With singer Michael Jackson’s unexpected passing and constant news coverage and replayings of his most successful songs, it sparked a bit of a “blast from the past” moment for me.

You see, in a former life, I was actually a performer.  A song-sign performerand I started performing and touring when I was 7.  There’s a lot of good memories I have from those days until I changed direction at the age of 21.  But for this post, I’ll just talk about the Michael Jackson aspect.    I covered quite a few of his songs back then, including Billie Jean, Thriller, The Way You Make Me Feel, and Man in the Mirror.

Even though I last performed in 1991. the memories are still fresh and still even today, when I attend deaf events around the country, someone I’ve never met before comes up to me and recalls some performance I’ve done.  It does some good for this aging ego. 

Probably my most memorable performance was when I was invited to join the Prism West dance company in Los Angeles and so I packed up my bags and moved to L.A.  A short while later, I debuted on the west coast with Thriller on Halloween Night.  Oh man, it was a perfect thriller night, with one of the worst rainstorms in L.A. in years and streets were flooded and there was lightning and thunder outside.

This past weekend, I found my old videotape of my performance and had it transferred to digital.  The quality isn’t so great, but at least its something.

So without further ado, here’s that performance with the cast of Prism West, and yes, everyone in the company is Deaf::

• Lisa Hermatz (playing the part of Vincent Price)  She has gone on to be an awesome actress and sign language teacher in L.A.  You can catch her guest-appearing on a 2008 episode of Cold Case
• Anthony Natale:  He’s done quite a bit of work on television and film.  You might remember him as the deaf man making out in the elevator in the movie “Jerry Maguire”
• Sheila Gibbons -- Rest her soul, a brain tumor took her away from us too early in life.
• Susan “Boing” Motylinski
• Ray Chahayed
• Vicky Gonzales

Okay, the video quality sucks, but what do you expect from a vhs tape buried for 20 years?