Why is Mark Zuckerberg smiling? Is it because he has access to your valuable info, and doesn't have to do squat to help you if Facebook fouls up your ability to use the site?

Dear Mark Zuckerberg:

As I write this, I’m going to post news of this blog to Facebook. But because some Faceless evildoer in my circle of 667 “friends”–I know not who–once reported a blog I wrote as containing “objectionable content,” your social networking site has blocked me from posting URLs or Tiny URLs in my status updates. Clearly, this “report” constituted a malicious action. What’s more, it’s just plain false. I have never used True/Slant to post pornography, profanity or even purple humor.

OK, Mark, I confess. I have on occasional written a thing or two that caused uber-conservatives and defenders of Mayor Daley’s corrupt parking deal to get their diapers in a bunch. But aside from that, nothing I’ve ever written is truly “objectionable.” Unless the First Amendment is dead in this country.

Or at least on Facebook.

I salute you as a scion of the Young Digital Intelligentsia. You made a megafortune before you were old enough to buy a beer in a bar, and you have never made a secret of Facebook’s intent to profit–and handsomely–off the information it gathers about me and all the users in your world. That’s fine by me; if I offer it up, it’s fair game.

But what also seems fair, at his point, is that you in turn dedicate significant time and resources to creating a help desk and user assistance protocols that solve sticky problems like mine quickly and easily. For as I sought to solve my problem, I was shocked to discover that Facebook has nary a human being that I can contact for help, a phone number to call, or a prominently posted email address for help.

Lord knows with all the money you’ve made, and all the information you now possess worth untold millions from Facebook users, ample resources exist to create the support I and other innocent Facebook users need. From what I understand, the traditional defense here is that Facebook really isn’t a business, but a free service, and therefore not obligated in any way to help those who trawl about on it.

I could not disagree more. Just as your creativity and thinking outside the box that was outside the box created Facebook, you need to take another bold step here and get proactive–really proactive–about assisting the community that made Facebook what it is. If I’m facing a problem of this sort through no fault of my own, and cannot find any remediation, I can only imagine the misery experienced by thousands of people out there who have fallen into Facebook’s Digital Black Hole through a server glitch, for example, and with no one to throw them a rope to climb out.

As a media person, I have resources to go straight to your PR department and get this straightened out by a real person through Fear of Bad Press–a move of questionable ethics at best, though I am highly tempted to do it. Desperate times, desperate measures and all that.

But even if my problem goes away, those innocent users your site unwittingly ties up due to the malevolent actions of others will not. If you don’t act at some point to create some resource to help them–some recourse for remedial action–they will be stuck. Indefinitely.

A guy I know in Grand Rapids, Mich. started a marriage ministry and Facebook shut him down–because it mistakenly identified him as a spammer. It took him two weeks of emails every day to “info@facebook.com” to get the problem solved. He’s a former  computer tech and was thus able to figure this solution out through sheer stabbing in the dark. Who solved his logjam, or how, he still has no idea.

Others need not be so unfortunate, Mark. Do the right thing. Bring reliable, easy-to-find user support to Facebook. And do it now. Otherwise, all of your high-falutin’ claims regarding all the wonderful things Facebook does for its “community” ring as hollow as a snake oil sales pitch.

And could even be labeled, without much of a stretch, as “objectionable content.”

Since you have not provided me with a phone number, I am providing you with mine. It’s below. I look forward to your call. And hell, I’ll even accept your friend request.

With respect,

Lou Carlozo

Columnist/blogger, TrueSlant.com

773-294-7006

Bob Dylan, teaching Allen Ginsberg the chords to "All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth."

Many readers linking to my Facebook page and my True/Slant piece on the 10 Worst Christmas Albums of All Time pointed out that I failed to put Bob Dylan’s new effort on there. I very much respect Melissa Campbell’s musical opinion, and darned if she didn’t put her money where her mistletoe is:

“$50 says Dylan would be your #1 worst,” she wrote me.

Granted, anyone who read Dylan’s own words in his autobiography knows the guy was a lot more shrewd about going commercial, even in the 1960s, than many of his fans want to believe. While the underground press hailed him as the “spokesman of a generation”–a title he loathed, by the way–Dylan was also quite the salesman of song. He pitched his ditties to the Byrds, Peter, Paul & Mary, The Turtles … why were people so shocked when he sold “The Times They Are a-Changin’” as a bank jingle a few years back?

