L.A. Aims To Limit Jackson Crowd
06/03/09
Link

Facing overwhelming demand for tickets to Michael Jackson's memorial service, officials are warning those who do not win seats for Tuesday morning's Staples Center event to stay away as police plan a massive deployment around the downtown arena.

A total of 17,500 free tickets will be distributed to people selected at random from among those who register by 6 p.m. Saturday www.staplescenter.com.


So many people tried to register for the lottery that the website's server briefly crashed Friday morning as the ticketing process was announced. More than 500,000 people had registered for the lottery by Friday evening, a spokesman for the Jackson family said.

Seeking to discourage massive throngs, officials said that there would be no funeral procession and that no one would be allowed inside a large area around Staples unless they had a ticket and a wristband, a media credential or could prove they live or work there.

"You must have a ticket to be admitted to the venue," Los Angeles Police Department Assistant Chief Earl Paysinger said at a news conference outside Staples Center attended by journalists from around the globe. "There's no way to get to this venue if you don't have a ticket."


The restricted area is bounded by Flower Street on the east, Olympic Boulevard on the north, Pico Boulevard to the south and Blaine Street to the west.

The memorial will be staged in a "safe and calm manner," L.A. City Councilwoman Jan Perry said. "That should ease the potential burden enormously" for taxpayers, she added.





Perry said the extra police deployment will be paid for out of an LAPD fund reserved for overtime costs of special events such as "1st Amendment marches, protests and funerals and other special events large in scope and that have a potential to impact public safety."

Because the fiscal year started July 1, the fund for all police overtime -- which according to one source covers 1.6 million hours, or nearly $90 million -- is flush. But some city officials questioned the wisdom of spending possibly more than $1 million in overtime funds so early in the fiscal year, noting that the city could find itself cash-strapped later in the event of a fire, earthquake or other major disaster.

"Do we want to blow our money at the first week of the fiscal year?" asked Police Administrator Rhonda Sims-Lewis. "No. We would prefer to get some reimbursement. That would mean we would be prepared as we go through the rest of the year. I believe they are working on trying to work this whole thing out. I hope it gets worked out."

Sims-Lewis said that each year, police officials expect a few extraordinary events. Last year saw marches for and against Proposition 8, a Metrolink crash and a few immigration protests, among other things. But "if we have something huge like an earthquake or a flood and a string of incidents, that could devastate us," she said.

In the case of a large-scale disaster, some expenditures could be reimbursed by the federal government.

Sims-Lewis said that last year, the LAPD did not use all of its allotted 1.6 million hours of overtime -- in part because about 100,000 hours -- or $6.7 million -- was returned midyear after Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa asked city departments to tighten their belts.

Perry said city officials don't know the public cost of the Jackson memorial but are using last month's Lakers championship parade -- which cost $2 million and was ultimately covered by private contributors -- as one benchmark. Nearly half of the money was for public works and law enforcement, the largest deployment of LAPD forces in approximately a decade.

At the news conference, Perry asked for donations to help pay the city's non-law enforcement costs. "The city would deeply appreciate" the help, said Perry, who was acting as mayor since Villaraigosa was in South Africa and City Council President Eric Garcetti was in Japan.


Tim Leiweke, president and chief executive of AEG, the company that owns and operates Staples Center and that was producing Jackson's comeback concerts in London, said the service will be carried live on television and the Internet. Further details about the service were still being discussed, he said.

Jackson family publicist Ken Sunshine said the event and the distribution of tickets are being orchestrated with the fans in mind.

"Everything about the memorial has to do with the fans," Sunshine said.

Late Friday, AEG announced that the random drawing, originally limited to U.S. residents, had been expanded to those living in other countries.

Staples Center, site of Jackson's last rehearsal, can hold as many as 20,000 people, depending on its configuration.

Organizers plan to select 8,750 names at random from the list of people who register on the Staples Center website; those selected will be notified between 11 a.m. and 8 p.m. Sunday and told where to go on Monday to pick up two tickets and wristbands guaranteeing them seats at the event. Of the 17,500 tickets available, 11,000 are for the Staples Center and 6,500 are for Nokia Theatre, across the street, where the service will be shown on a jumbo screen.

The rest of the available tickets will be given to "family, and friends of the family, for their use," Sunshine said.

Both Leiweke and Sunshine said they do not want anyone to try to scalp tickets.

