Day Three: the death of Michael Jackson. On your TV, radio, internet newsfeeds, blogs, magazines, newspapers, and just about everywhere else, we’re in King of Pop overdrive. Yesterday at Home Depot, a gentleman a few years older than My Sweet Baboo rang up my purchase, and as we were walking away, he said to another employee (of his same generation) “Hey Bill, it’s been what, 20 minutes since we heard a Michael Jackson song on the radio? That’s the longest they’ve gone all day!” The two of them chuckled, and to be honest so did MSB and I. It was pretty clear that the four of us fell on the ‘less is more’ side of MJ coverage, but it feels like we’re in the minority. Here's another illustration: later yesterday afternoon, sitting in the nail salon, everyone who was talking was talking about him – their favorite videos or songs, or what he meant to them. Some of the folks who were talking about him were only about 15 or 16 years old, yet they had their own very vivid ‘Michael memories’ just the same.
Thursday started out pretty unremarkably. I was on vacation, and MSB, Jim and Mare had all taken the day off. We visited a few west-shore Cayuga Lake and east-shore Seneca Lake wineries, stopped at a great place for lunch on a deck overlooking a beautiful little perennial garden, and then swung around through Watkins Glen and headed up the west side of Seneca for a few more stops. We got rain only at the very end – and a huge rain it was – but it ended quickly and the ride home was an uneventful end to a great day. It was only later that night, when I went online to check emails that I learned we had lost both MJ and Farrah Fawcett.
So what to make of these two now eternally-linked passages? Farrah had lost a lengthy battle with cancer, one made all the more maddening by the tabloid coverage that she fought almost as fiercely as she did the illness which eventually took her life. For some reason, I was more moved by scenes of her and Ryan O’Neal (taken from the recent documentary of her struggle with cancer) than I have been by any image or story of MJ that I’ve seen, including sentiments pouring in from all over the world; call me sentimental, but I’m a sucker for an endearing love story, I guess. Maybe it’s a blessing that she died the same day as MJ – her friends and family will be able to grieve outside the spotlight, in peace and surrounded by love, while everyone else focuses their attention elsewhere.
Michael Jackson also fought a lengthy battle – but he was his own worst enemy. Somewhere along the way, the cute little kid who sang and danced his heart out back in the late sixties and early seventies became a grotesque caricature. There’s no doubt that his was an extraordinary talent; we immediately recognize his songs, and his trademark dance moves, and the one glove and the short pants and sparkly socks. He inspired the same kind of devotion and fanaticism that the Beatles and Elvis did, and his death, in the way that only a handful could, has seemingly caused the world to stop for a bit.
He was the self-proclaimed King of Pop, but for the past 25 years or more, MJ has been as famous for making news as for making music. We immediately recognize the picture of him sleeping in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber; the face masks he wore as accessories; his ever-changing appearance; his ‘marriages’ to Lisa Marie Presley and to Debbie Rowe; his kids, always with their faces covered (as if they had something to hide); and Neverland. We remember the allegations of bad behavior, and we think (even though he was acquitted) that it’s likely he could have done what he was accused of because of the general weirdness of the life he lived.
I was not aware until only very recently that he was making a comeback – and I learned of that at the same time I learned that he had taken to wearing designer clothes...women’s designer clothes. Doesn’t make his attempted comeback any less impressive, it just shows to go you that he couldn’t help himself. In his own words, from my favorite MJ song, The Man in the Mirror: “I’ve been a victim of a selfish kind of love.” How sad that line seems now.
Thursday started out pretty unremarkably. I was on vacation, and MSB, Jim and Mare had all taken the day off. We visited a few west-shore Cayuga Lake and east-shore Seneca Lake wineries, stopped at a great place for lunch on a deck overlooking a beautiful little perennial garden, and then swung around through Watkins Glen and headed up the west side of Seneca for a few more stops. We got rain only at the very end – and a huge rain it was – but it ended quickly and the ride home was an uneventful end to a great day. It was only later that night, when I went online to check emails that I learned we had lost both MJ and Farrah Fawcett.
So what to make of these two now eternally-linked passages? Farrah had lost a lengthy battle with cancer, one made all the more maddening by the tabloid coverage that she fought almost as fiercely as she did the illness which eventually took her life. For some reason, I was more moved by scenes of her and Ryan O’Neal (taken from the recent documentary of her struggle with cancer) than I have been by any image or story of MJ that I’ve seen, including sentiments pouring in from all over the world; call me sentimental, but I’m a sucker for an endearing love story, I guess. Maybe it’s a blessing that she died the same day as MJ – her friends and family will be able to grieve outside the spotlight, in peace and surrounded by love, while everyone else focuses their attention elsewhere.
Michael Jackson also fought a lengthy battle – but he was his own worst enemy. Somewhere along the way, the cute little kid who sang and danced his heart out back in the late sixties and early seventies became a grotesque caricature. There’s no doubt that his was an extraordinary talent; we immediately recognize his songs, and his trademark dance moves, and the one glove and the short pants and sparkly socks. He inspired the same kind of devotion and fanaticism that the Beatles and Elvis did, and his death, in the way that only a handful could, has seemingly caused the world to stop for a bit.
He was the self-proclaimed King of Pop, but for the past 25 years or more, MJ has been as famous for making news as for making music. We immediately recognize the picture of him sleeping in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber; the face masks he wore as accessories; his ever-changing appearance; his ‘marriages’ to Lisa Marie Presley and to Debbie Rowe; his kids, always with their faces covered (as if they had something to hide); and Neverland. We remember the allegations of bad behavior, and we think (even though he was acquitted) that it’s likely he could have done what he was accused of because of the general weirdness of the life he lived.
I was not aware until only very recently that he was making a comeback – and I learned of that at the same time I learned that he had taken to wearing designer clothes...women’s designer clothes. Doesn’t make his attempted comeback any less impressive, it just shows to go you that he couldn’t help himself. In his own words, from my favorite MJ song, The Man in the Mirror: “I’ve been a victim of a selfish kind of love.” How sad that line seems now.
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Thanks for sharing your thoughts!