Column: Savagemama

Thriller: When a Princess of Pop (culture) Meets Oregon Farm Boy

By Jennifer Savage, 8-30-07

A few weekends ago Seth, Eliza and I needed a break from the smoke, from worrying about the fire that was crawling toward our house, from the pre-evacuation orders that seemed to be heading in our direction. So we left one fire-choked valley for another and went to a wedding where all we had to do was show up and celebrate.

After the ceremony, Seth and I were standing just off the dance floor when the band took a break. Eliza was falling asleep in a backpack on my back and I gently moved my hips to the familiar synthesizers of the hip hop coming from someone’s ipod.

“Does the name Sir Mixalot mean anything to you?” I asked Seth.

“No,” he said with a look that said even more. It was an I-had-far-better-things-to-do-with-my-youth-than-listen-to-cheesy-hip-hop kind of look and I knew it all too well.

“Did you own Thriller? The album that folded out with Michael Jackson dressed in white with that cat or tiger or whatever? Do you even know what Thriller is?” I asked.

“Yes, I know what Thriller is,” he said. “I just didn’t think it was that good.”

“Seriously? But it was Michael Jackson. Not like Michael Jackson today but Michael Jackson back then. I’m talking about Billy Jean Michael Jackson.”

He just shrugged his shoulders.

“Billy Jean?”

He was not affected. At all.

“How is it that we are still married?” I asked him.

A few days later I held up the back cover of a magazine to him.

“Who is this?” I said.

He just sighed. “I know who that is,” he said.

“Are you sure?” I said.

“He’s a short man with a high voice,” Seth said.

“His name is Prince,” I said.

When it comes to pop culture, Seth and I grew up very differently. He barely had a television in his house, I had one in my room and was an every Thursday night Cosby-Show girl. Then I was an every Thursday night Friends girl, then ER. You get the point. I owned Thriller and Purple Rain, he owned a dubbed Bob Marley and the Wailers tape. I wore zippered pants, he wore cutoffs. I cruised at the beach listening to “Baby Got Back” over and over, he was, at the same age, off climbing some rocks somewhere. I grew up in the suburbs in South Carolina, he grew up on a desert highway in Central Oregon with the Three Sisters at his doorstep. He reads Noam Chomsky to unwind, I read “smut” magazines (People, In Touch, Us Weekly) that my mom throws into the box when she mails Eliza something. 

Somehow we’ve bridged this gap. Sometimes Seth comes home from the grocery store and asks me what’s going on with Angelina and Brad. I call him when Alternative Radio is on NPR. We pass our Saturday mornings dorking out to the puzzle on Weekend Edition and we snatch Harpers and the New Yorker from each other’s bedside tables. Lately, he even tolerates it when I leave the radio in his truck on Energy 107.5.

Advertising itself as Missoula’s newest radio station, this string of bad rap and cheesy hip hop has turned my 25 minute commute to Missoula into a sing along. Yesterday I heard Justin, Beyonce and J.Lo. In the two weeks I’ve known about the station, I’ve heard “Bust a Move,” “Funky Cold Medina,” and “Push It.” It is, after all, a station with songs from “today and back in the day” and I couldn’t be happier that Missoula has it on its dial. As we drive to town I sing and dance and Eliza looks around the tall curve of her car seat turned backwards to see what has happened to me. She turns back and continues jabbering into her toy John Deere phone.

This music is like candy, just like reading People. Like all good liberals I subscribe to a stack of magazines and People isn’t one of them. I read it when I want to look at pretty celebrities in stunning dresses, when I want to take a break from all the thinking that comes with the magazines that clutter my nightstand, when I’m tired to the bone from chasing Eliza and just want to be entertained for a minute or two before I fall asleep. The same is true with hip hop, particularly the kind that they play on Energy 107.5. When I can think no more about funding choice, the coming presidential election or how in the world we’ll ever pay off my student loans, I turn on a little Beyonce, a little Pussy Cat Dolls and tune it all out. 

At the wedding a few weeks ago, I realized why Seth and I are still married. Even though he didn’t own Thriller, even though he doesn’t know Sir Mixalot, he got on the dance floor anyway and we danced to some bad rap music. Later in the night, with Eliza draped across my back, the three of us moved to an old Steve Earle song, then an old Johnny Cash one.

My cruising/Sir Mixalot days are behind me (pardon the pun) and I don’t think Seth has listened to Bob Marley in a really long time. Neither of us watch TV these days but instead rent nerdy documentaries. Somewhere between the high desert of Central Oregon and the suburbs of South Carolina, we’ve landed here in Arlee, with our little girl, on our patch of land with the low hum of broken-hearted, Texas singer-songwriters coming from our radio. And we’re pretty happy here, Thriller aside.

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