Michael Jackson

I have to admit that I have never bought a Michael Jackson record in my life. Not a one, not Thriller, not Off The Wall, nothing. Back in the 70's I considered myself a rocker and to those unfamiliar with our motto, it was, “If it ain’t Rock, it ain’t music”. As we moved forward into the late 70's and early 80's, I was kind of adrift when it came to popular music. Disco was a thing that was making my stomach turn at every bar and dance club I went too. Disco babes and dancing queens (both female and male, as it turned out) were not even on my radar. I certainly didn’t have any time for the namby pamby stylings of musical acts such as Peaches and Herb, Donna Summers or God forbid, KC and the Sunshine Band. I rejoiced in teasing one of my best friends who was a fervent Stones fan about the band going disco with Emotional Rescue. I kind of stayed in my own groove and celebrated every time some real music came out. A ray of sunshine in a bleak musical landscape, so to speak.

Tape decks in cars became my outlet for music, I don’t think I tuned in to an AM station for years in a row and only rarely allowed an FM station to be played. My musical life was made up of home made tapes. In fact, the whole musical repertoire of my wedding reception consisted of 90 minute tapes that I made, just to ensure dance music didn’t somehow sneak in.

All of that changed when I first saw the video of Billie Jean on NBC’s Friday Night Videos, our only source of music videos at the time. He took elements from every genre of music and somehow melded them into a cohesive and seductive form of music. It wasn’t Rock, it wasn’t Disco, it wasn’t R&B and it wasn’t Pop, but yet it was somehow all of them, all at once. And he didn’t so much as dance as much as he glided. His movements didn’t seem to be a series of connected routines like John Travolta laid on the world in Saturday Night Fever. He had a more like a natural way to him, like a flowing river. You certainly couldn’t go into a bar and dance like Michael Jackson did, that just wasn’t realistic. But you could go in and pretend you could dance like Michael Jackson and no one would fault you for it.

The hits that followed were more of the same, each seemed to move the entertainment apect of music and videos forward. Even as the number of hits started to fall off, there was still a quality to them. The morphing faces on Black and White were, at the time stunning. It still didn’t prompt me to go out and buy any of his records, that’s just not who I was. But it certainly didn’t stop me from admiring a man who could take such divergent musical styles and history and make them into a musical entity that everyone appeared to enjoy and tap at least their toes to.

The only thing I really can’t forgive him for was introducing the Moonwalk to the rest of the world. It was nothing short of embarrassing to see grown men, usually somewhat overly refreshed, trying to do this step in a crowded bar. Man, I still cringe at the thought and to be honest, I still can't do it.

Crime of the Century

I have never been one to imagine myself as a master criminal who could outsmart the police at every step of the way. I got my taste of that through the thousands of novels, television shows and movies over the years to satisfy any craving for that sort of notoriety. When even that wasn’t enough, I came up with a game show years before the onslaught of reality based television shows became the staple of everyday entertainment. I had envisioned a show called Crime of the Century, where an individual or a team of people would try and crack a safe house that had security measures in place to try and prevent them from stealing the treasure held within. A heady combination of the Thomas Crown Affair and The Pink Panther. Their task was to out-squirm, out-smart, out-do, out-plan and bamboozle anyone in anyway to make off with the goods. I even had the theme song selected which was the title cut of an album by Supertramp (a great cut if you have never heard it www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdXU_M9t004 ).

I don’t know if there is a similar show out there today, I started to look out of curiosity but stopped when I realized that there are literally thousands of reality shows on the air around the world. But if it hasn’t been done, now might be the time to do it. With the economy tanking, it seems more and more people are turning to the dark side when it comes to establishing an income stream. Some cloak their thievery in white collars and some just rob in plain sight.

After reading about the many investment brokers and advisors that have either swindled or willfully turned a blind eye to problems, I have come to only one solution as to why this happened. They are stupid, let me repeat that, they are stupid. I had always thought that if someone is making multi-millions on Wall St. or Bay St. there must be a gem of a mind behind that accomplishment. Now, it turns out that just like the wizard behind the curtain, there is no gleanable intelligence going on behind those whitened smiles. Their rise to the top of the wage earners of the country was a matter of RPRTRP (right place, right time, right parent). The Madoff sons appear to be prime examples of this. Their defense seems to be, “Sorry, we were too stupid to realize that there was this massive fraud occurring before our very eyes by our own father”.

I am sure I could pull hundreds of names out of the hat, the Madoff kids aren’t the only guilty ones, and point out that most of them would rather plead stupidity over savvy when it comes to market machinations and getting arrested. Rather than thinking with an independent mind, they would rather put on the blinders and focus on the pot of gold at the end of the bank vault. They seem to believe or maybe it was beaten into their heads that free thinking is verboten to the worthiness of any investment.

Of course, the in plain sight thief isn’t much better. With the Darwin Awards (http://www.darwinawards.com ) which among other things highlight the serial stupidity of most criminals and the reality television shows like Cops, America’s Most Wanted and The First 48 (I always wanted to do a Canadian version of this show called The First 24, where cops try and solve a crime before they finish a case of beer) which show us endless reels of the dumbest, stupidest criminals ever assembled. On that evidence we can easily formulate their thinking. Without a doubt, they all think they can outsmart the cops. They seem to think that every police force or intelligence operation around the world is comprised of deputies like Barny Fife and Enos Strates. The bubble only seems to burst when the cuffs hit the wrists and they then realize that cops are not dumb. The moment you start to believe you can outsmart someone, is the moment when you start to fail. That lesson is universal, from the street to the boardroom and from your marriage to your career, but unfortunately no one seems to acknowledge it, let alone appreciate it.