{"id":1100,"date":"2009-06-25T14:43:00","date_gmt":"2009-06-25T21:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2009\/06\/reeling-over-michael-jackson.html"},"modified":"2009-06-25T14:43:00","modified_gmt":"2009-06-25T21:43:00","slug":"reeling-over-michael-jackson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2009\/06\/reeling-over-michael-jackson.html","title":{"rendered":"Reeling Over Michael Jackson"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
ANYONE who knows my music taste will consider me and unlikely chronicler of michael jackson. and indeed, for my money, there’s not much post-“billie jean” (that song in specific a masterpiece i think) that lives up to his soul years.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
but i’m reeling like the rest of the world from the sudden death of the man known for decades as the King of Pop. Here<\/a> is the NYT story of his (as of now) mysterious passing at age 50.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
i’m shocked and confused partly because of the suddenness of it — this was, after all, going to be the season for a massive comeback.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
but also it’s because of my somewhat accidental meeting with him a few years back.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
this was at a party at producer robert evans’ house, maybe 2003, thrown for the smarmy director brett ratner, who was loudly chewing gum and running around his own party like a bar mitzvah boy on a sugar high.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
in any case, sara (my then-girlfriend\/now wife) pointed out to me as we were hanging out talking that we were standing right over jackson himself, who was sitting in a couch quietly flipping through a book of photographs. (sara was a huge fan of “off the wall” and that era so was really excited in spite of her own gen X jadedness.)<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
we did everything we could to avoid invading his space, and since i was covering the party i spoke to a serpentine, but friendly, paris hilton, who told me (perhaps because i was wearing glasses and a bookish expression) that her party days were over, that she just liked hanging out with friends like “bob” and having good conversations. and i found joel gray, jeff bridges, evans himself and other luminaries to talk to.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
when i walked back to sara and our friend, i saw a guy on the couch look up and me and kind of motion me over. may’ve been bc i was carrying a notebook. in any case, this was jacko, who was as friendly and sweet as could be. he asked me if a knew LAT pop critic robert hilburn (“such a nice man”) and discussed his love for movies (esp ratner’s which he compared to the work of capra).<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
overall, i was struck by a) how southern and easy his accent and manner were, b) how much more normal (for want of a better word) he seemed. <\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
he seemed to want to go on talking about film all night, but i excused myself and thanked him for talking. i think there were enormous bodyguards standing around us, but the sense i got was that there was a real person here who earnestly wanted to break out of the bubble.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
(i actually have a poster of a michael jackson statue from the budapest marzipan museum.)<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
may he rest in peace!<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Photo credit: Wikipedia<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ANYONE who knows my music taste will consider me and unlikely chronicler of michael jackson. and indeed, for my money, there’s not much post-“billie jean” (that song in specific a masterpiece i think) that lives up to his soul years. but i’m reeling like the rest of the world from the sudden death of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[30,490,491,38],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1100","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-los-angeles","7":"category-michael-jackson","8":"category-robert-evans","9":"category-rock-music","10":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1100\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}