Althouse: Magazine cover.

July 1, 2009

Magazine cover.

31 comments:

traditionalguy said...: Blasphemy. Take them out and shoot them. That's worse than the sea-pig.; 7/1/09, 3:37 PM
SteveR said...: No, not together. No.; 7/1/09, 3:42 PM
A.W. said...: ayieee my eyes...

they're giving me nightmares...

On a vaguely related note, yesterday i managed to find a copy of thriller at best buy. my wife was spending the night her her family so i turned on a video game, turned down the sound and cranked up the music. i had a great time. Right now "Beat it" is swirling around in my head. It occurred to me that as much as what was wrong in life, now all we have left is his music. Some predict he will be bigger in death than life, like Elvis. maybe so. only time will tell.; 7/1/09, 3:55 PM
TitusHelloIsThereSomethingYouWant said...: Just heard that Bubbles is fine and being taken care of in Florida.

Seriously.; 7/1/09, 4:01 PM
Nichevo said...: WTF did Farrah ever do to deserve that? Or us?

My eyes...the goggles do nothing!!!; 7/1/09, 4:05 PM
john said...: If you are trying to engender some emotion in me about this, I will not give you the satisfaction. It is absurd, meaningless. Where are my smokes?; 7/1/09, 4:16 PM
Chris Althouse Cohen said...: See, this is what you wind up with when you keep your baby's sex a secret!; 7/1/09, 4:23 PM
Ann Althouse said...: "Just heard that Bubbles is fine and being taken care of in Florida."

If you approach him, do not hold an Elmo doll in front of your face.; 7/1/09, 4:40 PM
TitusHelloIsThereSomethingYouWant said...: Anyone get a look at Al Franken's wife?; 7/1/09, 4:46 PM
Chris Althouse Cohen said...: Aaron: You could've saved some trouble and bought Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. As soon as you steal your first car and the radio comes on, Billie Jean is the first song that plays.; 7/1/09, 4:58 PM
Kev said...: (the other kev)

FYI, the Stranger is the lesser of Seattle's two major alt-weeklies. The staff of most alt-weeklies tend to be locked in a permanent state of college sophomore-ness, but these guys are in a class by themselves.; 7/1/09, 4:58 PM
Jason (the commenter) said...: I liked how they kept the nipples.; 7/1/09, 5:06 PM
Jason (the commenter) said...: Nichevo : WTF did Farrah ever do to deserve that?

Decided to go to Europe and get alternative therapy for her cancer instead of chemo so her hair wouldn't fall out.; 7/1/09, 5:08 PM
Rick Lee said...: Something tells me Michael would have loved it.; 7/1/09, 5:21 PM
KCFleming said...: Oh suuure, they both die at the same time.
Yeah, right.

I tell you, they were both one and the same person. Clue: never saw them both together, didja? Huh? Huh?

Case closed.; 7/1/09, 5:37 PM
TitusHelloIsThereSomethingYouWant said...: Farrah Fawcett gets up to heaven and God asks her for one wish and her wish is to save all the children of the world.

God grants it and kills Michael Jackson.

Isn't that awful. I heard it at the convenience store today.; 7/1/09, 6:02 PM
Fred4Pres said...: I would hit the Sea Pig.

I would not hit that creature.; 7/1/09, 6:04 PM
TitusHelloIsThereSomethingYouWant said...: Just so you all know I would do Deval Patrick, the governor of Massachusetts.; 7/1/09, 6:13 PM
Kirk Parker said...: Aaron,

That's "Ali McGraw, my eyes!!!!"; 7/1/09, 6:56 PM
Penny said...: Just in case we wondered, a great haircut and a nice body only goes so far.; 7/1/09, 7:04 PM
Cedarford said...: Ann Althouse said...
"Just heard that Bubbles is fine and being taken care of in Florida."

If you approach him, do not hold an Elmo doll in front of your face..

