Wow What a Week! Entertainment Edition Pt. 2

It's no secret that I'm a sports guy. It's not quite as well known that I'm also an entertainment guy. Well now you know. And now that you know you can probably figure out that for me it was quite the week. Pop culture nearly crashed its home in the Internet this week and if it was enough to do that you can imagine what happened to my little brain. First I'll recap the week that was, and then I'll go in depth about a few of the things.

Monday

Jon and Kate announce divorce

Greenville native Lucas Glover wins US Open

Chris Brown pleads guilty to assault on ex-girlfriend Rihanna

Perez Hilton and Will.I.am have Twitter feud

Ed McMahon, wing man to Johnny Carson, dies

Tuesday

SC Gov Mark Sanford announces affair with Argentinian woman

Wednesday

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen hits theaters

Thursday

Farrah Fawcett dies at 62 after long battle with cancer

Michael Jackson dies at 50 after going into cardiac arrest

NBA Draft

Friday and Saturday

Surprisingly quiet, thought maybe things had died down

Sunday

Billy Mays found dead in his home at the age of 50

(Note: This continues the Entertainment portion of the blog, if you're looking for Sports click the link to the right that says "Wow What a Week! Sports edition", and for Part 1 click here)

I left off Part 1 talking about the Wednesday Premiere of Transformers: The Revenge of the Fallen. Which of course leads me to Thursday where all hell broke loose, and the world of Entertainment lost not only two stars but two icons.

First was Farrah Fawcett. I'm far far too young to have been around in her prime as an actress but I've seen pictures and she was easily as beautiful as any actress is today. Fawcett starred in Charlie's Angels in the 70's and was the "it" girl of her time. Every boy had a poster of her on his wall. Except the ones that didn't. And they wanted one. She was a star amongst stars and an true icon in her day. However cancer is a disease that shows no mercy and it decided it was going to fight Charlie's favorite angel and the angel fought back. Fawcett fought her cancer bravely, going through round after round of chemotherapy documenting it all in a film she was producing called "Farrah's Fight" which I believe will eventually be shown on NBC. However as I said, cancer shows no mercy and eventually it won the fight and we lost Farrah Fawcett at the age of 62.

Later Thursday, as we were all still mourning the loss of one icon we lost another. First it was reported that Michael Jackson had collapsed in his home and was under cardiac arrest. Then TMZ reported he was dead however none of the major news sources could confirm it. They simply said that he was in a coma. Then, right as the 6:30 national newses all came on the air the LA Times confirmed that we had indeed lost The King of Pop.

To call Farrah Fawcett an icon and then to call Michael Jackson one is not fair to MJ. Farrah Fawcett was the prettiest among the unfathomably pretty world of Hollywood and thus she was an icon. Jackson was a true legend amongst legends and his impact is what sets him apart from any other entertainer the world has ever seen. The best way I can explain this is how I explained it to my kids. No I'm not a father but somewhere this summer in between being a DJ, a radio intern, and having the life of a 19 year old, I am also a camp counselor and Friday morning when I got to camp all anybody was talking about was MJ. Once again I'm too young to really comprehend MJ's reach because I wasn't alive during his prime, however I understand it far better than my campers and thus explained it to them this way.

I asked them who there favorite artists were today. I got varied responses from Carrie Underwood to Justin Timberlake to T.I. I then told them that all of them were affected by Michael Jackson. I singled out Carrie Underwood and talked about her music video for Before He Cheats. As is typical of music videos now she acts out the story of her song, smashing a car of a boy who's cheated on her to pieces. However this music video wouldn't have been that way if it wasn't for Jackson. He invented the modern music video. Another example I used of this was Timberlake's video for What Goes Around...Comes Around. The song and thus the video is over 7 minutes long and stars Timberlake along with Scarlett Johannson. She's a major motion picture actress, in a music video. The thought of a song as a movie originated with MJ and has continued to evolve.

Anyone who has seen JT perform also can point to Jackson as an influence in terms of his dancing and performance. Dancing and music have always gone hand in hand but MJ changed the way people danced and incorporated it into his performances, wowing crowds not only with his voice but with his moves. This has continued today with not only JT but Chris Brown, Ne-Yo, Ciara, and countless other dancing/singing dual threat artists.

Now of course the kids asked about the other stuff, and my answers were simple. Yes, he was a freak later in life. Yes, he went from a black boy to a white woman. No, that's not normal. Yes, he was missing a few screws and a nut. That being said you simply cannot deny the man's talent and his impact on the world. He was planning a 50 show comeback tour in London that sold out instantly which, in its own right shows that he still has the reach not to mention he nearly crashed the Internet when he died.

