Showing posts with label michael jackson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label michael jackson. Show all posts

6/24/10

NEWS

The King Is Dead, Long Live the King!

The 2010 FIFA World Cup tournament here in South Afrika has in a way overshadowed the first anniversary of the King of Pop, Michael Jackson's death. The King died last year from what has been claimed by not only conspiracy theorists but also prosecutors to be an overdose of prescription pills. Well, we know by now that his doctor has been charged with 'involuntary' manslaughter - for those in these Southern shores it's something similar to culpable homicide.

Just this week US tabloid magazines claimed that the King died being financially broke. It is interesting how much 'locked' potential people have while they are still alive. I mean, in most cultures, recently in Black culture there is this tendency whereby family members take out policies and have their unwell members as beneficiaries. I'm not that schooled in this but I guess it's similar to the fact that if I die the policy holder reaps massive rewards, which is what happens when the bearer dies as well.

So, you have these family members who live in squalor for the better part of their lives, die broke but enrich those who remain behind. The testimony of money making serious rounds starts showing when the memorial service has a catering company pushing invoices, there is bottled water distributed to mourners and the PAY PER HOUR pastor whose charisma is now called - in hip-hop circles 'swagger'.

Then on the funeral day you will see the dome blue or black casket, the shiny hearse, the black convoy and the expensive procession made up of Gucci suits and Louis Vittone handbags. The graveyard is characterised by Blackberry phones and people Facebooking what is happening to their friends at home.

Then the poor sod is buried and on Monday his/her ID and Death Certificate are a contest. Some relatives who never contributed to the medical bill and the funeral want to have access to the documents to claim their multi-million rand policy payouts. You live poor, die poor at a government hospital but get buried like a king.

Okay, so they say that Michael Jackson made R1 billion in one year of his death. That's bloody $100 million. No one is saying exactly how that happened. Some are claiming sales of his music from his massive catalogue. He owns the Beatles catalogue which he had not exploited by the time of his death. If the King has made a bloody billion before that one wonders how much was the King really worth when he passed away. Is it possible that he was the richest broke cat of all times?

Elvis Presley, another King and Michael's former father-in-law is still coining it decades after he expired. How Elvis manages to be relevant beats me. All I've heard is that the sod only performed once out of the United States of America and his music is as available as water in Saudi Arabia. 'Always on my Mind' is the one most known because it has been sucked to the bone. We know he was the Bobby Brown of the '60s - literally.

But then this post was about remembering the King. And so, the King has been remembered - one year on


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7/1/09

ANALYSIS

The Day The Story Died

When you see a bunch of journalists looking dejected don’t ever be stupid enough to think that maybe one of their own died – maybe a Rupert Murdock or Larry King. I doubt if they’ll ever cry if such happened. They never did when the Bang-Bang Club disintegrated.

In this world there are only two things that journalists dread – a deadline and the death of a story. A deadline is every media person’s internal opium that urges him to work harder or else he will miss it. It’s a bus to heaven, it's adrenalin.

To a journalist a deadline is like the last train out of a park station – you miss it you are stuck. They can bear missing everything (including coming during coitus) but not a deadline.

The second fear is when a story dies. How does a story die without ending you might want to know? A story dies when you allege that the minister (at national or in the Western Cape) used taxpayer’s money to buy a luxury Mercedes Benz and even corroborate your story by asking his PA who swears to god that she was with him when the transaction was sealed, his former driver who says “YEAH!”, that security guard at Rondebosch who says he saw it for the first time on June 30, the leader of the opposition who says she has dealership documents to support the sale, and the minister’s spokesperson who says he can’t comment on his boss’ personal ‘shenanigans’. Wow, you have a killer story of how the minister who earns R70 000 a month managed to buy a car costing a million at a time when the Credit Act limits how much of his money can be spent on luxuries and the global recession is on the rampage.

