There’s a wonderful quote from Amy that I want to share, regarding Michael Jackson. I love that she was a fan.

“You know how you either grow up in a Michael Jackson house or a Prince house?” says Winehouse, whose accent reveals her north London roots. “For me it was Michael Jackson. I could never decide whether I wanted to be Michael Jackson or marry him. I don’t care what people say about him now because he’s a fucking genius. That’s it – the end! He was robbed of his childhood, which is why he surrounds himself with children. When you’re around kids you can be a little kid yourself and pretend that life is magic and you don’t have to be one of those sweaty people going to work every day. I completely see what he’s doing.”

~ Amy Winehouse.

RIP, Amy.

September 14, 1983 – July 23, 2011

Say hi to Michael for me.

]]> http://www.tinalicious.com/remembering/amy-winehouses-final-curtain/feed/ 1 http://www.tinalicious.com/remembering/michaels-magic-lives-on/ http://www.tinalicious.com/remembering/michaels-magic-lives-on/#comments Fri, 24 Jun 2011 04:13:36 +0000 Tinalicious http://www.tinalicious.com/?p=1981 This is a digital collage I created and posted on my art blog, but wanted to post it here too, in memory of and tribute to Michael Jackson.

Gone, but never forgotten.

August 29, 1958 ~ June 25, 2009

Click for Full Size Collage

Like A Comet
Blazing ‘Cross The Evening Sky
Gone Too Soon

Like A Rainbow
Fading In The Twinkling Of An Eye
Gone Too Soon

Shiny And Sparkly
And Splendidly Bright
Here One Day
Gone One Night

Like The Loss Of Sunlight
On A Cloudy Afternoon
Gone Too Soon

Like A Castle
Built Upon A Sandy Beach
Gone Too Soon

Like A Perfect Flower
That Is Just Beyond Your Reach
Gone Too Soon

Born To Amuse, To Inspire, To Delight
Here One Day
Gone One Night

Like A Sunset
Dying With The Rising Of The Moon
Gone Too Soon

Gone Too Soon

(by Michael Jackson)

On the one hand, I gotta love that my subconscious self clearly enjoys a good ole blast from my 1970′s-bell-bottomed past now and again. A little trip down memory lane, as it were. Otherwise, why would the words to Donny and Marie’s Deep Purple, circa 1975, be playing in my head? At 6:23am no less! WTH?!

On the other hand, this isn’t a sign of insanity or anything, is it? I mean, Donny and  Marie? Before my feet have even hit the bedroom floor? Before I’m even conscious of what day it is? And before my brain is even capable of rendering a coherent thought?

I hope I’m not starting to lose it. Nothing against my favorite little-bit-country-and-little-bit-rock-n-roll-duo, but if my brain is going to get set on rewind I’d prefer to be in another decade. A little Bad-Era-Michael-Jackson is always welcome up there in the old noggin. [Guess I can scratch off "use the word 'noggin' in a blog post" from my Bucket List now.]

Anyhoots, it was definitely an interesting way to start my day. And who knows what tonight will bring…

Here in my deep purple dreams.

]]> http://www.tinalicious.com/wth/my-deep-purple-dreams/feed/ 9 http://www.tinalicious.com/twilight-a-holic/almost-last-year-in-review/ http://www.tinalicious.com/twilight-a-holic/almost-last-year-in-review/#comments Sun, 02 Jan 2011 05:56:15 +0000 Tinalicious http://www.tinalicious.com/?p=1364 As I was reading a post from one of my favorite bloggers, Sandra at Absolutely Narcissism I couldn’t help but be inspired by the way she decided to blog about 2010–a Year in Review (sort of) post. She found some questions on another blog and posted her own replies in her post. So I decided to carry forward that theme and answer those same questions about 2010 in my own blog post. It will be my first post of this new year…and it’s almost last year in review. So here goes.

What did you do in 2010 that you’ve never done before?
Well, I turned 44. That is certainly something I don’t do everyday. I also took a walk on the wild side and installed RAM in my laptop. All by myself. Yeah, that’s right. I’m just crazy like that.

