As Robert Lusetich put it, “It might have been one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen in sports,” and I suppose he’s seen a lot of sad things. Old Tom Watson, all 59 years of him, had taken a one-stroke lead into the final hole of The Open Championships at Turnberry. Needing only to par the hole to win his ninth major and become the most improbable victor in the history of sports, he instead flubbed two putts to end with a bogey, sending him into a playoff with Stewart Cink, who through no fault of his own had just become the villain of this morality play, and soon would become the destroyer of dreams.
I couldn’t find a live online video stream of the final round, so I settled for audio coverage, handled sparklingly by a pair of British announcers who commented with a melodious interplay of wit and charm that is simply foreign to their American counterparts. I listened to them amble from hopeful confidence in Watson’s chances to stunned deflation as the victory started to slip away so suddenly. When they announced Watson’s missed chance on the 18th hole, I actually felt a little sick to my stomach. As soon as he fell behind on the first hole of the four-hole playoff, I couldn’t listen anymore.
I’ve never wanted to play golf, and can only barely understand why anyone would. Walking around under a hot sun, a sack loaded with metal rods strapped to your back? I’ll pass, thanks. I think there’s a chain gang nearby that has an opening.
But I found myself mesmerized by the possibilities presented by this year’s British Open. When Watson shot a 65 and settled near the top of the leaderboard after the first round, I could smell a good, but brief, story. When he pulled into a tie for the lead after the second round and then kept the lead after the third, I was dumbfounded. The numbers: 59 years old. Watson last won a major in 1983, a generation ago. The oldest person ever to win a major: Julius Boros won the PGA Championship at 48. There’s always some old-timer who experiences a second wind at one of the majors, who seems touched by the gods of golf, at least for a few rounds, and this time, it was one of the legends of the sport.
Last year at the Open, it was 53-year-old Greg Norman’s turn to laugh in the face of Father Time. Like what happened with Watson, I found Norman’s run to be an inspirational story, and I was disappointed that he didn’t win, as well. But this year hurts more, and it’s because last year at Royal Birkdale, the Great White Shark faded early in the fourth round, and by midday, we had come to terms with his great attempt and inevitable failure. We wished him well as he went home with his newlywed bride, Chris Evert.
This year at Turnberry, Watson summoned some kind of power or sorcery to get within a hair’s breadth of a win. The 18th hole, his lips almost planted on the Claret Jug, and even when he fell there, he still had a chance in the playoff (although I think anyone who saw him knew that his only real chance to win was at that 18th hole). And there’s the history. Watson’s fabled “Duel in the Sun” with Jack Nicklaus happened on this very course in 1977, when the younger Watson conquered the older and far more celebrated Golden Bear on the final hole in what is considered by some to be the greatest golf tournament of them all. For Watson to win here again, 32 years later, when by all sanity, he should be sipping Arnold Palmers in a lawn chair somewhere – that would be history.
History, as opposed to just another Tiger-centric tournament. How rare is the former, and how increasingly unbearable is the latter. If Watson had won, it would have been the biggest story in the history of golf, and maybe even one of the biggest stories in sports history, right up there with the “Miracle on Ice” (if you’re into gee-whiz patriotism), Jesse Owens winning four golds at the Nazi Olympic Games, Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game, and one of those Ali fights that everyone talks about.
Okay, so a Watson win probably wouldn’t have had the cultural resonance of those moments, but it really should. Golf is different from all other sports. It’s the only sport where a 59-year-old man could even have a chance of winning against men half his age. And yes, golf is meant to be played by the old, but as we saw this year and last, it certainly isn’t meant to be won by the old. If Watson had pulled it off, he would have single-handedly demolished what we all take for granted – that you can never be as good as you once were. The fact that he didn’t win means that we were all cheated of that upheaval.
I have no doubt that the better performer won the Open this year. But the better story? Not by a long shot. After all, do you remember who won the Open last year after Norman’s collapse? Yeah, I didn’t think so.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Pictures from an Expedition
Last month, I made my annual visit to Chicago. I go back every year for an alumni function, just for two or three days. It’s a chance to catch a little rain, eat my favorite foods, and provoke a few memories. The memories I have of my time in college grow fainter year by year, and since memory’s best friend is documentation, I thought I’d put together a little slideshow, and let the present jog whatever it can of the past.
