20 Reasons Michael Jackson Was Cool

I would kill for this jacket.

Chartattack.com – the online home of the late, great Chart Magazine, has published my list of the top twenty reasons MJ was awesome. (It could have probably withstood another polish, but I wrote it quickly and while misty-eyed. Forgive me, and enjoy.)

Michael Jackson

Moonwalker

This performance of Billie Jean, taped for an NBC special, was featured on a VHS about the making of the Thriller video. I can’t tell you how many times I watched it or how many hours were spent teaching myself the moonwalk, the spin, the kick, the pelvic thrusts. I would practice in my bedroom, imagining I was him, imagining that I could do what he could do.

I couldn’t of course. The whole point was that no one could. He sang and danced in ways that were foreign and exciting to me. His videos expanded my imagination and made me think of music in a whole new way. He was my first hero, my first idol. I bought black pleather pants and a glitter glove and a t-shirt that said “Beat It.” Yes, I was a bit of a nerd about it. But it was my first experience of being a fan. Of dreaming about something larger than myself and the immediate world around me. Of imagining what was out there and what I could be or become.

His decline – in popularity, in mental and physical health – did little to diminish my fascination and yes, even fondness of and for him. His obsession with surgically altering his appearance, his love/hate relationship with his incredible fame and even his eventual freakshow status – I empathized, I wished for him better handlers, better friends, a better life.

Then there were the things that were harder to reconcile – the charges of sexual abuse, the Jesus Juice, the admissions that he had slept in the same bed as the children he befriended. Though I clung, perhaps too long and with too much vigor, to the hope that these were lies created and designed to extort him of his wealth, the truth is that I don’t know if I’ll ever be certain of what the truth was. Maybe I don’t want to know.

But I didn’t know and love Michael Jackson the man. I knew and loved Michael Jackson the performer, the icon, the idea. A little boy with more talent in his soul than anyone I’ve ever met. A little boy who was beaten and abused and who nonetheless created music that was as joyous and full of hope and optimism as any I’ve ever heard. From “I Want You Back” to “Rock With You” to “P.Y.T.” to “The Way You Make Me Feel” to “Remember The Time,” MJ has provided a soulful soundtrack to my life that has influenced every idea I have about music and entertainment.

There has never been and will never be another Michael Jackson. His influence is everywhere and he did as much to create our modern pop culture as anyone else I can think of. With him dies a part of music history and a part of my own history. He was a genius and a freak, an inspiration and a broken man. The most famous person on the planet, he lived a life none of us will ever understand, know or experience and we all richer for the contributions he made to our world.

He was my first hero.

Photograph by Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images. Stolen from Slate.com

Attention Citizens of Toronto

Killer

Good news! Apparently if you have no priors and can hold down a job, it is now all but legal to attack complete strangers on public transportation and kill them.

The Toronto Star reports today that John Paul Vallon has been handed a sentence of 10 years (minus 4 years and 4 months “credit” – though the crime took place only 2 years ago) for his lethal attack on student Nick Brown. On April 13, 2007, both men were on a near empty subway car in the early morning hours when Vallon attacked Brown, stabbed him 14 times and left him for dead. For no reason. At all.

So Brown is dead and Vallon will be a free man by 2014. For his part, Ontario Superior Court Justice Eugene Ewaschuk blamed not Vallon for the attack, but rather, the knife Vallon was carrying: “That’s what brought it all on. He got the knife and he was looking for trouble.” Ewaschuk is the same judge who sentenced two reservists to ten years for the stomping death of a homeless man in Moss Park.

So the next time you feel the need to release a little stress and get some of that rage out, go ahead and attack a fellow citizen. Chances are you’ll be free before the 905 gets a hockey team.

Behold the Power of The Lord

A Holy French Fry

As well all know, Jesus is all-powerful and can basically do whatever the hell he wants. This includes having his sacred image appear on everything from bagels to pancakes to the late Nell Carter’s ass. (Though that last one can’t be confirmed, I do have it on good authority such an event once delayed production on a third season episode of  “Gimme A Break.”)

Here’s a montage of news reports detailing the various times and places The Lord has popped up in America in just the past few years.

The Value of Determination

Not fun.

Two relatively unknown fighters, Toby Imada and Jorge Masvidal, squared off back in May at the Bellator Fighting Championships IV. Despite getting his face mashed into putty in the first two rounds, Imada came back in the third with an inverted triangle choke that may very well be the submission of the year. Brutal yet ingenious, it highlights something MMA has taught me again and again over the years – just because someone looks to be losing doesn’t mean they are. And the fight ain’t over until it’s over.

Misawa

Mitsuharu Misawa

Last Saturday, just as Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler” was released in the land of the rising sun, tragedy struck as Japanese wrestling legend Misawa died in the ring. And though the story of a past-his-prime wrestler (Misawa was 46) pushing himself to the point of breaking may draw comparison to Aronofsky’s film, that’s about all Mitsuharu Misawa had in common with “Randy the Ram.”

A former high school wrestler, Misawa rose to fame in Japan’s puroresu world in the 1980s as the second Tiger Mask. After removing the mask mid-match in 1990, Misawa would rise in popularity, becoming one of, if not the most popular wrestler in Japan for the next decade.

In 2000 Misawa formed Pro Wrestling NOAH, an organization revered around the wrestling world for the quality of it’s in-ring action and talent. Misawa was fighting in a tag-team match in the main event at a NOAH show in Hiroshima when he took a back suplex that rendered him unconscious and which caused the immediate spinal cord damage that killed him.

To call Mitsuharu Misawa a great wrestler is to understate the case. Renowned pro-wrestling critic and reporter Dave Meltzer has been reviewing matches from around the world since the early 1980s. In that time he has awarded 65 matches a 5-star rating. 24 of those matches featured Misawa. A multi-time world champion who developed an international reputation among fans despite rarely wrestling outside of Japan, Misawa built his reputation not with hype, catchphrases or elaborate gimmicks, but with the quality of his work, his connection with the fans and above all, his love and passion for wrestling.

That wrestling somehow isn’t “real” or that it is in some way fraudulent or “fake” is both the most common and the least pertinent criticism of the art. Those who wish to dismiss it out of hand will point to the pre-determined outcomes as reason enough. But wrestling is not sport. It is theatre, a spectacle of athletics that uses sport as it’s canvas upon which to paint stories of pain and hope and victory and loss.

Mitsuharu Misawa was an artist who died in the creation of his art and who will continue to inspire others as the legacy of his work and his contributions to the form continue to influence and inspire the next generation.

Misawa vs. Kenta Kobashi - 5 Star Classic