jamgirl said:

That and the "Thriller" drawing.

Timmy84 said:

^^ Love it!

I loved how he had one hand on the girl's arm, Paul's hand on the other arm and the girl is basically straining to get off both of them who are looking quite smug like "if this fool don't get his hands off...".

And I also loved the drawing of the girl in the "Thriller" drawing and how scared she gets and MJ's basically looking at her like "are you alright?"

heee hee get em mikey boo

Countthedays said:

When exactly did Janet look pregnant during her time with Rene? I can't recall anytime she did.

I don't think Janet ever cared about having kids. She wants to be carefree of those responsibilities and have fun.

Same with LaToya.

Only Rebbie out of the sisters is the one who had the desire to raise children
[Edited 7/24/09 15:39pm]

Doctor: "Michael Begged For Drug"
July 24

Michael Jackson begged his doctor for the drug Propofol even though he knew it could kill him.


Dr. Dwayne James claims he warned the 'Thriller' singer about the dangers of the substance just months before he died, but he continued to ask for it to help him sleep.

James said: "Michael asked, 'Can you get it for me? I need it so bad, the stuff knocks me out, it's great.'

"He didn't seem to care that I was telling him it was dangerous. He said, 'But I've had it before, I slept so well, like a baby.'

"I immediately told him that Propofol was dangerous and he should never take it at home, it could kill him. He didn't seem to care that I was telling him it was dangerous."

The singer died of a suspected cardiac arrest last month aged 50 after allegedly ingesting a cocktail of prescription drugs including dangerous painkiller Demerol and anaesthetic Propofol - also called Diprivan.

James refused the 'King of Pop' when he phoned him to ask for Propofol - an intravenously administered drug, reserved for hospital use with trained medical professionals.

James added to Britain's Daily Mirror newspaper: "Michael said he desperately wanted to get hold of the drug.

"There was no convincing him. What struck me was that he didn't seem to have any fear about taking Propofol, despite everything I was saying."

The doctor sent a nurse, Cherilyn Lee, to care for the singer.

Lee claims Jackson was still begging her to help him acquire Propofol just days before his death on June 25.

She said: "Jackson said, 'Find me an anaesthesiologist. I don't care how much money they want. Find me an anaesthesiologist to be with me here overnight and give me this IV.'

"I said, 'This is not a safe medicine, please don't take it. I would not give it to anyone.' "

The main focus of the police investigation into Jackson's death is his use of Propofol and Demerol and who was administering it.

His personal doctors, Conrad Murray - who was with the singer when he died and has been revealed to be the subject of a manslaughter investigation - and Arnold Klein have both been spoken to by Los Angeles police and both have had their offices raided to seize medical records this week.

Michael Jackson’s Death Feeds The Mob

July 24, 2009

We all ‘want a piece’ of celebrities such as Michael Jackson, and when they die we get our chance — just like the Ancient Greeks and their sacrificial animals.

When I heard that 18,000 people were cramming into the Staples Centre in Los Angeles to bid farewell to Michael Jackson, I thought, “mneh”.

In 1827 Beethoven had 20,000 people following his hearse through Vienna. Admittedly Jackson beat Beethoven on the number of people waiting outside, and there are no accounts of elephants padding around the church during Beethoven’s funeral service, as there have been with Jackson, but then there was no Google News in 1827.

Still, there are stories of people snipping off bits of Beethoven’s hair, even before his death; and, in later years, following the custom for geniuses (Haydn, Einstein), Beethoven’s body was exhumed for further examination. In line with this, the whereabouts of Jackson’s brain remains a mystery.

To paraphrase Britney Spears: we “all want a piece of” celebrities; and when they are dead we have a better chance of getting it. President Obama was quick to point out that Jackson was even larger in death than in life.

(In fact, the President wasn’t as quick as some would have liked: he faced complaints that he should have meditated on the death sooner and longer.) When the famous are alive they offer themselves to us, and we can cherish them for what they deliver; but when they are dead they are ours. Even when they are dying, in cases such as Jade Goody and Pope John Paul II, we can follow the decline hour by hour. Even so, the death itself remains a special moment.

Then we can find out what prescription drugs Jackson or Heath Ledger was on; who benefited from Michael Hutchence’s will; how small Napoleon’s penis really was.

