Michael Jackson

He should have stopped with the way he looked in the Billie Jean and Beat It videos. By the time you get to Black and White, something isn't going right, and the Leave Me Alone video where he's flying around in the little roller coaster rocket, he's taken his first step into the true Neverland where you Never Can return to anything even remotely normal or even good looking.

There is so much danger in having too much money when you are young and have no concept of how to manage it. I watched this documentary about him where he was shopping in a Las Vegas gift shop, a lot of fake Egyptian "relics." He would just walk up and down the aisles saying, "I'll take that, and that, and that one..." It was insanely expensive, useless, fake crap.

A news program tonight suggested that as Michael matured into adulthood, the face of "the man in the mirror" became more and more like his father's, and so the surgery began not just to de-ethnic the nose, but to make him so different from the father, he could never again be the son. And then you always think, the next thing will make me happy. The next thing. If I change this. If I change that. I will be happy. I will feel like I have back what I lost, what I never had.

But you don't. It must be a very strange and difficult way to live.

I liked "Rock With Me" and "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough." Sweet songs, and he was cute, even with his original nose and little Afro. He wore a tux, not gigantic baggy pants and a wifebeater undershirt. The Thriller video was a huge event. I remember hanging out in a Sears TV section because MTV was on and the station was about to play the video. It's a long, long video, and people gathered around to see it, fascinated. It was the perfect match between a catchy, epic tune and wonderfully choreographed dance numbers.

The dancing was amazing. Dancing went out of vogue in the 1950s after Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire faded from the movies. Michael Jackson brought it back for awhile like no one else could or has since. He would have had a much happier life on Broadway as a dancer and being openly gay. (As a singer, he is not that much, a Mickey Mouse voice that, like Britney Spears, benefits from special effects and studio enhancements. He is no Adam Lambert.)

I love the mysterious romance of the Billie Jean video. It is as classic and timeless as Gene Kelly's title performance in "Singin' in the Rain." The Beat It video is silly. Jackson cannot pull off being a tough guy, even in a red leather jacket, but the song is great. I attribute that to Eddie Van Halen, though. The introduction of the moonwalk at the 25th Anniversay Motown show is electrifying in ways I cannot describe. I remember watching it live when it happened and you just don't believe what you're seeing. His body could truly move in magical ways. It was the talk of the world the next morning, a defining moment in entertainment history.

But when he died, he was 50, almost 51. There is no magic in being a manchild and 50. There comes a time when you have to begin looking old or else you'e just going to look ridiculous. Like it or not, you start to look like your father and your legs and arms don't bend the way they used to. You cannot fight time. And you can no longer do a 50-city world tour and expect to enthrall the fans the same way you did 30 years ago. Even Sinatra became, in the end, a painful singer to listen to. If you are millions of dollars in debt (that no yard sale of all that Las Vegas gift shop crap is going to solve) and have no choice but to commit to such a tour -- and kill yourself trying to get in shape for it -- well, that was a series of bad decisions made by a manchild who had no one he could trust for sound advice.

And it's not like this is the first time this has happened to a famous person. Elvis and Judy Garland come to mind, just to name two. Elvis died at 42, bloated and puffy. Garland was only 47 and looked 20 years older.

Missing Mechanicsville

It was with great regret that I left Hanover County. I moved there in 1999 to be near a job. The only thing I knew about Mechanicsville was it had a windmill bank.

I found a great old house to rent for less than what two bedroom apartments were going for ($750 a month, and the rent never went up in five years!) Even though we were very close to a commercial area and a busy intersection, the house was surrounded on all sides by trees and brush and was far off the road. I felt like I was living in the woods, even though I was minutes from I-295, which quickly took me anyplace I needed to go.

Everything about Mechanicsville was convenient. Within minutes I could get to a Wal-Mart, a Ukrop’s or an all-night Food Lion. I was looking forward to the new Target with great excitement. I had all my doctors, bank branches and the vet nearby. The traffic was not bad at all compared to the West End or Southside.

I felt very safe and didn’t panic if I couldn’t remember if I had locked my front door. Nothing was ever stolen out of my yard or car. I lost one mailbox to vandals and that was it for my Hanover crime. During that same period, my wallet was stolen twice and our vehicles were broken into twice while in the city.

