...no, the beginning of the post before this one (the one I have yet to finish), doesn't have one small thing to do with Michael Jackson. (Or potentally large thing, cupped in hand.) Nor does it have one small thing to do with the (very recently) late Farrah Fawcett. Does anybody besides me feel sorry for her bad luck, dying the same day Michael Joe Jackson died - thereby firmly placing Farrah, she of the iconic 1970's poster, way over somewhere on a far side stage?
I'm not a fan type of person. Fan as in fanatic. Fan as in living breathing shitting crying and dying over someone else's breath or their body of 'work'.
Picture it:
BLINK.
It's 1980. And there I was, strolling along and doing whatever the hell it was I did in 1980. I can't remember what it was, although me being me, and in my twenties at the time, I was doing something(s), even if they've been clouded over, my powers of selective retention being as strong as they certainly damn well are.
And in to this pleasant picture walks the jangle of a phone, you know, the ones that actually had a ring tone before you had to select 'old timey ring tone' from the ring tone list. Ring ring ring, it rang. And I answered it.
"OH MY GOD OH MY GOD ROBIN ROBIN DID YOU SEE THE NEWS DID YOU SEE THE GODDAMNED NEWS THEY'VE KILLED HIM ROBIN THEY'VE KILLED JOHN! ROBIN ROBIN ROBIN DID YOU HEAR ME THEY'VE KILLED JOHN ROBIN!!!"
It was this big chick I knew, back in the day. Stood a foot taller than I stood, with a big personality to match. Biggest follower of other human beings I've ever met. If there was an award for 'biggest adorer of anyone other than herself", this chick would've won it, hands down, at least five years in a row.
So when she stopped screaming in my ear and took a well-earned fucking breath, just about gasping from the trauma of all her hard work, I stepped in with a word.
"Yeah. I heard on the radio some nut fuck shot John Lennon in Manhattan, and he's dead."
"ROBIN ROBIN THIS IS HUGE THIS IS HORRIBLE DAMMIT ROBIN (I checked out about here, but the screaming went on for a while, about BLAH BLAH BLAH and how could I be so callous and John was a genius and John how could anyone ever replace John...BLAH BLAH FUCKING BLAH.....and I checked out some more).
Then she took another breath, sucked in some stray saliva, choked a bit, and told me she and Blah and Blah and Blewie were gonna somehow get to New York City, no matter what, because it was really important that we show our respect or pay our respects. Whatever.
I said, Have fun.
She got pissed and said something about what a callous cold idiot blah blah blah...
(I knew she'd been planning on me doing the driving.)
BLINK. It's around Christmas 1998, I think. Late 90's anyway, and I have a different life, which is a damn good thing, because if you've been a functional adult between 1980 and 1998 if you haven't changed or done much, you may as well just check out and get it over with.
Anyway, JB takes me to Paris for a long weekend, and it's a good one. I do remember fussing with some French dude in the nice hotel where we stayed and telling him that a king-sized bed was NOT simply two regular beds shoved together, but other than that, it was a wonderful trip, wandering up and down the Avenue des Champs-Elysees, and poking around in other places here and there. And in one of those poking along walks, we came upon a place right in the middle of a crowded road, with flowers left everywhere. We looked around. What the hell? We scooted across and looked around, standing, if I remember this correctly, on the median strip in the middle of a busy thoroughfare. And then, we looked down an opening and saw a road with cars driving like mad in a tunnel below. Ah. They were still laying flowers where Diana had died - or at least hit.
Really? I mean, honestly?
BLINK. 1963. I remember when Kennedy died - barely - because I had just started Catholic school, and the meanest nun there, this old striation-faced hag named Techla, croaked over the intercom and told us we could all go home and be with our parents. We all liked that going home early part, and then I walked in my front door, and saw my father and mother crying, I'm talking sobbing, holding each other on the couch. Grasping. I was devastated - my stomach dropped down to the basement and landed splat and cold on the concrete floor, because when you're little and you see your parents in panic, you know hell has just happened upon you.
