no need to wonder anymore Chris Tucker, Michael Jackson was a p-i-m-p.
did you see the way he rolled into his own funeral? did you see all of his pall-bearers wearing one of his signature gloves? did you see the, as Wallace put it, "bomb" casket he had? did you see that each of the four major news stations, CNN, MTV, BET and any other cable station worth a damn (including our local Spanish TV station, translator-induced voiceover included) televised his funeral? i mean, wow.
i'm going to get my sarcastic comments out of the way right now... comment 1: hmmm, i thought i was watching a funeral for Michael Jackson, not Mariah Carey's voice... comment 2: how much does Chris Brown regret the Rihanna incident now? he was blacklisted from the BET tribute and reduced to just being in the audience today. good job dude... comment 3: Kobe Bryant? really? was Tiger Woods busy?... comment 4: MLKIII apparently did not inherit his father's speaking skills... comment 5: makes sense for a Texas representative to be speaking at a California funeral for a pop superstar who was born in Indiana... comment 6: your sunglasses look ridiculous Usher... comment 7: Shaheen Who?
sarcasm aside, it was a very good service and well worth the five or so hours that i spent watching CNN today. i think that this thing was dragged out long enough that any tears that might have wanted to flow were dried out days ago so i was just able to watch and enjoy. i was able to watch and enjoy beautiful performances by Lionel, Jennifer Hudson, Stevie Wonder and John Mayer, i was able to watch and enjoy great speeches by Smokey, Brooke Shields and Michael's brothers and daughter and i was able to watch and enjoy the numerous tributes and montages. it was great. it was beautiful. it was fitting for a King.
so before you go MJ, me and your music have something to say to you:
Dear Michael,
We really wished you could have beat it. We wished that you would have lived to celebrate with Dirty Diana, Ben and Billie Jean for one more day.
But God decided to take you home and since death isn't a black or white issue, we're left to ask if you were gone too soon. but you did leave us with your legacy and a ridiculous amount of memorable songs and hits so all I can say is thanks. do you remember the time when you were a thriller to the entire world? and although I'm sure you'll never know the way you make me feel, you never failed to rock my world. Thanks for reminding us to look at the man in the mirror and for trying to heal the world.
sorry about that P.Y.T. Mariah Carey's performance at your memorial but hopefully soon she's out of my life. sorry about some of the haters spewing things about you over the past week, trust me, whenever i heard the negative comments i wanted to scream and have the haters just leave me alone. but, guess what, i don't care if you were sometimes off the wall. i don't care if you were sometimes bad and i don't care if you were allegedly a smooth criminal. i just can't stop loving you MJ and i will continue to blast your music whenever i get the opportunity. maybe its simply human nature to feel a connection with someone who you've never met, but you were my homie Mike.
heaven can wait for me but hopefully, one day we'll all meet up. will you be there? you are not alone Michael because i am sure that there are a bunch of people up there wanting to rock with you. hey, but be sure to pace yourself a bit so when your earthly fans who wanna be startin' somethin' get to heaven, we can go tear up that big club in the sky so badly that we leave some blood on the dance floor.
that's all i've got to say Mike, once again, thanks for the memories.
sincerely,
danny
so i've decided that if she wanted to, Fergie could rule the world.
yes, the woman who first taught us how to spell the word "kids" in the 80s and again taught us how to spell with some of her adult songs, has a grasp on our iPod and not even the death of Michael Jackson can break it.
for those of you who haven't been paying much attention to the news in the past month, Michael Jackson passed away and in the 10 days or so since his death, the sales of his music have skyrocketed. it was almost like he was the most popular artist in the world. almost. because no matter how many hits Michael Jackson had (and he had quite a few), he can't knock off the Black Eyed Peas.
at the end of last week, Michael Jackson owned three of the top five spots on the iTunes' top-selling list. the other two slots, including the No. 1 position, went to the Peas. as i write this, BEP owns the top two slots while Michael's Man In The Mirror had dropped to No. 7 and Billie Jean rounded out the top ten. yes, more people want this song in their iPods than this song. congrats America. U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!
