My second and final piece of writing for the Paley Center for Media is up on the Perspectives on Media section! (The first piece was on Def Comedy Jam, you may or may not remember.) It's the first link: "What Girls Want: 70 Years of Pop Idols and Audiences." If you have any interest in girls, pop, idols, or audiences, then I am sure you will find it brilliant and fascinating. But even if you don't, and if you read it, let me know what you think!

Also, sorry my blog sucks as of late. I've been doing other stuff. Though if you asked me what, I honestly couldn't tell you.

I refuse to believe that LFO was anything other than an ironic joke played on the US by the recording industry.

I'm published! Well, on the Paley Center for Media's website. If you have any interest in Def Comedy Jam and/or hip-hop and/or me, read "The Def Jam Generation."

Tell your friends. And feel free to contact me with thoughts/reflections/corrections. Or comment on the page, if you're one of those people who likes to do that.

BTW: The music that plays when you load the essay is not my fault. I tried to tell those guys that nobody likes web page sound that you can't mute. Also, the CEO cut out the NWA video, "Fuck the Police." Apparently, the Paley Center for Media is afraid of media. Whatever.

"Tomorrow" was a little ambitious, but it's still this week!
Last night, I went with a couple of classmates to see This Is It, which was awesome. I had two fears:
1. That the film would be filled with treakly confessionals and interviews, as some kind of redundant memorial service and/or overblown recuperative project.
2. That MJ's face would be scary on the big screen.

But no!
1. It was a straight-up concert film, the rehearsals stitched together to allow the audience to experience the concert as it was conceived. Full songs, full choreography, and some really valuable peeks into the rehearsal process. Director Kenny Ortega and the rest of the creative team knew what they were doing. It's all about the music, man. (By the way, Ortega's filmography is fascinating -- from Xanadu to Dirty Dancing to High School Musical. He's one of my new favorite people.)
2. Not scary, because the movie shows MJ as a whole person and not a subject for extended dissection, both in terms of framing (medium and long shots) and content (by capturing genuine human interactions).

Above all, what you get to see is Michael Jackson perform. Watching his body move in space is a recuperative project, and the most appropriate and meaningful memorial for the audience, who never knew the man himself.

And completely from a personal perspective and from this moment in my life: Often in my program I have to watch a lot of boring movies. I find interesting things in them, because that's what I'm trained to do; but sometimes I lose sight of whatever it is I like about this medium, because I spend the course of a movie I don't care about, trying to explain to myself why it has value. Although I always know why I study movies, I don't always know why I watch them. But then I see a film that has value because I really like it. This Is It is not visually distinctive or, you know, part of the French New Wave, but I was totally engrossed for almost two hours, and it made me happy. And that makes me happy, too.

A few things I've concluded from my disappearance into the Michael Jackson-scape, which I am finally beginning to come out of:

1. God gives some things to some people and some things to other people, and God gave MJ lots of things he didn't give to you or me.
2. One of those things was a completely incomprehensible sexuality.
3. Another of those things was an intensity in performance that makes it completely impossible to turn away from him.
4. I don't necessarily believe that MJ touched children inappropriately, but it's not possible to know (see #2).
5. It's okay to fetishize childhood. It's not okay to fetishize children. So if your behavior is going to be otherwise bizarre, it's best for everyone that you make the aforementioned distinction *really* clear. Because outsiders won't be able to. And that makes it very, very difficult for people to love you and your music without internal conflict.
6. Everything about "Dirty Diana" is right.
7. Don't beat the hell out of your kids. Not any of them. And definitley not the dreamy, sensitive one. Don't call them ugly. Especially not during adolescence. And especially not the dreamy, sensitive one. He'll be able to be an extraordinary entertainer even if you *don't* fuck him up forever.
8. We are each of us more complicated than any of us can fully understand.

I feel better having laid this out. I have been seriously crazy for two weeks trying to figure this man out, then trying to accept that I will never, ever be able to. Fully embracing #8 is my new lifetime goal.

I am concerned about od'ing on Simon and Garfunkel. I have gone way beyond the recommended daily listening for "The Boxer" today. Gorgeous verse on Central Park, though. Can't let it go:
"After changes upon changes, we are more or less the same -
After changes, we are more or less, the same."

