The past week has been one awful news story after another–Farrah Fawcett, Ed McMahon, the Oxiclean guy, and, of course, Michael Jackson. Dead, Dead, Dead, and Dead. All of them. So tragic. Although not so much with Ed McMahon because he was 86 and that’s pretty old. So I’m not sure he qualifies as tragic. More like, um, predictable. That’s what old people do. They die. Tis one of those inescapable facts of life. Except it’s also one of those really scary facts of life, so I try not to think about it too much. I like to pretend that I’m going to live forever. Like a vampire, except minus all the slaughtering and blood drinking. At church, when they talk about dying, I close my ears and go “la la la la la.” In my head, of course. Our priest isn’t really cool with people ignoring him out loud. Priests are strict like that. Even though I’m pretty sure he was either hungover or possibly still drunk during one of his weekday sermons a few weeks ago. But that’s a story for another day, like preferably when I live in a different town because it’s not the best idea to write about your drunk priest in your blog even though the chances that anyone from your church reads your blog are slim to none because they only read these boring religious books that make me want to go to sleep. 

Back to the recently deceased–Unlike Ed, Michael Jackson definitely qualifies as a tragedy. Ahhh, Michael Jackson. It sounds so trite because everybody keeps saying it over and over again, but he really did define a generation. My generation. Kids who grew up in the 80’s. I remember in 4th grade when all the girls were carrying these leather drawstring Michael Jackson purses. I wanted one SO BAD. A light purple one. I’ve been trying to find a pic on the internet, but the closest I’ve found is this:

Which, I’m sorry, is SO not as cool as the purse I’m talking about. And guess who is kicking herself now? That’s right–my mom because the cool purse would be worth, like, a thousand dollars now. See Mom? I TOLD you you should have bought it for me. But noooooooooo.

Although I didn’t have the awesome purse (sniff sniff) I did have the Thriller album, which I played on my blue record player. A record player!!! I am so old.

This is the Thriller album cover and when you opened it up it stretched out so you could see his legs too. I hung it up on my wall, but my dad made me take it down because Michael Jackson was black and good little Southern girls did not have pictures of black boys hanging up in their bedrooms. In fact, he was mad at my mom for even buying it for me. But my mom didn’t care because she liked MJ too. Even though she didn’t buy me the purse. Not that I still think about that. That would be sick and unhealthy.

RIP, Michael.