“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, I was wondering,” he says, almost slurring and stumbling over his words. “If, if we could keep on.” It sounds unrehearsed in a way that his music never does–even at his best and most joyous, Michael had the precision of a surgeon. “Because the force, it’s got a lot of power, you know?” (Nobody ever talks about the Star Wars inspiration for this song, but I bet he meant the Force.) “It make me feel like, it make me feel like–oooooh!”

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 at the town swimming pool. I was fascinated by it. It was overwrought and intense and exhausting and connected to emotions I didn’t really understand. It didn’t sound like anything else on the radio and it always felt like it lasted about seven minutes until the singer had his nervous breakdown at song’s end.

I also was an avid watcher of the Jackson 5 cartoon series. I remember only one episode now: the group breaks up, which meant that their fans had to buy five separate records and play them all at the same time to hear their new song.

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 nurtured indifference to each other will be an even more contemptuous indifference to each others’ objects of reverence. I thought it was Iggy Stooge, you thought it was Joni Mitchell or whoever else seemed to speak for your own private, entirely circumscribed situation’s many pains and few ecstasies. We will continue to fragment in this manner, because solipsism holds all the cards at present. But I can guarantee you one thing: we will never again agree on anything as we agreed on Elvis. So I won’t bother saying good-bye to his corpse. I will say good-bye to you.

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 tarmac: “Michael Jackson’s dead.”

I wasn’t shocked, exactly; he seemed as fragile as a china doll. But I’m still getting used to this version of the world.

More soon. Previously:
Photos from the Neverland auction (outside)
Photos from the Neverland auction (inside)
1988 Countdown #94: “Another Part of Me”

posted 1 July 2009 in News. no comments yet

More Andy Warhol:

Tuesday, June 21, 1977

There was a black guy at the door of the Rainbow Room who didn’t know me and wouldn’t let me in and then another guy came to the door and it turned out to be this guy who always tells me that he wants his lobster pot back. He came to my house with a bunch of people once and says that he brought a lobster pot that he cooked in and then he says it’s still at my house and I don’t ever know what he’s talking about. I go crazy every time this guy starts up because it’s always the same routine! If he sees me in thirty years it will still be: “Give me back my lobster pot.” So he came out and said, “Oh, come right in, Mr. Warhol,” and at first I didn’t recognize him and as soon as we got in the door he turned on me and said, “Where’s my lobster pot?” and I thought, Oh this just can’t be happening to me again. Oh no, oh no no no no no no…. Then the guy had to go back to the door and we got away.

posted 29 June 2009 in Excerpts. no comments yet

Taken two weeks ago, around the corner from my house, a short waddle from the puddle in the street where they had set up temporary residency.

posted 26 June 2009 in Photos. no comments yet

Another entry from the Andy Warhol Diaries, this one describing a dinner party.

Saturday, June 18, 1977

Mr. and Mrs. Scorsese, Martin’s parents, were there. They’re taller than he is, which is unusual, because kids are usually taller than their parents…. There was a Negro girl with a baby, too, and the guy with the beard turned out to be Bobby De Niro, and this Negro girl was his wife, Diahnne Abbott….

Roger Moore was wonderful and charming. He showed us what he called his three expressions: “worried,” “eyebrow up,” and “eyebrow down.” He’s been married three times, he’s married to an Italian woman now.

Bobby De Niro came in after dinner with an agent with funny glasses, didn’t say much. Marty’s parents were there really late.

Everybody got really really drunk. They were wanting me to make a toast, and I was so drunk I actually stood up and said something and it came out right I guess because everybody kept saying how moving it was, but I was so drunk I can’t remember what I said. Liza kept saying, “I’ll tell this to my grandchildren–and I’ve forgotten everything else!”

It was the best party. I stole a copy of the record album of New York, New York because Valentine wanted it, and Roger Moore had written backwards on it, and then I felt bad because they saw me do it.

posted 25 June 2009 in Excerpts. 1 comment

Lately, it’s been reported that Val Kilmer is considering running for governor of New Mexico. Far be it from me to meddle in the internal affairs of another state, and I suppose Kilmer would be a step up from the guy on the corner shouting at the passing traffic, but hey, Land of Enchantment: I think you can do better.

I interviewed Kilmer back in 2003 for Rolling Stone. I thought he was smart, funny, kind of nuts, and not really honest about his widespread reputation for bad behavior. Unfortunately, the interview got cut in half at the last minute, which left the more lurid stuff in place but meant that readers didn’t really get the full scope of Kilmer’s personality; I always regretted that. I’m glad to finally add the uncut version to the archives–you should check it out.

Kilmer wasn’t happy with the interview, particularly the part where he explained that he carried a gun because “I live in the homicide capital of the Southwest. Eighty percent of the people in my county are drunk.” After he discovered that his New Mexico neighbors weren’t pleased by this description, he had his publicist (a new one, he had fired the previous one) call me up and ask me to release a statement that Kilmer had just been joking. I explained that while I didn’t necessarily think Kilmer had been telling the truth, that wasn’t the same thing. His representatives made some noise about being quoted inaccurately, which ended when Rolling Stone offered to release the interview tapes. (Kilmer later claimed that he had been buffooning a country hick when he answered that question; if so, it was a piece of satire so subtle as to be invisible.)

Soon after, the magazine got five letters from directors who had movies coming out later that year starring Kilmer, all attesting as to what a wonderful guy he was; clearly, he had leaned on them all. David Mamet wrote the cleverest one, finishing his testimonial “I would like to forestall possible cynics by categorically denying that my support for Kilmer contains an element of advertising for our film, Spartan, which also stars Derek Luke and William H. Macy, and which is due for an early 2004 release from Warner Bros.”

A few months later, Kilmer was a guest on The Daily Show. When that appearance was over, Stewart summed it up well: “That’s the craziest good-looking man I’ve ever met.”

To read the story, click here.

posted 23 June 2009 in Archives, Articles. 6 comments

Taken, like the Squid vs. Whale picture from a few weeks back, on a trip to the Museum of Natural History in New York City; I then had fun playing with the settings in iPhoto.

posted 19 June 2009 in Photos. no comments yet