Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Yup. This is a post about Michael Jackson

Over at Five Crows, Louise Plummer blogs about how sad she feels about the King of Pop's death and I feel the same way. I don't know. There's just something about the passing of an iconic figure--someone we all knew of--that makes us feel our own mortality. Plus, a lot of us watched him grow up--from vibrant little boy to boneless dancer to tragic freak show--all played out before our eyes.

Anyway, our oldest son loved Michael Jackson so much when he was in kindergarten that he used to wear a single batting glove to church. I didn't object. I never object if something amuses me and anyway I have low standards when it comes to grooming, as everyone knows.

I later took our son's love of Michael Jackson and gave it to the young boy character, Sinjian, in AMAZING GRACIE--a book I wrote so long ago it almost feels like it was written by someone else who lived on another planet. But I thought of Phil and Michael and Sinjian this morning with longing for moments past.

5 comments:

Bob the Woodworker said...

I never really liked Michael Jackson - he always seemed vaguely creepy, even in the earlier, pre-whacko times, though he always also seemed relatively harmless. He did have style and that's what was fun seeing young Philip pick up on the style. The celebrity fade-out from reality with the hovering sycophantish agents and doctors and lawyers (and agents' and doctors' lawyers) make me more sad than angry. It makes me happy once more not to be famous and not to burden our children with the costs of fame.

LucindaF said...

I was waiting for this post!

I don't know that I felt sad, to me, he died a long time ago.

And I love that you let your son wear a batting glove to church. I remember those sparkly Jackson gloves for sale at Toys R Us when I was a kid.

Amelia said...

I loved Amazing Gracie, and read it several times over! And I love the MJ music... especially the early stuff. Will always be sweet to me.

Randi said...

I loved MJ too and I'm glad he was famous for his awesomeness, but I'm with Bob. I'm glad I'm not famous.

Lisa B. said...

I don't know that I was ever into Michael Jackson himself--but there is music that is completely awesome for a long time in his career, and that seems quite remarkable. I watched a performance at the MTV music awards on YouTube (late 90s)--the dancing was really something, too.

"Human Nature" is, to me, one of the most sublimely beautiful pop songs of all time.