Thursday, June 25, 2009

Michael Jackson reportedly dead ...

Good. About a month back I said to a few people that if Michael Jackson would just die, I could listen to his music again ...

11 comments:

Sean Fagan said...

'e ain't dead, 'e's just restin'.

(Well, according to CNN, in a coma.)

There are very, very few people whose deaths I would celebrate; Jackson really isn't on that list. (I won't mourn him much, mind you.)

Sean Fagan said...

And just after I did that, CNN updated their website, and the "Breaking News" at the top cites "multiple sources" that he's dead.

Unknown said...

Makes me think of that bit from Armageddon Blues where they're talking about little Michael passing away after spending 25 years in a car crash induced coma. Gotta love the Great Wheel for alternate realities. =)

Daniel Keys Moran said...

No one has to celebrate Jackson's death, but it's more a good thing than a bad one. He was a standard issue monster, and his monstrosity was made noteable only by his fame and astonishing talent.

Sure, he was a broken man. Not a lot of monsters out there who aren't broken in one way or another -- I could give you some examples from my own life. But while it explains the monsters, it doesn't justify them.

ditmars1929 said...

Just one less drug addled child molestor on the the face of the planet. What a creep.

Steve Perry said...

Lawyer says he was doper. I can't say I'd be terribly surprised if he died as result.

Khyron said...

Starting on a third day worth of way too much Michael Jackson on the radio now. Boy, did I pick the wrong night to start a road trip.

I have to wonder, with regard to monsters, how much of the focus on that with him was due to freakish appearance changes. There are a lot of monsters in Hollywood/music, at least to judge by the surprising number of them too incompetent to keep it secret... this one made the mistake of looking like a monster and got way more attention for his behavior than most of them do.

Or maybe it's just the 20 different times I've heard Thriller lately that have me focused on his appearance and how fitting that song would have been on the comeback tour he was planning...

Steve Perry said...

Oh, I think the monster part came when the goings-on at Pedophile Acres came to light. Yeah, the man went from being a nice-looking black kid to a white animae cartoon character, but there are a lot of folks who have been made hideous by bad plastic surgery.

Ugly and monster don't go together.

Scott said...

First time I met a child molester in real life I didn't recognize the feeling; didn't feel anything like wrath, or fear; couldn't feel either of them at all.

Felt cold, and slow, and calm, and clear; saw the little dots of cancer in his chest and head, saw every major blood vessel, could feel how my knife would come into my hand.

So that's what hate feels like. Never felt it or anything like it in any other circumstance, just when one of them is in the room; Hell is a cold place.

Anonymous said...

glad to hear I'm not the only one who thought "good," and glad I'm not the only one who thinks he was a monster.

I've been fairly horrified to learn just how many of my friends are actually kind of sad he's gone.

Steve Perry said...

It's the waste of talent that bothers some folks. Here was a kid who sure could dance, could sing, and whose work did affect the way a whole lot of America looked at things -- from MTV, to what constitutes a super-star.

The man owned the Beatles backlist, for Chrissake.

But he was doomed from the git-go, and while the end is no big surprise, there is always some of that what-might-have-been when looking at tragic (in the classical sense) figures -- James Dean, Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, Michael Jackson. One of the reasons they loom large is that they burned bright but swiftly. They checked out early.

None of his upbringing excuses the ugly things Jackson did; it just seems like such a waste when somebody with mondo talent hits the wall because of his own bad driving.

Richard Jenni was my favorite stand-up comedian. He was flat out, I don't-care-who-you-are-that-there-is-funny, but he killed himself. Such a waste.