As usual I can't get through a blog without bringing up something I heard on the radio and this blog is no different. As I've said before there are no two bigger platforms in the world than sports and music. Simply put if Barack Obama died today, the Michael Jackson story is still bigger world wide. On this premise, Scott Van Pelt asked the question Friday who else in the world could die and have the same effect? Sports' MJ? Tiger Woods? Those are the two most logical answers and the two answers that came to mind for me but they would not have the impact this had. SVP did bring up one that I think would be close and that is Muhammad Ali. However Ali has been out of his prime longer than Jackson has been and has been living a far from normal life medically for years now so the shock factor would not be nearly as great. Simply put, nothing in the world could be a bigger story than what happened Thursday.

Friday and Saturday were recovery days and nothing major happened. I thought we were done. And then it happened. Today Billy Mays, the world's most famous and most successful pitchman, was found dead in his home. This was as unexpected as Jackson's death but to put the two in the same sentence is only OK because it happened in the same week. Like Jackson though, Mays was the best at what he did, so much so that he became a caricature of himself and even he knew it, mocking himself in a set of spots for ESPN360. However he paved the way for the Shamwow guy and whoever is next in the line of pitchmen and although I won't miss his commercials one bit, I do greatly respect what he did and how well he did it.

That's it for the entertainment world... I put an ellipses there because it's still only 5:30 on Sunday, that's a whole 6.5 hours for something else to go down. I'd say something sarcastically like a Brangelina break up but if it happened I'd feel bad. Or maybe Kate will have another kid. Just so she can have more than Octomom. Yay for Octomom jokes!

Tweet Tweet

First it was Xanga.  Then it was Myspace.  Then Facebook took over the world.  And while Facebook is still going strong, there is a new networking phenomenon that is taking over the world: Twitter.  It's simple, you get 140 characters to tell people anything you want.  What you're doing, something they should see, or maybe even what your blog's about.  You can also post pictures and links as long as everything you do is under 140 characters.  You can also send direct messages (like an internal twitter email) or even reply to somebody by mentioning them by name in your tweet (a twitter post).  All this is fine and dandy but what in the world does it have to do with sports?

How about this tweet a few weeks ago:

"grant hill told me before the game that the suns WOULD show up today -- he just looked over at me from the huddle and mouthed 'i was wrong'"

-or-

"heading to dinner with CC and a bus of his family! met Michael Jordan and tori spelling,,,,and we won! great day!"

The first tweet was from ESPN/ABC sideline reporter Lisa Salters during a critical game a few weeks ago between the Suns and Mavs.  The second tweet is from Nick Swisher after the Yankees first win in new Yankee Stadium on Friday.  So what's the big deal you ask?  Here's the big deal, I didn't get these off TV or search for them on the Internet.  I got them off their Twitter pages.  Pages I can see.  Pages I follow.  When you sign into Twitter and go to your home page you can see the most recent tweets from all the people you follow.  And from the people I follow you'd think I was a lot more than a college freshman:  Shaq, CC Sabathia, Derek Fisher, Pete Carrol, ESPN's Jayson Stark, Stephen A. Smith, Lamar Odom, and Chris Bosh.  On top of these sports A-Listers, if I so chose I could be following Ashton Kutcher (the first to 1,000,000 followers), Taylor Swift, Diddy, Ludacris, John Mayer, and yes, Oprah.  I can also follow President Obama and John McCain.  And then there are the multitude of news sites and services that post feeds including CNN and ESPN. 

All of this is just goes to show us once again how much smaller the world is getting.  I, Craig Hoffman, in Murfreesboro, TN, know who Nick Swisher ate dinner with last night.  He plays for my favorite baseball team!  This is also showing us how smart we're getting.  ESPN has mastered twitter.  They have their anchors update from the SportsCenter desk bringing us inside the studio and letting us know what the anchors are thinking as they sit there for 3 hours in the middle of day.  This particularly intrigued me last week when Harry Kalas past and this came through from Chris McKendry on the SportsCenter Twitter: "Chris McKendry: Could cry on TV. Harry Kalas gone at 73. The voice of my generation of Phillies fans. He called every game of my life."

ESPN has also used this (as many others have) as a marketing tool.  On top of SportsCenter I also follow all the ESPN radio shows.  Of course they post from the studios saying random things like Scott Van Pelt telling us he went and got a soda and was going to pay for it later, but more importantly they tell us in tweet form when guests will be on and thus, those of us in Twitter world know when to listen.  

So Twitter can be used to know what our favorite athletes and celebrities are doing, what's going on on the set of our favorite shows, and when things are going to happen on those shows.  Any other wonderful uses?  Sure.  Say maybe a young aspiring journalist (me) bringing his blog to the attention of one of the best in the business (Lisa Salters)?  Yeah, already did it.  (And Ms. Salters if you are indeed reading this I would like to thank you so much for taking a little time out for someone you've never met and I would love to know what you think!) 

Technology makes the world a smaller place and the more people that dive in the better.  It brings people together yada yada yada, but most of all: it's just plain cool.  140 characters have never said so much.  I thought that Facebook would be the end for a while after it sprinted past Myspace, but with Twitter catching on quickly who knows what the future holds.  But in the meantime, I guess we'll all just tweet away.

Follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/choffman223