Ahira's Hangar

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/26/arts/ ... lobal-home

This news greeted me when I turned on the TV after work. I'm more than a little shocked. Way too young to die.

Jackson wrote some awesome songs in his time. In particular, the songs off the Thriller album are part of the soundtrack to my life in the early 80's. Billie Jean in particular was one of the greatest pop songs I had ever heard, and remains so. I rank it among my 20 or so favorite songs of all time.

It's just too sad that his eccentric behaviour and legal battles in later years overshadowed his music-making.

Farewell, Michael.

Michael Jackson's

IMO, to this day nothing still comes close...

So much talent combined with so much sheer weirdness (and even alleged criminality). I dunno, to me he has always represented the perils of having too much fame and too much adulation and too much money at far too young an age with far too few limits on behavior.

But man oh man, back in the early 80's did he ever make some great music!

Hearing of his death was a little weird for me. I'm only a year or so older than Michael, and I grew up two counties over from where the Jacksons started out. I'm not supposed to be old enough yet to outlive the entertainers of my generation!

Why on the world should the tax payers have to pick up any of the tab for this? If the family wanted a circus, they should pay for the circus.

(Note: I do not mind the tax payers paying for part or all of the funeral for someone who died in public service, such as military, fire fighters, and police officers who die in the line of duty, or veterans, as they earned it through their service. Also "once in a generation" sorts of people like Rosa Parks who changed history forever for the better and who lie in state in the nation's capital. But this is something else entirely.)