Will the Real Danny Miller Please Stand Up?

Forget the political sites, I inadvertently started my own firestorm of controversy with my innocent little blog. It started when I was cited in last Sunday’s Los Angeles Times in a small article about my nephew’s band, The Blisters, and the recent oatmeal commercial they shot here with director Errol Morris. After stating that the boys’ parents declined to comment, the columnist writes that “an account on a blog kept by the boys’ uncle, Danny Miller, gives more detail” and then quotes from my blog. Needless to say I was shocked to see this mention which also appeared in the Chicago Tribune and in the online edition of both papers. I was surprised that he didn’t try to contact me himself and I was amazed to see myself as a “source” for an item in the newspaper. It made me think about all the stuff I write in here and how in some cases what is “true for me” would not exactly stand up to the most stringent of journalistic standards!

Some folks on a Wilco fan website called Via Chicago saw this article and looked up my blog. It wasn’t long before they were linking to it on their website. In a recent post where I was writing about the Wilco concert and my memory of my mother meeting Jeff, I included a wedding photo of my sister and my brother-in-law which someone from Via Chicago posted onto their site. That person was then roundly attacked by several diehard fans. People said it was “creepy” to post such a personal photo on a fan site, said it “went way over the line,” ordered the photo taken down, complained that they should show the Tweedys more respect, etc. I think it’s sweet that some of the Wilco fans feel so protective of Sue and Jeff, but I tend to agree with the other folks who argued that moving the photo from one public site to another public site is no big deal. Hey, I’m the one who is constantly stealing borrowing photos from other sites to illustrate my posts. I agree with one poster who said “there is no privacy on the Internet.” That’s why I’m not posting anything that I wouldn’t want to be in the public domain, not that I wasn’t surprised to see that photo end up on a Wilco discussion board.

What do you think? Am I wrong to consider any photo on the Internet as fair game? I guess there are limits. I sure wouldn’t want photos I post of my daughter to appear on any site frequented by pedophiles or other creepy characters. But I think all of the visuals I’ve posted have been fairly benign, with the possible exception of the softcore pornography Julie Newmar sent me when I was 11! And I would never download photos from blogs or other sources that specifically state that they are against this, such as photographers’ or artists’ sites.

It was fun to check my StatCounter results yesterday and see that the hits on my blog had skyrocketed from one to two hundred a day to a whopping 775. Should I start pandering to this new crowd to keep my numbers up? On Mondays I’ll post selections from my sister’s teenage journals. On Wednesdays I’ll conduct online auctions of the clothes Jeff gave me last year after he lost some weight. And on Fridays I’ll provide MP3 files of Wilco remixes intercut with my favorite Rodgers & Hammerstein showtunes: “Jeff Tweedy IS Billy Bigelow!” The discussion on Via Chicago got so heated that I posted on that site for the first time myself just to say that they needn’t worry. My sister and Jeff weren’t upset about the photo and believe me, if I ever posted anything on my blog that she took issue with, I’d hear about it right away. To prove my point (and to try to hold onto my new audience for just one more day) I’m posting one last photo of the cute couple that I still have in my computer from last summer. 11 years later and they still have it! For a fun activity you can place it next to the earlier one I posted and check for new wrinkles and age spots!

The funniest thing to come out of the Via Chicago furor was the fact that several people expressed doubts that I was the “real” Danny Miller! As if I’d register under a false name as some kind of hoax! Lord, if I were going to do that I’d at least pretend I was Tom Cruise so I could recant my slavish devotion to Scientology and publicly apologize to Brooke Shields. Of course it is very easy to assume false identities online, as we all know, and having such a hideously common name, there are plenty of real Danny Millers whose identities I don’t want to assume but whom I know people often think are me. Richard Cohen had a great post recently about all the Richard Cohens he’d come in contact with and I’ve spent half my life saying “No, you have the wrong Danny Miller.” I get frequent calls for Danny Miller the sculptor, Danny Miller the Vietnam vet, and Danny Miller the wrestler. Many people from my past hear my name each day as the producer of the great NPR program “Fresh Air” with Terry Gross (I wish!) and when Jeff was on that show last year everyone thought it was me. A quick Google search of my name yields, if you can believe it, over two million hits! At the top of the list is a professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales in Quebec, a multimedia artist in Chicago, a professor of anthropology at Cambridge, a cardiothoracic surgeon in Georgia, an assistant professor of emergency medical care in Kentucky, the Danny Miller Band in Wisconsin, a sophomore at Seattle University, the Danny Miller Benefit to raise funds for an injured boy whose parents own a jungle theme park in San Diego, Danny Miller Park in Greendale, Indiana, named after some poor kid who died in 1973, a man in Missouri who got power of attorney for his aging grandfather and proceeded to transfer all of the grandfather’s property to his own name, and so on. There were even three Danny Millers in my college class (I used to always get the wrong grades). The scariest thing is that there are also several Danny Millers posting online poetry. I don’t want to be unkind so all I’ll say is THAT IS NOT ME!! Trust me, the only poetry I will ever be posting (or writing) are my obnoxious Valentine’s Day poems that Kendall forces me to pen each year!