What countries did you visit?
Um, I visited America. And I’ll be doing that again this year as well. I’m the quintessential queen of short-distance traveling. No passport required.

What would you like to have in 2011 that you lacked in 2010?

1. Income (money may not buy happiness, but last time I checked, it does help pay bills. And I have a serious art & craft addiction that must be fed from time to time).
2. Patience.
3. A new refrigerator (the Hubs has to get sick of me asking at some point and just freaking buy it for me already, right?!).
4. Less gray hair.
5. A smaller ass imprint when I get up from the couch.
6. And un-saggy breasts that are located about 5″ higher than where they reside right now.

(And not necessarily in that order.)

What was your biggest achievement this past year?
Cleaning and organizing my home office sometime around August…and managing to keep it clean and organized…until…September. Trust me. That is a major accomplishment for me.

What was the best thing you bought?
**crickets**
You’re not going to believe how much of a raging shopaholic I am. [Insert laughter here] I tend to buy three categories of things most of the time. 1) Books, 2) DVDs, 3) Art & Craft Supplies. So the best book I bought would probably be Fallen; the best DVD would likely be (nice to see you again, Edward) The Twilight Saga: New Moon; and any art supplies I can buy are always the best things I buy on any day–despite what the Hubs calls my “insane ability” to shop in Michaels or Hobby Lobby for 2-3 hours at a stretch. Yeah, that is one of my very special skills, baby.

Whose behavior merited celebration?
My daughter started Cosmetology School last year. And the day she started on the path that will lead me to getting free haircuts AND free highlights…that merits some serious celebration!

Whose behavior made you appalled and disgusted?
That answer is the same every year: The Freak Next Door. ‘Nough said.

What song will always remind you of 2010?
Hold My Hand, by Michael Jackson (with Akon), the first song from his first posthumous CD release, Michael. And not just because it will always remind me of him and the legacy he left us with. But also because the words make me think of everyone I love…my husband, my daughter, my grandchildren, my mother, my sister…and everyone else that’s dear to my heart…and how everything will be alright if they just hold my hand.

“So if you just
Hold my Hand
Baby I promise that I’ll do
All I can
Things will get better if you just
Hold my Hand
Nothing can come between us if you just
Hold, Hold my Hold my, Hold my Hand.”

What do you wish you’d done more of?
Body Surfing.
Piercings.
Reading.
Dusting.
Exploring the recesses of our HVAC system.

Only one of those things is true. I’ll leave it to you to figure out which one.

What do you wish you’d done less of?
Mind-reading.
Vulcan nerve pinches on my husband.
Brilliantly funny blogging.
Watching all the seasons of LOST on DVD.
Being right.

Again, only one of these things is true. Can you spot it?

Did you fall in love in 2010?
No. I didn’t fall in love in 2010. But I did fall back in love…with a certain pale-skinned, amber-eyed, sparkling hot blood-sucker named Edward. Does that count? I hope so. Because this is on my agenda for 2011 as well.

Who was the best new person you met?
Now this one is super easy: my granddaughter, Destiny.  I love her to pieces. She’ll be turning 1 on 1-11-11. That has got to be a good sign for the new year!

She is also absolute proof that you can wear horizontal stripes and look completely adorable.

So that is my almost, kinda, sorta last year in review on this, my very first post of the new year.

Pretty painless, wasn’t it?

]]> http://www.tinalicious.com/twilight-a-holic/almost-last-year-in-review/feed/ 2 http://www.tinalicious.com/wth/the-truth-about-santa/ http://www.tinalicious.com/wth/the-truth-about-santa/#comments Sun, 12 Dec 2010 06:41:35 +0000 Tinalicious http://www.tinalicious.com/?p=1271 I was just thinking back to that day in my past…that dark, dreadful day when my childhood was robbed from me and I was thrown headfirst into the abyss of holiday reality.  You know what day I’m talking about, right? Yep, it was the day I learned The Truth About Santa.

