Jackson's Funeral

Fortunately, I didn't have to go anywhere near downtown LA today. Man, that musta been a headache.

Something I forgot in my previous Michael Jackson post--when we were in college, a buddy of mine had a Michael Jackson bong (MJB, for short). It was a regular bong with cutout pictures of him. He wasn't into his music (like me he was into metal), so I never figured out why he had an MJB. I'm sure it was a gift. I miss the MJB more than MJ.

Celebrity Death Week

I love watching and observing people with talent. At the same time, I HATE celebrity. When I worked at the radio station I had the chance to meet many famous, destined to be famous, and destined never to be famous musicians. The one thing I took away from this was that they weren't all that different from talented people in other areas, but, the had an inordinate amount of attention lavished on them due to their potential to be celebrities.

The Michael Jackson story is somewhat interesting because it's so convoluted. The important thing to bear in mind is that he hasn't put out a relevant record in more than 20 years. Yet, his celebrity lived on. But, he had the borderline abusive dad, the Svengali-like producer and the performer's childhood. He seemed to have never gotten a grip on the deal that all performers make: You give up some of the "normal" life to lead the extraordinary life. Talented young musicians and athletes have to deal with this. Most kinda-sorta do, but, clearly, Jackson did not.

I've never been a big fan of his music. I enjoyed the Jackson 5 before discovering rock, and I think that some of those songs were his best. I never liked disco, so "Off the Wall" had no appeal. Likewise, outside of the out of place Eddie Van Halen solo on Beat It, I wasn't that interested in "Thriller". But, the impact of those records in pop music is undeniable and made it very possible for singers like Beyonce and Usher to "crossover".

Considering that his best creative years were well behind him, I was caught a bit off-guard by the huge outpouring by people who weren't even born yet when Thriller came out. I guess I was wondering why people felt this need to defend him. Wasn't his music enough? Why were they so defensive regarding his bizarre personal life? What type of glory were they reflecting in?

In some ways, Farrah Fawcett was a more tragic figure than Jackson. She was always written off as no more than a sex-symbol. Did she have more potential as an actress? We'll never know. At the same time, like Jackson, she was clearly uncomfortable with her celebrity.

Ed McMahon loved being a celebrity. Divorces, bad investments, and a celebrity lifestyle clearly led him to hawking himself far longer than he wanted to. Johnny Carson showed him a lot of loyalty from their touring days until Carson scored the Tonight Show gig. I feel bad for him whoring himself on those commercials about selling your gold during the Super Bowl.

In the end, I'm sad for the families. But, we shouldn't let what happens to celebrities take our eyes off of the ball of what's important. Iraq. Afghanistan. The Recession.

Philanthropic Re-Gifting

Last night, my wife went to a fundraiser for a group that wants to start a charter school for homeless kids. It was held at a not-so-great casino south of LA. She went on the early side to say hello to the people she needed to say hello to, then head home as she wasn't (and still isn't) feeling that great.

So, she comes hoem and tells me and the HB about it. Mostly people there to play poker (the poker tournament was the draw, no pun intended) and there wasn't much bidding going on for the silent auction items. As she goes through them, I realize that some of these items would go for nearly twice as much at the HB's school's auction. I mention this to her, and, for a change, she agrees with me and she heads on back after dinner.

Later in the evening she said that the celebrity quotient went up with a couple of spouses embarrasing their more famous better halves. But, the bids on the silent auction items were still pretty low, so she kept the bids up. No word yet as to whether she got any of them.

Something feels a bit weird about this philanthropic black market. It's not like we'd be putting the stuf of eBay for our own profit, but it does seem odd that we could get things relatively cheap at one fundraising auction and get the double write-off by donating it to another.

Oh well. I don't make the rules, I just bend them.

Wall of Hung Jury

OK, given my earlier prediction about the Phil Spector trial, it is now obvious as to why I'm not a celebrity trial prognosticator. The prosecution seems to be in a good position in that the two holdouts from the twelve person jury pretty much said what it would have taken for them to find Spector guilty.

Apparently, having a ton of cash to spend on experts (regardless of their veracity) is the key to getting over in LA criminal courts. Keep that in mind if you come here to kill someone.

Wall of Guilt

Perhaps you have been following the Phil Spector murder trial. If not (I have no idea how much play this is getting outside of LA), here's the deal:

1) Spector, who wrote and/or produced some of the most memorable pop and rock music of the 60s and 70s, is accused of murdering Lana Clarkson, a non-celebrity actress, at his home, well castle, in a suburb east of LA.

2) His defense team, which has several folks on it who defended O.J. Simpson, maintains that Clarkson was feeling shitty about her career, was depressed and shot herself that night.

3) The prosecution has a witness (Spector's driver) who says Spector came out of the house and told him that he just shot someone. They also paraded through several women who testified that Spector had previously gotten drunk and threatened them with guns.

I cannot imagine him being found not guilty for a couple of reasons. First is that Spector looks odd. He dresses flamboyantly and has weird hair. Second, the defense's theory is preposterous. Why would this woman go home with a famous record producer who could turn her career around and then shoot herself? Also, less than 1/3 of female suicides are caused by firearms (the method of choice for men). Finally, while I don't have the statistics to back it up, my guess is that very few attractive women kill themselves by blowing off their faces.

Since this doesn't have the racial or sexual overtones of the O.J. case, I don't see the jury being as swayed by the defense's crap. Then again, you never know.

Stars Like Us

I need to let you in on a secret: Movie stars and other famous people live here in Los Angeles. I'm pretty nonplussed by this because a) I had the opportunity to meet a lot of artists in the record business when I worked at my college' radio station and b) I'm just not that into celebrity. I was the program director at the radio station, so I always had the record companies' college representative (the lowest dude/chick on the record label totem pole) and independent labels calling me about their bands, and vice versa. The station was way ahead of the heavy metal curve at the time and there were a lot of bands on small labels such as Metal Blade, Relativity and Shrapnel that were about to make it big (Metallica, Megadeth, RATT, etc.) that we were playing. It was pretty easy to get their records and concert tickets as well as swag for other bigger acts. Whenever I got the chance I would interview the bands for the station or just do a meet and greet.

One of the things that I took from the experience was that there wasn't one type of famous (or almost famous) person. Some were hard working and quiet and others were pretty full of themselves. A few were really bright and a few were dumb as a box of hair. At this point I figured out that they're just people and there's nothing to get all wound up about when you see them at a restaurant, shopping, or whatever.

I bring all this up because some of the kids at the HB's school have famous parents. Not tons, but a few. A couple are in that category of, "Hm...s/he looks familiar, but I can't quite place the name" while others are OMGITs (oh my god, is that....). Last week the school had a goofy fund raiser where you sponsor your kid/parents/teachers for how many baskets they can make in two minutes. There's one OMGIT who is great about showing up at these things. And not in a "Look, I'm famous and care about my kid" kinda way. Rather, he does the things all of the other parents do, like chatting with anyone who comes up to him, talking to the other parents he knows, and not drawing unnecessary attention to himself. Good to see in a world where there is so much cynical media surrounding celebrity.

I'll have my NCAA men's basketball picks ('cuz I know that you are dying to see them) tomorrow.