This is my friend/web designer’s lovely portfolio. She was doing me a favor and I decided to keep this here because it’s very nice and the world needs more nice.

Ironic that my earlier post about Father’s Day would lead us to a California day winding down with the news of one of the greatest pop legends ever had gone home and, of course, my memories of Michael Jackson are linked to my dad. As a lovesick grade school girl dreaming of MJ babies in glitter diapers, I know I had my dad concerned. As a debating teenager, he and I would go back and forth on the sadness of popstardom happening to someone so young and, I reasoned, that would lead most people to carry a monkey around like a child. Forget even about crowding around the television set for the MTV debuts of Thriller and the Bad video (the Making of included), depleted and revived at the same time when both were finished playing. Let’s not even go to the joy I had watching the local dance show (”The Scennnnnnnnne” - which I’ve posted about here before) kids getting together in the apartment parking lots in the neighborhood, dressed in all their glory doing the EXACT “Thriller” choreography to the t.  There was also the time that I literally almost punched a girl in front of school for getting the lyrics to “Beat It” wrong even though she believed in her heart that he was singing “No one wants to feel the beat of it” instead of the correct “No one wants to be defeated.”  My heart was ablaze.

In high school, I was thrilled whenever a group of girls I was friends with, the B Phi Sweeties I think they called themselves, would line up and do the “Black or White” video, each different complexioned girl jumping up and then fading back so the next darker skinned girl could pop up.

As a summer latch key kid when my parents didn’t have money or resource to send me somewhere to occupy me better, I stayed home and listened to records. This is how I discovered “Off The Wall” (I was a bit young when it originally came out) and Diana Ross’s “Mahogany” in all their splendor. Even to this day, my favorite Michael Jackson song is “I Can’t Help It (If I Wanted To)” and I’ve spent many California afternoons/New York city nights blaring it out of my iPod, instantly lifted up.

Michael was a stranger to us all in the last decade or so, plagued with a deep rooted celebrity that went back to being so young, so early, so famous, so fast that none of us except for some recent starlets can even imagine. None of us will ever know what was going on in his head but all of us can probably understand the desire to change one’s self from what you were when it was all too much. I am not so lost on the concept of trying to become anyone other than the fame magnet but wanting to keep your talent and original message. Of course your body will give out when you stretch so far from such a bright star.

I Can’t Help It”[1st Verse]
Looking In My Mirror
Took Me By Surprise
I Can’t Help But See You
Running Often Through My Mind[2nd Verse]
Helpless Like A Baby
Sensual Disguise
I Can’t Help But Love You
It’s Getting Better All The Time

[Chorus]
I Can’t Help It If I Wanted To
I Wouldn’t Help It Even If I Could
I Can’t Help It If I Wanted To
I Wouldn’t Help It, No

[Chorus]
I Can’t Help It If I Wanted To
I Wouldn’t Help It Even If I Could
I Can’t Help It If I Wanted To
I Wouldn’t Help It, No

[3rd Verse]
Love To Run My Fingers
Softly While You Sigh
Love Came And Possessed You
Bringing Sparkles To Your Eyes

[4th Verse]
Like A Trip To Heaven
Heaven Is The Prize
And I’m So Glad I Found You Girl
You’re An Angel In Disguise

[Chorus]
I Can’t Help It If I Wanted To
I Wouldn’t Help It Even If I Could
I Can’t Help It If I Wanted To
I Wouldn’t Help It, No

And I’m So Glad I Found You Girl
You’re An Angel In Disguise

[Chorus]
I Can’t Help It If I Wanted To
I Wouldn’t Help It Even If I Could
I Can’t Help It If I Wanted To
I Wouldn’t Help It, No

[Repeat To Fade]

 

Normally I pour my tears out on a Father’s Day post but this year it’s simple. Yes, I miss my father. Yes, I feel him with me. I struggle with holding tight to images, smells, memories, songs. I still cry spontaneously over little triggers that remind me.  I do have some miracles that have come out of this. My life has changed in two years in many ways, for the better for me (it isn’t really a question about if my life change has been better for others though I do think about that sometimes).

