Michael Jackson

Conversations with Kevin – Part #1 (July 3, 2009)

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It’s sort of comforting in advance to know that Kevin has written such a heartwarming post about our first “business lunch,” it is not worth my while to try to top – emotionally speaking. The one thing I will say is that I thought I was the only one who secretly viewed our monthly meeting as a lifeline to our shared suffering, and our bond with Jesika.

That is however, not to say, that when we met at Kuma’s Corner on Wednesday at noon, the mood was at all somber or stuck in our recent grief. As a matter of fact, it would be tough to stay serious at a place like this. This was a find of Kevin’s, and to know my friend, the last place you would expect him to seek out is a heavy metal burger joint.

I arrived about ten minutes early, and before noon already, the place was hopping. I took two seats at the bar, and a good look around, while I waited for Kevin. The metal music was deafening – before lunch. More than that, I could tell it was, as my friend Pete might say, “real metal.” In other words, I had never heard any of the tunes before. Kuma’s Corner is unabashedly not radio friendly. They have a list of “rules” posted at the front of the restaurant that, at first glance, don’t seem very customer-friendly either: We Will Not Change the Music, We Will Not Put on the Game, We Do not Do Take-out Orders if the Patio is open. They do things their way, not your way – how rock and roll!

I do wish the list of rules had also included, We Do Not Keep Working Locks on Our Rest Room Doors. Perhaps this would have spared me the indignity of being exposed on the pot by a middle-aged lady, who took her sweet time about closing back up after discovering her error. It is a good thing Boop no longer has much pride left after a lifetime of humiliating herself.

But I digress – the longer I know Kevin, the more I realize that no matter how diverging our perspectives and viewpoints, we really enjoy talking to each other. We covered a variety of topics duing the course of our get together: naturally a bit about how much we miss Jesika, and what she might make of our current situations in life. But we also talked about the recent death of Michael Jackson, and what role his comfort level with his own blackness played in his downfall. I don’t think it is all crazy to remark that Mike obviously had issues with his appearance – strong enough that he was willing to disfigure himself through multiple plastic surgeries. So there you go, a small white woman and a huge African American man discussing what it meant to Michael Jackson to be black. Why not?

We parted on the unusually cool afternoon with a hug in the rain: me on my way to a meeting with a fellow freelance writer, Kevin, his head full with several missions confronting him (career development, finding a new apartment). We kept things loose on this first lunch. Next go around, I am to pick the place. How do I outdo a heavy metal burger joint? Any suggestions?

BufBloPoFo 09 DayTwo (March 15, 2009)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

If you had the power to put together the most perfect, end-of-the-universe, nothing-better-was-ever-made repast, using whatever ingredients you want, and with whomever you’d like as your co-diners, what would you want? Tell me about one little bit, or all fourteen courses. Tell me about venue, about background music, about which box of wine goes best with which flavor of ramen noodles.

I have invited two temporarily resurrected men, Tim Russert and Jesus, to my place for dinner. Joining the three of us will be one person who remains of this world, Madonna. I have offerred to prepare a zesty vegetable lasagna from scratch. I have chosen a veggie meal because Jesus and Madonna are both Jews, and I do not keep a kosher kitchen. I understood from Tim Russert’s waistline while alive that he is not a picky eater. I set three plates at the bar in my kitchen, and pour three glasses of red wine. Madonna only sips gingerly at hers, requesting a bottle of Kabbalah water alongside her plate. Tim Russert and Jesus start sucking it down. We all know Jesus was a pretty fun wedding guest. Tim Russert came from a blue collar Irish background. ‘Nough said. I keep a plate for myself on the side. I will eat (and drink later). I do not want to be distracted or compromised whatsoever as we begin our discussion.

Wine has reddened the cheeks of Tim Russert and so he introduces a lively debate on the current economic crisis. Russert heatedly lays the blame at the feet of George W. Bush, though he does admit that the U.S. had been a little too lax about a lot of things in the last twenty years. Jesus is of the opinion that he sort of likes Obama’s Robin Hood approach to his most recent budget plan. However, realizing he may have said too much, Jesus grows a little sheepish. The son of God ought not to appear to pick sides, he says, so can we all keep what he said under our hats? It’s not exactly a lie, and thus we wouldn’t really be breaking any commandments. I tell Jesus to relax and poor him another glass. Madonna, who charges $200 or more to see one of her shows, apparently doesn’t realize there is a recession at all. Nevetheless, Jesus is always one to find a silver lining, and though he encourages the Material Girl to get to know some of the “little people,” he nonetheless commends Madge on the adoption of the formerly impoverished David Banda.

As we move toward the dessert course, a homemade banana bread pudding (in this fantasy, I have miraculously learned how to cook. Perhaps the divine intervention of Jesus?), the discussion moves to the subject of children. Jesus, just like Michael Jackson a couple millenniums later, obviously loves them (However, He pointedly resents the Gloved One’s use of “Jesus Juice” to calm them down – J endorses no such product), but immediately lets us know not to believe everything we read. The Da Vinci Code is just a work of fiction and there were no Jesus Juniors. I can barely mask my disappointment. Tim Russert, by now a little intoxicated, grows misty eyed at the thought of his now adult son Luke. I show him a clip of Luke working on behalf of NBC news during the McCain/Obama debates and he is done for. Madonna has three children from three different fathers (fine, the last one was adopted). Jesus knows it’s 2009 and doesn’t want to come off as a prude, so he stays quiet during Madonna’s confessional.

