The more I read about the Substance, and how it makes you forgo social events and forget to eat and want to clutch it close to you and to think about it always and to know it is really the thing that understands not just you but everything best, even when it's sometimes clearly not good for you, the creepier my dawning knowledge becomes, that I am feeling exactly this way for the book - Infinite Jest, that is - and that reading about people trying to overcome the Substance is becoming more and more this gloomy omen of the horrible day when I finish it, which at the rate of my consumption is rushing upon me much too quickly, and each chapter foreshadows those bleak days of withdrawal I'll be facing thereafter. Enjoying was the word to describe my attachment to it only a short while ago; god, I was actually reading it casually. Some unholy verb that communicates how craven and unhealthy this relationship has become would be more appropriate at this juncture, and I don't even want to articulate it because that would be some kind of admittance of a problem.
I dropped my copy on the floor the other day and it sounded like a thunderclap. I jumped fully off the ground in surprise.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Friday, July 24, 2009
Nobel Prize money put to good use, for once
Unfortunately, the train I was on never got close enough to the below car for me to get a good shot of its vanity plate. "Jose S".
It could only be Jose Saramago, right?
It could only be Jose Saramago, right?
Friday, July 17, 2009
To escape the world I've got to enjoy this simple dance/ And it seemed like everything was on my side
This is a Michael Jackson post; over three weeks late, but on my birthday, so that's something right?
Part 1. Important Guy
He was important, and saying so is every kind of obvious. But I heard a lot of people say that they didn't expect his death to emotionally impact them as much as it did. I am definitely of that camp. Before he died, I would say I listened to him on average about once or twice a week. Over the years, his music videos and live performances have acted both as a great procrastination tool and as a magic elixir to low spirits. And though I was obsessed with Thriller when I was a kid, it did not survive into my teenage years, as during that time, I elected to develop horrendous musical taste. It pretty much took my college friends four years to correct this, and I'd say it's still shaky (I am a genuine fan of the Scorpions, for example, and I have listened to the song "Let's Get Retarded" more than someone with the resources to not listen to it should have). And so when I thought of Michael Jackson at all, it was with a touch of nostalgia along with a nascent appreciation for the fact that he was, indeed, the best performer in the world.
But I don't think I ever regarded myself as a fan. I turned to him the way you turn to puppies to lift your mood or decide the world is alright because some natural spectacle or other really got to you. It's like, yes, I guess I am a fan of baby animals and snow-capped mountains if I really think about it, and if they were somehow excised from my life, I would really miss them. But they never play into the analytical part of my brain, the way Woody Allen, or ODB, or the Kids in the Hall, or the Cure, or Nathanael West, or Dave Chappelle, or Karl Pilkington, or The Wire, or Bill Watterson, or countless other past and present obsessions have. Being a fan requires you to interact with work in a deliberate and aggressive way; you have to pick apart, parse out and compare each nuance of the person/group/thing's output so that when some unfortunate person asks you why you like it just for small talk's sake, you embarrass yourself by talking about it for an hour, and even when you relinquish the conversation, you are still revising what you just said about it in your head, so the next time it'll be two hours.
I never did that with Michael Jackson. If someone asked me about him, I'd probably say, "Yeah, he's the best", and I'd mean it, but it'd be the way I'd mean it when I say, "Man, these chips are delicious". His music and performances were just there, a reliable indulgence, and that was all. I had no idea that all those little bits and pieces of watching and listening him for my whole life had resulted in him building a pretty hefty residence somewhere in my consciousness. It's a shock that a person we thought we'd wasted no mental energy on was apparently deeply embedded in our thoughts the entire time, and then they're gone, and you're off balance.
Part 2. Who Else is That Important?
One weird thing I heard a lot, I think to counter the surprise emotional upset, was to postulate on what other person's death might impact us in both the same way and on the same scale. It's actually a sick response, but I know I am not alone in having it. Part of it, I think, comes from a kind of perverse addiction to the pleasure that accompanies an icon's death - we kind of want to speculate on when we will get the next big hit of world drama.
Let me qualify that: I've been lucky enough to never have anybody in my immediate family or circle of friends pass away, and on the few occasions when I've imagined what that must be like or have felt comfortable enough to ask others about it, it is resoundingly clear that the pleasure part is absent. It is absent because you knew that person, you related to them on a variety of levels, you taught each other things, you laughed with them, you puzzled over where you were disagreeing with them, you wondered what you should get them for Christmas. There would be subjects that only the two of you could discuss. You had seen the kaleidoscope of that person's personality, and they had for you too, and now you are never, ever going to be able to do certain things again because that person is not there to do them with you. Your life is going to be different, and you have to mourn both the person you lost, and the parts of yourself they took with them.
