Farrah and MJ.

I don't often think about death and when I do it's more likely to be along the lines of What are we going to do in the event of a zombie uprising? or Who will we eat first when our plane goes down? The questions about mortality and the bigger picture rarely get consideration.

I thought I felt something this morning...about the Shaq trade to the Cavs. Then news of Farrah's passing came. I'm not a Charlie's Angels fan--bit before my time--but there were two things about Farrah Fawcett that I definitely admired. 1. She was hot. Even in her later years and 2. She was kind of nutty but seemed to enjoy it. She had a positive outlook on life even near the end, I thought, from the snippets I'd hear from her. Even terminal and with a kid in jail and Ryan O'Neal as a life partner, she was far less cynical and jaded than I am.

MJ's been taken away from me. I really loved this guy. I think back as far as I can remember. Childhood. This is who I think of in my early concepts of what fame and talent and pure 'star quality' are.

I remember being 4 or 5 and having a Michael Jackson shirt, a small notepad (yellow sweater vest and bowtie, you remember) and Thriller on a cassette tape. Overhearing my Uncle talk about the Pepsi accident--I worried about Michael. I wondered about Bubbles. A television appearance was a major event and I'd even be allowed to stay up later just to see it because no child should be deprived of seeing the Moonwalk and the glove and whatever surprises he'd bring this time. I didn't have cable as a kid (or as an adult) so I missed the Thriller video on MTV but I remember the buzz it created at school the morning after. Even as I got older, Michael Jackson had the staying power to come along with me. My parents would tell me that he was famous before, when he was a little kid. My cousins showed me old reruns of the Jackson 5 animated show. Watched the Wiz with the kids next door. Watched Moonwalker with a school friend and pored over the photos she took of him when they happened to be at Disneyland at the same time checking out the newly opened Toon Town. She also had a nearly-lifesize cardboard cutout of MJ in his BAD pose in her bedroom. It was creepy, but I wanted one too.

Oh, how I loved the Bad album and Captain EO, but it was nothing compared to that school friend who was a major fan. She was the hardest hit when the allegations came out. She began to resent him. I think she beheaded the cutout? I could be wrong about that one. I know it ultimately went in the garbage, which is a shame because I still wanted it. I didn't really buy into the pedo stories and the other stuff didn't matter to me. So what if he's gay or straight. So what if he bleaches his skin like you say. He likes changing his face--who cares. Even at a young, inexperienced time in my life, I understood, This man is clearly mentally ill and I wish he could get the help he needs, but I know he cannot or will not. I generalize and heap a lot of the blame onto Joe, Katherine, the Five, and the stress of being the untouchable Michael Jackson. He is not mortal--turns out he was.

I wasn't crazy about the music that followed Bad (tough to follow my favorite MJ album even with Dangerous and its fabulous music videos). He married a Presley. I didn't believe the molestation allegations, but I couldn't ignore them. Michael was suddenly wildly different than the man we grew up with. But, he was growing up too. I accepted this. With each new puzzle piece you just learned to accept it. Oh, he's going to start having kids now. With a woman from his dermatologist office. Okay.

SenorCrane and I spent HOURS in college, watching/rewatching History on Film and at least once a week, would play the hits at top volume and fantasize about what his personal life must be like these days.

He won't let us see his kids' faces. That's sad for the kids, really. Oh, now he's dangling one of them over the railing...Now, should we rewatch the full version of the Bad video or Scream?

All that other stuff that I pushed aside for years so that we could just remember Michael when he was sexy and still black and still had a nose, I realized that I appreciated that too. He was just too talented and fun and unique to not accept the entire package. Who but Michael Jackson would piss away a fortune on an amusement park in his front yard, exotic animals, and art that celebrated himself in the creepiest possible ways? Enhancements made to the face and body to the point of disfigurement? It's like he was constantly finding new ways to freak me out and it seemed so effortless! Who but Michael Jackson would consider Bahrain a haven? That Liza/David Gest wedding photo with MJ and Liz is still a gem.

This afternoon I was talking to Otamar about it. Very briefly. He sent me a link to a recording of the song Ben. I nearly cried.

Here's some artwork from the Ben vinyl (Momma Empirical just happens to have this in her collection) to help us all remember that some of the good from the beginning must have carried over all these years until the end even if you couldn't see it anymore.