The King is Dead

Michael Jackson's life has become so tragicomic that it doesn't really warrant commentary. I can only say - as a child of the 80s - that I thought he was cool back then and a lot of the music (helped along by luminaries like Quincy Jones & Eddie Van Halen) holds up pretty well.

People with no attention span, who see him only for the spectacle he's become, are ignoring the most poignant story arc of his life. It is not about the depths to which he's sunk, but the heights from which he fell. There are plenty of run-of-the-mill low-lifes out there. To Catch a Predator comes to mind. But how many of them could convince us that - no matter how damning the evidence might be - Billie Jean's kid is not their son? Fifty million albums later, that would've been some serious child support.

And as for people who refuse to acknowledge his import: you are either too young or too jaded to be honest with yourselves. If you were paying attention at all back then, you couldn't help but notice The King of Pop - even if only as a foil for your hipper, new wave tastes. And if you can't remember having an opinion one way or the other, then you are probably repressing memories or else you lived in a hyperbaric chamber.

Some anecdotes:

I still remember playing with an MJ Colorforms set, in which you could put him in different outfits, including the famous glittering glove, the red leather jacket, and the fedora. A lesser blogger would make a joke here about the irony of a little kid undressing Michael Jackson, but I won't give in to the temptation.

A good friend of mine in junior high school begged his mom for a pair of Jordans. She came home with a pair of "MJ" sneakers...made by L.A. Gear. I don't care where you're from, that's still funny. Check out the graphic on the box below. Kinda hard to project street cred in the low post with moves like that. Sh'mon!

And finally, not so much anecdotes, but further proof of the enduring quality of the grooves he brought into our lives:



And the ubiquitous viral video from last year that never really gets old:



Long Live the King.