TMZ.com is saying that Michael Jackson is dead.
I don't know what to say other than a part of my childhood has died with him. I was one of the millions of fans that bought Thriller not once but twice (vynil and cassette) and I used to listen to that album constantly.I mean, I can't explain it but the beat in Billie Jean is one of the most intoxicating sounds I've heard in pop music. It's hard not to want to dance to it.
I remember vividly this performance at the Motown 25 celebration. I think I even video taped it and played it over and over again. Michael was at the height of his pop genius. Sure, he already had tinkered with his face, but he was still amazing to watch and dance to.
The tragedy of Michael Jackson was his self-hating abuse of plastic surgery. Whenever he was in trouble, he'd blame it on being black. Every other time of the year he was happy to parade his white mask and his ever evanescent nose. Everything about his nergritude was game for changing with either cosmetology or plastic surgery and that's what really made him such a tragic figure because had he not been born into blackness we wouldn't have had Michael Jackson in the first place.
Good night, Michael Jackson. I hope your soul has found the rest it deserved.
From UCLA
I'm at a conference here at UCLA and I walk out of Royce Hall sometime after 2 PM for a break...and see two helicopters suspended above UCLA, right near the center near Ackerman Union and the Bear. Having gone to UCLA for grad school, I knew this wasn't too common. As I watched a third helicopter came in to hover. They were clearly news helicopters because police coptors would have been lower and doing more. I was tempted to go check out what was up, but didn't want to leave the conference.
As I watched a fourth helicopter, CLEARLY not a news helicopter but the kind that transports people came in much lower than the others. It also didn't head right for that central location but more towards the medical center (where I used to work). I wondered if someone famous had been brought in sick. Alternatively, as someone suggested to me, maybe Ah-nold was paying a visit.
Then heard the rumor it was Michael Jackson. I briefly wondered if it was that OTHER Michael Jackson (radio talk show host back when that meant something intelligent), but then realized he was already dead. The fourth copter I saw was almost definitely the one bringing Michael Jackson to the medical center. Probably was about 2:30 or 2:45 by then.
By then it was time to go back to science.
Coming out of that session back to the UCLA Guest House (where I get computer access!) the helicopters are still hovering. Many more of them now, I think. I hear crowds are gathering near the medical center, but no sign of it elsewhere on campus. And the corner of Westwood I went to (to the new, at least new to me, Trader Joe's across from where my grandmother used to live in her old age), was quiet. But I suspect if I had gone one block further West I would have hit the crowd.