So, Apparently Michael Jackson Had a Monkey's Paw

* In the event that the above title makes absolutely no sense to you, allow me to refer you to here.

So, apparently somewhere in his worldwide travels Michael Jackson acquired a monkey's paw. And sometime in the last week he decided to use it. "I wish that the whole world would love me again" he said. Done.

Yes, in another one of life's ironies Michael Jackson died on the eve of embarking on his "comeback tour" and in so doing managed to revive his career and image far more effectively than he ever could have done while alive. I believe that it's quite probable that his music will be more popular now than it has been in 15 years. And anyone currently under 10 years old will probably grow up knowing about "creepy Michael" only as a side-note instead of the main attraction it had become for the rest of us these last 10 years.

I look around at all the tributes being paid to him and I am quite perplexed. I can't escape the feeling that no matter how you look at it a disservice has been done to someone. Although he still had lots of fans (as evidenced by the sold-out venues for his planned tour), most of the world was done with him. The general consensus seemed to be "Yeah, you were a good entertainer for a long time, and you made some great music. But you are just too creepy, and we can't get past it." Even the majority of the black community had turned on him. Seriously, you were more likely to hear a black man defend O.J. than defend Michael Jackson. I think Chris Rock's comments from Never Scared in 2004 sum it up pretty well:

Damn. It's all fucked. The world's fucked up man. Michael Jackson lost his mind. What the hell is wrong with Michael? Another kid? Another kid? I thought it was groundhog's day when I heard that shit. Another kid. Get the fuck out of here. That's how much we love Michael. We love Michael so much. We let the first kid slide. Another kid. I'm fuckin done. I'm done with Michael. I was a fan my whole life. I am fuckin' done! I'm handing in my glove. I saw Michael on 60 Minutes. Ed Bradley tried his best to make Michael look like a mammal. Someone that drinks water and breathes air, right? He gave Michael the easiest question in the world, the easiest GED questions in the world, and Michael could not pass the test. He said, "Oh Michael, do you think it's proper for a 45 year old man to sleep in the bed with 13 year old boys?"

[as Michael Jackson ]"Yes".

[as Ed Bradley]"Ok, ok, oh let me rephrase that question. Michael, would you let your children sleep in a bed with a 45 year old man that has been accused of child molestation?"

[as Michael]: "Yes".

Ed Bradley looked at Michael Jackson like he wanted to say, "Nigga, is you crazy?" Like he wanted to take the 60 Minutes clock and push the shit forward and say "get the fuck off my show!"Did you see Michael going to court? Motherfucker going to court 20 minutes late! What kind of black man gonna go to court 20 minutes late? This ain't Barbershop 2. This is court motherfucker. And he ain't even wearing a real suit to court. Coming in there looking like Captain Crunch. Shit, who's your lawyer, Franken Berry? You better take your black ass to Banana Republic to get you a decent suit. What is up with that boy?

So now the guy dies and all of a sudden it's like he was still the beloved figure that he was the year after Thriller was released. Like the last 27 years didn't happen. I'm all for paying tribute to someone's life, but it all seems just a bit phony to me. It's like, if you really were still a huge Michael Jackson fan, where you been the last 10 years? Where were you to show your support for him and let him know that you still stood by him while he was still alive and could have benefited from it

To be clear, there were a number of celebrities and family that really did stick by him through it all. I'm not talking about them. Nor am I talking about the fans that bought all of his albums and even the ones that were psychotic enough to stand out front of the courtroom and cheer for him during his last molestation trial. What I'm talking about are the endless parade of celebrities that are using his death to shove themselves in the spotlight for an extra 30 seconds. The media pirranhas who have made a living on blasting his every move for the last 15 years and now will put out an endless series of "special tribute" issues. Just last week, Us Weekly ran a page making fun of "Wacko Jacko fashion". What do you think the odds are that this week's issue will be a gushing 20+ pages of over-the-top sentimentality? And I'm talking about the legions of "fans" who were all too happy to pass on an endless parade of Michael Jackson jokes over the last 2 decades and now will shake their head and mutter something about "the tragedy of losing someone so young."

