Bye, Murphy

Although he was a member of our family for only a month, the loss of a new friend pulses as raw as the loss of an old one.

My mom formally adopted Murphy just one month ago. In his new Sacramento home, he spent the first week cloistered under the bed in the guest room. I remember crouching on my hands and knees, head pressed against the carpet, coaxing Murphy out into the open. Over time though, it was my mother's affections and gentle voice that conquered Murphy's agoraphobia.

It was here, once Murphy regained his personality, that sweetness and charm bloomed. Like a gregarious puppy, Murphy asked his new family members for belly rubs. He would stretch out, arching his back, emulating the crescent moon. We would stroke his underside white fur, and Murphy would thank us with purring as consistent as heartbeats. And though animals seem more adorable to their owners' egos, I swear Murphy's heart-shaped nose was no mirage of my adoration.

Pets bind to our souls. They honor and cherish the mundane naps and impromptu walks. They depend on us, not as slaves, but as friends who trust unconditionally. Our rage, our tears, our weakness are neither judged nor exploited; they love us simply, without pride.

As the vet pushed the cocktail of euthanasia, I dreamed of all the possible futures, and none of them ended quite like this.

To the skies...

Homage to Michael Jackson: Jason Derulo's "In My Head"

Jason Derulo's "In My Head" is a typical pop song with predictable pitch-perfect auto tuning, bridges nestled in cookie-cutter verses, and anemic lyrics about unintentionally sexist intercourse.

But despite all this, there is one aspect that makes the song more than a repetitive echo in the Top 40 charts: The "In My Head" music video, di­rect­ed by Kai Craw­ford, is a purposeful and elegant homage to Michael Jackson's "The Way You Make Me Feel" directed by Joe Pytka. Though Derulo's lyrics have little connection to Jackson's 1987 classic, the music video is a subtle, almost masterful, update to Jackson's wooing dance tune.

At the heart of both videos, a male character engages in flirtations, dancing, and flirtatious dancing. Though Derulo doesn't solely imitate Jackson's dance moves, the specific cinematics of those dance moves are similarly silhouetted. Derulo's video goes even further to introduce a blue hue to the screen in a similar style as Jackson's dramatic final dance number.

Derulo goes beyond simple imitation though. One criticism of Jackson's "They Way You Make Me Feel" is negative portrayal of the loitering and fraternizing aspects of male society. Jackson's video, in a misogynistic fashion, isolates the female object of affection (Tatiana Thumbzen) in an accosting manner. Jackson chases her around the streets, simulates sex (or rape), but still manages to win her over.

Derulo's video, perhaps trying to avoid this distasteful perception, updates this idea by providing his female character supportive friends from the start of the video. Also, the female lead in "In My Head" clearly enjoys Derulo's advances from the start, while Thumbzen seemed actually to fear Jackson up until the end of the 1987 video.

Though there is an obvious imitation, great steps have been taken to push forward while acknowledging Michael Jackson's groundbreaking, although sometimes controversial, music video style. Filmed in late 2009, still in the wake of Jackson's death, Derulo's eulogy is more than imitation, more than wearing a blue hoodie instead of a blue buttoned-down shirt. The "In My Head" video takes the grandeur of 1987 and rebuilds it in 2010.