But we didn't know Michael Jackson. We have exactly the same relationship to him now that we did before his death. And our detachment excuses us entirely from mourning him on the level that the sane members of his family are. There is no personal pain of loss because there was nothing idiosyncratic about our connection to him; we share it with hundreds of millions of people. That is not to say that his music doesn't mean something different to each of us, but anyway, that's irrelevant, because we did not lose his music. About the only thing we lost was the hope that we might see and hear more from him in the future. But obviously, this is a very different kind of loss than if we'd known him personally. If we are upset by the fact that we'll never have his future music - well, that's crazy. We don't have it now either. We are just mourning a potential thing, that might never have happened anyway.
Some have posited that David Bowie's death will be similar. But of course, we know that will be a whole other kind of sad. Yes, Bowie rivals Michael Jackson for otherworldliness, but he knows that and cultivates it. Contrary to the way Michael Jackson tried harder and harder to be like a human only to accidentally become more and more like an alien, Bowie's androgyny and tri-yearly re-inventions are self-aware and deliberate and as such, make us much more comfortable than Michael Jackson's. We know that Bowie's in on it, and we know Bowie knows we know, and it's a whole positive feedback loop of knowing stuff, and our relationship to Michael Jackson just doesn't have that knowing-stuff-ness. Even with other alien-ish people, like Bjork or Crispin Glover, we can see that while they are super-weird, they still give the impression that they've got it under control. Again, Michael Jackson did not give that impression.
I've also heard Barack Obama as a comparable potential death, just in terms of scale. It is a good comparison for the scope of the loss, someone who was regarded as an icon around the globe, and who was truly loved by his supporters. On the other hand, it is a ridiculous comparison. Not that I'm stating anything ground-breaking here, but whoa, Michael Jackson and Barack Obama are the ultimate bizzaro-world versions of each other; they are at the farthest extremes of the charisma spectrum. Take alone their development of racial identity. In his thirties, Obama produces one of the most far-reaching, articulate and affecting books about race ever written. In his thirties, Michael Jackson at some point thinks "I think I am done with being black". And he actually has the money to be done with his race, at least superficially.
Yes, I'm aware that the point I'm making is that Michael Jackson and Barack Obama are very different people. Not all my trains of thought end up at stations.
For the record, the first person who popped into my head when I asked myself whose death would devastate me that much: Robert Smith. Holy fuck, I am going to lose my fucking shit when that guy dies, which my 15-year-old-me agrees with.
Part 3. Michael Jackson Was Super-Alive
Another reason I think his death affected people more than they expected is because every song and video he made indicates that he was about 3,000% more alive than we are. Whether it's his exuberantly happy kid-voice in "ABC" - indisputably joy incarnate - or it's that caged, edgy look he has in the "Beat It" music video - like he is just a mountain of pure potential energy - he was the epitome of life. Not life in the biological sense of "life on earth" or the social sense of "my life is okay" or the philosophical sense of "what is the meaning of life"; he is the epitome of "life" when used in the context of wow, Michael Jackson was "full of life".
Retrospectively, it's all over his work. When you're watching the video for "Earth Song", doesn't a part of you think it's a documentary? Like, the power of Michael Jackson un-logged that forest, un-warred that village, un-poached that elephant? In the "Thriller" video, don't you kind of believe Michael Jackson not only resurrected a bunch of people from the dead but also inspired them to be super-awesome dancers? And in every live performance you can find, there he is, leading his backup dancers. Those dancers will have gone through rounds and rounds of auditions, they have devoted their whole lives to their craft, they pay their Con Edison and AT&T bills with their ability to move well. And I am not shitting on them at all when I say they are furniture compared to Michael Jackson. He is not the focal point only because he is front and center with the glow of the spotlight encircling him. He'd be the focal point if he was three people in on the fifth row back. Something altogether different and exciting is going on when Michael Jackson performs, and it's the easiest example to cite when I claim that Michael Jackson somehow had a lot more life encased in his weird, pixie frame than the rest of us do.
Is there a unit of measurement for how alive somebody is? When Rip Van Winkle was in his 20 year sleep, he was, let's say, at 1 "lifey" (pronounced Lye-Fee). When Buster Bluth was faking a coma in Season 3, he was at 5 lifeys. When Linus van Pelt and Charlie Brown are lying on a knoll looking at clouds, they are at about 11 lifeys. When Jimmy McNulty drives his car into a pillar, gets out of the car, tries to re-assess the curve he needs to take, only to then drive into the pillar a second time, that's about 30 lifeys. On the higher end of things, we have the Greek heroine Atalanta; when she runs a foot race, she is at about 150 lifeys. Rick Moranis at the end of Ghostbusters 2 is at about 170 lifeys. When Wall-E first sees Eve, he's at about 200 lifeys, because you can have lifeys even if you are a robot.
