Bo-Bo Hopes Michael Jackson is Resting in Peace

I'm not a big Michael Jackson fan--I only bought Thriller album because I was tired of turning on the radio and catching Vincent Price talking about the mortals who can't resist the evil of the thriller at the tail end of the song--but the oldies station in Boston is spinning tributes all weekend and I seem to have no desire to turn off my radio. Which is odd given that I really can't overstate how much I hate high tenors as a general rule (just one of the many reasons I don't feel people like Justin Timberlake and--good god--Robin Thicke). But I'm enjoying the odd Jackson song I know and appreciating the vast catalog I've never heard and oh my god the radio just launched into "We Are the World" and holy man alive does that take me back.

But back to the business at hand. If it's not the music fascinating me what is it? It's not the spectacle, either, though the media--even NPR--is certainly not glossing over the weirdness of Jackson's life. I don't pretend to understand anything about this man who knew an isolation that rivaled Elvis's famous bunkering up, and really, if you consider the way the pedophilia scandal compounded Jackson's reclusive ways, the King of Pop was probably more alone than the King of Rock ever was, so what then?

When the world is calling in to talk shows and eulogizing Jackson around choking sobs; when we learn that the call to the ambulance was delayed because the people around him were trying to handle the crisis; when Jackson himself seems to be choked up during the spoken section at the end of "Will You Still Care"* that reads like bad middle-school poetry,** the human in me tries to understand the human in him, the guy beneath the controversies, the eccentricities, the bone-crushing insecurity we saw played out in the transformation of a sweet face the child in me crushed on into something so hideous that it's impossible, I think, to underestimate just how much Jackson loathed himself.

As an ordinary American inundated with a media culture that seems to--when it takes notice of the arts at all--lionize the myth of the artist instead of the art itself, it's easy to start believing that the bumpy, potholed creative road transforms into a freshly-paved, bucolic byway once the world gives you the nod. But that's just not the case. The creative road shakes its travelers by design--smooth sailing makes for boring art, after all--and for some unfortunate few (Jackson among them) the road detours onto a little-used, muddy dirt road where they just sink.

The next time I find myself shouldered with a flat tire and I'm watching in the rearview for signs of the truck Triple-A sent out to rescue me, I'll take a look at myself and remember that everyone--even the crowned prince of Neverland--has to start with that man in the mirror.

* AKA the Free Willy song

** In our darkest hour
in my deepest despair
will you still care?
will you be there? (etc. )

Bo-Bo Knows I'm No Runner

But I've been playing one for the two months I've been training for my first 5K race. Tonight I ran my second consecutive 30 minutes. Unfortunately, during that time I only traveled 2.4 miles. For those keeping score at home, those are 12.5-minute miles.

Here are a few words that don't come to mind: lightning, flash, zippy... I'll stop there.

The 5K that I'm running is actually 3.5 miles. That means if I keep up at my present pace, I'll finish just under the 45-minute mark. Here's a word for you: blistering. But only in the sense that I've been rocking a hairline blister ever since I hit my first consecutive 20 minutes. I can't help but wonder what possessed me to sign up for this business. I also can't help but wonder why the running nightmares haven't started up. Maybe because my conscious mind is terrorizing the inchoate runner in me just fine, thank you.

My biggest fear isn't the shame of having to walk--the adrenaline will be pumping and I know that I will soar (though I guess coast would be a better word given my pace) right through those 43-45 minutes. My biggest fear is death by trampling. If you think I'm overreacting, you haven't read the literature JP Morgan sent to the registered runners. They ask runners to separate themselves into two groups at the starting line--those who pace between 5 and 6 minutes per mile and those that pace at 7 minutes per mile or slower. If I'm reading this correctly, I'm pacing so slowly that even if a fast runner and a slow runner took turns on the course, they would both beat me to the finish line. Easily.

In this case, it's really not about whether I win or lose, it's about not getting flattened during my first 5K. Following the details about where the slow runners can stick themselves, comes this helpful tip:

"Please note that a slower runner at the front of the race could potentially be injured should they not be able to keep up with the pace of the faster runners."

Should they not be able to keep up? Should? What the hell do you do when you run five and a half minutes slower than the slowest of the slow?

OK, fine. These speed demons are probably too skinny to actually flatten me, but if I get in front of a pack of them--even the 7-minute slow pokes--it seems quite possible my heart might explode.

OK. New goal. An image of me at the start of the race waving every last runner ahead of me. "No, no, after you." Maybe I should factor in some self-preservation chivalry points and aim at finishing in 60 minutes. Yes. That seems doable. And since it's quite likely that all the good people from J.P. Morgan will be packed up and home by the time I cross the finish line, I'm recruiting a cheering section. So if you know the words to "The Final Count Down" or can approximate the sound of synthesized trumpets and feel like serenading me down Charles Street along the Boston Common on Thursday, you'd be welcome.

Da-da laaaa da
Da-da lah dah dah
Da-da laaaa duh da
Da-da lah dah dah dah dah, etc.

