Some readers of Rule Forty-Two expressed astonishment at my post where I mentioned that Thriller sold a small but significant number of copies on eight-track, so I thought you might like to see the following, from a recent eBay auction: (If you want this artifact to love and cherish, there are several more on sale […]
posted 17 July 2009 in Photos. 2 comments
In the archives today: a 2005 profile of the mighty Paul Giamatti, recounting how we discussed his life over an extremely long Mexican lunch in Brooklyn. Not discussed in the article: that Giamatti and I went to Yale at the same time. We didn’t know each other, but he was generally recognized as the best […]
posted 14 July 2009 in Archives, Articles. no comments yet
Shamefully, it’s been almost three months since my last flipwalk update. (If you’re not familiar with the flipwalk project: while living in New York City, I took walks of exactly one hour in duration, my route determined along the way by flipping a coin. Then I would take a photograph of whatever block I was […]
posted 10 July 2009 in Photos. no comments yet
The second Warhol/Jackson meeting, as recounted in The Andy Warhol Diaries. The setting is a party in a hotel room before a performance of the Jacksons’ Victory tour at Madison Square Garden: Saturday, August 4, 1984 Rosanna Arquette, the actress, came up and was so sweet, and I asked her if we’d ever done anything […]
posted 8 July 2009 in Excerpts. no comments yet
Andy Warhol had two encounters with Michael Jackson; in between, he did a portrait of him for a 1984 cover of Time (working from photographic reference). This is his account of the first meeting: Wednesday, February 2, 1977 Went home and did some work, then at 11:00 Catherine and I went over to Regine’s to […]
posted 8 July 2009 in Excerpts. no comments yet
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