Look, I don't have a problem celebrating the guy's musical accomplishments (of which there are many), or somewhat looking the other way on some of his private issues (if nothing else, it is true that he was never convicted of any of his alleged sex crimes; though of course he settled more than one out of court). I think I am just a big believer that how people talk about you when you're dead should be how they talked about you when you were alive. In sci-fi terminology, I guess I am looking for more Speakers. A person's life should be remembered by the actions they took and the effect they had on others, not on how we later choose to remember those actions and effects. You wanna know how history gets rewritten? It's subtle ways like these

As a final note on this, I am reminded of the Japanese author Mishima. He was rather obsessed with death and basically believed that all things (people, plants, animals, or artistic creations) should be cut down at their peak physical form and beauty so as to avoid decay and be preserved that way for all time. You can't help but wonder, how many of those that died so young actually ended up preserving a far better legacy for themselves? People like Buddy Holly, Richie Valence, Kurt Cobain, Heath Ledger, and Sam Cooke come to mind. Did we miss out on 30 more years of genius, or a tragic downfall? We'll never know. If you could have asked him just before he died, would Michael Jackson have been willing to trade the years from ~1987 to 2009 to be remembered for all time as simply the greatest musical performer ever? I wonder what he would have said.

Are You F*!&ing Kidding Me?!?!?

You may want to mark this date down, because I am almost speechless. Please read this story. It redefines the word "ridiculous". It's the kind of thing where if it happened in a movie, everyone would talk about how far-fetched and unrealistic it was. If it happened on April 1st, you'd be absolutely certain that it was an April Fool's Day joke. And if you got this story forwarded to you on any other day, you'd be positive that it was from The Onion.

This is my favorite part of the story (which makes absolutely no sense if you haven't read it yet): "Democrats scored a tactical victory by seizing the official Senate gavel, which is large and made of black walnut, its whack echoing through the chamber with authority. Senator George H. Winner Jr., who was presiding over the Republican session, was left to peck the table in front of him with a small gavel used by Republicans for their private conferences.
“It’s better than the eyeglass case I was using before,” Mr. Winner said."

My Marginally Exciting Life

OK, so it's been two weeks and thus it's probably time for a new post. While there have been some new topical developments in the world (health care proposals, new financial regs, the Iranian election) I am not currently in the mood to dive into any of them yet, so instead I'll just give a brief update on my life the past couple weeks.

The 30th b-day party on the 13th was a lot of fun. All week leading up to it the weather forecast just kept looking crappier and crappier and I woke up on Saturday morning to some dark skies and some pretty bad rain. So it looked like our outdoor extravaganza would be turned into a house party. Fortunately though, the weather cleared up significantly around 1:30 and it turned into a really nice day. We fired up the grill and got the ladder golf going and I even got to do my first (and probably last) keg stand. We headed inside at about 8:15 and started playing some poker. Admittedly, that's when the evening starts to get a little hazy for me and I started to do some really smart things like forgetting how many cards are on the board in Texas Hold 'Em. I did make it till almost 5:00 A.M. though and I was the last one awake, so that's something of an accomplishment (right?).

Last Wednesday I went to the Cubs/Sox game with some work friends. If you're wondering which game that was, it's the game right before the Cubs decided to have 3 miraculous comeback wins in a row. Other than the outcome of the game, it was a lot of fun. The Cubs had been 4-0 in games I attended this year so my streak finally ended, which was kind of a bummer. As of right now I am only scheduled to go to 1 more game this year. If that holds, it will be the least number of Cubs games I've gone to in probably 9 years. I'm still convinced that the Cubs will make the playoffs and it will be game 5 of the NLDS when Anabelle will decide to make her appearance in the world. Of course, for that to happen the Cubs would have to actually win a playoff game, something they've failed to do in their last 9 attempts.

