DesireeNevermind said:

In a way I understand why, in another way I don't. It's a mystery... then again so was Michael Jackson. Time will indeed tell tho...

I can't imagine how Tuesday is not going to be a disaster. The whole lottery system, while less tacky than the original $25 dollar a seat idea, is just asking for trouble. First you have the death of an Icon, you couple that with a lottery system that will leave 1.6 million people disappointed, and you throw the whole affair in one of the most densely populated metropolitan areas on the globe.

What the fuck...

Michael loved to cause a stir but I don't think he will feel particular honored by the chaos that is almost unavoidable Tuesday.

To those of you going with tickets and without, please be safe.

Peace.

utopia7 said:

Nah, it's a muddied affair. The Jacksons probably are better off not using AEG for any services. As for them saying "Jacko", well I can only say shame.

CalhounSq said:

I agree with you !

kalelvisj said:

I keep thinking it's going to be worse than the Biggie fiasco after his casket was driven around Brooklyn. God forbid they go to Gary and the same thing happens. Least Augusta (and New York) didn't act that way when James' casket was carried.
[Edited 7/4/09 23:46pm]

CalhounSq said:

I definitely agree. There comes a point where too much is too much.

Like Other Creative Geniuses Before Him, Michael Turned Isolation Into An Art
June 27
*Repost


Of all the myths enshrouding Michael Jackson's too-brief life, none was more potent than his image as the isolated artist, the tormented creative soul cut off from ordinary mortals.

It's an archetype with a strongly American pedigree, as grizzled and hoary as Citizen Kane clutching his snow globe while he sits alone in Xanadu, brooding on happier days.

Thoreau took to his cabin in the woods. Howard Hughes hid out buck-naked in germ-free hotels. Elvis holed up in Graceland under the sway of drugs and a byzantine retinue of friends and false comforters. J.D. Salinger squats behind his New England stockade, emerging every few years to threaten some or other writer with a lawsuit.


And let's not forget Gatsby, vanishing into the mob scene at his own lavish parties, or Norma Desmond, sustained by her delusional grandeur as she rots away in her Sunset Boulevard mansion with her stuffed pet chimp. (What is it about celebrity seclusion and simian fellowship?)

But few have inhabited the role of the reclusive eccentric more fully than Jackson, who at the time of his death, although decades past his prime, was still big -- at least to himself and the millions of us who came of age grooving and lip-syncing to his songs. It's pop music that got small.

Close friends described Jackson as the loneliest person they ever knew, entombed in his own celebrity, prematurely embalmed in his own legend. The King of Pop, who favored faux-military outfits, complete with braids and epaulets, lived out his adulthood as the sovereign ruler of his own private realm, Neverland, where normal codes of behavior didn't apply and the laws and taboos of the outside world didn't necessarily obtain.

The most painfully self-conscious of superstars, Jackson skillfully cultivated his own aura of apartness. In his later years during public appearances he was surrounded by bodyguards, his face sometimes obscured by a surgical mask or shaded under an umbrella, like a figure in a Magritte painting, as if he might wilt in the mega-watt glare of the omnipresent paparazzi.

"In a crowd, I'm afraid," he said. "Onstage, I feel safe."

His willful isolation turned him into an obscure object of desire, a human tchotchke, apparently so delicate that it might break if mishandled. Contemporary sculptor Jeff Koons recognized the fact in his 1988 work "Michael Jackson and Bubbles," in which he rendered the singer and his primate playmate in ceramic, as if they were a Dresden shepherd and shepherdess. "Look," Jackson's persona told his adoring masses, "but don't touch."

A famous person's impulse to withdraw may reflect either arrogance or humility. It may be a misanthropic turning of one's back or a desperate attempt to shield one's vulnerability, as seemed to happen with Judy Garland before her death at age 47.

Whatever was Jackson's motive, his decision echoed in his songs. Earlier in his career, the theme from "Ben" (a movie about a boy whose closest friend is a rat) was superficially sweet but left a cloying, queasy aftertaste. At the height of Jackson's fame and influence, "Thriller" (the John Landis video more than the song) playfully hinted at a frightening alter ego lurking inside the handsome, charismatic performer.

A couple of years later, with "Bad," Jackson's push-pull relationship toward his growing celebrity versus his desire for privacy made him ditch the tuxedo-clad dreamboat image he affected in "Off the Wall" and the seductive cover shot of "Thriller." For "Bad" he wore a black biker jacket and something closer to a scowl than a smile while warning others to keep their distance in the late '80s hit tune "Leave Me Alone."

