Michael Jackson is dead, and I'm already tired of having conversations about it. Now that Jesse Jackson has gotten involved though, you can bet this shit will go on forever. He always seems to bring a bit of class into any major social upheaval, be it an assassination or simply a long-ranging fight over basic human rights. Also, it looks as though after Michael is laid in state at Neverland, there will be some Anna Nicole-esque legal wrangling over the custody of his probably vat-grown children, and the disposition of his $300 million dollar debt. Apparently, ticket holders of the shows which now will not go on unless Michael is hooked up to some sort of Tesla galvanic device and electrified around the stage to the beat of his songs, (probably not too much more bizarre than some of Mike's other activities) are being given the consolation prize of keeping the tickets as souvenirs, since they are the last link to Jackson that will be available. Also, they have Mike-designed & inspired graphics on them.
There seems to be a lot of legacy spin control going on, which only surprises me because everyone who's even remotely affected by the fact that Michael Jackson has died has been around long enough to remember, pretty much, all the shit that's being pseudo-minimized. Had a chimp named Bubbles, bought the Beatles, tried to purchase the Elephant Man's bones, sleeps in a hyperbaric chamber, movie with Joe Pesci, has his own theme park out in the yard, diddles kids, has porn, keeps chopping off his face, dated Brooke Shields, married Elvis' daughter, repeated crotch grabbing as a dance move, dangles kids from balconies, interviewed about diddling, showed penis in closed legal session, Elizabeth Taylor, caught fire, pissed off McCartney. Some of this was found out to be lies spread by Jackson himself, and some of it was never proven in courts, but all of it will be part and parcel of his legacy, whether his family & fans like it or not. It's inescapable.
No one ever forgets the outlandish shit you get up to, and you cannot control your legacy. The Bush White House was trying really hard to have him remembered as a patriotic regular guy statesman who just did the job that needed to be done during a difficult time in American history. Good luck with that. People will remember the gaffes and the dumbassery, the tanking economy, the rampant greed, the quagmire war, and the rest of the world hating us. The fact that Osama bin Laden has outlived Michael Jackson should piss you off. Know now the fault of the Monkeyface. Back to music - Kurt Cobain and shotguns and heroin, Jim Morrison and vampire sex, Elvis and drugs and food and drugs and food and dying on the toilet, Hendrix and burning guitars & vomit. Celebrity death gets tied up with random shit they did while alive, and the circumstances of their visit from the reaper. David Carradine's unusual sex stuff's gonna stay with him for a while. That's just how it is.
This was unexpected though; in doing Internet "research" about Michael for this blog entry, I happened across this - Michael the inventor. This is his patent, US #5,255,452, for the shoes that allowed him to do the anti-gravity lean thing seen here at about 7:17. So - either you just had one of Mike's tricks ruined for you, or you're kind of impressed at his ingenuity. Or, if you're me - both. I found this, which made me scream internally, and I also found out that Michael deliberately lied to the press about the hyperbaric chamber (sleeping in it, anyway) and the Elephant Man thing, so I wonder this: could this all be an elaborate hoax to set up Jackson coming "back from the dead" in a zombie-like state to record Thriller 2, capitlizing on the success of the re-issue from last year and the fervor whipped up by his supposed "death?"
