Uh-oh Michael Jackson has had a heart attack?

http://www.cnn.com/

who's heart?

(yeah, yeah, too easy)

he's dead

i mean, if the medics are doing CPR in the ambulance, that is a bad, bad sign

rip thriller

first sky saxon then farrah--bad things happen in threes

twitter is certain he's dead

in the tour van we were jamming some of the good cuts from 'invincible' and looking forward to a new record :/

In what appears to be an apparent suicide, musician Michael Jackson was pronounced dead as a result of cardiac arrest after consuming more than two-dozen sleeping pills.

Complete details are not yet available, as this story is still developing.

?!?

whoa

We've just learned Michael Jackson has died. He was 50.

Michael suffered a cardiac arrest earlier this afternoon and paramedics were unable to revive him.

Michael is survived by three children: Michael Joseph Jackson, Jr., Paris Michael Katherine Jackson and Prince "Blanket" Michael Jackson II.

Jackson had 13 number one hits during his solo career.

Story developing...

12th

Wow, first you hear the guy is holding up tour rehearsals by insisting on a choir composed of a precisely equal number of black, white, Asian and Latino children, all fluent in sign language. The next thing you hear is dead of a heart attack. :0

sky says tmz is reporting hes died.

omg

also shit, another great american tragedy rolls to an ignominious end :(

oh hell no

Drudge Siren confirms.

BBC is also quoting TMZ, so it's probably true.

And it is a proper tragedy, too, in the classical Greek sense. Surprised he didn't pry out his eyes first.

jesus what a shock

This shit ain't right. Awful news.

good god

Yeah, i got confirm from a news friend
holy shit
holy holy shit
so fucked up

And it is a proper tragedy, too, in the classical Greek sense. Surprised he didn't pry out his eyes first.

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 25 June 2009 22:48 (1 minute ago) Bookmark

He pried out most everything else

In what appears to be an apparent suicide, musician Michael Jackson was pronounced dead as a result of cardiac arrest after consuming more than two-dozen sleeping pills.

Where was this quote from?

Sky Saxon, Ed McMahon, Farrah, MJ. Running the gamut there. Rule of fours?

oh wow

fuck i just don't know man this is really actually tragic

wow.

i was sort of assuming his latter years would be long weirdo sad farce, not short sad tragedy.

:(

man, i mean RIP MJ, and thanks for all the memories, but how is this in any way ~really~ shocking

yeah i wonder about that suicide quote? haven't read anything about that anywhere else, not that it's gone that long...

wow can't believe this really

not shocking just tragic and really really so.
fucked up as he was, i didn't really think of him as mortal

No one else did either, which probably contributed a lot to his personal problems.

i was sort of assuming his latter years would be long weirdo sad farce, not short sad tragedy.

i assumed the opposite but that doesn't make this less of a shock. speechless.

let's remember him like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VASYhabHkM

...none of the news channels are reporting he's died

jesus

He's walking on the moon tonight.
RIP Mike!

honest question: will there actually be like millions of people holding vigils for MJ, the world over? is he our last truly global pop star?

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE55O6AK20090625

iranian rioters stop to remember michael

("... TMZ reports" - so it's on Reuters.com, but it's still from TMZ, don't know how legitimate that makes it)

what a disaster for little boys

I'd like to think Michael is (as rumored) punking Prince in this classic clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CoxNzOOoQU

Well, the more legit news outlets are probably trying to y'know, verify and stuff before blazing away with the RIP Michael Jackson headlines.

what a disaster for little boys

― am0n, Thursday, June 25, 2009 5:00 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ho ho

lol am0n

DJ Premier did an MJ tribute mix

http://www.zshare.net/audio/61934373dba0571d/

I wonder if the media will make as much money of MJ's death than they did driving him to it?

― Adam Bruneau, Saturday, June 27, 2009 3:43 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

as a member of the media i can verify that the dollars are rolling in.. it's awesome

not sure if i'm going to make as much as i did driving MJ to his death yet tho

How much of a tip did you get?

15%

man tbh I kind of miss the pre-Internet days when slocki was driving Michael Jackson to death in print

The Jackson 5 must've had an animated Saturday morning series, yes? I foggily seem to recall one.

I wonder if I prefer "I Want You Back" to anything on Thriller ... well, why, exactly?

When is Elton John's new version of "Candle In The Wind" being released?

Poor taste stagger. The man's head caught on fire. Someone could have been hurt.

Can anyone link to some good clips of MJ performing live? All the live clips I've seen are lipsynched.

^^ that's the 80's for ya!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLX8Ibz6rB8&feature=channel

That's so good.

Last night I briefly saw Fallon; the Roots dressed a la MJ and played his music. Erykah sat in. Fallon was nervous; MJ hit him hard, visibly. He stumbled around and thanked Erykah. "Shamon," she replied.

I don't believe he's syncing here (at 11, he probly dint know how).

(TV debut, btw)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USsPvSbUbDI

i dont think he started miming til the 90s. bad tour was all the way live far as i know.

Not sure if this was posted, but Chief Justice Roberts on how to deal with Jackson in his Reagan apparatchik days;

I recognize that I am something of a vox clamans in terris in this area, but enough is enough. The Office of Presidential Correspondence is not yet an adjunct of Michael Jackson’s PR firm. “Billboard” can quite adequately cover the event by reproducing the award citation and/or reporting the President’s remarks. (As you know, there is very little to report about Mr. Jackson’s remarks.) There is absolutely no need for an additional presidential message. A memorandum for Presidential Correspondence objecting to the letter is attached for your review and signature.

