Wacko Jacko’s Best
By Matthew C. Scheck | June 27, 2009
[NOTE: Before you read this essay, scroll down to the music player I've embedded and play the music I am writing about. That way if you find my writing completely boring, Michael's music will make you groove and dance and shake your booty. And then maybe my words will make more sense or seem a little less boring.]
1. Working Day and Night - Off the Wall - 1979
Mixing elements of disco, R&B, latin, and funk, this electrifying, ass-shaking track packed every dance floor across the country for many years when DJs spun it. Michael was at the height of his artistic brilliance on this record, and with Quincy Jones manning the mixing board and conducting the impressive lineup of session musicians hired to back Michael, there didn’t seem to be any possible limits to the magic they put down on tape in these Off the Wall sessions. Thriller sold more units than Off the Wall and catapulted Michael Jackson into the throne as the King of Pop, but musically it really wasn’t more than a lateral move after Off the Wall. This song is so damn good it still sounds fresh, funky, and cool thirty years after it was first released. It contains every element that made Jackson not only the undisputed master of disco, R&B, and funk, but also the premiere pop singer of his generation. His magnetic charisma and joyful glee while performing always captivated my generation as we watched him grow up as were we growing up, and the fact he became such a freak show later in his life can never take away the undisputed truth that he was the biggest star of my generation and the greatest entertainer we’ve ever seen with our own eyes. And on this song he was almost perfect in every sense.
2. Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough - Off the Wall - 1979
The first shot across our bow alarming us that Michael Jackson was the biggest superstar in pop music and an absolute musical genius in every sense. As a kid he dazzled us with his talent and charisma, but now he was writing his own songs and working with the best producers and musicians in the business to fulfill his own creative vision and not that of Motown, Berry Gordy, his father, his brothers, or anyone else. And what a vision! Few artists have understood the ethereal magic of pop music like Michael, and even though he went completely insane a decade later and turned his life and public image into a laughable and pathetic freak show, during the period right after Off the Wall was released until about 1984 he was immensely loved and admired by damn near everyone all over the world. Even if his music wasn’t your cup of tea you had to admit he was an amazing talent who captivated the world like few artists have ever done before or after him.
3. Off the Wall - Off the Wall - 1979
More pop brilliance from his best record. People used to complain that Michael benefitted greatly from working with Quincy Jones and some of the best session musicians in the business, but let’s face it, if you replace Michael in these songs with any other pop singer of his time, would any of them have carried the songs quite like Michael? No way.
4. Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground) - Destiny - 1978
Motown screwed the pooch by letting the Jackson 5 sign with another label, but the truth was that Motown was a declining empire and no longer capable of producing fresh and hip music like they had for most of the 60s. Sadly, the Jackson’s new label, Epic, wasn’t much better than Motown at unleashing Michael Jackson’s star power, mainly because there were too many cooks in the kitchen and few were letting Michael have as much creative control as he really needed. Michael was a genius and his pop instincts were much better than anyone in his inner circle, and finally after a couple of failed Jacksons albums he began to assert himself more in the studio and within the constricting confines of his family business. The result was 1978’s Destiny, which he did with his brothers, but Michael had never really needed them and this would be the last time anyone would hold him back from expressing his own artistic vision. After this decent record, Michael was free to pursuit his solo career and take full creative control of his musical vision, and when he did he really took off. His little sister Janet did the same thing in the mid-80s, and while not nearly as talented and charismatic as her brother, she also rocketed to massive fame and critical praise when she took control of her own artistic direction and broke free from the Jackson family machine. Control is her Off The Wall, and it’s a pretty damn good pop record.
5. Dancing Machine - Dancing Machine - 1974
His voice began to change and he was no longer the cute little elfin wunderkind he’d been when the Jackson 5 broke out in 1970, but Michael was still an amazing lead singer and his dancing began to take on an almost otherworldly quality when this song was released. How many from my generation remember watching him dance the robot for the first time to this song? What was becoming more and more evident at this time was that his brothers were mediocre talents while Michael was a world class entertainer, and as long as he was stuck in this very constricting group he would never full realize his immense potential. For most of the 70s Michael’s talent was underutilized by his handlers and record labels, but finally he met music maestro Quincy Jones in 1977 while working on the film The Whiz, and the subsequent collarboration between the two led to Michael’s most fruitful artistic endeavors on Off the Wall and Thriller.