I believe I was in third grade. And up until that dark, dreadful day I was living blissfully unaware in my Santa Claus fantasy land, where all the sugar plums were free to roam. I regularly put out the obligatory plate of cookies and milk for the jolly old elf, and was only too happy to do it. After all, he was bringing me all sorts of Christmas goodies, and he had to get tired lugging gifts all over the world in his sleigh in one night, right? I would also occasionally leave out my autograph book for him, along with a thank you note, in which I asked him to sign the book, which he always did. And I always felt so special and lucky to have gotten his actual signature.

I was quite content in my Kris Kringle-filled world. Never mind that many of my friends no longer believed in Santa. Never mind that I often got teased for still believing.  I still believed, and that’s all that mattered to me. Until that dark, dreadful day.

I remember crying when my mom gave me the cold, hard reality check about my beloved St. Nick. I was in shock. Utterly stunned. And completely pissed off! If my 8-year-old brain could have rendered a coherent thought, (and if I thought I could have gotten away with it) I’m sure I would have turned to my mom and said without hesitation,

“Are you shitting me right now, Mom? WTH?!”

But I don’t really remember saying a whole lot as I processed my newly acquired wisdom. The cookies? The Milk? The Autograph Book? Faked. Faked. And Faked. Honestly, I felt so betrayed. So misled. So lied to! But as it was threatening to crush my heart of hearts, and whatever was left of my tattered and torn Christmas spirit, my mom gave me a pep talk, as only mothers can. I don’t remember it word-for-word, but it went a little something like this…

Santa Claus was a real person, somewhere, long, long ago. And he cared so much about other people, especially children, that he would bring them gifts and candy and such to fill their stockings, which they’d hang by the fire, on Christmas Eve. But at some point, Santa got very old and he passed away, threatening to end his generous Christmas traditions. But parents all over the world decided that the true spirit of Christmas wasn’t Santa Claus himself, rather it was his spirit of giving. So, to keep that spirit of giving alive for children every year at Christmas, parents would continue Santa’s Christmas traditions in his place. Thus, the spirit of Christmas would never really die. Mom also said that if I always believed in the spirit of Christmas, then Santa would always be part of Christmas…that he’d never die, unless we stopped believing.

As I said, that may not be word-for-word, but that was the  basic story I remember. And it’s the story I told my daughter when it was time for her to learn The Truth About Santa as well. My 7-year-old grandson still believes for now, and I hope he will for awhile longer. But I’m sure I’ll share that same story with him when it’s his time to learn the truth.

That pep talk really did help me recover–at least a bit–from the trauma inflicted upon me on that dark, dreadful day in my childhood. I was still pissed. But at least I knew that Santa had been real. At some point. But after I had calmed down and had time to think more clearly, an alarming thought penetrated my young brain…and I just had to ask my mom…

“What about the Tooth Fairy?”

]]> http://www.tinalicious.com/wth/the-truth-about-santa/feed/ 4 http://www.tinalicious.com/have-blog-will-babble/happy-halloweens/ http://www.tinalicious.com/have-blog-will-babble/happy-halloweens/#comments Sun, 31 Oct 2010 00:55:26 +0000 Tinalicious http://www.tinalicious.com/?p=1142 I’m just sitting here on the evening before Halloween, thinking about all the Happy Halloweens past, and decided to wax nostalgic blog about some of them. It has everything to do with all the great memories I have of my daughter, Jennifer dressing up at Halloween and taking her Trick-or-Treating. It has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that writing this post gets me an entry into a contest to win a fantabulous Canon Rebel T2i camera via the SITS Halloween Party Giveway. OK, well, maybe it has a little something to do with the camera giveaway. But as I do enjoy thinking about happy memories of my daughter’s childhood, I may as well blog about it. And if it also gives me the chance to win a camera, is there really anything wrong with that? I think not.

