I dreamt I was kicking it with Michael Jackson at his Neverland
Ranch last weekend. The man was quite the host.
The whole time it was all the hot dogs and snow-cones I could
eat. The guest room he put me up in had a lot of really classy
vases and statues. The paintings hung in the bathroom were really
modern and high-tech too; all the eyes looked like they were
watching me the whole time.
But it wasn’t all badminton and backgammon at the
second-happiest place on earth. I spent most of the time at
Jackson’s side talking about the recent surge of
Michael-mania, namely the many documentaries shown on network
television bearing his name.
“ABC really did me in,” he said as we checked out
the place where he was going to put the Elephant Man’s bones,
putting around in the official Neverland Ranch golf-cart. “It
was lies, all lies.”
“They’re showing it again,” I told him, and
his usual cheerful leer melted into a smirk of defeat. “To
counter NBC’s newer one. I think that one’s going to
focus on your many surgeries.”
“TWO surgeries,” he corrected me. “Just two.
But it doesn’t matter. FOX is going to show you what you
didn’t get to see on ABC. FOX will clear my name ““ with
the truth.”
“That’s great, Michael,” I said, removing his
hand from my knee. “But aren’t you afraid that FOX
might kick you in the ribs just like you claim ABC did?”
“Not a chance,” he assured me. “Rupert Murdoch
and I go to the same shrink. He actually fixed us up. He said it
would help both of us.”
I was intrigued.
“Who’s your therapist?”
“Satan,” he said with a smile but then added,
“kidding, kidding.”
I laughed more out of fear than pure obligation. The sun began
to peek out from the overcast sky. Michael grabbed a phone receiver
from inside the knot of a paper-mache tree with a smiley face on
it. In minutes, creatures that looked a lot like Willy
Wonka’s Oompa-Loompas appeared with a giant black beach
umbrella before disappearing into one of many hidden passageways in
the park.
“I love children,” Michael continued with a more
serious tenor, “I just don’t know why people have such
a hard time understanding. But I don’t care what they think.
It’s the opinions of the children that I care about. Just
wait. FOX will set me free.”
I was lost for words. So I flashed him a thumbs-up. Jackson left
me then, taking off in an Oompa-Loompa-provided jet-pack over the
nearby hills. So I had a lot of time to think on the slow train
ride back to reality. The man gave me the creeps just on the TV
screen. But in person it was a whole different story. It was like
walking with Gumby and talking with the Pope. Whatever that
means.
But I couldn’t help wondering who was taking who for a
ride. Who really wanted to see six hours of the King of Pop in his
worst moments? I tried to think back to the last presidential
election. Was that one of the many agreed-upon platforms?
It wasn’t the people. Maybe it was the corporate sponsors.
Maybe GM/Ford Motor Company and Altria/Kraft/Philip Morris were
behind this sudden surge in interest. But wait, Jackson
didn’t drive or smoke. So it wasn’t them.
Ho-ho! Of course; it was the networks. They love putting crap
like that on TV. It fit right in with the degeneration of the
reality craze. The snake had begun eating its own tail, and it was
already at the eyes.
Looking back on it though, who could I be mad at this week? I
mean, which is worse, an extremely rich, eccentric, could-be
pedophile or big three networks that take advantage of him?
I’m still not sure, but I’m pretty sure it’s the
viewers who are the ones getting molested for it.