The best cookie I almost had
This is a picture of the cookie I ate in lieu of the best cookie I’ve ever had:
Raspberry-filled shortbread with icing. At their best, these are maybe the second best cookie I’ve ever had. Today, they were honestly a bit stale. These are sold at the Classics Café at the University of Chicago (in the Classics Building, naturally), and are generally found individually wrapped inside a plastic jar at the cashier, next to another plastic jar that generally holds the best cookie I’ve ever had: a shortbread cookie of basically the same shape and proportions as this raspberry one, but filled instead with caramel, topped with a thick mound of chocolate fudge (these are sometimes called “thumbprint” cookies). Biting into one of these was like having cookie, cake, brownie, and fudge all at once, but with none of the remorse. (The raspberry does what it can, given limited resources.)
I was introduced to both of these cookies by my friend, Caroline, who in my last year of college told me that these were the best cookies she had ever had. I’m sorry I was at the end of my collegiate rope when I finally found my way to them in that plastic jar, just on the other side of the main quad from my dorm room. But I am eternally grateful to Caroline for her great culinary service to me. Now every year, I return to the Classics Café to look for them and get my annual fix, but this year, I was denied my chocolate cookie. Ironically, a few years after we had both left Chicago, I spoke to Caroline about the cookie that changed my taste buds forever, and told her how I would never forget her introducing them to me. She had no memory of the incident or even the cookies! What a strange, amoral monster is memory.
How green was my memory
I always said that the University of Chicago is the most beautiful place in the world. Botany Pond in the spring is the living showcase of my words. When the ivy grows into full leaf over the entire façade of Erman Hall, you can take in a nearly 180 degree view where everything is green. Here, a couple of mallards add their plumage to the landscape:
I love it when the wind picks up and catches the ivy. The effect is like the rippling surface of the ocean, or a blanket being billowed over a mattress.
In a different season, in the fall of my second year, Botany Pond once played a crucial role in the house elections at my dorm, Snell Hall. My friend, Zach, had just been elected house president, a position of much esteem, and unbeknownst to him or me, the more senior members of the house had prepared for Zach the traditional coronation ritual. It began with many “hip hip, hoorays,” then everyone got on their feet and herded Zach out the front door and down the slate path toward the pond. I followed along, not knowing what was to come. When we reached the edge of Botany Pond, the leaders of the pack hoisted Zach up by his arms and feet and inaugurated him by heaving him into the pond. Ah, college.
On the boob tube
As I flipped through the TV listings at the hotel, I came across this gem:
“Humankind enslaved.” A very succinct synopsis of The Matrix, although it could also describe, oh, Planet of the Apes. The Matrix came out in 1999, the midpoint of my college career, just before the release of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Then and now, it seems, The Matrix was the more . . . critically appreciated(?) movie, but I found it to be just a chilly rehash of New Testament flapdoodle. It certainly wasn’t a movie that would inspire me to make a midnight run.
The best pizza I’ve ever had?
During my college orientation, we first-years were almost buried in free food, much of it Chicago-style pizza. Freshman 15? That’s for those svelte West Coast colleges. Chicago seemed intent on delivering the Freshman 30. The two primary chains were Edwardo’s, which touted its “natural” pizza, whatever that means, and Giordano’s. Though the latter was and is my favorite, both chains made great pies, the likes of which I had never even imagined back home in San Diego. I mean, chunky tomato sauce covering the entire surface? Oh, you Midwesterners! Here is a spinach and sausage stuffed pizza from Giordano’s:
Unfortunately, there’s nothing in the photo to show scale aside from the laptop charger in the top left. I estimate that the pizza was about ten inches in diameter, and weighed at least a pound and a half. Yes, it was the “small.”