One of Jennifer’s first Halloweens that she dressed up for was when she was 2. Money was really tight, so even buying a costume was asking a lot of us that year. So I improvised a bit.  She already had a new pink footy-sleeper, so I just bought some bunny ears and a tail, and sewed the tail onto the sleeper. And voila: instant bunny. She was darn cute too, if I do say so myself.

Sorry for the less than quality photos here…these were taken back in the day. You know, PD (Pre-Digital). So these are scan and post pics that were originally taken with whatever sort of crappy camera I could afford at the time. If nothing else, at least they present a snapshot of my costume-clad daughter through the years, grainy as they  might be, along with the state of photographic technology during her childhood.

Another Happy Halloween memory was the year that Jennifer wanted to be Cat Woman. This was the same year the Batman movie came out that featured Michelle Pfeiffer as the sex kitten feline villain who was hot and bothered for the caped crusader. And Holy Bimbos, Batman! She was hot, even to me (but lets just keep that between us, shall we?)  Cat Woman costumes were not cheap, but since I was (and still am), I figured I’d just buy the Cat Woman mask and make the rest of the costume for Jennifer myself. I think it turned out pretty good. With some black clothes and some mock-leather fabric and a little white dimensional fabric paint, Jennifer was the spitting image of Cat Woman, yeah, even if I do say so myself.

Please be sure to note the loud carpet in the above photo. The house we lived in at the time was our first home, and I believe that carpet was original to the house. I like roses as much as the next gal, but I’m sorry, they do not belong on living room carpet.  You might also spy the VCR behind Jennifer on the entertainment center.  And on the left, what do we have? Oh yes, it’s a stereo…with cassette players. Show that pic to anyone under 10 who lives in your house and you can have some fun while they try to figure out exactly what they’re seeing.

And finally, there was the year that Jennifer wanted to be transported to the 50′s and wear a poodle skirt. And yes, being the cheap crafty gal that I am, I once again made her costume. Well, I made the skirt anyway. And even though the 50′s was actually before my time, I think Jennifer made the picture-perfect-poodle-skirted girl of the 50′s. Yes, if I do say so myself.

I’ll also point out that in this photo, Jennifer is standing in the same living room as the Cat Woman photo. We managed to jump in to the then-20th Century and get new carpet by that time. We even put wainscoting and wallpaper on the walls by then. And yet we still managed to keep the tired entertainment center, the VCR, and even the stereo with cassette players.

But hey, I just want everyone to know that I had one of the first DVD players on my block…one that holds 3 DVD’s at one time instead of just one. And, um, yeah, I still have it too. It’s gotta be over 10 years old by now, but it’s still kicking! Blu Ray, you say? Ha! Who needs it?! I couldn’t care less about Blu Ray. OK, well, maybe I would like a Blu Ray player, almost as much as I’d like the new refrigerator I keep lobbying the Hubs for. But it can wait. I’ve got time, and I’m not running low on my finely-tuned nagging abilities either.

So anyhoots, these are my memories of some of my favorite Halloweens with my favorite daughter, Jennifer. [Relax, I'm not really playing favorites. She's an only child.] Hope you enjoyed my waltz down Trick-or-Treat Memory Lane. It was definitely a fun waltz…even if I do say so myself.

Happy Halloween!

He wasn’t a freak.

He wasn’t wacko.

He wasn’t a monster.

He was music. And magic. And he was a man filled with love and compassion for a world that was only too eager to vilify him…a legacy that his children are now forced to bear. My gift to Michael is to try to right that wrong at every opportunity. And so I challenge you to do what’s right, especially on this day, Michael Jackson’s birthday:

Seek the Truth.

Reject the Lies.

And donate to the charity of your choice in Michael’s name.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MICHAEL!

Thanks for Thriller, the first album I ever owned that I actually wore out and had to replace. (And yes, it was an actual album…I am that old.)

Thank you for wearing highwaters and white socks, which looked silly on anyone else, but made absolute sense when you wore them (to enable us to focus on your feet when you danced).

Thanks for the Moonwalk, which I could never, ever do, though I repeatedly tried to learn, despite looking like nothing more than a dorky chick walking backwards. And nice touch, borrowing your mom’s sparkly jacket the night you Moonwalked into history wearing it.

