What I’ve Been Thinking About Lately

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Ever  notice that on early black and white episodes of “The Andy Griffith Show”, anyone NOT from Mayberry or neighboring Syler City always spoke as though they had Brooklyn accents?    Even if someone was  visiting from Raleigh,  he always sounded very New Yorkish.    Hhhh’mmm…..refresh my memory:  both Carolinas (before division) rooted for the gray team which represented the states south of the Mason-Dixon line, did they not????

I’ve often wondered about filming in 3-D.   Seriously, how do you give dimension and virtual tactility to film?    Also, I’ve discovered if you watch large screen TV with 3-D glasses on, you can also see a varied form of what you’re viewing in 3-D.   It only works in that which was filmed in color.   B&W don’t cut it.  Try it.   Especially after having a few drinks.

What really makes an airplane fly?  Yeah, I know it’s all about thrust and lift and speed, but those concepts confound me.   I don’t get flight,  especially when I watch the jet engine of a plane all heated up and creating it’s own friction, thus propulsion and I have to marvel at how the damn thing can fly.   God only knows how one of those HUGE military Hercules transports loaded with tons of equipment, jeeps and tanks bound for Iraq, can even roll along the runway, much less take-off and fly.   And think about this:  what really keeps these gigantic sons of bitches in the air?   How can a few big engines, a couple of flaps, a rudder, speed and a pilot defy gravity?

I’ve often questioned how allergens work to affect our bodies in such ways.  Congestion, hives, rashes, gastric distress, swollen body parts and even death in the most severe reactions.   Why can some people eat the hell out of peanuts and others can’t exist being anywhere in the presence of an open bottle or  can?

What purpose to ticks serve?  I mean really.  Do they eat aphids?   Do they create a delightful, human serving coagulant when they bite down?  One that can be harvested and turned into currency among the Inuits?    I think not.   I hate ticks and I hate raisins.  Therefore, ticks are unemployed raisins.   But I like grapes.  I only hate what dehydration does to them.

Cheerleaders.  Now, don’t get thy Hanes in a wad.,   I was a cheerleader in Jr. High and High School, so were my sisters and so was the woman who’s uterus incubated me for the bulk of nine months.    But really, what purpose do these people really serve?   Can a football team win a game without their cheers and screams for “defense”?    Do basketball players actually stop in the seconds before throwing one from downtown  to see if a cheerleader is encouraging him enough to sink it with nuthin’ but net?   Or are they just eye candy for frustrated pervs and sources of envy for the rotund, female Almond Joy addict?    

I liked being a cheerleader because it required even more people to look at me and know my name.   But  being popular often lends itself to being even more disliked.   So, the question beckons -  cheerleaders:  generators  of spirit OR wanton exhibitionists???      

YOU DECIDE

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Yeah.  Thought so.

I mentioned gravity earlier when extolling my ignorance with flight. Just for a second, try wrapping your head around gravity.  As w discussed, planes defy it, buildings defy it…gymnasts, too but countries  and continents also spit in its face.  

Go get a globe.  I’ll wait.   

(Insert  ’Jeopardy  ’theme….)

What?  OK then, look at a photo of one.   Go look at the South Poll and explain that to me.  How is it that people walk upright while traipsing around on the ice  down there?   Then go up north a bit and take a gander at the southern most tip of  Chile:    Tierra del Fuego.    It’s more down under than Australia, yet people are fine.    They drive, walk, fly…they live perfectly good lives, save for the occasional junta driven coup d’tat.

And finally, what about prayer?   It’s a global activity.  We all do it in varied forms; sometimes it’s called wishing.  Even so, can we look around us and believe without a doubt,  it works??  Is there always a catch involved?   Joy and jubilation for those who believe prayers are answered;  defeat and suffering for those with reason to believe their divine petitions were never even heard?

Believe it or not, the images below are all examples of answered prayers.

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So, does prayer (in its simplest definition) really work?

I suppose that depends on what you pray for.

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Michael Jackson Never Could Say Goodbye

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But I’m afraid this time, you’ll have to, Mikey.

I thought I’d go ahead and share my feelings on a very mournful day for Hollywood and former pre-pubescents from the early 80′s. Let me say this first: I am sorry that news of Farrah Fawcett’s death some five hours earlier has been overshadowed by the media overkill that is being given and will continue to be given to MJ’s death. Farrah spent the last five years of her life living it in pain. Cancer isn’t always a death sentence, but in reality, it often is.

I’m sorry Farrah died. I was by no means an ardent fan, despite her being a fellow Texan and I was way too heterosexual to find her anything other than a pretty young woman. Even so, I think when she got sick, she was strong as long as she could be and put up a worthy fight against this malignant nemesis. True, having fame and money helps; it supplies the troops and ammo needed to fight the battle, but all the money in the world can’t reanimate a body horribly, viciously ravaged by cancer. Death is often the only reprieve when that’s the case and today, Farrah Fawcett finally found hers.

