.  Thanks for reading, and for your continued support.

Playing (Music): "Make Her Say" by Kid CuDi feat. Common and Kanye West

In my latest blog I discuss the tedium and treats of the workday world, including some surprises that come from staying warm in the season of the wolf.

Thank you for your continued readership and patience.

Playing (Music): "I Knew You Were Waiting For Me" by Aretha Franklin and George Michael

In my new blog, I discuss why, exactly, I'm not gonna settle for an iPhone, a Palm Pre or a Blackberry. 

"Seriously?  Who does Hannibal think he is?  What's this Soapbox and The Hundred and Four stuff all about?  Why the heck should I leave the nice, comfortable confines of the site I'm on to go check out some weird blog on domains he dreamed up while he was drunk?"

Those are good questions. I hope to give you some good answers. Like what? Like this ...

* A Real International Hero? Close Enough ...: I loved the movie G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra. Seriously, loved it from wall to wall, despite some admitted problems. Even with that Wayans dude in it? Why? Moreover, how would I respond to critics? That blog answers those questions in detail, while sparring with one of Boston's most illustrious and praiseworthy bloggers and bon vivants, Mister Dart Adams of Nerd with Swag.

* Weave Down and Fatback for Mister Charlie: Who's the strange girl called Fatback? What's the story on her weave? Who are these weirdos she sleeps with? Why did she re-enact the verse from "Rapper's Delight" about dinner? With the amusing assistance of co-worker Casey Jones (and even a movie star cameo), you'll split your sides finding out.

* Blog Fu: Enter the Dragon, Blog Fu: 36th Chamber of Shaolin and Blog Fu: Iron Monkey: What? A triple-threat shot of Blog Fu, a lazy Susan-styled blog which focuses on all kinds of craziness: steganography, 10 products inspired by bacon, a live karaoke performance with Craig Sherman, disturbing stories of crime, the end of UCLA's Undie Run, lip-reading computers, Google's new OC, karaoke Skeletor and so much more.

How about them apples? The same craziness you loved from the MySpace blog, broadcast out to the world! Ch'mon!

Thanks for being along for the ride.

Now Playing (Music): "Shadowplay" by The Killers

I have to say "goodbye" to blogging on MySpace.

Why?

Well, despite the fact that I can track my traffic (sort of) and that I can post from the road (I've posted a blog while sitting on the toilet at Norm's in Lomita) and I enjoy the blogs of many people here ... it's just not working.

Most of my online interaction has been through my smartphone in the last year or so. Despite having a glorious, superbly powerful 15" Macbook Pro, I very rarely get time to work with it (and even less as the days go by). So, when I am online, I'm largely on a smartphone browser. MySpace's mobile site? Oy. My blog subscriptions don't work on the mobile site -- it can tell me when I have a new blog, but won't show me when other people do. On the phone or on a browser, the only way I can look at older blogs is to go back ... and keep going back ... clicking "older" over and over again in a disorganized fashion. So ... uncivilized. How inelegant!

For some time, I've been talking trash about web blogging engines. Blogger, Blogspot, Wordpress, Movable Type ... I've said they were for the weak and for pansies. I blogged the old fashioned way -- in HTML, making the files myself, coding my own bolds and what not. It was awesome.

When I had a lot more time in front of a computer.

In this day and age of RSS and WAP and unlimited data plans, I had to step up the game. I had to do more. So I used some clients and even a side project of my own as test cases and learned how to do something my good friend and Image high muckamuck Eric Stephenson has known how to do for almost a decade -- as of a few days ago, fit Blogger functionality into the look and feel of my own website. What's that look like?

It goes a little something like this, hit it! The Soapbox is back.



You can go back to previous months, you can leave comments, you can see titles, I can blog from the road, I can post photos from the road, my Twitter feed is right on the side there ... it is, in a word, awesome.

"Hannibal, why not just use 'notes' on Facebook?" Well, the same "go back" shtick is a problem, you have to be a Facebook member to see the dang things (or maybe not, given a Google search I did today), I don't like the formatting ... it's just a hassle. Moreover, Facebook's even more of a privacy invader than MySpace. I'm happy to syndicate there (and yes, Facebook has a number of more functional things going on -- when you watch somebody else screw up, you can normally do better) but it's not a solution.