"We're hoping people have dignity," Leiweke said. ". . . Those who would take advantage of this, shame on them."

matthewgrant said:

oh certainly for a video it would be cool ! and I think Michael would like the idea of the magic behind it since it was something he was fond of. I just felt
the hologram was reaching for him to perform somehow from beyond,The way the users posted.




but wait until the response the user gets rolls in one was good idea... next they'll say he should be a hologram for his sendoff.
[Edited 7/4/09 7:05am]

Chic35 said:

Update: Lottery eligibility expanded to include fans outside the continental United States.

brooksie said:

bboy87 said:

Beautiful!

Cinnamon234 said:

I know exactely how you feel. I was getting ready to see michael in concert. I always wanted to see him in concert and wanted to meet him. I don't mean to be selfish but i realy wanted this to happen but it never did. This is incredibly painful and I miss him so much. I grew up on some of michael's music and I feel like I have lost some of my childhood. I've lost a close friend. Honestly, sooner of later he would of died because we can't live forever but the fact that he died so suddenly is so upsetting.

Michael Jackson: 1958-2009
By Ernest Hardy
An Appreciation
Link

When contacted by Sony Legacy last year to write the liner notes for the reissues of the Jacksons’ CDs Destiny and Triumph, as well as a new Greatest Hits collection, I felt two emotions: fear and excitement. This wouldn’t be me introducing an artist or new music to an audience. This was music with which I already had a deep, personal history but that a whole lot of folks knew far better than I. But somewhere in my mind the dozing fanboy was stirred and I thought of this as a chance to stitch a thread that would do some heavy-duty connecting: from the younger me who’d religiously watched the J5 Saturday-morning cartoon; to the young me who’d watched his diaper-clad toddler cousin, Lesley, bend at the waist to smack the floor with her palms for emphasis as she sang I-I-I wun-duuuuuh who’s lovin’ you; to the preadolescent me who’d been so dazzled by the Jackson (and Sister Sledge) concert in support of the Destiny CD that when I returned home and my mother asked how it was, I stuttered and grinned like a fool; to the teenage me who’d watch his sister wash dishes and sing along to “Bless His Soul,” “Push Me Away” and “That’s What You Get for Being Polite,” and be moved and a little frightened at her wistfulness as she sang; to the me who instantly got sick of “Beat It,” but could play “Rock With You” over and over, and over again.

I wanted to draw a thread from all of me to all of the Jacksons, and express something of what their music had meant to me. I’d never wanted to be Michael, or be anything like him; never imitated him in a mirror or “performed” him for family entertainment. But I’d closed my bedroom door, turned up the music and fallen in.

Excerpt from the Destiny notes:

“The Jacksons were the flowers of the Civil Rights movement, the Black Pride movement. Their exquisite, perfectly round afros and stylized street attire celebrated a proud, new aesthetic. Their stop-on-a-dime perfect choreography drew from the hottest moves of the day while simultaneously harkening back to black performing traditions gleaned from masters like Jackie Wilson, Sammy Davis Jr., James Brown and the artists at the Jacksons’ first musical home, Motown. In their own relentlessly honed and perfected artistry, they paid homage to those who had come before them, while updating the blueprint for future generations. They were the carriers and embodiment of so many hopes, fantasies and dreams — cultural and political ambassadors just by virtue of their being: smart, talented, visionary, hard-working young black Americans, coming into their own after a decade of bloody struggle and sacrifice. The Jacksons seemed to be pointing not only black and white America but the world at large toward new possibilities of expression and being.”

Michael was blackness and maleness, soul music and pop culture, all forged pre-hip-hop, pre-Reagan, pre-crack, pre the implosion of short-lived civil rights–era idealism and hope. That’s an important point to help understand the thick strands of optimism, possibility, aesthetic and political vision that ran through his work. And that makes the darkness and paranoia that marbled so much of his later music all the more heartbreaking, especially as it roughly paralleled the shifting tenor of the times. He never lost his humanitarian streak or his belief in the overall goodness of humanity, but the evolution of his own relationship to the world and his feelings about how he was treated darkened noticeably.

The beauty and power of Michael Jackson, particularly in the first 30 or so years of his life, was that he was black. It’s important to stress and explain that because in this “post-race/post-black” moment, it’s become obvious that a lot of Negroes rushing to free themselves from the so-called shackles of blackness, aided by “colorblind” and “progressive” non-Negroes, don’t even know what blackness is: Working like a dog while mired in poverty in Gary, Indiana — endless rehearsals, mastering backbreaking craftsmanship, sweltering under the heat of a father’s dream deferred — all while aiming for a big time mapped out by sweat, hope and faith; that’s black. Not letting your lack of material comforts impede your forward motion; that’s black. Being rooted in the working-class/struggling-class vortex of innovation, perseverance and resilience that has birthed all the Negro musical r/evolutions in this country; that’s black. Building effortlessly on the past and setting a whole new bar for the future; blacker than black. Exercising the prerogative of organic genius by laying claim to shit that already exists and just making it your own; B-l-a-c-k. Mapping the template and setting the pace that will govern the globe; b-b-b-b-black. Coming of age amid proud shouts of “Black is beautiful” and effortlessly embodying the adage, but somehow getting infected with the centuries-old disease of white supremacy and internalized racism that will have you repeatedly take a knife to your natural-born beauty . that’s so very black. Being universal in your struggles and triumphs just by being you: black.