6. I Want You Back - Diana Ross Presents the Jackson 5 - 1969
This wasn’t a mere child star we were watching on TV in 1970—this was a midget combination of Smokey Robinson and James Brown who just happened to be a kid. He had more charisma, soul, and funky cool than the rest of the Motown stable combined, and for kids of my generation we had a pop star of our very own who we held close to our hearts well into our adult years. And even when he became an abomination and a monster, we still looked back to our childhood and smiled for all the good times this brilliant little singer brought us back in the day. When Michael broke our hearts it was a cruel and bitter feeling, as if Peter Pan himself had betrayed Neverland and was really a villain much worse than Captain Hook.
7. The Love You Save - ABC - 1970
One of the first singles I bought as a kid and my favorite Jackson 5 song back when I was in the second grade. At that time my musical interest was consumed by Michael Jackson, the Carpenters, and the Monkees, but if someone held a gun to my head I would have readily admitted the Monkees were my favorite—but Michael wasn’t far behind. This is a beautiful pop song. I haven’t heard it in years, and now listening to it I’m fighting back tears. Motown’s production team still had its A game on this song, and with Michael singing it they really hit a grand slam.
8. ABC - ABC - 1970
Seriously, when I was seven I wanted to be black and cool like Michael Jackson. How ironic is it that Michael’s most obsessive desire in life was to be an Aryan whiteboy like me? His transformation from black and beautiful to white and freaky was a stomach-turning experience for even his most ardent fans, and sadly while my generation can remember a time when he was so perfectly cool and brilliant, for those after mine he will be remembered as a weirdo and pathetic, child-molesting freak. How sad. Like Elvis, Michael’s legacy will bring as many chuckles and sardonic grins for its freakish nature as it will smiles for all the joy he brought the world with his music.
9. Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ - Thriller - 1982
I always thought Thriller was a great record, but it wasn’t as dazzling, funky, and fresh as Off the Wall. However, like everyone else at the time, I enjoyed the captivating cultural mania that came with each new video Michael introduced on MTV. In my opinion this was the best song on Thriller, perhaps because it sounded like it belonged on Off the Wall, but also because it was by far the best dance track on the record and a celebration of life and all the fun and joy Michael’s music could bring to the world. By the summer of 1983 Michael had become the biggest star in the world—and deservedly so—but it was also the beginning of his long, slow, and pathetic demise as an artist and a person. Like Elvis, he was a fragile, troubled, and abnormally insecure human being who was surrounded by far too many parasites and ass kissers who obviously were not helping him and couldn’t say no to all his insane whims and obsessions. In the end those around him failed him many times over. Mostly, Michael failed himself. The only thing more damaging to him than his crippling insanity was his massive ego. Both destroyed him in the end.
10. Billy Jean - Thriller - 1982
This was a smash hit in the spring of 1983 on the radio and the new cable channel MTV, which helped push Michael onto a completely new level of fame that had only been occupied by Elvis and the Beatles. After Micheal’s heart-stopping performance of this song on TV celebrating the 25th anniversary of Motown, where he introduced the world to his moonwalk dance move, his fame shot to a level wholly his own, surpassing every pop singer or act before or since. From this point forward his fame took on an almost surreal quality as everyone wanted a piece of him and he could seemingly do no wrong artstically. But to me it was the peak of his artistic creativity.
Conclusion
Whatever spark or genius that led Michael to such great heights in the early 80s seemed to get lost amid the sea of adulation and fame in which he would be awash the rest of his life, and his music suffered even more as he sunk further and further into insanity and his unhealthy obsessions with plastic surgery and buggering young boys. The more diligently he tried to equal Off the Wall and Thriller, the further he drifted from the spirit and artistic creativity that fueled those two seminal records, and for the rest of his life his music was mostly shit in comparison.