The police officers were familiar faces, like having a town full of big brothers looking after me. The one time I needed to call an ambulance, I was literally picked up by three grandfathers. They even stayed with me until I was put in a room. And I didn't get a bill afterward for the ride to the hospital.

It was an idyllic place to live. I got married at the historic Hanover Courthouse on a summer Tuesday evening, standing in the same spot where Patrick Henry tried cases. New commercial development brought new opportunities to shop, and yet there was still a small-town, rural feel. I loved to drive along scenic and twisting Atlee Station, Pole Green and Cold Harbor roads.

Then I decided I didn’t want to rent anymore. I wanted to buy a house, but Hanover was being built up with huge and identical looking subdivisions with tiny yards, prices starting at $270,000 and up. I guess when you have a school system as excellent as Hanover’s, people will pay anything to live here.

The few neighborhoods that still had houses under $170,000 were mostly along Cold Harbor Road, up against the steady roar of I-295. People were selling their little houses to move up to the bigger ones. They wanted me to pay $173,000 or more for a modest three bedroom rancher, often with only one bath and no garage, or a little four bedroom Cape Cod, two up, two down, eat in kitchen and a living room. The market was so hot, these houses would sell in minutes. We rushed around for several months, putting in bids, but people would actually offer more than the asking price.

Finally someone told me that the last place that was relatively close-in and still had some affordable housing was the Lakeside or Dumbarton area. On our first Sunday afternoon tour of open houses circa 1950-1975, we found one that easily would have cost $20,000 more if it was sitting across the county line. No one bid more than the asking price, so we got it by virtue of having our mortgage paperwork already in hand—although I have to ask myself how crazy is it to buy something as big as a house after looking at it for 15 minutes? I spend more time trying on a pair of shoes before I buy them.

I didn't want to leave Hanover, but I had no choice. I still miss everything about Mechanicsville very much, especially Anna’s Italian Restaurant, Cracker Barrel, the 23116 post office and the windmill bank, which I hear is no longer a Wachovia anyway.

The Truth about Jon & Kate

Who didn’t see this coming? The demise of Jon and Kate. (re: TLC's cable program "Jon & Kate Plus 8.")

First, they need to stop saying they’re both all about the kids and everything they’ve done, they’ve done for the kids. Granted, this was the plan when the first hour special was proposed to them. The money would go a long way into creating a better life for the kids. But then things got out of control, and it’s about way more than the kids now.

What the show doesn’t address because it would turn off viewers is Kate was once very religious. Decisions to promote the family were made on behalf of the “testimony.” I have religious relatives and know all about the testimony. You have to testify. You talk in public about what God has done in your life. In their case, they feel He delivered healthy children and brought together a network of people and resources to support their family when neither one of them had a job and family support was iffy. All that is documented in Kate’s first book. When God gives help, you have to show thanks by testifying. So Kate and Jon accepted speaking engagements at churches. It almost seemed like the testimony was the whole reason God had given them this big family (if you count using fertility drugs as God’s will.)

The churches paid their expenses. Then, after the two hour-long specials on TLC proved so popular, TLC offered them a television series. Being a family became their job, as Kate often says. As their television fame increased, churches paid more for them to speak. Then talk shows wanted them. Then other organizations. But the talk shows and other organizations didn’t want to hear about God as much.

Part of getting the religious testimony out there – since the TV show would not let them speak about religion – meant Kate had to promote the book. Being the articulate, educated,and confident one, Kate was the natural choice. She was more religious than Jon anyway. But the testimony got lost since it was only being heard at the churches. The mainstream media left God on the cutting room floor.

Kate didn’t back away when the media put the spotlight on her instead of her God. She stepped off the path of faith and let the god of money and hubris tempt her. That’s not saying she can’t come back. You can’t have a good redemption story without first having a spectacular downfall.

That’s the religious viewpoint of what’s at play here. The secular viewpoint is this marriage was doomed from the get-go.

If you’ve seen the “how we met” episode, Kate is older than Jon by a couple of years and was a nurse. At an event she was attending, she spotted him working at a golf course. Jon admits he had no career plans at the time and was going nowhere. What about that was attractive to Kate? A younger man with no plan. I’ve been there myself and the attraction is: he’s your own boytoy to control unless of course somewhere along the line he develops a mind of his own. And Kate, we know, is a controlling person.