Thank you for the trademark Fedora. You rocked it. And if I could own one thing in the world that you had ever owned, it would be one of your fedoras.

Thanks for the Jam video you made with Michael Jordan. After showing it to my six-year-old grandson, Dylan, I became cool for a day…and Dylan wanted to learn to Moonwalk!

Thanks for the Blood on the Dance Floor video too. Three words sum it up for me quite nicely: Red. Leather. Pants.

Thanks for the curls. Seriously. No one does curls like you did.

Thank you for that Smile. You know…
the one that only lit up the whole world?!

Thanks for making glitter accessories cool (even to those–who shall remain nameless–who still deny that they Bedazzled a white glove and wore it to school every day for a week in high school back in the 80′s).

Um, thanks for stealing Elvis’s signature move–the up on the toes pose. Yeah, Elvis did indeed do it first…but YOU did it best. And with sparkles!

Thanks for having a sense of humor about yourself. It’s just too bad that much of the world never got to see it.

Thank you for This is It. We’ll never forget all that you sacrificed trying to bring it to us.

To the man and the legend, thank you for the music, the magic, and the memories that I will cherish forever.

Michael Jacskon
1958 – 2009

]]> http://www.tinalicious.com/remembering/remembering-michael-jackson-2/feed/ 6 http://www.tinalicious.com/remembering/michael-jackson-gold-pants/ http://www.tinalicious.com/remembering/michael-jackson-gold-pants/#comments Mon, 07 Jun 2010 19:10:18 +0000 Tinalicious http://www.tinalicious.com/?p=594 This is the story of Michael Jackson’s Gold Pants. If you’re a Michael Jackson fan, the Gold Pants need no explanation, but for those of you that are necessarily a “fan,” here’s the scoop on an essential part of Michael Jackson’s lasting legacy.

During MJ’s History era, one of his standard costumes while on stage included a gold outfit, which included a helmet, a gold shirt, and some quite spectacular shiny Gold Pants. He’d appear on stage covered head to toe in gold–almost like a living statue, and it was quite the visual extravaganza.

As the music started, MJ would remove his helmet–revealing his requisite curls (who doesn’t love MJ with curls?!), and then he’d get down to his  magical, musical business, singing, dancing, and making girls faint right and left, as only Michael could.

But Michael wasn’t the only star of his shows. No, no. He shared the spotlight with those fabulously shiny Gold Pants. Now let it be said that I am not, in general, a fan of shiny gold pants. Truth be told, the average Joe could really never get away with wearing shiny gold pants. On anyone else, frankly, they’d just look silly.  Case in point:

Clearly, that photo needs no explanation. It is what it is. (A guy trying–but failing miserably– to look cool in shiny gold pants).  See what I mean?  It just doesn’t work.

But Michael and his shiny Gold Pants are an all together different story. That man could wear shiny Gold Pants. No, scratch that. He ROCKED the shiny Gold Pants. And he is the standard by which all shiny Gold Pants-wearers should be measured.

And what has been the impact of MJ and his shiny Gold Pants? There are fans all over the world obsessed with Michael in his Gold Pants. There are online communities devoted to them. Do a Google image search for “Michael Jackson Gold Pants” and you will get over 760,000 results. Seriously.

As I said, if you’re a fan, you know. You understand. And you appreciate the magic, the mystery,  and the wonder that is the Gold Pants.

And if you’re not a fan, at least now you’ll know why the shiny Gold Pants are a indeed a part of Michael’s legacy. And when hear “Gold Pants” in the future, or see some reference to them online, you’ll get it.

Can I get a Hee-Hee…and an Owwww! (MJ style, of course).

As someone who grew up when the Rubik’s Cube craze was at its peak, I can appreciate the humor in this week’s Wordless Wednesday photo. Admit it, you giggled, just a little. But if you didn’t, then perhaps this classic web wonder might do the trick…

Are you laughing now?

Enjoy your Hump Day!