Ken Griffey Jr pays a subtle tribute to the King of Pop
Griffey was acting “cutesy” during his first at bat in the Mariners game last night. “Billie Jean” blared over the sound system during his first at bat as he displayed one white glove.
He normally wears two, dark batting gloves.
Funny.
Almost a week after his death, MJ is racking up the accolades!
The ongoing coverage of his death has almost over extended its welcome (well, actually this past weekend it did) but still amazing in its own right is how the public is rushing to buy or download his music. This is absolutely nuts! We all knew it would be a media bombardment and you have to admit it’s fascinating to watch stories about people. It keeps getting more hairy, more interesting, and if you are a fan of Entertainment Tonight, then you’ve hit the prime time jackpot!
Does this mean that for the last 10-15 years, nobody has given a rat’s “you know what” about his music until the dude dies? Just a sign that so many only know of MJ for what he has done outside of the studio, which is sad. Can you blame people?
Regardless of that crap, the numbers for MJ’s music is staggering and is unheard of in the digital era and Internet based music world of 2009.
Thanks to Yahoo for this information and thought I would share.
Collectively, Jackson’s solo albums sold 415,000 this past week. That’s extraordinary, given that his titles sold a combined 10,000 in the week ended June 21. Of the 415,000, 58 percent were digital downloads.
On the Top Digital Albums chart, Jackson has a record six out of the top 10 slots, including the top four. “The Essential Michael Jackson” leads the Top Digital Albums list with 80,000 downloads sold, while “Thriller” is No. 2 with 57,000.
Jackson places a record 25 songs on the 75-position Hot Digital Songs chart (21 solo hits and four with his siblings), smashing the mark of 14 charting titles established by David Cook in June 2008. Jackson’s Halloween radio staple, “Thriller,” moves 167,000, which is good for second place on the chart behind the 203,000 shifted by the Black Eyed Peas’ “I Gotta Feeling.”
OK! OK ! Is that enough proof positive the guy was a musical stud? Nothing else to say or blog about (unless something real news worthy pops up in the near future) Sadly, people like to hear about MJ whether it’s music related or garbage about his life. If they keep dishing crap on MJ, I am sure I’ll eat it up too.
What a week of news stories!!!
Last week might have been the most news worthy of the year or last couple of years for that matter. Carrot Top is still…well…Carrot Top, the post-election rioting in Iran calmed down a bit, we lost Ed McMahon, Jon and Kate filed divorce papers, it was unveiled that Steve Jobs had a liver transplant, Albert Pujols belted 6 RBI’s against the Royals in one game!, we lost Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett within hours of each other, and just this weekend Billy Mays (the OxiClean guy) is found dead by his wife Sunday morning.
Oh, on the plate for this week, American troops are pulling out of Baghdad, Bernie Madoff gets 150 years in the pokie, and I need to fix one of our garage doors which came off the track.
In Memoriam…a sad week in Hollywood
Cue the circus music! “Yuuuu dat dat dada dada dat dat dudu”
*****OMG…what is that?******
I actually knew this would happen for some strange reason. Jacko (aka Michael Jackson) has hit the jackpot again by selling out all of his announced shows in London. A world tour? Hmm…
You have to admit, we all have (had) a soft spot for Mike. (or maybe his music) The jacket in the Thriller video, Billie Jean, the Neverland Ranch (should have been called NeverPaidTheMortage Ranch).
I’ve always had this theory of what happened to Michael Jackson and please chime if you want to. First of all, a lot of younger people forget that Jackson has been a mega star for nearly 40 years! Since the time he was in grade school in the late 60’s; he was a pop star singing with the Jackson Five. It wasn’t until the late 70’s that Jackson broke out on his own and established himself as a solo artist.
I laugh when I hear people say his career was short lived, um folks, when Thriller came out in 1983, he was already loaded and had been recording all through the 70’s. Thriller was a juggernaut of an album and this was during an era when there was no other media outlets for music besides radio, records, and MTV. The international success of Thriller tossed Jackson out of reality and into a world of seclusion and unimaginable wealth.
The last 10 years or so has been rough for him with all the oddball stuff he’s done and the charges against him. If you think about his life during the 80’s and early 90’s – he couldn’t go anywhere without an entourage of body guards and motorcades. Jackson never grew up. He lost his childhood years before he was a solo star and I think it seriously screwed with his head. He had no real friends besides Liz Taylor, Brooke Shields, and Emmanual Lewis (which teeters on the whole “child” thing which I find disturbing)…oh yeah and a monkey.
His life was not his own. He couldn’t go anywhere or maintain normal relationships with people. He was revered as a demi-God on an international level. Practically every non-english speaking country around the world adorned him as much as his fans in the States did. Same thing happened to Elvis and look what happened to him. That kind of attention and constant spotlight has to seriously jack with your perception of reality. Dude, I’m not a therapist but I try to stay open to all “possible” explanations of how humans behave. This is supposed to be bar talk, remember?
I have always thought Jackson sought some kind of personal solace in children because they posed no threat to his security or financial well being. His relationships with adults deteriorated as he fell deeper and deeper into a trench of lonely super-stardom. It’s like he’s still trying to recapture something that he lost years ago because his family thrusted the siblings into adulthood way before their time. I’ve read stories about Michael sharing hotel rooms with his older brothers, and having to sit idle as they “entertained” groupies. I’m sure life was not all lighted sidewalks and sequin gloves.
Here’s the part where I piss people off which is why I love writing a blog. I’m not totally 100% convinced that Jackson is a full fledged pedophile, but I am convinced that over time he developed a warped perception of who he attached himself too. A lot of it goes back to his status in the world, he was led to believe that he was God because he was treated like God. He rationalized everything he did as being “normal” and “socially acceptable” while the world saw it as freakish and criminal. His constant obsession with appearance and how his face has morphed into a Lord of the Rings, elfin magic looking thing from what was once a baby faced young man. It’s like he was in a perpetual state of hiding from the world by always changing his face and then having to overcorrect, again, again, and again, until he was so far gone that he ruined it.
I’m not undermining those families that brought charges against him, not in the slightest. He’s a fascinating case of someone who made a lot of odd and poor decisions some of which landed him in legal troubles. He should have never of involved himself with children the way he did and it ultimately hurt him professionally.
He has rendered himself old news because of his antics, but still an interesting subject who somehow still manages to wiggle his way back into the spotlight. He’s had a big impact on pop music and sadly the carnage transformed him into what he is today…that of which I’m not sure what.
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