Michael Jackson is dead (this is a bad thing).
First of all, Stephanie from work is really cute. She's been bouncing around my brain for the last 2 weeks. None of you know her (or so I pray), but I needed to get that out of my system. She's fucking adorable. And funny!
Re: MJ DOA in LA
So, yeah, I'm not sure how I feel about it.
My thoughts on the subject, in my brief, oblique way: When you're alive, people tend to try to point out ways in which they're better than you, and this is particularly true when you're famous. When you die, they try to find reasons why you were better than they.
Michael Jackson was an emotionally disturbed man, I might go so far as to say emotionally crippled.
About the child molestation thing (and sorry to refer to it in such a blasé way), I'm still not sure about it. It seems like a forgone conclusion to some people, but given how infamously libidinous males are, the fact that Jackson went 10 years inbetween accusations is fully unreasonable. Guys who are pedophiles aren't just in love with children (that was certainly true of Jackson), they obviously, more famously, desire to have sex with them. If you take a guy who is into kids sexually, and then give him millions and millions and millions (and so on and so on) of dollars, his own amusement park where he always invites kids over...
Let's put it this way. If I were the most famous person on Earth, as Jackson was in the early 90s, and I were surrounded by, let's say, cute 20-somethings (like the aforementioned chick I work with) who worshipped the ground I walked on....I would try to make something happen. So, just due to the derth of accusations (they should have been into the hundreds- there would be no debate), I remain skeptical of his status as a pedo, in the popular vernacular. Far more likely that he was gay or asexual or into fish, Troy McLure style, or something.
It seems to be that he was so traumatized by his childhood, his alternately abandoning/abusive father, his lack of interaction with peers, and so on, that he romanticized childhood innocence. There's a blog by a righteous chick who shares my initials, where in a recent entry she mentioned about her own issues with her childhood, although her issue was more common- she had a bad relationship with her mother, and has always wanted a baby girl of her own to love and raise right. She's realized now that in the back of her mind she just wants to repair her relationship with her mom, and that, to be brief, she was thinking all crazy and shit, yo.
So, I feel like all of the fawning over Jackson's career, and the people who piss on his memory out of some sort of imaginary obligation or solidarity are both examples of a missed point. Just like Farrah Fawcet's death was a missed opportunity to address what killed her- her cancer was most likely brought about by untreated exposure to HPV, a sexually-transmitted disease (there's a vaccine for that which can save thousands and thousands of lives but was not addressed by Fawcett or her handlers)- Jackson's life, and now death, are great opportunities to talk about mental health, childhood traumas, domestic violence, child abuse, people trying to recapture their lost childhoods, body dismorphic disorder, whatever. But, it's a love/hate issue, which is retarded and sad.
Something which occurred to me as I left work today:
David Carradine and Michael Jackson are sitting in a lobby, in heaven. Carradine turns to Jackson and says, "hey, aren't you...aren't you Michael Jackson?!" Jackson nods and confirms, being sure to mention how much he used to love the show Kung Fu. They compliment each other, and then Carradine asks, "So, how did you die?"
"Heart attack," Jackson replies. "How about you?"
Carradine pauses. "Um...you know what...I... Uh, yeah... Heart attack also. Weird coincidence. Weird..."
Anyway, his music. It's pretty good, really. Some stuff is fucked out and I don't feel the need to hear ever again (ie. Black or White), but I haven't heard that stuff in so long, that if I listen to it for 45 seconds, I'm sorta in to it. Some of his other stuff actually sounds pretty modern. There's a lot of layers (the producers other than Jackson himself don't get enough credit), and he was a great singer, with some pretty strong lyrics. This is all super-old news, clearly- but I haven't really listened to him for any extended period of time for 10 years, probably longer than that. I listened to his stuff all of the way home, and not counting the fact that the radio station I was listening to didn't play anything recorded in the last 10 years because of the downslope of his career.
In summary (by the way, why do people put that at the END of shit? Should the summary be at the beginning, so you don't have to read it all? What good is a summary, at this point, really?)...