His music since Thriller, though slickly produced at very great expense with the best producers and musicians in the music business, lacked the unbridled glee, limitless soul, and trascendent brilliance of his peak years. The peerless and remarkable pop instincts that drove him to such great heights in the early 80s abandoned him as his fame grew, and as the years went by he couldn’t even come close to capturing the magic he once could conjure so effortlessly. Like many of his fans who had loved him since 1970, I watched first in amusement, and then utter disgust, as Michael went from being merely eccentric and weird to a full-fledged, child-molesting criminal and traveling freak show who bought off his victims to keep his tender ass out of prison.
The greatest star of my generation had turned into a creepy monster, ugly, deformed, and completely insane, trapped in a fantasy world and incapable of even performing or recording music any more. His immense wealth had vanished long ago, and he was one of the most reviled public figures in the world. His death was a sad ending to this bizarre tale of such high highs and low lows in the life of the King of Pop, Michael Jackson. He broke as many hearts as he warmed in his long career, and when we learned he died we almost felt relief that his tragic freak show of a life was finally over.
Rest in peace, Michael Jackson. My heart is still broken for how you betrayed my generation, but you still had moments of brilliance that brought great joy to my life and made it worth living ten times over.
Topics: Culture, Music | 4 Comments »
German Club Music 1987
By Matthew C. Scheck | March 16, 2009
It was 22 years ago and a lifetime away in many ways, but the memories remain fresh. Every now and then I like to take a trip down memory lane and dig up all the cool music from a particular era just one more time for my listening pleasure. I thought this time I’d take you all along with me.
And here we go…
Club Marabu, Zweibrücken
Zweibrücken was a German town near the little town, Martinshohe, where I lived in 1987, and was home to a great dance club called the Marabu. Every Thursday night in the spring of 1987 my friend Jose Campos and I would hit the Marabu because it was Ladies Night, which meant the frauleins drank alcohol basically for free, so of course the club was usually packed with great looking and tipsy German girls. Jose and I probably hit on them all at one time or another.
The DJs always played great music at the Marabu. These were the days just before Rave, Hip-hop and Techno music would take off all over the continent, so dance clubs usually played the heavily synth-and-drum-machine-driven sounds coming out of the UK, Belgium, and Germany at the time. The beats in this “Electronic Body Music” (which I called “Funky Kraftwerk) were a little slower than those in the Techno music that would come out a little later, but as you can hear from the songs I’ve submitted, it’s pretty obvious that Techno borrowed heavily from its earlier precursors in Synth Pop and EBM.
Kissing the Pink’s “Certain Things Are Likely” is the one song that reminds me of the Marabu more than any other. For the first ten times or so that I heard this song I thought it was a new single by either Depeche Mode or Heaven 17. One night I finally asked the DJ who this was so I could buy the 12″ single, and much to my surpise it was Kissing the Pink, who were not unkown to me, but who to that point hadn’t made music that sounded like this song.
Also included on this playlist are the most popular German dance music acts—Propaganda, Alphaville, and George Kranz—who all had huge hits on the German charts when I first moved there in 1986.
Heaven 17’s “Let Me Go” had come out in about 1981, but in 1986 they released a really cool remix of the song that was huge in German dance clubs. Sadly I cannot find this version of the song for inclusion here, but the original is still cool enough to included. I have the remix version on my iPod.
Nowadays this stuff sounds a little dated—maybe even a little corny—but to me it brings back lots of great memories of the cool little club in that cool little German town near the French border.
Club Village, Homburg
Homburg was small town located in the Saarland and was a favorite hangout of ours in 1986 and 1987. It was a cool place, with a great center city that was loaded with cafes, pubs, shops, and restaurants. One would be hard pressed to find a cooler crowd of German kids than could be found in Homburg. This was probably due to the fact the University of Saarland’s medical school was located there. The Homburg social scene was also much more upscale and classy than some of the other places we frequented, and most American GI’s were not welcome unless they blended in with the German kids.
The Village (pronounced “Fee-laszh” by the locals) was a small but memorable club in Homburg where the coolest of cool Homburg kids hung out and danced. The music was mostly British pop acts that blended R&B dance rhythms with jazzy vocals, best exemplified by acts like Swing Out Sister, Style Council, Curiosity Killed the Cat, Level 42, Sade, and Blow Monkeys. These were hip and fashionable bands that appealed to upper crust kids. In late 1987 House music would erupt all over Europe and consume the club scene like a wildfire raging out of control, but I am writing about the relative calm before that inferno.
