Seriously, I thought it was all a helluva bad joke when I had a split-second glance at the Windows Live pop-up window announcing Michael Jackson’s death.
And then I took a second look.
“Michael Jackson dies of drug overdose at age 50…”
Oh my god, one of the legends I grew up listening to has just passed away?!
When I got word on Ray Charles and Luther Vandross, it was saddening, yes, but there was none of the inner churn of a hollow emptiness.
He was still so young, and had a series of what I’m sure would be legendary concerts piled up…
As I poured through, with near obsession, related media coverage and MTV specials and tributes, it struck me that Michael Jackson had (and still will I’m sure) entered my life in many more ways than I realised:
- Badwas the first single of Michael’s that I was exposed to. With its insanely catchy beats, a certain shy kid would find himself putting that track on whenever he needed to retreat into Fantasia.
- It was at my 5th Auntie’s place during Chinese New Year many, many years ago, that I got to play the Sega Genesis classic, Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker. I sucked at the game, but I remember being so taken by the Moonwalk special move which had every baddie dropping dead after dancing in unison on screen, accompanied by the classic Smooth Criminal!
- Black or White was responsible for a sore throat brought on by one pre-pubescent “hee hee!” too many
It also had this teenager’s eyes glued to the telly when the face morphing sequence came on.
- I was motivated to watch Free Willy ‘cos I wanted to hear the full version of Will You Be There! Mind you, this was back in the heydays where MP3s and the internet were unheard of.
- Heal the Worldwas used as the finale song during one of my primary school’s Speech Days (aka Prize-Giving Day). The song’s positivity and message of hope is still as fresh and relevant today as it was then.
- Thank you MTV, for making Thriller the #1 video in your Top 100 special! I’d have been hardpressed to come across this gem otherwise.
If you’ve never seen the video, you really should do yourself a favour, and check it out now:
Here’s some interesting Michael-related information I gathered from the tube specials:
- Sheryl Crow started out by being a back-up singer for Michael! She was featured in I Just Can’t Stop Loving You, amongst other tracks.
- We Are The Worldwas co-written with Lionel Richie.
- Michael’s music videos cannot be faulted for lack of length. In fact, the video for Ghosts is over 38 minutes long and holds the Guinness World Record as the world’s longest music video.
- Michael starred as the Scarecrow in a version of The Wizard of Oz, The Wiz. His performance was the only one that wasn’t critically panned.
- The music video forRemember the Timefeatured 3 big stars, Eddie Murphy, Iman and Magic Johnson.
- Even till today, the Scream music video is the most expensive ever made, at $7 million!
- Thriller has sold 35 million albums worldwide. Wow wow wow…
-You Are Not Alone holds the Guinness record for being the first song ever to debut at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart!
- The song They Don’t Care About Us had originally been recorded with lyrics that included the phrase “Jew me, sue me”, and “Kick me, kike me”.
Here are my parting words to a person who has transcended cultural, ethnic, and social boundaries to become one of the world’s most celebrated personalities:
My heartfelt thanks to Nuffnang and Nokia for their blogging competition, which provided me with such a unique way of remembering one of my favourite music artistes
As Singapore’s gay community tirelessly strives on to gain acceptance and understanding from the heterosexual majority, elsewhere, in another nation that too was once subject to British jurisdiction, a statute which we know as Section 377A gets repealed.Read the rest of this entry »
Most people consume far too much salt, and a University of Iowa researcher has discovered one potential reason we crave it: it might put us in a better mood.
Is it just me, or does virtually every single blockbuster that comes along suffer the Curse of the Bad Review (ok, so Star Trek was an exception) in The Straits Times Life! section?
I think Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen has set a new record though: 0.5 stars out of a maximum possible of 5!
Can’t blame me for not taking the reviews in there too seriously.
Based on an article in The Unofficial Sony Ericsson blog, the phone which I’ve been drooling over (not Satio surprisingly, for it’s a full touchscreen), Aino (most right one), will be coming out on 28 Sep!
That’s like only 2 months and 8 days from now, surely my K810i can hold out till then…
That’s a 3-inch screen you see right up there. It’s about time SE!
It’s amazing how ALL the programme booklets (which had barely anything in them, and cost $40+ a copy!), T-shirts, and CDs were absolutely sold out, a feat I don’t recall seeing for any other concert in Esplanade.
It’s also the first time that I see a queue form at the ticket-tripping area, 20 minutes before the venue is open.
Whatever were they queuing for, you ask?
To buy merchandise of course!
Being one of the few hundred to get Arnie Roth and Nobuo Uematsu’s autograph was certainly a thrill,
BUT
being able to be his personal escort, along with teaching him how to say “我很喜欢喝啤酒” (”I love to drink beer!”) properly, is an unforgettable, immense honour! “D
I thought my eyes deceived me when I first saw the following article header:
Have a smoke and help save the economy, China tells party officials
so I decided to read on…
In an effort to kick-start the Chinese economy, Communist Party officials are being asked to do their bit – by smoking. In Hubei province’s Gongan County, the order has come down from above that local government staff must consume 23,000 cartons of locally made cigarettes every year, which translates into a lung-busting 400 cartons for most council departments, and 140 cartons for each school.
If the bureaucrats and civil servants fail to smoke the required amount, their department risks losing out on its full share of the smoking allowance of four million yuan (£392,000). Gongan County hopes to retrieve losses from cigarette income tax with the decree, said Chen Nianzu, of the council’s cigarette market supervision team. “We are guiding people to help contribute to the local economy,” he told The Hubei Daily. Under the measures, workers who do not puff local brands can be fined.
The patriotic smoking drive follows pressure on party officials in Hefei province earlier this year to buy flats to keep the property market afloat.
China has 350 million smokers and million people die of smoking-related diseases every year. The government has introduced no-smoking areas and child education campaigns to try to get people to give up the habit.
I could only think of one particular Hokkien word as I read through the above.
And “Patriotic smoking drive”?! Talk about dying for one’s country…
Thankfully though, publicity rules and saves the day, ‘cos a few days later…
BEIJING (AP) — A rural Chinese county said Tuesday it had backed away from a rule urging its officials to smoke a certain amount of local cigarettes to boost tax income after it was reported in a newspaper.
Officials in Gongan county in central Hubei province were encouraged to smoke over 230,000 packs of locally produced cigarettes a year, the Hubei-based Chutian Metropolis Daily reported Sunday.
Departments whose officials smoked cigarettes from outside the county were to be fined, it said.
The article on the newspaper’s Web site did not say how many officials were in the county or how much tax revenue would be raised.
A notice on the Gongan government Web site Tuesday said the rule was introduced in March in an effort to crack down on fake cigarettes and illegal cigarette smuggling in the area, which is harming consumers and causing the government to lose revenue, but said it decided to scrap the edict since the article appeared. It did not elaborate.
The government said it will still investigate the smoking habits of local government employees to see if any are smoking counterfeit cigarettes.
Smoking is tightly woven into the fabric of daily life in China, the world’s largest tobacco market where about 2 trillion cigarettes are sold every year.
Tobacco sales, the biggest source of government revenue, brought in $61 billion in the first 11 months of 2008, up 18 percent from 2007, according to the Communist Party’s People’s Daily newspaper.