Now, don’t get me wrong cuz: a) I love Bob Dylan. I’ve covered many of his songs as a musician. (He didn’t even have to pitch me to do it, either.) And b) I have not heard the new Christmas disc. I done been looking for zhu zhu pets at the mall and all that.

But I promise to get it, give it a listen and weigh in. And in the meantime, help me out, folks. Is this new Bob Dylan Christmas disc as putrid as everyone says it is? Has Bobby gone all Johnny Mathis on us? Or should we give the poor guy a break, grant him a few precious minutes of avuncular charm–and let him be a post-punk Burl Ives as it were? Seems to me Bob has more than earned the right.  Right?

Or wrong?

Set me straight. Post here, or on my Facebook page, and in the spirit of the Master Wordsmith himself, wow me with your turns of phrase.

In 2010, I will retrofit my True/Slant column to return more to the subject I know exceedingly well and love even more: popular music. As I get ready to make that change, I present you with an updated version of a piece I did in 2008, where I name the 10 worst pop Christmas albums of all time. It’s a job dirtier than shoving coal into my kids’ stockings, but I take it on with the stoicism of Kenny G inhaling before one of those endless soprano sax solos.

Let’s begin our journey thus:

If Charles Dickens were still alive and searching for a new threat to haunt Scrooge more than his three Yuletide ghosts, he might start by strolling the CD aisles at Wal-Mart and grabbing a handful of discs that purport to contain ” Christmas music.” Among the recent offerings, he’d find an acoustic ditty by Christian artists Shane & Shane called “Born To Die.”

That’s right. A Christmas song called “Born To Die.”

True, some theologians believe baby Jesus came into this world knowing that he’d suffer a horrible death. That said, “Born To Die” sounds awfully inappropriate for the season and would likely halt your Christmas bash faster than botulism-tainted eggnog.

And so:

10] Shane & Shane’s “Glory in the Highest” (inpop) clambers onto our top 10 list of worst Christmas albums with all the stealth of, say, how you’d fall off a ladder while stretching to slap a star atop the tree. It comes in at No. 10. Here’s the rest of the swill that stirs my cup of holiday jeer:

9] “A Winter Symphony,” Sarah Brightman (Manhattan). You can never have enough harps at Christmas. But what better accompaniment than … jungle drums? “Symphony” sounds as if Brightman (pictured above in a frankincense-inspired rapture) sang the whole thing through a frosty glass window in a VH1 video, barely holding back the tears. Or, even more harps. REVISED TITLE: “She Could Harp On and On”

8] “Natty and Nice: A Reggae Christmas,” various artists (Rhino). Think of it as Christmas in July—a hot, sticky, dopey sort of July that’ll make you hanker for Chicago winter year-round. REVISED TITLE: “Christmas Dread”

7] “Merry Christmas,” Mariah Carey ( Sony). And you thought Carey’s Christmas gift to the world involved passing out popsicles on MTV. Maybe Mariah should set the bar higher—and team with Celine Dion and Whitney Houston to produce the Blandest, Most Melodramatic Pop Christmas Disc Ever. REVISED TITLE: “Really Mariah, You Shouldn’t Have”

6] “A Twistmas Story With Twitty Bird and Their Little Friends,” Conway Twitty (Tree Productions). His last name sounds like “Tweety,” and there’s a song called “Christmas Is for the Birds”—get it? Cheesy backup singers abound, and numbers such as “Happy the Christmas Clown” give us one more reason to fear pasty-faced circus jesters. REVISED TITLE: “No Country for Old Jokes”

5] “This Is the Time: The Christmas Album,” Michael Bolton (Sony). For those who like their Yule treacle super-size, there’s Michael Bolton. REVISED TITLE: “I’m Dreaming of a Whine Christmas”

4] “Christmas on Death Row,” various artists (Death Row/Interscope). Nothing says “Happy Holidays” like the words “Death Row” and “EXPLICIT CONTENT.” As one artist sings, ” ‘Christmas time is a time for chillin’.” And as one amazon.com reviewer put it, “Spending Christmas actually on Death Row would be better.” REVISED TITLE: “Bad Christmas Rapping Job”

3] “Christmas Song,” Mannheim Steamroller (American Gramaphone). Having forever infected the holidays with his synth-laden “Deck the Halls,” Chip Davis found his encore on this 2007 disc. He surrounded an aging Johnny Mathis (on “The Christmas Song”) with enough machinelike percussion to pummel a fruitcake. REVISED TITLE: “Grandpa Got Run Over by a Steamroller”

