RIP Michael Jackson

What a sad week it has been in Hollywood. First Ed McMahon, Johnny Carson's sidekick on the Tonight Show, who then went onto host his own show Star Search and launched many young careers passed on. It was not too much of a shock as he was 86 and had been in hospital fighting pneumonia for awhile.

Then on Wednesday night I heard that last rites had been given to Farrah Fawcett, a 62 year old actress who has been courageously and valiantly fighting cancer for the past few years and she died early Thursday morning (June 25). Again, this was not too much of a shock as it has been reported the last few weeks that her time was coming near and the poor lady had fought such a good fight for so long so it wasn't really a shock for her to be passing on. Very sad but not a shock.

I went out for a bit yesterday afternoon and came home to my email box being flooded with emails that Michael Jackson had died. At first it was quite unbelievable. He was only 50 years old...he was going to be doing a 50 concert "come back" tour in England next month. How could he possibly be in my email messages as being dead? But it is true, the Legendary Pop Icon has died. Now this death is a shock. I grew up listening to Michael. I remember seeing him on TV when he was just a little boy. I remember him crooning ABC and I was especially fond of a song he sang named "Ben". Such a sweet song as long as you didn't know it was about a rat... Thinking back, the last vinyl record I ever bought was Thriller. By 1982 I was busy raising my first son and pregnant with my second and for many years there after, I didn't even really know records existed....but I did know about Thriller...I loved it then and I still do now. Last year I was in a swap on one of my doll loops and we got to talking about which recording artists we liked and I mentioned I always loved Michael Jackson's Thriller. I was so surprised when my swap gift arrived and in it was the 25th anniversary edition CD and DVD of Thriller. As we no longer have record players, it meant I could enjoy an old favorite again. And I did not long ago. Now with Michael passing on, I went looking for the old vinyl recording. And I still have it. It wasn't played much, I didn't have time in those days and didn't have a record player in later days but I held onto the album all these years anyways. Personally, I always liked Michael Jackson. I could never quite understand what possessed such a good looking young man to turn his face into such a plastic surgery nightmare mess....but then he probably had hoped for a better result when he did it. But why he did it in the first place is a mystery to me. And watching him over the years it always struck me what a sad and lonely person he seemed to be. And what a sad early life he had with no childhood. But he was such a talent and he left such a wonderful legacy to the world. So many of today's artist's try to emulate his style of dancing. No one does it quite like Michael though. His music video of Billy Jean was finally allowed to be shown on MTV, who in those days did not present black performers on their shows apparently and it was an instant hit, which allowed other black recording artists to be shown on their shows as well. In death I see everyone everywhere saying such nice things about him and how much they thought of him but on one CNN report yesterday, I saw one person in his inner circle make the comment "Where were all these people yesterday?" (meaning Wednesday before he died). It kind of summed up the poor man's life. It seems as though he had to die for everyone to say nice things about him. How sad, how tragic, it is too bad he isn't here to hear all these nice tributes, maybe he wouldn't have been such a sad and lonely person if they had come sooner. Rest in Peace, Michael.