The northlondonhippy

Archive for July 7th, 2009

You might not have heard, but Michael Jack­son kicked the bucket recently. You’d think that sort of news would get around.

In truth, it did get around, shock­ingly fast. Thanks to TMZ.com and Twit­ter, the sad news spread around the world at the speed of tweet.

And just for today, MJ doesn’t mean mar­i­juana here, it stands for Michael Jackson.

I was work­ing the night he died, just head­ing into the office as the news broke.

I was early and paused out­side the build­ing to have one last smoke before going to my desk. As I flicked through a Twit­ter app on my iPhone. I caught one of the first tweets that stated MJ had been rushed to hos­pi­tal in an ambu­lance with a sus­pected heart attack.

A col­league of mine joined me at this point and as he lit up a cig­a­rette of his own, I told him what I had just read and we started spec­u­lat­ing on “what if” it turned out to be the worst case and he was dead.

For both of us, work­ing overnight in a news­room, MJ’s death trans­lated into utter fuck­ing chaos for many, many hours. What­ever the out­come, I knew it was going to be a nasty-assed night.

In real­ity, it exceeded my expectations.

Beyond that, the rest of my night at work is not really impor­tant. It was yet another busy one, deal­ing with a large break­ing story. I’ve had count­less nights like that.

It wasn’t until after that night, and the sub­se­quent few at work, that I really had the chance to con­sider the sig­nif­i­cance and mag­ni­tude of his death. That’s not meant to be an over­state­ment, its huge news that will carry on run­ning for a long time, as will MJ Inc. which will exploit his pass­ing even more than the media ever could.

Before you start think­ing I’m some mega-fan of MJ’s, I’d like to take a moment to point out that I’m not. I didn’t hate his music either and I can appre­ci­ate his unde­ni­able tal­ent, I was just never a fan of his solo stuff.

As a child, I did like the Jack­son 5, but it was prac­ti­cally children’s music. A-B-C, its easy as 1–2-3… It was like Sesame Street does Motown, before Sesame Street existed.

I liked some of his music videos, because they were inno­v­a­tive, ground was bro­ken with sev­eral, but I never bought an MJ record.

I should also men­tion that I believed the alle­ga­tions about him. Always did, still do. Per­haps its just my view of the smoke+fire equa­tion, but every­thing I read about it, makes me think there’s some­thing to it.

Every­one seems to be skip­ping over that part of the story right now, per­haps I should too.

I’m old enough to have vivid mem­o­ries of Elvis Pres­ley dying. Its dif­fi­cult to really explain how momen­tous this was at the time. Elvis was even younger than MJ when he died, all bloated, pinch­ing a loaf while squat­ting on the bowl.

Not a pretty picture.

Elvis was big when he was alive, they didn’t call him “the King” for noth­ing, but in death Elvis was even big­ger. You only have to look at his estate’s accounts to see that he’s grossed more money since he died than he ever did alive.

Now, think of the “King of Pop”, or MJ Inc. as I’ve been think­ing of it. MJ’s music is more mod­ern, his audi­ence is still on the young side. Elvis’s audi­ence was mature when he ate his last fried banana sand­wich, yet he has still kept on selling.

Also, MJ’s music sounds more mod­ern, it can eas­ily sit on the radio along side music being released today. An Elvis song sounds old, because they pretty much all are now; per­haps “dated” would be a more appro­pri­ate description.

I liked Elvis, I thought he was cool, at least until his 1968 come­back spe­cial. If you’ve never seen it, it really is worth your time. After that, he kind of became a par­ody of him­self, which was sad to see. I do have one Elvis CD, a com­pi­la­tion of his Num­ber 1 hits.

And even though I like Elvis, I’ve still man­aged to make a cou­ple of jokes at his expense. Imag­ine the MJ jokes I could make; or bet­ter yet, don’t imag­ine, just think of some you’ve already heard from your mates.

Only the really funny ones, please.

