The King is Dead

Yeah I know, no one needs to read another Michael Jackson reaction/tribute article but this is a major pop-culture event so I've go to write something about it.

First off this is huge because he is/was a prominent celebrity of my generation. Take a step back babies of the 80s and realize this - our celebrities are starting to die. Now of course you'll always have your "die young types", your River Phoenix's, Kurt Cobain's, Chris Farley's, but Michael Jackson died outside of one of the typical overdose, car crash, suicide, etc. celebrity cliches. The people we grew up watching and thinking were cool are old and getting older, hell Guns N' Roses has been on (good) classic rock stations for almost a decade, and they're soon going to be the celebrity deaths the world is talking about. It's a bit worrisome when you use it to look back at yourself and realize you're not a kid anymore.

Okay now for the historical pop-culture placement. Michael Jackson was the King of Pop. No one can take that away from him - hear me Justin Timberlake? Usher? (queue video clip from the Boondocks where Martin Luther King Jr. tells Usher "Michael Jackson is not a genre of music!") Thriller is still to this day the best selling album of all time, and thanks to the music industry being a bunch of jerks it seems like that will never change as tech savy teens find new ways to "obtain" music. Michael Jackson was the front man of the great '70s motown group, the Jackson 5 with his brothers, then went on to the most successful solo career ever, his Pepsi ads in the 80s were classic, he married Elvis' daughter, was accussed of molesting little boys, had a 3-D movie adventure in DisneyWorld, was controversial for grabbing his crotch and wearing one white glove, starred in a music based movie - Moonwalker (I'm tentative to call it a "musical") and the subsequent video game (which was awesome), lent his speaking voice (but not his singing voice) to a classic episode of the Simpsons, dangled his baby off a balcony, actually changed his skin from black to white, outbid Paul McCartney for the Beatles catalog and then licensed their songs for commercials, was a prominent child rights and health advocate via the Heal the World Foundation, had Jon Landis direct a 14 minute long video for Thriller and on top of it all amazed everyone with the moonwalk, which has to be the most attempted to impersonate dance move in the history of humankind.

In short, the man is a pop-culture legend. For all his good and evil (which I believe was the result of a tortured soul thanks to the well documented abuse at the hands of the Jackson Family patriarch - I mean, look at that family, all the kids are screwed up. Michael as the youngest and most talented, probably also got it the worst), it's up to us now to decide how to remember him. It shouldn't be too difficult though, his music and his (dance) moves will live on forever. Don't believe me? When your kids get to be around age 5 show them the music video for Billie Jean and be ready to scrub up scuff marks as they try to moonwalk across the kitchen floor.

Personally, I'd like to think that the Michael Jackson we all loved still exists, somewhere out there.