I Have No Words

Except I do have some words. Here they are.

I go up to cover the receptionist’s afternoon break and she has a news page up with a picture of Michael Jackson. I shudder at the frighteningly disfigured “face” on the screen. She tells me had had a heart attack.

My reaction: indifference

I do what a good little socially acceptable person does and crack the requisite jokes at his expense. You know the routine. Black to white. Fake nose. Child molestation. Right down the line.

Another coworker flies out of his office and announces, “Michael Jackson just died!”

My reaction: get totally fucking wigged out

I mean, that’s kind of intense, no? When a person who is that famous (read: well connected and wealthy) can’t survive passed 50, it just reminds you exactly how mortal we are. And besides that, there’s just something a little weird when an icon dies. It’s TOTALLY intense. There are debates already on the radio between this person calling him a pop icon whose influences have reached far and wide and that person claiming he’s a psycho. This really rubs me the wrong way, because of all the pointless arguments in the world…. Seriously. It’s like having an argument about whether someone was tall or has blue eyes. Like you can’t be both.

::shrug::

But all in all it’s just a little surreal. It’s like announcing Mickey Mouse has died.

I was going to marry Michael Jackson when I was six. Go ahead and crack all the jokes you want about how he would have been willing (but note that I was never a young boy), but the dude made some good music and he is a household name.

A little surreal for sure.