Here is a clip of a guy doing it in 1955: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VbPd2iu4bg

Later, street dancers in California incorporated the move into their style known as "popping." It was these same street dancers that taught MJ the move. And I mean these people were literally hired as teachers, not that he just saw people doing it.

But none of that takes away from what Michael accomplished as a dancer and as a singer. Clearly the man was a special talent.

The shoes though appear to be a fresh concept.

Dance that is exposed in the mainstream is a very thin slice of what is actually out there. Nor is it usually the "best".

I will confess that his moonwalk is pretty damn good though.

And while I will say that there are a large number of people that dance "better" and certainly more technical than MJ...

I have never seen anyone TOUCH his moonwalk. As far as I am concerned he was the greatest there ever was at that move by far.

I didn't realize that Michael Jackson had actually patented his shoe design. I guess he really was a hacker.

Here is the moonwalk, probably his most famous move (he wasn't the first to perform it, though): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnIDfDFqGWc

Here is the anti-gravity lean relevant to this patent: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HJbGSHtFYQ

Here is a montage of many of his dance moves: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKBLxh3u0tM

Out of curiosity, which type of music is that?

In fact, it is quite hard to describe without metaphors. Using metaphors, you can usually say that the music just feels as if someone smashes a heavy hammer against your soul and once the music stops, it pretty much feels like you fall down, as if you were leaning against a wall and someone removed this wall. Music which gives me this hammer -> face-feeling certainly includes, but is not limited to songs by Cryptopsy, Vomitory, Berzerker and to some extent Heaven shall burn and Suicide Silence (examples can be easily found on youtube). If you listen to several songs by these bands, I think my term 'light pop'will certainly become clearer :)

Now you're talking about this hammer --> face -type of music, which should be unrelated to the issue at hand - 'light pop'.

Were you, in fact, not talking about 'light pop' when you said "I strongly dislike this type of music"?

If so, it would seem that you were participating in some other conversation, which would be really weird.

Requiescat in pace, whatever his personal problems.

At the time I remember thinking, "Who is this guy? I guess his song is kinda catchy." I don't remember which one it was.

I am sure I was in the minority.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYaIXi1cNc0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2tZcGL55to&feature=relat...

The piece at 6:50 is especially awesome. The main reason I posted the original link was due to the MJ tribute half-way through.

I hasten to point out that he's a breaker that does acrobatics to the music. Acrobatics can be musical and the very best on the scene time their power and flips to work with the music and it is teh AWESOMES.

http://gizmodo.com/5303026/michael-jackson-gets-his-geek-on

The inner-elbow of the T-square represents a receptacle on the modified shoe. The screw represents the retractable post that protrudes from the stage.

Slide the screw into the very corner of the T-square's elbow, so that the head is above the square. viola! The square (and thereby the shoe and thereby the performer) are now fastened to the stage.

As an added bonus, in the linked anti-gravity lean video above, you can actually see MJ slide his feet backward at the end of the stunt to disengage his shoe from the stage.

I mean, the guy was obviously amazingly talented and everything. And this is a really cool tidbit of information that lets me look back on his career as a performer in a new light.

But really, folks, is it a good idea to claim Jacko as an ideal to which people in this community might aspire?

I don't want to speak ill of the dead here. The guy lived a hard life, and had been an object of scorn and derision for a long time. I hope he had found some kind of peace of mind before he died.

But I gotta ask -- don't hackers already get enough grief for being thin, pale, eccentric, socially awkward, obsessed with artificiality, and bizarre in how they relate to women?

Let the downmodding begin.

The man took something that was considered to be geeky and odd - dancing - practiced it feverishly and from a young age, and almost singlehandedly made his own brand of dance mainstream, sexy, and cool. To the end he worked hard at trying to keep himself at the peak of his abilities.

If he's a hacker, he was the ultimate hacker - despite being a bizarro geek in nearly every way up to and including the gradual draining of his skin pigmentation, he did what he loved, became famous for it, was the best at his line of work, and was a sex icon for two decades. If that's not hacking I don't know what is.

I don't think that anyone would want to emulate every aspect of his strange lifestyle, but he definitely came up with a few ideas that were worthy of a hacker. He found new ways to entertain people, and whatever strange personal identity crises he may have had he still hacked together an identity that most people are at least slightly familiar with.

To my way of thinking, that is relatively successful, even if he did end up dying young.

I think if there is anything worth emulating it would be persistence.

I think that in particular is what I'd want to emulate: He was weird because he did a lot of stuff that he liked that nobody else really understood. I don't know if it was courage on his part or if he just didn't care, but I hope that I'm one day able to do the same.

But was he really doing what he loved, or was he partially an automaton doing what his parents engineered him to do, eventually becoming the only things he knew how to do? It seems like he almost had no choice in the matter, and all his eccentricities were his way of coping with destiny.

Someone with that much musicality in him will make music no matter what. He's right up there with Stevie Wonder and Prince. They make music.

> Let the downmodding begin.

I expect your wish will be granted...

Which of Michael Jackson's traits do you think are worthy of emulation? Did he have any traits that people should be discouraged from emulating?

But if Michael Jackson was a hacker, he was a nearly ideal one. He was recognized as a musical prodigy when he was 5. After that, because of his domineering, exploitative, and probably abusive father, music was basically all he thought about [1]. These are the same childhood circumstances that produced Mozart and Beethoven.

The experts all seem to agree that he was an absolute master musician and dancer. At the very least, he made some of the most popular albums of all time. It's hard to imagine anyone achieving that kind of success without a lifetime of dedicated practice. I can definitely see the shoe thing as the product of someone who spent a lot of mental energy thinking about new ways to push the envelope in a song-and-dance act.

So, to sum up, if Michael Jackson was a hacker, he was a great one. And the trouble is, if Michael Jackson was a Great Hacker [3], he's the only one I know [4]. I happen to agree with Paul Graham's take on Greatness:

So if you ask a great hacker how good he is, he's almost certain to reply, I don't know. He's not just being modest. He really doesn't know.

And none of us know, except about people we've actually worked with. Which puts us in a weird situation: WE DON'T KNOW WHO OUR HEROES SHOULD BE. (emphasis is mine)

I'm really not comfortable with this conclusion, because I'd like to be a Great Hacker myself someday, and it's pretty obvious that Michael Jackson's troubles were partly caused by his success.

Of course, I'd love to find a way to escape this line of reasoning...

[1] Obviously, this isn't something anyone would want to live through, but it did have the effect of making Jackson focus on music the way a great hacker would. If music was the only way for him to earn his father's love when he was five years old, then he definitely would have wound up loving music [2].

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1059324...

[2] Yes, this is pretty twisted. Hard to believe. Most of the reporting I've read about the Jacksons says something to similar effect, though. I'm inclined to believe it's true just because it would be such obvious libel otherwise.

[3] http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html

[4] Or more precisely, if we're going to call MJ a hacker, I have more evidence that he's a great hacker than I do for anyone else.

for sufficient intensities of "try" I would have thought that is exactly how one becomes a great hacker. How else does one become a great hacker?

But is it really so surprising that my thoughts are internally inconsistent? So long as we're playing self-reference games, is it socially savvy to expect an absence of hypocrisy?

Yes. Yes they do. But thanks for adding to it anyway!

The mentally ill. Is that wrong?