[...learned #173] RIPMJ

June 26th, 2009 Graig

Michael Jackson, age 50, died suddenly yesterday from apparent cardiac complications.
News media is going apesh*t over the story, and last night’s TV schedule saw much of its regular programming preempted for hastily put-together retrospectives. I wasn’t arsed to watch any of them though, as there was a repeat of Survivorman and Law & Order UK to be had.

Now, I wasn’t ever what you’d call a Michael Jackson fan. My appreciation for him started with Weird Al Parodies and didn’t quite move on beyond that for most of my juvenile years. I was just old enough to witness the rise of Thriller but Bad was “my” Michael Jackson and he’d already started his descent into lunacy by that point. His hair had been burnt off on a Pepsi shoot, he built a playground called “Neverland Ranch” (a surprisingly self-aware allusion to his own Peter Pan complex) on his property, he bought a monkey and John Merrick’s remains, and he was experimenting with plastic surgery with the fixation a crack addict has for his vice.

By the time he turned 30 the spectacle of Michael Jackson: Freakshow had already started taking over the spectacle of Michael Jackson: King of Pop and his music was overshadowed by his not-so-private life. That his music was becoming less and less innovative and therefore less and less relative didn’t help any. If you look at it, the man contributed something incredible to music for about twenty years of his life, and something even more incredible to popular culture for another twenty.

Michael Jackson is a legend, of that there’s no doubt. And of that legend, there are two sides… all the incredible ground he broke musically and culturally, and then the utterly fascinating character study of a egotistical man-child who refused to grow up.

Oh yeah, and Farrah Fawcett died yesterday too.

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[...i ate #173] tacos

June 26th, 2009 Graig

Bought some hard taco shells, fried up some ground beef (with garlic salt, cumin, mexican chili powder and paprika), diced up some yellow pepper and shredded some lettuce… JJ wasn’t too sure what to make of the meal at first, but once he saw how big of a mess they made he opted for seconds, which, for him, is pretty surprising. I call that a success.

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[...consumed all new #173] Casablanca

June 23rd, 2009 Graig

Yes, that’s right, I had never seen Casablanca before.
Now I have.

What surprised me about the film was how involving it was. It’s a romantic drama set during World War II before the Americans got involved, and France was coming to terms with its German occupation. Not that I’ve watched many “war films” but so few World War II films that take place during the war are from outside of the soldiers or generals etc. perspective. It’s usually all about the military. This one, it’s about the exceptional people who are trying to live during the war, and I didn’t realize how resonant that theme was.

Another first, it was also my first Humphrey Bogart movie. I had to wonder afterwords if Bogey is always that…limited an actor in his. The flashback sequence of Rick in Paris as a jovial, care-free lovebird seemed painful for him, a force smile more like a wince or a grimace. Towards the end, he emotes a romantic stoicism, which is a variation of his tough-guy stoicism and his chummy stoicism.

I was most impressed with the film’s score, which tended to be mostly ambient, in-scene music, giving it an overall natural feel, and standing apart from so many other films of the era whose scores never, ever let up.

Brilliant? Classic? If it can weather over half a century and still come out as a fully engrossing feature, the yes, it’s everything they say it is. If you only know the cliches, you don’t know anything.

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