"Blood on the Dance Floor: TM's Switchblade Edit," Michael Jackson
Ira has a toy with a rainbow-colored tail he's obsessed with. It's in a cabinet, duct-taped shut because he kept opening it, rifling through like a burglar. When he gets it, it's like he still wants it. That's how I am about dancing to this song.
How it starts! There's no way to stop your rotting shadow come out to play, sweat blossoming into the inky stains of your shame. You choke on air as curtains rise, listing in releve on a stiletto heel.
When Bing was about 2, I had fallen asleep on the couch and woke up to find him standing on top of me, looking me straight in the eyes while he, um, pissed all over my leg. I guess I love him so much that I wasn’t really skeeved by it (not sure if that is the correct usage…I know it’s a phrasal verb but there’s back-and-forth re: who does the skeeving. For example, I’ve seen both “You skeeve me” and “I am skeeved by you.” Hmmm…), but—oops, got sidetracked—I was mad enough to run around the apartment sobbing and chasing his furry, bob-tailed a$$.
I had heard about interspecies telepathic communicators because there was an amazing woman who volunteered at our adoption center, talking to all the dogs and cats who found themselves in the shelter, abandoned or lost or otherwise. Bing had just been to the vet and was pronounced healthy, so I had a hunch there was an emotional component behind his rogue peeing. Why not just ask him?
So yeah, Bingaling’s wake-up call 13ish years ago was exactly that—“a message to you because you aren’t taking care of yourself,” he said. “You’re not sleeping enough.”And I was working so much that I wasn’t giving him what he needed. “Stay home and read a book sometimes, quieting your mind and letting it unfold—I want to be near you,” he demanded. “I get lonely…you have to understand, I need to do things and see things, too.”
What else is going on in his kitty mind? A freakin’ lot, as you’ll see here. Luckily, I took really good notes along the way.
Bing on dancing - “I can walk over teacups and not disturb them. Because I am so centered, I can dance in the craziest ways.”
Bing on being brushed - “I have no patience for that.”
Bing on subtle energies - “I am doing a balancing act in the home. I smoothe out and expand the energy in the apartment. We need to combine our energies so each is balancing the other, so it’s a mutual thing.”
Bing on Mrs. Brown, a sweet floofy Himalayan we tried out as a possible companion for him. - “She encroached on my territory and gave me an ‘Ugghhh’ feeling. I felt blurry with her around and I couldn’t escape her.”
Bing on some guy I went out with for awhile - “He wants you to pay attention to him and not do your own life. He wants to control everything, and doesn’t let you be yourself. It’s not serving you.”
Bing on the possibility of adopting Puff, whom he grew to completely adore - “I’d like to try her out for 3 days. I like the fact that she’s a girl, but I can’t know for sure until I see her. I am fascinated by her energy.”
Bing on Derrick - “This one is a great companion! We fit in well together, but he really forgets his boundaries sometimes—and I am not good at keeping boundaries.”
Bing on his own appearance - “Aren’t I beautiful?”
Thanks for reading, everybody. I sure hope he doesn't get mad at me when he finds out, tho!
Music for tuning into your inner Bing
D'uh! Of course George is his favorite Beatle!
You know, Bing's a total bopping elf himself...
This last one's kind of a surprising choice, I know, more like my sentiments about the Bingford. But really, I wanted to point out...MJ's doing relatively simple moves here, but there's something about them that's like dancing over teacups. Focused, perfectly expressed, grounded, not a wasted bit of energy. I think Bing would dig it.
That has gotta be the ultimate bait-and-switch headline…sorry—we’re not talking buns, hon, but the plight of this poor gal who has to look at the back of the Emerson Inn in Rockport, MA, in perpetuity. Don’t you think she might like to see, not just hear, the roar of the ocean behind her?
(Yeah, I know, this song would be more appropriate if it were titled “I want YOUR back.” But I dare you not to like it.)
Jeff Koons has said there are no hidden meanings in his art. OK, then, so how come I didn’t get that his 1988 Michael Jackson and Bubbles, dubbed a “masterpiece” by Charlie Finch in artnet magazine, “entraps MJ in gold leaf like a metrosexual Midas and offers the chimp Bubbles as a witty child substitute?” “The total effect,” writes Finch, “is one of transcendent impotence, a brutal contradiction constantly underscored by the futility of Jackson’s crotch grabbing in performance and facial procedures under the surgeon’s knife.”
It’s not like I’m one of those people who gets all angry at the proverbial white canvas with a big red dot—my definitions of art and beauty are way more inclusive than they are exclusive—and it’s also not because I’m the kind of person who has the Michael Jackson Dress-Up Colorforms set (my favorite is his outfit from Beat It)...I just wouldn’t call this inspired. Actually I’d call it expired, its energy kind of going nowhere, though I do like the shiny fool’s-golden Franklin Mint aspect of it (get this $5.6 million sculpture for just 3 low payments of 19.99!). And if you can’t get your hands on one of the 3 identical sculptures Koons created, you can always purchase a t-shirt with the image on it. (I saw one on Etsy today! Geesh!)
Nah—screw the talk of Koons depicting childhood as a “lifeless signifier of death” (though that at least explains the piece's silent/gumball machine-esque nature) …what bugs me is he did a crappy job of depicting Bubbles! Either he needs to get some lessons from the sculptors at Franklin Mint or lose the speciesist notion that all chimps look the same. I ask you—does that look like a chimp who can moon walk and has drank tea with the mayor of Osaka?
For when you really feel like pant-hooting Apeman, The Kinks
Ooooh! Could I get Ray’s big white fluffy jacket in 3 easy payments of $19.99?
"But, my dear Sebastian, you can't seriously believe it all." "Can't I?" "I mean about Christmas and the star and the three kings and the ox and the ass." "Oh yes, I believe that. It's a lovely idea." "But you can't believe things because they're a lovely idea." "But I do. That's how I believe." --Sebastian and Charles in Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited
Seriously, was I even paying attention when I read that book? I hardly remember what it was about, but I do know that I was so sad when Sebastian and Charles weren’t friends anymore, and of course I loved the teddy bear.
Oh, and I LOVE the above quote, too. That’s exactly how I operate. Got Beauty? Got a good story? Then ya got Truth, buster, and sign me up.
Anyway, what I really want to share in this post is my vision/version of heaven. If you think it’s a beautiful idea, you can believe it, too. There’s no St. Peter to greet me at the Pearly Gates, there’s all my past cat friends—Apple! Loma P! Neetch! Pod! And starring…Miss Puffelina!—doing a line dance to the 2007 remix of the Jackson 5’s Dancing Machine.
I love the original, but when ya get to heaven it’s gotta be the version from Motown Remixed, Vol. 2. It’s all salsa-fied and down into the ground, and I can just see Puffer doing this groovy mambo-hip move to it.
They make a place in the line for me and we all just keep dancing…
Rhythmatic, acrobatic She a dynamite attraction At the drop of a coin she comes alive…
It’s a lovely idea, right?!
P.S. It's the anniversary of Puff's birth today! : )