I don’t know if Giordano’s is the best pizza I’ve ever had. Bella Bacino’s on Wacker makes a strong case. (The reason I don’t qualify it as best “stuffed” pizza is because anyone who’s ever had stuffed pizza knows that other pizza styles are no longer contenders.) I do know that after I left Chicago and returned to my hometown, I longed for stuffed pizza and wished that some Chicagoan would have the gonads to take it national. In the too many years since I graduated from college, San Diego has seen the birth of at least three pizzerias that purport to make Chicago-style stuffed pizza. The most renowned, I suppose, is a sad joint called Lefty’s Chicago Pizzeria in the North Park neighborhood. When I first heard of them, I wore out a good pair of sneakers running over there to try their stuffed pie. It looks like the real thing. It even smells like the real thing. And then I tasted it.
Before you read on, know that I reserve graphic language only for occasions that genuinely demand that level of rancor. So I reluctantly but justifiably say that if I were a less stoic man, I would have thanked the chef by urinating on his creation and not shaking his hand. Yes, reader, I warned you that my words had acid. Frown on me if you must.
The other two stuffed shirts in town don’t fare much better, though they try their darnedest. My first conjecture was that the failure was in the ingredients. The cheese is the primary criminal in the San Diego pies. In Chicago, the cheese oozes out of the pie like high-calorie molten lava. In the imposter pies, the cheese is solid and congealed, with a texture similar to that sponge rubber they use to make sandals. I swear I saw unmelted strands of cheese once or twice, which is a scandal.
And then I thought, maybe we don’t have the right ovens in San Diego. Maybe the pizzas aren’t cooked hot enough or long enough. They do seem to take longer to make in Chicago. The quoted time for my small at Giordano’s was 50 minutes, but it ended up taking about an hour and 15. In San Diego, they can pop out a large in under 45 minutes.
And then I realized that I was just making excuses for these petty crooks. It wasn’t the cheese or the oven or something special in that Chicago River water. Ingredients and equipment are a big part of cuisine, but not nearly the whole. A great pizza is made by a great chef, and that’s what Chicago has that San Diego doesn’t. You don’t just pay a pimply high schooler 7 clams an hour to slap cheese and sauce on flat dough, then call it a pizza. Without the care and knowhow, you don’t get a Giordano’s.
Ode on a Grecian pie
Pictures of partially eaten food may become my signature. Here we have a delicacy that takes me way back and way far away to my study abroad days in Greece. Back in the old country, we called this a “zambonotyropita,” which means, “ham-cheese pie”:
In my traveling life, there have been a few unforgettable regional foods, including sweet pork jerky in Hong Kong, mandarin oranges in Japan, and stuffed pizza in Chicago (see above). These foods can be found in various bastardized forms elsewhere on the globe, even in San Diego. But after leaving Greece in the spring of 2000, I never again saw my beloved “pitas,” the multifarious pies made in those superb bakeries found all over the land of Homer. These are not American dessert pies or pizza pies, but more like a pastry.
Among these was the tyropita, a regular cheese pie, the milopita, a kind of apple pastry, and my favorite, the zambonotyropita, which had all the things that were good in the world: a thick slice of ham, melted cheese, and delicate and crispy yet soft phyllo dough. Back before this Euro nonsense, you could buy one of these golden oldies for about 300 drachmas (about a dollar), making it one of the best bargains in that entire sun-drenched nation.
Until now, I hadn’t seen this delicacy in the States, not even in Chicago’s Greektown, so imagine my surprise when I saw it in the food court at Chicago’s Midway Airport! The product is not exactly authentic; it uses diced ham instead of a slice, and the cheese is a little different, but as far as variants go, it’s pretty close to what I had in Greece, and it’s pretty delicious. The $6 price tag is pure American larceny, but what's a hungry Hellenist to do? I’m not sure I like the idea of having to make a special trip to Midway every time I’m in the mood for one, but I suppose it’s easier than flying to Greece.
The man of many ways
On my annual trips to Chicago, I always try to cram in as many activities as I can. I especially try to see the things I never got to see when I was a student, to do things I never seemed to have time for. Every year I make a list of things to do, and every year, I’m disappointed that I don’t complete it. We all have regrets when we leave college, and I look at these trips as a chance to make up for lost opportunities. I always feel like my Chicago experience is incomplete.
But this year, I realized that every year I come back, I do exactly what I most enjoyed doing in college: I walk around and run into things I didn’t expect to find.