And Michael Jackson, at a resting state, was at least at 500 lifeys. When he was performing, we think he was pushing 100,000, but we can't be sure if it was more, because our lifey scale could no longer accommodate his enormous lifey-ness.
It's just upsetting that this man with such a high lifey count is now at 0 lifeys, that's all.
4. Neverland
Peter Pan has been on my top five favourite books since I began listing my top five favourite books. In childhood, through my teenage years and still today, it is an endlessly appealing story to me. Right now, it is between Blood Meridian and Kafka's The Castle, which is VERY APPROPRIATE.
Anyway, if I was ever to become a multi-millionaire that had lost touch with reality, I would definitely build a Neverland, and would thus be viewed as utterly unoriginal in Michael Jackson's wake. I identify enormously with his compulsion to build that ranch; it might be the strongest personal connection I feel to him, music included. It bears mentioning at this point that I had a very happy childhood. If I, a girl who was lucky enough to spend her formative years actually being a kid - and I did such a good job of it that I intend to continue it today, my 25th birthday - if I am this attracted to a modern Neverland, it's not a stretch to see why Michael Jackson, who's childhood was adulthood in the extreme, would build it for himself.
It would be awesome if I could leave it at that; it would be very neat and clean. But of course, there's a reason that Peter Pan survived in my list of five favourite books throughout my teenage and adult years, and a reason I think it's appropriate to place it between Blood Meridian and The Castle, two dark, pessimistic books, one brutally violent and the other about characters fixated on getting to a place that may not exist. Peter Pan's got some sick and twisted stuff in it. You can sort of gloss over it if you turn a majorly blind eye, but the sex and violence is not even subtext. There was also a companion book J.M. Barrie wrote called The Little White Bird, in which the adult first-person narrator flat-out molests a little boy. It is waaay out of print; I remember having my ebay copy arrive in junior high with a Florida library barcode still attached, but it exists, and it is where the now legendary perennial boy made his debut. Barrie's own fiction betrays him as likely a pedophile, and definitely a man with violent thoughts. And it seems fitting that any Neverland be tainted, including Michael Jackson's.
I actually don't think that Jackson committed the crimes of which he was accused. Of course, I don't know, I fully admit that I have no way of knowing and will sign a waiver if you want me to, declaring that I don't know shit. But the reason I doubt it is because he legitimately seemed nuts enough to sleep in a bed with little boys not so much because he wanted to abuse them but because he desperately wanted to believe he was one of them. He was going off of Disney's Neverland, not Barrie's Neverland. And as somebody who has wanted to be some simple combination of Wendy, Tinkerbell but mostly Peter her whole life, wow, that just gets me where it counts.
Part 5. He Gave Me Rhythm
Oliver Sachs was on The Daily Show the other week, talking about Musicophilia. Jon Stewart was asking if somebody who goes through a stroke is more likely to lose music or language, and Sachs responded that they are way more likely to lose language, that music is very deeply embedded into our brains. He qualified the statement by pointing out that while some people can lose understanding of melody with brain trauma, rhythm is never lost.
For me, it cannot be lost, for it has never been there. It is known to many who have seen me dance that I am the exception to all of Dr. Sachs' hard-earned data. I love to dance, but - and again, many can attest to this - it is not so much "dancing" as it is "moving while music is playing". For it to be dancing, there has to be a relationship between the music and the motion of my body, and that is always the critical absence for me. I put my feet in different places, my arms do things, I swing my hips, I smile, I am always having a good time. But when Karl Pilkington described Steve Merchant's attempts at dance as "a piece of weird art", I knew I fit that bill too.
Except with Michael Jackson. I can actually dance to Michael Jackson, and I've attached proof. A year or so ago, my best friend Chris was visiting New York, and we went to the Times Square Virgin Records. We walked in, and to welcome us, the store immediately started playing "Billie Jean". We danced. On the escalators, in the $10 DVD section, in front of all who cared to look upon us. And below is a photo, which I think captures that I was actually dancing pretty well (by which I mean, what I was doing could be considered "dancing" and not just "being in motion as music plays").
I will always be grateful to Michael Jackson for this moment.
6. Planet Jackson
Here's what I imagine happened to him: there is a planet out there somewhere where all the planets' and moons' and asteroids' version of him goes to after they die. Like, all the weird, enormous superstars all go there, and they hang out. They relax. That's where I think he is, even though I know it's not. Some world where all the other worlds' otherworldly people go. He's taking a nap right now.
