Michael Jackson just died
- Thread starter usna2016
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I just heard...makes me sad. I saw him at Texas Stadium back during his glory days in the 80's. Our seats were on the very top row - nosebleed section! Fun times.
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I thought about posting this but seeing as it was all over the place I figured someone else would. I really didn't expect him to die anytime soon.
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I had written more, but for some reason the internet cut out. Either way sad news indeed.
Thriller, Bad, Billie Jean....all bring memories of my high school years. I remember watching the Thriller video for the first time on MTV (back when MTV only played music videos).
I feel sad when I see the clips of him as a boy singing in the Jackson 5. He was so talented but then his life became very strange. I didn't like the person he became but I will always appreciate his early music.
I feel sad when I see the clips of him as a boy singing in the Jackson 5. He was so talented but then his life became very strange. I didn't like the person he became but I will always appreciate his early music.
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We lost a legend. Michael Jackson produced some of the greatest music of the century. He will be sorely missed by fans and the media alike.
Just_A_Mom
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tpg -It was a cartoon called "The Jackson 5". Early 70's, I think.
My kids had never really heard the early early music. It was interesting trying to explain to them that "Ben" was a rat. They were kind of freaked out when I told them I remembered slowdancing to it in Jr High. It was his first number one hit.
He was brilliant but odd.
My kids had never really heard the early early music. It was interesting trying to explain to them that "Ben" was a rat. They were kind of freaked out when I told them I remembered slowdancing to it in Jr High. It was his first number one hit.
He was brilliant but odd.
My step-father was huge Motown fan so I was introduced to the Jackson 5 at the age of three. During my childhood I used to wake up every morning to whatever he had put on the record player that morning. He had a huge record collection. My boys didn't even know what a record was until I explained it to them.
MTV and their VJ's...Nina Blackwood, Martha Quinn, Adam Curry, Downtown Julie Brown...those were the days.
raimius
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Some of the cadre mentioned it to the basics, but they didn't believe it. They thought it was just the cadre trying to play mind games. Last night, one basic received a letter saying he had died and read it to the rest of the flight. The flight comm and myself were both like "What? We told you that already. Didn't you believe us?"
Just_A_Mom
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^ LOL
Did you tell them about Farrah Fawcett and Billy Mays?
My kids were more sad about Billy Mays than MJ.
WaMom68 - wasn't MTV awesome back in the day?
Did you tell them about Farrah Fawcett and Billy Mays?
My kids were more sad about Billy Mays than MJ.
WaMom68 - wasn't MTV awesome back in the day?
Pima
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There was a hysterical cartoon (non PC) that I saw. It was Ed McMahon talking to Farrah in heaven and saying why did you have to die 2 days after me, now nobody is paying attention to my death. She turns to him and says stop complaining only 2 hours after I died Michael Jackson did, the next frame is Michael walking by singing and her saying %$# shut up Michael!
Again not PC.
I always remember the 3 famous people at a time, so when Billy Mays died I turned to Bullet and said if I was famous I would be worried because 2 more have to die. Karl Malden died today so that only leaves one more.
Again not PC.
I always remember the 3 famous people at a time, so when Billy Mays died I turned to Bullet and said if I was famous I would be worried because 2 more have to die. Karl Malden died today so that only leaves one more.
Opinion piece about MJ
This caught my eye in today's local paper. I have been thinking about this same issue, which is how to resolve what I see as the two Michael Jackson's. In my opinion, the columnist did a good job of explaining the dilemma.
Too soon to resolve Michael Jackson's legacy
THE OLYMPIAN | • Published July 07, 2009
Sometimes, death is a blindside hit.
When it comes at the end of a long life as it recently for 86-year-old Ed McMahon, you are saddened by it but not particularly surprised. When it comes after a debilitating illness, as it did for 62-year-old Farrah Fawcett, you have time to brace yourself against it.
But sometimes, death is lightning from a clear blue sky, a car that runs the red light, ice-cold water dumped on you from behind. That’s how it was when Michael Jackson died.