When kids in Homburg went out at night, they hardly wore jeans, instead favoring more upscale clothing and styles in a finger-snapping, jazzy, cool kind of way. The kids here were less influenced by the Punk/Goth/New Wave styles that were more prevalent in places like Berlin, Frankfurt, Saarbrücken, or Kaiserslautern.
For my stints in Homburg, I usually wore my brown wool Hugo Boss blazer, black mock turtleneck sweaters, black slacks, and black loafers [see the photo on the upper left of this web page]. There were tons of cool clothing shops in its center city that catered to the upscale dress code of its club life. Plus Jose dated a gorgeous German girl, Regina, who managed a hip clothing store in Kaiserslautern, so we were never at a loss for cool clothes that year.
The girls in Homburg were beautiful and fun, but difficult to pick up without knowing them a while. I do no recall any of my friends ever having a one night stand here, but Jose and I hung out with quite a few girls from the university on a regular basis and even dated a few.
We usually hung out at the Village on Wednesday nights because that was its Ladies Night. In most German clubs the kids all danced alone or with groups of friends, but at the Village everyone danced with a partner from the opposite sex. This forced us to speak German and improve our social skills, because in order to dance we had to approach strange German girls and ask them to join us on the dance floor. It’s amazing how we honed our fluency with the few phrases and words we needed to pick up women or order beers, to the point we sounded like native Germans despite our limited vocabularies. I wouldn’t say we spoke fluent German, but what we did know we spoke well, and for most Germans that was enough.
Topics: Memoirs, Music | 3 Comments »
He’s Back! It Must Be Spring!
By Matthew C. Scheck | March 13, 2009
Dandelions are a sproutin’ here in Philly
So I wrote a little song it’s rather silly
To my little furry pal, my tubby feral chum
From his itty-bitty ears to his li’l chunky bum
Mister Chubbles I love you!
He’s not a squirrel or a cat
Or a corpulent rat
Not a chipmunk, not a doggie
He’s just my little groundhoggie
Mister Chubbley-Bubbley Pooo!
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh,
Chubbles, with the fat bootie,
You’re my favorite little furry cutie
You make every day sunny
My grass-munchin’ honey
Mister Chubbles you’re the best!
In the Winter you go sleepy
And without you I get weepy
So when the Spring days arrive
And I know that you’re alive
My heart leaps out of my chest!
Dear Chubbles, my feral fat brother
I love you like I would no other
Please stay all day
And graze away
Mister Chubbles, you’re the best!
Topics: Chubbles | 2 Comments »
My Bloody Valentine - Loveless
By Matthew C. Scheck | March 12, 2009
Simply one of the great records in the Post-Punk era, a masterpiece of artful noise and sonic beauty, utterly breathless with its majestic wall of fuzztone guitars and feedback, ear candy for the hyper-stoned Alt Rock generation. It breaks every convention of music with reckless abandon and simply sounds better and better with each listening.
I’m sure many just won’t get it. For them I feel sadness and pity. We probably exist in different universes, and yours lacks color, depth, and feeling. To explain why I love this record so much is like trying to describe the beauty of a waterfall to a blind and deaf person. It is just beautiful because it is.
I love every track listed here, but 1, 2, 3, and 5 are absolutely brilliant beyond belief.
Enough said. Listen. Feel. Enjoy.
Topics: Music | No Comments »
How I Wish to Be Remembered
By Matthew C. Scheck | February 27, 2009
Stultum est timere quod vitare non potes.
(It is stupid to be afraid of that which you cannot avoid.)
- Marcus Tullius Cicero
I recognize that the title of this essay sounds rather morbid, but the truth is that last year I learned I have a fairly large aortic aneurysm that has greatly lowered my odds of living to an old age. It doesn’t mean I won’t live to an old age, but it does mean that at some point I’m going to have to risk open-heart surgery and have an aortic replacement procedure performed on me that runs a great risk of killing me. Or my aneurysm could simply burst at any moment and I’ll be dead in a few minutes. In other words, there’s a ticking time bomb inside me that could explode, but diffusing it is also risky and could kill me too. Lucky me.