I still find injustice in the most obscure news related stories that have to do with fathers. For example, I do feel bad for the South Carolina Governor Sanford’s boys. They didn’t even hear from their dad on Father’s Day because he was in Argentina, unbeknownst to anyone but him and his paramour.

Yvie sent me a Sekou Sundiata video today and my link to my dad in that way is that Sekou met my dad at graduation and I could see some similarities in kindness and temperment that always make me ache. They’re both gone, Sekou and my dad. I hope they’re able to speak wherever they are.

Sekou Sundiata on Def Poetry Jam

 

There’s a father/daughter annual dance that happens in some parts of this country that makes me jealous. But then I still check myself that I did dance with my father at my brother’s wedding and I savor it in my head like a last meal. I am happy that I was able to appreciate that dance at the time.  Fuck Hallmark.

Is it called getting old if you really only listen to songs from your youth? I might have just overdosed on The Winans…which usually only my Detroit players understand.

I’m not so artsy that I can’t enjoy an escapist movie. I have no problem turning off the graduate degree and the Morrison-esqueness of my own writing to sit down and pretend for two hours that I’m in an action movie. I promise you I, for the most part, will not intellectualize, politicize or moralize an action movie as there was no election in my brain that made action movies the epitome of my BAU.

That said, I admit I was excited for this spring and all its delicious action promises. So far, my “Matrix” heart has been broken. Terminator left me crabby. Angels & Demons left me talked to death (and amazed that throughout the whole damn movie in Italy, not one shot made me hungry as mostly anything Italian does).  And now Transformers.

Luckily we have a group of friends who ride hard for the midnight show. Even if we didn’t, we’d go ourselves. This time we all ganged up at The Grove to hit one of many midnight shows, joyously turning into eight year olds with with cereal milk breath and tattered Saturday morning pajamas when we sat in our seats. Even if you didn’t watch the cartoon regularly (I admittedly did not as I had a full TV agenda back then and couldn’t commit regularly to anything other than Smurfs or Warner Brothers with a little Kids Incorporated) everyone knows the theme song thereby knowing all the major players. I hear you singing it in your head now. I do!

We’re all bigger now. We’ve got more fun gadgets. Our ADD is larger than our concentration. Things affect how stories are told. I get it. Except there’s a line you can cross where all the kaboom and the mechanical switchery can look like one big pot of hot diesel fuel mess. That’s what happened here. On the big screen, it’s very difficult to determine who was an Autobot and who was Decepticon, especially during the Matrix-like fight scenes. There’s no need to do suspended air acrobatics when you’re a car that’s a machine. That’s when you get too far with the dramatics. While some of the transformations are very cool (especially all the little Decepticon bugs that turn into one razor sharp insect that can extract ANYTHING humans put together), most are so grandiose and done in a tailspin of parts and dust that there’s no way to appreciate the painting as it gets put on the canvas.

Notice I’ve not mentioned the story. Because it’s secondary. Not for me but obviously for the moviemakers. It really doesn’t matter why Sam (Shia) has got to get these transformers together to save the world. He just does. Just liked last time. Only this one takes place within different environments like college, Egypt and New York. Yes, there will be sappy moments of “I am so lucky to have this incredibly hot toothy girl run around the world with me as we risk life and limb for the world” but then that’s action movies so you expect that. Lest your eyes get too tired trying decipher which transformer is which, you have your comic relief moments galore in John Tuturro (I mean he gets a break for doing this given he’s one of the vertebrae of the early indie film market - cash your check, John!) and a new squealing college roommate. And, as if young boys and grown men (some chicks) couldn’t get enough of the walking sex bot, Megan Fox, there’s another bot in the form of a collegiate “femme fatale” (the quotes are mine because, well, she ain’t) that’s so into Sam, he should get a restraining order. Seriously.