2] “A Twisted Christmas,” Twisted Sister (Razor & Tie). . Twisted Sister retrofits “O Come All Ye Faithful” to the melody and arrangement of their one-and-only hit, “We’re Not Gonna Take It.” This is rawwwk—as in “I got a rawwwk in my stocking.” REVISED TITLE: “We’re Not Gonna Take It (For a Gift)”

1] “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer,” Elmo & Patsy (Epic). When experts mull what brought down the major-label system, they can forget about downloading and examine this album instead. REVISED TITLE: “Let’s Run Over Elmo and Patsy With a Steamroller”

I got my Black Friday shopping done a few weeks ago, so to speak, when I went to NYC and shot this music video for America Online’s WalletPop section. That’s me cavorting through the store, lip-synching way better than Ashlee Simpson, if you ask me, to a tune I wrote and performed.

The story of Black Friday 2009 is in the news, fer sure, but the only real reason to post this today, I would think, is to remind you (and me) to have a sense of humor while braving the Black Friday crowds. Try not to have a fit if you’ve been standing in line at a store for seven hours, and they suddenly run out of zhu zhu pets or video shmideos or whatever it is you absolutely covet. There are many shopping days left in this holiday and, God willing, many holidays left after this one.

Enjoy!!! And pass that leftover turkey…

This Michael Jackson glove sold for $420,000 Saturday. Rumors place the missing mate at a Wal-Mart lost and found in Kansas.

Talk about a mitten you’d want to keep on a string: Michael Jackson’s infamous rhinestone-studded glove just went via auction to a Hong Kong businessman for $420,000. And it has me wondering who has that kind of money to throw around … regardless of how the hand throwing it is clothed.

One Hoffman Ma, a businessman from Hong Kong, bragged that he got a “fairly good discount” on the glove at an auction of Jackson memorabilia Saturday, according to the PopEater web site. Which makes me want to question Ma’s business sense: The glove was expected to fetch $50,000 in pre-auction estimates.

Of course, the value of a veritable pop-culture talisman, a one-of-a-kind item owned by the late King of Pop, may be hard to pin down. This is, after all, the same glove that Jackson wore when he unveiled the “moonwalk” during Motown’s 25th anniversary special. The same glove M.C. Hammer once proclaimed he would take away as a challenger to Jackson’s throne. Judging by Hammer’s reverse career trajectory in the years that followed, you could make a case for the glove’s supernatural powers to curse all R&B challengers. (MJ to MC: You can’t touch this.)

And so, put yourself in the shoes–no wait, the mitts–of Mr. Hoffman Ma, whose name couldn’t be better suited for a modern-day Dickensian tale of pop-culture possessiveness. So now you snagged the glove, Ma. What do you do?

Do you don it and dance Tom Cruise-style in your underwear around your Hong Kong penthouse, blasting “Billie Jean” at 11? Do you cryogenically freeze the thing in a glove Baggie and train six security cameras on it? Do you dare throw snowballs with it? Eh, nix that. (Hong Kong weather is too warm for snow.)

No doubt Ma now owns the bragging rights to an accessory that ranks right up there with Bono’s shades, Judy Garland’s ruby slippers and John Travolta’s disco suit from “Saturday Night Fever.” Personally I think it would be fun to own, so long as no one knew. You might even be able to hide it in plain sight–that is, wear it to parties and tell people, “Hey, it’s Jacko’s glove.” “Yeah right. Looks like you bought it at a post-Halloween party store closeout. What’d you pay for that thing? 5 bucks?”

And so it goes with all pop culture ephemera: The glove itself is not nearly so valuable as the meaning attached to it, based on the man or woman who wears it. It reminds me of the superstition my fellow guitar players have–that the longer an axe slinger owns and plays a guitar, the more of his soul seeps into it. And with Jackson gone, the notion that his glove might contain even a hair of his magic certainly seems alluring.

Not that I would pay almost a half million dollars for it, let alone $42.75 on eBay (well, maybe $50 if the bidding got fierce).

I subscribe to the theory that “where your heart lies, your treasure lies also.” And for all the item’s symbolism, I just can’t see squeezing my heart into a trinket so tiny as an entertainer’s glove.