Part 1. Important Guy
He was important, and saying so is every kind of obvious. But I heard a lot of people say that they didn't expect his death to emotionally impact them as much as it did. I am definitely of that camp. Before he died, I would say I listened to him on average about once or twice a week. Over the years, his music videos and live performances have acted both as a great procrastination tool and as a magic elixir to low spirits. And though I was obsessed with Thriller when I was a kid, it did not survive into my teenage years, as during that time, I elected to develop horrendous musical taste. It pretty much took my college friends four years to correct this, and I'd say it's still shaky (I am a genuine fan of the Scorpions, for example, and I have listened to the song "Let's Get Retarded" more than someone with the resources to not listen to it should have). And so when I thought of Michael Jackson at all, it was with a touch of nostalgia along with a nascent appreciation for the fact that he was, indeed, the best performer in the world.
But I don't think I ever regarded myself as a fan. I turned to him the way you turn to puppies to lift your mood or decide the world is alright because some natural spectacle or other really got to you. It's like, yes, I guess I am a fan of baby animals and snow-capped mountains if I really think about it, and if they were somehow excised from my life, I would really miss them. But they never play into the analytical part of my brain, the way Woody Allen, or ODB, or the Kids in the Hall, or the Cure, or Nathanael West, or Dave Chappelle, or Karl Pilkington, or The Wire, or Bill Watterson, or countless other past and present obsessions have. Being a fan requires you to interact with work in a deliberate and aggressive way; you have to pick apart, parse out and compare each nuance of the person/group/thing's output so that when some unfortunate person asks you why you like it just for small talk's sake, you embarrass yourself by talking about it for an hour, and even when you relinquish the conversation, you are still revising what you just said about it in your head, so the next time it'll be two hours.
I never did that with Michael Jackson. If someone asked me about him, I'd probably say, "Yeah, he's the best", and I'd mean it, but it'd be the way I'd mean it when I say, "Man, these chips are delicious". His music and performances were just there, a reliable indulgence, and that was all. I had no idea that all those little bits and pieces of watching and listening him for my whole life had resulted in him building a pretty hefty residence somewhere in my consciousness. It's a shock that a person we thought we'd wasted no mental energy on was apparently deeply embedded in our thoughts the entire time, and then they're gone, and you're off balance.
Part 2. Who Else is That Important?
One weird thing I heard a lot, I think to counter the surprise emotional upset, was to postulate on what other person's death might impact us in both the same way and on the same scale. It's actually a sick response, but I know I am not alone in having it. Part of it, I think, comes from a kind of perverse addiction to the pleasure that accompanies an icon's death - we kind of want to speculate on when we will get the next big hit of world drama.
Let me qualify that: I've been lucky enough to never have anybody in my immediate family or circle of friends pass away, and on the few occasions when I've imagined what that must be like or have felt comfortable enough to ask others about it, it is resoundingly clear that the pleasure part is absent. It is absent because you knew that person, you related to them on a variety of levels, you taught each other things, you laughed with them, you puzzled over where you were disagreeing with them, you wondered what you should get them for Christmas. There would be subjects that only the two of you could discuss. You had seen the kaleidoscope of that person's personality, and they had for you too, and now you are never, ever going to be able to do certain things again because that person is not there to do them with you. Your life is going to be different, and you have to mourn both the person you lost, and the parts of yourself they took with them.
But we didn't know Michael Jackson. We have exactly the same relationship to him now that we did before his death. And our detachment excuses us entirely from mourning him on the level that the sane members of his family are. There is no personal pain of loss because there was nothing idiosyncratic about our connection to him; we share it with hundreds of millions of people. That is not to say that his music doesn't mean something different to each of us, but anyway, that's irrelevant, because we did not lose his music. About the only thing we lost was the hope that we might see and hear more from him in the future. But obviously, this is a very different kind of loss than if we'd known him personally. If we are upset by the fact that we'll never have his future music - well, that's crazy. We don't have it now either. We are just mourning a potential thing, that might never have happened anyway.
Some have posited that David Bowie's death will be similar. But of course, we know that will be a whole other kind of sad. Yes, Bowie rivals Michael Jackson for otherworldliness, but he knows that and cultivates it. Contrary to the way Michael Jackson tried harder and harder to be like a human only to accidentally become more and more like an alien, Bowie's androgyny and tri-yearly re-inventions are self-aware and deliberate and as such, make us much more comfortable than Michael Jackson's. We know that Bowie's in on it, and we know Bowie knows we know, and it's a whole positive feedback loop of knowing stuff, and our relationship to Michael Jackson just doesn't have that knowing-stuff-ness. Even with other alien-ish people, like Bjork or Crispin Glover, we can see that while they are super-weird, they still give the impression that they've got it under control. Again, Michael Jackson did not give that impression.
