He and I were exact contemporaries. His death is enough to creep me out a bit.
Micheal Jackson as the scarecrow in The WIZ:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4th7d_you-cant-win-michael-jackson-the-wi_music
MJ fans can out-batshit anyone. I fully expect a church or a cult to emerge. But right now you are seeing folks who can remember growing up with Michael’s music, and of course it makes you happy. It was an innocent time. I mean, he was the biggest star in the universe… and he was totally safe. Hell, Ronnie and Nancy liked him.
I called a childhood friend today and she hadn’t heard the news. So we shed some tears but also laughed a lot about the good times we had listening to MJ - the Motown 25 performance, seeing the Thriller video for the first time, and so on.
And of course, you’re also seeing the requisite media whores. I fully expect to see future reality TV stars, American Idol auditionees, etc. filling the screens for the next several days.
Like many others, that was my first thought too. But having seen on TV his family arriving at the hospital so shaken up, plus the helicopter carrying his body to the L.A. Medical Examiner’s office for autopsy tomorrow, I’ve become convinced his death is real.
Does anybody know what religion Michael Jackson was? I know he grew up Jehovah’s Witness and remained one for much of his [ahem] adulthood, but had a falling out some years ago. At one point it was reported he was flirting with the Nation of Islam, then he lived in Dubai and traveled in the Arab world for a time (remember the reports of his wearing a burqa?) where both Sunni and Shi’ites view the Nation of Islam as brethren about as much as the Vatican does snake handlers, and he always maintained he had great faith in God, but does anybody know what he was by the end?
I made as much fun of MJ as the next guy, but I really felt sorry for him. He didn’t have a childhood at all, an abusive father and a mother who was too scared to intervene in the abuse. He had so much talent and it’s all been overshadowed by him being bat shit nuts.
Well, wherever you are MJ, I hope you’re at peace.
I am deeply, deeply ambivalent about Michael Jackson as a person. However, I will never forget two times in college (1984-1988) where, at two different parties, very early in the night (you know, that time of parties where nobody’s drunk enough to start dancing yet?), the hosts got everybody out dancing within two bars of two different songs. The first was “ABC,” and the second was “Gotta Be Startin’ Somethin’.” I got heartily sick of “Thriller,” since I preferred “Off The Wall,” but the music MJ made was groundbreaking. He also sort of forced MTV to start playing more videos by non-white musicians.
This was my thought, too. The man looked anorexic, even if he wasn’t.
Wow, I remember that montage of the faces morphing from one to the next – that was fabulous!
How strange. The two figures that launched more young boys sexual careers croak it on the same day.
I know at the end of Jermaine’s conference he said that Allah will always be with Michael.
My understanding that he was still a self-identified Witness. I remember hearing not too long ago- from him in some interview, actually- that he still witnessed; he’d wear a fat suit and prosthetics, then go around witnessing. I think it goes back to wanting to make his mother happy, who is incredibly devout.
I’m guessing another parallel twixt Jackson and Elvis is the estate. When Elvis died his finances were a mess: lavish spending, Colonel Tom Parker (did anybody ever find out just what was in those pictures he must have had of Elvis?), bad investments, more lavish spending, a huge entourage, a career slump, yet more lavish spending, etc., had him cash poor and with millions in debts; after a few years of Priscilla’s prudent postmortem management the Presley Estate was earning several times more per year than Elvis had earned in his heyday.
Jackson’s financial mess was as much a part of his legend as the sequined glove and the molestation charges. However, I can easily see Neverland becoming an estate operated tourist attraction to rival Graceland (it even has it’s own “amusement park rides and zoo for a small extra fee”- how hard to add some concession stands?). I’m sure he had some huge insurance policies that will provide some cash, and with his death some of his creditors will probably be willing to settle debts cheaper than with him alive and earning. He still owns part of the Beatles catalog (heavily encumbered I understand) which will either generate revenues (the Beatles always sell well of course but they go through waves of popularity- a few years or a new music technology could be a major payday) or generate a buttload of money if Paul McCartney and or Yoko make a bid, and that will help the debt restructuring. Nostalgia will probably see a rise in Jackson’s recording sales, there’ll be covers he’ll get royalties from, since he’s dead there’ll be no more $4 million shopping trips or $20 million out of court settlements, so the most chaotic liability to the estate (Michael himself) is removed. With good oversight his estate could be far more solvent in a few years than it ever was in his lifetime and his kids far richer than had he lived.
