Another King Falls

It's ninety two degrees outside and I'm sitting in my favorite pseudo-intellectual neighborhood watering hole, sweating over my liquored-up iced coffee. Amidst the sounds of the stirring drinks and subtle page turns I hear it. A sharp inhale barely audible through the thick of the summer air. When I turned to inquire, it was obvious by the man's face that this was no minor spill of the milk. Somebody died today.

It took only moments before he quietly stood and leaned over the worn oak bar beside me and whispered to the tender, "Jacko's gone... did you have him in the death pool?"

With that melancholy cue, the tumblers in my mind began to fall into place. Michael Jackson, the self-proclaimed king of Pop had vacated this earth and gone off to two-step with the deities, leaving behind only a body ripe with silicon and mystery.

As these things tend to unfold, my first reaction was denial. Surely this scraggly barfly was simply trawling up the typical tabloid hogs-wallop. But by the mystical powers of 3G, it was confirmed.

Googled into truth, the realities began to ferment, and the questions rose to the surface.

"Wasn't he planning a comeback tour?"

"Could this be a publicity stunt?"

"Is he that depraved?"

"Is it wrong to call out the recently deceased on being alive, even if it's from a distant bar stool?"

However, these queries faded into irrelevancy as "legitimate news sources" piped in minute to minute confirmations that the unfamiliar remains of the pop king of the 80's had been left soulless beneath the fluorescent lights of a sterile Los Angeles hospital.

This seemed to be an unusually mundane death for a man who had spent the latter years of his life maintaining an elusive existence

plagued with scandal and eccentricity.

Out of a muted respect I tend to hold for defunct superstars, i forced myself to stifle the fleeting hopes I had that Thriller was more of a prophecy, and that the perennial child shall be resurrected to continue on with his attempts of reviving his career.

Then it occurred to me that although Michael's reputation had been forever tarnished by the kind of rust that only comes with accusations of child molestation and baby endangerment, he will not be remembered only for his transgressions. If his death proves nothing else it's that a youth steeped in celebrity and good looks, will outweigh an adulthood brimming with mild insanity.

Still, I'm left in shock, swilling the remains of a more somber beverage than I intended. Finding myself asking, "Why do I care if he's dead?" I can't remember the last time I put on a Michael Jackson record.

I doubt I would have taken much interest in his comeback tour beyond the subtle desire to see if yet another music icon is to become merely a haphazard pantomime of his younger self while striving for another spotlight.

Don't be mistaken, I respect the man's art and his place in the musical lexicon of that era, however when the public mourns for their fallen star, (as they undoubtably will, by way of VH1 retrospectives and sappy channel 5 slideshows complete with an array of bedazzled gloves), will it be for the man they'll find beneath the hospital sheet, or will it be for the almond skinned boy with the sweet falsetto we all love to remember?

In the coming weeks I forecast a plethora of jackson relics will emerge from the woodwork, and perhaps only through the countless racial and sexual ambiguity jokes he amassed, or the treasury of now antiquated skits will we finally solidify "Wacko-Jacko's" place in history.

However, the bartender shakes his head no, and the man slowly returns to his booth, knowing that his morbid financial interest are, for at least the moment, secure. And so the familiar silence of a coffeehouse/afternoon boozery settles over the bar once again.

I am left with my thoughts, but soon enough even those are drowned out beneath the slurps of my empty drink. So I walk through the door and into the heat, with one less living legend occupying this earth than when I entered.