March 31: Business Is A Boomin'

Having just completed a twelve-hour shift, the night air felt refreshing as I walked to my truck. It was the kind of night where you want to sit outside with a group of friends and reminisce of the old days. It was the kind of night where you don't dare drive home with your windows rolled up. I wanted to feel the air fill the cab of my truck and make its way through my fajita scented hair. I turned the key and listened to the engine sputter to life. I rolled the windows down and cranked the music up.

Every so often, I'm incapable of selecting a genre of music to listen to so I'll turn my iPod to shuffle and let it decide on its own and I've been listening to a smorgasbord of everything from Garth Brooks to Phoenix to the Kingston Trio for the past few weeks. As I drove through the parking lot, Michael Jackson's "Who is it" from the Dangerous album came on. Normally, I would either skip the track or turn the volume way down in embarrassment, but a funny thing happens when a celebrity dies; he or she become relevant again.

It's now cool to blare Michael Jackson. Gone are the memories of his sexual accusations and freakish demise from a young black man into a ghostly white skeleton. The only thing anyone remembers is how talented the guy was. Jackson has been on top of the charts since his death, he's released a hit movie (of rehearsal footage, no less), and his estate just signed a multi-million dollar deal to release tracks that Jackson deemed unworthy of public knowledge. If Jackson had released what's to come two years ago, I guarantee you they would not have sold. The guy dies and all of a sudden, he's sitting on a gold mine! Is it just me, or is that macabre ideology a bit sick? A person has to die to amount to anything!

When I was in the sixth grade, I found an old copy of The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger in a box of books my grandmother gave to me. I sat down and read it before it was ever assigned in school and I remember thinking how much trouble I would get in if my mom caught me. I never heard anything about it again until after Salinger died. Sales for a book that was published in 1951 shot through the roof in 2010 just because the recluse of an author passed away.

I could go on and on with examples, but that would just be redundant and pointless. Patrick Swayze, Farrah Fawcett, and John Hughes all saw a boost in profits after their untimely demises. I've always been somewhat of a closet Michael Jackson fan. I bought HIStory when it first came out and was kind of embarrassed when friends would browse my DVD collection because his greatest video hits were in there. Driving home from work tonight however, I could let him scream and yell to his merry heart's content because as of June 25, 2009, it's now cool again to listen to the King of Pop.



Listening to the wind outside.