Bear,Bear,Bear,

Chic35 said:

Michael loved this movie and said he identified with John Merrick.

Of note - he sampled various dialogue parts in Morphine.
And the movie was directed by David Lynch who Michael went on to work with on the Dangerous teaser.

Swa

bboy87 said:

I am getting jealous...

I am not even reading the articles concerning his death, cause just looking at the headlines what can you make out of it?

Some pix from the KOP board:

I didn´t know Mike could ski.






[Edited 7/25/09 1:21am]
[Edited 7/25/09 1:21am]

I think it's so interesting how he was fascinated with the elephant man. Prophetic too, he identified with him when he was, by most ladies accounts, still the prettiest thing on earth. He became ghastly, freakish, scary and the more that comes out about him, I don't think it was just the plastic surgerybut the vitiligo (which I thought was bullshit) and the drugs. How could he know he would also be hounded and hunted like the elephant man, leaving him running in his last years. Sad to me, so sad. And when you think about it, fame and peoples reactions, the hysteria is very much like the hatred a lynch mob will show, people chase, out of their right minds wanting a piece of you, poor mike, I think it all must have warped him, sympathetically, I think it would most of us.

mozfonky said:

That's what I keep thinking "How much can one person take?"

got this from Adrian Grant's facebook



pre order it here

http://www.amazon.co.uk/M...095&sr=8-1

Michael Jackson Remembered:
Randy Jackson on the Electrifying Performer


Michael's death was the shock heard around the world. He was the biggest entertainer in the world, on par with Elvis.

I saw him live a bunch of times over the years with the Jackson 5, then on his own. They were the best shows I've seen in my life by anyone.

Electrifying from downbeat one. He's grimacing, you can feel the pain, he's singing "She's outta my life," he's crying, you have the drama, you have the theater performance, and this incredible passion that shines through him with this unbelievable singing ability, and unbelievable dancing ability. All that singing and dancing, he was doing it for real. And all these people, all these pop stars today, they're not really singing onstage and they're kind of prancing around — there were no Pro Tools then, there were no singers prancing around with wireless mics, not singing. They're faking it, he was real. That's why it's a shock heard around the world: this is the real deal. This is no fake. We will never see anything like this again in our lifetime. The best performer in the world is Michael Jackson.

I met him backstage at a show, in my hometown of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He was on tour with the Jacksons, and he was unbelievable. I was in awe, because I knew I'd met one of the greatest of our lifetime. He was really cool. Kinda shy, he said, "Oh, hey, ya know, I'm glad you liked the show."

Every artist I've ever worked with has been somehow been touched and inspired by Michael Jackson. You can't be a performer today, or any day, that sets foot onstage and didn't watch some of those performances, some of those videos, some of that magnetism, some of that whatever about him, and put that into your own show. If they're saying they aren't, then they're lying.

http://www.rollingstone.c..._performer
[Edited 7/25/09 8:10am]

bboy87 said:

Looks like Jackie is high on this photo. His eyes are glassy.

utopia7 said:

(i'm a lil' late with this reply lol)

Video - The Making of the Michael Jackson Exhibition
*( MJ sued the auction house in March 2009 to halt the sale plans.)













Michael Jackson Public Exhibition Five-Catalog Box Set


This five volume fully-illustrated, color catalogue features 1,390 items of fine and decorative arts, furniture, memorabilia, arcade games, Disneyana, and garden statuary from Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch. The immense collection, assembled in this catalog, represents the personal property and contents of Michael Jackson’s private amusement park and family residence to be exhibited to the public at 9900 Wilshire Blvd adjacent to the Beverly Hilton Hotel from April 14th through April 25th, 2009.

Michael Jackson"s groundbreaking music, altruistic personality, cutting-edge fashion, revolutionary music videos, and extravagant international tours have earned him unmatched recognition and respect from millions of die-hard fans around the world. Iconic memorabilia from Jackson"s career is featured alongside his luxurious home furnishings and profuse amusements in this once-in-a-lifetime auction of Neverland Ranch.


