I watched Cap­tain EO (not sure what the EO means) with my kids (the toe-head twins) and it occurred to me that I had never showed it to them until now.

Their favorite line was one uttered by The Supreme Leader:

You infect my world with your pres­ence! Turn the oth­ers into… trashcans!

Even though Cap­tain EO was a favorite from my child­hood, hav­ing seen it for the first time in the late 80s/early 90s, it took the pass­ing of Michael Jack­son and a flood of nos­tal­gia to con­vince me to do so. What a shame.

We also watched Moonwalker’s Smooth Crim­i­nal sequence, but that wasn’t nearly as cool to them. I tried to explain that when I was a kid (early 80s), Michael Jack­son was some­thing spe­cial and even after all these years he’s still con­sid­ered a true tal­ent. What I didn’t go into was all the media hype, spec­u­la­tion, accu­sa­tions, strange behav­ior or gig­gly inter­views because none of that mat­tered to me and some­day they can get the scoop on all of that if they really want to.

Michael’s mes­sage to the world was sim­ple: be inspired and imag­i­na­tive, lov­ing, cre­ative and good.

It’s some­thing we all can aspire to be and for that I thank “MJ” for his influence.