This shows that maybe George Will wasn't the only one confused about Springsteen's "message":

I recommend that no such letter be sent. The Jackson tour, whatever stature it may have attained as a cultural phenomenon, is a massive commercial undertaking. The visit of the tour to Washington was not an eleemosynary gesture; it was a calculated commercial decision that does not warrant gratitude from our Nation’s Chief Executive. Such a letter would also create a bad precedent, as other popular performers would either expect or demand similar treatment. Why, for example, was no letter sent to Mr. Bruce Springsteen, whose patriotic tour recently visited the area? Finally, the President, in my view, has done quite enough in the way of thanking and congratulating the Jacksons, and anything more would begin to look like unbecoming fawning.

http://floacist.wordpress.com/2007/06/10/vitiligo-photos-michael-jackson

^^^photos of MJs vitiligo.

lol at the picture with the shadow from his hair as "evidence of vitiligo"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/jun/28/michael-jackson-life-death-music

i love how his writer says its going to be about the music then ends up about the same stuff as everything else. that quote at the end though is :(

*this

also, black or white definitely isnt the last great MJ song at all.

I never knew the 5 did "Doctor My Eyes."

Doctor My Orbius

re: that Kenny Ortega guy. one of his first jobs was choreographing this:

http://www.80svideos.tv/play.php?vid=85

old article but worth a read:
http://floacist.wordpress.com/2007/08/22/gq-article-was-michael-jackson-framed

http://www.theonion.com/content/mj

http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/new_rap_song_samples_billie

loooooool

Armond:

The records “ABC,” “The Love You Save” and “I’ll Be There” exemplified youth culture’s new energy and power. Then MJ confounded convention with the startlingly poignant “Ben.” It was a strategic movie tie-in theme (for the 1972 horror flick Willard) the same year Diana Ross sought to infiltrate Hollywood with the biopic Lady Sings the Blues. But MJ took his B-movie opportunity so seriously that it quietly permeated the zeitgeist. People who don’t appreciate “Ben” don’t really appreciate pop culture and remain clueless about MJ. His tender, profound emotionality taught teenagers everywhere that they could feel more deeply than they realized.... Both “Ben” and “I Want You Back” offer the sense of immediacy special to great pop, holding witnesses in an intense private moment. It is not ironic that these records incarnate youth’s illusion of immortality. It’s a gift....

http://www.nypress.com/article-20022-in-mjrss-shadow.html

I thought "Ben" was recorded for the sequel to Willard, also called Ben.

It was. And what a strange career move that was! A tender ode to a killer rat. Not too many artists could survive that.

The career move, that is. Not the killer rat. Though it's fair to say that if the rat was indeed a killer, very few artists (or non-artists, for that matter) would be expected to survive.

Armond always gets at least one fact wrong per column.

(The song was reprised in the Willard remake that starred Crispin Glover)

http://content.yieldmanager.edgesuite.net/atoms/e6/48/c6/81/e648c68189ebf5b716f3f127be2aa509.gif

Ben-Hur intro's "Ben" at the Oscars:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1dAQN5QcZU

Reading various articles about his death (and life), it strikes me that the commercial fire accident in 1984 may have the beginning of the end for Jackson. It surely started his morphine addiction, and it strikes me that he wasn't quite as nuts before that as he has been later on, was he? I mean, when "Bad" was approaching, I was almost surprised he was even able to make music at all, as I thought everything that had happened since "Thriller" had gone to his head and made him incapable of coming up with something. This because of the long gap between the two albums (five years was an eternity in the 80s), but even more because of the increasingly weird stories from his life. But again, how many of those stories did actually happen before the fire accident?

There's an interview he did with Rolling Stone before that (and probably before Thriller even) where he's really exciting about installing manniquens throughout his house. I think the fire accident of 84 is a good touchstone, but I think the idea that MJ was 'normal' and then one day 'not normal' is a myth that holds together many other myths about the man that would not stand up under logical and unbiased scrutiny.

I recently read this interview he did with Oprah back in 1993, in which he talks more explicitly than I'd seen before about his childhood and adolescence. This exchange sort of underlines the psychological trauma he underwent -- at the age of 35, he's obviously still in fear of his father and trying to suppress any feelings of anger toward him:

Oprah: Would he...did he ever beat you?
Michael: Yes.
Oprah: And why would he beat you?
Michael: He saw me, he wanted me, I guess...I don't know if I was his golden child or whatever, but he was very strict, very hard, very stern. Just a look would scare you.
Oprah: And were you scared of him?
Michael: Very. Like, there's been times when he'd come to see me, I'd get sick, I'd start to regurgitate.
Oprah: As a child or as an adult?
Michael: Both. He's never heard me say this. I'm sorry, please don't be mad at me.
Oprah: Well I mean, I suppose everybody has to take responsibility for what they've done in life. And your father is one of those people who also have to take responsibility.
Michael: But I do love him.
Oprah: Yes. I understand this.
Michael: And I am forgiving.

he said almost the exact same thing on the very famous Martin Bashir documentary.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7RDCDLLIm8

Oh yeah, I never saw that.

go to about 5:30

It surely started his morphine addiction,

What are you talking about, he stayed away from booze and drugs unlike other pop stars, remember?

OK the shit about him and his dad is really sad and horrible and all his childlike behavior is disturbing if I actually consider it but I can't help but LOL at the beginning of the video when he's climbing the tree.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5130495n&tag=related;photovideo

The NME have republished Danny Baker's 1981 interview with MJ on their blog (although annoyingly, they've chopped out the rest of the article):

http://www.nme.com/blog/index.php?blog=10&title=michael_jackson_s_last_interview_2&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

Why is that article titled "Michael Jackson's Last Interview" if it was done in 1981?!

theres quite a few old interviews out there now. one from creem was on the guardian website last week.

xpost: The NME claim, no doubt rightly, that it was MJ's last UK print media interview. Which doesn't quite have the same ring about it.