Often, in our society, people seem to be squeamish about this fascination with famous death, as though there is something undignified about it: speakers queue up on the Radio 4 Thought for the Day slot to lament the noxious influence of celebrity culture on our children; licence payers complain that the BBC is spending too much time on the Jackson funeral; journalists manage to write whole columns about how the death is being covered. (Surely it’s time for a column about how many columns there are about Jackson’s death.) But behind all this awkwardness, and the rhetorical trickery by which commentators find ways of talking about Jackson’s death while maintaining the appearance of not wanting to, there lies a more ancient impulse that is impossible to shift.

To find it, we can look to Ancient Greek civilisation and its sacrificial rituals. In those days, when an animal was to be sacrificed, water was sprinkled on its head. This made the head move — which was taken as the animal’s assent to what was to happen. Next came a high-pitched scream from the women who were present; and after the slaying came a divvying up of the flesh. This wasn’t like a barbecue, where everybody got a rib; the carcass was cut up into equal portions, regardless of whether it was fat or lean, shoulder or rump. Who got which bit was decided by taking lots (as were the tickets to the Jackson memorial).




All this sounds like a metaphor. Surely we don’t really cut up celebrities as though they are animals? Maybe not, but aspects of the ritual crop up in our own dealings with people. The detail of Beethoven’s hair is a significant one. A priest would snip off some tuft of the beast. Walter Burkert, the great authority on ancient sacrifice, writes of this moment: “Blood has not yet been spilt and no pain whatsoever has been inflicted, but the inviolability of the sacrificial animal has been abolished irreversibly.” As with Beethoven’s hair, or, for that matter, Spears’s (which, after it was sheared off, briefly appeared on eBay), or victims at the scaffold or the guillotine, this is the moment when we can say, “They’re ours”.

And if the connection seems forced, then it is a connection that the Greeks made themselves, especially in their tragedies. In Aeschylus’ play Agamemnon, the chorus compares the doomed Cassandra to an ox going to sacrifice. Euripides explores the idea even more clearly. His play Iphigenia at Aulis is a version of what happened when Agamemnon was deciding to sacrifice his daughter so that the gods would send the winds that would take the invading Greek fleet to Troy. At first Iphigenia is incensed, but when she has lived with the idea she starts to accept it. She doesn’t want her individual life to obstruct the collective glory of the Greek army, and the chorus assures her that she will be glorious too: “And for this, immortal fame, / Virgin, shall attend your name.”

This is a moment that explains how fame works. Somebody remarkable, or royal, or beautiful, or gifted, is celebrated by those around him or her. Then those devotees dispatch the famous person somehow. We have a range of ways to get rid of celebrities. Killing them is perhaps the most extreme, but it happens: think of Socrates, or Caesar.

The Ancient Greeks would ostracise their great men — a process by which they would exile a dignitary for ten years. When the Athenians banished the Olympic victor Megacles, the poet Pindar wrote: “I grieve that fine deeds are repaid with envy.”

Allowing the famous to live in selfdestructive luxury is another method. In his enormous study of ritual and sacrifice, The Golden Bough, which he published in 1890, Sir James Frazer managed to compile many examples of human beings going to the altar having enjoyed a set period of feasting and pleasure, from Aztec Mexico to Ancient Rome.

Ever since, we have been able to follow ruinous hedonism in stars such as Amy Winehouse or Lord Byron. Another way to get rid of them is to forget all about them: the beauty, or the talent, or the athletic fitness that made someone glorious will inevitably fade as death approaches, and in our affections we will replace one luminary with another.

The observation that “we build them up to knock them down” has become a truism, and something we say in self-reproach, but it’s hard to see how else fame could operate. Many of the sacrifices and slaughters that Frazer collects take the form of “killing the king” — of removing or destroying someone a tribe has previously held in awe.

Communities would consider these necessary acts in order to rejuvenate the leadership that drew them together. Frazer provides an account of the rain-maker who is central to the Dinka tribe that lived in the south of Sudan, and tells us that this figure is never allowed to die “a natural death of sickness or old age”; if so, “the tribe would suffer disease and famine”. So, when he feels his power fading, he allows his people to bury him alive. At its purest, the fame ritual works when the famous know that their time has come and they yield their place to the next magical personality.