Last year I was staying at my sister Ann’s house while I was being seen at the Mayo Clinic, and for many nights after I learned of my condition I’d lie in bed and try to assess my life and whether I’ve lived it as well as I should have. I freely admit I’m an atheist, and that never wavered once as I was going through my medical crisis last year, nor do I think it will ever be possible to change this non-belief in a higher power that has basically dominated my intellectual makeup since I was a young child. I am not afraid or even saddened that I don’t believe in a god or spiritual world beyond this one. In fact, it brings me great comfort that fear, irrationality, and false hope do not drive my way of thinking.
My father died when he was a couple of years older than I am as I write this. He died horribly and tragically, a beautiful, brilliant, and wonderful man with a huge family who was unfairly felled by the utter randomness of our biological existence that operates much like a lottery in how it rewards and punishes us without any regard to how good or bad we are, or whether we particularly deserve to suffer such pain and indignity. My father was a far better man than I could ever hope to be, and it was only when I stopped trying to be so much like him that I was ever able to live my life without anxiety and self hatred. I realized I am who I am and he was who he was, and the fact we were extremely different is what makes us human. So I stopped trying to be him or even live up to his lofty standards that he imposed on himself in his life.
Dad left behind so much by his early demise. I could never leave that much behind if I should die young. He had a loving wife and nine children who needed him dearly. I am a childless bachelor at 45, and frankly I don’t even have many close friends any more. I mean I have many beautiful and close friends in my life, but they are either far away or are simply busy with their own families and priorities. Moreover, I am very busy myself with my mercenary lifestyle where I often work in far-off places for long stretches. I do this by choice.
I want to be remembered by this photograph of me. It was taken in June 1987 just after the most important thing I have ever done in my life, for which I am the proudest, happened. I am proud of many things I have done in my life, but this was my finest hour. I was the happiest and yet the saddest I have ever been.
Two weeks before this photo was taken I was a member of a team that performed this country a very necessary and difficult duty, and while we were all overwhelmed and deeply affected by this horrible duty, we all came out of it better soldiers and human beings. Five members of the team—Derrick Green, Kelly Wathor, Deb Troell, Felipe Linares, and Karen Linares—were dear friends who I am glad I had with me during the entire affair. In many ways I was the least capable of the team in handling the immense emotional and physical strain of our difficult task, but having these excellent friends by my side pulled me through. Few times in our lives are we ever called upon to serve such a difficult and important cause. I am glad that when I was asked to serve a higher purpose, I responded with my best effort.
I freely admit I was a cocky, haughty, and often prickly young man when I was 23, but I was also an ardently loyal friend, pretty good soldier, and someone you wanted on your team if we were at war. I was smart and intellectual, but I was also a huge goof who never took the military life too seriously, and of course I was famous for being a rascal who broke the rules with glee but was never in any particular trouble for doing so. My superiors kind of overlooked my open disdain for military rules and regulations and my often unbridled smart-aleckness because, in a pinch, Specialist Scheck was a tough, dependable, and trustworthy soldier. I am forever proud that everyone I knew thought this of me.
In some ways I was never the same person after this event. There are a multitude of reasons why, none of which need to be expressed here, but suffice to know that part of me that I was then was lost forever and I have never regained what I lost. I have never felt whole in the years since. I look at the guy in this photo and I wonder who he was, because in some ways it’s not who I am now—not even close. Nor have I a clue how to return there, if that is even possible. Maybe we all change like that. All I know for sure is that I have.
For the next couple of years after this was taken I struggled to regain what was lost, but in the end the only way I could find peace within myself was to just accept I would never get that back. And that has been how I’ve lived the last 20 years of my life, in silent acceptance that I’m never going to be whole again.
I am very happy with my life as I now live it, but those who know me know there’s a strange emptiness to me that is difficult to understand, let alone explain. I’m a good guy and have a big heart. And then come the “buts” about me. I have never married. I don’t have children. I’ve never wanted to own anything substantive even though I earn tons of money. I travel all the time for work and am happiest when I am somewhere strange and unfamiliar, and where I am working long hours under great strain. I have great difficulty maintaining loving, monogamous relationships with even the women I love deeply. I have few close friends near me any more, and I have had difficulty maintaining friendships with my best and dearest friends from the past. I’m an odd one, I assure you.
