21st CENTURY SOCIALIZING

by Wayne McWorter, VP Marketing

Hello from the official blog of Hollywood's Pantages Theatre. This grande dame of L.A. entertainment palaces is finally entering the 21st Century, about a decade late. But give her a break; she's nearing 80 and sometimes doesn't move so fast.

I've been avoiding the world of "social networking" for some time. I find very little spare time in my personal life to spend in front of a computer screen. I created a personal MySpace page years ago so that I could attempt to remain relevant to my kids. I created a Facebook page to attempt to stay on top of what was clearly a growing trend in how people connect, communicate and access information. I don't remember for sure, but I think I may have beaten my kids to that one. Nevertheless, by now they have far surpassed me in proficience to use that tool. Every time I go on Facebook, I have to re-learn where everything is.

Twitter seemed to me the "holy grail" of social networking, because it took such little time and effort. I jumped in and began "tweeting" to anyone who would "listen" about the stupidest details of my life. How many times can you post "got 2 have my morning coffee" or "finishing a crazy day @work" before you realize how uneventful your day-to-day life is?

I can no longer avoid the tsunami of evidence that we need to jump into the ocean of social media sites and do the best we can to master the wild currents we encounter. Eventually, we may even learn to stand up on our surfboard and look like we know what we're doing.

"We" is the operative term here, because I know that I'll never be able to keep this up on my own. So as we move forward in our blogging adventure, we will endeavor to share with you many different points of view from different members of our staff, and perhaps on occasion, some celebrity guest bloggers from shows playing this historic hall.

We hope you'll join us!