That Paul Simon. Man.

OMG, Rihanna is SO WHINY. This is why I don't listen to the radio.

I bought an iPod shuffle today, and I am COMPLETELY AMAZED by it. It is SO small, and SO COOL.

I love Paul Simon so much that I wonder if my heart is too full to love anyone else as well as I should. Like my parents. Or Mos Def. Once I think I've been appropriately exposed to the man's music, I hear something new, or in a different way, and the world opens to reinterpretation. (Most recently that song was "American Tune.") How can one person manage to be so great?

I really appreciate my friend Jared because he listens to oldies and knows much more than I do, so I can get recommendations and things. It's great. Another thing about Jared is that he will watch anything. He watched Seven Brides for Seven Brothers with me one evening, and that is a real friend. I emailed him today when I had thoughts on the 1950s. I love the 50s. I wrote:

Jared:
You may know that I created a Buddy Holly station on Pandora, and that's been pretty much all I've been listening to at work this week. So I'm hearing all kinds of great things, including the upright bass. And also actually hearing the lyrics for a lot of these songs for the first time. And I really am beginning to understand the hysteria of parents in the 50s when they discovered their kids listening to these songs. This may seem obvious, but these songs are about sex. Not like how Frank Sinatra, et. al., sang about love and kinda meant sex. Or how Pat Boone sang about sex and never meant sex. But like how I heard Elvis sing the original lyrics of "Shake, Rattle and Roll" (http://www.history-of-rock.com/shake_rattle_and_roll.htm), and I almost covered my own ears. And don't get me started on how dangerous Jerry Lee Lewis must have appeared. I mean, even before he started marrying underage cousins.

Just needed to share my epiphany.

Peace out,
Claudia

Jared might think it's weird if I pasted his whole response, so I'll just say that he is very scared that I am turning into the 1950s, and that he'll find me smashing rock-and-roll albums in street demonstrations. Don't worry, Jared. I'm just sayin', is all. Just sayin'.

Today hasn't blown chunks, which I am taking time to appreciate. I've done a reasonable amount of work -- that is, several hours' worth today, and that doesn't happen that often.

One factor contibuting to my joyfulness is the Buddy Holly station I created yesterday on Pandora. I enjoy old-school rock and roll of many types, but my "Roots of Rock & Roll" station has been unsatisfying listening -- because what I really wanted was Rockabilly. I found that out this weekend, when I met the trivia boys at the Quarry House in Silver Spring. It was a farewell gathering for Seth, who will be travelling about Europe until he starts law school in the fall (somewhere - we don't know where yet!). Entering the bar on Saturday evening, I followed a man carrying a guitar. "Great," I groaned, "Live music tonight." (I tend not to like live music at bars. It's complicated.) Eventually the guitar man comes onto the stage in a suit that must have been willed to him by Bill Haley, and proceeds to announce that it's "Rockabilly Saturday Night." Which is when I understand why every table in the bar save ours is made up of 50-year-olds. And the band starts playing Buddy Holly and the Crickets, and I realized what had been missing from my life -- or at least, from my Pandora life: two guitars, a drum kit, and -- most essentially -- a stand-up bass.

So I've been listening to not only Buddy Holly but also to his brothers in the country-Western/ rhythm-and-blues melting pot of hard-strumming greathenness: pre-jumpsuit Presley, Carl "Blue Suede Shoes" Perkins, Gene Vincent, Chuck Berry, Ritchie Valens, and ol' cousin-marryin' Jerry Lee Lewis.

The drawback to Rockabilly at work is that it requires rocking out. I feel self-conscious when I'm hit by the need to rock out in my cube, because nobody else ever does. I mean, we all listen to music during the day, and I haven't seen as much as a head-nod on a co-worker since I started this job. But I've just had to get over it today -- I can no longer be concerned about the judgment of people who clearly don't appreciate the value of the connection between the drum beat and the heart beat. So up their noses with rubber hoses, because I'm waltzing to my own tune over here. Or head-bobbing to my own guitar licks -- whatev.

When I run my own office, we're gonna have dance breaks.