My daughter has long been a devoted fan of The Simpsons, and sometimes puts her encyclopedic knowledge to the test by challenging us to find any random topic for which she can’t cite an episode that includes or addresses it; so far she has succeeded in all challenges. In recent times it has occurred to me that the same game can be played with sand and I thought that the subject of the recent and ongoing world headlines would be an interesting test. Now I will readily admit that a comprehensive inventory of the works of Michael Jackson is not something that I devote a lot of my increasingly precious brain cells to, and so this required a little research (cheating, by my daughter’s standards). The image below was easy, since it’s all over the net, a tribute sand sculpture by the Indian sand artist, Sudarsan Patnaik, on Orissa’s Puri beach and created in four hours with the help of students of his Golden Sand Art Institute and a couple of tons of sand. But this is a tribute, a posthumous creation - what about the classic works, surely some sand references there?
It didn’t take me long, and I draw your attention to the 1992 video of “Remember the Time,” an extravagant production set in ancient Egypt in the times of the cruel but song-'n-dance-loving Pharaohs and their glamorous consorts. Jackson performs some impressive magic disappearing tricks, including his final exit, with granular materials, but most impressive is the introduction which, after a brief homage to the angle of repose, resolves itself (above) into a swirling storm of sand grains - and a sandglass.
Oh_,_ and yes, Michael Jackson did guest star in an episode of The Simpsons.
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