Posted on Wed, Oct. 28, 2009
"I would like some way to disappear where people don't see me anymore at some point. I don't want to grow old. I never want to look in the mirror and see that."
- Michael Jackson
TOO LATE, too late. Michael Jackson won't be growing older, true, but disappearing? Amelia Earhart, he isn't. For one thing, there's the documentary "Michael Jackson's This Is It," a chronicle of his preparations for the comeback tour that never happened. The film, which opened in select theaters at midnight, is expected to attract lines out the door. And then there's the recently dropped namesake single.
This is it: Love him or loathe him or just shrug your shoulders, the Gloved One, who died at age 50 in June, was one of the most gifted performers ever given stage time. And he ain't going anywhere, dead or not. Not only is he not going away, he's got you nearly surrounded, whether directly or by several degrees of separation.
Put aside "This Is It" for the moment.
Consider the Geico insurance company commercials that use the chorus of "Somebody's Watching Me." The version of the song in the ad is a cover by Mysto & Pizzi, but if you're pop-savvy, you think of the original 1984 hit by Rockwell, with backing vocals by Rockwell's childhood friend and Motown labelmate, one Michael Jackson.
So you can't even get away from MJ when somebody's trying to sell you car insurance.
No, the King of Pop isn't going away any time soon.
Not even TV variety show king Ed Sullivan, who'd seen it all, could have known the half of it. When the Jackson 5 made their first appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show," in 1969, young Michael came off as a gene splice of garden gnome, James Brown and a whirling dervish.
He may have been singing and dancing for his life, fearful that daddy Joe would take off his belt if he didn't wow the audience. But he wowed. By the time he and his siblings finished performing, Michael held the lien on that theater. Sullivan just stood there smiling, shaking his head. "The little fella in front is really incredible," he said.
From there, whether with his brothers or as a solo or in combination with others, Jackson became one of the top-selling artists of all time, moving approximately 450 septillion records, including the "Thriller" album.
OK, so you won't get that figure by H&R Block, but do you really need an exact total to realize that if you want to get away from Michael Jackson, you shouldn't turn on the radio?
Speaking of "Thriller," MJ didn't invent the music video, but he tried his best to "Citizen Kane" it with that song's lavish mini-opera of a production number in 1983. If MTV had been guilty of ignoring black artists early on, well, that was well and truly over.
So if you want to get away from Michael Jackson, blow up your TV, because the videos are still out there, as is that Geico commercial, as are entertainment news updates on the latest, perverse wrinkle in the saga.
And now you can't go to the movies to get away from Michael Jackson because of "This Is It," which its director, Kenny Ortega, calls "sacred documentation." Well, it's not the Dead Sea Scrolls of docs. It's likely not even 1970s' "Elvis: That's the Way It Is."
But the doc should do serious business, even if MJ wasn't exactly known for films, his only substantive studio feature being "The Wiz." Unless you count "Captain EO," the $30 million, 17-minute, 3D number directed by Francis Ford Coppola that played at various Disney venues in the '80s and '90s.
This is also it: Not only didn't Michael Jackson moonwalk on water, but he was one of the most bizarre and controversial figures in entertainment history. Maybe history-history.
Most recently, he was a party in "When Former Teen Idols Threaten to Sue Other Former Teen Idols." Turns out Paul Anka, the onetime Canadian wunderkind turned Las Vegas fixture, co-wrote the song "This Is It" with MJ way back in '83 but wasn't given proper credit when the single was released. Anka made some lawyerly noises and got his credit, and a promise of half of what the song earns.
The incident was the latest in a long perp walk of bad MJ press.
There's the taint of child molestation - even if he was officially acquitted, even if he was an abused child who cowrote "We Are the World" and was forever proclaiming his love of kids.
There's the fairy-tale biodome of Neverland. There's the OCD of plastic-surgery scarification that left him looking like Skeletor's paler cousin. There's the burka-like protective gear he wore outside. There's the lapses in judgment in the public forum. There's the marriage to Elvis' daughter. There's the Elvis-like, all-you-can-swallow prescription drug use.
There's far more, so stay away from bookstores and newspapers for a while, because a lot of trees are going to die in order to tell the story of Wacko Jacko, in all its wild, weird, wayward ups, downs and sideways.
Again, he's always closing in on you.
That is it.
Steve Hedgpeth is a Bucks County writer and the creator of the pop-culture blog Ricky Retro, at rickyretro.blogspot.com.
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