 But Michael? His death is preliminarily being blamed on massive heart attack and rumors are circulatin that hard core prescription drugs may have played a role.  But there’s something about the oddness in his life that kind of makes you think dying in the way he did could be the ONLY way to add final punctuation to his life sentence. I first became aware of this small, talented nubian male child in the late 60′s. The Jackson Five’s first chart topper, “A-B-C”, served as my first introduction to their music. A few years later, in the fall of 1971 when I was 12-years old, I had matured enough to associate some emotion with his songs, namely “Got To Be There” and “Ben”. Then, by the spring of 1973, as I was finishing up my eighth grade year and preparing for my Freshman year in High School, I forgot all about Michael Jackson.

That is, until early 1980 when I was finishing up college in Austin, Texas. I remember eating eggrolls on the floor of the apartment of a gay couple with whom I’d been friends. The radio was on and as as the Top 5 Countdown started counting down, the number 5 song that night was MJ’s newest single, “Rock With You”. That song started his meteoric second career rise and he was untouchable…until he started allegedly touching a lot of young boys in inappropriate ways in the early 90′s. His fate was sealed then. His career took a slam and really, would never recover. He started hemorraging money and when that happens, “friends” can rarely be found. He fought off criminal charges, lawsuit after lawsuit and reacted accordingly by getting new noses, new cheeks, lips, dangling  his oddly named baby off the railing of a balcony in Germany, speaking with such a soft, high lilting voice that sounded like he’d been a lifelong member of Castrotti and of course, blaming vitiligo for his ever increasing mellanin decreasing.

That, my friends, is called a ‘deep end” and Michael Jackson went off of it with a two mile running start. It was said he had kept the Elephant Man’s bones in his home; he had a chimp/love interest named Bubbles. He slept in a hyperbaric chamber, married Lisa Marie Presley in one of the oddest pairings since vodka and iced tea and he had an unusal penchant for children. Where did this odd behavior come from? I’m thinking Papa Joe Jackson. I met a friend for cocktails earlier today. We’d just heard the news that Michael (who by the way, at 50 was just a few months older than me) had just died of an apparent heart attack. My friend insisted that Michael’s slick and hip dance moves were actually learned much earlier in life, when Michael was a child. Those slides and whirls and twirls and moonwalking were actually things he learned to dodge Joe Jackson’s belt in one of the crazed bastard’s ritual “ass whoopins”.

I think Pater and Mater Jackson knew their talented kids could get them out and keep them out of all those “hard times” in Gary, Indiana. It’s been said that Joe was exacting and a task master and probably secretly (and maybe not so secretly) resented his sons – Michael in particular, for achieving more in his young life than Joe had in all his years on Earth. What you’re about to read is no great globe shattering treatise on Michael’s life or psychopathy and what I’m about to impart has probably been said before, but personally, I don’t think Michael was a pedophile. At least, I doubt that was his initial intention. Now, wait a minute—before you order the tar and feathers, permit me to explain.

I think Michael was robbed of his childhood. He was just eight when he started fronting the band with his four other brothers. How many eight-year-olds do you know who have full time jobs, travel all over the world, apepar on Sullivan, Carson, are interviewed by Mike Douglas AND have a huge fan base of pudgy, acne faced pre-teens screeching their names? As a child, Michael was forced into having a particular priority that he didn’t want and perhaps, never understood: to help make the Family Jackson more financially solvent. Think about it: that’s a hell of a lot of responsibility for a child and a young Black child in particular, who was entering the Anglo dominated world of entertainment just as the water from the high pressure fire hoses in Selma and Birmingham were just starting to dry out.

Michael was surrounded by adults on an almost continuous basis. Record mogels, sound engineers, agents. He probably got to play some with his brothers while on tour but keep in mind, they were several years older. The truth is, Michael wasn’t allowed to be a kid. He grew up physically, but not emotionally and when he had so much discretionary income, he made every attempt to experience a childhood he never got to have. I submit for your perusal: Neverland Ranch with it’s llamas and Ferris Wheels, carousels, roller coasters and whatever else Disney was no longer using in California or Florida. I think he looked in the mirror and was confused by what he saw versus how he felt. I have no idea what really happened inside Mike’s Neverland manse. I’ve heard all about the “Jesus Juice” and other things he’s accused of using to ply these young boys into submission. And if anything ever happened, I’ll be the first to publicly admit these actions are completely despicable, not to mention, illegal and unforgivable. I’m not excusing his actions, I’m merely examining possible explanations as to what might have prompted all of his odd behavior.

In closing, Michael Jackson lived as he died – in the spotlight. But it’s more of a spotlight still burning from the past. In the early 80′s, he was a god. Worshipped by throngs were mere days away from seeing his image on a flour tortilla. He had money beyond the dreams of Avarice, but as with Farrah Fawcett, inall the moneyall There were triumphs and disappointments, gossip and innuendo, facts and fiction, drugs and sobriety, happiness and sorrow. He was a lonely man in a sea of humanity. He wanted love and never really found it. It’s ironic that he literally died from a broken heart.

But irony knows celebrity, though. It knows it well. In fact, it was there when a fast living  James Dean died in an even faster car.   

It was there when  comedian Sam Kinison, having just achieved three months of sobriety, was driving his Trans-Am on a Nevada highway in 1992. An extremely drunk teenager hit Kinison’s car with his truck and killed the funny man.  Just as Sam was getting a grip on the demons of addiction that plagued him, he was killed at the hands of someone who was carelessly indulging in his own.

RIP…across the board.

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