Sadly becoming a caricature of the amazing performer most of us grew up watching (mainly self-inflicted, but still), I can only hope Michael Jackson’s legacy remembers his 70s/80s heyday much more than what came since then.
I now briefly pause the album that nipped at Thriller’s heels for most of 1983 … out of respect.
Wait, wait, is he dead or just in a coma?
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/06/pop-star-michael-jackson-was-rushed-to-a-hospital-this-afternoon-by-los-angeles-fire-department-paramedics–capt-steve-ruda.html
to paraphrase The Simpsons, “He was rushed to the hospital where he was pronounced ‘Dead,’ and was then rushed to a better hospital where his condition was upgraded to ‘Not Dead’”
Given all the plastic surgery he had and all his below-the-radar medical woes he’s had as a result, and his obvious screaming craziness, I’m a little surprised he didn’t have a one-bed hospital built in to his home.
Wow. It seems strange, and yet…not.
I think it’s somehow fitting that the “three” dead this week (it’s the weirdest of truisms that famous-people deaths come in threes) — McMahon, Fawcett, and Jackson — were three of the biggest American cultural icons (even if Ed was only that in duet with Carson).
I imagine Michael offering his arm to Farrah, and Ed welcoming them. I think it would have pleased him to have died on the same day as as someone like Farrah — if that makes sense.
I can’t think of the horror show his life became right now. I’m remembering “Thriller”, and how my first 45 was “ABC”, cut out from a box of Alpha-bits cereal. And “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’?” and “Ben”.
And how much I loved, loved, LOVED his music.
Today I feel truly middle-aged.
I hear ya, Wanks. One thing to go from Farrah, my parents’ age, to someone more of my generation. In the words of Ed’s old partner in crime, weird, wacky stuff.
Well said Wanks. This is so strange. Both of them passing like that. Not that I was a fan of Michael’s but something of my free wheeling hell bent for leather teeny years is lost now. Bye Mike, never understood what you were all about but I hope you find some peace now. Farrah, heaven just got itself another angel. Don’t charm the guys too much. Leave some for the rest of us.
I’m a child of the 80s, but all I can say about this is “meh.” Something about his “love” for little boys put him into the place in my head where I dismiss all that came before his singing and dancing. The coverage of this is going to be as creepy as he was.
There will be time for that later. He was a cultural icon, supernaturally talented, and plain batsh*t. For now people will remember the talent. The rest will come later.
My whole childhood died today. I was born in the mid 70’s in Farrah’s heyday and grew up in the 80’s with parachute pants and a poor excuse for Michael’s glove (it was actually just a garden glove). I’m actually speechless right now, this is the only the second time that’s ever happened and the first time that’s happened while I’m concsious.
This has got to be one of the top three days for Death of the noteworthy in recent memory- the other two being
Jim Henson and Sammy Davis Jr. (May 16th, 1990)
C.S. Lewis, Aldus Huxley and John F. Kennedy (November 22, 1963) (Yeah, that’s a big one…)
The Henson/Davis one will never be forgotten. The two guys who brought many a smile to this child of the 70s.
Saddest day in this patriot’s eye’s, though: both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson dying on the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration. That’s just karmic spookiness.
I’m not torn up about this at all. MJ was hugely talented once upon a time, but he was also a monster, and every rational part of me is happy that there’s one less monster in the world. I’ll not wax nostalgic or feign sadness at the death of a child rapist. To be fair, though, I will say that the poor guy never had a chance: Abusive father, live on the road and in the limelite, forced to share rooms with his brothers banging groupies in plain sight while he was still just a little kid, that kind of stuff will mess you up, and it went on for more than a decade. None of which excuses the things he (almost certainly) did, but at least it gives us a window in to the origins of his very obvious mental illness. The body dysmorphic disorder, the spendthrift ways, his clear breaks with reality, I know he was Sony’s meal ticket, so no one wanted to mess with him, but I do wish someone had gotten him some help before it came to this.
At the Thursday Night Service at church tonight, my preacher said it best, “Whatever Michael Jackson beame, whatever he did, he was once an innocent child and he deserves our pitty and our prayers.” So I’ll give him that, but not my respect.
For the record, I’m with you in the respect department ‘bot 3.0. Unfortunately, no matter how I much I want his legacy to be remembered as I mentioned above, the other half of his career, which involved a personal life that overwhelmed and overshadowed his ability and probably desire to make amazing music, exists. I’d never deny that any more than forget how he unflinchingly robbed Paul McCartney of the Beatles catalog.
Like G-Man, though, I will choose to remember much more the way the man absolutely owned a stage like few others in the 80s.
I’ll remember his awesome music.
Perhaps the greatest loss within two days of each other were Robert Mitchum on July 1, 1997, and Jimmy Stewart on July 2, 1997. I don’t remember who was the “third” of that week, but with two heavies like them you don’t need a third.
Other people who died on the same day: Michelangelo Antonioni and Ingmar Bergman; Milton Berle and Billy Wilder; Orson Welles and Yul Brynner (Thus paving the way for the most disturbing anti-smoking PSA of all time – “Hello. I’m Yul Brynner, and cigarettes killed me…”); Klaus Kinski and Freddie Mercury; Orville Wright and Gandhi; Federico Fellini and River Phoenix; Jim Henson and Sammy Davis, Jr. (R2 conflated the Henson death with the Freddy Mercury one, but I think we’ve got it sorted out now).
Finally, there’s Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, and Ritchie Valens, though I’m not sure they should count since they were in the same plane.
And one that pretentious people like to cite a lot, but which doesn’t count: Shakespear and Cervantes. Yes, technically they died on the same day, but – as Nabokov points out – Spain and England were working on different callendars at the time, so they died like a month apart, which just happend to coincidentally be the same date on both callendars.