Many of the tributes being written, especially by Negro males, think they’re bestowing the ultimate praise on him by positioning him alongside conventional, traditional soul men or icons of Negro male cool. Make that unquestionable hetero Negro male cool. But the thing about Michael was that he resonated so powerfully precisely because he upended and shimmered beyond gender convention. It seems especially noteworthy that he cemented his solo superstar status during the gender-bending/gender-fuck era of the early ’80s, alongside Boy George, Annie Lennox, Prince, a funkily reinvigorated Grace Jones — though he was a seasoned old pro in comparison to all of them. (It was his second start at a solo career.) Because his gender tweak was subtle relative to those artists, it doesn’t really get commented upon. But Michael evolved from childhood mimicry of the masculinity of soul titans to something more complex and more layered. And it eventually housed a much more problematic sexuality. It’s difficult to know the ways in which his abusive childhood, the adult responsibilities carried on his childhood shoulders, and the paradoxically sheltered and wide-open pop-star lifestyle he had at an early age all contoured his sexuality, and to then fully know what inclinations and fetishes might have been innate and which were externally shaped.

Curiously absent from the praise and aesthetic roll-call being put forth for Michael is one name: Diana Ross. It’s a glaring and telling omission that has much to do with the low critical regard in which Ross is held, and the reluctance of critics to own up to not just the deep influence that diva Ross had on boy wonder Jackson, but on the ways in which her persona and performing style play out in him.

Michael Jackson was layered metaphor and walking commentary/cautionary tale, so the bifurcated coverage of his death leaves both sides with an incomplete picture. The sensationalists ignore the power and beauty of his work while wallowing in the sordid. Michael tapped into something transcendent that reached from Gary, Indiana, to Selma, Alabama, to Moscow to Paris to Hong Kong. His soulful, heartfelt music and poetic athleticism were otherworldly, resonating with all kinds of people. They soothed and inspired.

At the same time, he was a man who had an obsession with childhood and his idealized notion of its trappings of innocence and playfulness, extending all the way to his hosting sleepovers with young boys that were, at a minimum, creepy as hell. He was damaged, thwarted in crucial ways. It seems to me that the same impulses that manifested in his divine art also manifested as questionable (to put it mildly) predilections for companionship. It should all be put on the table at once. That’s the only way to get a truly complete picture of the man, to glean something of both the sublime and the darker elements of his life and work, and to make sense of the fact that a wealthy, immeasurably influential, unfathomably talented global icon was seemingly so unhappy, so pained, and so unable to combat it.

Copycat said:

... that woman!
[Edited 7/4/09 8:32am]

Representing Michael Jackson
The King of Pop's longtime attorney Bob Sanger would like to correct a few misconceptions
By Randall Roberts


06/03/09
Link

In the hours following Michael Jackson’s death last week, we spoke to the late King of Pop’s longtime attorney Bob Sanger.

Sanger represented Jackson for 16 years, and sat at the table with the star throughout the high-profile 2005 People vs. Michael Jackson case, in which the family of Gavin Arviso accused Jackson of child sexual abuse.

What have you been thinking about since you heard the news?

Bob Sanger: First of all, he was a great musician and performer, and his impact on music goes on today. I saw something on television today, I forgot who it was, but I looked at it, a current star doing a music video, and thought, “That’s Michael Jackson.”

When you represent him, you do get very close to a person, and I sat next to him for four months in the criminal case. It took a full four months, and he was there every day. But what I did learn in the years that I represented him — particularly in that last case — is that he is a very kind person. Truly from his heart. And his whole family is like that. His mother, Katherine, and his sisters LaToya and Janet — they have their own personalities onstage and everything, but they are the kindest, sweetest people you’ll ever want to meet. And his brothers are very nice; they offer to do what they can for you.

And Michael was the same way. He believed that one of the things he could do in life in addition to entertainment was that he could really help children. And I know that’s going to immediately get some kind of sarcastic response, but it’s absolutely true.

