I woke up on my birthday morning this month thinking about the king in chess. It’s the weakest piece, except for the pawns. It can only move one space at a time, save for castling, which can only take place once a game.
Yet the very point of the game is to capture the king. It lead to a melisma of thoughts about how we need to protect the most vulnerable among us. Dreams, and exhaustion, will do that to you.
Then I thought of all the people who have been dubbed the “king of” some aspect of life. “I’m king of the world, ” Jack Dawson (Leo DeCaprio) shouts, not long before he dies in the cold Atlantic in the movie Titanic (1997).
King of the Hill (1997-2010) was an animated program I watched a lot. Hank Hill, the patriarch of a middle-class American family in the fictional city of Arlen, Texas. He was hardly the monarch of his household.
My daughter is studying world history, and for all the great kings, Caesars and czars she read about, there were three or four duds.
As usual, the brain went right to music. A recent article in the Boston Globe suggested that Michael Jackson, who had been dubbed the King of Pop, should really make us uncomfortable now, after the revelations in the recent documentary Finding Neverland. So his music should, too. Discus.
Here’s a piece from NPR: Benny Goodman: Forever The King Of Swing
King Of Swing – Big Bad Voodoo Daddy
It’s Good to Be King – Tom Petty
King of Pain – The Police (#3 in 1983)
King of Suede – Weird Al Yankovic (#62 in 1984), parody of the Police
King of the Road – Roger Miller (#4 pop, #1 for ten weeks adult contemporary, #1 for five weeks country in 1965)
King Tut – Steve Martin and the Toot Uncommons (#17 in 1978); the Saturday Night Live performance
(Chart action from Billboard, pop charts unless otherwise indicated.)
For ABC Wednesday