It seemed cruel in the very suddenness of it, harsh in the abruptness of its reminder that there are no guarantees and that the next breath — the very next breath — cannot be taken for granted. Here today, gone today. Gone too soon.
Jackson’s death left those of us who grew up with him groping for resolution, words of summation in a moment when words of all kinds are elusive as smoke. What to say about Michael Jackson?
It is a difficult question to answer about anyone who suddenly dies. It is especially difficult to answer about Jackson. After all, he was a ferocious singer, boneless dancer, world-class showman, music video pioneer, racial barrier breaker, astute businessman, dedicated humanitarian, profligate spender, plastic surgery addict, painkiller addict, adulation addict, reclusive eccentric, alleged deadbeat and washed-up has been, who might, on top of all that, have gotten his jollies molesting little boys.
Yes, as a legal matter, a jury of his peers said in 2005 that the molestation never happened. As a practical matter, some of us will always wonder.
Makes it hard to find your way to resolution, hard to unearth the words that encapsulate all that you feel. Or even to know all that you feel.
It was easier before the blindside hit. At the time of his death, Michael Jackson had not released a significant record in 18 years. His public profile rested almost entirely on a series of increasingly bizarre and unsavory misadventures — debt, lawsuits for nonpayment, sleeping (innocently, he said) with boys, going to court in pajamas.
You looked at this guy and wondered what he had done with Michael Jackson — the real Michael Jackson, the boy prince of Motown with the perfect ’fro, the frictionless feet and the smile that seemed lit from within. This was not Michael Jackson. This was some odd, vaguely repellent creature unused to the way things are done in our world.
But judgments made in the heat and motion of a life are not like those made in the coolness and inertia of a death.
In life, judgments are about what is immediately before you, what is now. In death, they are broader and, perhaps as an inevitable byproduct, usually more generous.
Which has some people in an uproar. They say — you see this online and in letters to editors — that we ought not be generous with this man, given what he is suspected of having done. It’s a reasonable demand. What he is suspected of having done is monstrous.
So you wonder, many of us who grew up with him, why you don’t share their anger. Maybe it is that he is only “suspected” — a loophole for conscience. Maybe it is sentimental memory and residual affection washing down like rain, cleansing his sins. He was with us and we with him for so long — maybe we owe him that?
Or maybe we should just admit resolution is not possible. Michael denies it to us. Instead, in one last act of legerdemain, he forces us to split ourselves in two, become a union of opposite emotions, find a way to simultaneously hold contrary viewpoints in mind, minimize none of it, accept all of it — balance like a dancer frozen on tiptoes.
How fitting that image became his logo. And now, I think, it is his truest legacy.
So I’ll say only this: Michael Jackson died. I scorned him. I admired him. And I’m sorry he’s gone.
--Leonard Pitts, a columnist for the Miami Herald, can be reached at lpitts@miamiherald.com.
This caught my eye in today's local paper. I have been thinking about this same issue, which is how to resolve what I see as the two Michael Jackson's. In my opinion, the columnist did a good job of explaining the dilemma.
Too soon to resolve Michael Jackson's legacy
THE OLYMPIAN | • Published July 07, 2009
Sometimes, death is a blindside hit.
When it comes at the end of a long life as it recently for 86-year-old Ed McMahon, you are saddened by it but not particularly surprised. When it comes after a debilitating illness, as it did for 62-year-old Farrah Fawcett, you have time to brace yourself against it.
But sometimes, death is lightning from a clear blue sky, a car that runs the red light, ice-cold water dumped on you from behind. That’s how it was when Michael Jackson died.
It seemed cruel in the very suddenness of it, harsh in the abruptness of its reminder that there are no guarantees and that the next breath — the very next breath — cannot be taken for granted. Here today, gone today. Gone too soon.
Jackson’s death left those of us who grew up with him groping for resolution, words of summation in a moment when words of all kinds are elusive as smoke. What to say about Michael Jackson?
