Monkey Monday: Michael Jackson edition 13 July 2009 9:09 am
Posted by Tracy in : cheese,eating,events,fangirl,Holland,monkeys,news,random,travel,video,weird , trackbackI was eating popcorn when I finally and unexpectedly got emotional about Michael Jackson’s death. Not yucky microwave stuff, but real popcorn, homemade in a pan on the stove, with salt and pepper and nutritional yeast. That’s what makes this a food story. I’m posting it this Monkey Monday because it’s not going to get any more timely, and because it’s pretty freaking random (also, y’know, Bubbles). Anyway. Here goes.
When I got home from Holland last Thursday, the July 13 issue of New York magazine was waiting for me, and its all Michael Jackson Approval Matrix inspired me to spend part of a weekend afternoon watching MJ videos on YouTube, including the “Thriller” music video, which I had actually never seen in its entirely because I am an enormous scaredywimp who also happens to live under a rock in a cave on Mars. (Come to think of it, MJ eats popcorn in that video, doesn’t he? This introduction, it is all about the popcorn, I guess.) Still, I would’ve gotten to “Thriller” all by myself, but without New York‘s recommendations, I might not have had the weird revelation of watching the 1993 Superbowl halftime show:
I don’t care if it’s lip-synched, it’d be a bravura performance if MJ never opened his mouth, and sure, there’s plenty of cheese to go around with “Heal the World,” but shut up, I sang it in middle school choir so it’s etched on my brain along with nobody will ever know how much other tweenage angst, and at the end there’s Michael, smiling, on the big stage surrounded by kids in costumes and dancers and band and security and screaming fans and pyrotechnics and more, and say whatever else you will about the man and his plastic surgeries, but even more so than in his eyes, in his smile he’s still the kid whose genius cannot be denied, and I hoped that some of the happiness he was projecting was real, and then suddenly I was so sad I surprised myself by crying. Then I ate some more popcorn and got myself back together.
Later, catching up on all the comics I didn’t read while I was out of the country led me back to Michael Jackson, but in a less “well, damn, I’m crying” kind of way (Readers, why doesn’t anybody go on and on about how the “Thriller” video is so funny? I was totally not expecting that, and it was a wonderful surprise). I really liked Keith Knight’s take on the memorial, the later parts of which I caught live on TV in Holland, where by the way holy cats could the subtitlers not keep up. Anyway, I have the inimitable Mr. Knight to thank for reminding me to look up videos from earlier in the event, and in particular Magic Johnson’s fried chicken story, which made me way happy. (The link goes to a short version with embedding disabled, if you’re impatient, but I’d like to point out that watching it here means no chance of reading YouTube commenters. I’m just sayin’.)
Anyway, that brings me back to food, and is as good a place to end this post as any. Tomorrow: back to the standard irregularly-scheduled TracyFood, complete with stories from the latest trip to Holland.
Update, 6:56 PM: And almost as if to make me feel better about how late I am in posting about all this, here’s Jay Smooth with last words on the subject that kick mine into next year. Jay, you made me cry again, and while I’m feeling better, but also like I suck, I’m still happy to be able to shout you out. GAH. My brain, it probably needs dinner or something. Popcorn, maybe.