the thing that annoys me the most is that the second song on the current list (and the third song last week) is Boom Boom Pow. yes, even though Wikipedia told me that this song was released on March 10, Boom Boom Pow is still selling like hotcakes.
now i enjoy the BEPs as much as anyone else (they rap happy) but c'mon who doesn't own this song? i bought the song like two months ago and i thought i was slow. either the Peas have $1,000 budgeted each day for iTunes purchases or the same people who are just purchasing their songs are also just learning how to do the Macarena. i'm honestly shocked that My Humps hasn't cracked the top 20 lately.
so sorry, Michael, even though you have 13 Grammys, 13 No. 1 singles and you looked hella fly in gangsta attire, you were just handed a Perez Hilton-esque butt-kicking by the Peas. seriously, Fergie, wasn't it enough that you had to ruin the Thriller 25th anniversary CD? can't you give the man some love on the charts? ugh. yip, i think this is a good example of why other countries hate us.
but MJ, we appreciate and love you in the TYC so play us out.
the big question going into this season of the Real World was if it would be more like the great Brooklyn season or more like the Hollywood season. well, we have gotten to know the Cancun staff for a whole two episodes and we've got our answer... yea, this season is going to be awful. seriously, bail. get out. now. i would but there is nothing else on TV on Wednesdays and i like having other people's issues make me feel better about myself.
let recap the castmates: - Jasmine: the sista has already used the term: "because i would get kicked out of this ho real quick." the early leader for the award of my favorite housemate.
- Derek: he hasn't been on the show enough for me to gauge how much i will eventually hate him.
- CJ: spent the first episode cuddling with Emilee, which led to a break-up with his girlfriend. then spent the second episode trying to get down Jonna's pants. my guess is by episode eight, he's plowed through all four girl roommates and has fooled around with a couple of the guys as well.
- Emilee: she reminds me of Parisa from Sydney but she isn't hot enough to pull off being that obnoxious.
- Joey: he spit in the girls' tacos and they broke his guitar. now instead of listening to his crappy music, we'll have to listen to him talk. yea, this is what we in the business call a no-win situation.
- Jonna: playing the role of the "i-have-a-boyfriend-who-i-love-but-i-am-going-to-put-myself-into- 4,000-000-situations -that-may-cause-me-to-cheat" roommate. and i am not sure why people keep saying she's the hottest roommate because she is battling Ayiiia for the No. 4 slot on my power rankings.
- Bronne: he makes out with 50-year-old women. i think he might be the guy you invite to hang out so the next day when you are trying to rationalize what you did, you can be like "well, i wasn't as bad as Bronne." every group needs one of those guys.
- Ayiiia: you would have thought that MTV would have learned with Greg that the internet casting thing was a bad idea. instead, they went and cast Ayiiia who is.... just... ugh. she's terrible. if i am running into an building and there a two elevators - one with Ayiiia and one with 16 Klansmen, i am going to jump in with the guys wearing pillowcases and just hope that it's a quick ride too whatever floor i'm going to. i mean, she has three consecutive Is in her name! doesn't that just spell terriiible?
so there you go, we are two episodes in and i already hate myself for continuing to watch this show. luckily, i am watching these eight morons so i've been able to funnel that self-hate towards people who, i hope, i never meet. win-win.
as you can see, Maria has a new tramp stamp.
yes folks, i am halfway to being a new Texas driver. after spending 90-some dolla bills on a state inspection and another $177.something on vehicle registration, i was able to take home my snazzy new Texas license plates yesterday. and to be honest with you, i felt rather dirty putting them on my car. i feel like i betrayed my Montana and i don't feel original anymore. instead of people who have to put up with my driving saying "look at that asshole driving from Montana", people will now just simply say "look at that asshole driving." sad day.
now i have to get my Texas driver's license but that might take a while since i had to register my vehicle first before i could get my license. i also have to provide a birth certificate, a voter's registration card, my Montana license, the names of my unborn children, a blood and/or semen sample and my collection of Fresh Prince of Bel Air DVDs. i am only partially lying here.
so yea, i am one step closer to being a Texan. better go buy that gun rack.