Here is a picture from inside the newly completed Modern Wing of the Art Institute, looking at a glorious section of the Chicago skyline at night:
The long vertical lines of the window echo the lines of the skyscrapers, which surely was architect Renzo Piano’s intention. Perhaps the two reed-like statues in the left part of the frame are placed to emphasize the lines, as well. I’m the dark reflection in the middle of the photo, with my arm crooked. This is the only photo of me from my trip, which seems fitting, just another shadow passing through.
On my last day in Chicago, it rained. At last.
The best cookie I almost had
This is a picture of the cookie I ate in lieu of the best cookie I’ve ever had:
Raspberry-filled shortbread with icing. At their best, these are maybe the second best cookie I’ve ever had. Today, they were honestly a bit stale. These are sold at the Classics Café at the University of Chicago (in the Classics Building, naturally), and are generally found individually wrapped inside a plastic jar at the cashier, next to another plastic jar that generally holds the best cookie I’ve ever had: a shortbread cookie of basically the same shape and proportions as this raspberry one, but filled instead with caramel, topped with a thick mound of chocolate fudge (these are sometimes called “thumbprint” cookies). Biting into one of these was like having cookie, cake, brownie, and fudge all at once, but with none of the remorse. (The raspberry does what it can, given limited resources.)
I was introduced to both of these cookies by my friend, Caroline, who in my last year of college told me that these were the best cookies she had ever had. I’m sorry I was at the end of my collegiate rope when I finally found my way to them in that plastic jar, just on the other side of the main quad from my dorm room. But I am eternally grateful to Caroline for her great culinary service to me. Now every year, I return to the Classics Café to look for them and get my annual fix, but this year, I was denied my chocolate cookie. Ironically, a few years after we had both left Chicago, I spoke to Caroline about the cookie that changed my taste buds forever, and told her how I would never forget her introducing them to me. She had no memory of the incident or even the cookies! What a strange, amoral monster is memory.
How green was my memory
I always said that the University of Chicago is the most beautiful place in the world. Botany Pond in the spring is the living showcase of my words. When the ivy grows into full leaf over the entire façade of Erman Hall, you can take in a nearly 180 degree view where everything is green. Here, a couple of mallards add their plumage to the landscape:
I love it when the wind picks up and catches the ivy. The effect is like the rippling surface of the ocean, or a blanket being billowed over a mattress.
In a different season, in the fall of my second year, Botany Pond once played a crucial role in the house elections at my dorm, Snell Hall. My friend, Zach, had just been elected house president, a position of much esteem, and unbeknownst to him or me, the more senior members of the house had prepared for Zach the traditional coronation ritual. It began with many “hip hip, hoorays,” then everyone got on their feet and herded Zach out the front door and down the slate path toward the pond. I followed along, not knowing what was to come. When we reached the edge of Botany Pond, the leaders of the pack hoisted Zach up by his arms and feet and inaugurated him by heaving him into the pond. Ah, college.
On the boob tube
As I flipped through the TV listings at the hotel, I came across this gem:
“Humankind enslaved.” A very succinct synopsis of The Matrix, although it could also describe, oh, Planet of the Apes. The Matrix came out in 1999, the midpoint of my college career, just before the release of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Then and now, it seems, The Matrix was the more . . . critically appreciated(?) movie, but I found it to be just a chilly rehash of New Testament flapdoodle. It certainly wasn’t a movie that would inspire me to make a midnight run.
The best pizza I’ve ever had?
During my college orientation, we first-years were almost buried in free food, much of it Chicago-style pizza. Freshman 15? That’s for those svelte West Coast colleges. Chicago seemed intent on delivering the Freshman 30. The two primary chains were Edwardo’s, which touted its “natural” pizza, whatever that means, and Giordano’s. Though the latter was and is my favorite, both chains made great pies, the likes of which I had never even imagined back home in San Diego. I mean, chunky tomato sauce covering the entire surface? Oh, you Midwesterners! Here is a spinach and sausage stuffed pizza from Giordano’s:
Unfortunately, there’s nothing in the photo to show scale aside from the laptop charger in the top left. I estimate that the pizza was about ten inches in diameter, and weighed at least a pound and a half. Yes, it was the “small.”