It was quite a change from the adorable little boy with an Afro and funky clothes pleading "I Want You Back," or "Human Nature's" lovely, gauzy yearning for contact with a warm female presence and a giant city beyond the bedroom walls.

Jackson himself never made any secret of why he felt the need to retreat into a labyrinth of solitude. His Rosebud, of course, was exactly the same as Charles Foster Kane's. It was the childhood that had been stolen from him. "I never had the chance to do the fun things kids do," Jackson once said. "There was no Christmas, no holiday celebrating. So now you try to compensate for some of that loss."

By far the most troubling aspect of Jackson's withdrawal was the issue of whether he ever abused any of the children he invited to visit his fantasy world. Fans and cultural historians will be debating for years to come whether Jackson's self-exile was more a case of pathos or pathology, a misunderstood man's involuntary retreat into his own psyche, or a predator's escape into a safe house.

For a great artist, which Jackson unquestionably was, cultivating a rich creative life doesn't have to mean dropping out of the human race. Thoreau, in actuality, was no recluse. He received visitors regularly at Walden and remained vitally engaged with the community around him and with the issues of the day. He maintained his hermetic equilibrium by keeping the emotional and physical clutter around him to a minimum.

Jackson's solitude was more like Kane's, surrounded by gilded objects and haunted by the specter of irrelevance.

One of Jackson's great achievements was to prove that a black man could attain the accouterments of the American dream in extremis -- money, mansions, global adulation -- armed with little more than his own prodigious talent. His greatest personal tragedy was to discover how poorly those trophies compensate for whatever else may be missing in a human life.

Timmy84 said:

Reason why it was civil in New york because we were FREEZING James sister came out for a bit went all the way to the back of the line to warn the fans due to time having to drive James (not fly) back to SC they might not be able to view him.

Timmy84 said:

Ultimately, I don't feel it honors Michael or his fans to drag it all out like this. I know I am probably getting a bit repetitious but it feels as if the family and friends didn't have enough faith in Michael's legacy to make his passing memorable. Anyway, it is what it is, and the fans will do what they do, and the press will milk it for all that it is worth.

And so it goes.

trueiopian said:

layers of wrong

kalelvisj said:

Yeah it's really a dishonor to his legacy.

Ottensen said:

"layers"!!

Timmy84 said:

I can only speculate that he knew he was going to die so he thought about the two most inportant women in his life with no respect for their ages.

CalhounSq said:

I can understand your sentiment. I'm not the type of MJ fan that runs to be where he is when problems occur. I only ran to the credible news programs, lol. But on the other hand, sometimes when people are suddenly grieving over a loved person, they aren't able to think of others during that moment. I don't think fans going to the hospital itself was the problem. The problem in this case was the amount of people that showed up. If there had only been about 30 people outside, would U still feel that way?

matthewgrant said:

Yahoo7.com.au are going to stream the memorial here in australia online - and I will assume certain free to air and pay tv stations will also. CNN will most definitely.

Swa

I jsut wish Al Sharpton would shut the fuck up.

DesireeNevermind said:

What is he saying now?

DesireeNevermind said:

It's also possible that's what his thought process was, who knows? The will does make it appear he couldn't trust NO ONE in his family besides Katherine.

Timmy84 said:

Janet is cool, but I am happy he did not designate that the children be with her. I do not want them anywhere near So So Def.

july said:

I'm still really shoock up by this.

Yes it's the 4th of July.

I had a few Brews today. Been thinkin about Michael for days. Anyway. It still hurts.

i'm really having a hard time dealing with this. I miss you michael! I just wish he was still here.

kalelvisj said:

He's just every friggin everywhere. All up at the Apollo Tribute and still getin air time on various media outlets.

WaterInYourBath said:

But seriously how fucked up your life becomes when you only trust just a mother and a close friend from the Motown days to rear over your children. I'm sure it was probably another issue altogether with Janet... I don't know, we just don't know how Janet and JD's personal life is. From all accounts I've heard JD being a good father to his daughter but who knows?

DesireeNevermind said:

I'm tired of looking at that ancient perm of his. It look like a hairball tattooed on his head.

july said:

Thank you for posting the video for "She's out of my life." God how it took me back. That was the Michael I grew up with; pure talent, no questions, no manipulation of the tabloids to come back and bite him in the ass. Just a pure, from the heart soul man.

Damn.
[Edited 7/5/09 0:42am]

Thanks

Timmy84 said:

EITHER THAT OR HE BORROWED SOME HOMELESS MAN'S WEAVE.