Michael Jackson Dead
Written by Edward ChampionPosted on June 25, 2009
Filed Under Obits, jackson-michael
While TMZ and Gawker are reporting that Michael Jackson is dead, I wish to point out that there has been no official confirmation of his death. I spoke with Craig Harvey of the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office and he informed me that there was no official confirmation of his death as of 3:00 PM Pacific Time. The person who is legally obligated to confirm the death is Jackson’s physician. And as of yet, there has been no official announcement.
UPDATE: As of 3:15 PM Pacific Time, the Los Angeles Times reports that Michael Jackson is dead after arriving at a hospital in a deep coma.
UPDATE 2: Michael Jackson’s death confirmed by AP (as picked up by The New York Times). (Thanks for the minor correction, vidiot.)
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Books To Jump Up and Down Over
Beyond Heaving Bosoms by Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan. The famed writers behind Smart Bitches, Trashy Books have written a very funny and thoughtful volume about romances, both Old Skool and New Skool. Here is a book that any smug and humorless literary manboy beating his flabby passive chest over Banville or Bolano should probably read pronto, if only for the distant possibility that he might get over himself. While the Choose Your Own Adventure segment at the end caused me to have a very disturbing dream involving Shelley Long (don't ask), Sarah and Candy did have me rethinking many of my own misperceptions when I wasn't busy laughing. They're not afraid to take on the New York Times Bok Review or even the groupthink within certain sectors of the romance community.
Alice Fantastic by Maggie Estep. This wild and highly enjoyable narrative involves two sisters (presumably, the third one was still being rented out by Chekhov), a hippie ex-junkie mother who lives with seventeen dogs, a murder, gambling, and libidinous Hollywood actresses who live in Woodstock. But this is the wonderful Maggie Estep we're talking here. And what seems at first like a quirky yarn becomes something unexpectedly moving about connectivity. What I love about Estep's work is the way that she'll juxtapose an extremely astute observation (now that you mention it, why do cab drivers always have somebody to talk with on the phone past midnight?) with an often outrageous story development.
Generosity by Richard Powers. It doesn't come out until September 29th, but Richard Powers's latest will have anyone committed to books reconsidering their literary fervor. I foresee some animosity from the vanilla critics hostile to idea-driven novels, but book bloggers, YouTube chroniclers, and MFAs would do well to plunge into this chance-taking narrative, which introduces vital questions about what the reader's relationship is with media, scientific dissection, and "creative nonfiction." Are we rats fleeing to happy cities? Or can we find the humanism within the purported plague?
Pieces for the Left Hand by J. Robert Lennon. Lennon is one of the most underrated fiction writers working today. Much as On the Night Plain proved that Lennon had a lot more in the toolbox than heartfelt (and often very funny) suburban satire, this slim but fascinating volume juxtaposes 100 small-town anecdotes -- arranged by category -- in a manner that reads, at times, like Nicholson Baker's passions for minutiae and, at other times, Stewart O'Nan's concern for psychological detail. The result is fiction that makes us wonder about whether one person's subjective view of particulars can entirely be trusted. This book never found a publisher in 2005. But thankfully, Graywolf has released it in the United States, along with Lennon's latest novel, The Castle.
Wonderful World by Javier Calvo. This wonderfully raucous volume has been completely ignored by the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. But it's probably one of the most delightful reading experiences I've had this year. Calvo cavalierly mashes up multiple genres and manages to mix up familial subtext with larger-than-life, almost cartoonish characters. (Indeed, one might argue that one mobster's penis is a character of its own in this sprawling novel.). This is not an easy thing to pull off, but Calvo makes it work. And it's helped immeasurably by Mara Faye Lethem's idiom-specific translation. (See longer post.)
The Means of Reproduction, Michelle Goldberg This thoughtful book tackles the complicated (and little discussed) subject of reproductive rights from numerous angles, which includes a number of unpleasant but necessary ones. The upshot is that there isn't a quick fix solution for declining birth rates and fundamentalist abuses. Just about every political faction has contributed to the friction. But you'll want to read this book anyway to refamiliarize yourself with the topic, but also to understand just what's occurred during the past several decades to get us where we are today. (See also podcast interview with Goldberg.)
The definitive face of the 1980s… sadly.
Hey Steven, nice going. I hope everyone’s a huge fucking dick about his death.
Damn, I though Traci Lords was the definitive face of the 80s. Oh well, back to the drawing board.
Like I said before: Steven Augustine is the best known troll on the internet. The fact that I even know your name is quite a feat, dipshit.
It’s just like being attacked by Zizek!
CTR:
It’s slightly ironic that between the two of us, I’m not the one hiding behind a non-name, or tossing ad hominems at someone who was heretofore unaware of my existence, or posting comments with zero-content (if you ignore the animus)… and yet you’re calling *me* a “troll”. And “dipshit” is not exactly a Leavisite vocabulary word.
But, sure, I’ll take you as a kind of stalker/twisted fan.
More Trolling to Piss Off the Facile and Credulous
I was impressed by Quincy Jones using MJ as an example of a hard-working artist in his concept of “ass power” (writers called it Sitzfleisch, I guess) given in Nelson George’s “City Kid”:
“To illustrate his point, Q compared Michael Jackson to another well-known vocalist he’d produced [I'm pretty sure Nelson can't name Chaka Khan here for legal reasons]. The other singer, an artist with an immense voice and an insatiable appetite for cocaine, would come to the studio, maybe lay down a scratch vocal, and then wander off for hours. Jackson, in contrast, would come into the studio, record a lead vocal, work on the stacked vocal harmonies that distinguished his work, and practice where to place those ad-libs that were his trademark.
“His ass power,” Q said, “would keep him in the studio until he felt he accomplished something that day. That ability to focus, to stay in that chair in the studio, listening to playback and then going back in to record some more — that’s what separates the good from the great.”
As someone who discovered Michael Jackson when I was in my late teens and he was a little boy of 8 or 9, I think he was truly great.
Steven, you’re probably spot on with what is and is not a Leavisite vocabulary word, but you pretty much seem like a fucking dipshit.
Shane:
A stinging rebuke from a dude whose opinion matters to me. Um, will you be stalking me *with* CTR, from now on, or will you be replacing him?
Nice Little Kitsch-Antidote
‘Waaah, I don’t care about your dumb opinion.’ Sorry for choosing to point out that you’re being a prick. It’s pretty low hanging fruit compared to your succinct and brave dismantling of a modern deity.
Steven, Shane, CTR: Enough. Cool it.
The whole word pays tribute to Michael Jackson’s death.