Michael Jackson? dead.
Ed McMahon? dead.
Farrah Fawcett? dead.
Billy Mays (of all people)? dead.
the moral of this story is that it is not a good week to be a celebrity. it is however a great week to be a governor of South Carolina.
if you didn't know, Mark Sanford is in hot water after having his extramarital affair outed this past week. yea, a Republican politician had an affair. shocker. but what made Sanford's affair so awesome is that he was caught after disappearing for a few days to go sex up his mistress. his office said he was hiking in the Appalachians while he was actually in South America.
now that is what i call a long-distance relationship. Sanford doesn't go the intern or transsexual hooker route, he goes to foreign countries to sleep around on his wife. it actually seems like a brilliant idea, when you think about it. who is going to leak this to the press? who is this lady going to tell when he breaks it off? how is the National Enquirer going to find out? the only problem was (aside from abandoning the state you're supposed to be running for half a week) was the guy managed to get caught in the airport while returning from his abroad tryst. if he had the power to have his staff concoct an excuse for his disappearance for four days, you'd think that he'd have a plan to be snuck back into South Carolina without giving caught. somebody needs to work on their playa skills.
but, then again, South Carolina is the state that produced this awesome-ness so maybe it's unfair for us to assume that they'd be able to make a rational decision.
so anyways, Sanford becomes a headline and people are calling for his job and his political career is in jeopardy. and then, the celebrities started dying left and right. as i write this blog, there is not a single headline on CNN.com's homepage about the governor and his summer vacation. nobody knows (or cares about) Mark Sanford. us Americans do care a lot who is going to be the pitchman for OxiClean now.
in the past TYC has honored these political scandals by inducting the mistress into the Big Board of Beauties (see: Ashley Alexandra Dupre). now unfortunately, Sanford's main squeeze is only decent looking so that won't work. i was thinking about inducting Miss Teen South Carolina but, even though she's college-aged now, she was competing in a Miss Teen competition when she became famous so i'd just feel like a creeper. then i Wikipedia'd the state and realized that Andie McDowell appears to be the only celebrity from the state with a vagina so "no thanks" on that one. i then thought about doing a six degrees of separation from McDowell but that is going to take too much work.
so we're just going to instead induct Shakira and Christine Lakin of Step-by-Step fame and call it good.
why Shakira? because i used to have like five posters of her plastered on my dorm walls and Le texted me last night to remind me of her swell-ness. and while Shakira hasn't made any good music in like 46 years, there is no reason why we still can't revel in her hotness. why Christine Lakin? why not? Step-by-Step was a damn good show and Lakin is a Texas girl.
Lakin and Shakia are the first BBoB inductees of 2009. they join Thandie Newton, Jarah Mariano, Marion Cotillard, Michelle Williams, Lindsay Lohan, Hillary Clinton and Dupre in the most prestigious hall of fame in the cyber universe. recognize.
in honor of Mark Sanford, Ludacris, play us out.
alright, let's get to this.
yesterday was a somewhat sucky day for me. things with my family aren't great, its surprisingly impossible to get a driver's license in Texas, my bed broke and Vanessa, who has been like a big sister to me, is leaving and we had her going away Happy Hour. and that all happened to me before 3 p.m. when i headed to work since i was planning to go to V's downtown get-together at about 6.
so i'm just driving down i-35 and i got off the Riverside exit and, of course, i got stuck at the light. while chilling at the light and ignoring homeless people, i opened up my TwitterBerry and saw this disturbing update from the Statesman's twitter: "RT @ColonelTribune: My friends at the LA Times have more details on Michael Jackson's condition" with a link attached to it. i clicked on the link, read that MJ had gone into cardiac arrest and life seemingly slowed down for a couple minutes. i finished the drive to work and started getting text messages, first from MK, then from Robyn. i texted Ian, he texted back.
i got to work and sat at my desk as news broke that he had died. first TMZ (!?!) reported the news and then, like 45 minutes later, the supposedly legit news organizations got around to confirming the death. and just like that, Michael Jackson was dead at the age of 50.
