My Remembrance....

When a major event takes place I often wonder if posting my take on the issue will matter to a hill of beans. Then I remember……that although I do hope this blog brings at least a little speck of entertainment to a few close family and friends, it’s really an outlet for me to express myself whenever I feel the need, in the manner I choose. So…I wanna talk about Michael Jackson.

I’ve always been a fan. I’ve never been a screaming, crying, wanna be his girlfriend/marry him/fantasize about him fan…but a solid fan all the same. I've loved almost every hit he had and made sure I saw the ‘World Premiere’ of each accompanying video on MTV. I knew he was a ground-breaker, knew he had something that no one else had or could even come close to and I knew that he was far and away the pinacle of talent in many forms.

Like many people, I thought he was super cute when he was young and handsome up through the Thriller era – and for me, still good looking a while after that. I always kinda liked the ‘glove thing’ – if anyone could pull off a style like that, Michael could. I thought his jackets – the red one, the military ones with the gold-fringed shoulder thingies, were cool and even though his pants turned super high-water, he had those awesome glittery socks to make them work! However, also like many people, I didn’t understand the chimp thing, the gradual & continuous skin lightening and the changes in so many facial features. I never ‘bought’ the sleep chamber story, never really believed he tried to buy the Elephant Man’s bones although I guess he coulda and I never, for even one second thought he ever laid even one finger upon a child in an unacceptable manner.

See, it was always clear to me that he was more or less robbed of a childhood – that although he always seemed to project love and happiness, that a part of him was at least a little sad inside because of that fact. So it was also no surprise that he loved to laugh and have fun in more childlike ways than other adults – and certainly no surprise that he wanted to make sure that all children, everywhere, felt love and were taken care of. He was just so very full of love and kindness.

What I’ve never really understood is some people’s intense dislike and/or hate for Michael Jackson. For a man who always showed such vulnerability, how could someone have so much hate toward him? I heard a gal call in on a radio show after he’d died. She said, “I despised the man” with such hate and cruelty in her voice I got scary goosebumps. Hate is such an ugly thing. Why can’t people be more accepting – are they jealous of those who are so successful? Are they so repulsed by an image that they can’t see past it? How can you not give someone their dues for the brass rings they’ve attained? I never cared for James Brown, but I 100% knew and respected that he was the Godfather of Soul! Didn’t really like Chuck Berry but he had a couple of tunes that rocked my socks off! Folks need to get past the hate and see others for who they really are and what they’ve contibuted to all of our lives!

Seeing the live rehersal clips from the day before Michael died….I can’t help but think he woulda totally rocked this ‘comeback’ (I prefer to maybe call it a reappearance – I mean, he never left...he was just inactive, right?)! I thought he sounded awesome, looked good and moved as magically as he always had. I do believe he had such bad insomnia that he felt he really needed drugs to help him sleep (even if he didn’t really need them and had just actually become dependent) and that the shit-for-brain doctors who should've known better than to administer the sort of drugs they did, broke every ethical doctor’s code and should not only lose their licenses but be prosecuted for having done so.

I feel Michael’s death was a stupid, tragic and very preventable loss. I think the admiration the world is expressing toward him in his death would’ve surged just the same as soon as he reemerged on stage in his “This Is It’ tour and all could've been so wonderfully awesome instead of horribly sad.

He impacted my life from age 4 to 44. My daughter doesn’t ‘get him’ or even much like him. My husband, while he doesn’t really care for him, does like some of his music and certainly respects him for who he was and what he did. I can’t beat the way I feel about Michael Jackson into them and I don’t want to (well…I DO want to, but forcing people into a ‘feeling’ is very unsatifying, really). So, I’ll just treasure, remember and miss him on my own.

I thought you were super awesome, Michael. It's stil hard to believe you're really, really gone. Rest In Peace