Moonwalking through mortality

The year was 1989, and the 5-year-old me was just becoming aware of the world.

Ghosts were bad and had to be busted. The greatest football franchise to ever grace the Earth was Da Bears. And the three most famous people in the world were Hulk Hogan, Mike Tyson,  and Michael Jackson. These were the first three celebrities I became aware of.

They were all larger than life. Flashy. Flamboyant. Powerful and from a world seemingly non-existant to mere mortals. Hulk Hogan was America. Bright yellow with big bugged eyes and bulging biceps. He said “brotha” all the time and dropped massive legs onto anyone who challenged him, who challenged freedom or who challenged wholesomeness in general.

Hogan is divorced, his body is failing and he’s dealing with an incredibly dysfunctional family. His son just got out of jail for an accident that left one of his friends with permenant brain damage.

Mike Tyson was just as big as Hogan and even badder. He was the knock out king. The final boss in the Nintendo game Mike Tyson’s punch out. No one could knock him down, let alone defeat him. These days Tyson won’t even work out, for fear of falling into his old lifestyle, which was riddled with drug abuse and questionable decisions. Last week things became even sadder with the accidental death of one of his children. Hardly invincable.

And today, in perhaps the saddest twist of all, Michael Jackson died at age 50. I remember moonwalking, or trying to, with my buddies on the sidewalk in front of my mom’s house. We’d do it for hours, with or without music. We’d congratulate the guy who did it best. And laugh at the guy who couldn’t do it at all. We’d yell the ‘hee, hee.’ We’d even grab our groins and spin around. We didn’t know what it meant, not even close. We knew it was cool and he was even cooler.

 As we got older, that cool gave way to weirdness and eccentricity. But I always remembered the days when he epitomized music stardom. Not a month goes by when I don’t hear Michael Jackson’s music. It doesn’t matter what time it is, what season or even what country I’m in.

I just came back from a trip to San Luis Potosi. During a bus ride through the rural countryside, the driver began to play American music for those inside. He put on Coldplay, a few of the passengers smiled and told him right on. (Not me.) He played Daft Punk, and I flashed him the thumbs up. But the rest of the van seemed unimpressed.

Then he played “Billie Jean.” All the passengers, about half of which spoke different languages, looked around at each other. And we all began singing. It didn’t matter where we were from or who we were. We knew that song. And now less than a week later, he’s dead.

Big deal, someone told me, celebrities die all the time. So do regular people, every day in fact. It’s part of life, and the man hadn’t been himself for years. He was out of touch, losing it, and not the superstar I remembered.

It doesn’t matter. He was one of my stars. One of the people who had shaped my life during my youngest days. He was a celebrity from my childhood. They aren’t suppossed to die. I’m not old enough for that to happen. Or, I never have been before.

All these iconic figures from my childhood have started degenarating. And it’s just going to get worse. I’m 25 now. A long way from moonwalking in my velcro BK Knights across the couldesac in Glendale Heights as my mom called me to come in for dinner. Things haven’t been that simple for a while.

Michael Jackson is dead.

Five Alive

My dad used to drink it when I was a little kid. But I haven’t heard anything about it in at least a decade. What ever happened to this beverage, the Jackson 5 of juices if you will?

I twittered this thought a while back, and Matt Pleasant, a good friend of mine who was at the Poynter Institute with me, replied by telling me that was a good question. I asked him his thoughts, as to begin a discourse. (My exact tweet was “I know, riiiiiiiiiiight?”), and he replied that he remembered his dad drank it when he was young. There you have it, Five Alive was the choice of dads in the late 80s. Apparently these days it has a strong following in Canada and parts of Europe. Plus this guy fights crime with it….

The Coachella A Team

Man, we really brought it with this year’s Coachella squad. Not a sign of weakness anywhere. I will now write a quick blurb about each of us, which is a really bizarre thing to be doing seeing as I fully expect all three of these people to read this. And I don’t really feel the need to say the following to any one of them, because I just spent five days in the desert with this crew. So why am I writing this at all? Shouldn’t it just be an unspoken awesome mutual experience? Nah, I’ll shatter that to ammuse maybe two dozen people who passivly keep track of my life via social networking Web sites.

Dave aka the loose cannon. You never knew what was coming from Dave, but you could be certain as he did it there was probably an inappropriate sexual joke attached. You should know Dave is a teacher. Pictured above wearing dark shades and a bandana, which I don’t recall him wearing for much longer after this picture was taken. And this photo was taken very early in the day, so I think the bandana was only for the purposes of a “badass” facebook photo. What an asshole.

Alan aka pops. Alan was really a man among boys here. For instance, most of the time us normal dudes were happy to giggle at the use of the words butt sex (this entry has been abridged a tiny bit in the name of good tastes), but Alan wasn’t satisfied there. His mid-Coachella banter really aspired to a clever level the rest of us could barely imagine, let alone aspire to match. Also, he brought a cool headband with a light on it that was invaluable setting the tents up. Pictured above in the cap.

Tim aka captain boner. That nickname was really more appropriate for last year, seeing as Tim didn’t pull any major flub ups this year. But when it’s pushing 1:30 a.m., and you’re going to wake up in six hours to go to the gym, that joke name seems too funny not to use. Pictured above as the smallest guy.