In their wedding footage, the faces of key family members are blurred out because by the time the couple were having children, war had been declared against certain family members. It has always been Kate’s way or the highway. Jon overlooked all these early warning signs of Castration Up Ahead. The pre-babies Kate of the early footage is almost unrecognizable, so happy are they as they honeymoon in Disney World.

Then – cue the shark music from “Jaws” – Kate immediately wants a family. I mean, immediately. No waiting for a few years to see what happens. Kate is certain it’s not going to happen without help. Why is she so certain when she’s so young and it’s so early in the marriage? They successfully have twins, but no sooner are they out of diapers when she wants another baby. They both admit Jon was happy to stop at two. Two should have been enough for anyone. Where was letting God’s will prevail in this scenario? (Oh, sorry, this part isn’t about religion, but really, how do religious people conveniently forget the story of Sarah and Abraham, Ishmael and Isaac?)

Anyway, with Kate all determined and preoccupied with babies, she couldn’t work as much. When TLC begins filming them, she’s still doing weekend shifts as a nurse, and Jon’s spotty career as an IT tech is still spotty. Throughout their marriage, he’s been fired and laid off repeatedly – the surface excuse being that his health insurance coverage would be crippling to the companies he works for.

Kate wisely decides that she can’t work and mother eight children. Jon's employment is too irregular, but if she goes back to work, she will have to depend on outside help – which is hard to keep since she’s so particular and bossy and such a clean freak, no one meets her standards – so the best plan is to become employees of TLC and make the family the family business. With such a big organization to run, she’s bossier than ever, and now Jon has no escape. Suddenly he’s being recognized in public and other people are asking him why does he put up with so much crap from that wife of his? (Because that’s what happens to the man-with-no-plan.)

Now, embarrassed, he wants to dial down the show. But Kate is at her zenith. In last year’s finale, while he talks about the awfulness of being recognized in public as “Jon & Kate,” she says she’s never been happier. She is master of all she surveys. She controls the kids, the husband, the film crew. She is the TLC network golden goose. She has a hairstylist who designs a signature look for her. She has sex appeal. Her photo on a recent People magazine cover was dazzling. During Octomom mania, she gets calls for appearances on talk shows to flaunt her expertise. There’s a second book deal and both books are on the best seller list.

Jon wants her to give all this up because people are calling him henpecked? What will she have if she gives it all up for him? The lackluster, career-less boytoy she married. She’d have to go back to nursing, being bossed around by arrogant doctors. They’d have to live in a smaller house. The trust fund for the kids would not grow. They’d be as broke and ordinary as you and me, passing on this rare opportunity to be rich and famous, and rich and famous for excelling at management, Kate’s favorite thing!

If you really loved me, you would not ask me to give all this up, Kate thinks. If you really loved me, you would not ask me to live this way, Jon thinks. And they are both right. They do not really love each other. There was no real love in this marriage from the beginning. It all happened too quick, too impulsively. So Jon does what many men do when they feel henpecked, controlled, or trapped. I’ll show her. I’ll go out and have some fun.

He's disloyal. He embarrasses her in public. It’s all unforgivable to a controlling woman. Being one, I know. It is the worst thing. Jon is now doomed to multiple relationships with women looking for fame, impending baldness, irregular IT jobs and living off of alimony provided by Kate for the rest of his life.

(Rereading this in 2012, I was tempted to delete it since both Jon and Kate have disappeared from view.)

This Makes Me Strangely Happy

I Don't Need Mother's Day

Every year people ask me on Mother's Day if I heard from my son, or what did he get me, or where is he taking me, and when I say no, nothing, nowhere, they are appalled. But I'm not. I don't expect or require any kind of behavior on Mother's Day out of the norm, and he knows that.

That there's a day that requires a certain behavior seems insincere to both of us. If he suddenly decided to buy me a gift for some appreciative reason, I'd be fine with it any other day of the year. If he wanted to take me to dinner or somewhere to enjoy my company, I'd also be fine with it any other day of the year. And we'd probably get a reservation easier.

I'm happy without a phone call. Silence means he's handling his own problems, paying his own bills, busy, and relatively at peace. I'm a helicopter mother, always hovering, ready to swoop in and rescue my troops...and he's a generation that only marginally has a problem with that. For the most part, they let us hover and rescue. I know I won't always be around to do that, so when I'm not needed, I'm glad. If he can manage, that's good. I've done my job.