I've also heard Barack Obama as a comparable potential death, just in terms of scale. It is a good comparison for the scope of the loss, someone who was regarded as an icon around the globe, and who was truly loved by his supporters. On the other hand, it is a ridiculous comparison. Not that I'm stating anything ground-breaking here, but whoa, Michael Jackson and Barack Obama are the ultimate bizzaro-world versions of each other; they are at the farthest extremes of the charisma spectrum. Take alone their development of racial identity. In his thirties, Obama produces one of the most far-reaching, articulate and affecting books about race ever written. In his thirties, Michael Jackson at some point thinks "I think I am done with being black". And he actually has the money to be done with his race, at least superficially.
Yes, I'm aware that the point I'm making is that Michael Jackson and Barack Obama are very different people. Not all my trains of thought end up at stations.
For the record, the first person who popped into my head when I asked myself whose death would devastate me that much: Robert Smith. Holy fuck, I am going to lose my fucking shit when that guy dies, which my 15-year-old-me agrees with.
Part 3. Michael Jackson Was Super-Alive
Another reason I think his death affected people more than they expected is because every song and video he made indicates that he was about 3,000% more alive than we are. Whether it's his exuberantly happy kid-voice in "ABC" - indisputably joy incarnate - or it's that caged, edgy look he has in the "Beat It" music video - like he is just a mountain of pure potential energy - he was the epitome of life. Not life in the biological sense of "life on earth" or the social sense of "my life is okay" or the philosophical sense of "what is the meaning of life"; he is the epitome of "life" when used in the context of wow, Michael Jackson was "full of life".
Retrospectively, it's all over his work. When you're watching the video for "Earth Song", doesn't a part of you think it's a documentary? Like, the power of Michael Jackson un-logged that forest, un-warred that village, un-poached that elephant? In the "Thriller" video, don't you kind of believe Michael Jackson not only resurrected a bunch of people from the dead but also inspired them to be super-awesome dancers? And in every live performance you can find, there he is, leading his backup dancers. Those dancers will have gone through rounds and rounds of auditions, they have devoted their whole lives to their craft, they pay their Con Edison and AT&T bills with their ability to move well. And I am not shitting on them at all when I say they are furniture compared to Michael Jackson. He is not the focal point only because he is front and center with the glow of the spotlight encircling him. He'd be the focal point if he was three people in on the fifth row back. Something altogether different and exciting is going on when Michael Jackson performs, and it's the easiest example to cite when I claim that Michael Jackson somehow had a lot more life encased in his weird, pixie frame than the rest of us do.
Is there a unit of measurement for how alive somebody is? When Rip Van Winkle was in his 20 year sleep, he was, let's say, at 1 "lifey" (pronounced Lye-Fee). When Buster Bluth was faking a coma in Season 3, he was at 5 lifeys. When Linus van Pelt and Charlie Brown are lying on a knoll looking at clouds, they are at about 11 lifeys. When Jimmy McNulty drives his car into a pillar, gets out of the car, tries to re-assess the curve he needs to take, only to then drive into the pillar a second time, that's about 30 lifeys. On the higher end of things, we have the Greek heroine Atalanta; when she runs a foot race, she is at about 150 lifeys. Rick Moranis at the end of Ghostbusters 2 is at about 170 lifeys. When Wall-E first sees Eve, he's at about 200 lifeys, because you can have lifeys even if you are a robot.
And Michael Jackson, at a resting state, was at least at 500 lifeys. When he was performing, we think he was pushing 100,000, but we can't be sure if it was more, because our lifey scale could no longer accommodate his enormous lifey-ness.
It's just upsetting that this man with such a high lifey count is now at 0 lifeys, that's all.
4. Neverland
Peter Pan has been on my top five favourite books since I began listing my top five favourite books. In childhood, through my teenage years and still today, it is an endlessly appealing story to me. Right now, it is between Blood Meridian and Kafka's The Castle, which is VERY APPROPRIATE.
Anyway, if I was ever to become a multi-millionaire that had lost touch with reality, I would definitely build a Neverland, and would thus be viewed as utterly unoriginal in Michael Jackson's wake. I identify enormously with his compulsion to build that ranch; it might be the strongest personal connection I feel to him, music included. It bears mentioning at this point that I had a very happy childhood. If I, a girl who was lucky enough to spend her formative years actually being a kid - and I did such a good job of it that I intend to continue it today, my 25th birthday - if I am this attracted to a modern Neverland, it's not a stretch to see why Michael Jackson, who's childhood was adulthood in the extreme, would build it for himself.