About the Collection of Michael Jackson

An array of treasures from Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch ranging from Michael Jackson's iconic white-jeweled glove to the grandiose entry gates to Neverland Ranch are being presented in a tour de force public exhibition boasting 1390 Lots conducted by Julien's Auctions. Beginning with a highlights tour to major cities worldwide, Julien's Auctions will host an 8 day museum quality exhibition at 9900 Wilshire adjacent to The Beverly Hilton open to the public on Tuesday April 14th through Tuesday April 21st 10am to 6pm PST daily. The auction begins on Wednesday, April 22nd and runs through Saturday April 25th at 9:00 am and 2pm PST daily.

This monumental four-day public exhibition to be conducted by Julien's Auctions April 14th–25th, 2009 at 9900 Wilshire Boulevard adjacent to the legendary Beverly Hilton Hotel, offers an astounding array of Fine & Decorative Art items, paintings and life size bronze and marble sculptures to Memorabilia from the Life & Career of Michael Jackson. The exhibition also includes Amusements, Arcade Games & Disneyana, Entertainment Memorabilia and Garden Statuary and Furniture from the life and career of the King of Pop Michael Jackson and his Neverland Ranch.

Michael Jackson began his assent to the zenith of international pop culture in the 1970's as the stand-out member of the Jackson 5. His aspirations for success as a solo artist would be realized beyond anyone's wildest imagination in the following decade with the release of his albums Off The Wall, Thriller, and Bad. His altruistic personality and undeniable musical talent proved him capable of reinventing everything from music industry conventions to age-old racial barriers, becoming the first black entertainer to be embraced by the new crossover audience of the MTV generation. “The King of Pop” became one of the defining aspects of 1980's popular culture. His highly acclaimed, extravagant worldwide tours propelled him into the international spotlight, earning him recognition and respect from millions of fans around the world. Michael Jackson's innovations reach far beyond his groundbreaking musical aesthetic extending from short film to high fashion and influencing countless generations to come.

Neverland Ranch is named after Peter Pan's magical island whose youthful inhabitants never grow up and was created in 1988 when Michael Jackson purchased the 2,700-acre property in central California's wine country.

Neverland became an awe-inspiring wonderland containing larger-than-life superheroes, a custom made horse-drawn carriage and antique automobile replicas, top-tier 19th century paintings and sculpture, exquisite furniture and fine art, renowned international awards and Michael Jackson's iconic concert costumes.

Michael Jackson was an enthusiastic and avid collector of everything from exquisite antiques to prized entertainment and popular culture memorabilia. Julien's Auctions is proud to present all these items and much more for sale to the public in this once-in-a-lifetime auction of the property of Michael Jackson and the contents of his Neverland Ranch.

StillDirrty said:

I'm tellin ya, I was online, when my friend posted on Facebook that x17 online says he died....and TMZ was saying he was in critical condition.

mozfonky said:

My mom has vitiligo. It isn't BS.

It is something that really FUCKS with your mind.

[Edited 7/25/09 9:31am]

Timmy84 said:

I remember Larry King asking Miko Brando rather he was the father of Blanket, and Miko said no, but you can tell by his body language that he was was trying to shy away from answering that question.

suga10 said:

Blanket looks like his father...Michael Jackson.

And Mikio did not shy away...he said "Absolutely NOT!"

Love Mike's hat.

jamgirl said:

He said no, but then he was beating around the bush as well trying to avoid answering anything to do with that. His body language said it all.

jamgirl said:

Blanket looks like Blanket.

Michael Jackson's Lyrics Tell A Hard Story
June 2009

In the brief, electric prime of Michael Jackson, millions danced to "Billie Jean," "Beat It" and other songs so propulsive it almost didn't matter what they actually said.