I don’t know if Giordano’s is the best pizza I’ve ever had. Bella Bacino’s on Wacker makes a strong case. (The reason I don’t qualify it as best “stuffed” pizza is because anyone who’s ever had stuffed pizza knows that other pizza styles are no longer contenders.) I do know that after I left Chicago and returned to my hometown, I longed for stuffed pizza and wished that some Chicagoan would have the gonads to take it national. In the too many years since I graduated from college, San Diego has seen the birth of at least three pizzerias that purport to make Chicago-style stuffed pizza. The most renowned, I suppose, is a sad joint called Lefty’s Chicago Pizzeria in the North Park neighborhood. When I first heard of them, I wore out a good pair of sneakers running over there to try their stuffed pie. It looks like the real thing. It even smells like the real thing. And then I tasted it.
Before you read on, know that I reserve graphic language only for occasions that genuinely demand that level of rancor. So I reluctantly but justifiably say that if I were a less stoic man, I would have thanked the chef by urinating on his creation and not shaking his hand. Yes, reader, I warned you that my words had acid. Frown on me if you must.
The other two stuffed shirts in town don’t fare much better, though they try their darnedest. My first conjecture was that the failure was in the ingredients. The cheese is the primary criminal in the San Diego pies. In Chicago, the cheese oozes out of the pie like high-calorie molten lava. In the imposter pies, the cheese is solid and congealed, with a texture similar to that sponge rubber they use to make sandals. I swear I saw unmelted strands of cheese once or twice, which is a scandal.
And then I thought, maybe we don’t have the right ovens in San Diego. Maybe the pizzas aren’t cooked hot enough or long enough. They do seem to take longer to make in Chicago. The quoted time for my small at Giordano’s was 50 minutes, but it ended up taking about an hour and 15. In San Diego, they can pop out a large in under 45 minutes.
And then I realized that I was just making excuses for these petty crooks. It wasn’t the cheese or the oven or something special in that Chicago River water. Ingredients and equipment are a big part of cuisine, but not nearly the whole. A great pizza is made by a great chef, and that’s what Chicago has that San Diego doesn’t. You don’t just pay a pimply high schooler 7 clams an hour to slap cheese and sauce on flat dough, then call it a pizza. Without the care and knowhow, you don’t get a Giordano’s.
Ode on a Grecian pie
Pictures of partially eaten food may become my signature. Here we have a delicacy that takes me way back and way far away to my study abroad days in Greece. Back in the old country, we called this a “zambonotyropita,” which means, “ham-cheese pie”:
In my traveling life, there have been a few unforgettable regional foods, including sweet pork jerky in Hong Kong, mandarin oranges in Japan, and stuffed pizza in Chicago (see above). These foods can be found in various bastardized forms elsewhere on the globe, even in San Diego. But after leaving Greece in the spring of 2000, I never again saw my beloved “pitas,” the multifarious pies made in those superb bakeries found all over the land of Homer. These are not American dessert pies or pizza pies, but more like a pastry.
Among these was the tyropita, a regular cheese pie, the milopita, a kind of apple pastry, and my favorite, the zambonotyropita, which had all the things that were good in the world: a thick slice of ham, melted cheese, and delicate and crispy yet soft phyllo dough. Back before this Euro nonsense, you could buy one of these golden oldies for about 300 drachmas (about a dollar), making it one of the best bargains in that entire sun-drenched nation.
Until now, I hadn’t seen this delicacy in the States, not even in Chicago’s Greektown, so imagine my surprise when I saw it in the food court at Chicago’s Midway Airport! The product is not exactly authentic; it uses diced ham instead of a slice, and the cheese is a little different, but as far as variants go, it’s pretty close to what I had in Greece, and it’s pretty delicious. The $6 price tag is pure American larceny, but what's a hungry Hellenist to do? I’m not sure I like the idea of having to make a special trip to Midway every time I’m in the mood for one, but I suppose it’s easier than flying to Greece.
The man of many ways
On my annual trips to Chicago, I always try to cram in as many activities as I can. I especially try to see the things I never got to see when I was a student, to do things I never seemed to have time for. Every year I make a list of things to do, and every year, I’m disappointed that I don’t complete it. We all have regrets when we leave college, and I look at these trips as a chance to make up for lost opportunities. I always feel like my Chicago experience is incomplete.