Its too soon, we have to con­tinue to feign rev­er­ence for a while longer, before we can stop whis­per­ing the jokes and speak them out in full voice, in a crowded room, to thun­der­ous laugh­ter with­out a hint of shame. Try it now and all you’ll get are muf­fled gig­gles and unde­ni­able gasps.

No one dubbed MJ the “King of Pop”, the title was self-anointed fol­low­ing a spon­ta­neous intro­duc­tion when being pre­sented with an award. Once adopted, MJ’s PR peo­ple forced the media to refer to him as “King of Pop” and after a while it stuck.

Now, no one could take that crown away from him if they tried.

His death was tragic, as is any death at a rel­a­tively young age, but his is made more so because of his immense tal­ent. If ever there was a tor­tured artist…

MJ didn’t have a con­ven­tional child­hood. How could he when he was rehears­ing and per­form­ing from such a young age. His father sounded like quite a taskmas­ter, which is polite speak for moti­vat­ing Michael and his broth­ers by beatin’ on their ass(es).

Michael told Oprah as much on tv, so it must be true.

MJ was screwed up, dys­func­tional even, but I believe the cur­rent, accepted term to describe him is: eccentric.

The prob­lem with being the King, be it Elvis or MJ, is no one ever says “no” to you. For Elvis, it was fatty foods and pre­scrip­tion drugs, for MJ, well we can be fairly cer­tain it wasn’t fatty foods.

If we believe what we’re read­ing in the media, then MJ was using all sorts of doc­tor pre­scribed good­ies that most likely killed him. Most dis­turb­ing is the report of one of the drugs being Propinal (AKA Diprovan), a pow­er­ful anaes­thetic that should only be admin­is­tered in a hos­pi­tal because it is a con­tin­u­ous IV drip and requires full mon­i­tor­ing by a qual­i­fied doc­tor. The risks include res­pi­ra­tory arrest, which is fancy doctor-speak for: shit, he’s com­pletely stopped breathing!

Fuck. Why didn’t I hear of this before? Talk about a celebrity endorse­ment! Where can I get my own pri­vate med­ical doc­tor to come round and make a few days just zip right by, while I’m comatose and prob­a­bly mil­lime­tres from death? All the cool kids are going to want to do some POP (PrOPinal = POP as in the King of, its new, street name).

How messed up in the head do you have to be to want to be dosed up like you were hav­ing your appen­dix removed? How much would you want to escape both the entire world and yourself?

And what sort of licensed physi­cian would admin­is­ter that to some­one pri­vately, in their own home? Don’t they take an oath that says some­thing like, “First, do no harm?”

Play­ing with anaes­thet­ics sounds seri­ously harm­ful to me.

Which brings me back to where I started, with this becom­ing an ongo­ing news story. One of the biggest, most con­tro­ver­sial pop stars in the world died sud­denly, pos­si­bly at the hands of some­one else.

Yes, I am talk­ing murder.

And so is the LA Police, or so it would seem to me. Just because they say they don’t sus­pect foul play, doesn’t mean they don’t sus­pect some­thing foul happened.

If I was to gam­ble, I’d say some­one will end up being charged in con­nec­tion with his death. Some­one will become known as the man (or woman) who killed Michael Jackson.

And even though his funeral and pub­lic memo­r­ial are today, this story will run for years and years.

Expect more rev­e­la­tions about his pri­vate life to be com­pet­ing with the twists and turns in the legal bat­tles, crim­i­nal and civil, while he con­tin­ues to break records for music sales and MJ Inc. makes hun­dreds of millions.

What does it say about our soci­ety that we can wor­ship some­one for their tal­ent, while being fas­ci­nated by their eccen­tric­ity, yet repulsed by their alleged proclivities?

As a char­ac­ter, MJ is about as com­plex and rich a tapes­try as you’re likely to find.

And what does it say about our soci­ety that so many tal­ented peo­ple, in so many dif­fer­ent areas of the arts, are so trag­i­cally fucked up? MJ’s not the first mega-star to suc­cumb to such a sad end.

He won’t be the last, either.