...in summary, anything good you've heard about him is probably true. He changed popular music, period. Everyone from Usher and Neyo and Justin Timberlake and these other singers I don't listen to (including people I outright hate like Chris Brown and R. Kelly), to Fall Out Boy and others whose style doesn't seem to resemble his all owe a debt to Jackson. Not just that, he was, literally, the most famous person alive for many years- I wonder how I might explain this to kids nowadays. It'd be hard, because someone like Jackson only comes around once every few generations. Suffice it to say, he influenced millions, because he made them fall in love with songs, and whether they become homeless drifters or rock stars or politicians or auto mechanics, he touched a lot of people, but probably not sexually, though I can't say for sure.
And you know what? His life is sadder than his death, to me.
Speaking of sad things, Entertainment Tonight. I made a long rambling post about this when Anna Nicole Smith died...LJ should be easier to search your old posts for, I've just started adding tags to shit in the last few months... Anyway, (*20 minutes later* AHA!!) here's the deal: there are bunch of people who've spent the last 10 years making fun of Michael Jackson, who now have to pretend like they fucking care, and that makes me sick. Not sick, it pisses me off...sick is a more common expression of disgust, you get what I mean. Worse than that, is Entertainment Tonight, the grimiest of all shows. Like with Anna Nicole Smith died, they had to pretend like they weren't calling her an ignorant whore and making fun of her weight gain, and making money doing it. The fake sincerity, the interviews with family members, the paparazzi footage of her kid...seriously, sub-human. I would say it is beneath my contempt, but I seriously fucking hate them, and shamefully enough on my own end, sorta wish they would die.
Unrelated to the massive post above, I've been in a real funk lately. Real depressed. This didn't help, but I don't think it hurt that much. I've been...gone. I'm here, but I'm not really present, you get what I mean?
Get over yourself, self.
Seriously though, Stephanie is gorgeous.
Also, Even More Randomly, the srcoll wheel on my mouse is broken. And I used a computer for like 10 years before those little wheels even existed, but the fact that mine doesn't work right is horribly disturbing to me, and is a fucking tragedy. When I try to scroll down a page or some text, it doesn't move, or scrolls UP, but then also a little down. It's awful.
Pity me.
Re: MJ DOA in LA
So, yeah, I'm not sure how I feel about it.
My thoughts on the subject, in my brief, oblique way: When you're alive, people tend to try to point out ways in which they're better than you, and this is particularly true when you're famous. When you die, they try to find reasons why you were better than they.
Michael Jackson was an emotionally disturbed man, I might go so far as to say emotionally crippled.
About the child molestation thing (and sorry to refer to it in such a blasé way), I'm still not sure about it. It seems like a forgone conclusion to some people, but given how infamously libidinous males are, the fact that Jackson went 10 years inbetween accusations is fully unreasonable. Guys who are pedophiles aren't just in love with children (that was certainly true of Jackson), they obviously, more famously, desire to have sex with them. If you take a guy who is into kids sexually, and then give him millions and millions and millions (and so on and so on) of dollars, his own amusement park where he always invites kids over...
Let's put it this way. If I were the most famous person on Earth, as Jackson was in the early 90s, and I were surrounded by, let's say, cute 20-somethings (like the aforementioned chick I work with) who worshipped the ground I walked on....I would try to make something happen. So, just due to the derth of accusations (they should have been into the hundreds- there would be no debate), I remain skeptical of his status as a pedo, in the popular vernacular. Far more likely that he was gay or asexual or into fish, Troy McLure style, or something.
It seems to be that he was so traumatized by his childhood, his alternately abandoning/abusive father, his lack of interaction with peers, and so on, that he romanticized childhood innocence. There's a blog by a righteous chick who shares my initials, where in a recent entry she mentioned about her own issues with her childhood, although her issue was more common- she had a bad relationship with her mother, and has always wanted a baby girl of her own to love and raise right. She's realized now that in the back of her mind she just wants to repair her relationship with her mom, and that, to be brief, she was thinking all crazy and shit, yo.
