A Bad Thriller
I am so relieved that Michael Jackson is dead. Honestly. He was such an (amazingly) live embodiment of modern Western culture, the one Americans insist must be spread to the rest of the world so that it, too, can be relevant, that I was beginning to worry the torch might never be passed to Britney.
But I grew up just outside the Michael Jackson loop. He wasn't cool when I was young because he was my age and I had an older brother and sister who wouldn't have tolerated the Jackson-Five (5?) for 5 seconds. The only reason I was allowed to watch The Partridge Family was because it came on at a time when they were both otherwise occupied with extra-curricular activities.
And he wasn't cool when I was older because I wasn't into big theatrical MTV video productions. I was into bar bands - and Madonna (whom Michael Jackson, in an unguarded gay moment caught on tape, famously referred to as "a heifer"). So, even his spectacular talent, rated as such with predictable regularity in the popular press, "didn't impress me much", to quote (using slightly better grammar) Shania Twain.
Also, and this is where Michael Jackson really left me cold (particularly after the "heifer" diss of his only real competition) I never didn't see the disgruntled grown man in the "mysterious" pop icon. The wispy Marilyn Monroe delivery ("why won't people take me seriously?" she asked, incredulously, while wearing clothes three sizes too small), the anorexic girl physique, the conspicuous consumption attempting to fill a void so infinite it rivalled Disneyland (and eclipsed Graceland) - all I ever saw, as a non-fan, was the self-loathing, misanthropist who was so rich he could afford to amass a third-world-sized debt before mercifully passing on to his great reward.
Sorry, eh, to all you Michael Jackson fans. But, if it gives you any consolation, I'm like that about Madonna now, too.