It would be awesome if I could leave it at that; it would be very neat and clean. But of course, there's a reason that Peter Pan survived in my list of five favourite books throughout my teenage and adult years, and a reason I think it's appropriate to place it between Blood Meridian and The Castle, two dark, pessimistic books, one brutally violent and the other about characters fixated on getting to a place that may not exist. Peter Pan's got some sick and twisted stuff in it. You can sort of gloss over it if you turn a majorly blind eye, but the sex and violence is not even subtext. There was also a companion book J.M. Barrie wrote called The Little White Bird, in which the adult first-person narrator flat-out molests a little boy. It is waaay out of print; I remember having my ebay copy arrive in junior high with a Florida library barcode still attached, but it exists, and it is where the now legendary perennial boy made his debut. Barrie's own fiction betrays him as likely a pedophile, and definitely a man with violent thoughts. And it seems fitting that any Neverland be tainted, including Michael Jackson's.
I actually don't think that Jackson committed the crimes of which he was accused. Of course, I don't know, I fully admit that I have no way of knowing and will sign a waiver if you want me to, declaring that I don't know shit. But the reason I doubt it is because he legitimately seemed nuts enough to sleep in a bed with little boys not so much because he wanted to abuse them but because he desperately wanted to believe he was one of them. He was going off of Disney's Neverland, not Barrie's Neverland. And as somebody who has wanted to be some simple combination of Wendy, Tinkerbell but mostly Peter her whole life, wow, that just gets me where it counts.
Part 5. He Gave Me Rhythm
Oliver Sachs was on The Daily Show the other week, talking about Musicophilia. Jon Stewart was asking if somebody who goes through a stroke is more likely to lose music or language, and Sachs responded that they are way more likely to lose language, that music is very deeply embedded into our brains. He qualified the statement by pointing out that while some people can lose understanding of melody with brain trauma, rhythm is never lost.
For me, it cannot be lost, for it has never been there. It is known to many who have seen me dance that I am the exception to all of Dr. Sachs' hard-earned data. I love to dance, but - and again, many can attest to this - it is not so much "dancing" as it is "moving while music is playing". For it to be dancing, there has to be a relationship between the music and the motion of my body, and that is always the critical absence for me. I put my feet in different places, my arms do things, I swing my hips, I smile, I am always having a good time. But when Karl Pilkington described Steve Merchant's attempts at dance as "a piece of weird art", I knew I fit that bill too.
Except with Michael Jackson. I can actually dance to Michael Jackson, and I've attached proof. A year or so ago, my best friend Chris was visiting New York, and we went to the Times Square Virgin Records. We walked in, and to welcome us, the store immediately started playing "Billie Jean". We danced. On the escalators, in the $10 DVD section, in front of all who cared to look upon us. And below is a photo, which I think captures that I was actually dancing pretty well (by which I mean, what I was doing could be considered "dancing" and not just "being in motion as music plays").
I will always be grateful to Michael Jackson for this moment.
6. Planet Jackson
Here's what I imagine happened to him: there is a planet out there somewhere where all the planets' and moons' and asteroids' version of him goes to after they die. Like, all the weird, enormous superstars all go there, and they hang out. They relax. That's where I think he is, even though I know it's not. Some world where all the other worlds' otherworldly people go. He's taking a nap right now.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Major Victory
It was raining when I went out for my run tonight, but it was just little dibbly dabbles. I stood on my stoop for a couple seconds, considering abandoning the run, but then remembered I lived in Vancouver for four years, and became afraid of permanently negating that whole period of my life by being intimidated by dibbly dabbles. People would see me retreat into my house and say, "She must never have lived in Vancouver," and I just couldn't take that chance.
Anyway, at a certain point, it was no longer dibbly dabbles, and the lightning that was off in the distance at the start had gotten all up in my face. It looked like it was going to get torrential on me, and I realized I hadn't brought my iPod cover. Suddenly, this became about more than just my comfort; Little Mac's life was also at stake (or so my endorphin-addled brain believed). So I decided to sprint back to my house, to "race the storm" which I put in quotation marks because it sounds...fratty. I don't want you to believe I said it genuinely, though I do believe that I just raced the storm. There. I'm owning it.
And I am elated now, because there's no way around the fact that I won. I can't tell at what point in my sprint down Willoughby Avenue I realized that I was outrunning the storm, but I had that realization, and it may as well have come in the form of rockets popping out of my back and Swift-Wind-style wings growing on my feet. If any part of that storm was reaching me, it was only the back of my heels.
I didn't know that this was a thing I was supposed to do before I die, but wow, there is not much that is quite as satisfying as deciding it's you against a non-sentient force of nature, and then hands-down no-two-ways-about-it flat-out winning the challenge. As soon as I got in my door, I heard that bitch let out a thunderclap and the next second, unleash a heavy, heavy downpour. But it was just too late.
Thunderstorm, tonight, I really kicked your cumulonimb-ASS.