But the lyrics — whether Jackson's or others' — could be as disturbing as the music was liberating. Sealed in the grooves were tales of deceit, paranoia, violence and victimization. Even before his life broke apart and the tabloids bore down, Jackson sang like a boy-man under attack.

"You try to scream but terror takes the sound before you make it," he warns on "Thriller," the title track to his all-time selling album and written by Rod Temperton. "You start to freeze as horror looks you right between the eyes/You're paralyzed."

Jackson was almost 21 when his first "adult" record, "Off the Wall," came out in 1979. He had survived the childhood beatings and insults by his father and had already lived at least one life in show business, as the smiling, spinning prodigy fronting his brothers in the Jackson Five.

"Off the Wall" sold millions and shed the catchy, but impersonal persona of his child star youth. The title track, written by Temperton, was a lighthearted introduction to what would become Jackson's truest subjects: his strange life and the stolen innocence he wanted back. "The world is on your shoulder," the song advises, but "life ain't so bad it all/If you live it off the wall."

He would soon fire his father as his manager and vow that his next record, "Thriller," would make him the biggest star in the business — a promise met like few others. "Thriller" sold more than 20 million copies initially and sales now top 50 million. It earned him the title he bestowed on himself, "The King of Pop," and offered the first full take from the throne.

"Michael Jackson wrote songs for one great artist — which was himself," says Diane Warren, the Grammy-winning songwriter who has written for Whitney Houston, Celine Dion, Kelly Clarkson and Mary J. Blige.

Warren says Jackson also picked great songs by other writers — see "Thriller" — and "was an amazing interpreter" of them. Among his songbook, she spots a theme of defiance and toughness that perhaps acted as protective armor.

Music producer Glen Ballard was in the studio with Jackson and Quincy Jones for the making of "Thriller," and worked on the later "Bad" and "Dangerous" albums, co-writing the songs "Man in the Mirror" and "Keep the Faith."

"As he grew up and matured as an artist, his lyric writing had this sort of air of mystery about it," Ballard says. "He still knew how to write hooks — he just knew how to communicate that way — but he sort of created this vocabulary" that was darker, surreal and futuristic.

The bouncy duet with Paul McCartney, "The Girl Is Mine," is an interracial love triangle. The hard rock "Beat It," set to the switchblade guitar runs of Eddie Van Halen, is an anthem of pacifism, or passivity, with Jackson pleading to stop a gang war — and perhaps all wars — because "It doesn't matter who's wrong or right."

The singer in "Billie Jean" has been taken by a girl he meets on the dance floor and later claims has borne him a child. "Billie Jean is not my lover," he chants, teeth clenched. "She's just a girl who claims that I am the one/But the kid is not my son."

Jackson's "Billie Jean" lyrics are paranoid, defiant and "cool," Warren says.

"Maybe in a way he wanted to be left alone," she suggests, noting the trauma of his missing childhood.

If so, Jackson did not give that impression in the recording studio, according to Ballard. He remembers Jackson as "very shy" around people he'd just met, but when he felt comfortable, he was funny and fun to be around. He was collaborative yet focused on his larger musical vision. He moved and grooved, feeling the music. When Ballard and others hosed him with water guns on his birthday, Jackson grabbed a water gun and joined in.

Ballard had no idea about Jackson's life outside the studio. As for "Billie Jean," he can't point to any real-life experience or demons within the pop legend's psyche.

"It's just this incomplete portrait that you can fill in however you want and you can see it as this huge, mysterious, sort of tragic story or something," he says of the 1983 chart topper.

The same woman, or at least another named "Billie Jean," turns up in the equally besieged "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'," in which Billie Jean is another exploiter "always talkin'/when nobody else is talkin'/tellin' lies and rubbin' shoulders." Again, there's a child and Jackson, the alleged Peter Pan of popular music, doesn't want to know:

___

"If you can't feed your baby

Then don't have a baby

And don't think maybe

If you can't feed your baby"

___

Jackson was a cultural radical who broke the color line on MTV and shattered the old rock clique of white men with guitars. But his politics were more personal than collective, avoiding confrontation as surely as the guy in "Beat It." In "Man in the Mirror," from the 1987 "Bad" album, he worries about "the kids in the street/with not enough to eat," and concludes that the answer is to "take a look at yourself and then make a change." He would later call to "Heal the World," although doesn't say how beyond making sure that "you care enough."