This one really was hell; the world felt like it was tipping on it side and it would never right. (Innocence was lost, if it had truly ever been found.)Of course it is true that serious-consequence life-altering deaths do occur; deaths that are meaningful not just to the human being who suffered the loss of his or her life, and to the people who knew them and cared about them, who loved them or hated them, or needed them, or never wanted to see them again - but who actually KNEW them, and not just on a television screen or in Life.
But that doesn't mean that every entertainer or 'personality' that goes needs or deserves a drill-down shock-wave of trauma from society at large. If you don't believe me, ask yourself how many people actively care now - that Helen Hayes is dead. That William Holden choked to death. That Myrna Loy or Joan Crawford are no more. Even Marilyn Monroe, who died young and was pathetic, is fading out except as an icon - which is a fake thing to hold on to, kinda like a talisman you keep for yourself, to anchor your self, to think about..your self.
In short, I'm not soppy.
In long, I have something called A LIFE. I don't toss out my feelings to the four winds. I care about people worth caring about, in my world. And I define what that world is, and I make no apologies that I'm not gonna lay down the dawg because someone who sang some good songs and then came out with Thriller and oh yeah,I remember listening to Thiller that summer I stayed in Germany with my friend that worked for Amex...God that was a good time and I remember I didn't wanna ever fly home was for the past twenty years pathetic and held his own flesh and blood baby outside a window, grinning like a fool, has died.
I do feel for Farrah Fawcett, woman to woman, even though I never knew her. She had a three year battle with a cancer that was eating into her. THAT I have sympathy for; it must have been horrible....and I tried to have my hair cut like hers, back in the 1970's and oh yeah that was the year I fixed my hair that way and they hired me at the Playboy Club my hair never did look exactly like hers because afer all she had hairdressers, but it looked pretty good, annd every guy I knew had that damn poster of hers and oh I wish I was young again...
Hmmmmm. Does it sound like me feeling bad for Farrah is really..me feeling bad for me and thinking about...me?
Yeah. I'd say, honestly, that about says it all.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
So in answer to that Troll guy...
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15 comments:
I'll miss Farrah more than Jackson, that's for sure.
As for Diana, the weeks after her death were eerie. It's as if people went collectively bananas, and we seem to have been that way ever since.
So I'm ordering in a load of sandbags for when the dear old Queen pops her clogs. There'll be floods, I tell you, floods...
I'm with you there, everywhere, girlfriend. I remember people crying at work the day after Elvis died, and so completely not getting it.
But you did make me think, and what I'm beginning to think is that maybe the people who go all crazy over a celebrity's death really are internalizing it, just like you did with Farrah. (And, yes, though I didn't feel so much sorry for Farrah - since she likely doesn't care any more - for having the incredibly bad luck to die the same day as MJ, I did immediately feel sorry for her family getting short changed. And I heard about MJ because I got a phone call from a friend, said friend never calling about any other news like the protests in Iran, commercial plane or train crashes, or N Korea setting off nuclear devices, but this she calls me about.)
Most of the outpouring we see seems to be around celebs who die "young." Maybe some people see it as a slap-in-the-face wake-up call that death is stalking us all. That if fame and money can't keep you alive, then what chance does the typical schmuck have. Celeb deaths are a reaffirmation of mortality, and mourning the dead and paying "repects" in person may not be so much a reaction to the celebrity, but a cathartic way to personally acknowledge mortality and placate fate so that death doesn't come around and take them "young", too. It's a reversion to our base collective subconscious in which death is personified, or perhaps it's a transference technique for coping with the idea of mortality.
Or, yeah, could be that we just all live in a world of crazies. But does that really come as a surprise?
Hope this is a better weekend for you now that your own crazy has moved on...
Er, I was just kidding.
Phoenix, that was amazing, but I'm going with world of crazies.
There's no explaining crazy
That's what my work buddy says whenever we talk about what people are doing out there.
There have been some celebrities that I've felt sad about them dying. But more a nostalgic kind of sad that they weren't going to be making anymore good movies or records or whatever.
I was 2 when JFK was shot and I remember sitting in front of the B&W TV and my Mom crying.
I think Farrah finally got her wish for privacy.
As for dealing with my mortality? I am a lesbian and a lot of my friends died in their 20's and 30's. I've dealt with my mortality for many years.