Moreover, I've had to make things more clear. I'm putting my "chaos abroad, tranquility at home" motto to work, putting all "external" ideas -- blog fu, reviews, futurism and what not -- on The Hundred and Four (new and improved with 75 percent less failure) and things more specifically about me -- personal commentary, stuff about family and what's going on with me -- on the Soapbox. I'm *this* close to figuring out how to have both blogs show recent links from the other (it works on The Hundred and Four right now, but the code breaks the formatting), and that's about it.



Will I come back to MySpace? I'll keep posting things here as announcements: when I rock something on either site, I'll blurb it up here. But despite a lot of holdouts, many say the writing's on the wall.

Me? Man, I love MySpace. It's where I came to really enjoy social networking after the message boards at sfgate.com disappeared. I built a network of friends that -- by and large -- are people I know and like. But to be honest, I liked Friendster. I liked the message boards on sfgate.com. But when technology and people march along, you can be like the Los Angeles Sentinel and stay on Central Avenue years after your constituency couldn't even find your dilapidated offices? One has to do, et cetera, et cetera.

So don't call this "good bye." Facebook and Twitter have serious server problems. There's no telling where things will end up. But this is "thank you" to MySpace and a sign post to where things will have to go.

So long. Oh, and thanks for all the fish.

Playing (Music): "It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday" by Boyz 2 Men

"Why in the hell are you getting out of karaoke hosting?"

This is a commonly asked question.  To be fair, I'm virtually at the top of my game.  I've had many, *many* bars ask me to free up a night and bring my show to their spot.  I've consistently packed in Sully's and kept even slow times at Palos Verdes Bowl going for years (3.5 years at Sully's and a month shy of five years at the Bowl).  My shows work with almost military precision -- I'm so touchy about dead air that I often plan three singers ahead what will be heard inbetween, and my lyrical/whimsical selection of music (relying heavily on what's current but also knowing club favorites and singer predictions) are often appreciated (but admittedly sometimes jokes just for me).  Not to divulge any details, but I'm among the best paid weekly hosts I know (I am aware of some really high salaries being paid by clubs like Sardo's and Dimple's, but to be honest, I'd never wanna get down on the north side).  From a certain point of view, I'm the Michael Jordan of this business (unless you've been to Levi's shows in SD, and Aaron who did Miyagi's could give me a run for my money).

The reasons to get out of the game, therefore, are simply bigger than that.  Bigger than money, bigger than the very welcome accolades of a lot of entertaining bargoers.  

Circa December 11th, the very first creature ever spawned by me will arrive in the world, wriggling and hilarious, and she's gonna need me.  Moreover, the blessed vessel of that nascent life, my wife who's worked her way through this challenging pregnancy, needs me at home.  That's a higher calling than dodging beer spills or chanting "hey!" when somebody does "Blame It" or "I Love College."  I am ecstatic at the idea of having a new life to mold and guide through the lunacy of the modern world, overjoyed at another bright eyed little girl bouncing up to give Baba a hug.  That's awesome, in the old fashioned definition of it, as in literally stunning me with the grandeur and amazement of it.

Which is not to say I haven't loved every second of hosting -- even annoyed by a deluge of singers or have some nutjob bug me seventy times a minute to find out when they get to sing, it was better than agonizing meetings or frustrating busy work (i.e. "far too much of the time when I was at AOL").  I've been responsible for literally dozens of customers hooking up with each other.  I saw a guy take a girl's shirt off in mid song, and she didn't notice until he was pulling it past the mic.  There have been endless dance breaks and wild times and hilarity, like the jerk girl who dissed somebody only to spill her beer and go face first into the floor, after which point I played "Another One Bites The Dust."  Plus, and actually more importantly, at least twice a week, at least once a night, I lifted my voice in song and felt like I was a conduit for some kind of energy flowing through me, and that opening my mouth to sing completed the circuit.

So yes, there is some wistfulness in my mind as I walk away from a lot of good times and a not-indecent amount of money.  At the end of my last Thursday show, I sang "Time of Your Life" by Green Day and the whole bar sang along.  The homie Gabe kept dropping to his knees and yelling "whyyyyyyy?" It was emotional.  

This Friday night is the last of the last, my final weekly show, the end of an era.  I'm interested to see how it's going to go, and grateful to have been along for the ride ...

Oh, before I go, there's much more technical/newsworthy/political stuff going on at The Hundred and Four, the new home of blog fu and what have you.

Playing (Music): "Closing Time" by Semisonic

Just posted at The Hundred and Four.

Keywords: effectiveness, elegance, grendel, happiness, interview, karaoke, lady gaga, steganography, urine.

Figure that out for yourself!

Now Playing (Music): "Ego" feat. Kanye West by Beyonce Knowles