boooo to the removal of the unofficial rye rye “bang” video that i thought was sooooo much fresher. oh well. take a boogie break. it’s thursday!

I must admit, I wasn’t the biggest Michael Jackson fan.  In fact, for the majority of my life, I thought about Michael the same way I thought about most other musicians that my parents would play on their oldies stations in the minivan — Phil Collins, The Carpenters, that “Circles in the Sand” song…  The first Michael Jackson tape I ever owned didn’t even have him singing on it…it was an MJ cover tape by Alvin and the Chipmunks, and when I was 8 I’d spend hours meandering the hallways of my house with my Sesame Street bus boombox and “Man in the Mirror” on knock.

But even with that memory, I can’t say I was necessarily a fan.  Like many other 80’s babies, I didn’t have the mental capacity to appreciate Thriller — the universe’s biggest album ever — as a shriveled fetus.  Thriller dropped November 30, 1982.  I was born on May 24, nine months later.  Yes, there’s a 1 in 9 chance I was conceived to “Human Nature.”

(yikes that means there’s a i in 9 chance i was conceived to “thriller”…yikes i don’t want to talk about this anymore)

With a million copies sold per week, I’m sure my embryo self heard enough “P.Y.T.” to P.U.K.E. all over its umbilical cord (isn’t it strange how we refer to our embryos like they’re pets we used to have?  or is that just me?  sorry, i’m a distracted person).  My transformation into a human being was soundtracked not by soft-playing headphones of Mozart, but by Michael playing in the background while my newly-wed parents moved into their first home.  I was born a month after the first moonwalk.

So actually, I thought about Michael the way I thought about most things that I was born into –muffins, fire hydrants, love.  Michael Jackson was just always around.  His music was on every playlist, every mixtape, video countdown, and car ride that lasted more than 9 songs deep.  My memories of big family gatherings consist of a large television screen either playing Chinese soap operas or Moonwalker.  He was like the Dalai Lama.  Or the Pope.  He might eventually reincarnate as another chosen Michael Jackson, but he’d never die.

The Mortality of Mike

I once asked my mom how old Michael Jackson was, and she answered, “Around my age.” From then on I imagined Michael Jackson and my mom celebrating their birthdays together, blowing cake candles and unwrapping boxes of sparkly gloves.  In many ways the rubric she made up never lost its accuracy.  Mom stays looking young because of her Chinese lady genes, and Michael Jackson stays looking young because he’s Michael Jackson.

From that point on, Michael stayed in my life.  And my growth grew inversely with his reputation.  My first steps when his hair caught on fire.  My first words when his rumors spread about skin-bleaching.  I began middle school when his first sex charges came out.  I reached puberty when he started having white babies.  By the time Michael reached his awkward “yikes, I’m in between surguries…” phase, I was a fully-blossomed college freshman douchebag giggling as I clicked my mouse over reloads of Michael Jackson’s decaying face in the form of an animated gif.  I was never really into the Michael Jackson jokes.  I never got into enough light-hearted conversations about child molestation to be able to bring them up (”hey, speaking of child molestation, did you hear about the one where Michael…”) but my distaste for them was attributed not to my empathy for Michael, but rather my annoyance at the thought of entertaining something as cliche as another Michael Jackson joke.

In the meantime, the Gemini twin to my college freshman douchebag self was my “I’m on my own for the first time and allowing my geekiness to roam freeeeee I’m going to listing to ALL the music ever” self.  And so on the day Invincible came out, I was the one in the dorm building that was knocking on doors at 8am screaming “THE NEW MICHAEL’S OUT!!!!!” Lucky for me that no one hacked into my WinAmp to find out that the only Michael Jackson album I had was disc one of History.  Yes, I was blasphemous, a hypocrite, I completely made a big deal of his album, ran to Tower to buy it (I got the blue cover), listened to it for all of two days, spilled my Jamba Juice on the CD booklet and shoved it into my shelf never to be spun again.  After all, I was my new college “explore all the great music of the past” self, and I was going to listen to things of the past like Miles Davis and Ella Fitzgerald and Nirvana.  Michael Jackson wasn’t of the past, and I’d have all the time in the world to listen to him later.

