Shook up the World

I liked Michael Jackson, especially the younger version. Michael was a nut at times, but he offset this with good works. I think this may be the key to life, (like a carbon tax for polluters) a person needs to do more good than bad in this life to assure some sort of decent after life. Just a thought. I am a little younger than Michael but I remember when the Jackson 5 first came out. We were both from the Midwest, he from Indiana, me from Iowa. So we felt as kids that we were kinda close to the Jacksons.

When I was kid, something like 7 or 8 we had started a group like the Jackson 5 with our neighborhood friends. Lots of practices, lots of dance steps and lots of folks wanting to be Michael Jackson. It's funny thinking about it now. Time flies, it just doesn't seem that long ago. When 'Off The Wall' came out my two older sisters were seniors in high school, I was a freshman. We would go to the school dances and all you would hear and all you would want to hear would be the "Off The Wall" album. When the prom came around folks wore the tux like Michael wore on the album cover, that was a fresh look at the time.

Celebrity is something else. I've interviewed a few celebrities when I wrote about the music industry. Not many of them enjoyed or were comfortable with their celebrity. It seems like the worst part of fame. I had a tiny bit of it, while working and writing in the music business and I hated it. You get people around you who think about you more than they should. Strangers and weird people wanting to do things for you for no reason.

Michael being Michael had gillions of hangers on, yes people and lawyers surrounding him, the trifecta of slime. I would bet money, that we're going to find out his doctor overdosed him on Demerol, -a super strong pain killer-doctors prescribe for cancer patients. Nothing you should be shooting up at home. I personally think Michael is in a better place, I doubt if he had 50 concerts (he had sold out 50 shows in London) in those skinny bones of his. The last time I had seen him on stage he seemed slow, he didn't want to go out like that. Michael Jackson is one of the few people like Muhammad Ali who could actually say "I Shook Up the World." Just the attempts to confirm the news of his passing were big enough to crash the entire internet. That's big.

Gardening Tip: To add fragrance to your walk around your home, add creeping Thyme to the cracks and between stones in your walkway. When you step on the thyme when moving through your walkway the Thyme smell is released. This aroma adds to the quality of your life.