Anyway, at a certain point, it was no longer dibbly dabbles, and the lightning that was off in the distance at the start had gotten all up in my face. It looked like it was going to get torrential on me, and I realized I hadn't brought my iPod cover. Suddenly, this became about more than just my comfort; Little Mac's life was also at stake (or so my endorphin-addled brain believed). So I decided to sprint back to my house, to "race the storm" which I put in quotation marks because it sounds...fratty. I don't want you to believe I said it genuinely, though I do believe that I just raced the storm. There. I'm owning it.
And I am elated now, because there's no way around the fact that I won. I can't tell at what point in my sprint down Willoughby Avenue I realized that I was outrunning the storm, but I had that realization, and it may as well have come in the form of rockets popping out of my back and Swift-Wind-style wings growing on my feet. If any part of that storm was reaching me, it was only the back of my heels.
I didn't know that this was a thing I was supposed to do before I die, but wow, there is not much that is quite as satisfying as deciding it's you against a non-sentient force of nature, and then hands-down no-two-ways-about-it flat-out winning the challenge. As soon as I got in my door, I heard that bitch let out a thunderclap and the next second, unleash a heavy, heavy downpour. But it was just too late.
Thunderstorm, tonight, I really kicked your cumulonimb-ASS.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Low Moon is a Metric Tonne of Awesome
I was extremely lucky to get to review this book, and interview Jason. He is far and away my favourite graphic novelist; I was converted after reading only two of his books (Along these lines, I advise you to immediately buy The Last Musketeer). The only reason he is not a bigger deal here is that he is Norwegian and based in France, which are two things that upon close inspection are not North American. But with each new, fantastic book, his audience over here grows, and it would be better for everybody if you just joined it already.
I'll post my interview when it's up on the L magazine site. Review below:
http://www.thelmagazine.com/newyork/low-moon/Content?oid=1199089
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Homemaker
The most important thing you need to know about the below photo is that it is completely unstaged. It occurred when I happened to glance next to my laptop, only to discover that I am apparently taking full advantage of all modern liberties. Behold:
An empty wine glass and an empty Diet Coke with Lime bottle; both recently full. An empty mini-tub of ice cream, full less than a half hour ago. The evidence that I remained unsatisfied by the ice cream, and looked for the only high sugar alternatives in the house, settling on peanut butter and chocolate sauce. Yes, I squeezed the last of the chocolate sauce into the last of the peanut butter and ate it with a spoon. I value my freedom to do so, and take pride in exercising my rights.
The book I should be reviewing right now is obscured by the envelope that my last reviewing check came in. This might almost be professional if Will hadn't used the envelope to fulfill my request for a half-Ralph-Wiggum-half-Santa's-Little-Helper drawing. The drawing is extremely accurate, and is definitely worth more than the check the envelope once held. Here's a close-up:
Of course, modern liberty includes my scattered birth control pills, antibiotics and purple post-it-notes. It also includes two movies that I a) own and b) have watched recently: Conan (both Barbarian and Destroyer) and Ghostbusters 2. I could not get The Room into the frame, but it is also a movie I own, have watched recently and is lying on my desk.
You'll note the only cleaning agent in view is iKlear for my MacBook screen. Next to that: my tacky non-prescription fashion glasses, which I wear if I know I'm about to meet somebody that I want to impress.
I don't know why there is a screwdriver on my desk.
Despite all these clear indicators that I am allergic to resisting random impulses, I think my favourite part is the hair elastic. Because if it wasn't metaphorically clear enough here that I like to "let my hair down" as it were, I managed to shoehorn something pretty literal in there.
I'm proud to be living the life my 5-year-old self would've wanted.
An empty wine glass and an empty Diet Coke with Lime bottle; both recently full. An empty mini-tub of ice cream, full less than a half hour ago. The evidence that I remained unsatisfied by the ice cream, and looked for the only high sugar alternatives in the house, settling on peanut butter and chocolate sauce. Yes, I squeezed the last of the chocolate sauce into the last of the peanut butter and ate it with a spoon. I value my freedom to do so, and take pride in exercising my rights.
The book I should be reviewing right now is obscured by the envelope that my last reviewing check came in. This might almost be professional if Will hadn't used the envelope to fulfill my request for a half-Ralph-Wiggum-half-Santa's-Little-Helper drawing. The drawing is extremely accurate, and is definitely worth more than the check the envelope once held. Here's a close-up:
Of course, modern liberty includes my scattered birth control pills, antibiotics and purple post-it-notes. It also includes two movies that I a) own and b) have watched recently: Conan (both Barbarian and Destroyer) and Ghostbusters 2. I could not get The Room into the frame, but it is also a movie I own, have watched recently and is lying on my desk.
