Sebastiani

Wow. The King of Pop is gone. Very controversial figure, but I have to admit he use to be one of my favorite performers. Thiller was the first album I ever bought (1984).

stevesmithx

Sad He might be a bit controversial but his works are legendary and will live on. I will miss his works.

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Sharke

Of course you have to ask yourself, is he really dead. There, I've said it.

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Run for your lives!

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valaris

1 word.

KARMA

Sharke

I don't think I heard that one. Was it on Thriller?

valaris

No. Karma as in, what goes around comes around ?...

Bubba

Have some respect for the deceased.

He will be missed.

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Sharke

Oh, so it was on the B-side.

Sebastiani

One word: talent.

Keep in mind that he spent his *whole* life in the entertainment business. Last I checked that isn't exactly a recipe for sanity. Think about it: 95% of all child actors are screwed up. Is it any wonder why?

Michael Jackson made some great contributions to music. He wasn't perfect, and he certainly made terrible mistakes (he was human, after all). But he was also a very special person with an incredible gift, and deserves to be remembered on those merits, as well.

Rest in Peace, Michael!

Sharke

Almost everyone in the entertainment business is screwed up to some degree. It's because they spend so much time in a fantasy world - whether it's on set or on stage or at celebrity parties or wherever - they lose contact with the basic metaphysics of reality.

I've had several minor (and one major) celebrities as clients in my business over the years and I've gotten to see the insides of their apartments....one thing I will say they all had in common was that they had wacky self-help books lying around everywhere. How to find yourself, how to get in touch with your inner soul, how to think positively, how to heal your inner spirit, how to love, how to feel, how to communicate with others etc. Now I know that many people read one or two books like this at some point in their lives, but these people really do have tons of these things scattered around, with bookmarks in each as if they're reading 7 or 8 of them at once.

They're always in therapy, always looking for answers which their unreal lives can't give them. There are some sad, sad celebs out there and many of them have mental illnesses. Most of them suffer from paranoia of one kind or another.

MK27

Is this a "wages of sin are death thing"?

I imagine someone like you also believes this about Dr. Tiller, or the dead victims of gay-bashing.

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Mario F.

Will miss him greatly
Grew up with his songs, his dancing and even his antics.

Despite anything that can be said about him, this is one man that changed the face of music forever. His songs, dancing and even music videos paved the road for most of what came next. A performer genious, the King of Pop, a record selling champion still waiting for a match, and an immense talent that was taken away from us two soon.

As VH1 is saying all day, "We will never forget you".

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Originally Posted by brewbuck:
Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.

Sharke

He may have sold way more records, but he was no John Lennon. Did he write his own music? Was he a musician, or simply a "performer"? I can't think of any of his songs that were really good pieces of music. How did he "change the face of music forever"? Did any of his songs actually change the music scene? Or are we talking about a very narrow band of influence within a narrow band of Top 40 pop?

Don't get me wrong I feel kinda sad that he's died - mainly because he's been a household name my whole life - but I think there is a tendency when people like Jackson die to completely overstate what he was and for everyone to feign a "no, I'm more upset than you" face. It reminds me of the death of Princess Diana, a time when the media were completely exaggerating her achievements and her influence, while grown men were openly weeping on the streets of London. It became a creepy display of peer-pressure grief and bizarre adulation.

I think to most people he was a curiosity - and if it wasn't for the "wackiness" (freakish plastic surgery, oxygen tents, Bubbles the monkey, Neverland, face masks, dangling kids over balconies etc) then he wouldn't have been half the superstar he was.

But as for his musical influence, hmmmm. I think the only thing I ever liked was the guitar solo on Beat It. And that was Eddie Van Halen.

Sharke

Well, this was inevitable. Great stuff!

YouTube - BEAT IT YOU FANATICS!!! GET OUT OF MY LAND!