By Cathy Maestri
InstantPride.com

It’s still hard to believe, even as we watch footage of a helicopter carrying Michael Jackson’s body.

We knew when we went to bed early Thursday morning that Farrah Fawcett would die today; reports had started to trickle in that the iconic beauty had been given last rites in what had been a long and bravely public death.

But we didn’t think much when we saw breaking news that Michael Jackson had been hospitalized, figuring it was just the latest saga in a tumultuous life. When we saw police blocking off the streets around the UCLA Medical Center, our heart sank.

Things were different when we were a kid in the ’70s — there were three TV networks, plus PBS. Top 40 meant stations played the same 40 songs ad infinitum. So when something was big, it was really big. Everybody watched the same shows — the Jackson 5 cartoons were on Saturday mornings and, if we behaved, we could watch “Charlie’s Angels” at night.

We still have our “Charlie’s Angels” trading cards. Our brother was too young to have that nipply Farrah poster (I remember Mom making me apply a Sharpie bikini to the naked Art Noveau lady in the Bee Gees T-shirt I brought home from my second-ever concert), but he made his closet into a little shrine, with a Cheryl Ladd poster — Farrah’s replacement — as its centerpiece.

As for music, records were hard to come by in a village in Ohio; the patient man at the coin store doled out a stack of Motown singles with holes punched in the labels, someone’s unwanted promos that we happily spun. But somehow Anne next door had scored a Jackson 5 single, “ABC.” We played it over and over until we had the lyrics memorized; then we played it over and over and sang along and danced like they did in the cartoons. Anne ruled for months — if you weren’t nice to her, no Jackson 5. I don’t know how her parents endured it.

We were graduating from high school and heading to college outside Chicago by the time Jackson’s solo career exploded, along with MTV. (It’s hard to believe now, but back when MTV was all videos — also hard to believe — there were complaints that Michael Jackson was the only black artist whose music appeared on the channel. He literally transcended race.) Jackson’s music was everywhere, and the premiere of a new video was an event. It was not at all unusual to walk down the street and see tweens in red zippered jackets or wearing a single glove (which was pretty ridiculous when you consider how cold and windy it could get along Lake Michigan).

Then things started to get weird. There was the time his hair caught on fire while he was filming a Pepsi commercial. Bubbles the chimp. The hyperbaric chamber. The Elephant Man’s bones. The plastic surgery. His antics overshadowed his music.

Things got stranger and darker with the marriages (Lisa Marie Presley made him Elvis’ son-in-law, Debbie Rowe made him a father, sort of), the allegations of child molestation, the overspending, the debt, the drugs and anorexia, the dangling and blanketed offspring.

Michael Jackson, we frequently declared, would have been put away long ago if he weren’t rich and famous.

It was all just plain sad. Heartbreaking, when you go back and look at the adorable little boy with the magical voice in those old Jackson 5 videos. Those are still the ones we love.

Jackson, at 50, was getting ready for his big comeback, 50 shows in London. Heaven knows he needed the money; the adoration and brisk ticket sales, even in a struggling economy, must have been gratifying. It’s a shame he never got to take the stage. Certainly his most recent work hadn’t been terribly relevant, but he was still recognized as a huge influence on music and dance; when Riverside’s Alient Ant Farm had a hit with a cover of “Smooth Criminal,” the video was a parody but the admiration was genuine. Few pop fans would pass up a chance to see Jackson moonwalk in person. “If you’re a singer and you don’t want to be like Michael Jackson, something’s wrong,” Sean Kingston said.

Jackson’s death is all the more shocking because it was so simple. All that he’d been through, all the publicity and paparazzi following his every move — but on a Thursday afternoon he collapses at home, just like anybody else, and never regains consciousness. It was over before anyone really knew what was happening.

Why he died will come later — it’s likely the result of years of strain on his heart. He was too thin, too delicate, too stressed.

In the meantime, there are rumors circulating that Jackson was going to leave the rights to the Beatles songs to Paul McCartney; we hope it’s true. But there are lots of questions about what happens next — especially to his children.

They say deaths always come in threes. You couldn’t find three bigger, or more disparate, symbols of the ’70s than Jackson, Fawcett and Ed McMahon, whose jolly career as a sidekick was followed by years of severe health and money problems; he passed away on Tuesday. To have Fawcett and Jackson die on the same day is beyond shocking. We can only hope all three have finally found some peace.

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Filed under Entertainment, News A3

Friday, June 26, 2009

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