The Truth About Michael Jackson
It’s been nearly a week since the death of Michael Jackson. The initial shock has faded, replaced by grandstanding, speculation, innuendo, and some very tasteless (and very funny) jokes.
Seemingly lost in the pandemonium are the simple truths about the man and the people around him. Truths like these:
1. Michael Jackson was NOT the King Of Pop.
It’s apparently true that a phrase, repeated ad nauseum, will take root no matter how insubstantial or blatantly false. However, that title, created by Jackson himself, does not belong to him … it rightly belongs to Elvis Presley, who amassed 17 number one singles (to Jackson’s 13) during his lifetime. Unless he drank a lot of soda, the man should never be referred to with such a moniker.
2. Michael Jackson did not deserve much of his acclaim.
While the world currently mourns Jackson, many people continue to claim that Jackson was one of the greatest entertainers of all time. Possibly. But we need to remember that we are talking about a man who released very little substantial music in his career. His childhood years, though amazing, only showed off his singing talents. Then he released possibly his greatest record, OFF THE WALL. He followed that up with THRILLER, a record that is vastly overrated beyond the magnificent singles BILLIE JEAN and BEAT IT. Beyond that, his musical output has been almost anemic, with the perfect THE WAY YOU MAKE ME FEEL being the sole exception.
Albums like BAD or DANGEROUS were media concoctions rather than musical statements, created to sell Jackson’s products and image. Songs like THRILLER or BLACK OR WHITE are terrible, and were sold to the public via The Simpsons and other “events.” If you look at Jackson’s musical legacy with a clear head and unbiased eye, it’s startling how meager his musical output was throughout his long entertainment life.
We can also see the problem when we look at Jackson’s supposedly “live” performances throughout his career. When was the last time Michael Jackson actually sang an entire song LIVE? Even his seminal performance of BILLIE JEAN in 1983 was entirely lip-synched. For cryin’ out loud, Jackson even lip-synched on the GRAMMYS in 1988!! I don’t know about anyone else, but if I paid $100 to see Jackson in concert, I would want to hear the guy actually sing, not dance around to the tracks I have at my house. Yet Jackson made an entire career out of a practice that effectively killed Ashlee Simpson’s career when she did it on SNL a few years ago. Pretty lame for someone considered in such high regard as an entertainer.
3. Michael Jackson was a child molester.
Seems pretty obvious to say, but it has been largely ignored out of respect. However, it is also damaging to the children to gloss over the crimes that this man committed and escaped due to his vast wealth.
The media desperately wants to paint Michael as some sort of innocent Peter Pan who made mistakes, but the facts show otherwise. Innocent people do not pay millions of dollars to silence their accusers. Innocent people do not fire people and silence people who rebuke or question their behavior. The facts show that Jackson was a savvy and keen manipulator of people, either in his professional or private life. Neverland was an enormous amusement park version of a venus fly trap, ensnaring kids who would, under these special conditions, be perfect victims. I don’t think Jackson molested many kids, mainly due to his mangled psychology and his fame. But I think he did molest at least one, and would have molested many more had he not been so famous.
4. Michael Jackson was a liar.
I would really like some of Jackson’s fans to admit this one. Jackson’s lies are so intricate and thickly spun that it will take decades to extract the truth. Remember that mesmerizing Living With Michael Jackson interview with Martin Bashir in 2003? Almost everything Jackson said there about his kids has already proven to be completely false. In the interview, he admitted to having sex with Debbie Rowe to conceive his first two children, and then using a surrogate for the third child using his own sperm cells. Now, after his death, it has come to light that Jackson’s sperm never came within a zip code of touching any woman’s eggs, and the entire family was artificially created without Jackson’s involvement at all.
In fact, it’s fair to call both of Jackson’s marriages what they are: shams. His marriages to Lisa Marie Presley and Debbie Rowe - as well as the children - are merely media manipulations on Jackson’s part. The 1993 child molestation charges upset him deeply, not to mention they were a public relations nightmare. So Jackson’s response was to hastily get married and have children, giving his fans the appearance of normalcy and innocence.
In essence, Jackson lied to everyone, including his adopted children, in order to sell albums and concert tickets.
