I’ve had jury duty all last week and I’m returning again today. It sucks, but at least I’m not a juror in the really BIG trial currently ongoing in Los Angeles, the Jackson family vs. AIG. Last Monday when I reported to the court, there were dozens of news vans equipped with satellite dishes lining Grand Ave. My first thought was “Oh shit” and my second had to do with praying to a god I don’t even believe in to please, please please don’t let me get picked for that fucking Michael Jackson jury! I needn’t have worried as the jurors had already been selected. I saw singer Mark Lanegan on Grand Ave. yesterday. I wonder if he’s got jury duty, too? Hopefully he dodged the Jackson/AIG bullet himself.

One witness who will probably NOT be called to the stand in that high profile trial is Derek Acorah, a celebrity “medium” well-known to British TV viewers, Acorah held a televised seance on the Sky 1 network in 2009 during which he alleged that he was able to make contact with Michael Jackson from beyond the grave. With four teary-eyed Jackson mega-fans in attendance, Acorah was able to, um, “divine,” I guess, that Jackson was adjusting well to his spiritual life and spending time with his grandparents. However, Acorah did pass on MJ’s annoyance that he was not laid to rest beside his idol, actress Marilyn Monroe: “I wished to lie alongside her. I suppose it’s of no consequence.”

One of the Jackson fans who participated in the hysterically funny televised seance told Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper, “I looked into Derek’s eyes, and it was him.” [Emphasis added]
 

Michael Jackson:

At 40 he will have aged gracefully and will have a handsome, more mature look.

Man, did they get this one wrong.

Via Retronaut

 
The other day I wrote “Photoshop is the new surrealism.” It was one of those things that just popped into my head and sounded right at the time. But the more I thought about it the more it seemed to hold some truth. I try to imagine the fun Max Ernst and Marcel Duchamp might have had with Adobe software. With all of the imagery available on the Internet, a dada collagist like Hannah Hoch would have thrived in the era of Google Images. The permutations and juxtapositions are infinite. The idea: take what’s there and create what’s not there.

Needless to say, not all Photoshop is art. But some of it, like art, lies to get at a bigger truth. Like the above picture of Michael Jackson wearing a Joy Division T-shirt. It’s fake but some of us wish it weren’t. The idea that Jackson was a Joy Division fan (even before Joy Division existed) is a thought that brings all kinds of groovy things to the fore—like the fact that pop culture is inherently a mash-up, that radio, iTunes and deejay mixes have made us grow accustomed to a world where everything collides, bounces off each other and often melds into a somewhat messy wholeness (This started for me a long time ago when I was 12 years old listening to a transistor radio transmitting a seamless stream of songs from artists whose only commonality was a good beat and a good hook. The Supremes melding into The Animals melding into Blue Cheer melding into Tom Jones).

In the collective consciousness of rock ‘n’ roll, the playlist that endures is immense, eternal, and like Michael Jackson wearing a Joy Division T-shirt, inclusive. The picture may be a lie, but the idea of it, what it suggests, is true. Rock music succeeds better than any other art form in the shattering of barriers, in bringing people together and in re-inventing reality. My world changed radically in 1963 when I first heard The Beatles on a jukebox in a pinball parlor in Southern France. I had no idea who they were, but for a moment time froze and I sensed a different future ahead of me than the one I thought I had been heading for.

When I initially discovered the photo of Jackson wearing Joy Division, I didn’t wonder “why?” I thought “why not?” It was a lie worth believing. I never came to rock ‘n’ roll for the facts. I came for the fantasy.

 
Brandon Tudor of Oswego, Illinois, spotted a bird dropping on his 1996 Cadillac Seville car windshield last Wednesday which resembled Michael Jackson.

Tudor said:

“It was a likeness that became more obvious “after it hardened.” Everybody loves it. There’s not one person who’s seen it that doesn’t agree it looks like Michael Jackson.”

Mr. Tudor was trying to sell the Michael Jackson bird poop image complete with the windshield on eBay for $500. Unfortunately, the sale has ended with zero bids.

Via Arbroath

 
Click here to see larger image. 

Update: Redditor BreadyMcBread says “I see your picture of Michael Jackson drinking vodka with midgets and raise you a picture of Michael Jackson holding a huge pair of underwear with doves on his wrists.”
 

 
Via reddit

 
Whether you love or hate Michael Jackson, this painting of a young, innocent Michael holding a mask of his unrecognizable older visage speaks volumes. I don’t know who is responsible for it. If anyone knows, I’d love to credit the artist.

Update: “Boy Behind the Mask” is by Santa Cruz-based artist Sarah Weaver. Thanks, Siobhan Stofka!

 
The UK’s Daily Sport tabloid is on a roll - only a few weeks after delivering the now legendary leader “Gordon Ramsay Sex Dwarf Eaten By Badger” comes this beauty. But what I want to know is - did it hurt?

 
Poly Styrene’s new single “Ghoulish” deals with the last few years of Michael Jackson’s life. An interesting subject for the singer of “Artificial.”

In an interview before she died, Poly explained the inspiration for the song:

There was all these pictures of him, and the nose had fallen off, and the white face, and the ghoulishness. But then I just wanted to say, I see through that. I see through that, he was probably quite a nice guy.”

“Ghoulish” will be released as a digital EP on August 8 including, appropriately, a dance re-mix produced by Hercules and Love Affair.
 

 
Via The New York Times

 
Jump about 5:50 in to hear how Michael Jackson contacted the spirit of the flamboyant pianist using a favorite occult technique of the Great Beast 666!