Scandal and chaos only made him look harder, at himself, and at others: The boasts of "Invincible" and "Untouchable," the rage of "Tabloid Junkie" and the taunts of "Threatened." In the self-evident "Privacy," the world is a trespasser peeking through his window: "Ain't the pictures enough, why do you go through so much," he asks. "To get the story you need, so you can bury me."

Ballard, who has written for Alanis Morissette and George Strait, among others, says the passionate performer was a "remarkable songwriter" who "absolutely" felt his songs' lyrics.

"I don't think there's any question that that was just falling out of his creative, unpremeditated self. ... He tapped into his `whatever' and he was using it like an artist should and sort of creating these characters — maybe they're him, maybe they're not," he says. "You get distance from it. (The lyrics) just really have this kind of compelling, mysterious, very cool air about them, in addition to being really hot at the center with these grooves."

You could heat a country on all the energy spent wondering what happened to Jackson in the second half of his life and what eventually killed him. But he explained himself well in the trembling "Childhood," set to Hollywood strings and to a melody lost and forlorn as an orphaned boy.

That song "was probably the most autobiographical of all his amazing lyrics," says Grammy-winning songwriter Carole Bayer Sager, who co-wrote "That's What Friends Are For" with Burt Bacharach.

"Have you seen my Childhood?" Jackson wonders, his voice light and high. "Before you judge me, try hard to love me/The painful youth I've had."



http://www.google.com/hos...gD9949N000

Thanks Suga.

jamgirl said:

We'll have to agree to disagree because several news networks gave TMZ the credit for breaking the story like CNN, La Times, ABC News, etc.

StillDirrty said:

Well TMZ is more popular, of course they'll get the credit.

Harvey Levin was saying on TV that TMZ was paying these sources to get all this information about Michael.
[Edited 7/25/09 10:26am]

http://www.tmz.com/


[Edited 7/25/09 10:32am]
[Edited 7/25/09 10:32am]

Timmy84 said:

suga10 said:

Just like any tabloid site all over the world, right?

suga10 said:

Here is the REAL story from the AP

ackson advisor says he turned over $5.5 million

By LINDA DEUTSCH and ANTHONY McCARTNEY (AP) – 12 hours ago

LOS ANGELES — A former financial advisor to Michael Jackson said Friday that he was the person who recently turned over to executors $5.5 million, which had been "a secret between Michael and me."

Dr. Tohme Tohme responded to an inquiry from The Associated Press about documents in which administrators of the estate said they had recovered $5.5 million and substantial amounts of personal property from an unnamed former financial adviser.

"It was not recovered," he said. "I had the money and I gave it to them. It was a secret between Michael and me."

He said the money, which came from recording residuals, was earmarked by Jackson for the purchase of what was to be his "dream home" in Las Vegas. He said he was in negotiations for the home when Jackson died.

"He said, 'Don't tell anyone about this money,'" Tohme recalled. "But when he passed away I told them I had this money, and I gave it to them."

He said he also turned over a large number of items from Jackson's Neverland estate that were once scheduled to be auctioned. When Jackson decided to call off the auction, Tohme said he had everything put into storage. He said he turned over that personal property to the executors as well.

Tohme is the financier who advised Jackson during the last year and half of his life and was instrumental in saving Neverland from foreclosure. He also was a key figure in negotiating the contracts for Jackson to do a series of comeback concerts in London.

The estate's receipt of the money was revealed in 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 were 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 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://www.google.com/hos...gD99L9HUO1

http://www.tmz.com/