Why Urban Pigeon?

Every day at the bus stop downtown, I watch the pigeons. They are fearless. They don't care that cars and buses are whizzing by inches away from them. They don't care that people are sharing the sidewalk with them. They're busy looking for garbage to eat.

Then they fly to a monument and crap on it.

It's sort of like my life. There's been a lot of traffic and a lot of garbage, and my career as a writer hasn't advanced much past crapping on the monuments of decorum and tradition that is Richmond, Virginia. I came here just to go to a college that would let me get a degree without taking a math or phys ed class, and then the plan was to get out of here. But I keep getting married to people who want to stay here, and when I'm between marriages, I don't have enough money to rent a U-Haul. My life is in New York City but someone else is living it.

I think about that when I see the pigeons at the bus stop, one thing Richmond does share with New York. Pigeons.

What am I doing here?

Actually, I really do like pigeons. They also remind me of my father. As a boy growing up in the 1930s in the tenements of Long Island City, he raised pigeons. A lot of city kids did. They kept the roosts on the roofs of their apartment buildings. You didn't need pet food as the pigeons could find things to eat while they were out flying, and they always came back.

When I was in the 7th grade, we moved to a house in Greenville, North Carolina. It was the first house we ever had to ourselves. In New York, we had lived with relatives, like many Italians do. Everyone in the same house. Then we lived in an apartment in Alexandria, Virginia, and then we moved to this house in North Carolina. There was a kid in the neighborhood who had a pigeon coop and we were so enthralled with it -- I had heard my father's pigeon stories -- we decided to buy a couple of the pigeons and build our own coop.

So for a year or so, I had this project I shared with my dad, the pigeons. I have never had a very close relationship with my father, and this was the last chance. Before long, I'd move to permanent alienation via puberty and then distance, and then evil stepmothers.

Our two pigeons had babies (squabs are very ugly babies; I don't think there is an uglier baby in the animal kingdom), and the babies had babies, and I kept journals of which pigeons were married (they mate for life) and who their children were, and who their children married. We let them out. They flew around the house, sat on the roof, and came back to the coop. We cleaned out the coop. That was an awful job, and what eventually distanced me from the pigeon project. That and puberty.

(By the way, do not, and I repeat, do not, google "squab" for a photo. Apparently squabs are a delicacy, and you will find only photos of cooked squabs, which are more disgusting to look at than live squabs. It will also turn you into a vegetarian immediately. I warned you!)

Towards the end, it was just my dad. I'd see him out in the yard, hands in his pockets, wearing his Eisenhower jacket, watching the pigeons circle the sky around the house. Eventually it was no fun for him either, or no fun to do alone, and he sold our pigeons back to the boy who had gotten us started. The decaying roost was still in the yard when we sold the house.

And that was pretty much it for me and my dad. He died a few years ago, an old guy in his eighties that I no longer knew. His third wife kept us all at a distance, so I hadn't seen him in 20 years. But he wrote me one letter every month of just casual chit chat and put a $50 bill in it. I would write him back not to send cash through the mail, but then it occurred to me it was the only way he could do it without his wife knowing. And sending me money was the only way he could make up for not ever coming to see me, or being there for me.

So I watch the pigeons at the bus stop, and because of my dad, I know they're not well bred pigeons because they don't have thick crusts on top of their beaks, but they're not trashy birds either because they do have rainbow coloring on their necks. I wonder who they're married to and where they live. And I think about my dad, standing out in the yard by himself, hands in his pockets, wearing his Eisenhower jacket, and watching the pigeons we named and raised together, flying around the sky.

Mortgage Voodoo

Even though the whole housing crisis, bubble, creative mortgaging, etc. sunk the economy, the evil persists. This week I received a letter from First Fidelity Mortgage Group in Baltimore. They knew my name and roughly how much I still owed on my house. They were offering a 4.5 percent refinance, with a monthly payment almost two-thirds less than I'm paying now, plus for a mere $90 a month more, a $24,000 cash payment.

Down in the small print, there's a reference to interest only, and the 4.5 percent is good for five years only. After that, it could go anywhere. "Rate and programs subject to change at any time." Something mysterious about my refinancing charges being "higher over the life of the loan."

Isn't this how everyone got in trouble?