I was there at his ranch when he wasn’t even there, on at least two occasions when he had a giant group of kids come up. One, a bunch of kids who were from hospitals down in L.A. — children’s wards — came up with their families, and another time it was disadvantaged kids with their families. He would bring people up, and it was like they were at Disneyland. His staff was there, and at one point he had a hundred-something people on staff. They would be offering everybody candy, and something to drink, and to play in the game room, and to go to the movie theater. And it was just remarkable to see these kids and their eyes so wide and being treated this way.

Did the attorney in you ever become concerned with that? Here are hundreds of strangers coming into this multimillionaire’s home, and any one of them could have ulterior motives.

Well, you know what? Yeah, the attorney in me, I look at what clients do and I always wonder. But, I’ve got to tell you: Until we saw what this last family tried to do to him, which was so completely bizarre and off the wall, unfounded, manipulative — the D.A. was so committed to get back at Michael Jackson that they just looked with blinders at these people, and ignored the fact that they had scammed other people, and so on. When you saw that family and looked at that, you had to say, “Oh, my God, how vulnerable.” But for a family like this to be able to get the attention of a district attorney and law enforcement was just remarkable. And it just shows you how vulnerable people can be.

And [another] thing was that Michael was extremely well-read. In trial, the judge was doing jury selection, and it was time for break. He said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I want you to know that jury service is very, very important.” He’s trying to convince people not to have stupid excuses to get out of jury service. All judges do this. He says, “The jury system is a very time-honored system. It’s been around for 200 years. We’re going to take a break and come back in 15 minutes.”

We stand up and the judge leaves, and Michael turns to me and says, “Bob, the jury system is much older than 200 years, isn’t it?” I said, “Well, yeah, it goes back to the Greeks.” He says, “Oh, yeah, Socrates had a jury trial, didn’t he?” I said, “Yeah, well, you know how it turned out for him.” Michael says, “Yeah, he had to drink the hemlock.” That’s just one little tidbit. We talked about psychology, Freud and Jung, Hawthorne, sociology, black history and sociology dealing with race issues. But he was very well-read in the classics of psychology and history and literature.

He had over 10,000 books at his house. I hate to keep referring to the case, because the case should not define him, but the D.A. went through his entire library and found, for instance, a German art book from 1930-something. And it turned out that the guy who was the artist behind the book had been prosecuted by the Nazis. Nobody knew that, but then the cops get up there and say, “We found this book with pictures of nude people in it.” But it was art, with a lot of text. And they found some other things, a briefcase that didn’t belong to him that had some Playboys in it or something. But they went through the guy’s entire house, 10,000 books. And it caused us to do the same thing, and look at it.

And there were places that he liked to sit, and you could see the books with his bookmarks in it, with notes and everything in it, where he liked to sit and read. And I can tell you from talking to him that — especially for someone who was self-taught, as it were, and had his own reading list — he was very well-read. And I don’t want to say that I’m well-read, but I’ve certainly read a lot, let’s put it that way, and I enjoy philosophy and history and everything myself, and it was very nice to talk to him, because he was very intellectual, and he liked to talk about those things. But he didn’t flaunt it, and it was very seldom that he would initiate the conversation like that, but if you got into a conversation like that with him, he was there.

When was the last time you saw him, or spoke to him?

The last time I talked to him was right after the trial, and then he moved out of the country. I had not seen him in person — I talked to him on the phone — since then. Of course, I talked to people around him, because we still took care of matters for him. I don’t want to oversell my significance in his world, but I want to convey this side of him that people didn’t see. Every time I hear Jay Leno or somebody take a cheap shot — and Jay Leno I think is a very funny man — I think, that really isn’t fair, because that’s not who he is. And few people had an opportunity to really experience the kindness of him and his family. And few people really had the opportunity to have these intellectual discussions about great thinkers and writers. Freud and Jung — go down the street and try and find five people who can talk about Freud and Jung.



What’s the status of Neverland Ranch?

I always hesitate to comment on this because I don’t know exactly. It was taken over by an investor. I don’t know that it was sold outright. But Michael — after having it raided three times by the cops to no avail for them, it shook him. He was living there up until the trial, and continued to live there during the trial. But just before the trial, they got a search warrant and went back out, allegedly because they wanted to find as-built plans for the house. And they could have asked us and we would have given them to them. They could have made a motion in court. They could have gone down to the archives and got them. But it was just an excuse to go out and raid it one more time. They roused him early in the morning, and his kids were there, and after that he said, “I don’t think I can live here anymore.” And it was a shame. He had his tree. He would go up in this tree, and he wrote some of his songs there. It’s kind of like a historic place, but for him it was a very personal place.