There is a certain 5 year old who was told about MJ dying and she had no idea who he was. When she was told he's a bigger celeb than Hannah Montana, she was rather incredulous. No one is bigger than Hannah Montana in her world.
First ril, now Phoenix.
Robin, you are the Queen of Chat.
:-)
I remember when John Denver died in that plane crash. I LOVE his music and that was a bit shocking, but also I felt like he would've wanted to go like that.
MJ, sounds like this was his own doing. Too arrogant, in a way.
I feel sorry for Farrah's son. It seems like he's a bit messed up anyway, and she was probably the only one who had faith in him.
Hey, Whirl. I don't know about the Queen going. That may signal the end of an era that's already really long gone. It least it feels that way to me, looking from the outside in. I asked my stepdaughters a while back, what they thought about the Queen and the whole royal thingie. Said they didn't think of them at all, but what the hell, they brought in the tourists. I think that sums it up nicely for the younger generation.
Hi Phoenix!
I've been worrying about you - figured you were swamped with work, both work work and home work.
I agree with BT - I think both of your answers are right, girl, but my favorite answer is 'crazy'.
BT, I knew you were kidding, sweetie, no worries. I wrote that post yesterday without even thinking about the celeb death hooplah crappola, but I did think later on, too bad for me about the timing - so your comment on the previous post gave me the happy idea of a rant. Thanks for that, baby! Hope you all are having a killer good vacation.
Hi Sarah,
Yeah, and that's just the thing - ALL of us have our own clocks ticking away, like you said, some louder than others, and our own clocks, and those of our loved ones, are what really matter. The rest of this crap is too many 24 hour news and entertainment bullshit artists vying for our time, and unfortunately, getting a boatload of it from 'the populace'.
Same people who believe politicians write or even believe in the words in their speeches. Makes a person wanna go live somewhere away, wherever that is.
And I like that crazy quote of yours! Make a good bookend with a family favorite of ours - that I taught my girls -
You can't argue with stupid.
Yee-ha.
Meanwhile, Happy Saturday!!
Hey Chris!
We posted at the same time, sweetie!
I can say it was sad these people died young, and I feel absolutely no need to mourn, bemoan how the music/tv/film/enternatinment/world goddamn culture is going to now collapse for the loss of him/her/it. I mean, with five billion almost people on the planet, we surely have more talent available to fill the gap, right?
So I'm callous. I'm not really, just not going to act like the world is going to end.
jAnd I think you are right: When people go all bananas like you describe, they are really doing it for themselves. It is, at bottom, about them. Bleh.
Thriller came out when I was ten. (I've calculated it correctly now.) The truth is, Michael Jackson was my biggest childhood crush, hands down. Had all the buttons, t-shirts, posters, and memorabilia. Oh yeah - and all the moves from the videos. I watched The Making of Thriller I don't know how many times. A lot. And I'm sorry, but he was smoking hot in his Thriller days, even if he was a bit too skinny. Those eyes and that smile. It's too bad he just kept going with the surgeries. When I was ten, I was convinced I would grow up to either marry him or dance with him. Or both. You know "PYT"? He sang that for me. I was sure of it. (Only at ten years old, I was anything BUT a PYT. But you know, imagining MJ singing that to me got me through that. Yes, I was a strange ten year old. Why do you ask?) But yeah, MJ was one of my last links to childhood, and now that's gone. I've officially entered that period of life where my childhood celebrities/crushes will start to die off, one by one.
I'm a little more bummed about his death than I thought I'd be. The truth is, I was ashamed to have ever been a fan during the second molestation accusation; I figured where there's smoke, there's fire. But since then I've learned only too well what a determined prosecutor can accomplish with little or no evidence. And the media is really good at manipulating things. Remember that Senator whose girlfriend wound up dead while she was jogging? Thought he did it, for sure. Turns out he didn't. (But the whole prosecution/media thing is a whoooole other post, isn't it?) Nowadays I'm not so quick to judge. But yeah, the passage of a childhood. If there was any link back to it, MJ was it.
Unfortunately, I missed the whole Farrah Fawcett craze. I do admire that she and Ryan O'Neal basically stayed together all this time. Had no idea she was a feminist.