For those of you who knew the guy in this photo, I take comfort you knew that whole person I was back then who I’ve never been since. I am not being unduly harsh in my self-assessment, I assure you all. I think people in my family have thought this about me since I came home in 1990, that I’m a good guy, a hard worker, and fairly successful, but there’s definitely something not 100% whole in me that makes me a complete mystery to them, and yet I think they love me and admire me all the same.
I am a firm believer in seeking the truth in this life, even if the truth hurts when I direct my analysis and criticism at myself. I stopped fearing death last year and I don’t care if I live forever or until tomorrow. I will fight to live as long as I can with all my energy and intellect, and I will never give up. But I want to be remembered for when I was at my best in this world, and in June 1987 when this photo was taken I was definitely at my best and everything I should have been today but I’m not; now I am just proud of the fact I was at one point in my life.
This essay isn’t a cry for help or a plea for attention. I am a writer and philosopher above all else, and to be a good one I have to present myself and my ideas with wide-eyed honesty and candor. I cannot be the person I wish I could be, but I can know and understand who I am and try my best to live my life honestly with myself and those around me. My personal flaws and imperfections should not in any way detract from the ideas I express, but at the same time I cannot offer my criticisms and analysis of the world around me without first directing them at myself and being completely open and honest with what I find.
In the end I wish to be remembered as someone who made a difference, no matter how insignificant and subtle that difference has been. We are all not destined for greatness in this life, and I am far from ever being a great man with a huge effect on this world. But the little bit I can affect can only make the world a better place. For that I am immensely proud of how I have conducted myself, even if, as I have pointed out here, I haven’t been myself the last 20 years, nor will I ever be again. However, even at half-speed or maybe three-quarters I’ve been okay, a step above mediocrity, but certainly nothing history will remember.
In the end we all have to die. We often don’t get to choose how this happens. If I learned anything from my father’s early and horrific demise, it’s that the memory of his wonderfulness will outlive his mortal being for many years, and while I don’t believe in an afterlife, I recognize that our collective memory that we pass down to future generations assures that we’re never ever forgotten, so in a way that becomes our own afterlife.
We are so very lucky in this modern digital age to have tools and mechanisms to pass the important parts of ourselves to our future progeny. This is my time capsule of who I am that I wish to be passed down forever. The slightly cocky and self-assured young man you see in this black-and-white photograph, this Specialist Fourth Class in the United States Army in June 1987, is the best part of me and the last time I was who I wanted to be or should have been. So it is what I want remembered about me most. It may seem like a strange request to some people, but for me it makes perfect sense. That is also not to say I’m such a lousy person right now, because I am not, but who I am now is less important than the guy you see in this photograph. But of course he is me and I am him. So there is that knowledge too.
So please remember me thusly when I’m gone.
Topics: Memoirs | 3 Comments »
The Shittiest Job in the Army
By Matthew C. Scheck | February 26, 2009
While I was trying to watch the HBO film “Taking Chance,” a very subtle and sad story about a Marine Colonel escorting the body of a young Marine killed in Iraq home to his family, a flood of my own memories of my extremely shitty job when I served in the Army came crashing through my mind. I couldn’t watch the entire film because I was so deeply moved.
From 1986 to 1988 I worked in Forensic Pathology for the US Army 10th Medical Laboratory in Landstuhl, Germany. During my tenure, two of the worst military disasters in the 1980s happened on my watch: the 1987 USS Stark incident and the 1988 Flugtag Air Show disaster at Ramstein Air base. In the former, 37 sailors on the USS Stark were killed when an Iraqi fighter jet fired two Exocet missiles at the Navy frigate. In the latter, two Italian Air Force jets were performing a stunt before a crowd of nearly 300,000 people at the air show when they crashed into the crowd, killing 67 people and wounding nearly 300 more in the most horrible ways imaginable. In both cases, I was a member of the teams who recovered and identified the remains of the casualties.
Moreover, during my tenure hundreds of other casualties passed though my shop at the LARMC morgue, most of whom died in some of the most horrible ways imaginable. Even a peacetime military has its share of murders, training accidents, and suicides. We averaged about 5-10 casualties a week, week in and week out, and in the end I begged to be transferred out when I could no longer bear to cut open dead people any more.