Ne yo performed Off the Wall at the Essence Music Festival. I wonder how may other artists recognized Michael? That seems like a great venue to do so and gives folks a bit of time to prepare...

http://www.youtube.com/wa...ZpwgW-o28k

Oh and regarding the Staples Center event, why aren't the Jackson paying for this memorial? The city should not be paying for this.
[Edited 7/4/09 8:46am]
[Edited 7/4/09 8:50am]

mcw00 said:

I saw clips of quite a few other musicians at the festival playing a song or two of Mike's.

and as for the memorial, in the press conf. i'm pretty sure the lady said the city or state, whichever, has fonds to cover special events but they often receive donations afterwards that helps balance things out. The Jackson family has arranged for the event to be covered by News programs for free, so whether there's usually a fee for such an undertaking I'm not sure but if there is they're paying for that part of it.
[Edited 7/4/09 9:07am]

BoOTyLiCioUs said:

I can't bare the line "Michael Jackson is dead". It hit me like thunder when I read it for the very first time. I still don't wanna read it.

The only positive aspect of his dead is, that I believe his vault will be more open in the future. Something is bound to leak.
Not to mention the official releases. Just think of the OTW rerealese - maybe unherad songs from that era as bonus tracks?

According to fans on Max Jax- Michael's ghost was seen spotted walking across the hall in the back at 8:20 seconds of this video

That is weird



[Edited 7/4/09 9:33am]
[Edited 7/4/09 9:33am]

Paul Mc.Cartney has finally spoke about Michael, on his website today...

http://www.paulmccartney.com/news.php



You know... It's well-documented that their friendship dissolved in later years, but you'd never know by reading Mc.Cartney's words. It makes Quincy Jones' comments seem all the more bitter when another ex-friend like Mc.Cartney can put all the disputes to one side and remember the good.

Arnotts said:

i don't think alot of the jackson grandkids "look" like jacksons. have you seen jermey and jordan. jermajesty and jafar don't look like jermaine you act like all the grandkids are jackson clones when their not. and some of them are pretty light considering none of them have white mothers( mean pale and blond) some of them have tan latin looking mothers and they are still pretty light. and its all a matter of opinion. i think prince and blanket do have some of mj's feature. they may not be clones but they are not suppose to be. and my thing with princes lips is that they have gotten bigger over the years which indicates he may start to look more ethnic the older he gets. besides mj's lips weren't that big anyway so of course they are not huge

exactly....and that was a pretty huge dispute to put aside considering the level of back-stabbing on the part of Michael.

GirlBrother said:

suga10 said:

wtf i saw it too but isnt this some kind of manipulation by computer?

i believe in spirrits but hey this is kinda bizar

suga10 said:

at first i was gonna say it was someone walking behind them because there were people all over that place during this BUT they turned right around after they look down the hall and it's that's small bathroom plus you'd be able to see their shadows aswell. I'm a little confused about the lay out of the area they're in because I don't know where they came into from and the camera's done spun around but then as they go on you see people in a doorway so my money's on one of them being the shadow.

Jermaine kept saying how he could feel Michael's spirit at Neverland.

utopia7 said:

suga10 said:

Man that was one of the weirdest things, I´ve ever seen. It gave me a very strong physical reaction. I don´t believe in ghost so if this is a computer trick than it is a VERY nasty one, but it is Mike´s siluette.

suga10 said:

and for sure it COULD be. I don't mean to burst anyone's bubble, cuz i've had some 'supernatural' things happen to me and my family after people we knew passed on but we can't lose rationality. when they were in the kitchen the cook was preparing ALOT of food. My guess is Neverland has very rarely ever been completely empty for decades. I'll watch it again (i've watched it a few times already).

it would be interesting for the people at CNN to get wind of this and tell us what they think since they were actually there and would know more about who and what was going on around them at the time.
[Edited 7/4/09 10:06am]
[Edited 7/4/09 10:12am]

Close up

suga10 said:

I think it's MJ you'll!!!
He's trying to tell us something

mcw00 said:

The Pet Shop Boys played Michael's recording of You Are Not Alone.

The biggest homage is made by Madonna, she integrated Jackson into her whole tour. Of course, this will NOT get ANY media attention

GirlBrother said:

But that's McCartney. He tends to "forget" things whenever they don't fit into the picture. He often rearranges history as well.
I don't belive every word.

midiscover said:

head down. like on Billie Jean or he's really sad. Probably he's pissed at our behaviour.

this is a cool montage



from black celebrity kids

bboy87 said:

Can u post this larger and which magazine is this from?