5. The members of the Jackson Family are shameless fame whores.
Few stomachs remained unturned after seeing Joe and Janet Jackson appear at the BET awards two days after Michael’s death. Joe Jackson’s thoughtless shilling of his record company is one of the most despicably selfish acts ever unveiled in public … and then he did it again the following day! Meanwhile, sister Janet was paraded onstage to give a message to the fans … and keep the other successful Jackson kid in work. We need to remember that Janet’s career has been on the skids for a decade as well, and this perfect PR moment was milked for everything it had in order to create a sympathetic swell for Janet and her career.
What’s next? An exclusive interview with LaToya’s snake? A tearful remembrance by Rebbie?
Much of the blame falls on Joe’s oddly-shaped head. He beat these kids and molded them into a gaggle of record-making freaks, all the while collecting huge sums of money. The entire family is a mess, including Tito. The family no longer has real emotion; everything is calculated, manipulated, and buffed to a shine for the cameras. And with the death of the oddest and most famous among them, we can be assured that the Jackson’s will spend years sucking on his corpse for money and fame.
It’s high time for media and fans to honestly assess Michael Jackson for what he actually was, rather than what nostalgia suggests. He was once a terrific young singer and dancer who then descended into utter madness, criminal behavior, and self-delusion. He is not the greatest singer, songwriter, dancer, or entertainer that ever lived. He could have been, but his potential was wasted. In the end, Jackson will be remembered as an artist with a couple of brilliant songs who spectacularly disintegrated in public. He was essentially eaten alive before our eyes by those around him, as well as the demons that haunted him. We can feel sorry for him, but we should not make him out to be something more than what the truth tells us.
Hottest Michael Jackson Video Ever?
As we fall away from the shocking and sudden death of Michael Jackson, we start to reminisce about various aspects of his talent and legacy.
One of the curious things about Jackson was his sexuality. At one time, he was considered the sexiest singer on the planet, which is hard to remember after years of freakish plastic surgeries. There certainly weren’t too many women lining up to be humped by the Zombie Michael we all knew and feared from the last decade. But his videos were, for the most part, much more reflective of the man himself - asexual, puerile, childish, and extravagant. Only in a few videos did Michael dabble with sexual themes or adult situations.
So I ask - which Michael Jackson video do you think is the hottest or sexiest video he ever made?
Here are your choices:
In The Closet
Billie Jean
Blood On The Dancefloor
Smooth Criminal
Dirty Diana
The Way You Make Me Feel
and You Are Not Alone
The last one is a little joke that I sincerely hope you got.
Vote now!
Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough
I have never been much of a fan of Michael Jackson or his music. But I am a fan of his talent. And tonight, that talent - including so much unfulfilled potential - disintegrates on a coroner’s slab.
From the beginning, Michael Jackson was a star. As a six year old, he fronted a band with the raw sexuality and charisma of a person many decades older. As he grew into adulthood, his fame grew to astronomical proportions while his self-esteem shrunk inversely. Despite the bewildering successes he achieved in his life - massive albums like THRILLER and BAD, generous charitable organizations, and culturally-defining moments of pure performance - Jackson’s promise remained strangely unfulfilled.
It is a lesson to those generations most affected by Jackson’s enormous influence : Never wait on what you could do today. While most of us do not have the opportunity to have the kind of stunning and unique talents that Jackson once possessed, each one of us has gifts to contribute to the world, or at least our smaller version of it. It’s easy to become distracted by the everyday cares of life. But sadder than the loss of life itself is the loss of what might have been.
In Jackson’s case, the brilliance of his ten year contribution to music and film is completely overshadowed by the following fifteen years of controversy and non-musical pursuits. It’s confounding to imagine that a man of Jackson’s talents could be better remembered by history as a child molester and urn collector. It is not wrong to consider this. While we might desire to think of the positives at the end of someone’s life, so many high-profile negatives come to mind too easily in the case of Jackson.
If we want to assign blame, we can quickly point to father Joe Jackson for much of it. The elder Jackson mercilessly abused and exploited his gifted son, rendering him incapable of dealing with reality for much of his adult life. No doubt we will be subjected to many exclusive interviews, books, and television specials featuring a “grieving” Joe Jackson over the loss of his son, but, like most things Jackson, that will be a publicity grab more than a display of actual emotion.