It is a difficult question to answer about anyone who suddenly dies. It is especially difficult to answer about Jackson. After all, he was a ferocious singer, boneless dancer, world-class showman, music video pioneer, racial barrier breaker, astute businessman, dedicated humanitarian, profligate spender, plastic surgery addict, painkiller addict, adulation addict, reclusive eccentric, alleged deadbeat and washed-up has been, who might, on top of all that, have gotten his jollies molesting little boys.
Yes, as a legal matter, a jury of his peers said in 2005 that the molestation never happened. As a practical matter, some of us will always wonder.
Makes it hard to find your way to resolution, hard to unearth the words that encapsulate all that you feel. Or even to know all that you feel.
It was easier before the blindside hit. At the time of his death, Michael Jackson had not released a significant record in 18 years. His public profile rested almost entirely on a series of increasingly bizarre and unsavory misadventures — debt, lawsuits for nonpayment, sleeping (innocently, he said) with boys, going to court in pajamas.
You looked at this guy and wondered what he had done with Michael Jackson — the real Michael Jackson, the boy prince of Motown with the perfect ’fro, the frictionless feet and the smile that seemed lit from within. This was not Michael Jackson. This was some odd, vaguely repellent creature unused to the way things are done in our world.
But judgments made in the heat and motion of a life are not like those made in the coolness and inertia of a death.
In life, judgments are about what is immediately before you, what is now. In death, they are broader and, perhaps as an inevitable byproduct, usually more generous.
Which has some people in an uproar. They say — you see this online and in letters to editors — that we ought not be generous with this man, given what he is suspected of having done. It’s a reasonable demand. What he is suspected of having done is monstrous.
So you wonder, many of us who grew up with him, why you don’t share their anger. Maybe it is that he is only “suspected” — a loophole for conscience. Maybe it is sentimental memory and residual affection washing down like rain, cleansing his sins. He was with us and we with him for so long — maybe we owe him that?
Or maybe we should just admit resolution is not possible. Michael denies it to us. Instead, in one last act of legerdemain, he forces us to split ourselves in two, become a union of opposite emotions, find a way to simultaneously hold contrary viewpoints in mind, minimize none of it, accept all of it — balance like a dancer frozen on tiptoes.
How fitting that image became his logo. And now, I think, it is his truest legacy.
So I’ll say only this: Michael Jackson died. I scorned him. I admired him. And I’m sorry he’s gone.
--Leonard Pitts, a columnist for the Miami Herald, can be reached at lpitts@miamiherald.com.
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This is another point of view which I thought was well put,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgJNdlSWSO0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgJNdlSWSO0
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Every now and then (well, TWICE that I know off, and that's since around 2000), Mr. Pitts pulls his head out of his ass and hits a home run. He certainly did here.
I grew up listening to Michael Jackson. My iPod had tons of his stuff years before the current wave of purchasers got them. Anyone who denies that the man had an almost-inhuman talent is either deaf and blind, or else a spiteful, lying jerk. The man was absolutely unique and spellbinding to watch.
That was, of course, until about 1999. Then he just got plain weird and creepy. Yes, he was acquitted, and someone whose opinion I take very seriously and isn't known for cutting people slack has stated that the accusers in the case were less than cedible. Still, the charges just didn't seem all that outrageous when placed into context of what he had become.
I miss the old Michael Jackson, the one who moonwalked across the stage that night and left everyone who was watching wondering if they had actually seen what their eyes had just reported to their brains. I miss the Michael Jackson who belted out GOOD hit after GOOD hit, the one who was popular because he actually had talent rather than because he sang half-naked (as so many "talents" today do). HE is the one I miss.
My wife (an avid musician who followed the industry for years) lays his downfall at the feet of the media (who loved him, then destroyed him, and are now trying to pretend they always loved him) and his father (who apparently was a slavedriver who never allowed the poor kid to actually have a childhood).
I dunno, but all I know is that his life fits neatly into the original Shakespearean definition of "Tragedy": a good person brought down by a personal weakness.
RIP, Michael. May the Good Lord have you wherever you deserve to be. I, for one, look forward to the chance to learn the moonwalk from you personally someday, and hopefully not someplace where we're asking for ice water...