Yikes, have I reached a new level of narcissism? London is steel reeling from its terrorist attack, the world is going to hell in a handbasket, and all I can talk about is me, me, ME! But wait—it’s NOT me! Damn it, one of those other Danny Millers has hacked into my site. Phew, I’m not responsible for this post!

Comments

[Tamar]

Hey "Danny Miller" - if this is "you" - I just *knew* you would be famous one day!

[Neil]

It's definitely a new world of journalism if blogs are going to be quoted as "sources." If you want even more hits on your stat counter, next time mention that you are a relative of Lindsay Lohan.

[david]

Danny: this is so unbelievably fascinating. Whereas I post horribly personal things on my blog but no photos -- these may be two reasons why your traffic is (sob) four times mine -- you post photos, to which people react in incredibly personal and proprietary ways. It's so odd that fans feel that a relative is infringing on their privacy! Kind of spooky, really, but also highly ironic.

I say milk it for all it's worth. Hopefully you walked out of Sue's house with some good collectibles. You can lift some of Jeff's prints off those things, and link from this blog to E-bay. Off you go.

[natalie]

Hi Danny - I am the culprit who "discovered" your blog. It might disappoint you to know that you are on the second page of Google hits on your name. I made a lucky guess.

I feel like I should apologize or something? I'm not sure. My intentions were harmless - I just wanted to find out more about that oatmeal commercial that the Blisters were in. Oh, and find out Jeff's underwear size. Could you post that, please? Thanks.

[Danny]

No need to apologize, Natalie, it's been fun getting the additional hits on my blog—even if the Wilco fans don't necessary match up with my usual demographic (or maybe they ARE interested in Jewish angst and 1940s movies!).

Oh, and sorry, I only discuss Jeff's underwear on Thursdays. Stay tuned for my riveting Boxer vs. Briefs post!

P.S. Did I mention that Lindsay Lohan is my niece?

[The Retropolitan]

1. Your nephew was in a commercial directed by Errol Morris? That's AWESOME!

2. There's a movie somewhere out there called "The Sweetest Sound." It's a documentary about a guy that goes in search of other guys that were born with the same name as him; it's available via Netflix.

3. If you want, I can start writing a lot of posts with the words "Danny," "Miller" and "Wilco" in them, so that you won't be so overwhelmed by Google traffic. I could use a couple hundred more hits a day! Then there's always the last resort of "X-TREME NUDE BLOGGING," but I haven't worked out all the details on that yet.

4. I caught the "Monk" marathon on July 4th, and I'm sad to say that I did not spot any episodes in the entire line-up that had your house in them. On the other hand, it was worth watching for Traylor Howard. >flutter<

[Danny]

Retro, I heard about that movie and I was hoping someone would tell me the name. Thanks, I'll check it out. I am certainly a candidate for a similar study!

I was suprised to hear that our NEW "Monk" episode, "Mr. Monk Goes Home Again," is supposed to air next Friday, July 15th. Surprised because they just shot it a few weeks ago and, as I mentioned on my blog, the episode takes place on Halloween!

[Rurality]

I'm a long-time Fresh Air listener. But only just recently, after starting to read your blog, did I actually hear them saying, "Danny Miller". :)

[Aura Haft and Adina Blassberger]

Our cousin, Danny Miller, is missing.

He is under psychological care and has not taken his medicine in over 5 days.

He disappeared from JFK airport some time between Wednesday afternoon and Thursday.

He is 5'6 overweight 32 year old male wearing a black suit, white shirt and velvet yarmulka.

He has black hair and eyes, glasses and a beard and a British/South African accent.
He is carrying plastic bags and may say he's from Georgia, London, Israel, or South Africa.

Please help us find him.
Call Shomrim at 718-338-9797 - with ANY information.

Thank you so much! Aura Haft and Adina Blassberger

[DMB Fan]

Found your site by accident, but I wanted to offer that the Danny Miller Band in Wiscsonsin is, indeed, excellent. Great music, greater musicians, so if you're into the blues with an edge and some fantastic blues harp (Danny Miller) plus superb guitar (Dan Lloyd), please rush right over!

[additaJertemo]

Did anyone tryied torrents? awesome....can anyone rocemmend tracker for the stuff on this torrent?
Torrent

[D.K.Milgrim-Heath]

There's Many People With Your Same Name
By D.K.Milgrim-Heath
There's many people with your same name-
So many people have it they claim!
Not many are with D.K.Milgrim-Heath-
For my pen name I myself did bequeath!
A different writer's name with a zing-
My own name and my kids joined by everything!
My kids need a professional identity-
Similiar to mine yet different from me.
You and your family are in the arts-
My kids and me are too we have our parts!