Bo-Bo Knows "Dancing in the Dark"

I'll admit that I've had Oldies 103.3 as a radio preset as long as I've owned my car (2003). I'll also admit to tuning in and motor mouthing to whatever surprise I found there when NPR took a turn down a story alley I didn't feel much like following. But today it happened. The oldies station has finally caught up to my childhood: 103.3 played "Dancing in the Dark."



"Born in the USA" wasn't my first album. It wasn't even my album. My sister was the one who bought that glorious square of man butt posed before an American flag. But the summer that record came out, I was 9-years-old, she was 6 going on 7, and albums were rare enough in our house that mine felt like hers and hers felt like mine. So we spun that one over and over and over again, singing at top volume to lyrics we didn't understand:

• "Born in the USA" was just its anthem of a chorus;
• "I'm on Fire" was a pretty lullaby; and
• "Glory Days" and "Dancing in the Dark" were just as happy as their bouncy guitar riffs and upbeat drums said they were supposed to be.

What did we know?

Since that time, I've laughed at myself--and Ronald Reagan--for how wrong we all were about that album. I've become aware of the creep in the bad desire, recognized the clarion call in "Glory Days," and appreciated how "Dancing in the Dark" is really about climbing the walls of your life. But I'd never really felt those things until the song slapped at me through my shitty car speakers today. Exhibit A and B:

"I ain't nothing but tired, man I'm just tired and bored with myself.
Hey there baby, I could use just a little help."

"They say you got to stay hungry.
Hey baby, I'm just about starving tonight.
I'm dying for some action.
I'm sick of sitting round here trying to write this book."

I've long believed that old age isn't about chronology, but state of mind. This is why an eighty year old who shows off her neon pink tennis shoes is in fact younger than her 18-year-old great-grandson who won't dance with her at a wedding because he's afraid people will laugh at them. We're all Merlin's that way, if we're lucky: age makes us bold and boldness keeps us young.

So why is it that the line about being tired and bored with myself popped out at me? Why did I hear the lyric about being sick of my book? Why did I feel the twenty five years between that summer and this one like vertigo? Why did I for one fleeting, but painful, minute feel about my life that crush of let down you get when you reach for the door to some restaurant only to see you've missed the closing by five minutes or so? Why indeed when I have so, so, so much to get grateful for?

No idea. But I'm comforted by the questions.

Regret may be an inevitable part of life. There are too many choices--big and small-- in this life to ever hope we'll get them all right. Tonight at dinner with friends I was talking about the one and only time I was in a restaurant ritzy enough that the desert menu offered chocolate souffle on the menu, but I passed. To this day I've never tasted a souffle. Not the world's largest regret, and completely fixable. And truly, if I come to the end of my life without ever trying a souffle, I'll live. Well, actually, I'll be dead, but you get my point. Or maybe you don't because I'm only just now getting to it myself.

The point, I think, is this:

If I listen to a lyric about being tired and bored with myself and that resonates with me, I better damn well be asking myself some hard questions. If not I really am sitting "around getting older; there's a joke here somewhere and its on me."

Bo-Bo Knows Movie Montages

I'm in training for my corporate 5k. I'm the karate kid. I'm gonna be your man in motion!* I'm on the highway to the danger zone.** I'm Rocky freakin' Balboa.

Alas, when I'm doing the actual running (and not romanticizing the jogging into a cheesy eigthties movie montage) I feel more like the fly in the karate kid's chopticks. Like all I need's a pair of wheels.* Like I most definitely have the need for speed.*** Like Rocky's swollen pulp of a face when he screams, "Adrian!"

I've concluded that jogging is for the birds, and birds FLY everywhere, so what the hell does that tell you? I have a theory that the only way seemingly sane people turn into joggers is by addicting their bodies to the endorphin release at the end of all that knee-pounding goodness. The afternoon following my first consecutive eight-minute jog* since college, I giggled like I'd been drinking wine. The next day, my legs felt so strong, I choreographed a little soft shoe while waiting for my tea water to boil. And as the number of consecutive jogging minutes increased (I'm up to 25 now**), I found that my personality split while I ran.

To the part of me that bent my head down and grumbled about the ridiculousness of doing something that made my legs feel like Rocky's swollen pulp of a face, the burgeoning endorphin junkie reminded me that a few minutes of dead legs and searing lungs were a reasonable price to pay for a general sense of laughing-like-a-loon well being. To the part of me that wondered how I could possibly be making progress when I felt so bad, my inner Richard Simmons was pointing out how I'd gone about a tenth of a mile further than I had during my second 25-minute run.

To that I say, oh whoopy.

Tomorrow I will get up, walk Bo for 25 minutes then go out and run for 25 more. And by run I mean jog. And by jog I mean a bouncing-like step that clocks in at roughly ten minutes per .9 miles. The corporate team I'm running the 5K with is well aware of my (lack of) jogging prowess, and though I've joked that my loftiest goal is to come in dead last, I'm starting to think about how bad dead last will actually feel. Maybe I'll be laughing too hard to notice I suck as badly as the jerk that swept Danielson's leg.

* Lyrics from "St. Elmo's Fire" by John Parr

** Lyrics from "Danger Zone" by Kenny Loggins

*** From Top Gun

**** Condescending marathoners need not comment on this post, thank you.

***** Ditto, marathoners.