For me, the sight of a flag-draped military casket reminds me that I had quite possibly the shittiest job in the Army, and how I’ve spent most of my adult life trying to erase from my mind the horrible tragedies to which I bore firsthand witness. For years afterwards I was like that little kid from the film “The 6th Sense”—I saw dead people everywhere: in my dreams, in my mind’s eye when I was conscious, and sometimes when I was drunk or extremely tired I’d see them for real, right before my eyes.
When my colleagues and I were done identifying the casualties we received and determining the cause of their death, we shipped them to the mortuary at Dover Air Base in New Jersey, which is where the film “Taking Chance” begins. What always haunted me were the expressions on the faces of those dead GIs and military dependants we handled in our morgue. I know death is inevitable for all of us, but I realized after a couple of years that I could no longer bear to look at dead people any more.
I have tremendous respect for front-line troops in harms way, but I also hope everyone in this country appreciates the tremendously difficult duty performed by our troops who make sure our dead heroes make it home to their families. While I thought I had the shittiest job in the Army, I feel a great sense of pride that I did that shitty job, even if it probably screwed me up a little later in life. It was the least I could do for my comrades and my country.
Topics: Memoirs | 8 Comments »
100 Classic Songs 1980-89
By Matthew C. Scheck | February 17, 2009
I could list a thousand more songs that are worthy of this distinction, but these were the first one hundred that came to mind when I started compliling this list. There is no actual "best" order to this list, as any one of these songs is great enough to be considered the best song of the decade. Truth be told, if I'd only listed songs by the Smiths, R.E.M., the (English) Beat, and the Cure, I'd have been perfectly happy, but I wanted a little more diversity, so I've broadened the list to include many more bands than that holy 80s quartet.
Few of these songs were "hits" in America, and most were what could be called "alternative" in a broad sense, but let's face it, most of the popular music that did make the American Billboard charts in the 1980s was utter garbage and hardly worth mentioning some twenty years later. Also missing from this list are rap songs, even some of the ones I really liked. However, none were good enough to make my list. Rap really wasn't my cup of tea during the 80s, and to be honest most of it wasn't very good anyhow.
You will also notice my list heavily favors British acts. This is because I spent the second half of the decade living in Europe, where British music dominated not only the airwaves, but also the dance clubs, pubs, and cafes all over the continent.
So here we go.
Enjoy.
Topics: Music | 3 Comments »
My Job: A Small Example
By Matthew C. Scheck | January 28, 2009
Submitted here is a YouTube video of a very small automation project I designed, programmed, and managed for several months in 2006 and 2007 at the Nordstrom Department Store’s e-Commerce distribution center in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Compared to many of the systems I’ve done over the last ten years, this one is minuscule, but it does incorporate many of the elements I use for larger systems.
The marketing director at my company, Andrew Jobs, put together this excellent video of the Nordstrom small apparel shipping system, which, despite its small size, was a rather difficult system to implement due to the complex nature of the many integrated elements that made up the whole system. I worked many long and stressful days with David Dawsey and Dave Campbell of ARPAC, and James Marable, Tim Strunk, Danh Ho, and Matt Dunn of my company, GRSI, to get this small system into live production for Nordstrom. It has been in production since October 2007, and many satisfied Nordstrom customers have gotten their orders on time and safely shipped because of this small but highly efficient order fulfillment, packaging, and shipping system.
Often people ask me what I do for a living and I tell them I’m an automation engineer, which often gets a blank stare from them in reply. Then I tell them I make stupid machines do smart things through computerized electrical-mechanical control systems. Or I just say, “I’m in computers,” to which they reply, “ahhh” as if that explains it all.
So at least with this video you can see a small glimpse at what I do. It’s a ton of fun and I feel like a kid at a toy store every day I’m at work. This is a very small-scale project compared to most of the ones I do, so imagine this small system about ten times bigger and you can imagine some of the larger systems I’ve done over the years.
Topics: Culture | 2 Comments »
Seattle 2009
By Matthew C. Scheck | January 24, 2009
I’m working on a huge project for the Washington State Liquor Control Board in Seattle, so I have little time to blog. Here are some cool photos of my crew and me working our engineering magic on what can best be described as a nearly impossible mission that few software and controls engineers could pull off.
