While enjoying the H St Festival today I spotted two members of the Real World DC cast shopping and being pretty boring. Even the crew seemed bored with it all. When the two girls went inside the shop, they all plopped down and started texting and calling people, not even bothering to follow them inside to film them.

If you don’t already know, MTV’s The Real World has started filming here in DC. MTV has also started airing the RW Cancun so the DC chapter will probably air early next year. rumor has it they’re going to film until Thanksgiving, which would mean a solid four months of footage.

The house is at 20th & S, NW. You can’t miss it at night, it’s lit up like the daytime and during the daytime I’m sure there are camera crews everywhere. Local residents of that intersection aren’t necessarily thrilled with the media and personal interest onslaught that has taken up camp in their neighborhood. And I can’t say I really blame them, seeing as these interlopers will have no vested interest in their neighborhood and, relying on past RW chapters, will end up vomiting, pissing, fighting and all those other things 20-year-olds with starry eyes will do. The Anti Real World DC’s (new) blog is here.

Last night I was out with an out-of-town friend at Black Cat and told her about the RWDC and she wanted to go by the house. I thought it would be fun to piss off some of the cast members, as it appears to be the new fun thing to do in DC this summer. So we did.

It was late, around last call, so I was hoping some of the cast would stumble around the corner and then we could yell things at them to disrupt their filming (this is the de facto act to commit I’ve heard, as then they will have to edit out the audio of “Real World sucks!”). But the security detail in the truck across the street looked pretty relaxed so we surmised they were all already inside shooting pool or making daquiris or whatever they do. We did notice some movement in the glazed-over windows, but it looked mainly to be the crew.

We chatted with  security for a while but they weren’t budging on giving us any info. All of a sudden, there was movement the front door. Two of the cast members came out to eat their late night take-out on the front steps. So I hurried over to snap some pictures and one of the narcissist started cowering with his head down, as if he didn’t want any limelight. Um, dude, you’ve got cameras following you for the next four months. It’s a little too early in the game to be shying away from the cameras so soon. They had glowstick bracelets on, so they had been out partying somewhere that evening. Needless to say, after a few minutes of heavy sighing they packed up their styrofoam packs and went back inside.

It was a fun bit of fun but I’m really dreading the time they invade a restaurant or bar or some other venue that I’m at because I’ve heard the camera crews are pretty pushy and rude. Anything that gets the shot, right guys?

Douglas Coupland, 1993:

“My friend Graham Law took the footage of me with a Super-8 camera. All told, it took maybe 30 minutes. When it was developed, there was a bunch of footage still on the reel that he’d taken in Toronto years before. One of the most beautiful images was that of the nuns walking around on the square boardwalk. His studio used to look out over this walk. It was a rest home for nuns with Alzheimers, and its sort of sad because they’d spent their life devoted to God and then in the end they couldn’t remember it. Or could they? It’s a fascinating question.”

I thought about how odd it is for billions of people to be alive and yet not one of them is really quite sure of what makes people people. The only activities I could think of that humans do that have no animal equivalent were smoking and writing and body-building. That’s not much, considering how special we seem to think we are.

Forget about Thriller, here is the real Michael Jackson video from 1984 that we’ve all waited 25 years to see: outtakes from the pyrotechnic mishap on the Pepsi commercial set. Previously there was only a fuzzy film still, shot from the front, of him descending the stairs with a tuft of flame coming from the crown of his head.

Now we get the full detail.

Maybe we’ve changed over the years. We’re more de-sensitized now, after watching planes flying into buildings and their subsequent collapses. Now we want our stars accosted by an army of photogs while crossing the street. There are no press releases anymore, because some gossip site has already spilled the beans. Press agents are only called in for damage control.

Way back in 1984 when this happened sure it made news coverage. But it was a minor blip, quickly glossed over by a publicity shot of a sequined glove being carried away on a stretcher. Now that (some kind of) drug addiction seems to be the leading cause of Michael Jackson’s death they’re pointing to this event as the start for his pill-popping. Now we get to see the full event as-it-happened, with the best camera angle possible.

BONUS: here is an incredibly badly designed PowerPoint slide that tries to explain the sales of MJ’s records since his death. It includes an awkward chronology graph and folding arrows!

It’s been a bizarre week. Nine dead on the Metro crash. Farrah loses her battle with Cancer. Michael Jackson unexpectedly dies. Distant deaths of people I didn’t know but have had some sort of impact or memory in my life. Thursday I found out I’m separated by one degree to the driver of the Metro train that crashed.

In 1977 I had “the poster” iron-on on a yellow tshirt, and wore it to school. My principal made me turn my tshirt inside out for the remainder of the day. Apparently the teeth or the boobs (or the nipple) was too much. Some people didn’t know how to handle Farrah’s sex appeal. I also had a puzzle of the poster image, too. Her teeth was perfectly centered onto one of the pieces and I always thought that was cool. Maybe if that piece had not been cut so, if her teeth had been divided between pieces, I might never have remembered even owning that puzzle.

There are many more memories and associations with Michael Jackson. The first was back in 1972 or so. On my Cub Scouts handbook (Wolf? Bear? I can’t remember.) I had affixed a Michael Jackson plastic 3-dimensional sticker, which I probably got at the bottom of a cereal box. And also I remember watching the Jackson 5 cartoon series, with its groovy warm colors and animated videos to their songs. And singing Rockin’ Robin in music class.

Later, as an adolescent, I can remember the singles from Off The Wall on heavy rotation on both radio and at the skating rink. My favorite was always Workin’ Day & Night, maybe because it was the most frenetic of the singles from that album, maybe because all the staccato of the percussion. This, of course, was setting the stage for my fascination with the sequencer-laden pop from the early 80s and in particular one Mr. Nick Rhodes.

Then, right after high school, Thriller dropped. The sleeper first hit, The Girl Is Mine, was pretty much under my radar but then Billie Jean showed up on the radio and MTV, and I swear that bassline is still the hottest to date. I watched, live (at broadcast date) the Motown 25 special, where he first moonwalked and really declared his independence from his brothers, who had performed with him minutes earlier but then left the stage once the bass from Billie Jean started. Soon everybody was talking about the Beat It video and had I seen it yet or not. And you probably know the rest of the story from there: the Pepsi spot, the premiere of the Thriller video, super-hyper-mega-stardom, etc.

My interest in MJ waned over the years, but it was always obvious when a new album was coming out and there was no escaping the publicity about his personal life. Wacko? Guilty? Perv? I guess it really doesn’t matter now. The talk on the news is what he will be remembered for, will it be the music or will it be the oddities and scandals? I presume it will be both. No one speaks of Marilyn without mentioning JFK; nobody mentions Elvis without referencing the gaudiness of Vegas shows and dying on a toilet. And it’s probably better that we do remember both sides of Michael, the great music and the perverse plastic oddity he had become.

Today I found out a friend’s cat also passed away, the cute and friendly Kosmo that I spent some time with back in April. Friend’s pets passing is always sad for me, having The Twins™ pass away and knowing what those feelings entail. So RIP to all, even Mr. McMahon.