It’s been forever since I posted here and life is still such a whirlwind that I don’t think I’ll be updating regularly in the foreseeable future.  That said, I had another interesting Baltimore interaction on Friday that I have to jot down, more for the benefit of my cluttered memory than anything else.  The Michael Jackson outpouring of all kinds of public sentiment has dominated the news in the last few days, and I know it will all blow over in a few more – these things have a more predictable lifespan than any person’s actual lifespan.  I don’t want to weigh in with personal feelings, mainly because I don’t really have any.  I was less than a year old when Thriller was released, and by the time I even cared about music, Jackson had been supplanted by Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and my penchant for ill-fitting jeans.

In my little take on the world, this whole event would have been reduced to yet another example of celebrity culture gone awry –a kid growing up in the limelight, the eventual downfall, and then the public’s sudden turnaround of grief and fawning when an unexpected death occurs.  Quite predictable, really, except after his death was announced, even I was surprised by what I experienced on the city streets.

Thursday evening MJ’s death was all over the news.  Matt and I were sitting on the front porch of our house and saw the normal mix of yuppie workers trying their hand at city living (I hope we don’t fall into this category!) and people who have various levels of, um, street cred (dang it, if those are my options, I AM the yuppie professional).  We saw several tricked out cars blaring music through open windows, but instead of hip-hop, classic MJ songs were thumping for the neighborhood to enjoy.  And when I say classic, I mean like Jackson 5 or early solo career classic.  Matt and I couldn’t figure it out – 4 or 5 of these cars were occupied by groups of young men who were definitely too young to remember MJ as anything but an anomaly and pariah.  We even laughed a little bit.  You would have to see our street on a normal evening to fully understand just how surreal it is to have MJ tunes bumping on the block.

On Friday on my lunch break I walked around the neighborhoods that surround my office on the Westside.  Again, more MJ – at the storefront music label that I’m not convinced is strictly for recording deals, pouring out of a barbershop with a door open to catch any breeze at the sweltering midday.  And on the side of a boarded-up building, 4 old men around a classic car in need of some serious work were listening to MJ on a cheap little boombox.  Three men were slowly washing the car in the pulsing sun, and one sat back in a white plastic chair, sipping a sweating bottle of Coke.  My curiosity got the better of me (and fyi grandma, it was a busy street, there were plenty of pedestrians, etc.).  I walked up and said hello to the man sitting in the chair (mainly because he was the only one in the shade) and I said something about MJ passing away and that the song that was playing, ABC, was great.

The old man smiled and said “Yeah, last few years that boy been crazier than sh–.”

I’m sure I had a funny expression on my face, but fortunately the man was looking at the boombox, not at me. He shook his head a little, “But back then, he done us proud.  He done us real proud.”

I didn’t have anything to say.  I didn’t have anything I really could say – I didn’t experience the mystique of Michael when I was growing up, but more importantly, I wasn’t there to witness just how groundbreaking it was for a black man to become king of the entertainment juggernaut.  I wished the man a nice day and he replied “you too, sweetie.”  I had the song in my head the rest of the afternoon.