The End of an Era

I suppose I should post something about this, since I've been thinking about it for a couple of days now.

Michael Jackson. The good looking black guy who desperately wanted to be a white girl, and ended up being a sideshow freak in his own self-made media circus. I've never felt sorry for Michael, his music got progressively worse after "Bad", no pun intended...But man, did I think "Thriller" was the shit when I was 13. I wore the first tape I bought completely out, from choreographing two or three dances to every song on the album. I never copied his look, like most of the kids in my school, but then, I didn't need to; I could actually dance.

Like everything else, my tastes in music changed as I got older, and Michael never measured up to his former glory in songwriting, so he eventually dropped off my radar. Every so often I would see him on T.V., and some horribly disfiguring surgery would have altered his face yet again from the last time. I find it hard to believe that, with all that money, no one stepped in and said "Hey, Mike...That's enough with the fucking scalpel. You look like Skeletor wearing expensive clothes and a goofy-assed hat."

I was kinda stunned when my wife emailed me with the news (I wasn't logged onto CNN, I had no idea this had happened) "Did you hear about Michael Jackson? He just died of cardiac arrest!" I didn't believe it. You never think you're going to outlive the people who inspire you. You see certain people as Gods, in a way, immortal and everlasting. You never see the celebrities on the screen and think "They're human, too". But they are.

So, this is how I prefer to remember him...Not as the pedophilic, sociopathic jackass who consistently made one wrong move after another until he had pissed his career and life away, but the young guy who made great music and inspired a generation to get up and dance. A young man who got people aware and brought them together for the unprecedented USA for Africa movement. The spaceman who gave us the moonwalk, and freed the galaxy as Captain EO. The guy who, for the briefest of periods, made us believe.

I don't want to end this on a down note...'Cause This is Thriller