Saturday Fluffernutter: Michael Jackson; Michael Jackson; Weird Al Yankovich Spoofing Michael Jackson
Saturday Fluffernutter – all the fluffy news about those nutty celebrities.
Michael Jackson, Michael Jackson and, oh yea, Michael Jackson. When the “legit” news outlets are 24/7 on a long past his prime singer, you know what’s dominating the entertainment press. 
I don’t want to be writing about him, however, this post is called The FlufferNutter and is dedicated to all those fluffyheaded nuts in Hollywood. There can be little argument that Michael Jackson was the king of fluffyheads and nuts, so without further ado…
Michael Jackson had been dead about two hours, and I was watching the TV with another guy. I turned to him and said, all these people who are praising him now, are going to be denying they ever did so in two years, when all the real stories are told about him. My logic was, all the people who kept quiet, either for financial or contractual reasons or out of plain politeness, now had lost all incentive to stay quiet. The real Michael Jackson story would be told, and it would be appalling to all decent people.
The game is, not surprisingly, already afoot with a new Michael Jackson book about to be released by Ian Halperin. Halperin, most famous for his collaborative books on Kurt Cobain in which it is suggested that Courtney Love may have had Cobain murdered, has been working on his biography for a while now, and timed it’s release for July 2009 because he felt Jackson was likely to die around that time. He was, of course, uncannily accurate. Look for this to be the first of many books with the dirt on Michael Jackson.
The arguments that Michael Jackson was a great talent tend to elude me. I have spent the last week dismissing them as the ravings of a lunatic society. However, the video from the Mowtown 25th Anniversary show where Jackson first performs the moonwalk during Billy Jean has made me do a rethink. This is pop music at it’s absolute finest, and it is a brilliant performer at his peak.
Remembering Michael Jackson naturally enough brings out some other strange memories. Parody specialist Weird Al Yankovich, the worlds greatest rock ‘n’ roll accordionist, did great parodies of the 80’s pop hits and their videos. Here, he nails Michael Jackson’s Beat it with Eat It.
If you liked that, his Madonna parody, Like A Surgeon is even better.
Karl Malden – 1912- 2009
In Non-MJ news, the world lost a different type of great this week when Karl Malden died at age 97 in Los Angeles. Malden won an Oscar for his supporting role in A Streetcar Named Desire in 1951 alongside Marlon Brando. But it was his Oscar nominated role as Father Barry, again alongside Brando, in 1954’s On The Waterfront that is Maldens great work in my opinion.
Karl Malden was a fine actor and equally important he was, by all accounts, a fine person. Married for over 70 years, remarkable by any standard, astounding by Hollywoods, Malden is survived by his wife Mona (nee: Greenberg), daughters Mila and Cara, granddaughters, Alison, Emily, and Cami, and great-grandchildren, Mila, Stella, Charlie, and Thomas Karl. Condolences to all of them.
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