Le Michael Saga

I didn’t post about Michael Jackson. The death hysteria, the awful but funny jokes, and now the ‘revelations’ of drug abuse, baldness, who the real fathers are and of course, the nefarious ‘duck butter’…. blimey.

You don’t want to hear about how obsessed I was once with MJ – lets just say 1500 posters in my room and performing his dance routines in public (omg, I confessed at long last) – but by the time I grew out of it he was well into his decline.

I want to hear about all the crazy shit, I want scandal and I want funeral riots and his creepy father to have him cryogenically frozen but I’m a girl of the 21st century and nothing’s fucking sacred so I must know everything!!!! Tear his life apart, feed it to us braying hyenas!

Meth-head Grasshopper

But I also want to remember him the way I adored him when I was young: mega-talented, capable of making me cry and jump up and down like a meth-head grasshopper, and yes, even vaguely handsome. Of spending an entire summer running down to the video store to re-rent Moonwalker, to buy Smash Hits and TV Hits, steal copies of Bravo from my German lessons at school, and spend hours cutting out the pictures and making fan-defying collages that my parents rolled their eyes at.

Farce

So here’s a reminder of MJ, moments before his whole life descended into farce and kiddiefiddling charges, when despite all the surgery and the dated, naff wardrobe was threatening to make him passe for the 90s, that he was for the final time truly utterly motherfucking great. Herb Ritts, Naomi Campbell, sepia film, and a good stylist = In The Closet.