Wanna Be Like Mike

i have this faint memory. it’s a michael jackson concert on television.  it was huge, in that he was broken down enough to make it so that the fact that he was seen in public was a big deal.  i couldn’t see walls in the auditorium, if it were one.  from the stage camera looking out into the crowd, it is an endless sea of people. i don’t remember if i watched this as a baby, or high schooler, or in college, and it might just be a fantasy that i blended together with fragments of all the michael jackson footage i’ve ever seen…a perfect magnificent menagerie of every great thing that would make a live michael jackson show the greatest thing ever.  i remember this memory as the moment i decided that i wanted to be a performer.

The Morality of Mike

The more I wanted to be famous, the less funny the Michael Jackson jokes got.  It became an old wives’ tale for young college artists…a name-association game iLL-Lit would play while sitting at hotelroom patios soaking in memories of the future.

I’d want to be big like Marley but not like Cobain.  Like Jay-Z but not Elvis.  Like Stevie but not Michael.

We’d hopscotch these names and measure how thin the line is between praise and pity.  The artists who all ended tragically because their fame ate them, chewed them up, and spit them back out.  That fame that belonged to artists we didn’t want to be like, they had all died tragically, except Michael.  Good ol Michael, hanging out at Neverland, like always and forever.

And so besides the Chipmunks album, and multiple viewings of Captain Eo, I didn’t really reach fan status.  Amidst my hard-drive-killing music library I have maybe 3 full Michael albums.  I eventually learned his songs by the default of going out a lot.  When he announced that he was coming out with a new album, I smuggly blogged that I had given up on him, as a sidenote at the end of a reflection on Lauryn Hill.  Throughout two decades of watching Michael maimed and dangled by the media, I had finally lost hope.  Seeing him in the news was like looking at a lion in a zoo.  Unable to even look at the screen for long enough, whether it was a tabloid photo or a more recent music video.  There was nothing I could do, and I could only wish him the best, if I ever were to even stop to think about it for long enough in the first place.

Missing Michael

Michael Jackson’s death has saddened me more deeply than I ever would’ve thought.  It’s actually shocked me how sad I am…the past few days have been somber, and in the studio we all had to keep on working on music because every time we stopped we’d just end up talking about Michael.  It makes me question if I understand the capacity of dealing with death yet.  It baffles me how many Michael Jackson memories I’ve had throughout my life, and each time I shed a new one, I regress into sadness.  Because I had to come to terms with the truth of the matter, which is that I slept on Michael Jackson.

Had I looked beyond hotbox conversations and actually attempted to listen to the fellow artist speak, it would be so much clearer that we were witnessing the institutional oppression of a single human being. And he knew exactly what was going on.

And others as well.

The first few days after Michael passed, I felt a deep swell of guilt, that we as humans pushed a person so deeply, it killed him.  Can you imagine, having your entire species turn against you? Just because you outsold the powers that be’s favorite artists?  My regret truly comes from the understanding that I was co-opted to, at the very least, disregard him.

I’m sure that there’s some moral that I lost somewhere amidst my long-windedness.  Probably something about not taking other humans for granted, and there was this analogy like after a firefighter puts out a fire you don’t say “your hose spraying sucked!” so why do you do that to artists? but it made wayyyy much more sense in my head.  I just needed to make my peace.  May the best be yet to come.

See this is why Splinter always warned Michelangelo to use a condom with April.  Can you imagine being the babydaddy to one of these things?  What if you were changing its diaper and accidentally flushed the whole baby alien poop monster away?  What if it had your eyes?  What if it had your chin?

*sigh* everything reminds me of Michael Jackson.

“But the shit is not my son.” -M.J.

via nerd avec swag.

wassup with all these hot robots all over the place??

yowww.

not going insane.

via ill-literacy.com

Waking up to a world without Michael Jackson is like one day realizing that the metric system is gone. How do we measure the artistic culture that we measured with him as our standard? What does it encompass to lose the king of popular culture? This week’s Friday Funk is of course dedicated to the late great MJ, who continues to live on in every single act across the board. From the countless references from Jay-Z and Notorious B.I.G. to Janelle Monae’s moonwalk to the scholarship that funded Saul Williams’ artistic education. Not to mention that almost every major young pop star has at some point been compared to Michael’s voice, moves, and soul. In the end, we know that Mike can never be replaced, even as we brace for the floodgates to open for young children and their thirsty parents pushing them into the now-vacant spotlight.