And then your shrewd editor rejects the draft and urges you to get bank records of the transaction plus check the Registrar of Member’s Interest and viola, the muthafucka actually used the credit facility afforded all executive council members to purchase the car and it has been declared. Apparently you discover that the credit facility allows him to get a car worth R1.1 million but he went for a measly million. And yeah, it was taxpayer money, and yeah he went with his PA and a driver.

Then a twist, apparently he was bonking the PA who he forced to do an abortion two months ago then dumped and she’s got a vendetta, the opposition leader requested the same allowance and was denied, the driver was reprimanded for using the minister’s car to transport marijuana since protocol dictates that it is not searched at roadblocks and the border and the poor security guard acted in good faith.

Now, why am I telling you all these? It’s because my friend saw a lot of hacks outside the Jackson family home, some sobbing and sitting their Versace bottoms on pavements and mistakened their fake crocodile tears for emotion and pain at the death of Michael Jackson, Peter Pan, The Gloved One, MoonWalker, Wacko Jacko, Lehlanya etc.

No ways, some of those fake mourners were dedicated entertainment journos whose beat (where you are deployed) was Michael Jackson – and with his death their biggest story died – and probably their beats will follow as well. So, don’t be fooled, journalists have no heart, when they see you they see a story and nothing else – once they have milked you dry they move to the next source.

PS. I’m a journo so be careful how you interact with me. I might quote you one day

6/29/09

TRU

King Peter Pan’s Unofficial Autopsy Results – The Michael Jackson Eulogy!

I don’t want to pour cold water (given that it’s Winter and it’s cold already) over the recent euphoria surrounding the death of pop musician Michael Jackson by making jokes about the deceased. Yeah, for real, Michael is dead and his bigger-than-life gimmicks are gone with him. Never again shall he need to put on funny masks and hats at a time when Swine Flu is not yet an epidemic; never again shall he need to throw a peace sign everytime a camera clicks as if he was a Golani Bridage corporal as his tank passes a UN monitored check-point in Southern Lebanon.

Michael is finally gone and with him went his undying quest to be everything he was not destined to be. Unfortunately even at death he can't be Peter Pan. First; the young boy has always suffered unrequited love and an adult aura that is just too unacceptable for kids. Since eleven-years old pleading with ‘baby’ to give him ‘one more chance’ only for baby to marry him for two years and unlike his wish to produce a genius who will fuse Elvis Presley and him – nothing came out. Michael became a divorcee.

Michael, it is understood that as a kid who never really went to school like all of us always thought genetics worked along his narrow interpretation of biotic understanding– as if suppose I marry the daughter of Larry King me and her stand a big chance of producing a hotshot media personality. Nobody told Michael that genes don’t function according to our whim – you have more odds stacked against you to inherit cancer and diabetes from your mother than her guitar playing skills - another such punk was Lauryn Hill marrying a failed Marley hoping to produce Bob Hill. And poor Michael went ahead and married Lisa-Marie Presley only to bore her with his untold bedroom antics; somebody please leak Michael’s Sex Tape to Vivid!

Michael wanted to be a white person since he realised that he was not Diana Ross and that MTV preferred putting on heavy rotation videos from white artists to blacks at the time. He had seen a few Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday and Nat King Cole videos but scores of Rolling Stones and ABBA. His obsession to be bleached was a business move that went horribly wrong.

Sometimes I wonder where was Motown’s Barry Gordy through this entire morass? Okay, it’s Gordy we talking about who was where he was when Marvin Gaye bled through his nostrils.

Maybe Michael aspired to be white since he always saw his mentor Quincy Jones with white chicks. But whatever drove Michael along that route will never be known, lest the root of his life-long sadness. The nigger just couldn’t be Caucasian regardless of multiple plastic surgeries. Guitarist Carlos Santana said some time ago that success comes with its own hiccups. He said that after those screams, those autographs and euphoria, you are alone in your hotel suite and those walls just can’t hug you, your cars can’t love you, your millions can’t talk to you when you are lonely.

Even Lauryn Hill once spoke about some of the richest people she knew who wanted to commit suicide.