Don’t go to the movie to try and connect dots. That’s a waste of your time. Just go and ride it and wince when you see them destroy thousand year old ruins and appreciate the military coming in and saving the day along with the car men with the radio dj voices. I mean that’s what it is.

Oh and we got a “bonus” at our screening. One of the “stars” of the movie showed up to thank us for coming out. We probably should have thanked him since we saw more of him standing there for five minutes than we did in the movie. But what are you gonna do. Cars gotta shine too.

Once my mom and I watched “Terms of Endearment” together. That was probably not a good idea on a couple of fronts, namely putting ourselves in the position of discovering each other’s mortality on top of the contentious mother/daughter relationship. My mother insisted she would go bananas if I was suffering in a hospital and a member of the staff waited two seconds longer than they should have to give me my medicine. That brought a tear to my eye and not for the usual reasons a daughter would feel moved by her mother’s expression of love. More because I realized that she had no idea how some of the other things she did actually did feel like being two seconds late for my medicine. I won’t go into detail here but I am guarded in certain areas for reasons that stem back to childhood (um, like I have the only membership card to that club, right?). Part of me has always wanted to do a either my very own “Taxi Driver” monologue in the mirror (”You talkin to me? ARE YOU talkin to ME?”) or slap my own face for not getting over it. Shit happens. Parents make mistakes. Blah blah.

At some point though both get old and you are still left with what the hell are you supposed to do. Parents are people and when the Joe on the corner does something to piss you off, why wouldn’t you let them know? Who wrote the rule that we are supposed to do ballet tip toes around our parents for fear of hurting their feelings when our feelings are hurt? I attempted this tough love trip down memory lane once and my mom flipped out. I mean FLIPPED THE EFF OUT over the phone. When she does this, there’s this very scary Exorcist sound in her otherwise sing songy stepford wife voice. It sounds like an ocean of gravel is pulling up from the depths of the sea and it, along with Captain Jack, is going to do a water karate number on you like you wouldn’t believe. You can just hear the hurt tears and spit and saliva coming out of her face and well, that’s not fun. That’s the not the point of trying to get your parent to remember some crazy shit they did when you were kid that still has you sort of messed up in the head a little. And the trip I took her on was not one of the worst ones we could’ve traveled yet and still, she couldn’t handle it.

What brings me to this? Well, I’ve been thinking about this whole Sarah Palin/David Letterman thing and while the depth of my soul wants this opportunistic woman to go away and govern her state before they kick her in the tush for her backwards mouth, the other part of me wants to put this on the table they way I can’t do with my mom. Willow, Branch, Tree and Shrub or whatever her kids names are, should basically just let her know to stop talking about them. This morning she referenced Obama being able to lay the hammer down on the media talking about his family and how that was a double standard because he got what he wanted and she didn’t. There’s lots of crazy flaw in this argument. One, your teenage girl had a baby with a kid you brought along on the campaign trail and endured the long suffering rhetoric of your family values, twisting and turning all the while, condescending to those who weren’t middle class vanilla salt of the earth. Two, you never asked the media to stop talking about your family. You couldn’t do that because they would have promptly reminded you that you were talking about your family. Three, your family is on the cover of every tabloid and non tabloid magazine whether it’s the poor baby dady insisting your Moose Mafia is preventing him from seeing his kid or its your daughter who’s trying to become her own woman and turn her slip up around. Four, you talk too much about things that have nothing to do with you and you’re not smart about some of them so there goes your credibility. Every time you open your mouth to criticize in a specific way, that way is then slammed dunked (Dwight Howard style) by regular media that sheds light on the holes of your theories.

I get kind of embarrassed for her kids because not only are the enduring this kind of crazy opportunistic woman but they also have to figure out how to deal with this later on, their Mom none the wiser. There’s nothing like feeling like your Mom is using you, even if she doesn’t realize it and she is, it sucks. So that’s why I put two and two together and got Terms of Endearment. That two seconds past medication time is always hard to digest.