Michael Jackson is "evil"

for me it was that Smooth Criminal lean, I still have no idea how they do it

Thanks for that link, DJP. Wow!

alas for Fosse cred, The Little Prince was a huge bomb at the b.o.

re: the Smooth Criminal lean

https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/MichaelJackson/story?id=7941951&page=1

aha! I knew it was a magic trick

he definitely did not move like a 50 year old man.

Fosse is 47 ish in that clip. 50 years isn't that old if you keep in shape.

reminds me of people being surprised that "Jordan can still dunk at 50!!"

this is a really weird conversation

tony hawk last did the 900 at 48

maybe I should clarify that, I guess it wasn't so much that he was 50 but rather that he was apparently in very poor health and was just counting down the days until his tragic death

Michael Jackson was the Ken Stabler if dancing

well yeah Fosse was a chainsmoker and pillpopper, and an epileptic as well.

so, that's how he did it.

for me it was that Smooth Criminal lean, I still have no idea how they do it

It was shoes that clicked to the ground.

i was thinking about his dancing skills because no matter how grotesque his face began to look, his dancing skills were unscathed, like a reminder of who he used to be (even if the styles of dancing changed a lot)

i am of that age that by the time Bad came out, I thought MJ was pretty corny/someone I liked as a little kid (and by that time I was no longer a little kid, i was a pre-teen...so matoor)

Same. My dad bght me the rec cause he knew I was a fan. Well, yeah, was.

Thanks Dan! I thght I made that up. Haha

http://i2-prod.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article6727091.ece/ALTERNATES/s615b/Michael-Jackson-shoes-2.jpg
https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2018/05/22/613306407/michael-jacksons-gravity-defying-lean-continues-to-fascinate
https://catalog.archives.gov/id/5742939

I think dangerous might have been the first tape i ever bought

First Music You Ever Bought

hey this turned into an ILM thread, what a surprise

Those smooth criminal shoes look really painful

Cruel shoes, you might say

that song from 'Little Prince' goes hard

LL otm about his dancing. i still love watching choreo rehearsal footage of MJ. like, there’s hours of Dangerous tour rehearsal but thats more saddo territory lol

i like this Thriller one - https://youtu.be/3Y9jwxE0TJA

born in 83. i was just getting into music right at the moment when MJ and Prince had become kinda outdated -- hip hop totally twisted the world upside-down. vanilla ice & mc hammer, and i remember reading a kris kross interview or something i think where they mentioned liking michael jackson?? but then really the chronic, and finally doggystyle ... snoop dogg was my michael jackson at age ten. MJ and Prince felt like they were from another era, he seemed weird and creepy, and the new or recent music never lived up to the reputation. there was a whole aesthetic shift at that moment. i did like one prince song ('lovesign') but it almost felt like prince doing G Funk! ALso I should mention aside from "Cream" by wu tang which spoke to me as a kid somehow lol I really associated this shift with west coast rap and derivatives like da brat, new york rap got hot again for me as a teenager more, and in the late 90s

obviously loved mj & prince when i got into them as a 'music nerd' in my late teens & of course there were certain songs (thriller) (human nature cuz of the nas sample, lol) that I knew already as part of the ambiance but yeah there was a definite generational shift at one specific moment

oh and i DEFINITELY learned the "whats the difference between neil armstrong and michael jackson? Neil Armstrong WALKED on the moon ... and Michael jackson [child rape joke]" on the playground in like, elementary school. there was always some 'question' about it ... but it was more an aura around it

i actually do kind of remember the Pledge of Allegiance thing that Whiney mentioned

people really love that fucking forbes article

https://t.co/GJ2j7TlEsK An informed and well argued piece about the huge absence of context in the new doc on Jackson.

— Nelson George (@nelsongeorge) January 29, 2019

questlove too

its interesting that it's all posed in the language of "real journalism" like ppl want to rely on Authoritativeness to bolster their intuited feelings about the situation So Bad

This forbes piece on on #MichaelJackson should be read. That’s all. https://t.co/fTOrmCOKOu

— Questlove (In E flat) (@questlove) January 30, 2019

Disclaimer: this article is not intended as a review of Leaving Neverland, which I have not seen,

okay

huh. i wasn't really aware of the details regarding these new witnesses.

i don't know. there as something profoundly inappropriate with his relationship with children and occam's razor says he it was what it looked like. but if he was actually some extremely gentle and naive person who everyone thought was a monster than that is really, really sad.

