Off the Wall: Michael Jackson Remembered

Nick Jimenez - Entertainment Editor

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June 26, 2009
Filed under Entertainment, Entertainment Blog

Around the same Michael Jackson was being sent to the hospital after going into cardiac arrest, my friend and I were making fun of him on YouTube.I was over at her house and we had uncovered a video of Jackson’s “classic” 3D movie Captain EO. In the movie, MJ played a dashing spaceship captain in the vein of Flash Gordon. EO and his merry band of muppets travel to a horrible world of trash creatures and, using the power of music and dancing, transform the monsters into a crack team of back up dancers for the good Captain. So you see, there’s really nothing to do but make fun of it, right?

While Jackson was dying in his hospital bed, I was at the little coffee shop nook of the Borders in Arlington. I was with another friend, Taylor, waiting for her boyfriend Jakob to pick us up so we could continue to a friend’s birthday party later on in the evening. My cell phone buzzed; I flipped it open and read a twitter update; “Michael Jackson died!?” Doubtful but curious, I ask for my Taylor’s iPhone and scan the news. Sure enough, word had spread about Jackson’s hospitalization and possible death. By the time Jakob picked us up from Borders, the radio was playing all of the King of Pop’s hits on the radio and reporting his demise as fact.

The oddness that I had been mocking and laughing at Jackson earlier in the day was not lost on me, but I’d be lying if I said that my friends were mourning. We loved Jackson’s music; from his work with the Jackson 5 to his brilliant solo work. But we didn’t grow up with Jackson, the Pop Titan; the coolest guy on the face of the planet with the top selling album of all time. We grew up knowing Jackson as the bizarre recluse.  In my younger years, he was punchline and even a proxy boogeyman, known for his alleged sexual deviancy than his music.

We listened to KISS FM, where the DJ played all of the 80’s masterpieces that made Jackson a legend. Taylor, Jakob and I sang along to “Billie Jean,” “Thriller,” and “Rock with You.” All the while, Jakob and I lightheartedly discussed who should take over the mantle of Prince of Pop now that Jackson was gone. (His pick, Timberlake.) We weren’t mourning so much as half-jokingly celebrating the life and times of a legend that never really belonged to us.

The evening past and I had a great time with my friends. On the car ride home, radio stations were still mourning the loss of Jackson.  It was at this time that the more somber aspects of his death began to creep over me. Jackson was 50, born around the same time as my mother.  People were calling the radio stations, somberly sharing their memories and experiences that were in some ways fueled or powered by Jackson’s music. The friends that won the talent show at their school by perfectly recreating the dance from the “Thriller” video; the white guy that never left school without his one white, glittery glove. I myself began to reflect. The first album of his I ever heard was the 1991 Dangerous. At the time and to this day even, “Black or White” is one the few songs that can always make me dance. It occurred to me that Jackson was one of the few entertainers that were something to everyone.  His music and legend has fastened itself into our collective pop memory, whether it’s as an innovative musician or as freakish shut-in with a serious Peter Pan complex.   He was an American original. Spielberg put it very well when Entertainment Weekly asked him to give a few words in Jackson’s honor; “Just as there will never be another Fred Astaire or Chuck Berry or Elvis Presley, there will never be anyone comparable to Michael Jackson. His talent, his wonderment and his mystery make him legend.”

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