Topics: Memoirs | 3 Comments »
Generation of Swine Chronicles
By Matthew C. Scheck | December 20, 2008
This week’s best stories on the Generation of Swine:
- “On Wall Street, Bonuses, Not Profits, Were Real” by Louise Story, The New York Times, December 17, 2008. Next year when you’re standing in line to get your unemployment check, or you’re sitting at the kitchen table trying to pay all your bills, think about all these scumbag grifters from Wall Street who are sunbathing on their 60-foot yachts or summering in the Hamptons as if nothing has happened. Meanwhile, as Wall Street gorged itself on bonuses while gambling (and losing) other people’s money, Senate Republicans voted down the bailout bill for the automotive industry in order to break the UAW, as if it’s organized labor’s fault for the economic downturn that is crippling the industry and the nation.
- “The 17th Floor, Where Wealth Went to Vanish” by Diana B. Henriques and Alex Berenson, The New York Times, December 15, 2008. Bernie Madoff is the king of the Wall Street grifters, a man so vile he ripped off charities as heartlessly as he ripped off his idle rich pals from Palm Beach or the Average Joes who plowed ther life savings into Madoff’s investment schemes.
- “Madoff Scheme Kept Rippling Outward, Across Borders” by Diana Henriques, The New York Times, December 20, 2008. More on kingpin Wall Street grifter Bernie Madoff, who makes 80s Wall Street criminals like Michael Milkin and Ivan Boesky look like nickel-and-dimers. Madoff perpetrated the largest ponzi scheme ever even imagined, all the while presenting himself as a legitimate and respectable financier who hobnobbed with the rich and famous, all the while lifting their wallets as he hugged them as their best friend and trusted financial guru. Tens of billions of dollars disappeared into Madoff’s alchemy cauldron as he promised his investors he’d turn their lead into pure gold, but of course he didn’t and now the equivalent of a central American nation’s GDP has vanished.
- “Cheney’s Delusions” Los Angeles Times editorial, December 20, 2008. Were J. Edgar Hoover alive today, his nipples would get hard just looking at Dick Cheney’s official government phototgraph, which no doubt Hoover would have hanging on his office wall where he could gaze at it lovingly each and every day. When American political leaders and bureaucrats crap on the Constitution to provide us all “security” from our enemies, both real and imagined, it usually never makes us more secure, and of course the Constitution ends up covered in crap. How does it feel, Dick, to have been a part of the worst Presidential administration in the history of the United States, during which the economy has basically crashed, all of our allies hate our guts, and we’re mired in two seemingly endless wars that cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars a year and we’ve sacrificed far too many American lives, and all for what, exactly, Dick? A war crimes tribunal for you would be far too gracious, Mr. Vice President. But let’s do it anyway. Of course, there won’t be one, but at least we have the satisfaction, depressing as it is, of knowing how much of a failure Cheney and Bush were while in power. History will not be kind to these two bastards. It’s a small recompense for having to endure the mess they’ve created and which we in America will have to surmount in the next few years, but it’s better than nothing.
- “Two Sides of a Troubled Governor, Sinking Deeper” by Monica Davey, The New York Times, December 14, 2008. When I was a little kid growing up in Rock Island, Illinois, I remember all too well the infamous 1973 trial and conviction of our former governor, Otto Kerner, for taking bribes from a horse racetrack owner. And of course I watched with bemused interest a few years ago when the Republican governor of Illinois, George Ryan, also went up the river for various and sundry crimes of corruption and abuse of power. So the revelation that the current Illinois governor, Rod Blagojevich, is a following in the great Illinois tradition of corrupt politicians and chief executives, certainly doesn’t shock me. What I do find fascinating is how incredibly stupid Blagojevich was in openly discussing conspiracies on the telephone. Hasn’t this moron watched enough gangster movies to know that if you’re under investigation by the Feds, there’s a good chance all your phones are tapped? Either he’s seriously stupid or recklessly arrogant, or equal parts both, but what really amazes me is that the people of Illinois elected this goofy nut job with the Bob’s Big Boy hairdo in the first place.
Topics: Culture | 2 Comments »