This past weekend I went down to Houston to visit all my peeps down there. Played golf a few times (terribly of course) and took the nieces and one of my nephews to see Up, which is now probably my favorite Pixar movie after Toy Story. Other than that, just did some relaxing and tried to stay out of the 100-degree/85% humidity heat.

The big mission over the next couple weeks is to finish the conversion of the spare bedroom/my man-cave into Anabelle's room. We're planning on doing all the painting and adding the chair rail (and if you know what that is you're ahead of where I was 10 days ago) over the 4th of July weekend and then I get to build the crib, which came last Wednesday. Hopefully, all my years of IKEA furniture-building have honed my skills. I have yet to have a piece of furniture that I've built collapse on me, but I most definitely have built some contraptions that I wouldn't trust my daughter's life with. Hopefully, it's somewhat idiot-proof.

Finally felt Anabelle kick for the first time last night. My juvenile mind instantly conjured up a scene from Billy Madison ("You feel that kick; he's gonna be a soccer player. Yes he is") and then I started picturing her with a little forehead light, whistling the theme from The Great Escape as she tries to figure out a way out of her temporary home.

Yeah, I'm definitely mature enough for fatherhood . . .

The End of an Era . . .

So, with my birthday less than 7 hours away this looks to officially be the last post of my 20s. And since there's not a whole lot of "topical" stuff that I have a lot to say about right now I'd thought I'd just do a little bit (ok, a lot bit) of musing on how I feel about growing older.

Quite frankly, I never saw this coming. It's not that I ever had some premonition of doom that I wouldn't ever make it to my 30th, it's just that you never really picture it. More than anything, it just never really feels "real". For the vast majority of your life, you look forward to each birthday, happy and excited to be "growing up". Then you hit about 24/25. The novelty of being able to drink legally has worn off. You stay out till 3:00 A.M. on a work night just frequently enough to remind yourself why you don't do it more often. If you're really lucky (like me), you find someone you love and get married and start to think about your career rather than just your job. Your life starts to settle down a little bit and you start to think that you've arrived at some destination. You're grown.

But then a real funny thing happens. Or actually, a funny thing doesn't happen. Time refuses to stand still for you. It has this stubborn way of continuing to move on and on with no regard to your personal agenda. It's like you're travelling on a bus and just when you thought you were about to pull into the station it just keeps driving by instead at the same speed it's always gone. And once that finally sinks in, you get hit with the thought that the bus is only going to stop once; at the end. And you really have no idea what road it's going to take you down and how short/long that road's going to be.

The strange thing is, none of the rules have changed. And you know that none of the them have changed. It's you that's changed, and your reaction to the rules changes with it. Had I read the above couple paragraphs 10 years ago, I doubt I would have found anything enlightening about them at all. I never had any delusions of immortality. But there's a vast gulf between "knowing" something in the abstract and "knowing" something through experience. On one level, I "know" what it would feel like to witness the Cubs win the World Series, but I don't think that I really do. I "know" what it's going to feel like to hold my daughter for the first time, but at the same time I couldn't be more clueless.

There are just some things that have to be experienced to be understood.

That's a sentence that probably would have driven me nuts up until a couple of years ago. Hell, I'm sure that there will be many times where it will drive me nuts in the future. Nobody likes being told that they can't understand something, especially for a reason as seemingly arbitrary as the year on their birth certificate. "You'll understand when you're older" is probably one of the most infuriating sentences in the English language to be on the receiving end of. A lot of times, it's just a way of saying "I can't really defend my position against yours, so I'm just going to assume I'm right since I'm older". But sometimes it isn't. Sometimes it's true. I think part of growing wise instead of just growing old is recognizing the difference between the two.