But this year, I realized that every year I come back, I do exactly what I most enjoyed doing in college: I walk around and run into things I didn’t expect to find.
Here is a picture from inside the newly completed Modern Wing of the Art Institute, looking at a glorious section of the Chicago skyline at night:
The long vertical lines of the window echo the lines of the skyscrapers, which surely was architect Renzo Piano’s intention. Perhaps the two reed-like statues in the left part of the frame are placed to emphasize the lines, as well. I’m the dark reflection in the middle of the photo, with my arm crooked. This is the only photo of me from my trip, which seems fitting, just another shadow passing through.
On my last day in Chicago, it rained. At last.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
The Gloved One
The first time I saw The Gloved One, I wanted to be him. I wanted his moves, his swagger, his single glove, and most of all, his wounded history. But this Gloved One wasn’t the Moonwalker; it was a Skywalker. Luke Skywalker’s single black glove appeared in 1983’s Return of the Jedi, covering the prosthetic hand that replaced the one Vader had cut off in The Empire Strikes Back. Lightning would strike twice in 1983, which also saw the debut of Michael Jackson’s one white glove (not to mention the first moonwalk) in his performance of “Billie Jean” at the Motown 25 anniversary special on television.
It’s not so strange to compare Star Wars and Michael Jackson. I can’t think of two more universally known properties, nor two more universally liked properties. And if the recent activities of both had caused some fans’ devotion to sour a bit, perhaps it was because they remembered so well the Star Wars and Michael Jackson of their youth, and found their current renditions so changed.
I was familiar with Return of the Jedi from an early age. My father had taped it on VHS (probably copied from a rental video) and sent it with me to my babysitter’s house, and almost every night, we would pop it into the VCR and watch it. In fact, back then, I thought this movie was Star Wars, I mean, the entirety of Star Wars. I had no idea I was missing two previous episodes. What made it worse was that my father’s tape cut off about ten minutes before the end of the movie. For years, until I was maybe 10, I thought that this movie was Star Wars, and that it ended with the Death Star blowing up and Lando and his grotesque, mush-faced co-pilot screaming in joy. Then the tape ended and started rewinding, which I assumed was what always happened at the end of a movie. I never knew there was an Ewok celebration, never saw Vader’s body burning in a funeral pyre, never knew Anakin’s spirit found peace and companionship with the ghosts of Obi-Wan and Yoda. But I got everything else, and to me, Luke was the essence of cool, not just because of the lightsaber, but because he wielded it with that one black glove, and that made him dangerous, invincible, and maybe just a little bad.
On the contrary, I had never seen Michael Jackson’s performance on Motown 25, never even knew it existed. And if not for his death, I probably never would have come across what I now consider the most amazing five minutes of entertainment I’ve ever seen:
(For the Jackson 5 medley that immediately preceded this performance, see here. This clip shows Michael’s way with the crowd as he introduces his solo number.)
This performance is made all the more incredible by the fact that it’s lip-synched, yet it loses none of its immediacy. And for being the first time he showed the moonwalk to the world, it's astounding that it's just four steps lasting all of three seconds. But when I tried to figure out what made this performance stand out among all the iconic and mesmerizing images we have of Michael, I realized it was not only because it was live and he was throwing down all his best dance moves, but because he’s out there all by himself. You can see the band lurking in the shadows, but the reality is that MJ didn’t need anyone else on stage with him, and the audience wouldn’t have noticed anyone else when he was there. His greatest sidekicks on stage were sequins, a cocky fedora, and of course, the one white glove.
If you had asked me on June 24 what I thought of Michael Jackson, I would not have recognized having any personal feelings about him. It’s a tribute to the hugeness of his imprint on our social consciousness that I didn’t even notice all the ways he would show up in my daily life. Without trying to seek him out, I kept running into him.
Last year, just casually reading some forgotten online article about an unrelated subject, I learned for the first time that Eddie Van Halen played the guitar solo on “Beat It.” Around the same time, I was delving into the post-Beatles recordings of Paul McCartney and John Lennon when I heard an unmistakable voice on Paul’s, “Say Say Say.” Maybe everyone other than me knew that Michael and Paul had collaborated, and not just that once. And that was indeed MJ singing on Rockwell’s “Somebody’s Watching Me,” which I first heard in the Adam Sandler movie, The Wedding Singer (the song is now a TV staple thanks to the Geico commercials).