Speaking of his kids, I’m guessing the AA batteries are hitting the floor like shotgun shells at a tri state turkey shoot as Nancy Grace’s vibrator ejects more copperheads than Lincoln in a magic mushroom fueld daydream while she speculates on the thousands of hours of coverage she’ll get from the custody trials. This is her retirement package. The biological mothers evidently have no more rights than the biological parents of any other adopted child, yet you know they’ll sue; the Jackson [del]family[/del] tribe (how many of them are there? Dozens at least and many of them broke) will sue. I can’t imagine Michael giving much thought to his death so there’s no telling who the guardian is if there is one, and if he did it’s apt to be a triumvirate of Liza Minnelli, Bubbles and Dwight Babcock IV at Knickerbocker Bank, so it could be a battle royale.
Pardon my schadenfreude, but the passage of a god is such a rare thing, and when they fall from Olympus into the sea the tidal waves are fascinating to watch when you’re at the safe distance which cable so nobly provides.
Keith Olberman (sp?) commented this evening on the lack of same – so far. He wondered where all the celebrities were, the ones who always have something to say. The lawsuit and the gossip are more fresh in peoples’ minds than the music. I’m not in the loop, but today was the first I’d heard that MJ was getting ready to tour again. I think he was still a bit of a pariah, and maybe that’s why we haven’t heard from Liz Taylor and Brooke Shields and – Rodney Allen Rippy? (The short black kid who was pals with MJ for awhile.)
One guy that chapped my ass on Olberman tonight was an attorney – his name was Oman or Homen (something like that). Anyway, he went on and on about how he’d repeatedly warn MJ’s family about his overuse of prescription drugs. He was speculating about the cause of the cardiac arrest but kept saying he wasn’t speculating (because that wouldn’t be fair)-- and then tried to qualify this by saying “We won’t know until we see the autopsy report so I can’t say if it’s a factor” and then continued on about the prescription drug warnings. What an ass. Some “friend of the family.” :rolleyes: I predict we’ll be seeing a lot of him on TV. Asshole.
Well, get ready for Nancy Grace to either sink to the bottom of “journalistic” well by saying something a) stupid and b) vengeful (good call, Sampiro). And actually, Auntie, Liz and Brooke have commented - Liz essentially said she was too sickened by the news to say anything. I haven’t seen a comment from Diana Ross but I suspect she’s in the same boat.
My predictions:
Somebody famous (or marginally famous) will lose their career, or at least get fired for telling a joke or something crude about MJ in the next week.
There will be some MJ fan(s) out there that will commit suicide upon hearing this news.
There will be a god-awful TV movie or “documentary” out on cable, replete with “friends” of MJ commenting on how they saw this coming, etc.
Who the hell is Nancy Grace?
I have nothing here, except to say that the phrase “baby dangling freak” returns 647 results on Google.
Is that really fair though? A lot of people saw this coming, just no one knew when.
RIP Michael. I never thought you were a pedo, but something weird was going on with those kids.
You have no idea how badly I wish I could say that.
The first link worked fine for me. Thanks. I last saw the full video back in 1991, after The Simpsons. I guess they’ll do some kind of tribute on the Simpsons this fall - but what image will they show? Leon Kompowski? (for those who don’t know the episode, Michael Jackson voices a plumber who thinks he’s michael jackson. There are some songs in the episode, but supposedly they’re actually a soundalike). Maybe the Thriller Album when Bart shows him what Michael Jackson really looks like? And while talking about the episode, how awkward does it seem these days everyone calls two friends (and so on) about MJ being in town. It’ll be awkwarder (though I guess that ep will be shelved for a while.) Probably not so about the South Park ep. Well maybe that one too.
Oh lord, that made me choke up. I loved the Jackson 5. THIS made me actually cry. I loved that song so much, and hadn’t heard it for ages.
And this, oh my god, an astonishing acapella* “I’ll Be There” that’ll just tear your heart out.
This is what’s sad, what he used to be, all that talent, all that promise. There will never be another Michael Jackson. Unfortunately, and thank god.
*there are a bunch of acapella songs up. I don’t know what they are (software to take out the music? Tapes from the studio?) and I don’t know where they came from but they must have been gold to fans when they surfaced. Here’s an acapella “Ben”.