Although kept secret, Scribe’s spy fly on the wall recorded the results of an investigation…
“Wait, ‘assistant’ means you ‘assist.’ Why don’t you have his clothes off yet?”
“I… just… couldn’t…”
“Big fan?”
“No, I just found him CREEPY.”
“Yeah, I don’t find this autopsy much of a THRILLER, either.”
Silence. Not even the birds found it funny.
“OK, let’s get his pants off. Damn they’re tight. Oh, now that explains THAT. Now we know. White? Or Black? Definitely BLACK. But look at the size of that schlong. Guess Madeline Kahn had it wrong. In this case: it’s NOT ‘twue.’ Hmmm… some kind of problem here. Big bump. I’ll do an incision and… ‘press here?’ Some kind of device. OK, I’ll bite. Hmmm… bad choice of words. I’ll press the little button and…
Beat it!
Beat it…
“Oh, it’s a music playback device for when he was enjoying himself. Wonder if I press it again…”
Just a little bit of you
Will surely keep the Doctor Away
Eeny weeny teeny bit of your love
“‘Eeny weeny…’ got that right… OK, let’s get the shirt off. DAMN. This guy’s Black on the bottom… literally… and white on top: face just a bit more Black. What is this, a Star Trek episode? Speak of ‘oreo.’ And look at the tattoos! Satanic, every religion… even the weirdest ones. Wait, do you hear another song?”
Love is as welcome
As a sunny, sunny day
No grown up thoughts
To lead our hearts astray…
“Seems to be coming from in here. Well, time to get the old trusty saw out. Hmm, ain’t nothing to it. Like cutting through crepe paper. Or should I pronounce that ‘creep?’ OK, give me the Smokey Bones brand rib spreader.”
Take like so easy, nice and easy
Like a child so GAY and so carefree…
“There’s that song again…”
“We’re so close
I can almost taste it…”
“Hmmm, it changed tunes… do you hear a cry for help? OH, MYFRICKINGODDAM… there’s a little boy in there! And he’s alive. How long have you been in there? How did you survive? ‘They’ helped you? What did you eat? ‘They fed you,’ what does that mean? How did you breathe? ‘They’ gave you mouth to mouth? ‘They’ who? ‘Not who… what?'”
Ben, the two of us need look no more
We both found what we’ve been looking for…
“No. NO! Oh, God no. Help…”
Rats pour out of the corpse, devouring everything.
“They’re out to get you. There’s demons closing in on every side…”
“Somebody shut that damn music offfffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff………………………”
End of recording, rats crunching on bones.
Tune in next week for Dr. Frankenstein Has an Itch to Reanimate Jacko or Gotta Jacko Jocko Itch?”
I have nothing against Michael Jackson — a peculiar man, but good enough at what he did — but some of the over-the-top 24/7 coverage of his death descended to the level of asking his third-cousin twice-removed who hadn’t seen him since he was 5 for his opinion of his passing. Perhaps the lowest point was a woman who worked for him comparing Jackson’s ‘genius’ to Mozart. Wacko Jacko, who as far as I know didn’t write any of his hit tunes and depended on Quincy Jones for his ‘sound,’ was a genius like Wolfgang Amadeus? I don’t think so.
Meantime, some true geniuses of modern music are all but ignored by the mass media — when was the last time you heard anything about John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis or Count Basie on CNN? All of them contributed more originality to everything we hear today than Jackson, yet you’d think they never existed.
He’s also being credited with ‘breaking the color barrier’ in rock music — that’s nonsense; Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, Nat King Cole, Louis Armstrong, Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Fats Domino had done that before Jackson was even born, and they paid a much harsher price for it than Jackson ever did.
Michael Jackson’s best years musically were in the ’80s and he went downhill after that. By the late ’90s he was only famous for being weird and willing, through his press agents, to feed tabloids even more weirdness to keep his name on the cover. (Wonder where the Bubbles the chimp and hyperbaric sleeping chamber stories came from? Right from his publicist contacting the media.) For at least a decade, he’s been a freak sunk in self-parody.
As I said, I have nothing against him, and think it’s a tragedy he died so young, but somebody has to counteract this overhyped BS with some truth.
My friend has an interesting theory that the only reason for the excessive post-death hype was to beef up the sales of his CDs, videos, etc. (After all, many of the same big media companies that own the news have a piece of Jackson in one way or another.) If so, it’s worked — sales are soaring and, like Elvis, he’ll probably earn more dead than alive.
Elvis was a fat Vegas singer many years before he died. Then he turned far more icon than he was even during the best years… which says a lot given the early career years.
Scribe was spoofing his image which had turned, shall we say more sour than milk left out in mid-day sun for many weeks?
This column is just wrong in so many ways Ken. Kinda like Letterman on crack if you get my drift. Who cares about the size of his…, what color he is underneath etc. A little respect for the dead.
And as RS says, we’ve already heard too much about him in the last few days.
Now comments on the reasons why we’ve heard so much – that’s a different story. Each play of his music generates royalties for his estate as well as income for the record labels. As his music was entertaining, his fans want to hear it, it will generate income to support his children….fine.
As for the record labels who I hold at least partially responsible for his weirdness, mental illness and perhaps death (Hired MD to pump him full of painkillers so he could work), and for the media in general that keeps the news full of celebrity garbage all the time instead of real news – that’s fair game – and worth discussing.
You’re an odd one to lecture about respect JOYCE.
Scribe has a point here, Ana. Note to all posters: if you’re going to lecture other posters, you might at least try addressing them by their screen name.
Sorry Scribe – I am new to this and don’t know the proper protocols. My true apologies for not respecting the sanctity of the column.
@ Ana Grarian:
“Sanctity?” No, not really Ana. But starting out any comment by addressing another person other than the poster… or someone who posts under another name… just doesn’t seem a way to start a conversation no matter how much one disagrees or dislikes something: especially on the net where screen names usually receive some respect.
So let’s get beyond this and into the meat of the matter…
Scribe does realize that MJ had plenty of fans and was quite popular, though popularity alone does not necessarily mean “good.” The piece, like all Scribe these days, is part satire and parody. Perhaps you just prefer not to read such, which is fine… but much like MJ: plenty do. (Once again, popularity does not necessarily mean “good,” though if we were to edit out all things that offend any human we probably would have to lock ourselves into closets and never, ever come out.)
Essentially it was a piece written as if he had internally lived out his music and what weirdness there was. Humor. Not meant as anything else. And humor is in the mind of those who chuckle… or not. Though Scribe does cringe when he wonders what MJ may or may not have found funny. He did find Simpsons funny; he even wrote a song for the show that had Al Sharpton as a voiceover during the episode. Now that’s a real odd combination: low hanging fruit for those seeking punch lines.
Scribe can assure you that his columns amuse millions… of molecules… that probably add up to, let’s count the readers with Scribe’s fingers: 1, 2, 3.. oh, hell, Scribe lost count even though his right hand was lost due to a hideous monkey/organ grinder accident. Nevermind.