The expression goes "age is just a number", and that's absolutely true. It's not that I've received some bolt of lightning over the last 24 hours that makes me feel the way I do. These are feelings that have steadily brewed over the last 5-6 years, and this occasion is simply the lightning rod for coalescing and expressing them. Or maybe the moment of enlightenment happens sometime over the next 6 hours. I'll let you know tomorrow.

I titled this entry "the end of an era" and I think that's about right. As my friend Joe succinctly put it last week "we're not kids anymore" and although that's probably been true for a while now it only really "feels true" now. I look at this time now much as I did as college was coming to an end. I had an unbelievably great time, but I was ready to move on. The last thing I would have wanted was to live the college lifestyle for the rest of my life. Yet even though I was ready, there is always the tinge of sadness that you are leaving something that you remember so warmly along with more than a little apprehension about venturing into the unknown.

As I have been writing this, I realized that I'm talking about becoming a parent at least as much (if not more) as I am about growing older. I can't help it; the two are inextricably linked to me right now.

So time marches on, and so we all must march with it. I stand here on the eve of my 30th and I can honestly say that I'm pretty fulfilled. I have not achieved perfection, because that is impossible. There are always disappointments, regrets, and (possibly the worst of all) the "what if?"s. But I like what I have done with my life, and I'm proud of what I have accomplished. Between an amazing wife, unbelievable friends, and a loving family I have more wonderful memories and incredible stories than I ever could have imagined. But most importantly, I am happy with the person I have become and am. The challenge for me now is to live the next 30 years (or however long I have left) so that I can stand here and say the same thing. I am filled with equal parts excitement and terror at the prospect, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Torture and Newborn Babies

Another post from our guest blogger Joe Mays. Please note that I've actually had this in my hands for 12 days and just haven't posted it until now, so this was written before the Cheney and Obama speeches on torture. Just wanted to clarify so that when Weir bitches about it not being timely the fault is mine, not Joe's.

I was thoroughly shocked last month when I discovered that roughly half of the country finds torture acceptable, but I'm even more disturbed at the public discourse around the practice. The debate that is constantly running on all of the 24 hour news networks always seems to be centered on one question -- does torture work?

This is completely backwards to me. Let me explain myself with an analogy...
Let's say your child is screaming on the seat behind me on an airplane. One way to solve the problem is to pull out my NRA-approved assault rifle and blow his cute little face off. The screaming will stop. Problem solved! My tactics worked!

I don't do that because it's immoral.

There are also unintended consequences. If I didn't blow a hole in the plane and we all crashed, I'd probably get mauled by everyone else on the plane - even those who agree that your screaming baby is annoying! Torture has consequences, too. There is a pretty strong consensus that the president did the right thing by *not* releasing the two-thousand or so torture photographs as demanded by the courts recently. Commanders on the ground noted that releasing the photos would cause an escalation in violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, and some of our troops would die because of the torture and humiliation the pictures portray.

Finally, if the moral issue *and* the fact that I would be making enemies out of allies aren't good enough reasons, the legal punishment for killing a newborn is overwhelming. I'd probably get a**raped in jail for the rest of my life. This is precisely why we need to prosecute those who torture -- a lot of people don't have any moral issue with torture, and some even think it is perfectly legal.

They are mistaken. The U.S. hanged Japanese commanders who waterboarded our soldiers during WWII. These executions, along with the treaties we signed banning the practice, made our nation's stance on the issue clear - torture is immoral and illegal.

If you're one of the people who always thought that torture is a good war strategy and should be used daily on everybody we capture, that's another discussion. I clearly disagree with you, and I expect our conversation will get as far as me telling you to f*ck off, and perhaps you saying the same.

This post is directed at those who used to think torture was immoral, but have changed their minds because they believe Cheney when he says "it works" (we know he's never lied before). Support for torture started increasing just after the attacks on the WTC and has continued to rise. Two months after 9/11, only 32% of Americans thought torture was acceptable. Apparently, the "torture isn't wrong because it works" argument is catching on...