There is ten freakin’ hours of They Sold Their Souls for Rock N Roll.

Can you imagine being forcibly subjected to all ten hours by fundie parents?
 

 
Via The American Jesus

 
A gentleman performing a karaoke version of Michael Jackson’s “Black or White” gets really steamed when he thinks the wrong track is played. Things start to get interesting around the around the 1:00 mark. I suggest watching the whole video though, the guy’s got talent.

 
(via The High Definite)

 
This one is controversial for very different reasons to Mohammed Al-Fayed;s Michael Jackson statue. Fans of the King of Pop have been bombarding Premises studios in East London with hate mail after it unveiled the new work by Swedish artist Maria von Köhler, a recreation of Jackson’s infamous “baby dangling” moment. This makes me wonder if these same fans were angry with Jackson for the incident itself, or just upset at being reminded of it. Ironically von Köhler said she intended the work to be a commentary on fandom. Personally, I think it’s better than the other one, even if it makes MJ look more like Naboo from the Mighty Boosh.
 

 
Via the Daily Mail, of all places.

Previously on DM:
Soccer fans can go to Hell, as Michael Jackson statue unveiled

 
Millionaire Mohamed Al Fayed has told fans of his soccer club Fulham FC, to go to hell, if they do not like his gift of a 7 foot 6 inch statue of Michael Jackson.

Today at its unveiling, Al Fayed responded to criticism over the relevance of having a $150,000, two-and-a-half ton monument to the King of Pop, outside Fulham’s stadium, Craven Cottage:

‘Why is it bizarre? Football fans love it. If some stupid fans don’t understand and appreciate such a gift they can go to hell. I don’t want them to be fans. If they don’t understand and don’t believe in things I believe in they can go to Chelsea. They can go to anywhere else.

‘People will queue to come and visit it from all over the UK and it is something that I and everybody else should be proud of.’

Al Fayed was friends with Jackson, and once invited the singer to attend a soccer match at Craven Cottage in 1999.

Al Fayed is proabably best known as the former owner of the legendary department store Harrod’s, and as the father of Dodi Al Fayed, the “boy friend” of Diana, Princess of Wales, who was killed alongside the Princess in the infamous car crash in Paris in 1997. Al Fayed has famously maintained a campaign to prove MI6 were behind the killing of his son and the Royal Princess.

One fan of Fulham FC, Lee Robinson told the Contact Music:

“Why us? Fulham football fans do not want a statue of Michael Jackson. It’s completely mad. He’s got nothing to do with us. To be honest, he’s the last person you’d want there.”

However, not all fans agree, this from the Guardian:

The former Fulham player Kit Symons, who is now Under-18s manager at Fulham, defended Al Fayed’s decision. “It is great,” he said. “The big thing is it is obviously something that the chairman feels very, very passionately about and he has decided to erect this statue and fair dos to him.”

Speaking about the time of Jackson’s visit, he added: “It was just happy times. They were great times back then. The chairman obviously used to bring high profile people down the games. Tony Curtis was here a few weeks after and it was just fantastic times.”

Celebrity aside, the statue is just not that good, and looks more like a waxwork or one of those gaudy plaster statues found in a theme park. And of course, there is the bigger question of whether a sports club wants to be associated with a man who allegedly had questionable relationships with young boys?
 

 

 

 
Whoa. These are really weird. A clearly classically trained singer, one Chris Kent of Nashville, TN., doing very strange and wildly inappropriate vocal arrangements of your favorite Toto and Michael Jackson songs backed by a drunken band teetering on the brink of total collapse for the entire duration. As I observed before about Final Placement, It’s re-assuring to hear such rhythmically wobbly music in this day and age for some reason. Somehow at times I’m reminded of late period Scott Walker and maybe Berlin era Bowie. Huh.
 

With thanks to Thom Monahan

 
Well, it’s been almost fifteen years and Jarvis Cocker still hasn’t gotten his much deserved knighthood for jumping onstage during Michael Jackson’s ludicrous “messianic” performance at the 1996 Brit awards when the King of Pop implied he had the power to heal children and sick people. While the incident is well-known, of course, in the UK, this story is less known outside of Britain.

As Cocker told BBC’s Question Time in 2009:

“He was pretending to be Jesus. I’m not religious but I think, as a performer myself, the idea of someone pretending to have the power of healing is just not right. Rock stars have big enough egos without pretending to be Jesus – that was what got my goat, that one particular thing.”

Cocker and his friend, former Pulp member Peter Mansell jumped onstage and caused comic confusion before being led off by security. It was reported at the time that Jarvis “mooned” Jackson (that’s what I always believed) but this is not true at all.

The incident itself, which took place on live television. GENIUS!!! Even if you’ve seen it before, it’s still laugh out loud funny.
 

 
 
The police detained the Pulp frontman on suspicion of assault. A former attorney, comedian Bob Mortimer represented Cocker, who was released without charge.

Noel Gallagher, of Oasis proclaimed, “Jarvis Cocker is a star and he should be given an MBE.” Clearly the editors of the Melody Maker felt the same way. I was already a huge Pulp fan at the time, but this made me love them—and their lanky, fashionable and intellectual frontman—all the more.

After the jump, Jarvis Cocker’s press conference about the incident, Cocker looking back on the Brit awards stage invasion in 2009 and how the story was reported on at the time in Amercia..

 
Alien vs. Predator skateboard deck from Skate Mental.