JuiceBox Party

In 1989, while a Sophomore in college, one of my roommates, Dave, asked me if I wanted to go watch a taping of the Arsenio Hall Show. Now, at the time, Arsenio's show was huge (hard to imagine now) and his guest that day was going to be Eddie Murphy, who was bigger than big. I was in - and Dave, myself and a couple of others headed down for the taping. Now, when I say Arsenio and Eddie were big - I mean really big, and in order to ensure getting into the taping, we headed down early enough to make sure we were in line at 4 AM for the 4 PM taping of the show. Shows like this have a first come, first served policy and you don't even know if you're going to be the last one in line to make it in or the first one in line to be turned away.

Well, our early departure was not paranoia, because when we got there we joined a group of over 100 already in line, some of whom had been there since early the previous evening. Now I'm sure we've all had at least a couple of those mind-numbing line-waits on occasion, and this was certainly one of them, but a mere 10 or 11 hours after getting in line (which was not on some Hollywood lot mind you, but some seedy Hollywood side-street) the line began to move.
We were herded like cattle into a holding area, given wrist bands and made to wait again (all of which was a good thing, because many seats in the show were given away by studio types because the of the hype surrounding the show and we ended up being in the last 10-20% of the walk-ins who were given seats.) Now, once inside the actual studio, we were shuffled and dealt like cards in a deck and I ended up sitting next to none of my friends and, in fact, in far worse seats than them (though none of us near the "dog pound"). The crowd was very diverse in race and social class, much like Arsenio and Eddie's fan base, and I ended up sitting on the farthest left seat, near the top row, next a woman of color (let's call her "Ruth"). Now Ruth was a big girl, and next to her were a couple of her friends, also big girls.

As the show began, the mood was electric - the excitement was palpable. There was a added level of excitement due to the fact that Will Smith (who was a young an rising star) was introduced before the show and sitting in the front row. As Eddie Murphy came out on stage the level of emotion rose even higher and I've no doubt that there was no better place to be in all of 1989 than in this room. Then it happened...

Unannounced and unexpectedly - it happened. A figure appeared behind the etched glass of the set. Then...around the corner stepped...who is that? The crowd hushed. Michael Jackson? No. An impersonator. No. Is it? Yes. The King of Pop just walked onto the stage!

The crowd's intrepidation gave way to exuberance, then near-hysteria. As the realization of what was happening sank in, the room entered a fevered pitch. The woman next to me, Ruth, and her friends gave me an idea of what attending a Beatles concert must have been like. Ruth grabbed my arm with both hands and started jumping; up and down - however low she may have been able to. She nearly ripped my arm out of it's socket, and I (who was probably among the least impressed in the room) began to be more concerned about the health of my arm than anything going on stage.

Eventually the crowd calmed and the mood was dampened a bit by an awkward, clumsy exchange of awards between Eddie and Michael, but I left the room that night with the understanding that we pop-culture equivalent of a solar eclipse and that the next time I saw Michael Jackson, I hoped I wasn't standing next to a 250 pound black woman.