Jacko and Farrah RIP

Rest in Peace Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett. I can’t think of a day when we lost two major personalities to the affliction known as death. I don’t know about you guys, but I had phases where these people were important to me.

I was probably 7 when the Farrah Fawcett poster came out and she was all over the place. I badgered my brother to get the Playboy with her on the cover, and once I got it, it turned out to just be an interview. Major disappointment. I never missed an episode of Charlie’s angels. Even after Farrah was gone I still dug the show, but not as much. It didn’t hurt that it was on the same day as the bionic man or the bionic woman or both, but I loved those shows too. Farrah was huge, she was so beautiful and natural, she was the precursor to Bo Derek, Christie Brinkley, Cheryl Teigs, Pam Anderson, you name it, Farrah was the first. It’s funny that after a while she sorta became hideous. I don’t know how that works, but her face was less wholesome and more jagged and manipulated. I’m assuming she had surgeries, in the end she sort of looked like the scary sister from Pet Semetary. You look at the scary Farrah and look back at the old Farrah, and you sort of have the scary farrah on your mind and the features that became distorted in the scary farrah were there even back in the day. The kind of hooked nose, she wasn’t as emaciated back in the day, so her roundness made her more wholesome. I guess time passes and once plastic surgery took over our ideas of beauty changed. No question though, in the late 70s, Farrah was the shizznizzle.

What about Jacko? Geez I don’t know where to begin with this guy. He’s whacko for sure. Even back in the day, he wasn’t all there, but it didn’t matter. Thriller came out in 1982. I just read the wiki about it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thriller_(album), def check it out. It was an unbelievable sensation. 7 of the album’s 9 songs made the billboard top 10, that’s nuts. Most top ten songs from one album: Michael Jackson, Thriller; Bruce Springsteen, Born in the USA; Janet Jackson, Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814 (7 each). Another Jacko tidbit, Bad had more number 1s than Thriller or any album ever. As you all probably know, ....Jackson.... was huge in 1983. He seemed like a fairly normal guy. He was a huge sensation and the videos were on 24/7. His style became ubiquitous. Everywhere you went people had Michael ....Jackson.... jackets, gloves, pants, hair. Weird al did some great ....Jackson.... parodies, but back in 1983, you would see white guys that looked like weird al walking around all over the place: Jacko’d out even with the geri curls. I think I admitted it way back in the day, but I must own up to it again, I had an MJ Thriller coat, red with the black leather. It was a nice coat. Seriously though, I wasn’t alone. Everyone had them. A lot of people even had the sequined glove to go along with it. I used to carry around a ski glove liner which was a decent facsimile and bust that during the sockhop when they played ....Jackson.... stuff. What can I say, I was a slave to fashion. The crazy thing about the ....Jackson.... jackets was that you couldn’t get them. You would be running all over town. Between Jackson Jackets, Parachute pants, and Air Jordans, you’d be running all over in a 20 mile radius just to be hip. I guess when you go too far in one direction, you often get propelled in another. It wasn’t too long after I got over the Thriller obsession and moved on to U2. I guess succumbing too completely to the mainstream pushed me in the other direction. I got into underground music, it was underground in 1985, U2, REM, The Smiths, The Replacements, The Dead Milkmen, Violent Femmes, the list goes on. I dunno if it was a knee jerk reaction to my Thriller phase, or just the normal progression of things, but I’ve been into more underground music ever since.

Sorry about the layoff, I’ll holler back at you soon.

SLFTD: Side by Side on my piano keyboard, oh Lord, why can’t we?

SFMTFTD: Almost naked, always stud

VFTD: http://www.mtvmusic.com/jackson_michael/videos/206759/man_in_the_mirror.jhtml

TFTD: Michael, Thanks for the music. Farrah, Thanks for being beautiful.