Zack aka team leader. I put this whole crew together, and assembled the trip really, as I’ve been doing the past three years. This trip is my pride and joy, and really one of the few things in my life I can be really proud of. Lord knows I haven’t accompished much else. Ahh Coachella.

I promise, two more consecutive entries, and I should have the festival out of my system for at least 12 hours.

The man was a Beatle

Say what you will about Sir Paul, and I heard a lot of it including “why are all the good Beatles dead” (a friend) and “that’s bound to suck, they should have got Springsteen” (my dad), the man was a freaking Beatle. Not being one who buys into that “the Beatles were overrated” garabage (sorry Stones people), that makes him a pretty big deal to me.

And at Coachella he delivered hard. Early morning, laying in the tents at Coachella, a few sensations bombard you. First, the painful heat wakes you up by bringing any air movement in the tent to a screeching hault. So the first feeling is misery. Second, this heat wakes you up at 8 a.m. when the Sun fully decides to blast your tent with everything it has. So the second feeling is sheer misery.

And third, you hear the chatter of those around you, waking from their Coachella stupors in the same miserable state you’re in. So this feeling is curiosity.

On Day 3 of the fest, after Paul McCartney and The Killers had both played headlining sets, the stoney guys next to us had the following conversation, the crux of which happened to be Brandon Flowers and The Killers guys might be good, with a few catchy songs, but Paul McCartney was a Beatle. Here is the exchange as remembered by what was surely a very miserable me at the time.

“You guys remember when Brandon Flowers was all like, ‘we’ll play two more songs, we know you’re all tired.”

“Yeah, and the night before Paul McCartney was like ‘I know you’re tired but I don’t care. I’m a freaking Beatle and I invented rock and roll.’”

And that’s pretty much exactly how it went down. Subsequent newspaper reporting says that McCartney played 32 songs, extending his set past the traditional midnight ending time and playing until 12:54 p.m. (For those in the Beatles are NOT overrated camp, yes he played a ton of their songs, more than he did his solo stuff in fact). By comparison, The Killers played for 90 minutes. That’s about half as long as Sir Paul. And Brandon Flowers is less than half as old as Sir Paul.

Nice. And by the way, did anyone else see the Austin City Limits line up? Bogus. Dave Matthews Band for real? They must be really scared of the economy and hoping the more mainstream headliner will pull the people in. Lameness, I wonder if the fratty guys from my college will be there playing bags and drinking Keystone Light, like they always seemed to be everytime Dave Matthews was played anywhere in Carbondale.

Flavor Flav jumped on me

No joke. It happened at Coachella last week. Mid way through Public Enemy’s excellent set, in which they played the album that pretty much created political hip hop It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, Flavor Flav jumped on me.

Flav, who despite being an idiot on reality shows is THE best hip hop hype man of all time, paused and pointed to where I was standing with a few friends.

“I have a question for y’all,” he said.

It was day three of the festival, and we’d shouted often, but we still had energy left. WHAT!?!?!, we roared.

“If I jump, are y’all gonna catch me?”

“F*CK YEAH!”

Flav paused for a moment, and Chuck D whispered something to him. Flav, who forgot to lower his mic, replied, “what? no, it’s not that far.”

With that, he took three steps back, ran forward and jumped on me — jokers hat and clock in all. As he flew to the air, I momentarilly thought, oh shit, this is going to hurt my wrists. Not so. Flav is probably barely more than 100 pounds.

We caught him easily, making good on our promise. And he crowd surfed for a bit, as Chuck begged us to return him. Flav did it twice more, once in the middle and once on the other side of the stage. Afterward, Chuck told us, “he’s 50 years old y’all. That was his 50th b-day jump.”

Amazing. This is one of the many reasons I love Coachella so much.

Coachella virgins

For the second straight year, Tim and I have worked to bring a Coachella virgin on the trip with us. Last year we took Jeff and Dave. This year Alan makes the trip.

We’re not doing this for selfless reasons, like a pair of good will, rock ambassadors spreading the gospel of indie, hip hop and progressive music. No. Forget that. We do this for selfish reasons. Coachella is better when you look over and see a fresh sense of wonderment in the people next to you, like when everyone in the family buys the youngest nephew a load of presents because it reminds them of Christmases from their childhoods.

The first Coachella was mystical, magical and impossible to repeat. Tim and I realize this. This marks our third straight year. And sure, we iron out the little wrinkles in the trip planning process, but every time we make it smoother we lose part of our naive, idealism. That’s the same feeling that brought us here in the first place.

But lucky for us, this year we have a guy like Alan to channel it through. Look how excited he is already….

The first Coachella trip/blog

Duuuuude. We chronicled the whole trip — planning through return. This is kind of embarrassing. I had an easy semester at college and I used it to write the equivalent of a small novel about Coachella:

www.highwaytochella.blogspot.com

Here’s just a sample of the humiliating photos and writing you can find on there.

