So in one week we get (in order of deadness) a dead Ed McMahon, a dead Farrah Fawcett, a dead Michael Jackson, and a dead Billy Mays.  Huh.  A dead overrated huckster cookie with creamy dead talented person filling.

I’ll tell you right off the bat that I owned a copy of “Off The Wall”, the Michael Jackson album that was released back in 1979.  I was 16.  Now, when I was 16, I was a pretty huge Bowie fan; not only was almost every album he made up until 1979 great, that was his Berlin period, when he released three of the best albums of all time: “Low”,  “Heroes” (both in 1977), and “The Lodger” (1978).  And they were followed up with the mighty “Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)” in 1980.  He totally lost me with the crap-fest that was “Let’s Dance” in 1983, but back in the 70’s I loved David Bowie.  I also loved Richard Hell, XTC, the Sex Pistols, and Yes.  And I still had a copy of  “Off The Wall”.  Because it was great.  And, uh, maybe I was a bit of a closet disco fan – which might have started when I was 15 and wore a black velvet suit to Studio 54 for the premier party for the worst movie of that decade, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”, starring Peter Frampton and the Brothers Gibb.  All of them except Andy.  I went with my mom.  So I used to tell people that I danced with the chick that played Strawberry Fields, but I think that might have been a lie.

The King Of Pop. Before the whole becoming-a-white-dude thing.

Anyway, after “Off The Wall”, pretty much everything the Jackson recorded made me want to throw myself in front of a bus (especially that piece of crap he did with Paul McCartney).  So now he’s dead.  And news assholes and commentary writers everywhere are tripping over their dicks to talk about what a great guy he was and how there will never, ever, ever be another Michael Jackson, and what a terrible loss it is.

Sorry, I just can’t get behind that. People die, my bitches, and they do it every day.  There are even some that didn’t pay $20 million to settle a child molestation lawsuit out of court.  And even if the guy really was just incredibly fucking stupid about his behavior and wasn’t the mincing kid-toucher some people think he was (honestly, the dude was so odd I really don’t have an opinion about that one way or the other), the coverage is getting ridiculous.  He lived, he made some good music, he made some crappy music, he made a shitload of money, he lost a shitload of money, he became a really sad looking son of a bitch, and he died.  The ground-breaking good stuff  people attribute to him is offset by the ground-breaking weird stuff.  Yes, he left three kids behind, which monumentally sucks for them.  But it’s not like he died irrigating Iraq with his blood while his wife and kids were looking at a photo of him on the mantelpiece and wondering when he’d be home.

I heard Larry “Skeletor” King on the radio venerating Michael on Thursday night.  He promo’d his upcoming show on which his guests would be Cher and Celine Dion (who could have fed the malnourished looking Jackon for a week using her camel toe) and said that because Michael had died, Farrah Fawcett’s death “is in the past now”.  Really Larry?  Tell that to her family.

Now Farrah, I dug Farrah.  I’m not going to jump on the “I had a picture of her on my wall” train, because I didn’t. I preferred the topless picture of Suzanne Somers I hid under my bed.  But I still loved Farrah.

What's not to love? If this doesn't make you nostalgic (and a bit randy) nothing will.

My wife liked Farrah too (no, not like that.  At least I don’t think like that, but it’s an intriguing – and mildly hot – question).  Hell, everyone liked Farrah.  And thanks to her and Michael Jackson dying on the same day, if you’ve turned on the TV in the last few days,  instead of an awesome montage of Farrah-ness from the 70’s, you’ve gotten endless replays of the creepy, sad, icky Martin Beshear documentary about Jackson.  Or a parade of media-hungry bottom-feeders that deigned to crawl out from under their rocks to bless us with their insights.

C’mon: does anyone give a shit about what Gloria Allred thinks about Michael Jackson?  Tell me what Camille Paglia thinks about Farrah, and maybe I’ll tune in (of course this week did bring some good TV news: Billy Mays, in his stupid blue shirt and idiotic chia-pet beard, will finally stop screaming at us from my kids DVR-less television).

Oh, and I hope you didn’t expect some maudlin “Rest In Peace” bullshit at the end of this either.  They aren’t resting.  They’re dead.

This is a post from: Bradford Schmidt's blog, Bone In The Fan.

Celebrity Death Week