Does Jackson fit into this pattern? Did we kill the King of Pop? Well, it’s difficult to fit him into any pattern, and if people felt that they had taken any part in the collective, ritualised offering-up of Michael Jackson, they’d probably want to wash their hands of it. Nor can we see him giving up like the Dinka rain-maker; he was all set to make an audacious comeback, after all. And yet there was something desperate about the way in which he clung to youth — both his own and other people’s — and sought to preserve it in himself; and about his retreat into Neverland, the ranch with the otherworldly name that invokes the boy who would never grow up. It was as if he was staving off that moment when his own youth would pass and he would no longer be any use to the tribe. And that’s the part that fits a pattern. One of the most enduring images of Jackson will remain that of the pale figure with the misshapen eyes and the skin that barely covered his nose. It creepily conjures up Frazer’s discussion of Aztec sacrifice: “In ancient Mexico the human victims who personated gods were often flayed and their bloody skins worn by men who appear to have represented the dead deities come to life again.”


http://entertainment.time...725304.ece

Copycat said:

This sounds like suicide to me
because he didn't give a damn
about the warnings AT ALL!
What a selfish motherfunka
leaving those poor kids alone
with out a daddy!
The picture is coming
through REAL CLEAR.

Countthedays said:

I thought that the LAPD already ruled out suicide? I remember hearing that report.

Countthedays said:

All these doctors are coming out of the woodwork saying Michael begged them for Propofol just to get their two seconds of frame. Its hard to believe who's telling the truth when they're speaking in the media.

I've never heard of this Dr.Dwanye James before
[Edited 7/24/09 16:25pm]

suga10 said:

Well that ain't no better than people saying he was murdered either.

StillDirrty said:

The LAPD said either accidental death or negligent homicide. I love how secondary news stations are going on saying "murder". As if that's better.

suga10 said:

People should be more aware about the stuff they are reading, I don't know what to believe, they all should shut the fuck up, attention whores.

Yup its like a huge circus.
[Edited 7/24/09 16:48pm]

seeingvoices12 said:

Sheryl Crow's Blog Entry About Michael Jackson
God Bless Michael

Hi everyone.

I've been thinking about my time with Michael Jackson a lot lately.

It is hard for me to put into words how important that time was. How life-changing. How very defining a time it was for me and what a turning point it would become.

I will never be able to look back on the career I have had and not be grateful to Michael Jackson for giving me my first shot.

From the BAD Tour came my most important relationship in my career and certainly the best friend I could ever have. Scooter, my manager for nearly 2 decades, worked as the liaison between Michael and the sponsor, Pepsi.

He was the one person who expressed his belief in my talent and invested in me from that time forward.

But, the most major impact working with Michael, or Mike, as we all called him, was Michael himself. I cannot begin to express the magnitude of the talent embodied in this individual.

When Mike would come into the room, the molecules would change. He was seemingly not of this world and in one of the few conversations I had with him, I believe he felt he was not of this world. Or, if he was of this world, he could not quite figure out how to fit into it without having the impact that he had.

My fondest memories are not of the faux passion we shared during the duet, "I just Can't Stop Loving You" or the flirting during "The Way You Make Me Feel," but the moments I stole watching him perform "Human Nature" from offstage, doubling him on the high notes. His delivery of that song, his gravity-defying moves, were beyond regular.

His talent was truly art. And, surreal, in the truest sense of the word. I can call up the amazement as if it was yesterday.

Other moments, like singing harmonies of "Rock With You," "You Are My Lovely One," "Startin' Something," almost gave him the appearance of being normal. But, he was anything but normal. And, while I got to stand close enough to get a glimpse into what was not so normal about this singing/dancing/iconic sensation, nothing any of us ever think we knew about this person should ever overshadow what made him special and what drew us all in from the moment he came on the scene as a small boy.

I will not be at the memorial today for a number of reasons. I am in the middle of doing some tour dates that have me in the Midwest but more than that, the spectacle of it all has nothing to do with the gratitude that I feel this magnificently, unique talent graced this world for a moment in time. The hoopla cannot begin to compete with the memories I got to experience on an intimate level.

Although Mike might love what is going on today in his honor, I, like so many other people who loved him, will continue to quietly rejoice in the knowingness that his soul is at peace.

