By the time I was old enough to start listening to Top 40 radio and to buy records (er, tapes), Michael Jackson was already becoming a punch line. “Black or White” topped the charts when I was in Grade Seven and Jacko was more of a freak show draw than music icon throughout my high school years. Then there were the child molestation charges and it looked like the King of Pop would end up irreparably tarnished. He was acquitted of those charges, though, and people started to give him the benefit of the doubt. I mean, if there is one person who was so completely divorced from the standard norms of behaviour and so completely outside our collective realm of comprehension that he might innocently share a bedroom with a young boy and be surprised at the outrage, it was Michael Jackson.
A few years ago, though, I started to hear it: the odd M.J. song. We played Billie Jean at the bar where I worked when I was pregnant with Young C and some of the first fetal movements I felt were in time with this pop classic. Many of those early songs are good. They hold up. There was a bit of a Michael Jackson resurgence going on and people wondered if he had anything more. People were talking about the music, not the bizzaro personal circumstances surrounding the man. Continue reading 'Growing Up in Public: Michael Jackson and Us'»
DAILY SNACK
It was raining pretty hard.
I started the car, hit the defrost button and turned on the wipers.
L’il I fell asleep right away.
But Young C and I enjoyed looking for songs on the radio dial,
And identifying street names,
And pointing out landmarks.
We drove right past home and right past bedtime,
Into the dusk.
The smell of rain on a cool summer evening in the car,
Took me right back to my own childhood.
Memories of where safety and security meet excitement and adventure.
They both nodded off and I pulled over and opened a novel.
Off the road, off the grid, the ultimate escape.
Welcome to the new AdSense-free Playground Confidential. Isn’t it so nice and … white? I wish I could write that I have decided to blog for the sheer joy of it and that I am no longer seeking advertising revenue to support my hobby. But that is not the case.
Google AdSense has decided that my blog “has posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers.” They’ve shut me down, in other words, for violating their Terms and Agreements. I was pretty taken aback — to say the least — when I first received the email. I mean, this is a one-woman show here. I actually write my own content and rely on a growing base of loyal readers for my traffic. There’s nothing but make-money-off-Google-ads schemes every which way you look. There are scads of sites that are filled with RSS feeds and stolen or cobbled together content designed to maximize search engine optimization and confuse readers into clicking on ads. And they cut me off. Me! Continue reading 'Advertise to Urban Canadian Moms'»
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