I was driving home from work listening to the Jersey guys on 101.5, just punching different stations. I was hoping to catch the weather, but they were joking about Michael Jackson being taken to the hospital with an apparent heart attack. Joking because, you know, it's a celebrity, and it was Michael Jackson, and he's, well, weird. And he had been pretty weird, for a long while.
Also, highly talented. Add to that, a little tragic. Make that, a lot tragic. But to the tabloids, mostly weird. I expect the coverage of his death is going to be no less weird than the coverage regarding his life. That's how it is.
I remember in 1983, Micheal Jackson wasn't really weird--he was hot. For people my age, a lot of us are going to remember Thriller as being one of the first albums we bought ourselves. I remember sitting on a bed with girlfriends singing along to it. I was probably right about the age where girls who really dig the Jonas Bros and Miley Cyrus are, now, with the exception that Micheal was actually good. His voice was compelling, his dance moves were almost extraterrestrial, his songs had verve....and in the age of videos, he set the standard of what a music video could be. "Thriller" was a musical movie short with brilliant choreography and effects. He was the King of Pop.
But there was always something just a little odd. Hyperbaric oxygen chambers to sleep in? His own zoo at his Neverland (how Peter Pan) abode/private theme park. Wanting to buy the Elephant Man skeleton?
But he kind of seemed to know what it was about--after all, he'd been in the spotlight since he was ten. An incredibly talented, but very young, vulnerable kid. In a big, sometimes dysfunctional family. So he knew about being in the spotlight, but he had maybe a little less of an idea about....being normal.
There are people who believe Micheal Jackson was a pedophile, and as for me, I can't say one way or the other. I just don't know. I would prefer to believe he was just a really confused person in some ways, musically gifted, but childlike and arrested in others. What I can say is, as certain things started making it clear he was a troubled person, like the drug issues and obvious frequent plastic surgeries, it seemed clear to me that this was a person who knew pain. And just like people say with genius sometimes comes eccentricity (apparently true with Jackson), it's also become axiomatic that people who've been abused sometimes do abuse. Life doesn't always make sense, and Michael Jackson's life kind of shows it.
When you look at his music and his performances, you see the brilliance shining through--the work and polish he applied to his natural talents. But sometimes there was a twist in that creativity. And while he had a great eye for staging his appearances (c'mon--he knew you knew who he was when he turned up in a surgical mask, or in some exotic costume), a look at his plastic-surgery-battered face seemed to suggest a deep insecurity. If half of what was said about him was true--he was a strange and even bad man. But the half that wasn't true doesn't say much about our gossiping culture. So let the man be--he's dead. I'll remember the artist.
When I saw this kind of anti-"Singing in the Rain" dance, I remember thinking it was angry, provocative, but jaw-dropping. It was like weaponized choreography.
Damn, but he could dance.
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