I tend to be on your side of the "okay, I've heard the news" when a celebrity dies. Since I didn't know them personally, it's hard for me to get overly worked up at their departing except, as Sarah indicated, in a nostalgic sort of way.
The exception would have to be John Lennon. While I didn't go off into the deep end, I was extremely grieved when I heard it, and still feel bad about it nearly thirty years later. Don't know why. George was always my favorite Beatle.
I can say it was sad these people died young, and I feel absolutely no need to mourn
Yep, that's my take. Sometimes something will strike me a bit harder: a sense of disbelief and maybe even a recognition of my own mortality. Or just sadness at the loss of something which could have been. But as you say, I'm feeling sad for myself. That's not the same as mourning.
Hairdressers again, huh?
Think I'm getting what the theme is now...
I think a lot of the craziness around celebrity death is that people come to believe some sort of connection has been created that does not really exist. It's the inversion of the Bugblatter Beast, which figures if you can't see it, then it can't see you. People figure that if they can see Michael and know every detail of his every day, then he must feel the same way about them.
I attended this really cool reading/concert/lecture with Harlan Coben and Missy Higgins. They chatted on stage and took questions from the very intimate audience of about 60 in a small local theater. At the end of it, I had become a huge fan, particularly of the young Australian singer-songwriter who seemed so real and approachable yet who is a mega star. She signed autographs and allowed people to take photos with her afterwards. I watched her eyes glaze over as several young women monopolized her with personal chit-chat that clearly meant nothing to her. She had been speaking into a spotlight all night, not to us as friends, and tomorrow she'd be playing to a crowd of 2,000. Today, she may not remember the venue, and I guarantee she does not remember a single person there (except of course Harlan Coben).
And Robin, I totally agree--seeing your own parents cry is a life altering moment.
Hi WW,
Exactly. you can feel bad for someone - an entertainer, perhaps- who died young and was talented, but it sure doesn't need to be all-consuming to the public. A huge amount of people lose their lives every day - and of that number - there are many incredibly talented people, and my guess is, if they had their own marketing machine and we weren't as vacuous a society as we've come to be, ,any of them, worldwide, would engender a lot more sorrow and respect on our collective selves.
Fredde, I see what you mean. Jackson meant a lot to you when you were growing up. I remember being sad when Jackie Kennedy Onassis Kennedy died - not because I knew her - but because her death signalled the end of the Camelot era for me - an era in which I was a little girl. It was a false era, of course. Jackie named the whole thing Camelot herself, came up with the concept and let the media feed on it, but still, it was the place and time I knew when I was young, so I mourned. For about an hour; maybe two. (That's just my way, doesn't mean I'm right.)
Hi Bevie,
Exactly with the nostalgia that Sarah mentioned. In the end, every experience is self-filtered (no big surprise, huh?) but what gets me is the 24-7 'news' coverage of a fantasy, basically.
Hey Sylvia,
Right there with you, of course.
Hi ril,
Now you've got me worried I have a them I didn't know about, honey.
I started laughing when I realized I'd mentioned hairdressers in both posts. (I write these firecracker fast; just 'let it flow', as they say - then read over for typos and let her rip, so half the time, I reread the next day and think, hmmmm, yeah, that IS what I think, or, every once in a while...huh? Who said that?)
So yeah, I'd better be exploring my hair thing...
Hi Pete,
Absolutely with the connection thing. I watched a few minutes of clips the other day about the comeback tour Michael Jackson was gonna do- and he was standing in front of a crowd of 'fans' (and I use that term in its full-blown sense here) - and some of them looked like they'd been handed some damn good drugs before MJ came out - they looked intensely in the moment, fried with inner glory, just being there. It made me sad for them.
And yeah - there's nothing like seeing the people who are the constants in your life, when you're little, fall apart. It's facing mortality for the first time, but not being able to give this feeling a name.
Interesting piece:
Some thoughts on Michael Jackson - Koax! Koax! Koax!
I'm not really any sadder about Michael Jackson's death than I already was about his life.
It was clear that this was a guy whose Maslovian pyramid took a sharp turn somewhere above "safety needs" and ended up with its tip pointing in a direction nobody else has ever been interested in going.
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