I wonder if Michael knew how dangerous chimps were and just how close hecame to being attacked and having his fingers, genitals, and nose ripped off and eaten.....hmmmm...maybe that explains a few things..Nose, an adrogynous emasculated celebrity, sequin glove...; 7/1/09, 7:23 PM
ricpic said...: Michael Jackson wanted to be Farrah. And so does Titus, who has a better shot at it.; 7/1/09, 7:44 PM
Unknown said...: ann, i just saw a part of your bloggingheads piece with robert wright. typically i find that you think carefully about what has shapped your perspective (baby-boomer, white female, etc); but i was disappointed this time to see you pursuing the question on MJs significance purely from that angle. Maybe its not realistic to hope that you would realize that your black counterparts did indeed follow MJs careers through what you seemed to call his 'wackyness'.... and as you may have heard others express, he did also help black people to be less threatening in the eyes of non-blacks. It seemed also that even the folks on MTV and VH1 got this .... i'm a bit shocked really, that you missed all of this ...; 7/1/09, 7:45 PM
ricpic said...: Jackson didn't make me feel less threatened by blacks, but then I'm not a beautiful progressive type person.; 7/1/09, 8:06 PM
Penny said...: I think danielle is raising a great point here, if in fact it is true.

Do successful black people help to ease the closet racist's mind?; 7/1/09, 9:24 PM
ricpic said...: A Little Rachmanes, You Perfect People

Ease the closet racist's mind,
Let it come out of the closet;
Isn't it a bit unkind
To damn and never cosset?; 7/1/09, 9:42 PM
kentuckyliz said...: actually, given the causes of anal cancer, and the causes of what mj's symptoms seem to me suggest he had aids, i think ff and mj had something in common that this very integrated poster hints at: taking it up the tailpipe.; 7/1/09, 10:19 PM
Ralph L said...: At first glance, I thought it was a poster of Paula Abdul.

Did anyone notice that the son on Nip/Tuck has MJ's eyes & brows? One of the reasons I stopped watching that show.; 7/1/09, 10:51 PM
themightypuck said...: The only song of MJ I ever really, really liked was Billie Jean. I also think he gets too much credit for getting people to listen to a black artist. My recollection is that a lot of us were listening to The Ohio Players and Stevie Wonder in high school. I bet in 20 years people are still listening to Talking Book and no one is listening to Thriller.; 7/1/09, 11:37 PM
a psychiatrist who learned from veterans said...: It's very cruel. Dorothy Parker had a story, 'Big Blonde,' which starts out "Men liked her, and she took it for granted that the liking of many men was a desirable thing. Popularity seemed to be worth all... Men like you because you were fun.., and there you were." Farah paid the price of admission for this, to be there, though she seemed vulnerably to want to escape. I suppose the magazine editors wanted to suggest this aspect in MJ. Such an aspect to the personality was probably what the critics were suggesting when they derided Ronald Reagan as an 'actor' and it was an aspect of being an actor that, in his case,e seemed to serve his purposes rather than something that led him.; 7/2/09, 12:07 AM
A.W. said...: Chris Cohen

Actually I have that game and I remembered that because my thought the first time I played it was to say, “wow, that is ironic. He is desperately denying having sex with an adult female. Bet he wouldn’t make that song today.”

But on a serious note, it has occurred to me that really all we have left is his music. Now all those charges of molestation should keep him from being on the stamp like elvis, but I think otherwise we could expect his legend to grow based on the music without all the concerns about his lifestyle.

Chris (not Chris Cohen)

> I bet in 20 years people are still listening to Talking Book and no one is listening to Thriller.

Well, the staying power of thriller was tested in part by how well it sold as the rest of his music career imploded. My understanding is it sold pretty respectably for a 25 year old album. But I will let you know after a few listens to the album if I think it really has staying power. The thing that leapt out at me was how much better the music sounds when you don’t have a video distracting you. I mean the Vincent Price rap is just badass, for instance.

On an interesting tangential note, in life Jackson never let his songs be sampled (that rule didn’t apply to the Jackson 5, hence we got OPP sampling ABC). Now that other people are controlling his catalog, I wonder if that will change.; 7/2/09, 8:07 AM