first, i will touch on some comments my co-workers made. apparently in the 25 minutes after MJ's death, the newsroom turned into a comedy club and it was the place to be for Michael Jackson/kid jokes. Facebook was the home for some "Michael Jackson was a pedofile so I don't care about this death" comments. all i'll say is these jabs were all made by people who are seemingly in the same demographic so that says enough in itself about these jokesters. i will also suggest this timeless piece of advice: if you can't say something nice, you should probably just shut the fuck up.
it's really ironic that Michael Jackson died yesterday. as has been previously posted on this blog, i always thought the idea of mourning over a celebrity's death was a bit ridiculous. in fact, i was rolling my eyes throughout the day over the 20 Facebook statuses noting the passing of Farrah Fawcett, who had died earlier and was the centerpiece on many newspaper layout plans for all of 26 minutes.
then Michael died. it sucked. i became mopey and nearly cried. i received text messages of condolences and i sent some out too. my brother's football team walked out of their voluntary practice when they got the news.
it was just weird that he was gone. for all long as i can remember, i've been a fan of Michael Jackson music. i'm such a fan that i will, for some reason, defend the Invincible album. i, again for some reason, own the Thriller 25th anniversary CD that boasts the Fergie and Akon butcherings of such classics as Beat It and You Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'. in the summer of 2005, Ian and I threw a "He Beat It" party when Michael was acquitted of child molestation charges. growing up, i used to tape (yes, use a VCR) Michael Jackson performances and somewhere in the big blue house are tapes that contain the star-studded anniversary special and from a few years back and MJ's terribly awesome Moonwalker movie. on the iTunes, i own 37 Michael Jackson songs and you could probably make an argument that that's a small collection for a true MJ fan.
i mean, Michael was just a part of me. he was a part of the Team Black American culture. of the people cracking the MJ jokes and dishing out the hateration, not a single one of them was black. no, we were too busy at the Apollo and watching the music video marathons on MTV and BET. not to say that Michael's death didn't touch white people, in fact, i got my Thriller vinyl from the boyfriend of one of the biggest MJ fans i know and she's white.
granted, Michael definitely did some sketchy things later in his life and it was pretty easy to see in the Bashir documentary that he wasn't all there. say what you will about the child molestation charges but i'm giving Mike the benefit of the doubt on the second case and the first kid got paaaaaaaaaaid (like $20 million) so guilty or not, let's not shed any tears for him. but i'm also somewhat-convinced that OJ didn't do it (the first time) so, ya know, take that for what it's worth. but Michael could have murdered a gaggle of orphans in front of me and i would have given him a pass because, as Dave Chappelle so famously put it, he made Thriller... Thriller.
20 years from now, Michael isn't going to be remembered for Neverland, the molestation charges, the plastic surgeries or the marriage to the Presley daughter. do people remember Sam Cooke for his beautiful music or the crazy way he died? will people remember Jerry Lee Lewis for his Great Balls of Fire or the fact that he married his 13-year-old cousin? what's more associated with the Temptations? My Girl or the fact that their group was fronted in its glory days by a drug addict and had one of its alcoholic founders commit suicide?
it's the music that people will remember Michael for and it's his music that defined an entire generation and is still relevant today. go to any club today and watch the reaction of the patrons as the DJ switches from some crap 2009 song to Billie Jean. the place just lights up and everybody gets on the dance floor. that's how it is.
does life go on? of course. in fact, it didn't take long for the Facebook status updates to go from "RIP MJ" to the "TGIF"-theme. that's just how out society goes. i'm not saying that when June 25 rolls around next year, i'll automatically remember that it's the one-year anniversary of Michael Jackson's death. but i don't think that's what i want to remember. i want to remember Michael's genius and i want to remember his music. and that's what i'll do.
Michael Jackson, play us out.
i will blog more about this tomorrow but, in case you hadn't been by a TV/radio/computer/anybody today, Michael Jackson passed away today at the age of 50. in case you are a newcomer to this blog, TYC is a huge fan of MJ. and so while we gather our thoughts for tomorrow's post, i will leave you with this video. it isn't my favorite Michael Jackson song but, come on, who are we kidding? this is the best MJ video ever.