Yeah, the ‘King of Pop’ who aspired to dance on the moon since his Thriller days finally has an opportunity to be a King for real. Where he’s at there’s no work so his credentials alone guarantee that Michael finally became king, at death – on our side. Funny.

However we need to also be empathetic to the Gloved One. We are not him which means we can’t walk a mile in his size 11 shoes. At the same time we must remember that while he was Pied Piper R.Kelly role model, when Kelly was accused of sexual impropriety with a minor he let the courts decide and never settled out of court with the accuser. Some armchair analysts say such a move in Kelly’s part means that he had nothing to hide and wanted everything placed in the open while good old Michael settled out of court because he wanted his moment of wacky testosterone surge to be buried under a load of dollars.

Imagine if President Jacob Zuma decided to settle his own rape accusations with Khwezi out of court. I doubt that he would be occupying Mahlambandlopfu today.

So, we’ll never know if Michael did it but since dead people can not sue or be sued we can start to speculate why he would always love walking around with burly Marine-type men holding umbrellas for him and sitting on wheelchairs? For the life of me I am scared of wheelchairs even when it means they are just the means to being admitted to hospital. Something says to me if I acquaint myself with the machine I might be inviting some handicap. I know this sound cheap but not cheaper than Michael’s gimmicks which are snapped for free.

But for Michael to love wheelchairs to the point that when the paparazzi snapped him sitting on one and raised a flag about his health his publicists had to dig deep to convince them that he loves traveling incognito in wheelchairs leaves a lot of questions than answers.

Whatever emerges and what can be observed out of the life and times of Michael is that he was a very sad and broken man. He never really had friends apart from his legion of publicists, biographers, fans, Nelson Mandela, personal photographers, PAs, brothers, sisters, mother and father. He never trusted people enough to get close to them since he always thought they wanted something from him. He was never a 50-Deep type. Who the fuck did he think he was – some drug that everyone wanted to get high on?

He surrounded himself with naïve young boys. Of all people, including alleged long-time ago girlfriend Lisa Bonnet Michael married his nurse and ‘fathered’ two children with her. He then fathered a third surrogate child whose mother we will soon find out as lawyers sling it out in the LA High court. Very few people know if Michael drank alcohol or smoked purple. What people know is that he loved his prescription drugs as a cocktail and often drug cocktails clog the heart and bring about heart attacks – Marilyn Monroe opened our eyes. Was Billy Jean about her?

There’s not much science involved in analysing heart attacks; if your heart is overloaded with all the carbon dioxide it beats very fast, which means more blood or rather oxygen released into the system, which means you sweat, which means you become dehydrated and the blood becomes thicker and has more difficulty traveling through your arteries, which means if at that time you are incapacitated by another drug your heart gets clogged and you suffer cardiac failure and die.

I heard people in Harlem and all over the world saying when the King (of Pop) died a part of them died as well. The same people cried when the King (of Rock and Roll Elvis Presley) died as well and claimed a part of them died with him. Some of those career-mourners cried twelve-years ago when the King (of New York Notorious BIG) died too and claimed a part of them was silenced under those bullets in LA.

I saw people on television crying as if they have just lost their balls. They cried the same way when Jimi Hendrix died. I saw them crying when Janis Joplin passed on. I swear I heard them crying fifteen years ago when Kurt Cobain spilled his own brains.

I read a piece written by another King (of Kwaito music) Arthur Mafokate saying he was shattered by Michael’s demise. My advice would be ‘go ahead and be shattered, he is not coming back folks. I loved Michael too as a human being and musical genius, but not deep enough to cry, let alone stop rolling my blunt because I miss him’. I ask people who trusted Michael with all their heart to tell me, ‘if you could unscrew your dick and leave it with someone for five days while you went somewhere, would you trust yours in the hands of Michael, do you think your pussy or dick will still be in a state you left it in with Michael if you did so? The question is largely that do you think the dude could be trusted? '

I don’t know. But truly on June 25 – indeed the music died.