image courtesy of Epic Records

Ever since this Michael Jackson story broke it has been difficult to steer clear of it…no matter how hard I try…not only the stories of his death and his odd life but his music is all over the place…not only on your typical music stations but on news stations, sports and everything in between.

So there I was, earlier today in Target to pick up some stuff and there was a single copy of the “Thriller 25th Anniversary Edition” on the shelf, that was both remastered, had additional tracks as well as a separate DVD of his top 4 videos (Billie Jean, Thriller, Beat It and his appearance on the Motown 25th Anniversary). I just had to pick it up…and to be honest, it is awesome. The tracks from the CD are incredible, the additional tracks are fun and the videos, especially the appearance on the Motown special were in a word incredible.

Ok…so I’m part of the hype…but what the heck…it’s great music!

Friday, June 26, 2009

He Knew.

Years ago Michael and I were having a deep conversation about life in general.

I can’t recall the exact subject matter but he may have been questioning me about the circumstances of my Fathers Death.

At some point he paused, he stared at me very intensely and he stated with an almost calm certainty, “I am afraid that I am going to end up like him, the way he did.”

I promptly tried to deter him from the idea, at which point he just shrugged his shoulders and nodded almost matter of fact as if to let me know, he knew what he knew and that was kind of that.

14 years later I am sitting here watching on the news an ambulance leaves the driveway of his home, the big gates, the crowds outside the gates, the coverage, the crowds outside the hospital, the Cause of death and what may have led up to it and the memory of this conversation hit me, as did the unstoppable tears.

FOR THE COMPLETE STORY CLICK HERE

Getty Images via nymag.com Daily Intel

I’m tired of reading and hearing about Michael Jackson and to a lesser extent Farah Fawcett…so I searched around for an interesting article about celebrities who have died on the same day and came aross this from nymag.com daily intel

Poor Farrah Fawcett. A month ago, People magazine’s Larry Hackett admitted to the Times that she only had one remaining chance for some friendly press:

“At this point, Farrah has to die,” he said. “It’s the only cover left for her.” Needless to say, she’s missed her chance. Having vanished from the headlines after Michael Jackson’s sudden demise, Farrah is just the latest to join a peculiar group: the Eclipsed Celebrity Death Club.

The classic ECD example is Groucho Marx, who passed away the same week as Elvis Presley, and thus missed out on a good week’s worth of TV tributes. But the easiest way for a famous person to vanish from the earth without so much as a blip is to follow a president of the United States. Ray Charles caught barely a moment’s coverage when he died in 2004, right in the middle of the weeklong blanket coverage of Ronald Reagan’s death and funeral. Same story for James Brown, who got some press but definitely ran second to Gerald Ford. (The only person who could square off against a dead head of state, it seems, was Mother Teresa. When she died a few days after Princess Diana, a good deal of the coverage tried to frame them as comparably angelic figures.) And don’t forget Alice Trillin-granted, not a worldwide celebrity, but a beloved figure to her husband Calvin’s thousands of New Yorker-­reading fans. While awaiting a heart transplant, she died on September 11, 2001, following the horrible deaths of thousands of New Yorkers. Most of her husband’s readers only learned about it many months later, when he published About Alice.

FOR THE COMPLETE STORY CLICK HERE