Tenderoni

As a society, we are so engaged on tragedy. We love to watch people fall, self-destruct, and go down in fiery storm in a whole slew of other cliff diving behavior. It makes us feel alive (ugh). Hell, we will even push someone off the cliff, get the car in neutral and help sky rocket that sucker straight down the Grand Canyon, especially when that someone is elevated so high with personal accomplishment and successful career aspirations. 

Poor Michael Jackson.

The Fans! The Support! The kind words! Too late, huh? Where was everyone when he was on trial? Oh, probably making even more accusations and raising the middle finger in disdain and disgust.

Fans are coming out of the woodwork, even people who weren’t born to watch him at the peak of his career and people who only know the chorus of  “Billy Jean” because they play it in Fanueil Hall, suddenly mourn the loss of The Great Gloved One.  Isn’t funny how everyone suddenly cares? Two weeks ago, a huge majority of people would have made some joke about him and his diddle with the youngin’s…”Wacko Jacko.”

It’s pretty typical actually; when someone is high, we want to break them down, be lesser than us, expose all sorts of faults, to make a person “more real.” But, when the inflicted fault from years of Media torture finally ends in the tragic loss of life, everyone hypocritically says that person was a genius, and a legend, and the best that ever was. While in the meantime, they pull out the old Us Weekly cover story about this aforementioned celebrity’s transgressions on Hollywood Blvd or in the confines of his own home and cry over the loss of life, so soon and so talented…

WE did this. What did WE expect from someone who’s normalcy in life was preforming in front of millions of people? Of course he wouldn’t view life the way you or I did, but no one will ever agree on what it means to be normal in the first place, especially any of the great minds of History. Sure, Mike didn’t cut off his own ear, but he did come out of plastic surgery looking like Skeletor. Who cares…his face, his life, his own “normal.”

I am truly saddened by Mike’s death. Maybe more selfishly than anything else: he represents a piece of my childhood and a piece from every other kid growing up in the 1980′s. He was and is an Icon and represented something in our lives: innocence, unprecedented awe, Pong, whatever. A little piece of our own lives has passed away too. The passing of heroes or icons of our past, means that we are getting older and time is passing much faster than we ever could have imagined.