In the meantime, while the world waits for a new legend, myth, hero to fill the cultural void he left behind, Michael also left us a vast catalog of amazing work. As Michael didn’t only influence pop music, his roots lie deep in a myriad of genres as well. With his career essentially beginning upon him being able to speak, Michael’s adolescent development ran parallel to the evolution of soul music–through the sweetness of R&B to the rawness of funk.

I know this probably isn’t the first Mike tribute you’ve come across today, and it surely won’t be your last. So before all the CNN specials air, the screen-printed t-shirts fill the streets, and rumors of sightings with Elvis and Tupac begin, and before the man’s already fantasy-driven life becomes diluted in exaggerated folklore, let us take some time to appreciate what can never be contested–the music.

Michael Jackson’s “We’re Almost There,” because he’s finally arrived.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

[Michael Jackson "We're Almost There"]

It’s insane how many events can fit in a single day. In class this afternoon, my students were engaged in a discussion about American Exceptionalism while I huddled in the corner biting my nails reloading Twitter and five separate browsers with various press websites. Some claimed he was already dead, others that he was in a coma, while I insisted that his whole thing was a hoax to get everyone to increase their facebook activity. When it was finally confirmed that Michael Jackson had died, I sat speechless at my desk, feeling utterly alone while surrounded by twenty high schoolers all completely oblivious to the complete shift in the way the world sees art and culture that was upon us. After class i turned to one of my students. “yo,” i wimpered, “michael jackson died.”

“oh.” he said. And the walked away. Nico, who had to step ojtside his class for 5 minutes, had a student that said “so?”

We had a somber drive to Stockton that afternoon. My rush burn of Thriller with surounding Jackson 5 tracks played over several times and even as my eyes burn with sleep, I’m waiting for an answer.

This is bigger than Lennon. A world without Michael Jackson seemed so distant. The man who we as a world betrayed, shifted, maimed into a cartoon monster was also the most famous person…ever. The most recognizable earthlings in all of human history has left the building.

So many thoughts not fully developed about this man who survived so long after being left for dead be the American public. This is what we do to our celebrities. We’re like a nation of Elmira Fudds holding our celebrities to suffocation, dragging them through soil and toil, stroking their scalps until their necks snap, and then wondering what could’ve possibly driven a person so deep into oblivion.

Ohhhhhh myyyyyyy godddddddddddddd iiiii’mmmmmmmm soooooooooooooo saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaadddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd.

Michael Jackson was the most influential artist of our generation. Even though he was 3 decades older than me, his music was prevalent throughout my childhood. From the Alvin & the Chipmunks cover album of his classics that I bumped daily as a kid, to my mom’s cassette of Dangerous that was played until it was all tangled and distorted, to hearing the premier of “Blood on the Dancefloor” at a rest stop on the I-5 while roadtripping to LA, to rushing out to cop Invincible freshman year of college, Michael was a pillar in my timeline both as an audience member and as an artist.

An incredibly sad day, as we prepare to make our way to Stockton for tonight’s show. Burning up our tribute cd for the road trip. Play the music, love the art. We’re going to need a new legend now. Who’s stepping up?

whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.

were speed racer

and dragon ball

not enough????

Imagine Fat Albert starring Michael Cera.  FOH.

via Disgrasian

I’ve been getting more and more worried about the techno-organic infection on my left arm. The lesions are spreading and machines keep malfunctioning around me. Not fun.

I’ve tried contacting doctors but they either get confused or laugh in my face. I’ve had to resort to my technologically-talented little brother who’s operating on my arm in hopes to “short circuit” the mechanic matter in the infection without harming the living cells that are being attacked. Craziness I know. Cheers to health…

damn you uc davis women’s studies classes!!