Today’s my last day of Michael Jackson posting for a while (i.e., until his next video comes around on the 1988 countdown). I’ll have some MJ excerpts from the Warhol diaries a little later in the day, but first I thought I’d share two historical updates from last week. Another tidbit from the early 1980s […]

posted 8 July 2009 in Tasty Bits. no comments yet

There’s been a lot of fine writing about Michael Jackson’s life and death in the past twelve days, and some of the best of it has been by friends of Rule Forty-Two. I have a few more MJ-related posts to make, but before I cut off this skein, I wanted to steer you towards some […]

posted 6 July 2009 in Links. no comments yet

For your holiday-weekend contemplation, a few more photos from my April visit to the auction-house exhibition of the contents of Michael Jackson’s Neverland.

posted 3 July 2009 in Photos. no comments yet

Aside from its ultramegahugeness, there are some aspects of Thriller that wouldn’t be the same today. A. If it was released now, it wouldn’t be sequenced the same way. Here’s your all-star lineup: (side one) 1. “Wanna Be Startin’ Something” 2. “Baby Be Mine” 3. “The Girl Is Mine” 4. “Thriller” (side two) 5. “Beat […]

posted 2 July 2009 in Tasty Bits. 1 comment

My dad worked at CBS Records (as Sony Music was then known) in the 1980s and programmed the computer systems that handled a lot of their internal bookkeeping. I remember two details he told me about Thriller, which sold so many copies it routinely overwhelmed the computer: 1. One quarter, it accounted for one half […]

posted 2 July 2009 in Tasty Bits. 1 comment

“In eighteen months, he never once called me by my name… I have a lot of respect for him, but his manners need a little work.” –Sheryl Crow “We love Michael so much, we let the first kid slide.” –Chris Rock “You got to put the jelly on the jelly.” -Michael Jackson

posted 2 July 2009 in Tasty Bits. no comments yet

Is there anything groovier than the first fifteen seconds of “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough”? Over a buzzy bassline, Michael Jackson talks in a voice that’s as close to his natural speaking voice as most people would ever hear (the breathy falsetto was a guise he adopted when in public). “You know, I was, […]

posted 2 July 2009 in Tasty Bits. 2 comments

Trying to remember when I first became aware of Michael Jackson, I realized I had two separate exposures to him around the age of ten–and I’m not sure that as a child, I realized both came from the same person. I vividly remember hearing the ballad “She’s Out of My Life” on AM radio, particularly […]

posted 2 July 2009 in Tasty Bits. no comments yet

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about Lester Bangs’ eulogy for Elvis Presley. In some ways, I suppose the career of Michael Jackson undermines his point–but the sentiment has never in my life seemed so true. If love truly is going out of fashion forever, which I do not believe, then along with our […]

posted 1 July 2009 in Excerpts. 3 comments

When the news of Michael Jackson’s death started to leak out, I was on a plane to Texas. So I missed those first few hours of conflicting reports–what I got was a flat announcement from a woman with a cell phone one row in front of me, ten seconds after the plane hit the Dallas […]

posted 1 July 2009 in News. no comments yet