Coachella update

I’ve been gone a bit. But don’t blame me. Blame CBS’s How I Met Your Mother, and how hilarious it is. Me and Dianella have literally holed up and watched it almost every night the last two weeks. We’re finishing up season 4 this week, so hopefully regular blogging will resume once we finish.

Here’s something to hold you until then – more about Coachella, my favorite subject at this time of the year.

The line up seems locked in. Tim, Alan and I have all bought plane and concert tickets. Dave has taken the time off work, and he’s going to buy his this week. I’m not sure where Jeff’s at. But chances are he will head to the desert too, making this the first five man venture to the fest.

I’ve also finished my research on the bands. People keep asking me what I’m excited to see. And it’s a hard question to answer, because the line up this year is so good. Here’s the short version.

On the first day, I’m going to see Sir Paul. The man is a Beatle. That’s a no brainer. But I think Beirut takes the must see of the day for me. Zach Condon’s haunting, opera-esque vocals always work over his music. But his latest collaboration with a massive band from Oaxaca Mexico beats anything he has done. I admit, I didn’t like it too much at first, but it has really grown on me.

I’m also excited for The Aggrolites brand of reggae-ska fusion, People Under the Stairs hip hop, White Lies post punk power rock, and of course N.A.S.A., a dj/producer duo that cobbled together a ton of talented collaborators to make an early entry for album of the year. You have to hear this, my favorite tracks are the ones with Chuck D and Del.

Day two, I’m excited for The Killers (see below), Michael Franti and Spearhead, Atmosphere, Fleet Foxes, TV on the Radio, Calexico, Junior Boys, Ida Maria, Glass Candy and Gang Gang Dance.

I’m calling Gang Gang Dance as the best set of that day. I’ve been into their album for a few months, and I can’t wait to see them live. I could be way off, but I’m getting the same vibe I got from Battles last year – straight up rocking show from start to finish.

Day three, is all about Public Enemy for me. Yes yes, I know Flav is lame. But Chuck D is one of the smartest men in hip hop, and his work defines what political rap should be. I hear he still brings it live. Other notables from that day include The Cure, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, My Bloody Valentine, Lupe Fiasco, Peter Bjorn and John, X, Lykke Li, The Kills, Clipse, Friendly Fires and The Knux.

If you know some of these bands, you probably realize how versatile that list is. So many genres covered. But the thing they share, is they all seem like a straight up, energy fest/good time, with the possible exceptions of The Cure and My Bloody Valentine, who should close the main stage and be perfect to calm down to.

Me and Dee are about three episodes into season 4. I should blog my thoughts on that show. Nay! I will blog my thoughts on that show. Stay tuned.

The line

I live a 20 minute drive from Mexico. Obviously, the border plays a large part in life here. That’s not to say you can’t live life without going across, but that line still permeates the culture, people, and business.

When I first arrived, I failed to realize the danger of the border. I worked Tuesday through Saturday night on the police beat. On Sundays, I would often drive to the border alone, park my car in the lot for $2, and walk across the bridge. I would wander the streets of Reynosa, sometimes until midnight, never realizing the danger of my situation.

Once, two men in a car pulled up, and in careful, slow Spanish they asked me what I was doing. I told them going for a walk, and they began to warn me about the danger, even offering to drive me the mile or so back to the point of entry. During that same trip, I got lost about 5 miles into a residential neighborhood. Seemingly out of nowhere, a man in a Halloween costume emerged. It was August, and he wore an expressionless, pristine white mask. He asked me for a dollar and I complied. I also began to politely ask him for interesting things in the city to see. With my broken Spanish we conversed.

He feigned little interest, telling me “nada.” And I would later learn he was right. Reynosa holds little for the visitor. In the nearly two years I’ve been here, I’ve read news of federal police officers and drug traffickers gunned down in the streets. I even once made a trip the day after such a shooting. I was there as a reporter, seeing the blood-stained sidewalks, grenade-charred parking lots, and heavily-armed federal troop battalions left in the wake of the violence.

I still make the occasional trip to Reynosa — the tacos on Boulevard Oaxaca also known as la calle de tacos are incredible — but it doesn’t hold the wonder for me it once did. I look at Reynosa almost sadly now. It could be such a place of interest and culture. It doesn’t have to be a place where the citizens warn foreigners to leave, fearing for their lives.

Last week, six more people died amid a gun battle.

The Killers

I know I’m not suppossed to like this band, but that doesn’t stop me. Lately, I’ve even been listening to their Sam’s Town album, the most critically panned disc of all.

But the fact remains, when I have The Killers on I enjoy myself. I love mimicking Brandon Flowers’ over singing in my car. And I’m going to love it even more on the Empire Polo Fields this spring when they headline Saturday night of Coachella. The scuttlebutt on the Coachella Message Board – a place I spend far too much time – is that the promoters will drop a major Saturday act on us, bumping The Killers to sub headliner status. You know, sort of like what they did last year with Prince and Portishead.

But the fact remains, that I don’t care either. Sure, something like David Bowie performing Ziggy Stardust would be absolutely, indescribably awesome. But I’ll have mounds of fun either way. Coachella research continues at a decent pace. I almost have my 15 Saturday bands picked. It’s time to dive into Sunday.