There is no non-sad interpretation possible

very true

Nelson George goin after Kamala Harris and defending MJ in the space of a week, cool agenda he’s got there

Don't find the Forbes piece particularly convincing. Wade Robson changed his story and Michael Jackson was kind and generous towards some children is all it says. Those two things are hardly inconsistent with MJ being a molester.

thread is a handy reminder that middle-agedness isn't quite the flattener it seems. i'm in my mid 40s and five years either way doesn't seem like a big deal now . . . except for enormous things like 'your age when you encountered hip-hop'

Wade Robson changed his story

This is a very strained reading of the forbes article.

Is it? The article says he testified in court that nothing sexual had happened between him and MJ, and then later said it did.

ok, I'm not sure which side you're on, but this stuff from the forbes article:

In 2011, Robson approached John Branca, co-executor of the Michael Jackson Estate, about directing the new Michael Jackson/Cirque du Soleil production, ONE. Robson admitted he wanted the job “badly,” but the Estate ultimately chose someone else for the position.

In 2012, Robson had a nervous breakdown, triggered, he said, by an obsessive quest for success. His career, in his own words, began to “crumble.”

That same year, with Robson’s career, finances, and marriage in peril, he began shopping a book that claimed he was sexually abused by Michael Jackson. No publisher picked it up.

In 2013, Robson filed a $1.5 billion dollar civil lawsuit/creditor’s claim, along with James Safechuck, who also spent time with Jackson in the late ‘80s. Safechuck claimed he only realized he may have been abused when Robson filed his lawsuit. That lawsuit was dismissed by a probate court in 2017.

In 2019, the Sundance Film Festival premiered a documentary based entirely on Robson and Safechuck's allegations. While the documentary is obviously emotionally disturbing given the content, it presents no new evidence or witnesses. The film's director, Dan Reed, acknowledged not wanting to interview other key figures because it might complicate or compromise the story he wanted to tell.

say there's more investigation into Robson's charges needed before we conclude that MJ definitely molested them.

The above is evidence of nothing. It's implied there that as Robson's life and finances were falling apart, he eyed up a sexual abuse accusation as his next paycheck. Just as likely (and I'd say a whole lot more likely) is that his initial denial was about Stockholm syndrome, about confusion about what happened, about a desire to be associated with MJ's fame and glamour and to parlay that into a career in the entertainment industry etc. And when all that waned, he went public.

True enough, but the "reasonable doubt" factor (in the court of ILX) comes into play. I haven't seen the movie either, but I will watch it when it's on HBO.

Max Wall invented the moonwalk, as any fule kno.

To this day I remain haunted by his enunciation @ 0:29:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyPbeFDS-y0

rivelinho iirc

Put your hand flat on a surface and touch your pinky to your thumb. Do you see a raised band in your wrist? That there’s a vestigial muscle called the palmaris longus. It used to help you move around the trees. About 14% of us don't even have this muscle anymore. (2/8) pic.twitter.com/ZF3Ta91IGy

— Dorsa Amir (@DorsaAmir) January 15, 2019

To this day I remain haunted by his enunciation @ 0:29:

jfc are all the people commenting on that video suggesting that jackson was just too pure or naïve to realize that sleeping in the same bed w/ a young boy would have "sexual connotations" to most people, aware that when he died they found mountains of pornography in his home, including some that essentially represented or simulated man/boy sex? (he also had heterosexual pornography and "adult" male pornography fwiw.)

there's really nothing exculpatory that holds up.

as for the supposed unreliability of the witnesses, i mean, sure, we'll never be 100% certain. but the fact that the motives of one of the witnesses may not have been entirely pure is... not really surprising at all? or damning? anyway, his account would hold less water if it weren't congruent with those of several other boys.

people really want to think MJ was innocent. i guess i kind of understand why and yet, ... why?

following is presented on not the firmest footing, being that its coming from a white guy awash in privilege, but offered in good faith…

Why do Nelson George, Questlove and other african americans stand up for MJ year after year, when it is self evident that he did everything he possibly could, using his vast resources, to eliminate his physical connection to the african american community? over and over again over at least 25 years, he tried to resemble a confluence of Joan Collins and a white boy, ostensibly because his father made fund of his nose when he was a kid, among other hideous depredations? It seems to me that his mental illness/working through childhood trauma should not excuse what appears to be a visceral insult.