The Battlestar Galactica, Michael Jackson 4th of July.

Well, he’s probably moon walking across the galaxy now. White bread Christian angels, who probably don’t look much different than Michael did, once he got done with himself, are telling him to go nova with his bad self. Michael’s grabbing his crotch and asking the nearest black hole if it wants its ass turned back into a white dwarf star. All the secrets and mysteries of the universe are bending over and waiting; hoping for an infusion of the absolute superficial and somewhere down the line we get Leonardo Da Vinci in hotpants doing a bikini wax commercial.

I missed out on the Dead Jackson Virus. The total of my exposure has been a short clip about them closing off the streets and area all around the StaplesCenter. I’m assuming that’s named after the office supply corporation and not the singing group. I did happen to see where the bipedal Coca Cola can, Madonna said something about him at one of her ‘sticky and sweet’ appearances (nice picture); “Let’s give it up for one of the greatest artists the world has ever known,”

I used to say (and probably still do), “The bigger the funeral, the bigger the asshole.” Just about anytime the world gets into one of its arranged sob-fests, its planting either a major psychopath or someone with the Hollywood version of hoof and mouth disease. St. Vitus Dance meets Captain Tourette; that appears to be what we’ve got here.

Apart from what you might suspect, I’ve got nothing against Michael Jackson. For a short period he displayed a couple of fairly remarkable, terrestrial abilities. The material was pedestrian but the choreography was compelling... except for the message in the movements. It was mostly comedy though, watching a hyperkinetic tooth fairy pretend to be an urban gang leader. That’s how it is in this world, pretend to be something you’re not and then get dipped into sealing wax and pressed against the parchment of life with a hot iron. Made authentic, so to speak; Madonna has a lot of that manufactured appeal, except in her case she can’t do any of the things Michael could but that doesn’t matter either.

When Madonna checks out at the age of 96, already embalmed for decades, they’ll bury her in a terrarium or put her in one of the display areas at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History next to a pterodactyl.

See... there’s a cosmic justice here. That’s why Mozart got one kind of send off and Kabuki Boy is getting another. The world applauds one kind of presentation and deplores the other. The reason is that, ‘the other’ isn’t ‘giving it up’ for the world and all its temporary ‘sticky and sweet’ goodies. Here in the Halitosis Cathedral of entropic despair, only the vain and useless get the 24 hour LED treatment in Times Square.

This is the place where they gave the Nobel Prize to Henry Kissinger among other notable psychopaths in recent times. This is the place where a six term United States congresswoman and a deserving recipient of the Nobel Prize can be hijacked in international waters by members of a genocidal nation, while attempting to deliver desperately needed supplies to the victims of the genocide and it doesn’t even get mentioned by the people giving Peter Pan his send off to Never Neverland.

This is the place where entertainment icons can engage in all sorts of illegal activities that anyone else would get sixty years for. This is the place where secret societies of wealthy bankers, politicians and sundry can attend pedophile bacchanalias to take the edge off their busy, competitive days. This isn’t the place to be someone else unless there’s someplace else but the jury is, supposedly, still out on that one.

I haven’t come to bury Michael or to praise him. I’m surprised if they don’t hold the same kind of event for the passing of the Hostess Twinkie. I’m guessing they still make them. I’m wondering what they did for Orpheus on his big day.

Yes, it’s the big 4th weekend and so MSNBC wants to treat us to a photo gallery of ‘famous’ Americans born on the 4th. Notice anything funny about the list, besides Stephen Foster, Eva Marie Saint and Bill Withers and others missing from the list? It’s probably just a coincidence. I’m sure we’re all comforted that Geraldo Rivera wasn’t left out.

Meanwhile, in Gaza, as in many places around the globe, people are getting hammered just for being on the land or next to the resources that somebody wants so that that great American culture, beacon of the West, can go right on celebrating the best and the brightest, as we all climb, in a donut-glazed wonder toward that shining city on the hill.

In order for us to go on celebrating the most vacuous portions of ourselves, someone has to pay. In order for the finery and glitter of the deserving few to continue in gaudy, endless spectacle, someone- a whole lotta someone’s- have to go without. In order that massive waste can continue, as proof that some of us will never have enough or spend even a small amount of what we have acquired at the expense of others, some must go without. Given that most of the people suffering have been convinced that they would do exactly the same if they were given the chance well, I guess it works out on some level, somewhere.

Michael’s the real life equivalent (if this is real life) of a Disney character, no different than Mickey Mouse. Mickey turned fifty a little while ago but he’s still going strong. Michael’s one of the gatekeepers that keep you penned in your own wonderland of wanting. He’s the smiling; backwards dancing door warden that says it’s all right here. Eat, drink and be merry because there are people just waiting to clean it up for you and then maybe sell some of what’s left on EBay.

I know they’re going to blow something up again pretty soon. Michael’s funeral would be a consideration if irony were your cup of tea.

Speaking of irony, there’s no small amount of it in the comparison between the stages of change in Michael’s face and the stages of change in the culture in which he thrived over that period of time. The culture now looks like Michael at the end of his journey. It also went under the knife, sculpted into the thing you see in front of you today. It’s no small surprise that Howdy Doody is now the president of the UnitedStates and can make war on three different nations (hoping for four) and talk about how Iran and Russia ought to show more respect for the democratic ideals of all the captive people yearning to be free. There’s got to be another word besides Irony that covers this. This is too big and too grand a thing for what Irony defines. Meanwhile, the caged criminals in Palestine continue in their obstinate refusal to die or depart.

I suppose that Irony would also have to apply to this year’s celebration of the 4th of July. All across the land of excess, thousands of venues are filled with drunken, red-faced Schmoos in a corpulent, teary eyed ecstasy, celebrating something that has turned into it’s opposite. John Philip Schoomsa is marching out of the speakers and... and what?

It’s Battlestar Galactica on bad acid and the real possibility of Michael rising from the dead. You broke it, you bought it. I’m going to go celebrate the, sooner or later, end of the perpetuating embarrassment we’ve turned every finer possibility into. It’s the thing that gives me hope... sooner or later this will all be gone. Meanwhile, let’s see how far they push it. I’m curious about the possible, physical limits to the physics of the absurd.

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