So as I’m sure you’ve heard by now Michael Jackson died suddenly yesterday of an apparent heart attack. I’m not going to go into his later life and legal troubles, nor will I express an opinion on weather or not I think he molested those kids. ( I wasn’t there, and neither were you.) But I felt that I have to write something about the man and the huge impact he’s had on entertainment, and my life.
In 1983 I was five years old and well on my way to becoming a fireman. Then in the summer of that year I slammed my arm through a glass window and needed fifty-seven stitches to close the gaping wound on my arm. My Aunt Jane hand made a get well card composed of the goriest pictures she could find, because she has a sick sense of humor. (Thanks for giving me your sense of humor Aunt Jane!) You see, she thought that the card would gross me out, instead it had the oppsite effect in that I just had to know where those pictures came from. So I harassed her for months about it until she relented and gave me the tattered remains of a magazine named “Fangoria”. I couldn’t read the articles, but I poured over every picture a hundred times. I was fascinated by the fact that the monsters that scared me so badly were created by normal people, and not dark wizards. This is probably the single most important thing that has ever happened to me, and helped to define the person I have become.
The second most important happened later that year, in the winter of 1983. I was staying with my grandparents over the weekend (as my sister and I often did) and I was one happy camper because they had cable TV, and we did not. I gorged myself on Nickelodeon and “You Can’t Do That On Television” all weekend and was more than a little annoyed when my mother came to pick us up on Sunday evening. But on this night she wasn’t in a hurry to go. Instead she gathered everyone into the living room and turned to a station I had never seen before. She looked at me and said, “I heard about this today and I thought you might like it.” “What is it?” I asked. “Just keep watching, it will be on in a little bit.” And then………
I love you Mom. My mind was blown into a million pieces. Werecats, Zombies, and that music….Damn that music was catchy. My Mom bought Thriller on vinyl, and we wore that sucker out over the years. Three really important things happened to me that day; My love of all things Horror solidified, I discovered MTV, and I found out who John Landis was, which led to American Werewolf in London…. and down the rabbit hole I dove.
I am a child of the eighties. And the eighties were ruled by Michael Jackson. That’s why they called him “The King of Pop”, because he was. He is my generations Elvis.
Oh, and he made a really crazy movie called “Moonwalker”, which was turned into a video game. And let’s not forget about “Captain E.O.”, one of the first 3-D motion controlled rides at Disney’s Epcot Center.
I will miss you, you crazy genius. May death bring you the peace you never had in life.
—J Frog
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