When I started doing ballroom dance a few years ago, I never thought of Michael Jackson as one of my dance influences. After all, his was a completely different style from ballroom (he was practically a style in himself). Yet even in the ballroom world, there was no escaping the man.
I remember one time at a dance competition where I was entered in the hustle, an updated disco dance that is now usually set to synth-heavy contemporary dance-pop. To the delight of me and probably everyone else in the room, the music started to play, and it was “Billie Jean.” No one could have expected it. I couldn’t move at first because I was so surprised by a sound so familiar, yet strange in this context. Afterward, I thought to myself that they should play MJ at every competition.
I remember going to practice with my partner one day at our regular studio. In those days, I tended to wear white socks for no good reason except that I owned them. That day, I was dressed in black warm-ups from head to toe, with the exception of those white socks. The studio owner noticed me and asked if I were trying to channel Michael Jackson. I didn’t get the reference at first, but then I looked down to see that what looked a little ridiculous on me once looked funky and fresh on MJ.
All of these things were just neat facts and coincidences, because for years now up until his death, I never thought about Michael, maybe because he was everywhere all the time. I had ceased to notice, either for good or bad.
My first thought after hearing of his death was about Guitar Hero. Just a few days earlier, I had sung the vocal part on “Beat It,” with the guitar and bass parts in the hands of my siblings. In general, I do the vocals for this game under duress, and mostly because my siblings are reluctant and prefer the instruments. But I was ecstatic to get to this song, and I didn’t really know why. I knew I wouldn’t do it justice, and I just about mangled the “Hee” and “Hoo” yowls so badly that my brother thought I was making fun of the man, when in fact, those were part of the vocal track.
I always thought that a music artist’s success and influence shouldn’t be measured in number of albums sold. 100 million albums sold doesn’t tell you how many more millions (billions?) of people heard the songs and loved them. I never bought a Michael Jackson album or single or anything, but my first musical memory is of “Beat It.” It was my favorite song as a kid, and even though I don’t believe in favorites anymore, I don’t feel bad about saying that it’s still my favorite song. It may sound silly, but singing it in Guitar Hero has brought me closer to my memories of how much I loved Michael Jackson as a kid.
All my personal run-ins with MJ over the last few years fed into my subconscious sense of his impending comeback. Seemingly everything from the 80s and early 90s has returned to us, and the results have been a mix of successful (New Kids on the Block, Transformers, Indiana Jones, Rocky Balboa, Nintendo’s market dominance), mediocre (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Terminator, American Gladiators), and just plain ugly (Knight Rider, shutter shades, the G.I. Joe movie?). Finally, Michael Jackson announced what seemed inevitable, that he was coming back, live on stage. This was going to be his year. Even though I wouldn’t be there to see it, I wanted it to happen.
Now that the man is gone, I can only imagine what his comeback concerts in London would have done for his career and his legacy. I console myself by thinking that his death may have done exactly what he hoped the London concerts would do: bring the real Michael Jackson back into the public eye and private hearts. At least for now, it seems like all the ridicule and Michael-as-punching-bag have been wiped away, leaving only the music, which had dried up ever since his last album in 2001 and the subsequent child molestation trial that more or less banished him from the stage he once owned. More important than this, I think his death has reminded those of us who revered him back in the 80s that to us, he is still the greatest, even if we had forgotten.
On June 24, I wouldn’t have thought of Michael Jackson. On June 25, I remembered the man who first brought music into my life, and wondered how it was possible to feel so deeply about something and not even know it.
One last anecdote: I was in a Nordstrom store yesterday, browsing some shirt racks, when the mewling sounds of Coldplay overhead gave way to the opening synth of “Thriller.” I immediately started nodding my head to the beat, and then I looked up to see two other guys nodding their heads as well. We gave each other some knowing glances, but to be honest, these guys looked a little douchy, and I’d be surprised if I had much in common with them. Yet if there was one thing that could join us in a head-nodding unison, it could only be the Thriller himself. May the Force be with you, Michael Jackson.
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