1 COMMENT

  1. Wow. I remember going to the Captain Eo show at EPCOT where I made my wife watch it twice with me because it was so much fun.

    Just this weekend I was visiting my parents for Father’s Day and I had WCBS-FM on as we were driving back and forth to NYC. Michael Jackson and the Jackson 5’s songs were played more than once and I remember even my kids stopping a couple of times to listen more closely. Maybe I’ll dig out my copy of “Thriller” and play it for them. They don’t need to know about the circus his life turned into; they’ll just appreciate that amazing voice of his.

  2. I feel bad for the poor guy. He’s been in the spotlight since he was 8 years old, abused, ridiculed, and yeah, as time wore on he got pretty strange, but at the same time, non of us knew him. He didn’t exactly have what you could call a normal life to begin with. The whole world presumed to know him and judge him, but in the end, there is no way of knowing what is in a man’s heart and soul. I know a lot of people thought they could tell us, but as far as I could see, they all had their own agendas: to be funny, to be shocking, to reap some of his fame or money for themselves, or just to be hateful and angry about something. There is no way of know what he did or didn’t do. There is know way of truly understanding what brought him to the place he was at, and know way of knowing where he intended to take his life from there. We as human being deserve every chance to live, and strive to become better people, but there’s still that part of the world that wants to beat a person down, even in death. Whatever Jackson was, we as an opinionated public did take part in shaping that person. I don’t say this as a fan, because I’m not. I’m saying this so some people might think before they speak as I’ve noted so many people haven’t today. I for one will pray for him, his children (who are out a father now) and his family.

  3. I was in a (empty) NY store the other day, and they were playing Billie Jean on the PA, and the kids behind the counter (young hispanics) were grooving to it, and I stopped to listen, and I said to myself, “this is good shit!”.

    …Didn’t sound dated at all.

  4. Michael’s music never fails to get people moving. Put it on in a crowded room some time and watch what happens. Across the board, generationally,…nothing would get peoples heads bobbing, en masse, like that guy’s stuff. Amazing. Phenomenal.

  5. I gotta admit, i didn’t get into Jackson’s music until later because my parents weren’t fans and we didn’t have cable. Yet I vividly remember seeing Captain Eo there and thinking it was one of the most awesome movies I’d ever seen as a kid at the time. The man was a real life comic book character who made sci fi real. As for his personal tragedies and illnesses, that’s a sad underbelly to that legend.

  6. Mark Ronson & Rhymefest made a Michael Jackson tribute mixtape last year. It was the best album of the year by a long shot. It’s free at Rhymefest’s site.

  7. Not huge MJ fan, but he was definitely talented and hard working. And obviously mixed up, which might be a naive-sounding platitude, but in this case I am trying to think the best of him. May he find some peace now.

  8. The bizarre thing is that Farrah Fawcett died on the same day. If you’re a celebrity don’t ever die on the same day as a bigger celebrity dies. You’ll be totally overlooked.

  9. Michael joined his brothers one last time for the Victory Tour. I got a couple of comp tickets, so got to see them at Dodger Stadium. They really know how to put on a show.

    Sasha Baron Cohen had the premiere of his new movie yesterday in Hollywood, so Michael Jackson’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame was blocked off. Not to be put off, fans congregated around and left their memorials on radio talk show host Michael Jackson’s star.

  10. Raffaele said:
    “The bizarre thing is that Farrah Fawcett died on the same day. If you’re a celebrity don’t ever die on the same day as a bigger celebrity dies. You’ll be totally overlooked…”

    Yeah, and tell that to the people of Iran dying in the streets for a tiny slice of democracy — who thought they had the world behind them… only to fall off the news feed to the King of Pop in a split second. Public revolution? What public revolution?

  11. It’s just a moment of recognition, a shared experience because the celebrity (s) who died were in some way or another part of our youth. It does not diminish nor squander the lives of those in Iran fighting for democracy… I doubt they care at the moment what TMZ or CNN is covering. They have bigger issues they want to deal with internally.

  12. Yeah, Rafael is right. Plus, even the 24-hour news cycle can’t milk a celebrity death for more than a week, and I doubt Iran will resolve its issues that quickly.

    That said, it pissed me off to no end this morning when I was getting ready for work and NO ONE was covering Iran. I actually bought a newspaper (!) just so I could find out what was going on, since I didn’t feel like navigating the 20+ stories about MJ just to find the one or two about Iran.