You'll note the only cleaning agent in view is iKlear for my MacBook screen. Next to that: my tacky non-prescription fashion glasses, which I wear if I know I'm about to meet somebody that I want to impress.
I don't know why there is a screwdriver on my desk.
Despite all these clear indicators that I am allergic to resisting random impulses, I think my favourite part is the hair elastic. Because if it wasn't metaphorically clear enough here that I like to "let my hair down" as it were, I managed to shoehorn something pretty literal in there.
I'm proud to be living the life my 5-year-old self would've wanted.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
New Review!
It can be found here:
http://www.bookslut.com/nonfiction/2009_07_014734.php
Also, just because I haven't written about Michael Jackson's death in any sort of timely fashion does not mean that there is not a monster of a post sitting in my drafts that may or may not make its way onto this blog in the next day or so. Unlike all those other selfish MJ bloggers, I am giving you lots of fair warning.
And one more thing: Ricky Gervais has an opinion on whether Britain or America is at the forefront of comedy.
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/tv/2507745/Ricky-Gervais-I-cant-stand-Brit-comedy.html
As a child of British parents now living in the (at least symbolic) center of American comedy and raised with the weird brackish water of both sensibilities that is Canadian humour, I a) proclaim myself an expert and b) expertly concur*. I also want to posit that if Americans are raised to believe they can be anything they want and Brits are raised to believe that's just not how life goes, then Canadians are raised to believe that sure, they can be anything they want, if they really want to be that thing to 30 million people at the very most, and of course, much less if we're being realistic, because most Canadians are just too busy developing healthy relationships with themselves and the world to get too caught up in what some stranger like you is doing anyway, but good luck nonetheless!
*Excluding Peep Show, Look Around You and anything Ricky Gervais himself has ever done.
http://www.bookslut.com/nonfiction/2009_07_014734.php
Also, just because I haven't written about Michael Jackson's death in any sort of timely fashion does not mean that there is not a monster of a post sitting in my drafts that may or may not make its way onto this blog in the next day or so. Unlike all those other selfish MJ bloggers, I am giving you lots of fair warning.
And one more thing: Ricky Gervais has an opinion on whether Britain or America is at the forefront of comedy.
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/tv/2507745/Ricky-Gervais-I-cant-stand-Brit-comedy.html
As a child of British parents now living in the (at least symbolic) center of American comedy and raised with the weird brackish water of both sensibilities that is Canadian humour, I a) proclaim myself an expert and b) expertly concur*. I also want to posit that if Americans are raised to believe they can be anything they want and Brits are raised to believe that's just not how life goes, then Canadians are raised to believe that sure, they can be anything they want, if they really want to be that thing to 30 million people at the very most, and of course, much less if we're being realistic, because most Canadians are just too busy developing healthy relationships with themselves and the world to get too caught up in what some stranger like you is doing anyway, but good luck nonetheless!
*Excluding Peep Show, Look Around You and anything Ricky Gervais himself has ever done.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Oh Canada, You Know I Be Standin' On Guard for Thee!
On this, your day of celebration,
142 years since Confederation,
I miss you so much, Cana-doo;
More majestic than any Xanadu.
More serene than the Zenniest Zen -
It almost makes DFW's O.N.A.N.,
Have some appeal, if only so I might say
I live in Canada, though technically, it's the USA.
I miss parliaments that get dissolved by queens,
and going as "kid-in-snowsuit" most Halloweens.
That anthem line I sang in grade school,
Will remain the one I sing, cuz fool(!);
A notion I just can't revise,
Is that "with glowworms' hearts, we see the rise".
And I guess this is my long way of saying,
Happy birthday, and thanks for staying
The True North, strong and free.
And I miss you lots, Oh Cana-dee,
And I'll see you soon, Oh Cana-doo.
Still so proud of that rhyme I made with Xanadu.
Even though it makes no sense,
Because your name is Canada.
142 years since Confederation,
I miss you so much, Cana-doo;
More majestic than any Xanadu.
More serene than the Zenniest Zen -
It almost makes DFW's O.N.A.N.,
Have some appeal, if only so I might say
I live in Canada, though technically, it's the USA.
I miss parliaments that get dissolved by queens,
and going as "kid-in-snowsuit" most Halloweens.
That anthem line I sang in grade school,
Will remain the one I sing, cuz fool(!);
A notion I just can't revise,
Is that "with glowworms' hearts, we see the rise".
And I guess this is my long way of saying,
Happy birthday, and thanks for staying
The True North, strong and free.
And I miss you lots, Oh Cana-dee,
And I'll see you soon, Oh Cana-doo.
Still so proud of that rhyme I made with Xanadu.
Even though it makes no sense,
Because your name is Canada.
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