But ultimately the blame lies with Michael himself. Rather than focus on his music, Michael allowed himself to spiral into a vortex of amusement park rides, unhealthy child relationships, and drugs. Think about the vast fortune wasted by Jackson during the last fifteen years of his life. Not just THRILLER money, but also the Beatles money and all of the endorsements. Michael probably wasted well over a billion dollars in the last decade of his life on legal fees and extravagances. While sad, it is also hard to forgive or cast aside.
Even worse, Jackson wasted what many tonight are calling a seminal and special talent. Most of us will never be able to sing, dance, or write music like Michael Jackson. We will never know the thrill of entertaining hundreds of thousands of fans all at once. We will never have a world eager to touch us, see us, or own our face on a lunchbox. Yet, Michael Jackson’s talents earned him that opportunity … for a while.
But his death leaves us wondering … what happened? What could have happened? Someone with his talents, abilities, and financial status could have done anything in his life, but he decided to live in hotel rooms, collect statues, and carouse with young boys. In some way it is reflective of the message in CITIZEN KANE - a young man leaves behind his most valued possession in order to compile a great legacy, only to end up alone in a pile of junk. Michael was all alone at the end of his life, surrounded with the meaningless pursuits that had crowded out his truly magical gifts.
It is so easy to get carried away with the everyday that we lose sight of what we could be or what we could accomplish. Michael Jackson certainly lost sight of that, tarnishing his early brilliance with many years of foolishness that left his potential unfulfilled. It is a sobering thought for those of us left behind, those of us who might be squandering our own goals in life for the temporary … the transitory … the momentary. We only have one shot at this silly little exercise called life. Do the right thing, do it as well as you can, and do it right now.
Or, as Michael once sang, don’t stop ’til you get enough. The time might come sooner than you think when enough simply isn’t.
Karma’s A Bitch
The Frankenberry of gossip - Perez Hilton - has been claiming today that he was attacked Sunday night by the entourage of Will.I.Am of The Black Eyed Peas.
Not to be insensitive, but that rude, snivelling faggot had it coming. His ridiculously over-the-top account of the attack, full of screaming and hilarious crying jags, is guaranteed to become the next “Leave Britney Alone” viral sensation. It will be remixed into oblivion.
I can’t condone violence against anyone, even mouthy, marshmallow-shaped queens. But it is not difficult to understand in this instance. Perez has made an enormous amount of undeserved money viciously mocking famous people who depend on public support for their livelihood. You can’t expect them all to lay down for you.
Totally Hilarious Eclipse of the Heart
Bonnie Tyler’s early eighties smash “Total Eclipse of the Heart” had a video that would make your head swim. It was like a very bad art film.
Clearly other people feel the same way that I do about this video. But they’ve taken action. Watch this hilarious deconstruction of eighties video music madness:
Even Heroes Shit Themselves
I will always despise George Brett for leading the Kansas City Royals to victory over my beloved St. Louis Cardinals in 1985.
And that’s why it’s nice to hear him admit he is a disgusting, incontinent slob.
Growbama Or Negrow?
The Chia Pet company, which hasn’t been relevant in thirty years, has unveiled their masterpiece. It is a bust of Barack Obama, upon which you can grow the company’s signature plant.
I absolutely love it. Now that Barack’s in the House, can we grow some weed on top of that thing??
Piracy And The Art Of Posturing
So I watched X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE a few days ago and posted my reactions to the rough cut of this upcoming film. Not only was I deluged with pompous, self-righteous comments from angelic beings of pure light, but the site was also targeted by FOX with demands to remove the sneak peek.
As I look over the decimation wrought this week by the internet leak of the WOLVERINE workprint, I find myself slightly nauseous at the posturing I’ve seen by many movie websites and the droning anonymous hordes that troll their message boards.
According to our dear reader “chuck”, who runs a little movie blog (officially the 200th million such site, by the way), I was immoral for watching the workprint. Nevermind that I never ripped the film, uploaded the film, downloaded the film, copied the film, or distributed the film. All I did was merely click a button and watch the film, just as easily as one might watch talking heads videos on YouTube. If what I did was immoral, then it was only in the loosest sense (the best kind of immorality, if you ask me … wink wink).