So, I feel like all of the fawning over Jackson's career, and the people who piss on his memory out of some sort of imaginary obligation or solidarity are both examples of a missed point. Just like Farrah Fawcet's death was a missed opportunity to address what killed her- her cancer was most likely brought about by untreated exposure to HPV, a sexually-transmitted disease (there's a vaccine for that which can save thousands and thousands of lives but was not addressed by Fawcett or her handlers)- Jackson's life, and now death, are great opportunities to talk about mental health, childhood traumas, domestic violence, child abuse, people trying to recapture their lost childhoods, body dismorphic disorder, whatever. But, it's a love/hate issue, which is retarded and sad.
Something which occurred to me as I left work today:
David Carradine and Michael Jackson are sitting in a lobby, in heaven. Carradine turns to Jackson and says, "hey, aren't you...aren't you Michael Jackson?!" Jackson nods and confirms, being sure to mention how much he used to love the show Kung Fu. They compliment each other, and then Carradine asks, "So, how did you die?"
"Heart attack," Jackson replies. "How about you?"
Carradine pauses. "Um...you know what...I... Uh, yeah... Heart attack also. Weird coincidence. Weird..."
Anyway, his music. It's pretty good, really. Some stuff is fucked out and I don't feel the need to hear ever again (ie. Black or White), but I haven't heard that stuff in so long, that if I listen to it for 45 seconds, I'm sorta in to it. Some of his other stuff actually sounds pretty modern. There's a lot of layers (the producers other than Jackson himself don't get enough credit), and he was a great singer, with some pretty strong lyrics. This is all super-old news, clearly- but I haven't really listened to him for any extended period of time for 10 years, probably longer than that. I listened to his stuff all of the way home, and not counting the fact that the radio station I was listening to didn't play anything recorded in the last 10 years because of the downslope of his career.
In summary (by the way, why do people put that at the END of shit? Should the summary be at the beginning, so you don't have to read it all? What good is a summary, at this point, really?)...
...in summary, anything good you've heard about him is probably true. He changed popular music, period. Everyone from Usher and Neyo and Justin Timberlake and these other singers I don't listen to (including people I outright hate like Chris Brown and R. Kelly), to Fall Out Boy and others whose style doesn't seem to resemble his all owe a debt to Jackson. Not just that, he was, literally, the most famous person alive for many years- I wonder how I might explain this to kids nowadays. It'd be hard, because someone like Jackson only comes around once every few generations. Suffice it to say, he influenced millions, because he made them fall in love with songs, and whether they become homeless drifters or rock stars or politicians or auto mechanics, he touched a lot of people, but probably not sexually, though I can't say for sure.
And you know what? His life is sadder than his death, to me.
Speaking of sad things, Entertainment Tonight. I made a long rambling post about this when Anna Nicole Smith died...LJ should be easier to search your old posts for, I've just started adding tags to shit in the last few months... Anyway, (*20 minutes later* AHA!!) here's the deal: there are bunch of people who've spent the last 10 years making fun of Michael Jackson, who now have to pretend like they fucking care, and that makes me sick. Not sick, it pisses me off...sick is a more common expression of disgust, you get what I mean. Worse than that, is Entertainment Tonight, the grimiest of all shows. Like with Anna Nicole Smith died, they had to pretend like they weren't calling her an ignorant whore and making fun of her weight gain, and making money doing it. The fake sincerity, the interviews with family members, the paparazzi footage of her kid...seriously, sub-human. I would say it is beneath my contempt, but I seriously fucking hate them, and shamefully enough on my own end, sorta wish they would die.
Unrelated to the massive post above, I've been in a real funk lately. Real depressed. This didn't help, but I don't think it hurt that much. I've been...gone. I'm here, but I'm not really present, you get what I mean?
Get over yourself, self.
Seriously though, Stephanie is gorgeous.
Also, Even More Randomly, the srcoll wheel on my mouse is broken. And I used a computer for like 10 years before those little wheels even existed, but the fact that mine doesn't work right is horribly disturbing to me, and is a fucking tragedy. When I try to scroll down a page or some text, it doesn't move, or scrolls UP, but then also a little down. It's awful.
Pity me.