God Bless Michael.




http://www.sherylcrow.com...?nid=22084

Copycat said:

And long ago in 2004 she was talking about how he was all child-like and weird. I hate people who jump onto the bandwagon whenever its convenient, and Sheryl is an example.

http://popdirt.com/sheryl...ess/25914/

[Edited 7/24/09 18:16pm]
[Edited 7/24/09 18:16pm]
[Edited 7/24/09 18:18pm]

LOL, Sheryl really said I'm fascinating? I don't know much about her except for the dating Lance Armstrong but that I didn't take her to be so conceited. Then again she was never on my radar.

StillDirrty said:

I think she was being sarcastic - something that doesn't come across so well in print, lol.

Swa

StillDirrty said:

I think that whole quote is tongue in cheek n meant to be taken so.

Swa said:

True, lol. She did tell CNN he had already started to isolate himself when she got there so maybe that's why he seemed off to her.

Swa said:

Magazine articles & actual televised interviews do showcase differing looks.

.
[Edited 7/24/09 19:22pm]

TODAY WILL BE 1 MONTH SINCE MICHAEL'S PASSING I DEDICATE THIS TO HIS LIFE

Court filings: Jackson estate will be 'solvent'

By ANTHONY McCARTNEY, AP Entertainment Writer Anthony Mccartney, Ap Entertainment Writer – 45 mins ago

LOS ANGELES – The temporary administrators of Michael Jackson's estate have recovered $5.5 million and substantial amounts of personal property from an unnamed former financial adviser, and predict that the pop icon's estate will be solvent despite an estimated $400 million or more in debt, according to court documents released Friday.

Attorney John Branca and music executive John McClain are serving as temporary administrators as spelled out in the King of Pop's will. The men are finishing several deals that they expect will generate "tens of millions of dollars of revenues."

They expect to submit those deals for court approval within the next week, the filings state.

The revelations were included in two motions requesting allowances for Jackson's three children and his mother, Katherine. The petitions state that Jackson was the primary source of income for his children and his mother, who receives some money from Social Security.

Katherine Jackson currently has custody of the three children, 12-year-old Michael Joseph Jr., known as Prince Michael; 11-year-old Paris Michael Katherine Jackson; and 7-year-old Prince Michael II, known as Blanket. The children and Jackson's mother are the only members of Jackson's family eligible to receive support from the estate, according to the court filings.

The monthly stipends that Branca and McClain hope to provide the Jacksons are redacted from the court records released Friday.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mitchell Beckloff refused to grant the allowances on Thursday, opting instead to consider them at a hearing on Aug. 3. The judge did allow the administrators to enter into deals that will bring reprints of Michael Jackson's 1988 autobiography, "Moonwalk" back to booksellers.

Branca and McClain "believe that the projected cash flow and the assets of the estate are more than sufficient to cover the payment of this of this amount as a family allowance for the benefit of the minor children."

Jackson paid for the expenses at the Jackson family home in the San Fernando Valley, the court filings state. The administrators plan to keep that arrangement, even though some of the expenses may go to other Jackson family members who also live at the home.

Jackson's children will receive Social Security benefits, which have been applied for but payments have not yet started. Their monthly stipends from the estate may be reduced, depending on much money they receive from Social Security, the filings state.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/a...son_estate

Michael Jackson Had Some Money After All!

Today 3:29 PM PDT by Natalie Finn
Michael Jackson Pool photographer/Getty Images

The King of Pop may have been $400 million in debt, but it turns out he had some money stashed under the proverbial mattress.

The executors of Michael Jackson's estate have recovered about $5.5 million in cash and "tangible personal property" from the singer's former advisers, according to court documents filed along with an allowance request for Katherine Jackson and Michael's three children.

Which is a lot more than what the accountants unearthed in their initial report on the state of Jackson's finances.

Attorney John Branca and music executive John McClain, appointed by Jackson as executors of his estate in a will dated from 2002, also stated in the filing that there's more dough—"tens of millions of dollars of revenue"—on the horizon, as well, from various deals that are in the works.

The dollar amounts they're requesting for Katherine and the kids were redacted from the public record.

Starting with assets like his stake in Sony/ATV Music Publishing's catalog and then allowing for all the Vegas shopping sprees, bad investments, zoo animals, etc., Jackson's net worth was recently valued at $236 million.

http://www.eonline.com/ub...r_all.html