And that’s really the rub about the internet and stealing. The fact that you can push one little button and take anything you want dilutes the meaning of the idea of theft. The internet has created massive new ways to obtain stuff for free, and people are liberally taking advantage of that new business model. But while the internet may be desensitizing the way people look at stealing, it has yet to correctly change the way businessmen look at the nature of business.
The internet has completely changed the game, and it shocks me that so many of these businesses have yet to change their rules to cope with the difference. The music industry never recovered from the death stroke inflicted by the internet in the form of easily-downloaded music. Why did they not survive it? Because they failed to anticipate the rise of the technology, and then failed to capitalize on it or change their business model. You see, those record company executives liked making millions of dollars a year back in the eighties, when they could charge $20 for an album that cost them a dollar to make. They enjoyed having a stranglehold on the sound and image properties that made their companies obscenely rich with exorbitant pricing. Mixtapes, which have been around for decades, never worried the studio executives because it was a drop in the bucket. Hell, bands like Metallica made their name distributing their music for free early in their career. But once the internet began to take their money away, Metallica and the record studios greedily tried to retain the cash flows they used to enjoy, but by then it was too late. In the process, Metallica and others have actually seen a backlash … all because they failed to properly assess the power of the internet.
The movie business has been, for the most part, shielded from this type of problem because the internet was far too slow to easily distribute movies. Ten years ago, the bigger problem was DVD copying rather than internet distribution. However, for reasons not entirely clear, the movie studios did not address the situation promptly or properly. How could they not see that the same circumstances that befell the music business would eventually happen to them??? It was only a matter of time before technology would allow the distribution of movies just as easily as it had allowed music distribution in the nineties … how foolish for them to miss that fact.
It’s also a bit silly for a movie studio to bitch and complain about their movie being stolen when they’ve been freely distributing theworkprint among employees for months. As Devin Faraci’s excellent article mentions, this policy almost DARES people to steal the film. My analogy to this situation goes like this: Imagine you left you house unlocked and unwatched. Someone eventually comes along, notices the door open and the house abandoned, so he steals your stuff. Of course the thief is wrong, but how much fault do you carry for the theft of your merchandise. You left it open for such an act, didn’t you?
Taking it one step further: Imagine that the thief, rather than take your stuff to his house, decides to leave your stuff on a random parking lot beside a dumpster. Eventually people will come along, see the merchandise, and take it home. Did they do anything necessarily wrong? They did not actually steal from you, nor did they really steal from anyone; they merely took stuff that was sitting there, seemingly free. Such is the case with everyone who watched WOLVERINE online - they were merely taking stuff that was sitting there for free. The real culprit in this crime is the fucking moron who left their door wide open in the first place, i.e. thedipshits currently running Twentieth Century Fox. Their stance on this issue this week has been nothing short of ludicrous and laughable.
Which leads me to this posturing over internet piracy. There have been several websites sighing and groaning over this “terrible and grievous act” (insert eye roll), each one attempting to console and coddle up to the bosses at FOX for the theft. They want to make it clear to their readers that they in no way condone the theft of movies over the internet. Fascinating. Of course, each one of these websites makes their bread and butter attempting to scoop one another with pictures taken from closed studio sets, internal studio emails, and, on occasion, the leaked movie itself. The most hypocritical movie site on this issue is Ain’t It Cool News, which has been blasting the pirates who posted the WOLVERINE print. What a fucking joke! Few can forget site owner Harry Knowles posting a breathless early review of ATTACK OF THE CLONES after watching a pirated version back in 2002. And before that, the psychotic lardass built the entire site around posting secret reports and spy photographs. Harry Knowles decrying internet piracy is like a fart complaining about the smell in the room.
The internet is never going away, folks. And the ability to obtain information and entertainment is only going to get easier, not more difficult. So the time has already come for these studios to remake themselves in light of this coming technological wave. The fact that they passed around multiple pristine copies of their big summer tentpole movie is proof enough that they have not learned their lesson yet. But if they want to survive, they need to do it fast.
And as for all the movie websites crying over internet piracy, go straight to hell and stay there. Movie websites complaining about internet piracy is like a mob lawyer complaining about mob activities; you’ve made your living doing the same type of shit that the pirates are now doing. Shut the fuck up and enjoy it, hypocrites.