Tim Russert can barely stand by the time we finish our meal. Jesus tells us the coolest thing about being the Son of God is his immunity to basically, well, everything. He hoists Tim up on his shoulder so they can begin the walk back to heaven. Surprisingly, it’s not that far. Madonna has a chopper on top of my roof and will fly off with her boy toy, 22 year-old Jesus Luz. She realizes the irony of sleeping with a pretty young thing that bears the name of the Chosen One, and accepts that as further proof that her bed hopping is indeed all part of God’s plan.

Losing More Than Innocence: The Challenger Disaster and Children of the 1980s (January 31, 2011)

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I have written some about the rough upbringing my sister and I endured, which included a lot of ugliness not important to itemize for the purposes of this essay. However, before we moved into our first single family home when I turned seven, the situation was fairly benign, I would go so far as to say happy.

My father had recently finished a four-year stint as an Army M.P. and we moved back to Chicago from the Virginia station we called home in 1982. My baby sister was only two years old, and since we arrived in the Windy City during the summer months, it felt extra wonderful to return to my birthplace. I was able to see grandparents almost anytime I wanted, grandparents usually bearing gifts or trips to favorite restaurants. I was preparing to enter kindergarten, and unlike many other nervous small fries, I was stoked. I already knew how to read and write but I precociously understood that there was a lot more information out there that I wanted to consume. Jen was definitely more concerned with my morning absenteeism from her world.

We went on normally, playing in the backyard of our North Center neighborhood apartment complex, watching The Family Feud and The Bozo Show, recreating Pat Benatar and Michael Jackson dance sequences in our parents’ bedroom in front of a small black and white TV. I will forever be grateful for the seven years of blissful childhood ignorance I was able to enjoy before the bottom fell out.

Although I do not hold the explosion of the Challenger Spaceship on January 28, 1986 personally responsible for my inevitable turn toward weary cynicism, it definitely provided a shove. There I was with the rest of my class, sitting in front of a TV our teacher, Mr. Knuth had rolled into the room. Every other space inside the tiny Lutheran grade school I attended was enjoying the same privilege. It was so exciting to be granted a reprieve from routine to be able to watch the shuttle launch, which included the first teacher/astronaut, Christa McAuliffe. And she was a woman too! What an awesome role model, even as we kids snickered about how much we’d love to launch our own teacher into the stratosphere.

We sat quietly at our desks, enthralled by the pre-launch activities, as well as the opportunity to be treated like real people with an interest in national news events. It felt so empowering. When the shuttle went off, we cheered over the roar of the engines and the fiery plumes left in the moving craft’s wake. Hey, maybe one day we all could be astronauts too!

And then…well we know what happened. 73 seconds after the loud excitement of the nation’s children began, many of us received our first taste of complete shock and grief. I felt something for the first time, a set of emotions that I would come to know intimately: I knew what I saw and what it must mean, but how could it be true? If it was true, how could it be undone? What do you mean we can’t fix it? We have to! Of course upon realizing that the adults around us did not have the answers, were in fact just as bewildered and sad as the rest of us, I felt afraid. This was the first moment, the one I will always remember, when I realized that the world is often so far out of our control. Even the well-meaning, the hard-working, the rule abiders can suddenly and quickly find themselves on the short side of cosmic fortune.

The TVs were rolled out of the room by jittery, bereft teachers just as quickly as they had been rolled in. Our instructors did what they could to return some normalcy to the day but it was far too late. How could we forget that we had witnessed the fiery, sudden death of American citizens? How would that ever be ok?

A seven year-old does not have the wherewithal, the emotional resources for perspective. Whether a situation is pleasing or tragic, it seems as though it will go on that way forever. We’re like a bunch of mini manic depressives at that stage. There was a lot of crying that evening, on my part as well as my mother’s. I asked a lot of questions but wasn’t really satisfied with any of the answers. This was the first time I had any idea that most of life works this way. All I know is I didn’t care for it. I thought about how Christa Macauliffe’s children must have felt that night, how the families, spouses, siblings and friends of her fellow space hopefuls must be racked with grief.

I concluded right then that I never wanted to be an astronaut. Even being a teacher sounded like a raw deal, as to my young mind, you were either the victim of tragedy or one who had to walk students through their own. I also figured that maybe I ought not to be so eager with my information consumption, as the truth often leads to horror.

It angers me as an adult that per Wikipedia, “The Rogers Commission found that NASA’s organizational culture and decision-making processes had been a key contributing factor to the accident. NASA managers had known that contractor Morton Thiokol’s design of the SRBs contained a potentially catastrophic flaw in the O-rings since 1977, but they failed to address it properly. They also disregarded warnings from engineers about the dangers of launching posed by the low temperatures of that morning and had failed to adequately report these technical concerns to their superiors.”

I think what little was left of my seven year-old sanity would have been completely demolished it if had been explained to me that agency greed and ambition was the actual killer of the space team. Now of course I am inured to the damage to human and environmental life that corporate decisions can bring (BP, drug makers, etc.).

The Challenger Explosion was more than a major “Where were you when?” moment in the lives of 80s children. It was the first glimpse of the notion, in a period where President Reagan cheerfully peddled American invincibility and Nancy Reagan told us all to stay away from drugs, that our leaders just might be full of shit.