Last month, I had the enormous joy of seeing the Beach Boys on their 50th anniversary tour. Like I’m sure many other people, I assumed they’d be mediocre at best. Carl Wilson, whose vocal harmonies and guitar leads seemed essential to their live show, died in 1998. Al Jardine hadn’t been touring with the rest of the band in a while. What Mike Love and Bruce Johnston were touring with wasn’t fairly called The Beach Boys (and, indeed, was billed as “The Beach Boys Band”). And Brian Wilson had gone solo, and when I’d seen him with his own band several years ago at the Hollywood Bowl, he was a lumpen vestige of his previous self, unable to remember his own lyrics, to offer much in the way of actually playing, or, even, to know who or where he was at the moment. Accordingly, I described this 50th anniversary reunion as their “wheelchair tour.”

But my friend Trey Nichols wanted to see them. Although we’d seen that Brian Wilson show together, he’d never seen the Beach Boys perform. (I’d seen them twice in the 1980’s, once on the beach in Atlantic City in what proved to be Dennis Wilson’s final performance, and a couple of years later in Philadelphia.) So we bought tickets for the Dallas performance and off we went.

Why Dallas? Because I was going to be out of town for every California performance of the tour — for example, I’m now in Omaha, Nebraska and the Beach Boys are playing the Hollywood Bowl this weekend. I couldn’t make the Las Vegas tour date either. Tucson, Arizona — the first date on the tour — I could do, but the seats were lousy (on the lawn way in the back, for eighty bucks a ticket). When we discovered that, I said to Trey, “Let’s check out Dallas.” Voila: We got fourth-row center tickets in Dallas at the lovely Verizon Amphitheatre for only twenty bucks more, and the plane fare to Dallas didn’t cost much more than plane fare to Tucson. So off we went.

The show started on time (7:30 p.m.), which was refreshing, and over the course of two hours the Beach Boys played 44 songs. That’s right: 44 songs. They sounded great, they were incredibly entertaining, and they were gracious, clearly thrilled at the reception they were getting. The crowd was overjoyed, me among them. I was especially gratified that they played “Heroes and Villains” (Mike Love may not like the Van Dyke Parks songs, but I sure do). I now find myself reevaluating the role of Al Jardine, who handled many leads, in a new and more positive light. Mike Love was a more low-key (and, therefore, better) front man than the two previous times I’d seen them. And David Marks, a founding member newly re-found, took over for Carl on those guitar leads. But who filled in for Carl on his vocal parts, or helped Brian fill out the parts he can’t quite carry any more?

Jeffrey Foskett, who is profiled here in today’s LA Times.

It’s hard to read this profile of an otherwise unheralded sideman who is a lifelong Beach Boys fan and now living his dream of playing on tour with them, without thinking that without him there would be no tour. He’s a stabilizing presence within the band, and onstage he’s supplying a lot of the heart that I was afraid the band would lack without Carl. The Beach Boys are all over the U.S. now through July; if you’ve got a chance to see them, I urge you to take it.

A couple of side notes:

1. I also didn’t hold out much hope for their new album, “That’s Why God Made the Radio,” which goes on sale June 5. I was dreading a return to the “Kokomo” era. In fact, what I’ve heard so far of the album makes me think it holds more promise than I’d thought — several of the songs are more reminiscent of the “Surf’s Up” era. The closer, “Summer’s Gone,” could be a leftover track from “Pet Sounds.” Three months ago, I wouldn’t have predicted this, but I think I’m going to buy the album.

2. During the show when they set up the new single, Mike Love said, “Here’s the single from our new album, ‘That’s Why God Made the Radio.’ ” I turned to Trey and said, “What’s a single? What’s an album? What’s the radio?” That one sentence relegated the era of the Beach Boys to times long gone. But their songs and their sound remain timeless.

I’m at Bob Hope Airport waiting for a flight (heading to the Great Plains Theatre Conference in Omaha, NE ; posting this from my iPhone).

On the overhead televisions — almost impossible to escape — the studio audience for The View is for some ineffable reason giving Donald Trump a standing ovation.

Throwing up now.

Squat at AOL, living, eating, working and sleeping at their Palo Alto office for free.

Good if you plan to be in business for only two months, because eventually they catch you.

I like Facebook. I use it every day, throughout the day. It’s helped me keep in touch with friends I don’t see often enough, and it’s helped me reconnect with people I haven’t seen in a long time. It’s a great platform for sharing photos and news pieces and fun information and thoughts with a wide circle of contacts. Before Facebook, I was more likely to copy things and mail them to friends. That was time-consuming, expensive and, well, a drag.

I don’t even mind the ads on Facebook. In fact, I like the ads on Facebook, because they’re built around relevancy. How did I find out last year that Bryan Ferry would be playing the Hollywood Bowl? Through a Facebook ad — one that was directed at me because I put “Bryan Ferry” as one of my likes and interests. In general, I don’t want ads that I don’t want — I call these “interruption marketing,” because they seek to interrupt me. But without permission-oriented ads, I may not have known about the local appearances of Devo, Brian Eno, Louis C.K. and others I’ve gone to.

And I don’t mind Facebook trying to find ever more ways to make money. They’re going to have to. It’s a free service for my use, and they have nowhere near the revenue stream or the cash reserves to properly arm them in their little tripartite war with Apple and Google. I don’t want to start paying for Facebook — and that’s been rumored as a potential new revenue stream — and I don’t want to lose Facebook either.

All of that said, though, here’s something I don’t want them to do: I don’t want them to start using my profile pic on ads on their system. I didn’t mind them saying that “Lee Wochner likes this” with their thumbs-up sign on some of their ads; that seems fair, because I do indeed like those things, and because I’m not ashamed of people knowing that, and because, again, the system is free. But I don’t want my profile picture attached to it, and I don’t want them allowing third-party apps to use my profile pic either. Luckily (or, perhaps, for legal reasons), there’s a way to disable that. Here’s a little further background, and here’s what to do about it:

On May 25th, Facebook will start using your photos in ads that will appear on the profile of your contacts. It’s legal and was mentioned to you when you opened an account. To prevent this do the following: Home -> Account Settings -> Facebook Ads (Bottom left) -> Ads shown by third parties -> Edit third party advert settings, then choose “No one” in the list and save the changes.

While you’re at it, you can also change your setting to disallow the “[your name] likes this” setting as well.

OR — and I’ve thought about this — if you’re inclined to play games with the folks at Facebook and their advertisers who are supporting the system that, again, we’re all using for free, you could put an objectionable (but still passable) image up as your profile picture so that whenever it says “[you] like this” people will see, say, Adolf Hitler and think twice about buying what’s being advertising. Of course, they’ll also think twice about remaining your friend — either for real or on Facebook.

Here’s why it’s not good to align portraits side by side when you’re doing a slideshow: the human brain, earnestly seeking to differentiate them, exaggerates the differences, resulting in an optical illusion called Flashed Face Distortion that makes the faces seem hideous and ogre-like. (Or, if you’re Clint Howard, more hideous and ogre-like.) Take a look.

Even if you’re never going to make a music video, you have to admire the cut-to-the-chaseness of this post. And, for all my friends so thrilled to be writing for Huffington Post for free, note the insistence on getting paid for your expertise.

A recent poll shows that a majority of small business owners polled lean conservative — but plan on voting for Obama. What’s their number one issue? Health care. Hm.

Which brings new meaning to the term Beastie BOYS.

Here they are.