Non Christian Family Guy
The whole Christian Bale episode has been pretty played out, although some of the remix stuff is funny in a Star Wars Kid kind of way. Now the scattergory geniuses over at The Family Guy have fashioned their own fun out of Bale’s unfortunate public moment … and it’s hilarious.
The Latest Toy
Joaquin Off The Stage
A few months ago Joaquin Phoenix announced his retirement from acting to work on a music career. I figured he would form a rock band or maybe even try it as a country singer after his role as Johnny Cash, but neither is the case. He is actually trying to make it as a rapper. Sounds like a bad idea, right. Well watch him leave the stage after a recent performance.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7F_Ikksg40U[/youtube]
If you want another laugh, watch the performance of the song that preceded that.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LieYeCudbQ8[/youtube]
Rod Blagstupidbitch
Last night, Impeached Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was on The David Letterman Show. Some people never learn. If you are a dumbass, famous for being a dumbass, or both you might want to rethink going on Letterman. He doesn’t pull any punches and gives them shit the whole interview. The best thing is that he is so good with his insults that they usually don’t even realize it. Note to all the famous dumbasses going on Letterman. He will make you look stupider that you already looked.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3NXq49b2K8[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hgig3BBmbXA[/youtube]
French Kissin’
My boys Chester French have finally, finally, finally made a video for their magnificent song She Loves Everybody. It’s been pinging around the internet for well over a year, and their popularity has skyrocketed during that time (hey boys, where’s that interview you promised me???). To me, it sounds like they have the best Beatles hooks since Yoko broke them up. Check it out:
Bale Wind
By now we have all heard about Christian Bale’s profane rant recorded on-set while filming Terminator: Salvation. Now someone named RevoLucian has done an amazing remix of his rant. Hilarious!
What The Hell
Those damned snobs and cultural Nazis have won the battle. T-Shirt Hell is no more.
What is T-Shirt Hell, you ask? Only the greatest online t-shirt company in the world, you dumb faggot. Every shirt is a lovingly-crafted middle finger to the sensitive sensibilities of religious and sexual prudes everywhere. I dare you to check out their site. In fact, anyone who comes here needs to go there right now.
The guy who has been running this company for eight years has made an enormous amount of money; in his goodbye letter, he brags that the company still sells 3000 shirts a week in a slow economy. That’s a lot of dough, folks. But I especially love the part where he has decided to not sell-out. The guy is simply going out of business and walking away. HOORAY!!! There is someone out there with balls of integrity.
And to the dumbshits out there who drove him to this unfortunate decision, go fuck yourself in your eye socket until you can actually see the pain.
Her Morning Elegance
The Sign Says It All
Walrus Wanking
You know those awkward moments when you take you little kids to the zoo and they want to know why the monkey has a big red ass. Or when they say Daddy, why is that goat on the other goats back and pushing him real hard? Or my favorite Daddy what is that big thing underneath the Horsey?
Well I have a new one for you. Next time you go to the Zoo, hopefully you won’t have to answer this question. Daddy what is that walrus doing?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybK_qbo9h70[/youtube]
Something Evils Lurking On Broadway
We all knew that Hollywood was out of ideas. It looks like the creative minds on Broadway have been sucked dry too. It was announced Monday that Micheal Jackson’s music video for Thriller will be the inspiration behind a new Hollywood musical. The musical will feature music from Jackson’s albums, Off The Wall and Thriller.
I would much rather see a musical featuring Wacko’s life at that time. That would be entertainment. You could have this head catching fire, man on monkey love with Bubbles, and scenes of him sleeping in the a hyperbaric oxygen chamber.
No matter what the theme is, it’s sure to be a sell out every night. If you can’t get tickets, just figure it will look something like this.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbvP7dT3Dx0[/youtube]
No Words
Jeff Wells posted this beautiful short film called A Thousand Words on Hollywood Elsewhere today, and I wanted to share it as well. This dialogue-free five minute movie by Ted Chung contains more real human emotion than most Hollywood blockbusters do in a year. It also has a gorgeous, haunting piano score.
A Thousand Words from Ted Chung on Vimeo.
